Morality without God?

[PRmerger]

And there are people sacrificing themselves in Sweden too, or other quite atheist countries.

Do you have an example of an atheist who has given his life for a stranger out of love? I have been asking this question for years on this forum and have not found an answer yet!

 

[RobbyS]

On natural law, which God implanted in every human heart. Civilizations did do this before God revealed his Law to Moses.

He was right but reason and experience alone are not the final guarantees, as we can see in our own times when religion has been twisted to fit the “me first” mentality our society has adopted.

It’s been done. Thoman More’s Utopia is a good example.

St. Thomas seems to have assumed a world where man had not fallen, or at least a kind of Limbo where mankind attained natural virtue but without the joy of the celestial vision.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I just want to point out that altruism is indeed an evolutionnary trait and the very reason our specie has been so successful. In the “old” way, animals only think of themselves. They are alone and vulnerable. Altruism helps the group to stick together. If all members of the tribe are ready to sacrifice their lives for any other member, there is a strong sense of community which make the group very efficient. Scientists observed that altruism arises on its own when robots interact and are faced with challenges.

This goes to the heart of falsifiability since anything that has some possible “positive” effect can theoretically be included as a survival “friendly” one in an evolutionary sense. Frankly, this is nothing more than an assertion which cannot be falsified because it is more of a conceptual position that presumes anything that could be advantageous will be, and actually has been, advantageous. One merely has to identify a group with that trait and, voila, advantage proved.

The same circularity is presumed in the “survival of the fittest” paradigm. How can we know a trait made the living possessor fittest to survive? Well, duh, it has survived.

Selfish traits enable survival, so do altruistic traits. It’s win-win. What exactly is being asserted when some trait is claimed to be advantageous to survival? Nothing more than that trait is present in an existing group of living things and, therefore, that trait must have played a role in enabling that group to survive. There is no refuting such an elastic position.

 

[Fomalhaut]

This goes to the heart of falsifiability since anything that has some possible “positive” effect can theoretically be included as a survival “friendly” one in an evolutionary sense. Frankly, this is nothing more than an assertion which cannot be falsified because it is more of a conceptual position that presumes anything that could be advantageous will be, and actually has been, advantageous. One merely has to identify a group with that trait and, voila, advantage proved.

The same circularity is presumed in the “survival of the fittest” paradigm. How can we know a trait made the living possessor fittest to survive? Well, duh, it has survived.

Selfish traits enable survival, so do altruistic traits. It’s win-win. What exactly is being asserted when some trait is claimed to be advantageous to survival? Nothing more than that trait is present in an existing group of living things and, therefore, that trait must have played a role in enabling that group to survive. There is no refuting such an elastic position.

I concede I was a bit carried away with the “very reason our specie has been so successful”. It is true we can’t really claim this for the reasons you pointed out. However, it doesn’t take away the fact that altruism can arise on its own in nature, and that a belief in a God is not necessary.

Do you have an example of an atheist who has given his life for a stranger out of love? I have been asking this question for years on this forum and have not found an answer yet!

Well, I don’t have a particular example in mind. And I think it wouldn’t be easy to find. Why ? Not because atheism cause people to be selfish, but because most atheists don’t define themselves throught that. If an atheist sacrifice himself to save someone else, you won’t find other atheists to celebrate his sacrifice as coming from his absence of belief in god. The person and his or her bravery will be celebrated, but it’s unlikely someone emphasizes the atheism of the person because it is unimportant. You never heard of any “atheist hero” because it is the same than “left-handed hero”. What am I supposed to search for when I want to find an example ? “Atheist hero” ? “Atheist sacrifice” ? I don’t think that would return anything. I would have to go through several personal stories, looking for someone mentioning for some reason that the hero was an atheist. Sweden, Canada, France, a lot of people who don’t believe in God, there ARE a lot of non-believers who sacrificed themselves. You just can’t deny that, and you actually are insulting the memory of all these people.

A potential example who comes to my mind is Louis Slotin, a canadian nuclear physicist who saved his colleagues by holding in his hand a very radioactive source and preventing it from falling apart, then died of radiation poisoning. Was he an atheist ? A christian ? I don’t know and couldn’t find the information. My guess is atheist, coming from canada and being a scientist, but it’s really just a guess since this information wasn’t mentionned anywhere. You really have to understand that in some countries, religion is not a major issue.

 

[Bradski]

A potential example who comes to my mind is Louis Slotin, a canadian nuclear physicist who saved his colleagues by holding in his hand a very radioactive source and preventing it from falling apart, then died of radiation poisoning. Was he an atheist ? A christian ? I don’t know and couldn’t find the information.

