Atheism more moral?

[ManOnFire]

“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

-Einstein

 

[ManOnFire]

Where was the empathy when history’s dictators failed to practice religion and killed millions of people? (I understand that Islam calls for the destruction of the infidels, so maybe killing = practicing their religion) What about the Russian orphan who was adopted by American parents, then the parents bought him a one-way ticket back to his orphanage after he threatened to kill them and burn down their house? What will society do with someone who doesn’t learn empathy? What happens when more men abandon romantic love in favor of “the deed?” What happens to romantic love when the now single mom is forced to raise the child alone because the man who was living on basic instincts ran from responsibility instead of living by God’s Covenant for behavior? How can reducing people into basic instincter simpletons be considered progress? What are the odds the child will learn romantic love if he/she grows up in a bitter misogynistic / misandristic experience? How is justice served if a child learns to fear romantic love? Where is the empathy? The proof is the people who refuse to get married because they fear divorce. Most of our failures in relationships are because we could not avoid basic temptation, we weren’t the religious Covenant for behavior enough, and now you want to go in the exact opposite direction??? Add selfish independent individualism and the conflicts between people will escalate since everyone has their own set of values.

Society’s attempt to control values and behavior is just an agnostic horse of a different color. Maybe next decade we can have reverse hippie-ism where we wake up and rebel against the media’s attempts to “correct” our values and behaviors. ANd choose God’s romantic Love and Depth over pop culture’s basic instincter shallowness.

 

[AntiTheist]

I’ve more or less abandoned this thread, but I glance at it occasionally, and I feel the need to point out errors. That’s just how I roll.

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

I’ll take “causation does not imply correlation” for 100, Alex.

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?

I don’t think you really grasp the fact that decisions like acting on empathy (instead of antipathy and aggression) aren’t made arbitrarily in a vacuum. Humans have, for thousands and thousands of years now, had very similar broad goals that necessitate orderly societies and cooperation.

As a result, human values, influenced by civilization, by our judgments of the effects of our actions, by tradition, and by a host of other factors, generally support cooperation over selfish behavior. By and large, cooperation usually works better than selfish behavior – not all the time, but most of the time. Over long stretches of time, such cooperation has become increasingly important to human society.

In more primitive times, human societies were more tribal – cooperation was typically directed to the in-group and aggression was typically directed to the out-group. Over time, and given the advantages that we’ve seen that have come out of cooperative behavior, we’ve slowly come to regard a more universal cooperation as a value worthy of having.

We don’t pick our values out of a hat. We don’t just randomly say, “Gee, I guess today I’ll go with empathy.” It’s the context of thousands of years of civilization and human experience that give us the basis for the values that society trains us in.

 

[DonM]

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./.quote]

I don’t understand how a motivation view of morality can fit into an atheist moral system.

Theists can worry endlessly about their inner states, since God may judge them for bad thoughts. I don’t see how an atheist gets to a point of worrying about inner states, except as they may affect action. Fantasizing about killing someone may be a welcome release, as long as one doesn’t act on it. But the Christian that doesn’t kill and the atheist that doesn’t kill have to be of the same moral standing in the atheist’s view of morality. Purity of heart can’t matter, unless there is someone privy to one’s heart, and judges it.

An atheist may assert that, because his morality comes from independent rational decision making, he will make better decisions in the realm of morality. But frequently atheists end up arguing that morality comes from tradition and evolutionary impulses, so I would argue that a religion may be truer to the cultural and evolutionary impulses than thinking each problem out one at a time.

 

[flyingfish]

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

Well, if you look at crimes in the Western World, the US has some of the highest, if not the highest rate of violent crime. Secular Canada, Scandinavia and so on are much safer. Still, you’d be hardpressed to make a causal connection between religion (or lack thereof) and crime. There are so many factors that contribute to crime, such as poverty levels, education levels, presence of discontented immigrants/refugees and so on.

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?

The OP was asking about whether the moral law is written in the heart of men, and empathy certainly seems to be written in our biology. Since the OP wanted an approach that would work for secular folk, I suggested it.

I don’t really understand your question. What do you mean why take empathy over “antipathy”? My nature is such that I feel compassion for suffering people and sometimes help them. There is no why, it’s the kind of organism I am.

