I'm going to repost something I posted there:

I think that Scott is looking at Phil Robertson’s literal words and ignoring context, implication, and connotation. It is possible to parse what Phil Robertson said as a thought experiment which questions the logical consequences of an atheistic position.

But even though his literal words have the form of such a thought experiment, that’s not what he’s doing. He’s stringing together a set of applause lights meant to tell his audience that he fantasizes about the outgroup getting punished for being the outgroup in a way that is their own fault.

It is a scourge of the Internet that people are too literal. Scott is falling victim to this trend here. The way Phil Robertson phrased that, and the circumstance surrounding it, make it very clear that it is not just a thought experiment even if you can take it apart and say “well, a thought experiment has A, and B, and C, and Phil is also using A, and B, and C and in exactly the right order."

Yes, people can use extreme scenarios when they are legitimately trying to argue a point. No, this is not a case of that. It's not even a case of atheists in the audience getting mindkilled. It's a case of atheists in the audience correctly understanding what he's saying. In the real world outside LW, most hypotheticals of this sort are attacks and not sincere attempts to make a philosophical point.

The problem with Robertson's thought experiment, I feel, isn't that it's extreme or visceral, but rather that it is strawmanning an overwhelming majority of atheists. (Scott actually coined a term for this sort of thing: weak man.)

Most atheists I know don't in fact believe that God is the only possible source of morality; in fact, many of them hold that even if God existed, they would still evaluate each of His commandments on their own merits before deciding to obey. The mere fact that you don't believe in God doesn't make you a moral nihilist all of a sudden. Robertson's thought experiment relies upon the implicit assumption that atheism implies moral nihilism, making it okay to rape and murder, which is frankly a very old argument that has been refuted a great many times, both on and off the Internet.

My problem with such examples is that it seems more like Dark Arts emotional manipulation than actual argument. What your mind hears is that, if you're not believing in God, people will come to your house and kill your family - and if you believed in God they wouldn't do that, because they'd somehow fear the God. I don't see how is this anything else but an emotional trick.

I understand that sometimes you need to cut out the nuance in morality thought experiments, like equaling taxes to being threatened to be kidnapped, if you don't regularly pay a racket. But the opposite thing is creating exciting graphic visions. Watching your loved one raped is not as bad as losing a loved one - but it creates a much better psychological effect, targeted to elicit emotional blackmail.

Thanks for doing this.

As someone who has spent a lot of time with religious conservatives, I've heard the sort of argument given by Robertson many times before. And they use it as an actual argument used against nihilism, which they tend to think follows directly from atheism. So Scott is completely right to address it as such.

I think Robertson conflates the two because he (and others like him) can't really imagine a coherent non-arbitrary atheist moral realist theory. Can anyone here give a good example of one that couldn't include what the murderer he depicts seems to believe?

Robertson's point is actually quite relevant for religious folk. When I was still a serious Christian, I too wondered how a purely secular approach to morality could avoid degenerating into relativism or a "might makes right" free-for-all.

Any arbitrariness in one's approach to morality risks relativism, as someone else can take a different approach and so reach a different conclusion. For example, utilitarianism becomes a much different beast if I introduce a caste system wherein I take a weighted sum of people's utilities. I may decide that one group's happiness is worth more than that of a different group.

Cheating is another issue that bothered me. If you can lie, cheat, steal, and kill your way to a good life and avoid all the negative consequences, then why not do it? This is the perspective of someone who does not value other people's happiness and only follows the rules because of the punishments for breaking them.

Contrast with a supreme judge. He's the source of morality, so there's no relativism. He's omniscient, so there's no getting away with doing something in secret. He's almighty, so there's no way to use one's might to avoid consequences. Is it any wonder that the devout can feel underwhelmed by secular morality? They can accept that atheists can be just and honorable, and that some are more righteous than most religious folk. What they have trouble accepting is that those moral precepts have a solid foundation without God.

I largely agree with the post. Saying Robertson's thought experiment was off limits and he was fantasising about beheading and raping atheists is silly. I think many people's reaction was explained by their being frustrated with his faulty assumption that all atheists are necessarily (implicitly or explicitly) nihilists of the sort who'd say there's nothing wrong with murder.

One amendment I'd make to the post is that many error theorists and non-cognitivists wouldn't be on board with what the murderer is saying in the thought experiment. For example, they could be quasi-realists. I say this as someone who personally leans moral realist.

I definitely agree with Scott's argument. Using extreme scenarios can help get to the heart of the matter/morality. It's especially interesting because Scott's previous post was... Is Everything A Religion? If everything is truly a religion then Phil Robertson's scenario loses steam. The atheist would simply reply to the intruders that he does believe in God... just not the Christian God. If the intruders pressed the atheist for details... and the atheist was a liberal... then he could tell him that the state is his God. This would be consistent with a paper written by a Nobel prize winning economist...

The state did, indeed, become God. - James M. Buchanan, Afraid to be free: Dependency as desideratum

It's too bad that Scott didn't share that paper as an additional example of how different beliefs can be considered religions.

But the atheist wouldn't necessarily have to be a liberal to have some degree of faith that the state would track down, apprehend and judge the law-breakers.

Personally, even though I'm an atheist, it's entirely possible that I would totally claim Christianity and quote the heck out of the Bible if I found myself in Robertson's scenario. I would have absolutely no affinity with Kant in this regard. I would lie like a rug if I thought it would save my family. That being said, if we assumed that the intruders were highly intelligent, and/or had a lie detector test on them... then I would tell them that my "God" is progress. Difference is the engine of progress so difference is the engine of "God". If the intruders killed my family and I... then this would decrease difference... and as such, be against my religion. And because everybody benefits from progress... even the intruders.. then it would behoove them not to kill us. In essence I would be making a consequentialist argument against being murdered.

The same thing is true if the leader of China called me on the phone and threatened to invade the US and kill/enslave all Americans. Again, assuming adequate intelligence... I'd make a consequential rather than a deontological argument against the invasion. Sure, China would gain X from having a bunch of additional resources at their disposal... but they would be foregoing Y. What's Y? Y is what they would have gained from American innovations. Progress (innovations, discoveries, cures) depends on difference... and China would eliminate a lot of difference by invading us. Therefore... Y > X.

Perhaps it would be more effective to simply reply that we'd bomb the heck out of China if they invaded us? History clearly indicates that this argument doesn't work in the long run. We're all safer and better off when more, rather than less, people appreciate the value of difference.

Phrasing the moral example this way is likely to cause participants in the discussion to get mind-killed and not conductive to get them to reason freely.

In particular it distracts here from the strawman he's making. Most atheists do think that there something wrong with rape and murder.

You could construct an argument about needing to reinforce explicitly using system-2 ethics on common situations to make sure that you associate those ethics implicitly with normal situations, and not just contrived edge cases. But that seems to be even a bit too charitable. And also easily fixed if so.