Atheistic hypoethical?

[Qoeleth]

Let’s imagine it was incontrovertibly demonstrated that the sum total of suffering involved in human existence necessarily exceeded it joys. Hypothetically, let’s imagine that this has been demonstrated by some ‘universal survey’, or the discovery of some principle of human nature. On the other hand, a given hypothetical individual might consider it demonstrated incontrovertibly simply on the basis of their experience and observations. But let’s simply consider it is as a hypothetical ‘given.’

Now if that case is assumed (that suffering necessarily outweighs happiness)- would an atheist, who doesn’t believe in the possibility of a happy afterlife, be ethically bound to consider it preferable that the human race, somehow (preferably painlessly), cease to be?

 

[Bradski]

So if you have five children and three of them have a miserable life, it would be OK to kill all of them? Painlessly, of course…

 

[Cheiron]

No, because there are atheists who take great delight in the suffering of other people. Just as there are atheists who do their utmost to alleviate suffering. Atheism does not lead necessarily to a humanitarian or philanthropic worldview.

 

[Aloysium]

How about five thousand, and three did not have a miserable life; would it be ok to kill them all? It would have been four who were to be saved, but one looked back. We pretty much all die in pain btw.

Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things?

I would say it does. Love is more than an emotion, but an act rooted in goodness. Conscience is the connection to Goodness itself.

 

[Qoeleth]

So if you have five children and three of them have a miserable life, it would be OK to kill all of them? Painlessly, of course…

Let me clarify- say it was shown, incontrovertibly, that in EVERY human life, pain necessarily outweighed joy. Perhaps for some more than others, but for everyone, the pain and sorrow ultimately was destined to outweigh the joy…

How would an atheist respond, if such were shown necessarily to be true?

 

[inocente]

Let me clarify- say it was shown, incontrovertibly, that in EVERY human life, pain necessarily outweighed joy. Perhaps for some more than others, but for everyone, the pain and sorrow ultimately was destined to outweigh the joy…

I’ve seen a few religious people use that idea to argue it’s OK to torture - a bit more pain here below doesn’t count when followed by an eternity of joy.

I guess atheist morality would reverse that and instead have to be about increasing joy and removing suffering wherever possible.

Is that what you mean? :flowers:

 

[Qoeleth]

How about five thousand, and three did not have a miserable life; would it be ok to kill them all? It would have been four who were to be saved, but one looked back. We pretty much all die in pain btw.

Does it really matter in the grand scheme of things?

I would say it does. Love is more than an emotion, but an act rooted in goodness. Conscience is the connection to Goodness itself.

Yes- but goodness, as such, is a common value both to Christian and atheists. But a Christian will say a life where misery is predominant is somehow redemptive, and leads to infinite joy. An atheist does not have this perspective.

So, if suffering were shown, definitely and irreversibly, to predominate over joy in this world, would it be better if a cloud of deadly, but painless gas encircled the globe on peaceful night, and the earth reverted to an inanimate state? The miserable would be free from pain, the happy would know nothing of what they had lost.

Something like the sentiment of Byron:
*Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o’er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
’Tis something better not to be. *

 

[Qoeleth]

I’ve seen a few religious people use that idea to argue it’s OK to torture - a bit more pain here below doesn’t count when followed by an eternity of joy.

I guess atheist morality would reverse that and instead be about increasing joy and removing suffering wherever possible.

Is that what you mean? :flowers:

No- my hypothetical is that if it was known that in EVERY human life, pain outweigh joys, and that it is not possible (due to human nature) for it to be otherwise.

If this were the case, would the atheist (or even the Christian for that matter) be bound to welcome some kind of painless, mass euthanasia?

 

[inocente]

*Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o’er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
’Tis something better not to be. *

A great argument for living in the moment and not dwelling on the past. Be more dog.

 

[inocente]

No- my hypothetical is that if it was known that in EVERY human life, pain outweigh joys, and that it is not possible (due to human nature) for it to be otherwise.

