posted
I just don't type fast enough! You know what I mean. Or you wouldn't have known I was refering to you. So there!
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
I think atheists are perfectly capable of developing a moral code and adhering to it without a basis in any sort of scripture.
An atheist moral code relies on reason. It values human relationships and our relationship with the rest of the planet. And every atheist has his or her own, built from reading, learning, and experiences, even if it is never written down. You don't automatically lose a sense of right and wrong if you don't have a religious moral anchor.
It rejects the "do it because I said so" morality developed by religious, parental, or political figures. What is "right" is not bounded by laws specifically, but by reason. Human beings, like nearly all animals, are born ready to form relationships with others of their kind. Everybody, everywhere can recognize that an ideal world would be one without killing and violence. You don't need commandments to lay that out.
An atheist moral code relies on our natural sense of empathy and fairness. We have the ability to understand others, and learning what is "moral" means considering the the physical and emotional impact of your actions. Instead of learning what behavior is moral through the application and enforcement of rules, this morality fosters an understanding of the whys behind acceptable behavior. Similarly, rules don't create fairness, people create it in their own interactions through cooperation. Empathy allows for further understanding of what is fair.
These values lead into others, such as self-control and duty. It is not necessary to introduce an exteernal factor to declare that these things are "right." They can be seen as moral through their own virtue.
A morality based on an atheist perspective would probably suffer fewer of the societal ills that the original poster's article described. For example, look at sexual relationships. Where (I would say) religion-based morality leads to the prevalence of abstinence-only sex-ed, an atheist would look at the issue entirely differently. We recognize the complexity of sexual relationships and the consequences of specific sexual actions, but we do not outright reject premarital sex, because there is no moral authority to say that that is always the "right" thing to do. Instead, we recognize that marriages provide many great benefits, especially the stability that is so important when children become involved. Atheists recognize that sex can be fun and enriching outside of marriage as well, and when people spend their time thinking about the consequences of their actions, they generally make decent choices. Athiest morality wouldn't lead to less premarital sex, but that wouldn't be the goal. Without an authoritarian moral framework, one is free to rationally examine all possibilities for action and choose the one that best matches his or her individual situation.
This morality doesn't make the claim that it knows best for everybody. It recognizes some universal human goals, such as peace and understanding, and it trusts us to make our own choices to bring those goals about.
quote:The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
posted
I was hoping this thread would be a discussion of good/bad use of correlation. And how "science" can be used to prove whatever you like.
We can speculate as well as the author of this "study," but we won't believe each other's speculations.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Seeing as the question keeps popping up, I decided to go ahead and find one the posts I made earlier this month of the subject of morality. I'm agnostic, which pretty much means the moral code by which I live is separate from my belief in the existence of God or any deity:
"First I'd like to address the question of "How do you determine morality if you don't believe in God?" Being agnostic I feel like I can answer this question, at least from an individual point of view. My morality is derived from what my family taught me as good, for anyone to deny their upbringing had any effect on their morals seems somewhat foolish. My morality also stems partly from the religion I used to hold, Catholicism. But I think that overall though, morality stems from Natural Law (as according to Locke).
We, as people, all seem to share a certain code of morals and views on right and wrong. I also subscribe partly to Deontology as suggested by Kant where the intent matters more than the action itself. The will is the only thing which is inherently good, actions and consequences can easily be tainted by circumstances, but your intent, what you sought to achieve, is the only thing over which we as people have absolute control. The "golden rule" standard can also be used to some extent to determine morality: "Do unto others and you'd have them do unto you." This method of course, also has it's failings because we as humans are all inherently different and we all want different things, so relying on one particular philosophy to me, seems somewhat foolish. Instead I choose to combine different aspects of codes of ethics and apply a different bit of code depending on the situation.
At the end of the day though, the way I determine my self worth as a human being is based a lot on what society thinks of me. My self image is tied in to my morality, to be sure, but since I know that as a human I am a fallible entity, I also rely on the judgement of my loved ones and of society in general.
That being said I believe I am a good person. Overall my intent in most circumstances is to do the "right" thing according to my moral standards, I say overall because I know that sometimes even I fail to my own code of morals and I also accept the fact that my intent isn't always the best, I don't think there's a single person in the world who hasn't taken the last slice of cake instead of sharing it with everyone equally.
