Shodan, you’re trying to say that without God, the word “atrocity” would not be defined. I disagree with that, but I’ll play along. Let’s change the question thusly: “If it were proved to you that there is no God, which act would you do first: commit mass murder, rape, or theft, and why?”
Humanism is not predicated on a God. Heck, the Golden Rule needs no God to figure out.
Lets start with axiom 1: Very few people enjoy being hurt. Pain hurts. Thats the whole point. Thus I think this is a rational axiom. Thus, any society formed by people is probably going to place a certain amount of emphasis on not letting those within it hurt eachother.
Axiom 2: As societies develop in complexity, they tend towards “ownership” of things. This is not an absolute, but often occurs. If I believe something is “mine”, then I probably don’t want you taking it. It is in the best interest of most involved if, instead of my beating you into a pulp and then taking all YOUR stuff too (although some societies have run that way as well), laws are enforced by the majority within. I can beat everybody up one by one and take everybody’s stuff, but can I beat everyone up all together? Maybe if I have my own people, but then I probably need to give them stuff and not take it away (loop here).
Axiom 3: Societies will take certain steps to preserve themselves. Once created, societies can be viewed as more than the sum of their parts. A society is not just you, me, and my friend Larry. Its you, me, my friend Larry, our histories, our grudges, our strengths, our weaknesses… all melted together into a new alloy. This society will do quite a lot to keep itself intact. This sometimes means that I will fight, kill, and die for my nation, tribe, whatever. As well, I realize that I stand a better chance of not experiening pain if I pile myself in with a couple thousand other schmucks instead of facing a thousand people all alone. And besides, the only way I get to keep my stuff is by preserving the culture which recognizes that it is, in fact, my stuff instead of their stuff.
This is just a thought experiment to show that laws can derive purely out of self-interest and not religion.
Respectfully, I disagree, Shodan.
I believe that one fundamental moral premise is just about as good as any other. If you are going to derive your moral principles using deductive reasoning, there is no escaping first principles. Whether your first principle is God or the decalogue or anything else, there is still considerable utility in deducing moral laws. I just don’t see how it matters whether the first principles are (supposedly) handed down from above or generated by man ex nihilo. What is relevant is not their genesis but whether they are obeyed.
I think that’s kind of amusing, because that means that unless god is real, the atrocities committed in god’s name throughout history are OK.
People have made the very same argument if god DOES exist. I.e. “If there’s an eternal afterlife, what’s the point of this one?” and dozens of other questions. Why does morality have to be imposed upon humanity by some force outside humanity to be valid?
Tell that to a Buddhist. I’d be very curious to hear the reaction.
Being an atheist doesn’t imply one has a problem with the notion of faith. Atheism is the lack of faith in a god, and that’s it. The conclusions you’re drawing beyond that are just your own assumptions.
Why? Just because Christians suddenly find themselves without a basis for their morality, does not mean the rest of us don’t have an inner moral compass.
How is that different from the Christian worldview? I don’t think you are going to preamble all discussions wrt ethics and morality you engage in with a defense of your god’s existence, yes?
You are assuming that we rely on an external source - we don’t.
Do you mind if I kill you? Why?
Thus far, you are operating on the assumption that everybody requires an external moral compass. This is false.
Prove it.
It seems like you are the one begging the question here.
Haven’t read every message in this thread yet, but – assuming nobody has postulated this already – I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that a hypothetical world where “NO culture or country believed in God, or gods or any higher moral or ethical authority than mankind” would be one that’s better than what we’ve got now.
Why? Because people would be forced to realize that they themselves will be held accountable for their actions. God would cease to exist as an all-purpose excuse for whatever atrocity you want to commit; if you screw up, you pay the penalties, and there ain’t any Savior in the Sky who will eventually judge you and give you a pass.
Note that I’m not saying all crimes or sins would cease to exist; but rather, the ones that are committed now by zealous fundamentalists would be seriously curtailed, since they wouldn’t have a basis for their zeal. You’d still have the folks who will do heinous acts because they feel they can get away with it, but at least you won’t have the “God told me to kill you” squad added to the total.