If this were the case, would the atheist (or even the Christian for that matter) be bound to welcome some kind of painless, mass euthanasia?

Every so often we read of a clinically depressed father who, before killing himself, kills his family in the belief he is saving them from future suffering. And sometimes that takes a religious idea too far:

*Here I must build up misery,
but there, there I will see
sweet peace, quiet rest.
youtube.com/watch?v=dx2THaIicfM

No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I’ll fly away.
youtube.com/watch?v=uz-0C2dhKlg*

Imho even with Byron’s hedonist arithmetic, one joy may outweigh a thousand sorrows.

 

[puzzledtoo]

What of all the other living beings on this earth? Will they die from this cloud of “painless” gas designed to wipe out humans? Should they die because my pain and suffering outweigh theirs? Hypothetically of course.
Happy Thanksgiving day to all.

 

[Qoeleth]

What of all the other living beings on this earth? Will they die from this cloud of “painless” gas designed to wipe out humans? Should they die because my pain and suffering outweigh theirs? Hypothetically of course.
Happy Thanksgiving day to all.

Let’s say ‘no’- other living species are not affected by it.

 

[Qoeleth]

No more cold iron shackles on my feet
I’ll fly away.
youtube.com/watch?v=uz-0C2dhKlg

.

Chuff! I can’t believe someone actually wrote such a song. It’s blacker than death metal…

 

[puzzledtoo]

Well that would be good that no other living beings are affected. However I agree with post #10 from Inocente.

 

[Peter_Plato]

No- my hypothetical is that if it was known that in EVERY human life, pain outweigh joys, and that it is not possible (due to human nature) for it to be otherwise.

If this were the case, would the atheist (or even the Christian for that matter) be bound to welcome some kind of painless, mass euthanasia?

Each time you bring up the ethical “challenge” you substitute different words with different meanings for the two alternatives.

Here you pit ‘pain’ against ‘joy.’ In the OP it was ‘happiness’ in opposition to ‘suffering.’

Let’s be a bit clearer here:

1. Pain contrasts with pleasure.
2. Joy contrasts, though not perfectly, with sorrow.
3. Suffering is difficult to locate a precise corollary because it depends entirely upon what it is that one is ‘suffering’ or having to ‘bear with.’ It could mean suffering pain, displeasure, ill-health, sorrow, torment or a whole host of maladies. So the best contrasting idea would be to be ‘free of’ all or most of those unwanted negatives.
4. Happiness (and this is very problematic because of the hugely variant views on what ‘happiness’ truly comprises) contrasts – to some degree – with sadness, but I think Aristotle was closer to its true meaning, in the case of human beings, when he defined (very roughly paraphrased) happiness as: human beings being what we were meant to be within a political, economic and social landscape that fully permits and facilitates that fullness of being.

With regard to 4) it is entirely possible that happiness in the sense of living a full human life will necessarily involve some pain, some sorrow and some sadness – or even a preponderance of those over all – if pain/pleasure, joy/sorrow and suffering/freedom from suffering are not ends in themselves but are, rather, aspects of attaining the more proper ultimate end of forming fully human, fully alive, moral beings.

Of course, this all presupposes an Aristotelian view of teleology or final causation which atheists may or may not find acceptable. In the case of the latter, objecting atheists would have to defend their own reasons for why pain, suffering, sorrow, etc., might be tolerable even when these exceed pleasure, joy, and all positive emotions, generally.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Let’s imagine …

I am still stuck trying to imagine what you mean by the thread title, “Atheistic hypoethical?”

In the title, does the prefix “hypo” in hypoethical mean “slightly” or “below normal” or something else entirely?

 

[carefullytread]

As someone who may or may not be an atheist depending on your definition, let me answer this question with definitively no.

First, an atheist isn’t required to hold any particular form of ethics. An atheist can be a virtue ethicist, a nihilist, an act utilitarian, a rule based utilitarian, they can even not have a very well thought out position. In fact, I think that this last position is the most likely. And not just for atheists .