I know when I fail, I know when I'm commiting a bad deed. I believe my image of myself as "good" is tied directly to my desire for redemption for such bad deeds. The desire to be the best person that I can be, the desire to grow and change into a better person, I think that is what defines "good". I may never come close to even measure up to perfection, but I'm going to try my best to do it anyways.
With all that said, I subscribe to the belief that any God that chooses to damn a person because of lack of faith is an entity that doesn't deserve my worship. I do my best to do good as a person, I try to serve my fellow man and when I fail, I get up and try to learn from my mistakes. Any deity who cannot accept my fallibility, who damns me from the very moment I draw breath a baby when I'm at my most vulnerable and when I lack the most basic sense of reason... that is a God which I cannot accept. My mind simply cannot accept the fact that God damns us for having made us the way he did, if we are born damned it's because he made us that way, and if that's a bad way to be then we are not to be blamed for being flawed, just as you would not blame a newborn for coming into this world with mental retardation.
If God's judgement isn't based solely on my works and my intent to do good on this earth for my fellow man, then what is God, other than an omnipotent bully?
I'd also like to state that I mean no offense to any Jatraqueros out there whose beliefs may differ or clash with mine. This is just an explanation of my reasoning for my beliefs, if you believe in a God that requires both good works and acceptance of his religion in our mortal lifetime, please don't take this to heart. "
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quote:Why should you do this in the presence of a god?
I don't think it is about the existance of God as much as about the immortality of the soul and the idea of eternally regretting one's mortal behavior--which is, BTW, what I believe hell actually is.
So, again with the fear of punishment?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I don't know -- it seems weird though. I tend to think of punishment as something that's imposed. To say that not doing something because you know you'd regret it is the equivalent to fearing punishment seems to water down the word punishment. I regret not picking up milk when I was at the store on Wednesday -- am I being punished?
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quote: I think atheists are perfectly capable of developing a moral code and adhering to it without a basis in any sort of scripture.
An atheist moral code relies on reason.
I think Jeff's argument has been -- although he hasn't said as much -- that reason itself, in the absence of a God, is really just the arbitrary firing of neurons and therefore meaningless in the big scheme of things.
*shrug* I'm content appealing to physics, but I can understand why other people might not be.
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posted
But you could just as well say that the edicts of a god are meaningless firings of whatever the god uses for neurons, and completely arbitrary. What makes a creator of universes special?
dkw, if the regret was going to go on forever and you had nothing better to do, then yes, I'd say you were being punished for not buying milk. Also, while I hesitate to assign meaning to other people's words, I suspect that bev was thinking of something a little stronger than 'oops, I forgot about that.'
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posted
I know bev was talking about more serious regrets, but if regret is a punishment, then slight regrets would be a milder punishment, neh? I think I see punishment in a different category altogether, not just as a matter of degree.
Although I suppose we (generic we) sometimes talk about people consumed with regret as "punishing themselves" so maybe it works.
It just seems to me that that reduces everything to rewards and punishment -- you're rewarded by feeling good about doing something, you're punished when you regret doing it. I know there are people who do reduce human motivation to that level, but I'd like to think we're more complex than that.
Edit: and if we aren't, then how are atheists not motivated by fear of punishment just as much as theists? I presume you also feel regret at times?
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quote: ...completely arbitrary. What makes a creator of universes special?
I think the "special" thing in this instance is the modern idea of God as a perfect and absolute arbiter. In other words, God can never be arbitrary, because God's whims are themselves absolute.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Yes Tom, but I'm kind of asking the theists to back up that statement.
dkw, yes, but I'm not the one claiming that this somehow makes me morally superior. I consider enlightened self-interest and the primate sense of justice prefectly good foundations for a moral system, and avoiding regret is part of that. Bev, on the other hand, seems to believe that having a god, or a hell, available, makes for a better morality. Incidentally, how is "I'd like to think" an argument for anything whatsoever?
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quote: I'm kind of asking the theists to back up that statement.
For a lot of theists, this is definitional. In other words, something is "good" only because God wants it (and "evil" because He does not) -- or, from the Mormon point of view, God cannot be God if He does or wants anything "evil," so anything God does while remaining God is "good."
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I wasn't really making an argument. I don't have any way of proving that human choices are more than operative conditioning in action, but I find the idea distasteful.
I consider it a good thing to attempt to transcend the carrot/stick approach, whether it's imposed by an outside force or self imposed. Maybe instead of saying "I'd like to think we're more complex than that" I should have said, "I admire people who try to base their decisions on more than that." Or something.
