Atheism more moral?

[Mystic_Banana]

Are you like a first year science student? “significance levels used always allow for the possibility that the observed results were due to chance”

Your correct that statistical significance is to do with observed results. I.E. Interpreting the data produced through EXPERIMENTATION! The earth not being flat was originally theorized thought experimentation, Eratosthenes of Cyrene. However this is now an observable fact, unless you want to get into nihilism which has nothing to do with science…

No, but it has much to do with logic, something those of a scientismic tendency seem to ignore outside of scientismic interpretations - and I’d love to find an atheist (especially a scientismic one) who can explain to me a logical basis for atheist morality - the apparent absence of which I suspect is why we’re in such a selfish state today

You can refer to biological imperatives, but since nature (according to a scientific interpretation of the same) can be cruel, how can that be a basis for morality?

 

[Hooding_Trees]

No, but it has much to do with logic, something those of a scientismic tendency seem to ignore outside of scientismic interpretations - and I’d love to find an atheist (especially a scientismic one) who can explain to me a logical basis for atheist morality - the apparent absence of which I suspect is why we’re in such a selfish state today

You can refer to biological imperatives, but since nature (according to a scientific interpretation of the same) can be cruel, how can that be a basis for morality?

Empathy, next?

 

[LittleSoldier]

Are you like a first year science student? “significance levels used always allow for the possibility that the observed results were due to chance”

I have a B.S. in biology, a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in research psychology methodology and advanced statistics. I was badly injured at work and became disabled, so my education was cut short at this point. I wasn’t able to go on to get my Ph.D. or M.D., although I was offered admittance to the medical school at UC Irvine. I’ve had scientific method branded into my brain from my first intro course in biology through my orals when obtaining my M.A.

I don’t see any problem with my statement about significance. Surely you are aware that levels of significance are usually set at p<.01 or p<.05. There is no p=0. Are you referring to the language I used in the statement? This is a thread on a forum; not a class in scientific method. I can write pages on scientific method, using fancy words and terminology, but why should I? I’m responding to a post written by someone whose spelling and grammar skills are remarkably lacking. You obviously haven’t spent much time in preparation of your posts, so for you to complain about my statement is rather hypocritical.

Your correct that statistical significance is to do with observed results. I.E. Interpreting the data produced through EXPERIMENTATION! The earth not being flat was originally theorized thought experimentation, Eratosthenes of Cyrene. However this is now an observable fact, unless you want to get into nihilism which has nothing to do with science…

Actually you’re over-simplifying here. In science, it’s not always the case that data are obtained via experimentation. Sometimes statistical analysis involves nothing more than just examining correlations between factors in order to determine significance.

In a previous post you listed the earth being round as a FACT. It isn’t a fact. It’s a theory at best and one which is problematic. The same is true with your “fact” about the earth not being flat. What I’m seeing here is you jumping from supposed fact to supposed fact.

ScrapeTV | Online Pop Culture Magazine

Why are you showing me this? All I see is a scan of what appears to be the earth. So what? What’s your point?

 

[Hooding_Trees]

I have a B.S. in biology, a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in research psychology methodology and advanced statistics. I was badly injured at work and became disabled, so my education was cut short at this point. I wasn’t able to go on to get my Ph.D. or M.D., although I was offered admittance to the medical school at UC Irvine. I’ve had scientific method branded into my brain from my first intro course in biology through my orals when obtaining my M.A.

I don’t see any problem with my statement about significance. Surely you are aware that levels of significance are usually set at p<.01 or p<.05. There is no p=0. Are you referring to the language I used in the statement? This is a thread on a forum; not a class in scientific method. I can write pages on scientific method, using fancy words and terminology, but why should I? I’m responding to a post written by someone whose spelling and grammar skills are remarkably lacking. You obviously haven’t spent much time in preparation of your posts, so for you to complain about my statement is rather hypocritical.

