Morality without God?

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Just curious. Did Christopher Hitchens ever join Mother Teresa in Calcutta? :rolleyes:
 
PRmerger said:
But when there is a moral choice to be made between what society says is moral and what a father may decide, then it is to his conscience that he is deferring.

And the moral man ought never disobey his conscience.
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Just for clarification for Bradski I am interjecting a usage comment from #104.
PRmerger said:
Well, by “conscience” I am referring to the classical Catholic understanding of conscience. Not the rather modern notion of conscience being a “feeling” that I did something wrong.

The Catholic understanding is: intellect applied to morality. It is knowledge of right/wrong
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ThinkingSapien said:
Nope. He is illustrating how empathy can cause some to change their stance. Here we have a cog in a slaughter machine that is having second thoughts on his position because of a breif connection he’s made with another human. Something that may result in a decision to change behaviour. This thread was about morality without God. An interaction like the above could result in some on developing or adjusting their rules on morality.
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A few points:
  1. We don’t know if this actually occurred (and I doubt that a Nazi sociopath suddenly developed empathy for a Jew, but willing to accept evidence to the contrary);
  2. I don’t think anyone disputes that empathy can lead to a change in behavior;
  3. Recognizing a residual effect of empathy does not mean that it always leads to moral decision-making. One slave-owner may empathize with another slave-owner after one of his slaves escapes. The resulting change in behavior might be to purchase more slaves.
 
PRmerger, there is not the same degree of evidence. It’s not as if there are a bunch of omnipotent beings running around, and a bunch of omniscient beings running around, and a bunch of three-in-one beings running around, and so on, so that it’s just a matter of numbers that there’s probably a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, etc. and satisfies the classical definition of the Christian God.

That’s in contrast with the present situation, where we know that a bunch of atheists exist and that people sometimes sacrifice themselves for others. Unless you have evidence of some sort of magic psychological block that prevents atheists from doing such a thing, it’s perfectly reasonable to suppose that the set of atheists and the set of self-sacrificers have some overlap.

And no sane atheist thinks that it’s wrong to believe in things that lack certainty. What we do think is that God’s existence is substantially less likely than believers would have it. That’s the kind of “faith” that we object to - not believing in something uncertain, but believing in something more strongly than the evidence warrants. I don’t have a strong belief that there’s a self-sacrificial atheist. I just think that there’s enough prima facie evidence to suppose that there probably is one. In contrast, the average theist here seems to be pretty strongly convinced that there is a God, and in my judgment the evidence doesn’t bear out the strength of that belief.
 
Eleve said:
PRmerger, there is not the same degree of evidence. It’s not as if there are a bunch of omnipotent beings running around, and a bunch of omniscient beings running around, and a bunch of three-in-one beings running around, and so on, so that it’s just a matter of numbers that there’s probably a being that is omnipotent, omniscient, etc. and satisfies the classical definition of the Christian God.

That’s in contrast with the present situation, where we know that a bunch of atheists exist and that people sometimes sacrifice themselves for others. Unless you have evidence of some sort of magic psychological block that prevents atheists from doing such a thing, it’s perfectly reasonable to suppose that the set of atheists and the set of self-sacrificers have some overlap.

And no sane atheist thinks that it’s wrong to believe in things that lack certainty. What we do think is that God’s existence is substantially less likely than believers would have it. That’s the kind of “faith” that we object to - not believing in something uncertain, but believing in something more strongly than the evidence warrants. I don’t have a strong belief that there’s a self-sacrificial atheist. I just think that there’s enough prima facie evidence to suppose that there probably is one. In contrast, the average theist here seems to be pretty strongly convinced that there is a God, and in my judgment the evidence doesn’t bear out the strength of that belief.
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There’s no prima facie evidence for the existence of God? The vast majority of people throughout world history have held a common belief in a divine being. What’s more likely - that the vast majority of people from all walks of life throughout world history are wrong, or that atheists are right? There’s plenty of prima facie evidence for the existence of God, apparently you hold theists to a different standard.
 
I think what could be happening is that atheists want to base their morality on something besides their feelings and are kind of looking for something. I doubt that if they were an atheist in medieval Sweden that they’d cite inborn altruism or their observation of reindeer.

I say this with respect. I’m just trying to get to the heart of the matter.
 
