Is there a rational basis for morality in a purposeless universe?

[User124]

The universe is a thing, things don’t have morals, we make up morals including religious ones, mainly religious ones, even religious morality isn’t the same for all beliefs. Life purpose is very simple, to live, be happy and avoid harm(ing) as much as you can, that’s it!

But humans make up inventions, discoveries and ambitions, all for the same purpose, to make life easier and happier, sometimes they fail, other times they succeed.

 

[ReapReason]

The universe is a thing, things don’t have morals, we make up morals including religious ones, mainly religious ones, even religious morality isn’t the same for all beliefs. Life purpose is very simple, to live, be happy and avoid harm(ing) as much as you can, that’s it!

But humans make up inventions, discoveries and ambitions, all for the same purpose, to make life easier and happier, sometimes they fail, other times they succeed.

This is your belief. However, it is meaningless to speak of a purpose if you are an atheist. All you really mean is that you don’t want to suffer and so you feel coerced to make choices that suit you to that end. And for the fear of non-existence and the desire of some form pleasure you are forced to live as if life has meaning; a meaning that you as an atheist knows not to be a true reflection of actual reality.

However, a religious person does not know that their beliefs are false.

 

[Lochias]

The universe is a thing, things don’t have morals, we make up morals including religious ones, mainly religious ones, even religious morality isn’t the same for all beliefs. Life purpose is very simple, to live, be happy and avoid harm(ing) as much as you can, that’s it!

But humans make up inventions, discoveries and ambitions, all for the same purpose, to make life easier and happier, sometimes they fail, other times they succeed.

Some people are happy when they harm other people. What purpose do they have, if they must avoid doing what makes them happy?

 

[Portofino]

Some people are happy when they harm other people. What purpose do they have, if they must avoid doing what makes them happy?

They are unfortunate, indeed. But, if they value their freedom (i.e., staying out of prison), then there is some return on investment for their self-sacrifice of behaving with civility.

The neighbor who derives joy and satisfaction from helping others has them beat in the happiness department, because he harmonizes his individual happiness with the happiness of his neighbor.

 

[Lochias]

They are unfortunate, indeed. But, if they value their freedom (i.e., staying out of prison), then there is some return on investment for their self-sacrifice of behaving with civility.

The neighbor who derives joy and satisfaction from helping others has them beat in the happiness department, because he harmonizes his individual happiness with the happiness of his neighbor.

But if people who are happy harming others have to refrain, and therefore must be unhappy, what is their purpose other than simply existing?

 

[Sair]

But if people who are happy harming others have to refrain, and therefore must be unhappy, what is their purpose other than simply existing?

Why do they - why, indeed, does anyone - require a “purpose” in the sense of some transcendent reason for existing? Why is it not considered enough just to be?

The things that make us happy, the experiences to which our reward centres respond, are hardly immutable - if a person finds that such activities as make them happy make everyone around them miserable, make others respond hatefully, then what real happiness could they gain from such actions, other than the most transient and shallow ‘buzz’? It’s within such people’s power to re-educate themselves to live more harmoniously with others and gain more lasting rewards.

 

[ReapReason]

Why do they - why, indeed, does anyone - require a “purpose” in the sense of some transcendent reason for existing? Why is it not considered enough just to be?

The things that make us happy, the experiences to which our reward centres respond, are hardly immutable - if a person finds that such activities as make them happy make everyone around them miserable, make others respond hatefully, then what real happiness could they gain from such actions, other than the most transient and shallow ‘buzz’? It’s within such people’s power to re-educate themselves to live more harmoniously with others and gain more lasting rewards.

But if naturalism is true, then every act of human will is a transient shallow buzz. You act like some actions have significance and others don’t. You fear that people will respond hatefully, you are not prepared to take on that kind of confrontation. The only reason a person reeducates themselves is because their particular subjective idea of happiness as individuals requires it.

 

[Sair]

But if naturalism is true, then every act of human will is a transient shallow buzz.

As far as supernaturalists are concerned, anything that doesn’t last forever is a shallow buzz! And, actually, almost like a textbook example, you have supported a claim I recently made in another thread, that those who believe in supernatural phenomena think that puprose can somehow only come from beyond the world we experience.

You act like some actions have significance and others don’t.

That’s because this is the case - some actions do have significance which others lack - but it is a matter of subjective response, as well as objective effect, to determine what such actions might be.

You fear that people will respond hatefully, you are not prepared to take on that kind of confrontation. The only reason a person reeducates themselves is because their particular subjective idea of happiness as individuals requires it.

And a subjective idea of happiness can be altered…and should be, if it visits demonstrable and unjustifiable harm upon others whose happiness is at stake.