What this actually means, iamthat, is that nobody is an atheist in the trenches during a war - that is, everyone has faith when the chips are down. I have heard few things that are more false. It’s not just false, actually, it’s unmitigated bullshit.
Both meaningless questions until after you have established the validity of a standard that says what I like or don’t like is moral or immoral.
In the absence of a transcendant standard, pain is an electro-chemical pattern in the brain. So is human happiness, just in a different part and a somewhat different pattern. By what standard can we say that some kinds of electrical patterns are “good” and others are “evil”? By the same standard, turning on a light bulb or a PC is “good” but turning on a refrigerator or a dishwasher is “evil”, because the electrical patterns of the first two are different from the second.
Another meaningless question.
There is no “why” without God, and it makes no difference what I choose to do. In the absence of a justifiable moral standard, there is no distinction to be made between murder, altruism, or anything else. If there is no God, after I am dead, it makes no difference at all what I did while I was alive. After everyone with whom I interact is dead, it makes no difference what I did to them while I was alive. After the world comes to an end (after the sun goes nova, or after the heat-death of the universe), nothing whatever that anyone did will make any difference.
Thus the distinction between moral and immoral actions is a false one. It makes no difference what you or I or anyone else does in the long run.
Correct. Unless you can establish a non-arbitrary standard by which you can judge actions, it is meaningless to label any action an “atrocity”, no matter what the motive or what the action.
Again, a meaningless question until you can establish that what I mind has some moral validity. In the absence of some justifiable standard, it does not. After I am dead, what I mind affects nothing and has no meaning. Again, begging the question.
I am saying that without God, all discussions of ethics and morality are meaningless. Since there is no standard that can be rationally established that shows that ethics or morality really exist.
No, I am operating on the assumption that there is no valid moral compass until one has been established via valid reasoning. Without God, no such compass can exist.
Which is the problem with all non-theistic morality. Atheists are compelled to argue with tautologies (like the “pain is bad because it is pain” circular argument) or to take some standard for granted. Well and good, but no such standard can be defended.
Maybe you choose the avoidance of pain as your standard. This is fine, but it is no more morally defensible than the standard that “the good” consists of whatever advances the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the well-being of the master race, or whatever I feel like at the moment.
Anybody can choose any standard as the basis for a moral system. The instant anyone asks “why?”, you are reduced to arguing in a circle.
Precisely. Just as good, or just as bad. All are equally meaningless in the long run.
You can base a morality on saying “Whatever gets my team into the World Series is moral”, and it has just as much validity as Buddhism, or Christian morality, or anything else.
Which is to say, in the absence of God, none whatsoever.
Regards,
Shodan
I know, Albert Einstein isn’t the final answer to morality questions, but he did express his views on the subject in a way that you might find interesting. Here are a couple of old standards:
I’m not quite as eloquent, but I would just say that what hurts people is bad, and what helps people is good. It isn’t as simple as following a list of rules; we actually have to think about the results of our actions, short-term and long-term. I’d ask you what you think is wrong with that, except that I suspect you’d say it’s a meaningless question.
I’ll admit that some people aren’t ready for that responsibility, but the species is evolving and learning. I can imagine a day when we grow beyond the need for simplistic myths as a basis for morality. Some of us are there already.
Shodan, if it were proved to you that there is no God, how many people would you go out and kill that day? What weapon would you use? Would you kill the people who annoyed you, or just go out and kill everyone wholesale?
True, Shodan, but that doesn’t mean there is no morality. Just that there can be different morals in different cultures based on different values.
‘Valid’ (as in approved or given by God) has nothing to do with it.
All are just relative.
Your appeal to some Sky God for your particular set of morals doesn’t give them any more validity than an appeal to empathy in a secular’s “It’s not nice to hurt other people”.
Not all morals are viable however, “Whatever gets my team into the World Series” will not be a moral that will be around for a long time and certainly not over a wide area. A moral like “It’s not nice to hurt other people” has a much bigger chance to survive.
As I said earlier, Shodan, you can argue at least as convincingly that none of those things matter if there is a god.