Actually you’re over-simplifying here. In science, it’s not always the case that data are obtained via experimentation. Sometimes statistical analysis involves nothing more than just examining correlations between factors in order to determine significance.

In a previous post you listed the earth being round as a FACT. It isn’t a fact. It’s a theory at best and one which is problematic. The same is true with your “fact” about the earth not being flat. What I’m seeing here is you jumping from supposed fact to supposed fact.

Why are you showing me this? All I see is a scan of what appears to be the earth. So what? What’s your point?

I am sorry to here about your injury…

Anyway, lets jump straight to the point so cant both be singing from the same hymn sheet. Of course you are correct that the earth is not round, however i am sure you knew what i meant.

You claim the the earth not being flat is a problematic theory at best, on what basis do you make that claim?

 

[Leela]

Thank you Leela what I’m saying is since aithiests do not believe in God, or spritual things then there is no need for morality. Animals do not use morality to keep order and we do not subject animals to any moral code. If God is out of the picture then what is it that makes us any different than the rest of the animals on this planet? Why should morality be enforced on me and not on the other animals here? See the problem with athiests is there very postiion denies our human natrue as a whole because its one part animal and the other part spritual (body and soul)!

Hi Heliotropium and Mystic Banana,

You both have the same question.

I just posted my answer to your question in my blog:

atheistichope.com/

Here is an excerpt:

"If you ask me why I ought to be concerned about other humans, I will have no answer for you. Though I sometimes get asked this question, I’ve come to find it more and more strange that anyone would think that it is an important question to ask, yet it has been made clear to me that I am thought to be lacking something vital in not having an answer. In being able to respond, “because God says you ought to,” believers tell me that they have something significant that I don’t have. What I am supposedly lacking is often called a “foundation” for my ethical claims.

On the contrary, I think that anyone who needs to sincerely ask the question, “why love?” is the one who is lacking something important–probably love itself. People who love others simply don’t ask “why love?” unless they are playing the hypothetical extreme skeptic–the Devil’s advocate. The only non-hypothetical people who need an answer to this question are those we call psychopaths, and no offer of a philosophical foundation through reading Kant or Aristotle is likely to convince a psychopath of anything."

Best,
Leela

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Empathy, next?

Empathy = Sufficient basis for morality? :doh2:

Please go back 3 spaces and miss a turn

All very well for those we actually empathise with, not so good if we’re not in the mood for it for everyone… got anything better?

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Hi Heliotropium and Mystic Banana,

You both have the same question.

I just posted my answer to your question in my blog:

atheistichope.com/

Here is an excerpt:

"If you ask me why I ought to be concerned about other humans, I will have no answer for you. Though I sometimes get asked this question, I’ve come to find it more and more strange that anyone would think that it is an important question to ask, yet it has been made clear to me that I am thought to be lacking something vital in not having an answer. In being able to respond, “because God says you ought to,” believers tell me that they have something significant that I don’t have. What I am supposedly lacking is often called a “foundation” for my ethical claims.

On the contrary, I think that anyone who needs to sincerely ask the question, “why love?” is the one who is lacking something important–probably love itself. People who love others simply don’t ask “why love?” unless they are playing the hypothetical extreme skeptic–the Devil’s advocate. The only non-hypothetical people who need an answer to this question are those we call psychopaths, and no offer of a philosophical foundation through reading Kant or Aristotle is likely to convince a psychopath of anything."

Best,
Leela

Well, that’s a lengthy blog you have there missy. But goes back to the same thing. Lots of people aren’t in the mood, and I can’t quite find anything in what you say as to why they should be - except to damn everyone who isn’t inclined to be nice as being psychos?!? What about when it’s no fun to be nice?

 

[Leela]

Well, that’s a lengthy blog you have there missy. But goes back to the same thing. Lots of people aren’t in the mood, and I can’t quite find anything in what you say as to why they should be - except to damn everyone who isn’t inclined to be nice as being psychos?!? What about when it’s no fun to be nice?

