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MTGandP comments on Why Eat Less Meat? - LessWrong
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If Christianity were true, wouldn't this be the most ethical thing to do? It's only wrong because Christianity is not true.
Careful :-) If Christianity were true this would NOT be an ethical thing to do since Christian morality is not utility-maximizing.
Hmm, fair point. If everything about Christianity is true then you're right. I suppose I was presuming that Christian facts about are true, but not Christian values.
I think that this assumption is warranted because I don't know what it would even mean for Christian values to be "true". If by morality being true you mean that those who disobey will be punished, then yes, but that doesn't mean that disobeying is wrong according to your personal utility function. And as far as moral realism goes, I don't see how a world where it holds would be different from a world where it doesn't. Even if there is some moral law written into the fabric of the universe, it would still be a further question whether you decide to care about it. So I agree with your original comment, if the heaven-and-hell version of Christianity was true, killing babies would be a very altruistic thing to do.
Thank you for saying this! I thought something along those lines but I couldn't think of how to put it.
That's pretty simple. If God -- specifically the Christian God -- truly exists and the general teachings of Christianity adequately represent Him, then Christian morality is basically like physics: it's the natural law because that's how the world has been constructed and that's how it works. Your personal utility function is irrelevant in the same sense in which maybe you really want to fly, yet if you jump off a cliff gravity will still do its job.
That's quite standard theology -- since LW frequently discusses religious matters (without usually recognizing them as such :-D) I recommend at least some familiarity with it...
My claim is that this idea of morality being "like natural law" is conceptual nonsense. Does it mean that I'd be incapable of violating it? No. Does it mean that I'm being irrational if I don't follow it? Well, one could define rationality that way, but what is the point; I don't care if I'm losing according to the "law of the universe" just like I don't care that I'm losing in terms of reproductive success.
I don't think so. "Like natural law" here means "will lead to certain consequences regardless of whether you believe so".
If Christianity were true (we'll ignore a bunch of issues and self-contradictions here) then, for example, dying after committing a mortal sin and without proper repentance will lead you to Hell. Doesn't matter whether you think it wasn't a big deal -- you still end up in Hell. Having free will means you can violate the Christian morality but it's similar to jumping off a cliff -- you just will make a messy splat. Whether you care or not is irrelevant.
That's not what I was disputing. Of course you'd end up in hell if Christianity is true, but if your personal utility function is utilitarianism, you'd sacrifice yourself for the greater good.
No, because if Christianity were true then God defines what is the "greater good", not you. Your belief that what you're going for is "greater good" would be mistaken. Because of free will you can choose between good and evil but you can't define what is good and what is evil.
Speakers use their actual language.
To elaborate: Even if counterfactually God were to legislate that all must use the holy dictionary that defines the symbol "greater good" as divine punishment, or face smiting, this would not make the sacrifice mentioned by ice9 not for the greater good. Because what we are talking about when we say "greater good" here, in the real world, is not divine punishment. Specifically, when ice9 says "you'd sacrifice yourself for the greater good" they mean you'd sacrifice yourself to save people from a god's evil vendetta.
Below you mentioned that you can't define gravity to repulse things instead of attract. This is a good analogy what you are supposing God to be doing. In fact God is free to define "gravity" (a symbol, a string of 7 letters) in a new language of His own. But claiming that God can define gravity itself is logical nonsense (gravity not being a symbol of any language).
The same way, it is logical nonsense to suppose that God can define the greater good to be something bad. He can invent a new language where "the greater good" (a string) refers to something bad, but that would simply be a useless language that no-one here speaks, and irrelevant to any matter of actual morality.
(I won't dispute that "god can redefine the greater good" might well be standard theology, but as theology it is logical nonsense.)
Taboo moral terms like good/bad/evil; can you still explain to me how a world where a God given morality exists is different from a world where it doesn't? My belief that I'm doing it for the greater good would not be mistaken because I'd define "the greater good" as the amount of suffering prevented (assuming that this is my terminal value), and I literally don't care whether that definition corresponds with whatever semantic tricks God wants to play.