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goout
Guest
Thanks at least for addressing the question.
Those articles discuss ethics and morality, and give example of some specific morals used by Girl Scouts etc…but do not propose anything specifically “secular humanist ethics”.
It’s all very general and non-committal.
IN fact it is interesting that the few ethical principles are put in contrast to 10 commandments rather than proposign value of their own.
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Tomdstone
Guest
Aristotle was not an atheist in the strict sense of the word, but he did say:
“Prayers and sacrifices to the gods are of no avail”
“Men create gods in their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.”
So he was not a theist either.
But in the Nicomachean Ethics he discussed several moral virtues:
Moral Virtues
- Courage in the face of fear
- Temperance in the face of pleasure and pain
- Liberality with wealth and possessions
- Magnificence with great wealth and possessions
- Magnanimity with great honors
- Proper ambition with normal honors
- Patience in the face of irritation
- Truthfulness with self-expression
- Wittiness in conversation
- Friendliness in social conduct
- Modesty in the face of shame or shamelessness
- Righteous indignation in the face of injury
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism
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Peter_Plato
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How are these any different than traditional Catholic virtues?
Cf. Seven Cardinal Virtues
Or for that matter how are they much different from what Aristotle proposed in Nichomachean Ethics and further developed by Aquinas?
The so called “humanist” ethics merely strips out God/theism as the grounding and foundation of ethics but leaves unanswered the point of why anyone ought to practice them in the first place, merely making the assumption that such principles are “good” for no reason other than humanists consider them to be that.
Other than providing the humanist with the self-satisfaction of living a “virtuous and moral life” there is still the question of why that life is objectively better than a life of mayhem and evil if it merely depends upon the subject determining such things for himself – which implies that the grounds for being “virtuous” in any sense stops at the individual himself. Whatever that may be.
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tonyrey
Guest
“ … so those who first looked up to heaven and saw the sun running its race from
its rising to its setting , and the orderly dances of the stars, looked for the craftsman of this lovely design, and surmised that it came about not by chance but by the agency of some mighty and imperishable nature, which was God.”
st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_spa/pops/…/existence_of_god.pdf
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PumpkinCookie
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A life of virtue is our only chance at εὐδαιμονία.
A life of “mayhem and evil” is πλεονεξία.
Eudaimonia is better than pleonexia. It’s common sense. Happiness is preferable to chaos and death, both on the micro and macro levels.
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Charlemagne_III
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This also from the article you cited:
*In his own writings, Luther is known to have made shocking statements. For instance, in his “Table Talks,” he teaches that Jesus Christ committed adultery three times:
“Christ committed adultery first of all with the woman at the well about whom St. John tells us. Was not everybody about Him saying: “Whatever has He been doing with her?” Secondly, with Mary Magdalene, and thirdly with the woman taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus even Christ, Who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died.”
In 2015 the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog, Cdl. Gerhard Müller, cautioned the German bishops, asserting that they are headed into schism.
Nearly a month later, Pope Francis called the German bishops to account for the “eroded” faith in Germany. He noted, “Fewer and fewer Catholics receive the sacrament of confirmation or get married in church, and the number of vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life is severely diminished.”
He told the bishops “to diligently carry out their mission as teachers of the Faith — the Faith that is preached and lived in communion with the universal Church.”*
So you are saying the bishops of Germany are O.K. with Luther leading the exit from the Catholic Church and the collapse of Christian unity throughout the world?
Are you a Lutheran, and are you proselytizing for Lutheranism in this forum?
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
None of the above pertains to an objective, authoritative system of universal ethics.
That is one of many fundamental flaws in atheism, that we are free to willy-nilly devise our own morals even if they have no social glue that binds all society to conform to them. You follow Aristotle, your neighbor follows Sartre, your other neighbor follows Nietzsche, then farther down the street Spinoza, etc. etc. *ad nauseam et ad aeternam. *
How is that going to work in a court of law that up to now (but less so lately) has had the Judeo-Christian ethic to found and sustain it?
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Peter_Plato
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So you are claiming that human existence is ordered toward εὐδαιμονία. You must recall that Aristotle’s four causes included the final causes towards which things specifically and all things in general are ordered. Which means teleology is built into Aristotelian ethics.
From whence does this “ordering” on a moral level derive? According to Aristotle that would be the Uncaused Cause or Unmoved Mover (AKA God.) Absent God as the ordering principle as a basis for morality, there is no necessary relationship between a life of virtue and happiness. Not in a final sense anyway. Which is why you reduced the connection to mere chance, as in: “…a life of virtue is our only CHANCE at εὐδαιμονία.”
I suppose many would point out that a life of virtue doesn’t necessarily nor necessarily very often lead to εὐδαιμονία, absent a Guarantor that it will (again, AKA God.) Which would mean moral agents ought to be free – if finding happiness alone is the ground for moral agency and it doesn’t guarantee happiness – to take their chances finding happiness in other ways, such as lives of cruelty and mayhem, if they so choose.
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Bradski
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Let’s say you someone discovers you doing something immoral. Something that you think is wrong. Let’s say looking at porn. Your reaction will be one of embarrassment and perhaps shame. Guilt will be in there somewhere. You will have entirely normal reactions that you would do most things to try to avoid. And you will have these reactions whether you are of a particular religion, or none at all or if you are a high priest in the church of the FSM. These are entirely natural socially conditioned evolved reactions. If you want to say that no, it’s God making us feel that way, then you can skip the rest of this post.