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posted
I reckon I'm the only one here. I want someplace in between all the rules and structure of religion and the... coldness... of atheism...
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posted
Tom, I'm aware that I'm challenging an axiom here; I just don't think it makes a difference. After all, I could perfectly well define a god as being purely evil, but I wouldn't expect a theist to accept that without me making some kind of argument. So why should I accept their definition?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Well, at some point somebody has to accept somebody else's premises to have a discussion. So what you can do is say "Okay, let's temporarily and conditionally grant that God is good. God has given us these laws of behavior, which are also Good. God has acted in direct opposition to these laws of behavior, according to your own scripture, in the following dozen or so instances. Were there ameliorating circumstances we don't understand, were these laws not meant to apply to God, or...?"
And then they pick one of the above, any one of which is of course unprovable, and you both go on your merry way.
I've witnessed that particular conversation a couple thousand times. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Amanecer: I find this way of thinking very dangerous. It seems to assume that people operate solely based on fear of getting punished. I think this level of functioning is completely devoid of morality.
Yes, that's sort of the point being made. You can find any number of religious people who argue that religion must be retained because otherwise there is no morality. Either those people haven't thought it through, or they really do think this way.
Boy this thread grew today!
KOM, my feeling here is that if someone says that without the fear of God there would be nothing to keep them moral: PLEASE KEEP YOUR BELIEF IN GOD, because if that's all that's keeping them in check, then they need all the faith they can muster.
And I've had plenty of personal experience with people who do claim that they personally would be immoral monsters if they lost their belief.
The flipside is that they want to impose their god on those of us who can control ourselves without that fear, or belief. As long as they keep their fear/faith/belief to themselves, it probably benefits society. But it creates problems when they start telling others how to live their lives.
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quote:This isn't true, for example the catholic church has a lot of fake teachings and a lot of kind but lazy people (who don't bother to read the Bible, yes, most catholics ignore the bible) are pulled into it.
you are wrong about this, in many ways.
At least he makes it clear which team he's playing on. Jack Chick, anyone?
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posted
I'm thinking odds are ten to one that's he's not an evangelical Christian at all, personally. Much less Hungarian. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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-The acceptance of pagan festivities - This one is a good one, for example "christmas" was originally the birthday of the sun god. It was getting wildly popular way back, so the church decided to adopt it (ouch.) to keep their popularity
Just plain wrong. The early Christians chose to celebrate the birth of Christ in the near vicinity of Saturnalia so that their celebration would blend in with the celebration within the rest of the populace. They were not celebrating Saturnalia, they were disguising their own celebration so they wouldn't be persecuted for it.
Also, there is no reference in the bible which clearly describes the time of Jesus' birth. One can extrapolate from "shepherds tending their flocks" that it must have been spring, but it wasn't until much later that the (Dare I say it) CATHOLIC church decided to figure out when Jesus was born and build a calendar around it, that they figured that Jesus was probably born in the spring.
In any case they'd been celebrating Jesus' birth near the solstice for quite some time by then. It wasn't like it was a decision to ignore Jesus' birthday in favor of Saturn, who by the way, wasn't a sun God.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:KOM, my feeling here is that if someone says that without the fear of God there would be nothing to keep them moral: PLEASE KEEP YOUR BELIEF IN GOD, because if that's all that's keeping them in check, then they need all the faith they can muster.
I've been meaning to post something about that... I agree 100%.
I don't think (I hope) this is truly the case for most people. Those of you who believe this, do you think that if you lost your theism you'd throw away all your morals?
You can craft your moral code around religion, that's true, but I hardly think it's dependent on it, or so I would hope. Am I wrong here?
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quote: What are the cons ? I'm willing to discuss, so don't worry, this isn't flamebait.
I think many of them have already been mentioned in this thread. Religion encourages people to see themselves as being invested with the authority of God and thus having the right to enforce their will on others. I am in no way saying that all religious people do this, but I do think people like this exist in all religions. People can attribute this to human failings but I think that's side stepping the issue. I think that religion often causes people to feel empowered with authority. It frequently encourages judgment over compassion. Sure these problems wouldn't exist if everybody was perfect, but since people aren't perfect I think it's important to address the effects that religion has on imperfect people. Further, I think that religion does not always encourage growth. It sometimes encourages dogmatic views where people are discouraged from trying to find truth that does not perfectly match up with their church's doctrine. Again, I am not trying to say that these are always the case. However, I do think that they exist and are what I would call the "cons" of religion. Some of the things I see as positives are that it gives people a sense of purpose and a strong community to belong to.
quote: I never claimed this to be the way *I* thought. But I don't see how it is OK to say it one way and not OK the other.
posted
I don't think morality is dependent on religion.
