In response to the OP, albeit a bit late in the debate, I don’t believe that an empirical basis for morality can be established. Morality is subjective. I don’t personally believe that self-interest is a basis for morality. What can be deemed good for one may not be for another. In that regard, morality is dependent on perspective. How can morality be founded in empiricism when it is subjective?
Libertarian:
You have said:
and:
Are the two statement not mutually exclusive? Typically, what god deems good is presented in literature. These words were penned by men. Haven’t men simply dictated precisely what is good? I realize that some individuals do not rely upon various scriptures for their edification on ethics. According to your logic, one who maintains a monotheo-centrically (yes, I know that is not a real word) based perspective can arbitrarily state one who does not is simply acting according to god’s interests. I find it disconcerting and disrespectful to state that I am religious, but I just don’t know it.
I would like a clarification on what god deems good. Are you referring to the ten commandments or particular religious doctrine? For example: murder is bad or you shouldn’t have sex before marriage?
Harkenbane:
You stated:
To play devil’s advocate, from the perspective of an individual who does not believe in god, might it not appear insane to base one’s actions on the will of a nonexistent entity? I agree that there cannot be true morality, but that also holds true for the case of those who appeal to god.
You also stated:
Are good and evil not graduated? Again, I submit that in the presence of “an absolute source there are no final answers.”
You also stated:
This statement may appear argumentative, but it is not intended as such: my views are not “subservient to those of any hypothetically absolute God.” How could they be? Glitch:
You stated:
I disagree that (a) applies only to things. I don’t believe that I am a moral or immoral individual. I think I do have a sense of morals, but due to the subjective nature of morality, I choose to extricate myself from moral connotations.
Looks like my time might be limited again for a bit, but I did not want to disappear without addressing your concern:
No, I know that atheists do not “believe in God”. In fact, I have acknowledged repeatedly that they don’t. I am saying, and have said repeatedly, that God lives in the hearts of people who love, be they theists or atheists.
Love — the kind of love God is — is a heart thing. Love is known by faith. The kinds of love that you can know with your intellect, your instinct, or your loins [no typo this time, Gaudere!] does not even approach the Agape.
It is better to declare, “I do not believe in God,” even as He dwells in your heart than it is to declare, “I believe in God,” even as your heart is cold as stone. I have always known that many theists do the latter; lately, I have learned that many atheists do the former.
I’m not quite sure what you mean here, but my ethical philosophy is as follows: I do what I think is best. I don’t rely on anything other than my own sentience to justify my ethics - neither gods nor reason. Doing either would mean that eventually I would come across something which I would have to convince myself is ethical despite my own feeling, and I refuse to ignore my own feeling. My ethical judgments may or may not agree with religion or reason, but they are not derived from either. They’re derived from my soul or my psychology, as you prefer. To paraphrase Whitman, I review what I’ve been taught, discard what’s an insult to my soul, and start again. You may call it humanism or existentialism.
Well, it’s not. But that’s OK, because ethics are a product of human sentience, and human sentience perforce looks from a subjective point of view. There’s no such thing as an objective observer, which is why reason is useless as an ethical master.
Well, the example we usually give is a tribesman watching his young cousin drown. If he goes in and saves the kid, his genes face some small risk, but the chance is greater that both he and his related genes will survive. Therefore, the genes that encourage this sort of behavior will be the most numerous and likely to survive; if you die to protect three of your siblings, it’s a net gain for your genes. If you look in the animal kingdom among social animals, you can find other examples of altruistic behavior; it’s not specific to humans. Horses will make a circle around foals to protect them–even the ones that do not have foals of their own. By protecting their related genes, the genes can ensure their survival even if one specific instance is killed. Putting another’s needs before your own can lead to a net gain for all; it’s not necessarily a win-lose proposition–look at how successful humans are when they sacrifice some of their selfishness to work together. So it’s not just natural genetically, societies also encourage moral behavior for the best results for all.
Killing one person to protect the lives of many people is generally considered moral (certain conditions would make this untrue). If Brutus truly believed that the only way to prevent great harm to the people of Rome was to kill Caesar, he was acting morally by his own lights. We usually will not condone killing based on only a suspicion of harm because we know how unreliable our guesses of what a human will do and how other people will react are; the magnitude of harm done–killing an innocent, harmless person–generally far outweighs any justification you might have for pre-emptively killing someone. What, you though morality had easy answers? It’s like the old dilemna: if you could kill Hitler one day before he started putting into gear the Holocaust, would you?