 

[ReapReason]

As far as supernaturalists are concerned, anything that doesn’t last forever is a shallow buzz! And, actually, almost like a textbook example, you have supported a claim I recently made in another thread, that those who believe in supernatural phenomena think that puprose can somehow only come from beyond the world we experience.

If reality as a whole is fundamentally made up blind undirected physical actions and reactions, then it is logically meaningless to speak of the Universe as having a purpose. You might pragmatically determine goals for your self (If that’s even possible in a purely physical reality), but ultimately these are just objectively meaningless acts that have no real significance at all. Its just make belief born out of your meaningless desire to survive and be comfortable.

Your protest that people should value other peoples idea of happiness or fulfilment beyond that which is pleasurable to the subjective values of the individual is purely just an attempt to influence how other organisms behave towards by giving a false sense of relevance to your existence and fears. You are just trying to manipulate peoples emotions to suit you. Evidently that in no way shape or form makes your actions objectively significant. Its just another meaningless event among other meaningless events. And it is because you cannot accept the harsh implications of metaphysical naturalism that you are trying very hard to convince others that some how your mere existence is something to be valued. At most, you are a tool to be used either for the meaningless survival of others, or for the pleasure of others. You have a utility value, and nothing more given pure naturalism. Anything beyond that is chemically induced fantasy in your brain.

There is no ought or the way things should be once you accept metaphysical naturalism. If everybody started killing each-other, that event would be no more or less significant than if everybody decided to help each-other to survive.

…and should be, if it visits demonstrable and unjustifiable harm upon others whose happiness is at stake.

If metaphysical naturalism is true then such talk is delusional.

Some people like Marmite, and other people like Jam. No taste is truly more significant or moral than the other; Its just physics, and the same goes for human actions.

 

[User124]

This is your belief. However, it is meaningless to speak of a purpose if you are an atheist. All you really mean is that you don’t want to suffer and so you feel coerced to make choices that suit you to that end. And for the fear of non-existence and the desire of some form pleasure you are forced to live as if life has meaning; a meaning that you as an atheist knows not to be a true reflection of actual reality.

However, a religious person does not know that their beliefs are false.

It isn’t meaningless to speak of a purpose as an atheist, you live in a world where you plan for things and work for money and as long as you’re letting your intellect react to achieve a certain goal and hope for something, you’re making it with a purpose, in fact define purpose because I’m in somehow confused here?

Some people are happy when they harm other people. What purpose do they have, if they must avoid doing what makes them happy?

Other things.

 

[Portofino]

There is no ought or the way things should be once you accept metaphysical naturalism. If everybody started killing each-other, that event would be no more or less significant than if everybody decided to help each-other to survive.

I accept this. If metaphysical naturalism is accepted, there also is no prohibition against – as I noted in another thread – eating fetid garbage, swallowing needles, and ingesting poison (what will never be objectively true, however, is that such behaviors are healthy to the human organism).

There is little chance of many “sane” human beings – including the most anti-social criminals – adopting this behavior. If we did have ancestors who consciously chose things such as this, none of them are left to tell us about it.

Likewise, there is no prohibition against the purpose of the medical professional being to maximize harm of the patient (the anti-Hippocratic oath); from fire departments being established to start fires; and for rape, murder, and violent theft to become mandatory, on pain of imprisonment .

But there is little chance of that gaining common currency in human society, either (if it had, we would not be here to discuss religion and the meaning of life, or anything else).

It is not possible to exterminate the will to live in the majority of even intelligent human beings, any more than it is possible to exterminate language or thought from human existence. It’s just the way we are hard-wired, and–by all appearances – our very rationality exists because it was a very effective means of keeping us alive. Rationality was the means; survival was the end, even though – as many human beings have done with sexuality – rationality now becomes perceived as an end in itself, and it whiffs at something so mundane as self-preservation (or the propagation of the species).

Our very God concept may have evolved precisely because we desire life so much, nothing but immortality will satisfy us.

It’s just as simple as that – as long as we prefer life over death, and pleasure over pain, what we call personal wisdom will be foundational (e.g., it is not “wise” to drink paint, or to put your hand down a garbage compactor), as well as what could be called social wisdom (hospitals should *treat *patients; fire departments should *extinguish *fires; laws should protect). Rightly or wrongly, we don’t have much use for an individual who is a sociopath or a violent criminal, any more than we have tolerance for poison in the vicinity of food.