The way I see it, religion, like civilization (think Lord of the Flies), is one way of keeping people from regressing to primitive, animalistic ways. Obviously not the only, but a very useful one.
As much as I would like to think that the majority of people would naturally do Good even without the fear of punishment/reward, I'm still very grateful for the law enforcement and judicial system that is in place.
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posted
There might be some world in which one needs to claim God's backing to do horrible things to others; this clearly isn't it. (Mao and Stalin wee living proof.) We *are* in a world in which people who want to dominate others will seize on any excuse.
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posted
Will B- I suspect that is in response to me. I agree that people don't need God's backing to do horrible things. I also think they don't need religion to have a sense of purpose or a community. However, I do think that religion fosters a sense of purpose, a community, and sadly a sense of authority to inflict one's view of God's will on to others.
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: KOM, my feeling here is that if someone says that without the fear of God there would be nothing to keep them moral: PLEASE KEEP YOUR BELIEF IN GOD, because if that's all that's keeping them in check, then they need all the faith they can muster.
On the contrary, let them instead lose their faith instantly. If their religion is really their only moral compass, then I would just as soon have such monsters exposed immediately. Especially since most religions aren't actually very nice; people who say this kind of thing rarely have any idea what their supposed moral compass is actually preaching. Once they find out, they'll be a much worse danger to society than a person who is merely completely amoral.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
Without Christianity, many horrors of the Middle Ages would not have occurred.
And without Christianity, many of the great works of Ancient Europe wouldn't have survived the Dark Ages.
A social scientist who thinks they can evaluate a single dominant principle as the cause of a wide array of effects without eliminating the wide variety of other principles possibly causing those effects is a liar.
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quote:I think Jeff's argument has been -- although he hasn't said as much -- that reason itself, in the absence of a God, is really just the arbitrary firing of neurons and therefore meaningless in the big scheme of things.
This is pretty much what I've been saying, yes. And given this, why be good? I do not feel any particular obedience to my body's animal programming aside from stuff like "don't do stuff that will kill you". An atheist's moral code does not spring from and rely upon reason.
Lack of belief in the divine or supernatural requires that the decision to be good is arbitrary: a person does good because it makes him feel good, and does not do bad because doing so makes him feel bad. And this programming is largely beyond our control, it relies on our upbringing.
Now the morality of the atheist Nato describes beyond that, yes, there it's based on reason. But the ultimate decision is still arbitrary.
KoM, speaking for myself, what makes God special is that I have faith that He has much greater knowledge of The Way Things Work than I do, after my whopping 24 years of living. Given that faith, I think it reasonable to believe His reasoning might be less arbitrary than mine. And since I have faith that He is not wicked or neutral, I put my trust and faith in that. I realize the arbitrariness is removed a few steps (if I assumed that the arbitrariness in God existed), but then I think there's just as much faith in an atheist as there is in a theist-at least, an atheist who is sure there is no supernatural or divine.
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Chris,
quote:And then I would never be entirely comfortable around others for fear my secret would get out.
Come now, you're more than clever enough to committ a crime where no one would even ask you if you'd committed it. And people keep secrets all the time, it's just a matter of degree. If fear is your motivator not to lead a life of crime, well you could overcome that motivator pretty easily and reap all the benefits a smart, cautious, studious criminal reaps.
quote:I think my desire to be a good man is representative of the fact that I am supremely selfish, so much so that I don't ever want to have to worry about whether anyone would trust me or if there's anything I have to hide from people.
If you were truly "supremely selfish", I think it would manifest in more than just your desire to be a good man, Chris.
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quote:I asked this earlier, but you apparently missed it : Does your moral code exist independently of god? If so, why is your god needed?
I don't recall you asking me this, I must have missed it. This question is answered further up in the post.
quote:Um, no. Wrong. You cannot stand aside from your own emotions like that. So what if love, say, is only programmed into our brains by our genes? The fact remains that we feel the emotion, and act on it.