So that is the reason why we try not to do things that we consider to be wrong. We want to be seen to be loyal, truthful, honest, upstanding, hard working. What other people think about us is generally quite important to us, sometimes to a significant degree, and it affects almost our entire outlook. Almost everything you do will affect someone else and whether you consciously think about it or not, what you do will take that into consideration.
Now this is not pop psychology. This is psychology 101. It’s a universally accepted, cross cultural and temporally indifferent given. Shame and guilt, with possibly the exception of anger, are two of the strongest emotions.
But why do we feel guilt at looking at porn? Well, because we think it’s wrong. Or at least, most of us do. So what are the reasons for that? Well, you can make a list if you like, but the specific reasons are not important. It’s the fact that either we have worked it out for ourselves or we have read it or we have been told. And we don’t make a decision to accept what we have read or what we have been told without some justification. Children don’t need justification - they are ‘programmed’ to accept what is being told them by an authority figure (for obvious reasons). But you and I are not. You don’t accept any given moral position just because someone says so.
So you have actively considered every moral position that you hold, whether it is something you have deduced yourself or whether, for example, your church has given it to you. Anything the church decrees, you consider to be entirely reasonable. Because you have thought about it, mulled it over, had perhaps an internal discussion and decided it is the correct course of action.
Now how would I know this? Well because every single reasonable person on the planet has, at all times, done exactly the same. If they haven’t, then they hold moral positions for which they have no justification. Other than ‘this is what I was told’.
So we know the process by which we arrive at our sense of morality and we have a reason why we tend to not break our own rules. But, sez the Christian, you don’t HAVE to follow your own rules, or anyone else’s either. Because there is no guarantee that you will have any price to pay.
True. But notwithstanding that Christians don’t seem to think that eternal damnation is much of a threat in any case, I don’t really think it reflects well on you to suggest that you are a moral person because of the threat of punishment.
‘Watching porn is wrong because of A, B and C and…I might go to hell if I do it’.
That isn’t morality. The last phrase shouldn’t be there. It demeans the person. And if we take it out, then there is no difference between us.
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Charlemagne_III
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As in the case of the Marquis de Sade who justified his pleasure driven cruelties on the assumption that there is no God and therefore one is free to be cruel with impunity if you can get away with it.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
I skipped the rest of your post for the reason you suggested. It’s actually not true that everyone is ashamed of porn. Look at all those who make the stuff and get awards for their efforts. Look at all the people who buy it and talk it up and share it with their friends.
If anyone is ashamed of the business it might be those in the business who turn to drugs, alcohol, and suicide, as many have. If any are sorry they got into it, it won’t be because of “socially conditioned evolved reactions” so much as the reason that they have wasted their lives, alienated those who might have loved and respected them, and risked bad health not to mention early death. If God makes them feel that way it would be because by the grace of God they have been offered a way to think contrary to way offered them by the world, the flesh, and the devil.
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Peter_Plato
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Hold on Brad, you are claiming that it doesn’t “reflect well” to suggest you are a moral person because of a threat of hell, AND YET you want to suggest that it does reflect well to claim to be a moral person because of a threat of “embarrassment and perhaps shame” if other people find out?
Odd.
And yet, in terms of your reasons for being moral, all you could muster was you choose to be moral because you don’t want to be embarrassed or shamed in front of others?
Oh, yes and undisclosed reasons A, B and C for why things might be wrong.
I am at a loss to understand how any of those constitute GOOD reasons for being moral. I would suggest that perhaps fear of hell would be at least as good a reason as fear of shame and embarrassment.
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tonyrey
Guest
Precisely. If we exist by chance we have no moral obligations to anyone - including ourselves. If the going gets tough we can kill ourselves and whenever we like and others into the bargain… Life is cheap in a mindless universe.
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Bradski
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The embarrasment is not a threat. It’s a natural ocurring emotion. No-one says: ‘If you do something wrong I will occasion you to feel unpleasant emotions’. The threat of hell is just that. A threat.
It seems like God decided that if shame and embarrassment don’t do the trick, then He’s going to add a little something to the mix to help you make the right call. Whoa, did I say a little something?
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
Cheap and easy in that you don’t have to bother thinking your way out of your mindless misery.
Just cave in, plunge the knife into your own heart, and wave goodbye with a smile.
The ultimate atheist solution.
conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_suicide
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PRmerger
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Well, that’s like saying, “If you keep going down this road you’re going to crash into the river, since the bridge is out ahead”, and the response is “That is a threat.”
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Peter_Plato
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My point actually was that the threat of hell is not a necessary motive for living a moral life for any believer. It is actually a distortion foisted upon believers where such a motive need not exist.
It is a negative motive just as fear of embarrassment, shame or sanction are negative motives.
The point being that a theist has a stronger positive motive in fulfillment, perfection or sanctity precisely because in a purposeful universe where final or teleological ends for human existence actually exist then morality and human existence lead to the possibility of positive and determinable reasons for being moral.
Absent God, human ends are somewhat ad hoc and fortuitous rather than built into the orderedness of human existence.
My point being, again, that both fear of hell and fear of embarrassment or shame do not constitute proper grounds for morality. They are negative and inadequate in the sense that they do not supply a positive vision of what needs to be done to find moral, spiritual or personal fulfillment. Because they do not provide anything like a groundwork for what to do or to become a moral person or find fulfillment as a moral person, they are insufficient in terms of providing a reasonable answer for why we ought to be moral.
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Bradski
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That implies that you go to hell if you continue being bad. That you take the evil path and follow it all the way to the end. But that’s not the case, is it…
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PRmerger
Guest
Huh?
Are you of the opinion that telling someone, “Hey, there’s a washed out bridge down the road” is a threat—yes, or no?
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