The Vikings :knight2::knight1: weren’t so bad. After all, didn’t they become Catholic? 😃
 
stewstew03 said:
A few points:
  1. We don’t know if this actually occurred (and I doubt that a Nazi sociopath suddenly developed empathy for a Jew, but willing to accept evidence to the contrary);
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I don’t know if it happened or not either. So for now I can only refer to it as an illustration instead of a recollection of an event.
stewstew03 said:
  1. I don’t think anyone disputes that empathy can lead to a change in behavior;
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Okay, that’s cool.
stewstew03 said:
  1. Recognizing a residual effect of empathy does not mean that it always leads to moral decision-making.
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Correct, it doesn’t always lead to behaviour that may be considered “more moral”. And I recognize that it can motivate some one to do something that even by the judgement of the person acting may be considered morally wrong, such as the illustration of the police stealing the money or the account(s) of the people getting caught stealing food from a store for their children. Empathy can motivate people to consider to impacts their actions have on their objects of concern and in some instances expand the size of the members of those with which the person is concerned.
stewstew03 said:
One slave-owner may empathize with another slave-owner after one of his slaves escapes. The resulting change in behavior might be to purchase more slaves.
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That’s quite possible. And there were other reactions such as beating and killing the slave as caught to serve as an example for others that would follow in those foot steps. And it could be further sustained by propaganda that the slaves are no completely human (referred to earlier as “dehumanizing” ) not intelligent , prohibiting slaves from openly expressing their complaints. In the end this is where violence came into play in changing a society. The portion of society that disagreed with the treatment of the slaves had enough gun power and resource (while eventually being able to disrupt the gun power and resources of the southern states) to force submission (mentioned in #91,#113). Though even after the emancipation proclamation forms of slavery continued through peonage laws and other prohibitions some of which lasted through the Civil Right’s movement.

Empathy seems to behind self-motivating decisions to make a change (what some people might refer to as a “change of heart.”). Changes in behaviour can come from threats and penalties too, and the possibility of punishments does play a role in shaping people’s behaviour.
 
stewstew03 said:
There’s no prima facie evidence for the existence of God? The vast majority of people throughout world history have held a common belief in a divine being. What’s more likely - that the vast majority of people from all walks of life throughout world history are wrong, or that atheists are right? There’s plenty of prima facie evidence for the existence of God, apparently you hold theists to a different standard.
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The vast majority of people throughout history have not been Christians. Is this prima facie evidence that Christianity is wrong?

Anyway, I did not say that there is no prima facie evidence for the existence of God. I think there is some evidence, but the evidence is defeated by counterarguments - both direct attacks on the existence of God and non-theistic explanations of the evidence. Compare that with PRmerger’s counterargument. There is some evidence that there are self-sacrificing atheists: we know that there are atheists and we know that there are self-sacrificing people. PRmerger’s response is to assert, without any argument whatsoever, that self-sacrifice requires “supernatural love” and that atheists do not possess “supernatural love.”
 
ThinkingSapien said:
I don’t know if it happened or not either. So for now I can only refer to it as an illustration instead of a recollection of an event.

Okay, that’s cool.

Correct, it doesn’t always lead to behaviour that may be considered “more moral”. And I recognize that it can motivate some one to do something that even by the judgement of the person acting may be considered morally wrong, such as the illustration of the police stealing the money or the account(s) of the people getting caught stealing food from a store for their children. Empathy can motivate people to consider to impacts their actions have on their objects of concern and in some instances expand the size of the members of those with which the person is concerned.

That’s quite possible. And there were other reactions such as beating and killing the slave as caught to serve as an example for others that would follow in those foot steps. And it could be further sustained by propaganda that the slaves are no completely human (referred to earlier as “dehumanizing” ) not intelligent , prohibiting slaves from openly expressing their complaints. In the end this is where violence came into play in changing a society. The portion of society that disagreed with the treatment of the slaves had enough gun power and resource (while eventually being able to disrupt the gun power and resources of the southern states) to force submission (mentioned in #91,#113). Though even after the emancipation proclamation forms of slavery continued through peonage laws and other prohibitions some of which lasted through the Civil Right’s movement.

Empathy seems to behind self-motivating decisions to make a change (what some people might refer to as a “change of heart.”). Changes in behaviour can come from threats and penalties too, and the possibility of punishments does play a role in shaping people’s behaviour.
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So it seems we agree - empathy, as an emotion, is wholly unqualified as a source for morality, since one’s empathy can result in both “evil” and “righteous” behavior.
 
wittgenstein said:
The fact is that the water buffaloes acted altruistically. If we use them as an example of altruism or not is superfluous to our discussion.
What a subject looks like is also unrelated to the question,is that subject’s behaviour altruistic.
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Whether a water buffalo is capable of acting, in a moral sense, altruistically, is an open question, but presumes that a water buffalo is capable of moral behaviour, i.e., responsible behaviour for which it could have acted otherwise.