Why is it wrong? You've just said you cannot set aside emotions because...they're emotions, we feel them. That's not very rational at all, is it? Especially since you and I both know that one can train oneself to set aside emotions, or change instinctive emotional responses, and that our emotions owe a great deal to how we were raised.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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What you have here is a human failing common to believers in God and nonbelievers. (We can verify this by observation.) Since it's observed in believers, we could conclude that the belief fostered the failing; but it's not sound.
Anybody here read Bowling Alone? With the exception of a short section on the South, in which the author abandons science for a rant, this book shows how to do sociology (while discussing how Americans are less clubbable than they used to be).
If we want to show that belief in God (or, to be more measurable, professed belief in God) fosters control-freakness, we'll have to find a measure of control-freakness, then survey people to see if they have it, making sure that the groups are similar in other ways (say, we wouldn't want to pick a bunch of nonbelieving artists and a bunch of believing prison wardens, and interpret the result to have nothing to do with profession), and see if the results we get are statistically significant.
Since we can't do that, let's consider incidences of attempted control in our lives. It might be interesting. + for God-based, - for not-God-based. (Of course, someone could by lying about his motivation; but in these instances, it's usually obvious.)
In the past 3 months, in my life:
- DMV: better fill out that tag application. - Cops on Old Forest Road: switch lanes to avoid a power line. - workplace: mandatory meeting - me: making assignments for class. (Actually, this would be about 25 -'s.) + Fr. Morris: asking women to "dress modestly" on our beach trip - city water: pay up. (Control, because there's no alternative.) - Tim: insisting we agree that no one had ever faced such awful times as him - coworker: insisting we sign his grant proposal, whether we think it's sound or not, saying we were legally obligated
Interesting. It reminds me how little people try to take control of me, at least so as I notice.
Not sound science yet; maybe people often try to control me or those around me because God Said So, and I just don't remember. Doesn't seem bloody likely, though. I think I'd be really surprised if I heard this -- just like I was when Fr. Morris spoke up.
Alternatively, we could just come up with explanations that feel right to us; but that way, we start with our preconceptions and end with them, too.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
"Lack of belief in the divine or supernatural requires that the decision to be good is arbitrary: a person does good because it makes him feel good, and does not do bad because doing so makes him feel bad. And this programming is largely beyond our control, it relies on our upbringing."
Not arbitrary. All human decisions are informed by the lens of human experience. {Since there is no God} religious morality is based on the same human experience that atheists have. The only difference is that theists assume that morality exists because of God, and based on that assumption they also assume that atheists must be amoral.
On the other hand, since morality exists, and God doesn't, the atheist sees morality as an intrinsic characteristic of human nature, not something imposed externally.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
"Why is it wrong? You've just said you cannot set aside emotions because...they're emotions, we feel them. That's not very rational at all, is it?"
Of course it's rational. Emotions exist. It's irrational to base an argument on something that can't be demonstrated, but emotions are demonstrably real, even if they aren't transferable.
There's a line from "Contact" that has always bothered me. Ellie asks Joss to prove God exists, and Joss asks her if she loved her father. When she says "yes," he says: "prove it."
There are elements of human experience that we all share: a sense of color, warm/cold, hunger, sex drive, etc. If you want to get deep into philosophy, you can argue that we may all experience these things differently, but that's just argument for argument's sake.
The fact is that we all share human experiences, including emotions. Demanding that Ellie "prove" that she loved her father is simply shifting the burden of proof. Worse, he's equating the human emotion of love to belief in God. But there's a difference: We all experience emotions. We can take them as a given. But none of us experience God. Some of us experience belief in God, but none of us actually experience the thing itself.
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posted
I've been reading alot of Bertrand Russell recently, and he has some interesting points to make about the whole God thing. For starters, we really cannot be sure of anything (unless you follow Sartre and "tu pense donc tu es"). So atheists can't be sure that God doesn't exist, and theists can't be sure that God does exist. So where does this leave us? Well if we are applying this axiom to the rest of the world, things get a little sketchy, since we really can't know anything, we'd have to start being agnostic to every idea, like the homeric gods, or flying dwarfs, etc --> intellectual paralysis. So, to resolve this, Russell created something called probabilistic skepticism. Basically, it states that we can't know anything for sure, but there are certainly some things which are more certain than others. For example, it is more certain that I'm writing this post right now than that I'm actually flying through the sky on a magical carpet. Russell personally thought that it was more likely that God didn't exist, but that was his own personal opinion which wasn't justified by anything more than subjective thoughts. Soooo, a theist could cogently claim under this philosophy that for him or her, it was more probable that God did exist. The reason this distinction is important is because there is a conscious effort on both sides to admit that they really can't be 100% sure of their opinions on both sides. So as a theist, if you can't be 100% sure of a religious belief, should you really be adhering to dogmas that require that impossible level of certainty? And as an atheist, should you be condescending and derogatory to theists if you cannot be 100% certain of your beleifs? no.
