No, the validity of atheist morality has nothing to do with the validity of the theistic one.
The work’s already been done elsewhere.
No, experience - the “if it ain’t broke…” principle is what I’m referencing here.
Gotta call you on this, even though it was several pages ago. A Straw man:
I find that your OP fits that accepted definition quite nicely. A strawman so large, that I would fear it breaks the fourth commandment 
OK, this is an important point then: why ‘not necessarily rape and murder’?
Are you sure? The OP to this thread? Did anyone else get “Religionist morality is no better than atheist morality” from the OP? 
I didn’t get it.
Point of clarification regarding the OP, please. Are we using scenario #1, where there is no god or gods, society has progressed just fine without them on its own, and mswas accepts this as fact? Or are we using scenario #2, where The Lord God On High created the heavens and the earth, and mswas decides to deny the obvious and become an atheist?
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. Are you trying to say that the behaviors you’re taught as children don’t change after you’ve developed rational morality, and therefore the methods used to arrive at those behaviors are equivalent? I wholeheartedly disagree, for a couple of reasons: first, the method matters more than the result. Let’s say I want to train a bear to dance around in a tutu. I can beat the bear with a stick until he fears me enough to dance, or I can use positive reinforcement to coax the bear into dancing. The result is the same; are the methods therefore equivalent?
Second, the results may seem superficially the same for some situations, but many results are quite different. For example, as a child you may be taught that it’s profoundly wrong not to go to church every Sunday. As an adult with a reasoned moral system, you may decide that every Sunday is not crucial, or even that going to church at all is not necessary. Theft and violence are not the only subjects of behavior indoctrination, you know.
Your OP gave no indication of “this is how I envision a crisis of faith”. Rather, it read like, “I’ve decided to be an atheist, now I can do whatever I want because there’s no god to punish me, WHEEEE!!”, which is what ticked people off. In any case, it’s really overstating things to say that “everything must be called into question” unless every little thing in your life depends upon your belief in God. I find it very unlikely that deciding that there is no God means that suddenly you become a fundamentally different person. Although I’m sure there are folks who will lash out with hatred at everyone and everything when their faith is called into question. Hell, I’ve met a few.
Atheism has no cultural system to inculcate morality because atheism is not a culture. I’ve never seen atheists gather together regularly in large groups and sing, and I kinda doubt it’ll happen anytime soon.
Anyway, for people old enough to reason, a moral sense that comports well with life and society isn’t too difficult to obtain. I’m sure many do what’s right simply because it feels right. For a deeper understanding of why right actions are right (a level which, frankly, people of faith don’t seem interested in), atheists have numerous philosophers and great thinkers to fall back upon. Most people, though, boil their morality down to the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”), Utilitarianism (“The greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.”), or the Categorical Imperative (“Would society be helped or harmed as a whole if all persons performed this action?”), and for most folks that suffices.
As I mentioned before, though, children are not moral beings. They don’t have a deep understanding of “right” and “wrong”. We just train them to behave properly, substituting our judgment for theirs because we have the moral sense that they lack, and we shape their behavior to align with our own moral choices. When they arrive at the age of reason, they can develop their own moral senses. Now, you appear to be saying that religion is invaluable in this early behavior-shaping stage, and for that I’d have to see some proof. I don’t agree that “God says it’s wrong” is any more effective to a child than “How would you like it if Sally pulled your hair?” I do feel that setting up a moral system on “God says it’s wrong” is doing a disservice to the child’s later moral education.
The God of the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, can be pretty bipolar at times. But I was referring more to the New Testament stuff, the “no way into heaven but through me” bits. I find it impossible to reconcile the idea of a loving God with one who’d cast you out for earnestly searching for truth and not finding the answers he wants you to find.
And in my mind, the most annoying thing is that he’s apparently unable to see how anyone could’ve misinterpreted his OP- or, that if they DO misinterpret it, then obviously it’s some sort of mental failure on their part that caused them to misinterpret it.
Exactly.
And no, that’s not the same as faith, as some have asserted. It’s a combination of fact ( the verifiable results of one’s actions ), and assertion - I WANT life to be better for everyone, including me. I declare myself on the side of making things better for people, and don’t care if there’s some cosmic truth behind it or not. Assertion and faith aren’t at all the same. Faith makes baseless claims about objective facts; assertion declares axioms.
But a religious person is generally going to have LESS restraint about killing, because they typically believe in souls and an afterlife.
