Morality without God spinoff- Make a secular moral case

[Portofino]

Here is the secular case for morality without God…(perhaps you will recognize it):

The world evolved randomly. There is no god…no meaning or purpose…We are, therefore, utterly free to do whatever we want! But, then…that’s the first problem…we are also free to harm each other. Such a world is naturally divided between the predator and the prey…the Strong and the Weak.

Premise #1…Everyone is born free to enjoy everything we desire…but for the fact that The world is naturally divided between the Strong and the Weak…and the Strong must be CONTROLLED…or the Weak will never be free.

Premise #2…For people to fully realize their free enjoyments…the problem of the Strong must be addressed. If you are not for controlling the Strong…then YOU are part of the problem…YOU are “evil”.

Premise #3…If you see the world divided between the Strong and the Weak, and you are for CONTROLLING the Strong and helping the Weak to be free…then you are Empathetic. You are “good”.

Premise #4…The natural world is morally divided between the Strong and the Weak…the Empathetic and the Manipulative…those who seek equality in all things vs. those who speak of hierarchical inequalities

Premise #5…Those who work for herding the Weak into powerful groups to control the Strong…are doing a great service…vs…those evil people who speak of individual freedom and hierarchical concepts like religion

Premise #6…The goal of the human race is to achieve a worldwide government that imposes control over all sources of Strength and lifts up the Lowly…a government that imposes Empathy amid world peace and progress and human enjoyment. A government that will not tolerate unequal speech or hierarchical thinking…perhaps jailing or executing the religious and those who manipulate others

The tone of your post sounds ironic – in what sense, I couldn’t quite tell!

It first reminded me very much of Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals – so perhaps questioning, in an ironic undertone, whether the subjugation of the strong by the weak is a good thing at all (Nietzsche called the subjugation of the strong by the weak, via a morality of empathy, a “slave morality”, as opposed to the “master morality” – based on exploitation–of the strong).

But by the time I got to the end --the jailing of the religious?–it seemed that the perhaps ironic undertone was aimed at the communists in particular.

Of course, for a society to value empathy does not mean it is destined to be authoritarian! Most western societies, for example, don’t illegalize basic forms of exploitation (lying and cheating in interpersonal relationships, impoliteness, etc.). However, these societies do value truthfulness, trustworthiness, and politeness.

In Christian terms, sin is not illegal (except for the most grievious of sins, such as murder). If all forms of sin were illegal, then you would have a totalitarian regime.

But where I quibble about the weak versus strong argument is that one could cast the conflict very differently – namely, the compassionate strong versus the non-compassionate strong. Think of it, on another level, as the cop (using his strength, ideally, to protect life) and the criminal (using his strength, at worst, in a wanton disregard for life).

It matters whether the strong have the impulse to protect the weak, or to exploit them. And, perhaps, you have strong individuals who are angered by other strong individuals who abuse the weak (in the spirit of “why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”)

It’s not clear to me that the strong cannot be naturally compassionate or protective of those weaker than they – “powerful gentleness, like that of a father” is how Nietzsche himself once put it. Parents --and adults, generally – are certainly like that in regards to children.

So I don’t think that the truly weak have “pulled one over” on the strong by tricking them into being compassionate; amongst the strong themselves, you have considerate and compassionate natures. And the strong themselves can be swayed to compassion – “tricked” into it, if one is cynical – but, looking at it differently, convinced that one can be “strong” and compassionate at the same time (and, indeed, a “strong” individual – physically or intellectually – is perhaps weak in character, if he believes that any kind of consideration or fellow-feeling is a sign of weakness).

 

[Charlemagne_II]

As suggested above, natural law morality is universal. It applies to atheists as well as Christians. However, it is by no means always dependable or infallible. God gave us revealed law to set beside natural law as a confirmation of natural law. Unfortunately, men are very good not only at lying to others, but also to themselves. Because men do this, the natural law can be perverted by those who are determined to do so, as for example when it is argued that abortion is a natural right to be protected by governments (when we know very well it is infanticide). For this reason morality without God may well exist, but its purity may be diluted or even befouled without the knowledge of infallible divine guidance and revelation.

 

[Pugsly]

The tone of your post sounds ironic --…"

My post was straightforward. I truly believe that a god-free worldview generates a fear-based philosophy that seeks to control EVERYTHING…starting with the Strong.

I’ve written here before about that fear-based philosophy. It features Survival, Victim and Nature ethics…with the secular morality based on “natural equality” of all shapes…eg…that people and animals and nature itself are EQUAL.