 

[o_mlly]

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

Your notions reflect an existentialist approach to morality and, I think, suffer from its weaknesses as a method to discover universal ideas on how we ought to relate one to the other.

Existentialism, knowledge gained by individual experience, is inherently biased. When the subject becomes its own object, bias impregnates knowledge. I can observe more objectively things outside myself than the thing that is myself. Bias, a preference or an inclination, inhibits impartial judgment. If I know bias exists, I should be reasonably skeptical of any all-inclusive claims based on such knowledge. Skepticism and existentialism, I think, are good partners when we pursue the truth about salvation. Metaphysics compliments existentialism as a thought process, each checking and balancing the other. Existentialism, an experience driven mode of knowing, may garner notions about the human condition that metaphysics, a rationally driven mode of knowing, may not. Metaphysics, however, can clarify and expand spiritual notions, like God, and his plan for our salvation, because spiritual notions are only dimly part of my “lived experience.” My “lived experience” may be tangential or partial with the divine, but is never co-extensive or exhaustive of it. An existential knowledge of the divine must be seen as at least anthropomorphic, if not anthropocentric.

Existentialists, noting that existence always precedes essence, seek to discover, not deduce, knowledge by examining one’s own “lived experience” and, inductively, from those particular experiences that are common to all, offer generalized theories of reality. The discovery of who you are (and who God is) always includes who I am. Intelligence can never disown itself. Your experience, therefore, must resonate with mine to have meaning for me.

This existentialist approach, I believe, suffers the twin weaknesses of the existentialist’s method. Any initial generalized hypothesis offered by the existentialist is both inchoate and fragile. Inchoate because the truth in the hypothesis is dependent on massive collaboration and fragile because just one descent may begin its obliteration. If the “lived experience” examined is unique to its examiner, then that “lived experience” must be considered an anomalous experience of the examiner, and, therefore, not natural by definition— present in all people, at all times and all places. Until the “lived experience” of the one is confirmed by the many, the generalized truthfulness of that knowledge as applying to all humanity must be held in suspense. The only logical way around this conundrum is to specify that reality is not singular, but multiple, and, at times, perhaps even contradictory. But such a position, making truth subjective, would obviate any need for further deliberation! I must, therefore, reject any part of an existentialist’s expression of human nature or salvation that does not square with my own existential expression. If we are to dispute productively, we must go to a different realm of knowing, and, I suggest, the metaphysical as the only court of appeal.

 

[Leela]

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.

I make no such assumption. I don’t think there is any way that all theists are. Your mistake is in thinking that there is some particular way that all atheists must be and and perhaps in thinking that I have the same antagonism toward you that you seem to have for me.

I don’t think that theists do what good things because of fear of punishment and want for reward, that is why atheists are not lacking moral motivation in not believing in such punishments and rewards. All that is required for moral behavior is love, and atheists are just as capable of love as theists are.

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!

…So you keep insisting. All we need to be able to address morality is to have concerns for others. The fact that we don’t have such concerns for rocks and trees is irrelevent.

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?

This is pure bigotry. Do you know any atheists? Do you see them as having a desire to do evil?

People don’t choose to become atheists out of a desire to do evil. they just are atheists when they are unable to get themselves to believe what seems to them to be unbelievable.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

Your notions reflect an existentialist approach to morality and, I think, suffer from its weaknesses as a method to discover universal ideas on how we ought to relate one to the other.

I am only existentialist in thinking that we have an inescapable responsibility for the choices we make as individuals. I assume you just as existentialist on that point.

You are moving the conversation (thankfully) past the meta-ethical concerns for the foundations of ethics to the practical considerations for how we ought to make ethical decisions. Three dominant approaches in ethics are universalism (Kant), consequentialism (Mills), and human flourishing (Aristotle). I think we run into problems if we take any one of these considerations as an ethical system that can hand us correct responses to all sitiations.

I agree with you that universibility is an important consideration in ethics. We ask our children , how would you feel if someone did that to you? or what if everyone behaved that way? But I think we also ought to consider the consequences of our actions (hitting causes pain, and pain is bad) and the well-being of sentient creatures (burqas limit the possibilities of human flourishing for women) in making ethical judgments for which we each always bear personally responsibility even when we let someone else (or a church or other organization) decide for us.