I might as well ask why I don’t have three limbs, or four eyes. It’s as fundamental as my very anatomy, however demeaning it may seem to certain individuals that they were born as mammalian creatures with certain natural “preferences”, one of which is the desire for life; another which is the desire for happiness. If these natural preferences didn’t exist, ironically, morality itself would not be necessary, because no one would have minded if anyone killed them, or caused them pain. Society itself, likely, wouldn’t exist – nor would we. Nor, sadly, would any concept of God – in a human brain, at least.

But as for selfishness – yes, we are selfish. Case in point – we value human life more than animal life. Humans come first. We did not need God for us to come to that conclusion; that is humanity’s love and preference for itself.

 

[ReapReason]

There is little chance of many** “sane”** human beings

Again there is no such thing as a way an organism ought to think, or how a brain ought to work. There are just physical processes given metaphysical naturalism. These value distinctions you are making don’t reflect actual reality. Criminality again is a social construct. There is no such thing as group of atoms stealing from another group of atoms, or a group of atoms murdering another group of atoms. These are all subjective value distinctions that do not reflect reality as it truly is.

 

[Sair]

Anything beyond that is chemically induced fantasy in your brain.

This from someone who believes our purpose in life is determined by an invisible supernatural being!

There is no ought or the way things should be once you accept metaphysical naturalism. If everybody started killing each-other, that event would be no more or less significant than if everybody decided to help each-other to survive.

If metaphysical naturalism is true then such talk is delusional.

Some people like Marmite, and other people like Jam. No taste is truly more significant or moral than the other; Its just physics, and the same goes for human actions.

As against that, I’ll use an example I read about in a blog post at the Guardian today. A survivor of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals (carried out at the same time as the Holocaust, and historically and culturally eclipsed by it) recalled, back in the 1980s, the day when he was forced to watch his lover being torn apart and eaten by dogs in the concentration camp in which they were confined - just because this particular young man had the misfortune to be selected for a random execution. Was there any meaning to this act, on the part of the Nazi prison guards who carried it out? Probably not - they just did it for fun, because their instincts had already been brutalised (and, no doubt, desensitised by the Christianised culture in which they lived - hatred of homosexuals has long enjoyed tacit approval, let’s be honest, thanks in large part to Christianity). Was it meaningless for the man who had to watch this happen, powerless as he was to prevent it? I don’t think so. Certainly, in the grand scheme of things, it was just another organism dying; no worse, objectively, than a gazelle being eaten by lions, after all. But it certainly left an indelible impression on the survivor in question, who woke up screaming from nightmares on numerous occasions, and could never erase the vision from his mind, of his lover dying so violently. Perhaps if he’d been able to attach some external meaning to this event, it might have been less painful in the long term - who knows?

If you’re trying to say that people who don’t believe in supernatural woo should not care about such things, I suspect you’re fighting a losing battle. The objective fact is that emotions are physical experiences as much as they might be anything else. When people deliberately act in ways that make others unhappy, the reality is that they will reap some sort of negative consequence - it might not be criminal charges and punishment, but it will certainly be the stress that comes from knowing that you have given others all the excuse they need to deal with you as badly as you’ve dealt with them.

 

[tonyrey]

And a subjective idea of happiness can be altered…and should be, if it visits demonstrable and unjustifiable harm upon others whose happiness is at stake.

It needs to be explained how an idea can be altered if every event has a physical cause… It sounds like natural “woo”!

 

[ReapReason]

This from someone who believes our purpose in life is determined by an invisible supernatural being!

I don’t know that it isn’t. But you should know that given metaphysical naturalism any value distinctions you make about reality beyond the utility value we give to things is nothing more than a chemically induced fantasy in your brain. In fact human existence is as insignificant as the excrement left by an elephant. Your sense of self importance is a fantasy, regardless of who shares your delusion.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

In fact human existence is as insignificant as the excrement left by an elephant. Your sense of self importance is a fantasy, regardless of who shares your delusion.

The word “significance” as used here and some previous messages appears to be used in a fashion that i understand as a relational concept… That is, significance is an expression of a relationship among a perceiver and a thing (person, object, concept, whatever). The perceiver here though seems to be implicitly the other members of this forum that many of us would expect to give little significance to such excrement. It may have different significance to those that use excrement for fuel or fertilizer. In scenarios where a god is posited or granted it seems that the perceiver is silently changed from being a person or persona to the god… While there may still be a “significance” relationship between the person, people, or persona it is then being ignored.

Does any part of my assessment here sound incorrect?

Pardon my mistakes. Sent from my mobile device.

 

[ReapReason]

This from someone who believes our purpose in life is determined by an invisible supernatural being!