I would humbly submit that there is only one god in the Judeo/Christian religion.
Satan is either an angel of God with a specific role (old testament, little “s”), or a fallen angel and adversary of man (new testament, capital “S”). In neither case is he a god.
Apollo:
There are two deities, as satan is seen as being the opposite of good. A deity is, really, anything believed to be supremely superhuman and included in a religion. In fact, demigods are a specie of deity, all coming down to the fact that polytheistic faiths have their deities on an equal footing, whereas ‘monotheistic’ faiths have a social structure. Simple extension of the monarchial attributes of the cultures that created them. Liberatarian:
If the modern religion is so repulsive to the deity it worships, why aren’t there more prophets? The Judeo-Christian faiths are full of those who set the faith back on track. BTW, a prophet can’t be cured by a little lithium with some prozac. Those who can be are called delusional.
I honestly don’t think you’d get many Jews, Christians or Muslims to agree with you on the “two deities/gods” theory, Deleth.
deity
1 a : the rank or essential nature of a god : DIVINITY b capitalized : GOD 1, SUPREME BEING
2 : a god or goddess <the deities of ancient Greece>
3 : one exalted or revered as supremely good or powerful
Now, since you’ve used it as synonomous with God, I’m assuming you mean the first two definitions. Satan is only an angel in the OT, albeit one on a special mission from God (as Apollyon noted). The Christians seem to have made him a great deal more powerful and truly evil; the perception of him probably changed based on the influence of Zoroastrianism, which did indeed have two Gods, one good and evil. Still, even then Satan is only a fallen angel, not a God. There is genuinely only one God in monotheistic religions, even if there are a bunch of lesser spiritual beings. None of them have the rank of God, the essential nature of Him, or anywhere near His power. Besides, it’s somewhat impolite to tell a monotheist that although he thinks he believes in only one God, he really believes in more.
About as impolite as smugly telling someone that it doesn’t matter if they don’t believe in “God”, because “God” believes in them. Nothing convinces someone to listen to you like telling them that their deeply thought-out views on religion are something to be easily dismissed.
Note to Libertarian: Personally, I think that redefining the words morality and love to fit your personal views does nothing to add to this conversation. Perhaps in the future you can find other words to fit what you mean to say. “God is Love” is a nice bumpersticker, but logically it is meaningless.
No… Apollyon. Both Greek I grant you, but Apollo is the classical god of music, prophecy and healing, and Apollyon is the Angel of the Abyss from Revelations.
I wouldn’t normally correct this, (it seems niggly) but under the circumstances, I wouldn’t want us to be confusing angels with deities.
I beg to differ. I am fairly certain that the classical greeks did not consider Zeus, the king of the gods, to be on an equal footing with either Hermes, the messenger of Zeus and the herald of the gods, or his own demigod son Heracles.
Religion and morality are not interdependent. The fact that most western religions push morality does not mean morality cannot exist without religion.
Morality varies widely by geography and is a human invention with a purpose of social order and expediency. Its debatable whether morality was invented before, after, or with religion. As most religions find it to be generally more expedient to be more predatory than beneficial, it seems the more appropriate question should be, “Isn’t morality easier for atheists?”
Absolute morality does not make sense. The overwhelming majority of any judges, religious or not, pass sentence on the convicted according to results of a crime, harm done, not on the crime per se.
If a cat kills a bird it is good for the cat but bad for the bird. All morality is ultimately relative. In fact, beyond the human imagination morality does not exist.
You, my friend, are a fine debater. I find myself reading your posts, nodding my head and agreeing - not that you’ve necessarily changed my core beliefs… But I am comfortable letting yours nestle in right next to mine.
I’ve said before that the reason I frequent the SDMB is too hang out with people smarter than me. I don’t get to do that often enough.
As far as this debate in general (and my question about pragmatic agnostics, specifically) is concerned, I’m satisfied. Thank you for your posts.
I am afraid you’ll have to take up your protest with the English language (or at least Merriam-Webster).
Main Entry: mor·al
1 a : of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior : ETHICAL <moral judgments> b : expressing or teaching a conception of right behavior <a moral poem> c : conforming to a standard of right behavior d : sanctioned by or operative on one’s conscience or ethical judgment <a moral obligation> e : capable of right and wrong action <a moral agent>
You claim to have a moral sense, therefore you are moral by definitions c,d & e (a & b clearly do not apply to people).