I was thinking Captain Oates of the Scott expedition. Again, was he a Christian or an atheist? I don’t know. Does it matter? Well, no it doesn’t. He did something honourable – something that he felt was the right thing to do and to suggest that he could only have done that because of a specifically Christian love of his fellow man strikes me as rather belittling to the man’s actions. Indeed to any such similar action.

Do you have an example of an atheist who has given his life for a stranger out of love? I have been asking this question for years on this forum and have not found an answer yet!

Self sacrifice is not that common – mainly because we don’t often find ourselves in positions where it may be considered. But it happens often enough in all cultures to be able to emphatically say that most of those people who have made the ultimate scrifice were not Christian but members of other religions and those with no religion.

If a child is in trouble in the surf and a young man risks his life to swim out to rescue her, is it even conceivable that anyone watching would turn to the person standing alongside and say: Well, he must be a Christian. Would you want to claim him as ‘one of yours’ as you do often enough with Kolbe? Or does the young man take pause and think: ‘Wow, that’s pretty dangerous and anyway, I don’t believe in God, so maybe I’ll let someone else take the risk’.

Does it work like that?

 

[John_Savage]

I didn’t know about this. I searched and found what’s below. I don’t know how based in fact it is.

Mullin‘s play is structured as a chronicle of Slotin’s agonizing demise in the accident‘s aftermath, punctuated with deathbed visits by compassionate colleague Philip Morrison (Connor Trinneer, who doubles as a crusty Harry Truman); by Slotin’s devout Jewish father (John Combs); by nurse Annamae Dickie (Ariana Navarre), who, rather prosaically, takes a shine to the doomed physicist; by the visages of Oppenheimer (Chris Lo Prete) and Einstein (Tim Sabourin); and finally by the fantasies that emerge from Slotin‘s morphine-addled brain. All of which serves as pretext for launching some heady philosophical polarities – man and God, creation and destruction, faith and science – into orbit.

Louis Slotin Sonata is not a great play – Mullin is more of a philosopher than he is a poet – but it’s an awfully good one, communicated with an infectious love of paradox. The question at its core dates back to Greek tragedy – how can someone so smart do something so dumb? – an allegorical if not rhetorical question about our capacity to play God.

The idea‘s innate lyricism is diminished somewhat by Mullin’s tendency to overexplain. Slotin adores a Mozart piano sonata, which we hear in moments throughout the action, in tender counterpoint to the accident‘s horrific fallout. But Slotin has to tell us about the music’s complexity, and the wonders of creativity, as though that weren‘t apparent from the mere sounds of the piano.

Yet in a closing scene in which Slotin’s father, after reciting the Kaddish for his deceased son, is asked to approve of an autopsy – against the faith, for the science – drama and symbol couldn‘t be more delicately interwoven

I concede I was a bit carried away with the “very reason our specie has been so successful”. It is true we can’t really claim this for the reasons you pointed out. However, it doesn’t take away the fact that altruism can arise on its own in nature, and that a belief in a God is not necessary.

Well, I don’t have a particular example in mind. And I think it wouldn’t be easy to find. Why ? Not because atheism cause people to be selfish, but because most atheists don’t define themselves throught that. If an atheist sacrifice himself to save someone else, you won’t find other atheists to celebrate his sacrifice as coming from his absence of belief in god. The person and his or her bravery will be celebrated, but it’s unlikely someone emphasizes the atheism of the person because it is unimportant. You never heard of any “atheist hero” because it is the same than “left-handed hero”. What am I supposed to search for when I want to find an example ? “Atheist hero” ? “Atheist sacrifice” ? I don’t think that would return anything. I would have to go through several personal stories, looking for someone mentioning for some reason that the hero was an atheist. Sweden, Canada, France, a lot of people who don’t believe in God, there ARE a lot of non-believers who sacrificed themselves. You just can’t deny that, and you actually are insulting the memory of all these people.

A potential example who comes to my mind is Louis Slotin, a canadian nuclear physicist who saved his colleagues by holding in his hand a very radioactive source and preventing it from falling apart, then died of radiation poisoning. Was he an atheist ? A christian ? I don’t know and couldn’t find the information. My guess is atheist, coming from canada and being a scientist, but it’s really just a guess since this information wasn’t mentionned anywhere. You really have to understand that in some countries, religion is not a major issue.

