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.
Sorry, but I’m guessing you don’t spend much time around religious conservatives like Robertson. It’s actually quite common among them to reason philosophically like this, mainly due to the emphasis on Christian apologetics. I’m sure Robertson has come across an argument of this form before and just reworked it for this.
Let me offer some more evidence. Listening to a recording of it, there are some chuckles in the audience at the beginning, but it grows silent by the end as most people grow more disgusted. The natural reaction, right in his last line, is, “Yes, something isn’t right about this. Atheists do not deserve to be raped, murdered and castrated. The world would be quite chilling if we didn’t have the moral authority to declare that some things are right and some things are wrong.”
That’s the complete opposite conclusion as, “Yes, atheists deserve to be tortured for believing there’s no right and wrong.” I honestly don’t see how you think that could be the conclusion he wants you to reach. You don’t promote the Holocaust by talking about how much pain the Jews would suffer in concentration camps. You use weasel words like “the final solution to the Jewish problem.” Robertson is doing the exact opposite.
The fantasy isn’t mainly that Robertson likes torturing atheists or thinks his audience does. The fantasy is that their own atheism is responsible for them being tortured and that the awfulness of that demonstrates that atheism is awful. Whether his audience likes hearing about atheists suffering is a side issue.
.You don’t promote the Holocaust by talking about how much pain the Jews would suffer in concentration camps.
That’s a bad comparison because Nazis did not believe that Jews could or should give up being Jews.
Hmmm, I think a better word than “fantasy” here is “dystopia.” Robertson is painting a bleak picture of a world where without moral authority, like the (much longer) bleak depiction of say, Fahrenheit 451 of a world without intellectual freedoms. Again, the natural reaction to reading Fahrenheit 451 or hearing Robertson isn’t gleeful cackling, but shocked horror. “Something ain’t right.”
Robertson is mistaken in believing that atheists all deny the existence of right and wrong. However, from a timeless decision point of view, someone who does in fact deny the existence of right and wrong is at least partly “responsible” for it if he is murdered by someone who does not believe that murder is wrong and who would not have done it if he did believe it was wrong.
Saying he has no responsibility at all in this sense, would be like saying that the person who takes two boxes in a Newcomb situation is not responsible for the fact that he didn’t get the million.
Precisely. It’s also implying that atheists are moral nihilists. Which is BS. Plenty of religious people believe in god who will grant them passage to heaven irrespective of their moral conduct just as long as they repent and accept Jesus; and a plenty of atheists are not moral nihilists.
“and not sincere attempts to make a philosophical point”—So, he’s confused atheists and moral error theorists, but the point is rather valid philosophically. It is very easy to say that one doesn’t believe in morality in the abstract, but much harder when confronted with a vivid, specific example.
I’m going to repost something I posted there:
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.
Sorry, but I’m guessing you don’t spend much time around religious conservatives like Robertson. It’s actually quite common among them to reason philosophically like this, mainly due to the emphasis on Christian apologetics. I’m sure Robertson has come across an argument of this form before and just reworked it for this.
Let me offer some more evidence. Listening to a recording of it, there are some chuckles in the audience at the beginning, but it grows silent by the end as most people grow more disgusted. The natural reaction, right in his last line, is, “Yes, something isn’t right about this. Atheists do not deserve to be raped, murdered and castrated. The world would be quite chilling if we didn’t have the moral authority to declare that some things are right and some things are wrong.”
That’s the complete opposite conclusion as, “Yes, atheists deserve to be tortured for believing there’s no right and wrong.” I honestly don’t see how you think that could be the conclusion he wants you to reach. You don’t promote the Holocaust by talking about how much pain the Jews would suffer in concentration camps. You use weasel words like “the final solution to the Jewish problem.” Robertson is doing the exact opposite.
The fantasy isn’t mainly that Robertson likes torturing atheists or thinks his audience does. The fantasy is that their own atheism is responsible for them being tortured and that the awfulness of that demonstrates that atheism is awful. Whether his audience likes hearing about atheists suffering is a side issue.
That’s a bad comparison because Nazis did not believe that Jews could or should give up being Jews.
Hmmm, I think a better word than “fantasy” here is “dystopia.” Robertson is painting a bleak picture of a world where without moral authority, like the (much longer) bleak depiction of say, Fahrenheit 451 of a world without intellectual freedoms. Again, the natural reaction to reading Fahrenheit 451 or hearing Robertson isn’t gleeful cackling, but shocked horror. “Something ain’t right.”
Robertson is mistaken in believing that atheists all deny the existence of right and wrong. However, from a timeless decision point of view, someone who does in fact deny the existence of right and wrong is at least partly “responsible” for it if he is murdered by someone who does not believe that murder is wrong and who would not have done it if he did believe it was wrong.
Saying he has no responsibility at all in this sense, would be like saying that the person who takes two boxes in a Newcomb situation is not responsible for the fact that he didn’t get the million.
Precisely. It’s also implying that atheists are moral nihilists. Which is BS. Plenty of religious people believe in god who will grant them passage to heaven irrespective of their moral conduct just as long as they repent and accept Jesus; and a plenty of atheists are not moral nihilists.
Exactly right.
“and not sincere attempts to make a philosophical point”—So, he’s confused atheists and moral error theorists, but the point is rather valid philosophically. It is very easy to say that one doesn’t believe in morality in the abstract, but much harder when confronted with a vivid, specific example.
“Sincere” and “valid” aren’t the same thing.