Pardon us atheists for stating the obvious instead of justifying our positions with men in the sky. By the way, care to show me an argument for god’s existence that isn’t circular?
Buddhist morality isn’t predicated on the existence of a god; Buddhists generally don’t think there is one.
Since when is god moral in the first place? And how would you know god’s standards of ethics and morality? Isn’t that simply presumption on your part? I don’t think the actions traditionally ascribed to god are moral at all; I think they’re the actions of a vengeful, domineering, potentiall schizophrenic mass murderer.
Rashi Mani, you write better English than many of the native speakers of the language on this board. But …(and there is always a but) the word “thou” in English is an obsolete form of the second person pronoun “you.” As in “Thou art a mighty force etc., etc. etc.”
The word in English you are looking for and which is pronounced “tho” is spelled “though.”
I think that religion far from being a force for good is a divisive element in any diverse population. I believe you only need to look around to see that.
And I think that all those who argue that things would be pretty much the same without a supernatural “higher power” are correct. Children pretty much adopt the mores and morals of the society they are born into with an occasional rebel from time to time to advance things.
Gods, as has been said many times before, are created in our image.
While you definitely addressed my proposition, Shodan, you didn’t discuss my conclusion. Perhaps I should clarify.
The relevance of God, in my opinion, is not his existence or lack thereof but the wide scale recognition that he is the source of ultimate moral authority. In fact, it appears to be difficult for some people to conceive that any other ultimate moral authority could exist aside from God.
I contend that this is an assertion. I see no reason to believe that in the absence of God absolute moral authority cannot exist. Contention that ultimate moral authority is inseparable with the idea of the Divine simply ends the conversation. I do not accept this assertion, many religionists admit no division between God and morality, so we essentially go our separate ways.
MR
Keep thinking, Shodan, and one day, when you’re able to see beyond this shallow canard, you’ll be able to look us atheists in the eye.
Sorry, but that is an unproven assertion, based on (if you are citing Einstein as your basis) an argument from authority. There is no rational basis for this assertion besides “I just think so, or Einstein thinks so”. It is, in fact, almost identical to a fundamentalist saying that he believes what he does because the Bible says so.
As I mentioned earlier, setting up “helping people” as the Good is just as arbitrary as any other standard. And an arbitrary standard isn’t worth anything if it cannot be supported.
Not “difficult to conceive” - “impossible to establish”.
Yes, it is indeed obvious that atheists are choosing an arbitrary, irrational standard for their morality. But if you reject using “men in the sky” to justify your morality, there is no other way of justifying it.
And the problem comes when others reject your morality. There is no reason that they should not do so - you cannot establish it on any lasting or rational basis, and that is much the same as saying it is nothing but an assertion. On what basis should I accept it? You cannot prove it in any form that will hold water for five minutes - how is it any different from any other bill of goods?
And none of them is worth a damn. There is no rational basis on which you can choose one set of morals over another. Female genital mutilation or human sacrifice are exactly the moral equivalent of altruism or baseball.
It doesn’t matter. Killing is just as morally valid as scratching an itch, in the absence of God.
If there is no God, then working for the happiness of my neighbor is a meaningless exercise. So is torturing puppies with a butcher knife, performing abortions, enslaving women, or singing arias. None of them have any moral content at all, because you cannot establish that moral content exists. Because you have no valid standard that shows that it can.
Which is why atheists tend quickly to try and change the subject with nonsense like this;
I am looking you in the eye, and I am telling you straight out - your emperor has no clothes.
Sorry - I need to hear why your standard has any lasting value. So far, all I have seen is circular argument.
Or more accurately, what we theists refer to as an “act of faith”.
Regards,
Shodan
Unsurprisingly, Shodan, all we are hearing from you is circularity. Like I said before, if for you the concept of ultimate morality is impossible to separate from the divine by construction, then this discussion is over.
MR
Shodan, you seem to be saying both that God is moral, and that the only standard by which to judge morality is God. That’s about as circular as reasoning gets.
So if I were to kill you, Shodan, then it’s on big deal?
Somehow, I don’t think it works that way.
And if you want to get THAT technical, why does GOD make it any different? So WHAT? Just because a god says so?