Let’s put it this way. Instead of “why be nice?” let’s consider “why not be cruel?” Are you a parent? What do you say when your kid hits another kid? Do you tell him that hitting is wrong? What if he asks, “but why is it wrong?” I suspect that like me, you sidestep this question, and rather than threaten God’s wrath or propose an ontological foundation for a system of ethics, you propose a better question: “How would you feel if someone hit you?” You ask your child to imagine putting himself in another’s shoes. This is not just how we cultivate empathy to help our children grow morally through an expansion of the moral imagination. This is what it actually means to grow morally–to come to see a wider and wider circle of others as also your self to the extent that their happiness is your happiness and their suffering is also your suffering. This is how “it is wrong to be cruel to others” becomes self-evidently true and how “why love at all?” ceases to be a question at all, and the desire to claim an ontological foundation for moral truth is no longer a desire.

Morality, if it is to be something other than prudence, is not a system of incentives and disinsentives for encouraging a certain set of behaviors. A moral act is not one done toward gaining God’s or anyone else’s favor. It is done only because it is the right thing to do. If we didn’t do it, we couldn’t look ourselves in the mirror. We would cease to be ourselves. It doesn’t take a moral person to follow God’s laws any more than it tyakes one does to follow the laws of state. It only takes the prudence to recognize that more pleasure and less pain follows from obedience. In any moral act, on the other hand, God’s existence or nonexistence must be regarded as irrelevent even to believers, because a moral act would be merely prudent rather than moral if it were done to achieve God’s reward or to avoid God’s punishment. A moral act is only moral rather than prudent if it is carried out as though there were no God to punish or reward you.

Best,
Leela

 

[Heliotropium]

Hi Heliotropium and Mystic Banana,

You both have the same question.

I just posted my answer to your question in my blog:

atheistichope.com/

Here is an excerpt:

"If you ask me why I ought to be concerned about other humans, I will have no answer for you. Though I sometimes get asked this question, I’ve come to find it more and more strange that anyone would think that it is an important question to ask, yet it has been made clear to me that I am thought to be lacking something vital in not having an answer. In being able to respond,

Why do you apply morality to yourself? Like you said you do not have an answer for why you apply something that is not applied to all other known living organisms in the known universe! This is a huge question because at the same time you deny the existence of a God, a spiritual nature, and a soul you use the products of these things in your daily life (morality). In order for you to prove to me that morality is part of our physical animal nature you would have to show me where morality is practiced or enforced on other creatures. You can’t because morality which has nothing to do with nature exists because its source is supernatural! You have morality because you have a soul! Your soul has given you free will and free will allows you to deny your animal nature and this is what truly separates you from all other creatures. This Free Will is why morality applies to you and not any other creature.

You constantly use morality which is a product of our spiritual nature and at the same time you deny the existence of a spiritual nature, soul, and GOD! You live a life contrary to your belief and this is a big thing! If you’re an atheist you must conclude that nothing you do is moral, nothing you do is either good or evil, and yet you cannot accept this fact because you know it’s not true and that you are capable of good and evil actions. But you can not answer the existence of morality based on your belief in atheism because the source for morality is not found in your animal nature. YOU ARE A WALKING TALKING CONTRADICTION!

 

[Leela]

Why do you apply morality to yourself? Like you said you do not have an answer for why you apply something that is not applied to all other known living organisms in the known universe! This is a huge question because at the same time you deny the existence of a God, a spiritual nature, and a soul you use the products of these things in your daily life (morality). In order for you to prove to me that morality is part of our physical animal nature you would have to show me where morality is practiced or enforced on other creatures. You can’t because morality which has nothing to do with nature exists because its source is supernatural! You have morality because you have a soul! Your soul has given you free will and free will allows you to deny your animal nature and this is what truly separates you from all other creatures. This Free Will is why morality applies to you and not any other creature.

