On morality: Is it from religion, science, or both? Ramzy Maclon & Rami Rustom Session #1

I had a great discussion with Ramzy Maclon in my group Enlightening The Arab World about whether science or religion is the source of morality.

Below is the discussion with some editing for clarity and brevity.

The discussion started when he posted to my group with the following (with facebook's translation):

سأل مسلم ملحد: كيف تعرف الصواب من الخطأ الأخلاقي من دون دين؟

- الملحد: عن طريق عقلي؟

- مسلم: وكيف يعرف عقلك الصواب من الخطأ الأخلاقي؟

- الملحد: أسأل اليابانيين؟

- المسلم: وكيف يعرف اليابانيون الصواب من الخطأ الأخلاقي؟

- الملحد: عن طريق العقل

- المسلم: وكيف يعرف العقل الصواب من الخطأ الأخلاقي؟

- الملحد: أسأل اليابانيون

المسلم:

A Muslim asked an atheist: How do you know right from moral error without religion?

- Atheist: through my mind?

- Muslim: How does your mind know right from moral error?

- Atheist: Ask the Japanese?

- Muslim: And how do Japanese know right from moral error?

- Atheist: through reason

- Muslim: How does the right mind know from moral error?

- Atheist: Ask the Japanese

The Muslim:

شوكت كريمي

There's a real way to know right from wrong away from your conversation with the strawman


Rami Rustom

How would you reply to the OP?


شوكت كريمي

It's a straw man . No atheist will talk like this and there is actually away to know what is right and what is wrong

Whether the act is beneficial or harmful to the individual and group .
That will decide on the morality of the action


Rami Rustom

yes I basically agree with you.

I think what also matters is the extent to which someone had the requisite knowledge to do the “moral” action.

Ramzy Maclon

Beneficiary and harmfulness are relative religious terms. They can't be explained on the base of logical reasoning, or on the base of science with it's deterministic or quantum natural laws, or on the base of evolution theory with it futility random purposeless genetic mutations, or on the base of secularity view of the universe as meaninglessness materialistic phenomena.

Rami Rustom

Why do you believe that beneficiary/harmfulness is subjective/relative ?

You didn’t explain.


Ramzy Maclon

What is that makes some things right and others wrong?


Rami Rustom

We use the scientific approach.


Ramzy Maclon

So please tell me how could you prove rape wrong by using the "scientific approach "


Rami Rustom

Science doesn’t work by “prov[ing]” things.

I know people say that about science but people are confused.

Science works like this. We start with some theories. It doesn’t matter how bad they are. It’s theories that we are using in real life.

Then we find mistakes in the theories and sometimes we find fixes to those mistakes. That takes the form of new theories.

And we keep doing that forever.

So we’re always going from flawed theories to less flawed theories to even less flawed theories.

Does that make sense ?


Ramzy Maclon

No, it makes nonsense. Science -like evolution theory- doesn't tell us what must we do or what we must not. Science just explains and describes how things happen.

Rami Rustom

Do you want to learn about my view ?

If so, I can explain to you in detail how we create moral knowledge using the scientific approach.

Are you interested?

Ramzy Maclon

Yes, I would appreciate that

[to be continued...]