Certainly not me. It looked to me like just another version of the “Atheists are eeeevillll ! !” slander I see all the time.
You don’t see a crucial distinction between the objective question of a flat versus non-flat Earth and subjective opinions of whether there is an objective morality? Or are you suggesting that the latter can be determined objectively?
But even if this were the case (and I still don’t see how gods aren’t subjects even if they create what they’re being subjective about - I can hardly be said to be objective about my musical compositions), religious moralities conflict with each other to such an extent that none can be said to be more objective than any other.
I wish you’d stop using the word valid: a given morality isn’t an argument (which can be inconsistent, ie. invalid) but a premise (which one can hold to be be sound or unsound, but not valid or invalid).
But we seem to agree that all moralities are subjective, even religious ones. There are simply candidate explanations for why the particular morality which characterises humans (insofar as there is such a thing) is as it is, which in turn causes humans to enact laws reflecting them.
So which option characterises you, and more importantly why do you think that is?
Am I alone in believing that athiests and religious people alike can move through the same stages of moral awareness? Not all religious people or all athiests are the same.
Kohlberg put it best when he defined the following stages of moral belief:
Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)
-
Obedience and punishment orientation
(How can I avoid punishment?) -
Self-interest orientation
(What’s in it for me?)
Level 2 (Conventional)
3. Interpersonal accord and conformity
(The good boy/good girl attitude)
- Authority and social-order maintaining orientation
(Law and order morality)
Level 3 (Post-Conventional)
5. Social contract orientation
- Universal ethical principles
(Principled conscience)
See: Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development - Wikipedia
Note that a religious believer may be at any of these stages: for example, he or she may act merely to avoid the wrath of God (stagel 1), or to achieve rewards in this life or hereafter (stage 2), or because God established laws Man should obey (stage 4), or because of principles of reciprocity based on the divinity within each human (stage 6).
Similarly, an athiest may be at any of these stages: they may act merely to avoid (secular) punishment, or to achieve (purely secular) rewards (at the low end of the scale); or they may develop their individual concience or base morality on some sort of social contract (at the high end).
Now, the debate in this thread seems to proceed by each side underestimating the level that the other could achieve. Seems to me the OP is in effect implying that athiests are of necessity restricted to levels 1 or 2. Typically in these arguments, the reply from athiests is that religious types can’t achieve any more than 1 or 2, since without religion as a crutch they would run wild - that religion in effect impedes people from achieving higher levels of moral reasoning.
I’m curious how reasoning based on the principles of reciprocity based on the divinity within each human would be stage 6 reasoning. Reciprocity is stage 2 or 3 sociomoral reasoning (“the Golden Rule backwards”).
“Based on the divinity”? Wouldn’t that be authority-based reasoning, or am I misunderstanding what that means?
Perhaps appeals to aspects of individuals could somehow be stage 5 or 6 reasoning, but these stages generally involve reasoning that appeals to universal principles.
Kohlberg’s stages are nice because they do not require another system to understand or explain them, or for them to have utility. They are a perfect example of a secular or non-religious model for the development of morality.
But suppose I came to you and declared that 2=2=4 was objectively true. And you disagreed with me. Then I took two rocks and two more rocks, and you counted them and came to the conclusion that there were four rocks. This is how I convince you that 2+2=4. And the more we think about it, the more it seems to us impossible that there could be any other answer.
But now suppose I come to you and declare that “Thou shalt remember the Sabbath day and keep it Holy” was objectively true. And let’s say that I had a divine revelation that demonstrated that objective truth to me…a burning bush spoke to me. Note that it doesn’t matter what objectively true moral statement I put in there, only that we stipulate that some sort of objective morality exists, and that I have been convinced of the truth of that objective morality, and that I’m trying to convince you, in the same way I convinced you that 2+2=4.
How do I go about doing that? Unless you also recieve a direct revelation from God, how do I demonstrate that my objective morality is objectively moral? It seems to me that every attempt I make to convince you that my postulated moral code should be adopted must be made by appealing to your subjective sense of right and wrong, of good and evil. Your personal preferences, in other words. Unless I can demonstrate the truth of my objective moral code as simply as I can demonstrate that 2+2=4, or as subtly as I can demonstrate that the Earth is spherical and revolves around the Sun, what exactly is the difference between my supposed objective moral code and all the myriad other subjective moral codes?