Best,
Leela

 

[JohnSanzone5]

I make no such assumption. I don’t think there is any way that all theists are. Your mistake is in thinking that there is some particular way that all atheists must be and and perhaps in thinking that I have the same antagonism toward you that you seem to have for me.

This is a very annoying and common trope in atheist discourse. The old ‘you can’t say anything meaningful about atheists, collectively, because we are not a cohesive movement’. Au contraire, mon cheri! In rejecting our Lord Jesus Christ–more likely than not, the God of your ancestors since time immemorial–you reject a great deal more than you know.

I don’t think that theists do what good things because of fear of punishment and want for reward, that is why atheists are not lacking moral motivation in not believing in such punishments and rewards. All that is required for moral behavior is love, and atheists are just as capable of love as theists are.

Unqualified love is not the essential ingredient for moral living. Close, but no cigar.

…So you keep insisting. All we need to be able to address morality is to have concerns for others. The fact that we don’t have such concerns for rocks and trees is irrelevent.

This is pure bigotry. Do you know any atheists? Do you see them as having a desire to do evil?

People don’t choose to become atheists out of a desire to do evil. they just are atheists when they are unable to get themselves to believe what seems to them to be unbelievable.

This seems to assume too much for the hypothetical, unspecified atheist, wouldn’t you say? To say that, as a rule, all atheists are more ‘epistemically conscientious’ is a bit of a stretch. In fact, many of the atheists I know are either captivated by the idea that atheism renders everything permissible… or by a porcine indifference to all the most important questions in belief and morality.

Best,
Leela

 

[JohnSanzone5]

I am only existentialist in thinking that we have an inescapable responsibility for the choices we make as individuals. I assume you just as existentialist on that point.

You are moving the conversation (thankfully) past the meta-ethical concerns for the foundations of ethics to the practical considerations for how we ought to make ethical decisions. Three dominant approaches in ethics are universalism (Kant), consequentialism (Mills), and human flourishing (Aristotle). I think we run into problems if we take any one of these considerations as an ethical system that can hand us correct responses to all sitiations.

I agree with you that universibility is an important consideration in ethics. We ask our children , how would you feel if someone did that to you? or what if everyone behaved that way? But I think we also ought to consider the consequences of our actions (hitting causes pain, and pain is bad) and the well-being of sentient creatures (burqas limit the possibilities of human flourishing for women) in making ethical judgments for which we each always bear personally responsibility even when we let someone else (or a church or other organization) decide for us.

That’s really great that you seem to have taken a few undergraduate courses in philosophy, but these are only so many distinctions. They do not matter when there is the slightest bit of pressure. I can easily distinguish the person who has never suffered a personal crisis by the person who includes several identitarian qualifiers in a description of their beliefs.

Best,
Leela

 

[Mystic_Banana]

I’ve more or less abandoned this thread, but I glance at it occasionally, and I feel the need to point out errors. That’s just how I roll.

I’ll take “causation does not imply correlation” for 100, Alex.

Hi Antitheist - lets see if you can come with something approaching a reasonable justification on **this **thread, then, shall we?

I don’t think you really grasp the fact that decisions like acting on empathy (instead of antipathy and aggression) aren’t made arbitrarily in a vacuum. Humans have, for thousands and thousands of years now, had very similar broad goals that necessitate orderly societies and cooperation.

As a result, human values, influenced by civilization, by our judgments of the effects of our actions, by tradition, and by a host of other factors, generally support cooperation over selfish behavior. By and large, cooperation usually works better than selfish behavior – not all the time, but most of the time. Over long stretches of time, such cooperation has become increasingly important to human society.

In more primitive times, human societies were more tribal – cooperation was typically directed to the in-group and aggression was typically directed to the out-group. Over time, and given the advantages that we’ve seen that have come out of cooperative behavior, we’ve slowly come to regard a more universal cooperation as a value worthy of having.

We don’t pick our values out of a hat. We don’t just randomly say, “Gee, I guess today I’ll go with empathy.” It’s the context of thousands of years of civilization and human experience that give us the basis for the values that society trains us in.

