A
_A
Guest
When the religious nonsense is trimmed away, you are left with a good set of laws.
Again, the golden rule.
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Mirdath
Guest
The person in question decides them – just like the theist decides his or her mores when signing up for a particular religion.
The Categorical Imperative has no relation to religion at all. It is a statement of enlightened self-interest: act always by that maxim whereby you can will it becomes universal law. No gods required.
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Little_Mary
Guest
Sorry, that may have been a little dramatic
Not sure how else to word this… what tells you what is right and wrong?
Assuming you agree that robbing a bank is wrong, why do you agree?
Again, I am not trying to get you to say that it is “God” or the Ten Commandments, etc. My question is what, inside your head and heart, tells you this is right or that is wrong?
A
_A
Guest
Nothing so nebulous and unreachable as ‘inside my head’.Sorry, that may have been a little dramatic
Not sure how else to word this… what tells you what is right and wrong?
Assuming you agree that robbing a bank is wrong, why do you agree?
Again, I am not trying to get you to say that it is “God” or the Ten Commandments, etc. My question is what, inside your head and heart, tells you this is right or that is wrong?
I use banks. Part of the reason that they work is that the vast majority respect the property rights of others (golden rule).
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notself
Guest
The only way to test this is for the woman to have a brain scan before she became pregnant and after an abortion. The differences in the area of the brain which indicate “happiness” could be compared.
I doubt that “happiness” would increase.
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phooney
Guest
Taken from some of my posts in the last thread:
Atheism is a lack of belief in God and nothing more. Atheism is not a political point of view, Atheism itself has nothing to say about morals, Atheism has nothing to do with physics, biology etc. However, I have tended to notice that the skepticism Atheists apply to the notion of god is often used in many different aspects of life.
At the moment, the best explanation I have come across is evolutionary morality. We had the basics for our morality as part of our genetic make-up from before the time when we were even humans.
So in a way I guess I partially agree with you in that a very basic form of our morality is ‘written’ in us. In an extreme nutshell, an entirely innately immoral ‘society’ would wipe itself out before it could even get started. We literally couldn’t BE social animals while simultaneously everybody stole everything from everybody else, and raped and killed everybody else.
Stephen Pinker in his book “How the mind works” gives examples of why our species generally gets along, why and how some individuals act immorally or deceptively for immediate personal gain, and describes why and how we detect such individuals and as part of the consensus of the “society” impose penalties on them, all in evolutionary perspective.
Primitive penalties were reasonably limited to death or expulsion from the group etc. Reciprocal Altruism is abundant in the animal kingdom as well. Richard Dawkins mentions a couple examples in “The Ancestor’s Tale” I think. Carl Sagan gives many examples in his book “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” which is mostly about primate evolution. The parallels between ourselves and our closest relatives, Chimpanzees and Bonobos is absolutely amazing, I’d recommend anybody read this one.
Again, Stephen Pinker gives some examples in his book “How the Mind Works” The most basic example that I can remember off the top of my head is the one regarding ‘cleaner fish’ and their ‘clients’. In coral reefs there are certain places that a weary fish can go when it needs to have itself cleaned of any parasites that have latched on. Anywhere else but these places, it’s a fish eat fish world, but those that eat the cleaner fish there are refused service afterwards and thus get riddled with parasites and are less likely to pass on their genes. Cleaner fish go about their business, even removing parasites from INSIDE the mouths of their ‘clients’. Occassionally they get eaten because sometimes a fish has just GOT to eat This is all explained by evolution quite tidily.
While I have read the books I mention above, I am planning on reading some books specifically about this topic, such as “The Moral Animal” by Robert Wright, and also some books specifically against it (no examples come to mind, but I would guess they are probably out there). That being the case, this is a belief I hold reasonably tentatively at the moment, but I can’t see any flaws in it yet.
So I hope this helps clarify some things for you, the immediate benefit from ‘immoral’ behaviour is countered by the rest of the society or not at all. If the person dies having never been penalised, then there is no evidence to suggest that there is any punishment, though it is a long shot that one would get away with it, even powerful leaders of entire countries can be brought to ‘justice’.
Is this always fair? No, but you would be begging the question to assume that the universe is ‘fair’ no matter how much we might all like it to be.
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phooney
Guest
continued@Little Mary
Another couple posts from another thread here:
“There are major problems with saying that God (or any of the gods postulated by modern monotheistic religions anyway) is our moral benchmark. This ‘model’ for morality asserts that an unchanging, eternally perfect law giver is what we base our morality on. This fails to match the reality that our morality has demonstrably changed over the course of our evolution, and development of our cultures.”