In other words, suppose someone stumbled upon an objective and perfect moral code, how could that person know that this putative objective moral code was the correct one? I don’t see, absent divine intervention, how this can be done.
Of course, then you give the standard rejoinder, if all moral codes are subjective, then why would I prefer a moral code that says it’s wrong to send the Jews to the ovens over one that says it’s right to send the Jews to the ovens? It would be like saying that blue is better than red.
And the answer is, if I genuinely prefer blue to red, then I really do prefer blue over red. I really do prefer a holocaust=bad morality than a holocaust=good morality. But WHY, I hear you you ask again.
Because that’s the sort of person I am. I was created with certain likes and dislikes, through the process of evolution over millions of years, and here I am, willy-nilly. I dislike pain, I dislike hunger and thirst, I like sex with women, I like hanging out with other members of my species, I like taking care of children, and on and on and on, and I didn’t consciously choose any of it, nor can I consciously choose to hate children and hate sex and enjoy hunger.
Evolution doesn’t make loving my children MORAL, it simply made me the kind of creature that loves my children. And hence, I prefer the kinds of social organizations that tend to make a good world for my children to live in, and dislike the opposite. My preference for my children to live isn’t moral by any objective standard, but it’s my standard. Food isn’t objectively better than poison, living isn’t objectively better than dying, but SO WHAT?
Evolution doesn’t provide me with my morality, evolution merely created me as a particular kind of organism that prefers certain kinds of things. Having more offspring isn’t more moral than having none, that’s not the argument. The argument is that there is such a thing as a human being, and given the human being’s evolutionary history that human being is going to have a certain nature, and a given human being isn’t going to like things that are contrary to its nature.
The fact that I can recognize the source of human nature as evolution rather than God doesn’t mean that I deny human nature, or that I am a nihilist or a sociopath, any more than believing that God created human nature would render me a nihilist or a sociopath, or would make me hate my nature. Why would it?
So even if we stipulate that your postulated God-given objective morality exists, how can we access it? How can we know that it is? In practical terms, how is the universe different if we imagine an objective moral standard that we fallible flawed mortal human beings cannot know directly, or if we imagine fallible flawed mortal human beings expressing their subjective moral preferences?
No, you are not alone. It matters very little whether a person is theist or atheist in relation to their morals. Morals, to me, are not rules or laws on how one should treat others. All morals have to do with number two, self-interest. That is why morals define the best path anyone can take in life. Actions and events are reciprocal, if you treat people with respect they usually will return the respect to you. Anger begets anger and so on. So if you live your life in a kind and caring manner you are more likely to achieve your goals, or at least the goals that are worth achieving. Look at all the great teachers of the world for guidance.
I’m thinking here of various forms of mysticism, which is more or less present in most religions. Universal moral principles are very often derived from mystic-style beliefs, as in the poetry of Hafiz [my paraphrase]: “in the love of God I’m not a Christian, Muslim of Jew, but human; through that love, I love all creation”.
I do not understand what is meant by “They are a perfect example of a secular or non-religious model for the development of morality”. Kohlberg’s stages are descriptive, not proscriptive. To my mind, they model stages of moral reasoning for religious and atheist alike, and indeed my point is that neither position precludes reaching any particular stage.
Okay, but that doesn’t explain how reciprocity could exemplify reasoning above stage 2 or 3. Higher level reasoning appeals to universals independent of the individual. Doing something because someone did or should do the same thing back to me (reciprocity) is, again, typical of younger children.
Exactly. It describes moral development independent of religion, which is what the OP was purportedly interested in trying to understand. A relious person could progress through all stages, except of course that to the degree that one should do things because a god, a priest or a book says you should, one is engaging in authority based reasoning, which is not the highest level of moral development.
I think that in here somewhere is the crux of your intended argument: that you propose that religion has formed the moral underpinning of society, and that if you suddenly remove the religion, the believer will be devoid of any morality, since they will inevitably throw the baby out with the bathwater and reject every moral concept they know.
Of course, let’s first note that this presumes that the theist has only the most primitive and basic of moralities - the childlike “I can do anything if I don’t get caught” attitude, coupled by a complete lack of empathy for others, and an amazing belief in their own brilliance and invulnerability. In other words, their personal, inherent morality has to top out at being at most that of a spoiled, selfish, and probably rather stupid teenager.
Secondly, it presumes that this former theist cares nothing about what anybody thinks of him but god. Also, he has to fear nothing but hell, and care for no reward other than heaven. Because if he has any connection to other mortals or secular authority, they will fall back on these connections.