Funny, though, and I’m sure you could argue it’s my imagination, but there’s been a not inconsiderable aspect of the long history of moral progress being developed according to an understanding of existence in terms of involving God and/or spirituality or something…

 

[ManOnFire]

We ask our children , how would you feel if someone did that to you? or what if everyone behaved that way?

Best,
Leela

What if your children never “felt that way,” i.e. the behavior you’re trying to prevent? Then, they would not know empathy. Do you think the first slave traders were slaves themselves and said “we better enslave them before they enslave us?” They said “we can be selfish and get away with it.”

This is what I don’t understand from those who believe society is capable of achieving a purely secular social nirvana: The closer society gets to purely secular nirvana, people will not suffer from struggle in order to generate empathy within themselves, so empathy will not occur. And what’s to stop people from being selfish and cheating the system to get others to do more work?

Love, you say. What Love? Love of self? What’s to convince self to Love others first? We’re all young, attractive, and mysterious in the beginning. What happens when the mystery wears off? Should the spouse with means and ability just trade the other one in for a better model if he/she can and so desires?

Did you grow up in a religious household?

 

[Leela]

What if your children never “felt that way,” i.e. the behavior you’re trying to prevent? Then, they would not know empathy. Do you think the first slave traders were slaves themselves and said “we better enslave them before they enslave us?” They said “we can be selfish and get away with it.”

This is what I don’t understand from those who believe society is capable of achieving a purely secular social nirvana: The closer society gets to purely secular nirvana, people will not suffer from struggle in order to generate empathy within themselves, so empathy will not occur. And what’s to stop people from being selfish and cheating the system to get others to do more work?

Do you have children. How do you teach them if not how I described?

Even as culture evolves so that people tend to have a more and more enlarged sense of “self” that includes more and more of what were previously thought of as “others,” children born into such a society will still need to personally go through that same evolution. How do we get them to evolve? By fosterring that empathy by what ever means we have. And we have a lot of means at our disposal. Perhaps indeed when we ask our children “how would you feel if someone did that to you” they have simply never felt that way. That doesn’t mean that we can’t help them to imagine what it would feel like. That doesn’t mean that they will never do wrong in spite of being able to empathize. We will always need laws and punishments for wrong doing, but when we raise our children we (at least I am) are trying to get our kids to evolve to a point where fear of punishment is irelevent. they do the right thing because it is the right thing.

Children are generally capable of such imaginative growth and empathy, but for people’s whose moral growth is stunted and for those that simply cannot imagine any inner life in others at all (we call such people psychopaths) we will simply have to rely on our legal system and perhaps need to separate such people from the rest of society so that they cannot be a danger. I don’t know who you mean when you say that people are supporting a secular social nirvana. We will never do without the police and prisons as far as I can see. We also don’t need to rule out the possibility of teaching such morally stunted people that there is a God in heaven who will punish them after death for their wrong doing and reward them for being good. The carrots ancd sticks of such religious teaching and legal enforcement would not be true morality, but it may be the best we can do for some.

Love, you say. What Love? Love of self? What’s to convince self to Love others first?

You ask, “what is to convince self to love others first?” I don’t think we generally need any such convincing through rational argumentation. How did you first come to love others? I think people tend to come to love before they can think, so rational argumentation is irrelevent.

We’re all young, attractive, and mysterious in the beginning. What happens when the mystery wears off? Should the spouse with means and ability just trade the other one in for a better model if he/she can and so desires?

I don’t know what you are getting at here. Are you having second thougts about your marriage? There is nothing preventing you from trading in for a newer model (assuming you think you still got it going on), but do you think that that is the right thing to do? Would the newer model really be better for you and for your family? Would you be able to look yourself in the mirror if you did? If such considerations can’t get you to do the right thing, perhaps it is good that you fear God’s wrath (assuming you do), but I don’t think the law should force you to stay with her if you can’t get yourself to see it as the right thing. Perhaps it isthen not the right thing. Such a situation would be likely to turn abusive and a bad situation in which to raise children, so it may be the best thing for you two to part ways.

Did you grow up in a religious household?

Pretty much. I was fairly religious as a teenager, but the dogmatic claims of Christianity began to seem less and less plausible to me as I matured. I didn’t want to leave the church, but my inability to make myself believe that the piece of bread turns miraculously into Jesus made me unwelcome at the altar.