Implicit in your question is an acceptance of utilitarianism, so let’s assume that the atheist is a utilitarian. Well, in the hypothetical you describe, a thoughtful atheist would simply cease to be a utilitarian. One of the best attributes of atheism is that it allows an epistemological humbleness that requires one to always be doubting whether your ideas are serving the ends that you want. I think most utilitarians are utilitarians because it strikes them to be the best ethical theory they’ve seen.

If it turned out that a fully flushed out utilitarianism meant killing everyone, most atheists would just say “Oh, I guess I was wrong that utilitarianism was the right moral theory”. And I consider the ability to reconsider your principles when you realize they’ve encountered situations they weren’t designed to handle to be one of the great strengths of a properly conceived atheism.

 

[Bradski]

No- my hypothetical is that if it was known that in EVERY human life, pain outweigh joys, and that it is not possible (due to human nature) for it to be otherwise.

If this were the case, would the atheist (or even the Christian for that matter) be bound to welcome some kind of painless, mass euthanasia?

I’m sure that a lot of people consider ending life if it contains nothing but pain and misery. But it would be a personal decision.

What puzzles me is that a lot of Christians believe that an eternity of pain and misery awaits, should they not live up to God’s expectations, yet they don’t seem concerned about it in the least.

 

[STT]

Let’s imagine it was incontrovertibly demonstrated that the sum total of suffering involved in human existence necessarily exceeded it joys. Hypothetically, let’s imagine that this has been demonstrated by some ‘universal survey’, or the discovery of some principle of human nature. On the other hand, a given hypothetical individual might consider it demonstrated incontrovertibly simply on the basis of their experience and observations. But let’s simply consider it is as a hypothetical ‘given.’

Now if that case is assumed (that suffering necessarily outweighs happiness)- would an atheist, who doesn’t believe in the possibility of a happy afterlife, be ethically bound to consider it preferable that the human race, somehow (preferably painlessly), cease to be?

Can you tell me what is the value of life from your perspective? You suffer, you perform evil, etc. This is crucial to understand otherwise it is morally allowed to finish humanity. Why not end this miserable life and join God? This make no sense to me.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I’m more curious how a theist would respond. If theists were certain of a terribly painful life, but a wonderful afterlife, maybe theists would try to die to get to that fabulous, promised afterlife sooner?

Perhaps this highlights the crucial difference between a theistic view and an atheistic one.

Theists, from where I stand, have a view of life where meaning, significance and fulfillment or becoming in a final sense are the grounds for a “fabulous” life or “promised afterlife.” I wouldn’t suppose most theists are hinged upon pain or absence of it as the ground for life being judged “wonderful” or not.

Perhaps a theist’s view transcends completely the purely sensory or pleasure/pain ground from which a physicalist or atheist might form their judgement about the “livableness” of life.

In other words, if your view of what life is essentially is based entirely (or fundamentally) upon the sensory fallout, that may mean you have a completely different way of assessing or valuing that life compared to someone who views the significance of life from some alternate paradigm.

As for atheists…many are about accepting and embracing the day in front of us and the life before us and the here and now. Just because it’s painful, doesn’t mean it’s not great to be alive. Contrary to what many theists think, atheists don’t just live their lives to feed their base pleasures or whatever many have said here.
And since most of us already go thru a lot of pain…and we can’t be sure of what happens after we die…I think we are all pretty much in this position, anyway.

Okay, so we have now moved from the purely sensory to the aesthetic as grounds for value. It raises the stakes a bit, but still not a full sense of meaning because it relies upon “here and now” (name removed by moderator)ut stimulus rather than by bringing into the evaluation of life its potential significance within a real purpose and end good – i.e, wrestling with question of WHY we came into existence to begin with, a consideration which atheistic paradigms completely dismiss as inconsequential.