Thirdly, it presumes that this former theist doesn’t have access to any secular material of the type that underscores the amorality that can be found in their prior religion and, by contrast, the atheist morality that exists independent of that religion. It’s my understanding that a fair number of ‘sudden conversions’ to atheism are the result of disgust with their former church - in that case, we are clearly dealiong with a person that not only is already aware of atheistic morality, but also is clearly more morally developed than as described in the OP. (Which does raise the question of why our theorized sudden convert quit religion at all. Childish spite, perhaps?)
And, fourth, this presumes that this former theist doesn’t rapidly learn that his ‘I’m gonna outsmart the authorities’ plan is dumb as dirt - and such educations are usually quite difficult to ignore by nature. Of course, there’re a lot of stupid jerks out there, and he might be one of them. But if he’s an intelligent former theist, he’ll probably soon adopt a more conservative form of feral atheism similar to my childhood behavior - not perfect, but still fairly polite, very obedient to civil authority, top of the class, relatively well-liked, and only gaming the system occasionally and within a limited range of tolerable risk. And while that’s not really morality, it gets the job done anyway for the most part.
On a somewhat related topic, it seems to me that you think that (Christian) religion is the underpinning of the morality of (American/western) society. If I’m correct in thinking that you think this, why do you think it? Is there any indication that societies that have adopted Christianity actually lacked the social proscriptions in it (that is, secular civil laws against murder, theft, etc)? Or even that when they adopted Christianity that they adjusted their immoral behavior as a result?
That’s interpretation is mostly interesting in that it shows how much you have to distort the content of the bible to make it morally palatable. Unless you seriously think that the best way so show that you would not do something is to do it (and then take it back - just kidding!). :smack:
(And that’s putting aside Deuteronomy 21:18-21, too.)
You were asserting that atheist morality should be considered true before its premise had been established on grounds other than faith. This is not the case - you need to show that your premise is correct before anything else.
Again, you’re begging the question until you can show that your principle is not, in fact, ‘broken’.
I don’t think you could, except in the way that you mentioned - as a direct perception of truth that 2 + 2 = 4.
If A = B and B = C, then A = C. I think anyone of normal intelligence can see that this is true, but I have no idea how I would go about proving it. I think perception of the presence of God is much the same - once He is perceived, it is rather difficult (at least for me) to understand how people can deny Him.
If I understand your question. I guess I would phrase it by saying that some things are true but not necessarily provable.
That’s badly put, but I don’t have time to clean it up right now.
Regards,
Shodan
I can accept that. But then comes the next question. What’s the difference between an objective moral truth that is true but not obviously true or provably true, and a subjective moral preference?
It seems to me that even if there are objective moral truths, all we have to go on are our subjective preferences. But not all subjective moral preferences are created equal.
Human beings usually have some sort of innate notion about right and wrong. We can call that innate sense part of human nature. We can disagree about the source of human nature, but for me, the idea that human nature is the result of human evolutionary history is so convincing that it would be perverse for me to deny it, on the order of denying heliocentrism.
But even if the human moral sense has some other source, say we argue like some theists that all humans including atheists are endowed by their creator with an innate moral sense, so that they follow that objective moral code even though they don’t believe that moral code was God-given. But then there’s no reason to imagine that abandoning theism means abandoning that objective moral code and become mswas’s cartoon nihilist.
Some people do seem to lack that innate sense, there are some people who really are sociopaths who only follow the rules of society because they don’t want to get into trouble. But then we have to ask, why would a sociopath or a nihilist who doesn’t care about anything care about getting in trouble? Why would they care if they live or die, are comfortable or in agony, free or imprisoned? Even a sociopath who gets a thrill of enjoyment from killing prostitutes has some sort of haywire human desires. He feels powerful and important when he kills the prostitutes, and he kills because he enjoys feeling powerful and important. If that sociopath truly had no human emotions he wouldn’t care about killing prostitutes.
And these people aren’t created by lack of belief in God, or because they weren’t taught that Jesus died for them, but because there is something wrong with them. They just seem to lack the innate moral sense that most people have. And if you believe as I do that this moral sense as provided by human evolutionary history, it isn’t hard to imagine that some people are just born broken, like some people are born with depression, or autism, or blindness, or cystic fibrosis, or cleft palate, or all sorts of other problems. Something goes wrong in their brain development, and they just ain’t right.