 

[John_Savage]

As for courage and sacrifice, the diminishing courage of the Western world is something that has been commented on before by different authors. One of them, Mark Steyn, points out the behavior of Canadians during some recent situations, like the one where a guy killed people on a bus ( I forget the other situations). He also contrasts the behavior of the men of the Titanic to a more recent maritime disaster: Most of the Titanic survivors were women and children while most from the latter accident were men, who, according to reports, trampled women on their way out.

 

[PRmerger]

Well, I don’t have a particular example in mind. And I think it wouldn’t be easy to find. Why ? Not because atheism cause people to be selfish, but because most atheists don’t define themselves throught that. If an atheist sacrifice himself to save someone else, you won’t find other atheists to celebrate his sacrifice as coming from his absence of belief in god. The person and his or her bravery will be celebrated, but it’s unlikely someone emphasizes the atheism of the person because it is unimportant. You never heard of any “atheist hero” because it is the same than “left-handed hero”. What am I supposed to search for when I want to find an example ? “Atheist hero” ? “Atheist sacrifice” ? I don’t think that would return anything. I would have to go through several personal stories, looking for someone mentioning for some reason that the hero was an atheist. Sweden, Canada, France, a lot of people who don’t believe in God, there ARE a lot of non-believers who sacrificed themselves. You just can’t deny that, and you actually are insulting the memory of all these people.

So there is no evidence for this atheistic equivalent of Maximilian Kolbe, and yet you believe he exists?

This is a curious paradigm indeed, coming from an atheist/agnostic.

At least with Believers there’s tomes and tomes written regarding proofs and evidence for God’s existence. We believe based on faith and reason.

Not simply because, “He’s got to exist!!” as it appears to be your paradigm regarding this atheistic lover of humanity.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

If a child is in trouble in the surf and a young man risks his life to swim out to rescue her, is it even conceivable that anyone watching would turn to the person standing alongside and say: Well, he must be a Christian.

It’s quite conceivable. Come to deep south of the United states (the cultural south, not the geographic south). One idiom for saying that some one has done something nice or noteworthy is to say “That was mighty Christian of xxxxx.” People that have found out that I’m not Christian have told me it was hard to believe because I’m such a helpful person. There are even a few that tell me that I must be Christian and I just don’t know it.

Given that it’s been said for lesser actions than saving a life I would not be surprised if I encountered it said about some anonymous someone risking injury to help another.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

There was a discussion I read or saw recently where someone described an German soldier during the war who was responsible for taking children of Jews who had already been killed to be killed themselves. Because he had been, literally, indoctrinated with the idea that the Jews were worthless as people, he didn’t have any problem in doing it…]

Dehumanizing stereotypes for an out-group have often been used to impair one’s sense of empathy. This seems to enable some one to engage in cruel behaviour without feelings of guilt and without a second thought for as long as these stereotypes are held. It can also contribute to some one taking one of the “well you must have done something to disturb it” attitudes when some one in a dehumanized out-group is victimized; even to the point of giving them less protection under the law.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Bradski

**If a child is in trouble in the surf and a young man risks his life to swim out to rescue her, is it even conceivable that anyone watching would turn to the person standing alongside and say: Well, he must be a Christian. **

John 15:13

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

What famous atheist has ever preached this?

 

[stewstew03]

…

There was a discussion I read or saw recently where someone described an German soldier during the war who was responsible for taking children of Jews who had already been killed to be killed themselves. Because he had been, literally, indoctrinated with the idea that the Jews were worthless as people, he didn’t have any problem in doing it. Until a moment when a young girl walking alongside automatically reached up and took his hand and he automatically responded.

It didn’t matter if he was a Christian or an atheist because he didn’t act as either. He simply became a father rather than a someone doing an unpleasant job.
…

I’m confused by this little vignette. You’re providing evidence of a kind-hearted genocidal Nazi to show that atheists can have a moral compass??

 

[ThinkingSapien]

I’m confused by this little vignette. You’re providing evidence of a kind-hearted genocidal Nazi to show that atheists can have a moral compass??

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.

 

[shoe]

I think many people who have turned a deaf ear to the moral principles and spiritual laws that God has placed within them can sometimes neither determine nor anticipate what actions, or what behavior goals, are morally right or wrong. That is to say, if people do not have a standard for absolute moral right, how can they realize what is absolutely wrong? The moral anarchy of many atheistic evolutionists allows them to believe that unborn children, for instance, have no moral value and therefore have no moral right to life; consequently, many atheistic evolutionists believe that the right to abortion is the most important right the world has ever offered mankind. For these people, since God does not exist in their eyes, abortion can be both right and wrong, depending upon an individual’s personal worldview, public opinion polls, or the best interest of the government in power (as though truth can contradict itself). However, if God does exist, then such things as taking the innocent life of an unborn child, as well as committing such atrocities as the Holocaust and the Pogroms in Russia, is obviously forever morally wrong.