"In a nutshell, the best explanation I can come up with is that our morality evolved with us, destructive behaviour towards the society is generally legislated against, and the legislation is the codified representation of our morality. ‘Wrong’ behaviour hurts other people, and the evolutionary mechanism that usually stops us from doing that is a neurochemical reaction that causes us to feel ‘bad’ about it or to empathise with the people we have hurt. Of course, I realise that people still do go around killing people all the time. Naturally, it must be noted, many of these examples are over religion, but I’m sure those aren’t the examples you were meaning to dredge up. In many cases, I think it is probably a matter of perspective (as in “I’m so poor and I can’t think of any other way to get some money/food” or “these foreigners want to take away my country”) that causes people to go around killing.
The golden rule, as in treating others as you would like to be treated yourself of course predates Christianity by quite some time, forms of it being in the Code of Hammurabi and perhaps the Ur-nammu code, though I haven’t read the latter."
Another couple posts from another thread here:
“There are major problems with saying that God (or any of the gods postulated by modern monotheistic religions anyway) is our moral benchmark. This ‘model’ for morality asserts that an unchanging, eternally perfect law giver is what we base our morality on. This fails to match the reality that our morality has demonstrably changed over the course of our evolution, and development of our cultures.”
"In a nutshell, the best explanation I can come up with is that our morality evolved with us, destructive behaviour towards the society is generally legislated against, and the legislation is the codified representation of our morality. ‘Wrong’ behaviour hurts other people, and the evolutionary mechanism that usually stops us from doing that is a neurochemical reaction that causes us to feel ‘bad’ about it or to empathise with the people we have hurt. Of course, I realise that people still do go around killing people all the time. Naturally, it must be noted, many of these examples are over religion, but I’m sure those aren’t the examples you were meaning to dredge up. In many cases, I think it is probably a matter of perspective (as in “I’m so poor and I can’t think of any other way to get some money/food” or “these foreigners want to take away my country”) that causes people to go around killing.
The golden rule, as in treating others as you would like to be treated yourself of course predates Christianity by quite some time, forms of it being in the Code of Hammurabi and perhaps the Ur-nammu code, though I haven’t read the latter."
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phooney
Guest
Further questions for Little Mary.
I noticed you ignored my question from my previous post, I’ll assume unintentionally. If God told you to go and kill somebody, would you do it?
And what is a “prayer warrior” ?
I noticed you ignored my question from my previous post, I’ll assume unintentionally. If God told you to go and kill somebody, would you do it?
And what is a “prayer warrior” ?
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Little_Mary
Guest
Yes, unintentionally, sorry. If God told me to go and kill somebody would I go and do it? Well, sinner that I am, I’d question very carefully whether it was really God that wanted me to do that.
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phooney
Guest
And how would you do that?
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Little_Mary
Guest
Prayer Prayer and more prayer, and I’d share it with my priest, family and friends. (They’d probably lock me up at that point!!) Bottom line, if it really, truly was God that had a mission He wanted accomplished He would see to it. I don’t like “going out and killing somebody” as an example. It totally goes agains what He teaches and how He wants us to treat each other.
Oh, and a prayer warrior is someone who visits the Prayer Intentions forum and posts on threads to tell people who have asked for prayer that you will pray for their intentions. I try to look for threads that not many people have posted to.
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phooney
Guest
What if you already knew the person was a sinner? If you hold the bible to be historically accurate, it is hardly unprecedented the event of God commanding his followers to kill entire villages (except for the virgin girls of course).Prayer Prayer and more prayer, and I’d share it with my priest, family and friends. (They’d probably lock me up at that point!!) Bottom line, if it really, truly was God that had a mission He wanted accomplished He would see to it. I don’t like “going out and killing somebody” as an example. It totally goes agains what He teaches and how He wants us to treat each other.
You’re not SUPPOSED to like “going out and killing somebody” as an example, and I am glad to hear you say you would at least ask some questions. Not liking this example is a demonstration consistent with the model of morality that I outlined in my previous few posts.
What makes me a little uneasy is that you seem to indicate that once you were sure enough, by some measure, that it was God, you would go out and kill. What would make you sure enough though? You say you would pray. If God answered you with the same clarity after asking you to kill as he does (presumably) now, would that make you sure enough? If God is speaking directly to you, why would you listen to a priest advising against killing above God’s instructions? God didn’t tell the priest to kill, only you, so all the priest has are the collections of writings relating to his particular deity, and his own opinion. What methods do you invisage the priest utilising to determine the truth of God speaking to you?