As against that, I’ll use an example I read about in a blog post at the Guardian today. A survivor of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals (carried out at the same time as the Holocaust, and historically and culturally eclipsed by it) recalled, back in the 1980s, the day when he was forced to watch his lover being torn apart and eaten by dogs in the concentration camp in which they were confined - just because this particular young man had the misfortune to be selected for a random execution. Was there any meaning to this act, on the part of the Nazi prison guards who carried it out? Probably not - they just did it for fun, because their instincts had already been brutalised (and, no doubt, desensitised by the Christianised culture in which they lived - hatred of homosexuals has long enjoyed tacit approval, let’s be honest, thanks in large part to Christianity). Was it meaningless for the man who had to watch this happen, powerless as he was to prevent it? I don’t think so. Certainly, in the grand scheme of things, it was just another organism dying; no worse, objectively, than a gazelle being eaten by lions, after all. But it certainly left an indelible impression on the survivor in question, who woke up screaming from nightmares on numerous occasions, and could never erase the vision from his mind, of his lover dying so violently. Perhaps if he’d been able to attach some external meaning to this event, it might have been less painful in the long term - who knows?

Am i suppose to attach some emotional moral relevance to this? You choose to give relevance and meaning to the events in question, and you do so despite the fact that it has no objective moral meaning or relevance. So what if someone experiences pain? It is because you attach a delusional moral significance to the plight of homosexuals and the value of human life in general that you feel repulsed by the events. Like I said, some people prefer Marmite and some people don’t. There is no true difference in value between the actions of the Nazis and a man sacrificing his life to save a child from certain death. Using moral buzz words, is not going to fool me in to thinking that your emotional attitude is rational. A difference in value occurs in your head only because you choose to be fooled by your emotions and delusional ideologies. These are merely meaningless physical events.

Its not surprising that you want to have your cake and eat it. You are a human with insecurities and fears after all. Who really wants to believe that the holocaust wasn’t truly morally wrong. But you cannot have what you want if you are prepared to settle for metaphysical naturalism. It is not good enough to say that its not rational to believe in the existence of God for its emotional or existential benefits, and yet at the same time say that its okay to be lead by our emotional attachments and moral value distinctions despite the fact that they do not rationally reflect the world as it truly is objectively.

This is a double-standard.

 

[ReapReason]

The word “significance” as used here and some previous messages appears to be used in a fashion that i understand as a relational concept…

You choose to understand it that way because you know that the alternative won’t support your argument.

The perceiver here though seems to be implicitly the other members of this forum that many of us would expect to give little significance to such excrement. It may have different significance to those that use excrement for fuel or fertilizer.

Utility value. But even that has no objective meaning or significance. There is no objective values given metaphysical naturalism.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

You choose to understand it that way because you know that the alternative won’t support your argument.

Not at all. I’ve consulted a dictionary. The available definitions fall either in the realm of statics and quantity or as being defined using other perceiver relationship concepts such as “meaning” (which expresses a relationship between a mind or being capable of intent or holding a concept). I don’t think you are using the statistical definition of the word. I’m sure if you consult dictionaries available to you that your findings will be similar.

Utility value. But even that has no objective meaning or significance. There is no objective values given metaphysical naturalism.

As I’ve seen it used in these forums “objective meaning” is usually a specific case of “subjective meaning” in which the mind/perceiver is a specific entity. There doesn’t seem to be any definitions that are not dependent on the presence on a mind/perceiver.

 

[tonyrey]

Am i suppose to attach some emotional moral relevance to this? You choose to give relevance and meaning to the events in question, and you do so despite the fact that it has no objective moral meaning or relevance. So what if someone experiences pain? It is because you attach a delusional moral significance to the plight of homosexuals and the value of human life in general that you feel repulsed by the events. Like I said, some people prefer Marmite and some people don’t. There is no true difference in value between the actions of the Nazis and a man sacrificing his life to save a child from certain death. Using moral buzz words, is not going to fool me in to thinking that your emotional attitude is rational. A difference in value occurs in your head only because you choose to be fooled by your emotions and delusional ideologies. These are merely meaningless physical events.

Its not surprising that you want to have your cake and eat it. You are a human with insecurities and fears after all. Who really wants to believe that the holocaust wasn’t truly morally wrong. But you cannot have what you want if you are prepared to settle for metaphysical naturalism. It is not good enough to say that its not rational to believe in the existence of God for its emotional or existential benefits, and yet at the same time say that its okay to be lead by our emotional attachments and moral value distinctions despite the fact that they do not rationally reflect the world as it truly is objectively.

This is a double-standard.

Emotion alone is not a rational basis for morality. Otherwise sadism and sexual perversion could be justified!