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

This is a very annoying and common trope in atheist discourse. The old ‘you can’t say anything meaningful about atheists, collectively, because we are not a cohesive movement’. Au contraire, mon cheri! In rejecting our Lord Jesus Christ–more likely than not, the God of your ancestors since time immemorial–you reject a great deal more than you know.

But Hindus and Mulsims and Buddhists, etc also “reject our Lord Jesus Christ,” so whatever you would say about atheists here would apply to them as well, no?

At any rate, I have little desire to defend atheists in general and only use the label because other people apply it to me. I don’t generally self-identify as an atheist because it is a purely negative term, and I don’t usually think of myself in terms of beliefs that I don’t hold. I’m not out to promote atheism or anything, though I do have a great concern for bigotry against nonbelievers.

Unqualified love is not the essential ingredient for moral living. Close, but no cigar.

Please enlighten me.

To say that, as a rule, all atheists are more ‘epistemically conscientious’ is a bit of a stretch. In fact, many of the atheists I know are either captivated by the idea that atheism renders everything permissible… or by a porcine indifference to all the most important questions in belief and morality.

I don’t think atheists “are more ‘epistemically conscientious.’”

And any atheist who thinks that without God everythingis permitted has never tried to sneak into a Marylin Manson concert.

That’s really great that you seem to have taken a few undergraduate courses in philosophy, but these are only so many distinctions. They do not matter when there is the slightest bit of pressure. I can easily distinguish the person who has never suffered a personal crisis by the person who includes several identitarian qualifiers in a description of their beliefs.

Can you explain what you are getting at here? Are you saying something about me personally? I actually never took a philosophy course, so maybe what you are saying is over my head and needs to be dumbed down for little old me.

Best,
Leela

 

[Betterave]

I thought this was interesting and pertinent to a number of the comments that have been made here:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Kenny

Although deeply interested in traditional Catholic teaching and continuing to attend the
Catholic mass[2], ANTHONY KENNY now explicitly defines his position as an Agnostic, explaining in his What I believe both why he is not a theist and why he is not an atheist. His 2006 book What I believe has (as Ch 3) “Why I am Not an Atheist” which begins: “Many different definitions may be offered of the word ‘God’. Given this fact, atheism makes a much stronger claim than theism does. The atheist says that no matter what definition you choose, ‘God exists’ is always false. The theist only claims that there is some definition which will make ‘God exists’ true. In my view, neither the stronger nor the weaker claim has been convincingly established”. He goes on “the true default position is neither theism nor atheism, but agnosticism … a claim to knowledge needs to be substantiated; ignorance need only be confessed.”[3] He defends the rationality of an agnostic praying to a God whose existence he doubts, stating “It surely is no more unreasonable than the act of a man adrift in the ocean, trapped in a cave, or stranded on a mountainside, who cries for help though he may never be heard or fires a signal which may never be seen.”[4]

 

[Betterave]

“And any atheist who thinks that without God everythingis permitted has never tried to sneak into a Marylin Manson concert.”

That’s funny! Are you saying you have?

 

[JohnSanzone5]

But Hindus and Mulsims and Buddhists, etc also “reject our Lord Jesus Christ,” so whatever you would say about atheists here would apply to them as well, no?

**Nope, sorry.

As you can read in our Catechism which you can purchase for 10.17$ on Amazon–‘used’ starting at 6.07$–the RCC’s position on ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue suggests that the plurality of religions on the global scene are also ways of attempting to reach God and the phenomena that Catholicism describes perfectly… just in imperfect ways.

Also, the moslems don’t “reject” our Lord… they just don’t recognize him in the most important way.**

At any rate, I have little desire to defend atheists in general and only use the label because other people apply it to me. I don’t generally self-identify as an atheist because it is a purely negative term, and I don’t usually think of myself in terms of beliefs that I don’t hold. I’m not out to promote atheism or anything, though I do have a great concern for bigotry against nonbelievers.

That’s good to know, I understand what you mean completely

Please enlighten me.

It takes more than ‘unqualified love’ for ethical life. I am not sure if by ‘unqualified love’ you mean a universal love, which is unqualified… or the ability to feel unqualified love, but not necessarily direct it towards some object. If you are willing to further refine this very vague, Romantic-sentimental assertion, I believe it would not be too difficult to provide counter-examples.