You constantly use morality which is a product of our spiritual nature and at the same time you deny the existence of a spiritual nature, soul, and GOD! You live a life contrary to your belief and this is a big thing! If you’re an atheist you must conclude that nothing you do is moral, nothing you do is either good or evil, and yet you cannot accept this fact because you know it’s not true and that you are capable of good and evil actions. But you can not answer the existence of morality based on your belief in atheism because the source for morality is not found in your animal nature. YOU ARE A WALKING TALKING CONTRADICTION!

Hi Heliotropium,

You seem convinced that you have a knockdown argument on your hands for proving the existence of God based on the existence of morality, but I can see no contradiction bewteen morality and disbelief. You keep insisting that I simply can’t hold these views simultaneously, yet I do as do lots of others.

I don’t think any ontological foundation for morality is needed whether supernatural or natural. All we need to be ready to know that we ought to love is to care about at least some others, which we already do. I simply don’t need a reason to love others. “Why love at all?” is just not a question I have. The virtue of love is self-evident to me as it is to any child who loves its parents. I do noty need to be convinced by some rational argument to love any more than that child does. Love does not need to be grounded in something else to be taken seriously. If you need a system of carrots and sticks enforced by a supernatural being to behave as though you love, them I am glad you have that, but it is not real love. It is just acting out the part. You can follow all the Divine Commands you have heard of, but as Paul said, "If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. " Following rules out of fear of punishment or desire for reward is not love or morality. It is just the pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding behavior of any animal. The good news for you may be that when people act out the part by taking care of others for whom they feel no love, they tend to start loving them for real.

Best,
Leela

 

[Heliotropium]

Hi Heliotropium,

You seem convinced that you have a knockdown argument on your hands for proving the existence of God based on the existence of morality, but I can see no contradiction between morality and disbelief.

Hi Leela

It is a pretty good argument considering you live and enforce morality when morality itself is dependent on a supernatural source for its existence (This is why you can’t explain why you have it). I find it funny how even though you cannot attribute the existence of morality to any natural cause, and you yourself say you don’t know why you have it, you will furthermore deny the fact that you’re atheistic belief is the very source of this contradiction.

You keep insisting that I simply can’t hold these views simultaneously, yet I do as do lots of others.

If atheism was true then morality is contrary to the nature you profess you have. Furthermore people can live in a lie Leela. Just because they can live in a lie does not mean the lie does not exist. Nice try though.

I don’t think any ontological foundation for morality is needed whether supernatural or natural.

Of course you don’t because you know the source of morality is not from nature because nature is not subjected to it. Yet you can’t say it’s unnatural because then its source would be supernatural and that would contradict your belief in atheism, so you ignore what the source of morality is. But hey whatever helps you sleep at night right?

 

[ManOnFire]

Many people unknowingly get their sense of morality from the unelected pop culture media. Outrageous behavior with the media’s blessing = “anything goes.” If you say or think something without the media’s blessing = you are “not correct.” (What happened to anything goes?) If you want proof, just look at the movie that wants to save a small speck of a bug, or save a tree, then compare it with partial birth abortion.

The religious in the thread bring up the parallel argument that one can simply choose not to be nice, and the disbelievers refuse to see that this is a parallel argument. They don’t relaize that they have been conditioned by the media what to value. Who is in control of the media propaganda? What happens when the leaders decide to change their message? Why do mature adults with free will allow the media to dictate their values?

 

[flyingfish]

is it right to say that everyone has some sort of moral code because God has written His law on our hearts? but how do you explain this in a scholarly way??

You can talk about empathy, which has strong biological components. Empathy is essentially the golden rule, and is a part of our nature (or that is the norm, there are exceptions such as psychopaths).

That would be consistent with God having written his law in our hearts (via our biology, which you can say was designed by God), and would also be something non believers could accept though they would not attribute it to God.