If no distinction is drawn between moral behaviour and genetically programmed behaviour then we may as well concede that ants are acting altruistically when they sacrifice their whole existence for the colony; again presuming that ants make deliberate and reasoned choices which are, therefore, moral choices regarding their “altruism.”

It is not clear, at least to me, that ant behaviour that appears altruistic is, indeed altruistic in the sense that that term is applied to human moral choice. We may as well call robotic components in factories that are fully and unselfishly dedicated to the production of automobiles for humans, likewise altruistic because they act without regard to a “self” and for the sake of a non-robotic species. Altruistic behaviour, it seems, presumes the existence of a self whose concern is disregarded and overcome for the sake of “other.”

A water buffalo’s behaviour could only be regarded as altruistic when it has been clearly established that a water buffalo is capable of having regard for a “self” that it then overcomes for the sake of another.

When Jesus commanded that we love our enemies, clearly he intended that to mean more than simply love your extended “in-group.” Altruism, as Jesus seems to have understood it, would mean extending love to one’s out-group. In the case of a water buffalo it would obtain as something like a deliberate act by a water buffalo to risk its own life for the sake of saving a lion from harm.
Bradski said:
That’s a very good point. It seems ridiculous to suggest that someone who is not a theist doesn’t have a set of ground rules within which he or she lives. Some of those rules some theists claim as their own, although they seem pretty universal to me, whether you believe in a deity or not. I don’t think that ‘Do not steal’ and ‘Do not kill’ came as much of a surprise to anyone when Jesus started to preach.
…

So the answer to the question ‘where does an atheist get his morality?’ is…the same place Christians got theirs. They’re the same.

If Christianity didn’t exist, then we’d follow the same morality as we do today. Because it’s based on the very ground rules that enabled us to become civilised.
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This presumes a great deal. For one it presumes that morality is not based upon a world view. Almost all cultures and societies in human history have been based upon the premise that human existence is not an island, that it is part of a larger and more universal scheme of meaning. That human life matters has almost universally been because it matters within a larger context of being from which meaning is derived.

Aside from the Greek atomists, it has been only recently that a purely “materialistic” world view has had anything like prominence in the building of a moral system. This question of where an atheist gets his/her morality is, therefore, an academic one, and certainly not one evidenced historically.

An aspect of the question that has not been adequately addressed is not whether an atheist can be moral but whether any kind of moral system can be adequately and reasonably derived from atheistic principles grounded in a purely materialistic world view.

Certainly, there is nothing in atheistic materialism that contradicts having certain moral beliefs, but that is far from establishing that materialism itself provides a substantial foundation for sound ethical beliefs and, in particular, for altruistic behaviour.

It is difficult to comprehend how a philosophical position that human persons are nothing more than an illusory “glow” cast off by biochemical reactions leads, by logical deduction, to an ethical system that the most laudable moral behaviour that humans should strive for is to sacrifice the existence of their own illusory glow for the sake of another’s illusory glow. It would appear incomprehensible, at least to me, how an atheist committed to principles of pure materialism could reason to such a belief given the world view they have espoused. Matter just is and its causal effects simply occur. Any “qualitative” filters placed on pure materialism, by illusory subjects cast up by the “natural” order, would seem to have no moral cogency since these are, to be consistent with the belief system, not in any sense part of the real order but mere shadows cast up by the necessarily mechanistic and chemical functions that underpin reality.

So the issue is not whether atheists can be moral, but whether morality in any sense of the word can be derived rationally from atheistic premises founded on a purely materialistic world view. Sure, atheists can be moral but are they moral because of their world view or in spite of it? I would argue an atheistic world view provides absolutely no reason for moral behaviour precisely because of the purely materialistic ordering that is assumed.
 