On a side note,I think I noticed when I signed up to this forum that the rules state people aren’t allowed to post unauthorised revelations, which I thought was pretty amusing!
Thanks very much for the explanation. Could you explain what prayer means to you?
If people in that forum weren’t aware that I was an atheist, do you think they would be able to tell the difference in their lives between the prayers that you tell them you action for their intentions, and the prayers that I might action for their attentions? Just so you have all relevant information to answer this question, for this hypothetical experiment I would be praying to the Uni the Universe Creating Unicorn, but we won’t tell them that of course.
If you think there would be a difference, what difference do you think that would be, from the prayer recipient’s perspective? Could we observe it in any way?
For your previous prayers, do you have any anecdotes of previous successes? If you’ve told somebody you’re praying for them to get well soon, how can we differentiate from the effects of your prayer and the placebo effect? How can we show any statistical significance when there are ‘miraculous’ against the odds recoveries and coincidences going on all the time regardless of who is praying for who, and what kind of life the ‘recoverer’ or beneficiary of coincidence leads?
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ontologysue
Guest
Sorry, A, that won’t fly. The “Golden Rule” derives from man’s religious consciousness and his belief in the dignity of the human being, and eternal moral principles.
It’s common to all major religions:
Christianity (which of course has been the main influence in our cultural heritage,) the 2nd Great Commandment, “Love others as yourself.”
Buddhism: “Hurt not others in ways you yourself would find hurtful.”
Islam:“That which you want to yourself, seek for mankind.”
Confucius: “Do not impose on others, that which you do not want imposed on you.”
I can’t believe you’re using that as an example of non-religious ethical standards.
You and other atheists have religion to thank for that sound little bit of wisdom!
Try again…
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Mirdath
Guest
Commonality does not translate to heredity in either direction. Enlightened self-interest is not a religious principle.
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Armor_of_God
Guest
But a good question, NE…But how can we be sure her happiness isn’t a hallucination?
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
How do *you *tell the difference, A?
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notself
Guest
Buddhism is a religion without a God. It is a-theistic. It is more accurately, in my opinion, described as a philosophy with a specific moral code of non harm to self or others.
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Hubriss
Guest
Sorry but none of those sayings you quoted appeal to a “belief in the dignity of the human being, and eternal moral principles.” They appeal to to self-awareness and the prospect of reciprocity.
And what has been said before that you can’t seem to understand, is that this morality based on selfishness and reciprocity MUST have been around since the beginning of human groups (at least a hundred thousand years ago), or else we would not have been able to live together and prosper.
And what exactly is “man’s religious consciousness?”
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ontologysue
Guest
The subject here is not your values or mine, it’s about whether or not there are universal moral standards and, if so, do they originate from either the concept of Natural Law, ie eternal moral principles discoverable through reason, or through mankind’s theological development.
Atheists claim no such thing as absolute moral values, therefore, morality is entirely relative, and my contention is, if that’s true, power is the only determining factor.,ie, various States that have no philosophical grounding in moral absolutes usually become tyrannical. We’re not talking about individual ‘mores.’
I can only quote Kant himself: “**Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” **The moral imperative is an example of man’s deriving, through reason, moral absolutes, ie the Natural Law!
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Mirdath
Guest
With all respect, you’re making this stuff up. ‘Atheists do things this way, theists do things that way’. It just ain’t so. Some atheists and agnostics do not believe in moral absolutes; some do. Some theists don’t, some do. There’re all kinds in both camps, and to generalize the way you have is doing neither of us any service.
Kant was a believer, yes. That does not make the Categorical Imperative a function of natural law; indeed, it is entirely opposed to it. Act as though you wish your action were law, not as if God had made it so!
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ontologysue
Guest
Well, you’re just wrong; actually before the enlightenment every major civilization practiced some form of religion. From Plato’s idea of “forms” which was later incorporated into Christian theology onward, and, the same is true in the Eastern cultures. It was a fact of life, no moral standard came about that wasn’t a product of man’s theological ultimate concern.
Secular atheism is a relatively new phenominon which was born out of the philosophers of the enlightenment putting the nail in the coffin of teleolgy. Very esoteric stuff but the point is, those “sayings”, to which you so blythly refer, did not just happen; they were born out of man’s religious consciousness.
As primitive as man’s sense of selfishness, is man’s sense of the wholly “Other.”
What is man’s religious consciousness? Well, per the above, if religion and the concept of the eternal has been a part of every single culture up to the enlightenment, he (man) must HAVE one. Might be worth studying it in more detail!
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