Does having a sense of the nature of morality necessarily require that one act upon that sense? I think not. One can be exposed to such concepts yet not feel constrained by them or feel that they are applicable to them. Do you not agree?
I think that if you have a genuine moral sense, you can be moral or immoral or any combination of the two, but you can’t be amoral. I think to be truly amoral you would have to be completely unaware of morality, or recognize morality only as an intellectual thing (I believe this may be what you were getting at with bringing up people who may not “feel that [morality is] applicable to them”); if you fully know and accept the difference between right and wrong, you can choose to do one or the other but you have lost the value-neutrality of amorality, such as animals have. A psychotic who doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong is amoral; a criminal who does understand the difference between right and wrong and chooses to do wrong is immoral.
Do you or do you not have a sense of right and wrong (see definition c, d & e)? That is moral sense, if you have such then you are moral. If you do not then you are amoral. If you do not subscribe to a commonly viewed standard of right behaviour then you are immoral. It just isn’t more complex than that.
I would agree that understanding the nature of morality doesn’t imply a moral sense, and frankly, I don’t have a clue whether you have a moral sense or not (I highly suspect that you do). But if you have a “standard of right behaviour” and are capable of “right or wrong action” based on your own “ethical judgement” then you have a moral sense.
Glitch,I agree with your general assertions; however, the notion of simplicity you apply to morality isn’t quite so applicable in my opinion. Concepts such as right and wrong, good and bad, and other terms have absolute connotations. These juxtapositions aren’t valid in my opinion. I do not concur with an absolute as decreed by a supernatural power or any other absolute. It is the implicit subjectivity in these terms which negates definitive and objective attribution of the characteristics to an individual or action. In common parlance, I would refer to myself as a moral individual, but given the nature of the OP and the “empirical morality” sought, I must hesitate in asserting my compliance with morality.
My actions and views are indubitably immoral to many people, specifically, particular religious sects, forms of government, et cetera. I am sure many individuals would consider me to be of sound moral character. The problem is that the application of terminology is relative. As Gaudere stated:
Again, I concur with the general concept. If I may present an analogy of color, consider black and white in a graduated spectrum. If one selects an arbitrary point withing the spectrum, one can state that it is a combination of black and white or that the point is neither black nor white; therefore, I must disagree with the last clause of the sentence.
Gaudere, you also stated:
I agree with you (and your assumption is correct), but isn’t morality simply an intellectual (albeit not necessarily logical) construct?
Not to be argumentative, but I don’t think the “value-neutrality” of other animals can be decisively asserted.
Nen: Let’s not confuse moral with good. I am not saying that you have good morals or bad morals. Note, the modifiers to the terms morals. The term inherently, in reality, has a neutrality to it, except that in common speech somebody will say “you are moral” to mean “you have morals which match mine and so you have good morals”. This is the fault of the English language and the people who use it (i.e. that human language has connotation and implied meaning). But you, presumably, are moral, i.e. you have a moral sense and you are almost undoubtedly not amoral in that you do not lack a moral sense.
I would say that gray is not “neither” black nor white, it is a combination of both. Don’t mess with me about colors or hues or shades, I’m an artist! Your defintion would also make every person who is not either wholly good or wholly bad (which is almost certainly all of us) “amoral”. So everybody’s amoral, which kind of flies in the face of every reasonable defintion of “moral”. For me, moral is one end of the scale, immoral is the other, and amoral does not consider the scale at all. While the amoral person may do actions that we would place as either “moral” or “immoral”, the amoral person cannot judge these things; the scale does not exist for them.
Well, the difference I see is between someone who knows setting kittens on fire is wrong but does it anyway, and a person who knows other people consider it wrong, and might call it wrong, but “wrong” is simply a word, an arbitrary defintion, without the meaning most of us have of “something-I-or-anyone-else-should-not-do-because-it-is-bad”. I guess I am saying that a person can be aware of the definition of a word without understanding the meaning. Like a blind person who knows “orange” is red and yellow mixed, but although if you asked him what red and yellow make he would respond correctly “orange”, he would still have no idea what orange is. He knows the intellectual definition, but not the meaning.
True enough; they’re generally considered amoral because we can’t get inside their heads and see if they’re deciding “is this right or wrong?” I would consider ants amoral becuase I don’t think they have the brain power to comprehend morality, but I’d reserve judgement on many of the smarter animals.