Eleve said:
The vast majority of people throughout history have not been Christians. Is this prima facie evidence that Christianity is wrong?
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I’m not making a prima facie case for Christianity (please re-read the post).
Anyway, I did not say that there is no prima facie evidence for the existence of God. I think there is some evidence, but the evidence is defeated by counterarguments - both direct attacks on the existence of God and non-theistic explanations of the evidence.
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This is arbitrary. You are haphazardly assigning strengths and weaknesses to arguments based on your own world view.
Compare that with PRmerger’s counterargument. There is some evidence that there are self-sacrificing atheists: we know that there are atheists and we know that there are self-sacrificing people. PRmerger’s response is to assert, without any argument whatsoever, that self-sacrifice requires “supernatural love” and that atheists do not possess “supernatural love.”
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And your argument can be summed up like this - “atheism is obviously right based on the strength I’ve assigned to the evidence.”

I haven’t read all the posts, but based on what you just just posted it seems self-sacrifice would require something supernatural:


  1. *]It is natural for one to preserve one’s health and survival.
    *]To sacrifice one’s self for another would mean acting against one’s natural response toward self-preservation.
    *]Therefore, self-sacrifice must involve something beyond what is found in nature.
 
I know that you’re not making a prima facie case for Christianity. But you were making a prima facie case for theism. I’m saying that if popularity is a prima facie case for theism, it’s also a prima facie case against Christianity.

I haven’t argued for atheism in this thread, so I don’t see how you can evaluate the strength of my reasons.

And while I can agree that it’s in some sense natural to protect one’s own interests, I don’t think that that is the only thing natural to human beings. We also have a natural inclination toward benevolence, honesty, and so on, not to mention a rational nature that allows us to evaluate actions by moral principles. People who sacrifice themselves for others are therefore acting in accordance with their nature.

Besides, you’re equivocating on the meaning of the word “natural.” It’s natural for a tree to grow and unnatural for it to suffer from Dutch elm disease. But that doesn’t mean that Dutch elm disease is supernatural. “Unnatural” and “supernatural” are not the same thing.
 
Peter_Plato said:
…
This presumes a great deal. For one it presumes that morality is not based upon a world view. Almost all cultures and societies in human history have been based upon the premise that human existence is not an island, that it is part of a larger and more universal scheme of meaning. That human life matters has almost universally been because it matters within a larger context of being from which meaning is derived.

Aside from the Greek atomists, it has been only recently that a purely “materialistic” world view has had anything like prominence in the building of a moral system. This question of where an atheist gets his/her morality is, therefore, an academic one, and certainly not one evidenced historically.

An aspect of the question that has not been adequately addressed is not whether an atheist can be moral but whether any kind of moral system can be adequately and reasonably derived from atheistic principles grounded in a purely materialistic world view.

Certainly, there is nothing in atheistic materialism that contradicts having certain moral beliefs, but that is far from establishing that materialism itself provides a substantial foundation for sound ethical beliefs and, in particular, for altruistic behaviour.

It is difficult to comprehend how a philosophical position that human persons are nothing more than an illusory “glow” cast off by biochemical reactions leads, by logical deduction, to an ethical system that the most laudable moral behaviour that humans should strive for is to sacrifice the existence of their own illusory glow for the sake of another’s illusory glow. It would appear incomprehensible, at least to me, how an atheist committed to principles of pure materialism could reason to such a belief given the world view they have espoused. Matter just is and its causal effects simply occur. Any “qualitative” filters placed on pure materialism, by illusory subjects cast up by the “natural” order, would seem to have no moral cogency since these are, to be consistent with the belief system, not in any sense part of the real order but mere shadows cast up by the necessarily mechanistic and chemical functions that underpin reality.

So the issue is not whether atheists can be moral, but whether morality in any sense of the word can be derived rationally from atheistic premises founded on a purely materialistic world view. Sure, atheists can be moral but are they moral because of their world view or in spite of it? I would argue an atheistic world view provides absolutely no reason for moral behaviour precisely because of the purely materialistic ordering that is assumed.
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Well stated.

So the question I have for atheists is: What motivates an atheist’s altruistic behavior? It cannot be empathy because, as I’ve stated, empathy is just an emotion that can lead to both benevolent and malevolent behavior.
 
The belief that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. If that’s incompatible with being “purely materialist,” I’m fine with that, since I’m not an eliminative materialist.
 
Eleve

**
Anyway, I did not say that there is no prima facie evidence for the existence of God. I think there is some evidence, but the evidence is defeated by counterarguments - both direct attacks on the existence of God and non-theistic explanations of the evidence.**

That’s a fallacy called begging the question.
 
How so? I’m not even making an argument, just explaining what my actual view is.
 
The bottom line is that Christianity preaches altruism. Atheism preaches nothing of the sort.

Read some of atheist Ayn Rand and get the real lowdown.
 
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