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posted
I guess my point is that spirituality should be kept spiritual. I hate it when believers or non-believers let their subjective spirituality influence the rest of their life, in terms of their political, social, or economic ideals.
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quote:The only difference is that theists assume that morality exists because of God, and based on that assumption they also assume that atheists must be amoral.
The one doesn't follow from the other.
I believe morality exists because of God. I do not believe that atheists cannot be what we would generally describe as a moral person, excepting those portions of morality that deal with one's obligations to God.
But, I still believe that the morality they express comes from God, just as I believe the air they breathe comes from God. I don't believe atheists don't breathe, just as I don't believe atheists cannot act morally.
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: KOM, my feeling here is that if someone says that without the fear of God there would be nothing to keep them moral: PLEASE KEEP YOUR BELIEF IN GOD, because if that's all that's keeping them in check, then they need all the faith they can muster.
On the contrary, let them instead lose their faith instantly. If their religion is really their only moral compass, then I would just as soon have such monsters exposed immediately. Especially since most religions aren't actually very nice; people who say this kind of thing rarely have any idea what their supposed moral compass is actually preaching. Once they find out, they'll be a much worse danger to society than a person who is merely completely amoral.
Why would these monsters be exposed? Amoral people are usually not recognized as such until their crimes are discovered. I don't think the benefit of discovering the monster outweighs the price of the crimes they would commit.
As to religions being "not very nice." I disagree. Religions wouldn't survive long if they didn't encourage positive interactions, at least among "us," or the people who are worth being nice to. You'd be hard pressed to prove to any member of a religion that the sense of community that they foster is "not nice." Harder still to convince people that feeding and housing the poor are "not nice." These are the very reasons why people are driven to join religion in the first place. People like to think they are nice.
The secular morality that exists in the absence of God is what drives people to be part of a religious community. Pretty ironic.
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posted
I'd like to quote Russell in relation to that last point about God making morality.
"Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular during the nineteenth century. It has all sorts of forms. One form is to say that there would be no right and wrong unless God existed. I am not for the moment concerned with whether there is a difference between right and wrong, or whether there is not: that is another question. The point I am concerned with is that, if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. You could, of course, if you liked, say that there was a superior deity who gave orders to the God who made this world, or could take up the line that some of the agnostics ["Gnostics" -- CW] took up -- a line which I often thought was a very plausible one -- that as a matter of fact this world that we know was made by the Devil at a moment when God was not looking. There is a good deal to be said for that, and I am not concerned to refute it."
Posts: 441 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:The only difference is that theists assume that morality exists because of God, and based on that assumption they also assume that atheists must be amoral.
The one doesn't follow from the other.
I believe morality exists because of God. I do not believe that atheists cannot be what we would generally describe as a moral person, excepting those portions of morality that deal with one's obligations to God.
But, I still believe that the morality they express comes from God, just as I believe the air they breathe comes from God. I don't believe atheists don't breathe, just as I don't believe atheists cannot act morally.
Sorry Dag, I overgeneralized. This is an argument that some theists use. Those people claim that one follows from the other.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Of course it's rational. Emotions exist. It's irrational to base an argument on something that can't be demonstrated, but emotions are demonstrably real, even if they aren't transferable.
You've injected rationality into my quote when it wasn't there. My question was why should we be governed by our emotions, since emotions are so incredibly subjective, and often instinctive, not to mention very reliant on upbringing?
Furthermore, emotions can be easily twisted or changed due to outside influence. Eat some chocolate, you might feel a little better. Drink some alcohol, you'll feel less inhibited. Take some prozac...etc. etc. etc.
Now it makes sense to make decisions partially based on emotions, because hey, we're actually living in these bodies, and who doesn't want to feel good when they can?