 

[wittgenstein]

See posts 136
youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM

 

[Charlemagne_II]

wittgenstein

**note that the water buffaloe is willing to risk his life against the lions to save a water buffaloe calf that is unrelated to it. Just as a man might sacrifice his life to save another man that is not a family member.
If water buffales lacked that altruistic sense they would have vanished as a species long ago. Lions etc would have had no problem eating all of them. **

I’m not sure what this is supposed to prove. Water buffaloes are not humans. We do not think of them as having free will. A human can choose to help or not to help another human being attacked by a wild animal. The choice not to help can be governed by several factors: fear, cowardice, or even lack of empathy for the person being attacked. Humans have to make one of these choices. The altruistic one, to help, is the one favored by Christianity. But atheism says nothing about altruism. All it says is that there is no God to who we will be held accountable for our fear or cowardice or lack of empathy.

 

[Fomalhaut]

So there is no evidence for this atheistic equivalent of Maximilian Kolbe, and yet you believe he exists?

This is a curious paradigm indeed, coming from an atheist/agnostic.

At least with Believers there’s tomes and tomes written regarding proofs and evidence for God’s existence. We believe based on faith and reason.

Not simply because, “He’s got to exist!!” as it appears to be your paradigm regarding this atheistic lover of humanity.

The key word here is agnostic. I don’t require irrefutable proof or evidence for my all of my beliefs. My belief in the existence of an altruist atheist comes from my personal experience interacting with human beings, atheist, agnostic and religious. I believe the heart of a man goes beyond his religious beliefs. I never met anyone who later sacrificed his life since in the end, it is quite rare. However, considering statistics and my belief about the human heart , the existence of a self-sacrificing atheist appears obvious to me. This is an inductive reasoning, so it’s true that no 100% certainty cannot be reached until observation. (Very difficult observation for the reasons I gave earlier). I would like you to precise what you have in mind, instead of insinuating things with questions. Do YOU believe no atheist could ever give his own life to save a stranger ? That this is a purely christian behaviour ?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Formalhaut

**Do YOU believe no atheist could ever give his own life to save a stranger ? That this is a purely christian behaviour ? **

I believe it is possible that an atheist could do so. It depends on his upbringing. Many atheists I know were not always atheists, or were brought up by Christian parents. These people have the benefit of being raised in an altruistic environment. As the Jesuits used to say: “You can take the boy out of the Church, but you can never take the Church out of the boy.”

I believe it is also possible that a Christian might not sacrifice himself for a complete stranger. But in most wars I think most soldiers have been Christian and did precisely that.

 

[PRmerger]

The key word here is agnostic. I don’t require irrefutable proof or evidence for my all of my beliefs.

I absolutely believe that.

Except for some reason when there is little evidence for [A] you say: he exists! Of course he could exist! Why don’t you believe he exists!

But for some reason when there is little evidence for B] you say: there’s no evidence He exists, so my default position is: He does not exist until you provide me with lots and lots of evidence for His existence.

This is illogical.

 

[PRmerger]

It’s quite conceivable. Come to deep south of the United states (the cultural south, not the geographic south). One idiom for saying that some one has done something nice or noteworthy is to say “That was mighty Christian of xxxxx.” People that have found out that I’m not Christian have told me it was hard to believe because **I’m such a helpful person. **There are even a few that tell me that I must be Christian and I just don’t know it.

Ohmygoodness, folks!

No one is saying that atheists can’t be helpful. Or nice. Or kind. Or help little old ladies across the street.

Sheesh!

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/...cxvh3P1erU4JhSfr7v-jEykNBjEYSaYdZnFqjN2TUgbjU

Given that it’s been said for lesser actions than saving a life I would not be surprised if I encountered it said about some anonymous someone risking injury to help another.

This is the most faith-based assertion I’ve read on this thread.

Nothing wrong with that, of course.

As a Believer I’m good with faith-based assertions.

I just hope that you never object to a Believer making faith-based assertions of her own.

You now realize that you live your life based on faith in something with no evidence.

At least Believers believe because of evidence. You may say it’s not sufficient to convince you, but no atheist would deny that there aren’t any arguments proffered for God’s existence.