 

[Betterave]

Let’s put it this way. Instead of “why be nice?” let’s consider “why not be cruel?” Are you a parent? What do you say when your kid hits another kid? Do you tell him that hitting is wrong? What if he asks, “but why is it wrong?” I suspect that like me, you sidestep this question, and rather than threaten God’s wrath or propose an ontological foundation for a system of ethics, you propose a better question: “How would you feel if someone hit you?” You ask your child to imagine putting himself in another’s shoes. This is not just how we cultivate empathy to help our children grow morally through an expansion of the moral imagination. This is what it actually means to grow morally–to come to see a wider and wider circle of others as also your self to the extent that their happiness is your happiness and their suffering is also your suffering. This is how “it is wrong to be cruel to others” becomes self-evidently true and how “why love at all?” ceases to be a question at all, and the desire to claim an ontological foundation for moral truth is no longer a desire.

Morality, if it is to be something other than prudence, is not a system of incentives and disinsentives for encouraging a certain set of behaviors. A moral act is not one done toward gaining God’s or anyone else’s favor. It is done only because it is the right thing to do. If we didn’t do it, we couldn’t look ourselves in the mirror. We would cease to be ourselves. It doesn’t take a moral person to follow God’s laws any more than it tyakes one does to follow the laws of state. It only takes the prudence to recognize that more pleasure and less pain follows from obedience. In any moral act, on the other hand, God’s existence or nonexistence must be regarded as irrelevent even to believers, because a moral act would be merely prudent rather than moral if it were done to achieve God’s reward or to avoid God’s punishment. A moral act is only moral rather than prudent if it is carried out as though there were no God to punish or reward you.

Best,
Leela

I don’t think any ontological foundation for morality is needed whether supernatural or natural. All we need to be ready to know that we ought to love is to care about at least some others, which we already do. I simply don’t need a reason to love others. “Why love at all?” is just not a question I have. The virtue of love is self-evident to me as it is to any child who loves its parents. I do noty need to be convinced by some rational argument to love any more than that child does. Love does not need to be grounded in something else to be taken seriously. If you need a system of carrots and sticks enforced by a supernatural being to behave as though you love, them I am glad you have that, but it is not real love. It is just acting out the part. You can follow all the Divine Commands you have heard of, but as Paul said, "If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. " Following rules out of fear of punishment or desire for reward is not love or morality. It is just the pleasure-seeking, pain-avoiding behavior of any animal. The good news for you may be that when people act out the part by taking care of others for whom they feel no love, they tend to start loving them for real.

So now, on the one hand, you’ve got (non-human) animals following rules out of fear of punishment and desire for reward, and on the other, you don’t need anyone to tell you to love because your enormous empathy-powered moral imagination tells you that love is, and makes love to be(?), the prudent thing to do, although you try not to notice that it’s prudent because in your view that would negate the moral value of your act?

 

[Mystic_Banana]

You can talk about empathy, which has strong biological components. Empathy is essentially the golden rule, and is a part of our nature (or that is the norm, there are exceptions such as psychopaths).

That would be consistent with God having written his law in our hearts (via our biology, which you can say was designed by God), and would also be something non believers could accept though they would not attribute it to God.

You could, but where the biology fails, where presumably it does otherwise people wouldn’t be mean, the lack of empathy itself becomes the golden rule - and a rule for justification for immorality, at the end of the day.

“Stop killing that man! Your empathic nature should tell you it’s wrong!”
“Well, my empathic nature is completely drowned out by my apparently abundant natural aggression, which is telling me something else. Ergo, I’ll just keep going, thankyou very much, and maybe start on you next”

Nah. And I see no evidence it does work, or why it would. Why, atheistically, naturalistically, would you feel impelled to take empathy over everything else?