I don’t think atheists “are more ‘epistemically conscientious.’”

And any atheist who thinks that without God everythingis permitted has never tried to sneak into a Marylin Manson concert.

Har har har. Well, the quote I responded to seemed to imply this. You should go back and re-read it, but I think we both understand that the matter is settled.

Can you explain what you are getting at here? Are you saying something about me personally? I actually never took a philosophy course, so maybe what you are saying is over my head and needs to be dumbed down for little old me.

**You mentioned the three courses that modern ethical systems usually take in providing manners of living and ‘highest goods’. I honestly despise those things, and even (hypothetically) if their doctrines have been made so stringent and internally consistent, I do not believe they provide livable alternatives to Catholic (Christian) life. I do not think Western philosophy has rendered a livable alternative to Catholic (Christian) living–or, as I am hesitant to admit, most religious systems–since the Hellenic schools.

Which in themselves only amounted to Cults to Reason, and therefore quasi-religious. **

Best,
Leela

 

[Leela]

…the RCC’s position on ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue suggests that the plurality of religions on the global scene are also ways of attempting to reach God and the phenomena that Catholicism describes perfectly… just in imperfect ways.

If all religions are trying to reach Jesus even though they don’t realize it, couldn’t the same then be said of atheists?

Also, the moslems don’t “reject” our Lord… they just don’t recognize him in the most important way.

As far as I know, I don’t reject “our Lord” any more than the Muslims do. In fact, I think I probably accept him to a far greater degree than does the average Muslim.

It takes more than ‘unqualified love’ for ethical life. I am not sure if by ‘unqualified love’ you mean a universal love, which is unqualified… or the ability to feel unqualified love, but not necessarily direct it towards some object. If you are willing to further refine this very vague, Romantic-sentimental assertion, I believe it would not be too difficult to provide counter-examples.

I couldn’t clairify “unqualified love” since this was your term to begin with, but here is an explanation of my views on ethics:

atheistichope.com/

You mentioned the three courses that modern ethical systems usually take in providing manners of living and ‘highest goods’. I honestly despise those things, and even (hypothetically) if their doctrines have been made so stringent and internally consistent, I do not believe they provide livable alternatives to Catholic (Christian) life. I do not think Western philosophy has rendered a livable alternative to Catholic (Christian) living–or, as I am hesitant to admit, most religious systems–since the Hellenic schools.

Which in themselves only amounted to Cults to Reason, and therefore quasi-religious.

The doctrines of Kant, Mills, and Aristotle ARE internally consistent, aren’t they? How do they contradict themselves? The problem with them is that philosphers just seem to have an easy time coming up with examples where following any of these systems will in come cases conflict with our moral intuitions.

As for the Catholic alternative to these systems, I am not aware of any stringent moral theory that all Catholics are called to follow. My understanding that Catholics are called to listen to what the Church teaches, pray, think, and ultimately obey their conscience (moral intuitions). It seems to me that Catholics make the same sort of considerations as anyone else with respect to moral diliberation with the exception of prayer in the case of many of us nonChristians. Don’t Catholics just like pretty much everyone else consider such things as their moral intuitions, universability (the Golden Rule), consequences, human flourishing (natural law), and the various authorities we have come to respect?

Best,
Leela

 

[JohnSanzone5]

If all religions are trying to reach Jesus even though they don’t realize it, couldn’t the same then be said of atheists?

**There is a substantial difference–under this view–between the person willing to ‘consecrate’ their life to some God, and **

As far as I know, I don’t reject “our Lord” any more than the Muslims do. In fact, I think I probably accept him to a far greater degree than does the average Muslim.

I couldn’t clairify “unqualified love” since this was your term to begin with, but here is an explanation of my views on ethics:

atheistichope.com/

**Ah, I see, excuse me.

Well that makes my refutation even simpler. Love without right-doctrine and right-practice is a foundering ship. One can think of many very intense kinds of ‘love’ which have only resulted in atrocity. The older forms of Christianity, especially Orthodoxy, held dispassion and its moderation alongside love as an ideal. Therefore, I find it slightly facile (and probably a little Romantic) to consider ‘love’ without any qualifiers as the tell-all prerequisite for moral life.**

The doctrines of Kant, Mills, and Aristotle ARE internally consistent, aren’t they? How do they contradict themselves? The problem with them is that philosphers just seem to have an easy time coming up with examples where following any of these systems will in come cases conflict with our moral intuitions.