But that's a pretty crappy reason to do good things, isn't it? Isn't that the reason KoM routinely says religious people do everything? Isn't that what animals do, try to feel good when they can?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Perhaps Rakeesh, but I don't think either side can claim that they do things for any reason other than that. When you follow a religion, do you not do it because it makes you feel good in one way or another? A sense of community, of belonging, a sense of righteousness in some ways, knowing that when you die it's not the end and that if you did good in this life you will be rewarded in the other, or perhaps even the fear of feeling "not so good" when God punishes you for being a bad person. Everyone does things because they make them feel good, people do charity because it makes them feel good about themselves, whether they consciously admit it to themselves or not.
We as humans simply cannot escape the fact that we are governed by emotions. The difference between us and animals is that we can make a conscious choice to override those emotions if we think more good feelings can be gained by doing it.
Posts: 459 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I don't see how an atheist morality is any more uncertain than the other beliefs that an atheist holds. You object that in calling something right or wrong, an atheist is merely succumbing to biological drives (feeling good), and lacks any transcendent reason for doing so.
Fair enough. The same would seem to go for an atheist's belief that roses are red. Scientifically speaking, these beliefs are all the result of brain chemistry. But we trust in the fact that our senses and our evolved thought processes give us an accurate picture of the world.
Why should morality be any different in this regard? I trust my biological brain to tell me which things are red, and to reason out math problems. I also trust it to figure out what's right and wrong. Why should the latter form of knowledge require God's input, when the former clearly doesn't?
You might say that God is needed for moral knowledge because moral facts aren't facts about the physical world. But the atheist denies this, so you're just begging the question!
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:When you follow a religion, do you not do it because it makes you feel good in one way or another?
Yes, but atheists are stuck with chemical evolution in emotions for the why question. Theists are not, even if they have only one degree of seperation from that. A theist can say, "I do good because it makes me feel good, and because that is what pleased God." An atheist only gets the first part of that sentence-people continue to read into this that I'm saying the atheist choice to be good is inferior morally speaking because of that. I'm not. I'm just saying that the atheists have no reason why beyond the arbitrary.
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Destineer,
quote:You object that in calling something right or wrong, an atheist is merely succumbing to biological drives (feeling good), and lacks any transcendent reason for doing so.
Well for the record I didn't start out from that standpoint, the discussion naturally flowed there. When I asked, "If there is no god or supernatural, why do good things?" people responded, "Because it feels good to do so." But emotions are hardly a scientific standard of anything...not even of themselves. So this reasoning is arbitrary, and to me at least, unsatisfactory, because I have enough hubris to think that I'm more than just a machine, an animal-pull a lever, I do this.
quote:Why should morality be any different in this regard? I trust my biological brain to tell me which things are red, and to reason out math problems. I also trust it to figure out what's right and wrong. Why should the latter form of knowledge require God's input, when the former clearly doesn't?
Well this certainly falls apart after a little bit of scrutiny. A human being raised in New Zealand will think that a given rose is the same color as a human being raised in Nova Scotia. Because our bodies work in the same way, our eyes take in the visual and our brains show that to us. And we can actually examine the red rose and find out why exactly we see it as red. It reflects light differently than, say, a pink rose does, that's why.
Not so with morality. You can have a moral question, let's take even one that's obvious to most people here: is it acceptable to steal a loaf of bread to feed one's starving child? Answers will vary drasticall, even when two given people both say, "Yes," there's a good chance they'll go on from there to have wildly different reasons. But take those two people and show them the same rose, and they'll tell you it's the same color.
But they'll answer the moral question differently, for reasons based on upbringing, ideology, politics, religion, experience, and even things like current situations regarding money and brain chemistry.
You can trust your biological brain to decide between right and wrong, but you have to admit that the decision it reaches will be arbitrary. When asked, "Why did you decide this way?" ultimately you'll have to respond with, "Because I felt like it." Which is fine, but it places us on par with animals.
I've never said God is required for moral knowledge-you're putting words into my mouth.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Well this certainly falls apart after a little bit of scrutiny. A human being raised in New Zealand will think that a given rose is the same color as a human being raised in Nova Scotia. Because our bodies work in the same way, our eyes take in the visual and our brains show that to us. And we can actually examine the red rose and find out why exactly we see it as red. It reflects light differently than, say, a pink rose does, that's why.
Interestingly enough, this is not in fact true. There exist languages in the Pacific that have no word for 'blue', and use the same word to describe the colour of the sky, and the colour of a leaf.
Edit : That kind of point is all the better for a link.Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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I want someplace in between all the rules and structure of religion and the... coldness... of atheism...
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