 

[Leela]

So now, on the one hand, you’ve got (non-human) animals following rules out of fear of punishment and desire for reward, and on the other, you don’t need anyone to tell you to love because your enormous empathy-powered moral imagination tells you that love is, and makes love to be(?), the prudent thing to do, although you try not to notice that it’s prudent because in your view that would negate the moral value of your act?

Something like that. I’ve distinguished between moral action as motivated only by the belief that what you are doing is the right thing to do and prudent action as motivated by carrots and sticks. In making use of this distinction, one who believes in the rewards and punishment of a supernatural entity must set this belief aside to be able to act morally, since if the act in question is done out of a desire to seek favor with or deny the wrath of such a being it is merely prudent and not moral. To act morally, one must do what is right *as though there were no God *to offer punishments and rewards.

One can of course take the position that morality is nothing more than prudence in which case there is still no need to talk about an ontological foundation for morality. Atheists and believers will simply have some different views about what actions are prudent since the atheist will only be concerned with terrestrial carrots and sticks while the believer will also be concerned about some additional ones to be enforced after death.

Best,
Leela

 

[flyingfish]

Nah. And I see no evidence it does work, or why it would. Why, atheistically, naturalistically, would you feel impelled to take empathy over everything else?

Someone who is empathetic wouldn’t consciously say “I’m going to buy a meal to this starving kid” because of empathy. They would feel compassion for the kid and feed him because of that, it would make them feel good about themselves, and they’d feel bad about themselves if they let the kid starve.

Some people are more empathetic than others, how empathetic a person is varies depending on circumstances as well.

 

[Heliotropium]

Something like that. I’ve distinguished between moral action as motivated only by the belief that what you are doing is the right thing to do and prudent action as motivated by carrots and sticks. In making use of this distinction, one who believes in the rewards and punishment of a supernatural entity must set this belief aside to be able to act morally, since if the act in question is done out of a desire to seek favor with or deny the wrath of such a being it is merely prudent and not moral. To act morally, one must do what is right *as though there were no God *to offer punishments and rewards.

This is under the huge assumption that you believe all theists only do what is asked of them because of fear of punishment or the want for a reward. While I’m not denying that some people will do this the true reason for why a believer would do what is right/good is because they want to conform to the WILL of God who is Goodness itself and because only the best result will come from following this will. They do this because they love God, and because they love their fellow man. Good and Evil is what morality addresses. Good and evil are things atheism cannot address because in the natural world nothing is looked at as being good or evil. The weather is not good or evil, animals are not good or evil, plants are not good or evil, and if you are truly atheist humans should not be looked at as good or evil because good and evil require a spiritual nature! I mean come on this is the main reason for why people become atheist because they do not want to be told that what they are doing is good or evil. They justify their actions by saying we are animals and now your contradicting this by saying your animals with morality? Contradiction

 

[Mystic_Banana]

Someone who is empathetic wouldn’t consciously say “I’m going to buy a meal to this starving kid” because of empathy. They would feel compassion for the kid and feed him because of that, it would make them feel good about themselves, and they’d feel bad about themselves if they let the kid starve.

Some people are more empathetic than others, how empathetic a person is varies depending on circumstances as well.

As has been pointed out, they are also influenced by society, and all societies have religious groundings, and recently increasing antireligious influences. I recently looked up stats in the UK, and over the fairly recent period (last 60 years) of decline in religiousity (at least as represented by Church attendence), there has been corresponding increase in crime - that certainly refutes the main suggestion of this thread

But still, you’re dodging the question - why take empathy over antipathy? I see little evidence of reason for that from atheism. “Oh, people are just empathic” doesn’t cut the mustard in the face of experience and statistics - and the lack of reason why people should be empathic beyond feeling like it doesn’t give any reason to justify to them to not be antipathic when they feel like that instead, does it?

 

[Zatzat]

Thank you for that quote from Einstein. I liked it so much I copied and pasted it in my “Quotations” file.

Another…

I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954)

Another…

…Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
(Albert Einstein, Obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955)