**(1) I wasn’t arguing whether these philosophers and their systems are consistent.
(2) I don’t believe the ‘problems’ you can find with them can be reduced to just one thing. Although I agree with the objection you cited.
(3) As the Church is universal, so are its moral approaches. I am glad that the Church hasn’t hopped into the boat of modern ethics. At the same time, there have been numerous particularly fertile schools which the Church’s teachings have generated, and countless others which have been influenced significantly.

(4) I believe that I could** potentially agree with most of the subsequent paragraph, with some general points that can be clarified:

Because the argument comes down to it, I will explain what makes Catholics–the Catholic ethical agent, in practice–different:

Yes, Catholics listen to the teaching authority of the Church, and affirm its beliefs (rendering the Catholic his moral premises). Along with this, there are the bases from which the Church’s teachings are drawn: Scripture, Patristics, the sacraments, Church custom, &c… A good Catholic must also make it his duty to familiarize himself with these.

Thus, along with a built-in teaching authority, the Catholic familiarizes himself with the cultural-spiritual-poetic-literary-philological-historical treasure trove that is the Bible; he imbibes the basics of Church’s teachings and their dynamic relationship with the philosophical schools of several different centuries, by studying Patristics and the Doctors of the Church. The Catholic receives grace through our Church’s sacraments, and learns to purify himself, the rudiments of ascetic practice, in expectation of receiving the sacraments. Finally, he is raised–spiritually and intellectually–from his present circumstance (no matter how despicable) by the aesthetic beauty of the Church and Her customs.

When the time comes to make his decision, and the Catholic is alone with his conscience, it is my firm opinion that the Catholic will be infinitely better-placed to make his decision than the secular academic (no matter how well-schooled) or the secular layman (often, little better than a swine).

This constitutes a practical difference. Which is significant, as ethics divorced from action is less worthwhile and more hypothetical a pursuit than the worst critics of theology argue that theology is.

Moreover, not “everyone” else attempts at universality. That is baseless. I hope you are referring only to the ‘modern schools’.

Finally, by attempting to say that Catholics are as everyone else because they contain elements (a stretch to say this, to be sure) of the different ethical systems we have just discussed is to pervert your argument. To reduce it to a pastiche of universality, consequence, moral intuition, eudaimonia, &c. is blatantly useless–even if this does make it theoretically indistinct from the modern schools is just a useless distinction. I cannot even believe I am seeing this argument advanced.

Just because it contains the basic elements of ethics, doesn’t mean it is theoretically distinct from all the other ethical schools. My goodness. Why even subscribe to a school over another!–they all contain the laundry list!? This is to undermine the entire ethical project, to say that as long as it contains the following, it has been perfected!

Moreover, it should be noted that just because Catholic ethics contains elements of all the ‘great schools of our day’ does not make it equivalent to these systems, in any way. Whereas each of these schools has overemphasized only one ‘item of the list’, Catholicism incorporates each in a way that is organic and maintains the system’s integrity. Without overemphasizing the consequences, or utils, or pleasure, or any other small part of the system. There are no ‘ChopChuck’ thought experiments in Catholicism.

I hope you trim the fat off of this argument so that I can actually respond concisely. Therefore, please keep fallacies and conflations at a minimum, THANK YOU!

 

[Betterave]

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.

Is this not a huge non sequitur? (If you can’t see this, please tell me; I can explain.) Also, do you seriously think that your ‘theistic psychopath’ can reasonably be said to follow rules in the same way as an animal can be said to follow rules? (I take that claim to be self-evidently preposterous.)

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.

So what makes it the case that *your *position retains a view of morality as more than prudence? My original point in asking the question you responded to here was that your presentation of your ethic of empathy did *not *appear to do this. As you presented your position, your appeal to empathy and moral imagination, as well as/in conjunction with your ‘metaphysical’ interpretation of the self and the other, appear to be grounded in prudential considerations.