Please note that I am not averring that compassion for strangers is valueless. I am not.
Please also note that I am not averring that only the religious can feel compassion for others. I don’t think that either.
Please note, lastly, that I am not claiming that religious persons are incapable of compassion or sympathy. I don’t think that, and even if I did, I don’t feel like starting a boardfight this evening.
What I am looking for is statements by persons who style themselves atheist or agnostic–who do not believe in a higher power governing the universe who will reward or deny virtuous acts–as to why they believe it is incumbent upon, at a mininum, themselves to feel compassion for people they don’t know personally, and to act to their betterment.
The virtue is nothing to do with religion: firstly, one day it might be you - or someone about whom you care - that is the stranger; and secondly, you never know what profit you might gain from your kindness. Think of it as both a form of insurance and a form of speculation.
I thought about typing “agnostics & atheists, metaphysical naturalists, and brights,” but my fingers got tired. By the way, you may have missed the memo, but it’s not actually necessary to insult the religious at every opportunity. Some of them are quite pleasant company, and persons of good will can disagree and be civil. The only persons who must be insulted on sight are Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, Clumsy Smurf, and that body-builder from Seattle who is actually a cloned body with Stalin’s brain inside.
I suppose I qualify as “materialist” by the definition of the OP. My answer would be that compassion is a human thing, and I am a human, so why so surprised?
I’m sure my ethical values are partly biological and partly cultural. What it definitely is not, as it is not for almost anybody, is a set of rational decision-making heuristics. Most ethical discussions end up being, if unconsciously, ex post facto justifications for why we feel certain actions are good and others are bad.
Simply put, I feel empathy and compassion because we’re social animals who’ve evolved to have a high degree of empathy even towards strangers. No doubt this has helped our species to survive to this point. That empathy compels me to aid someone in distress, because I am able to (or rather, cannot help but to) project myself or someone I care about being in that situation and have an immediate impulse to do something about it. I feel guilty and bad if I don’t, and good about myself if I do. Similarly, I respect and laud those who act selflessly and scorn those who act churlishly.
None of this requires some cosmic calculus of good and evil or reward and punishment. Just people being good people.
In some ways this question is like asking “What is the virtue of hunger?” You can certainly answer that in a sense–the laws of thermodynamics require that you take in energy-yielding substances in order to maintain your body’s metabolism and not die, etc., etc. Along the same lines, humans having evolved from a long line of social animals living in small, self-sufficient, family-based bands, we have evolved feelings of compassion which promote reciprocal cooperation and looking out for our kinfolk who share a large fraction of our genes, and so on.
But note that “hunger” isn’t a voluntary choice (I guess I could imagine someone whose brain is messed up and who doesn’t experience hunger; they’d have to set an alarm clock to remind themselves to eat before they just keeled over). Similarly, feeling compassion for others isn’t a choice (although acting on it is). It’s an emotion, an instinct that wells up in you whether you like it or not when observe someone else in need.
Hunger is frequently “subverted” in a modern, industrialized, non-hunter-gatherer setting–usually in a bad way (we run the risk of drowning ourselves in all those tasty fats and sugars and red meat that would have been difficult to obtain and highly prized nutritious food on the Serengeti a million years ago). Deep down some part of our brains is always worried about famine and on the look-out for high-value, high-density foods.
Compassion is likewise “subverted” in a modern, urbanized society where your neighbors are unlikely to be your relatives, and people on the other side of the world may show up in your living room courtesy of CNN–arguably this subversion of our natural instincts is a good one, and leads us to be kind and compassionate and donate to the Red Cross when we hear about people on the other side of the world being caught in a tsunami, because deep down some part of our brain still thinks “Hey, if I know these people (even if it’s only via television and the Internet), they must be relatives, so I should help 'em out–they bear some of my genes, too, plus someday they might be helping me out.”
Materialist means you believe in matter as opposed to spirit, not that you like to go shopping and own boats and stuff.
For me, the answer is because each other is all we have. I’m not counting on a second life, so I want to enjoy this one, and helping others do the same makes me happy. I don’t want to see anyone go through something I wouldn’t want to go through. It’s empathy.
I’ve occasionally heard the term “physicalist” used instead, to avoid confusion between the two meanings of “materialist”.
As for me; between the fact that life is better for everyone if strangers are treated with respect ( because everyone is a stranger to most people ), and my instincts and upbringing, I see no contradiction between materialism and empathy towards strangers. I find it rather easier to justify than the believers seem to, actually, since they tend to focus so much on imaginary things like souls, and not the needs, desires, or suffering of real people.
Why can’t you just say “non-religious”? Materialism is a very narrowly defined philosophy.
Compassion for strangers? We “non-religious” people feel compassion out of choice, because we’re rationally convinced that it’s good. Many religious people, on the other hand, have to be forced to be compassionate, out of duty or fear. I’ve known some really obnoxious religious people who donate to charity out of fear of going to hell; they actually don’t contain a shred of compassion for anyone.
So one could argue that it is to society’s benefit that people like that continue to believe God is watching them. It’s not as though being converted to atheism would mean someone like that would transform into a nicer person.
It’s my belief that being decent and kind to others tends to raise the level of kindness and decency in the world. Also, I realize that the only thing I really have control over is my own behavior. Since I prefer a world with a higher level of kindness and decency in general, and there’s no way for me to make others be kind and decent, I try to promote it by practicing it myself. This includes my interactions with strangers along with the rest of my interactions with others.
I suspect that Skald used the term “materialist” to rule out not only those who are following the teachings of a particular religion but also those who, while not being religious in a traditional sense, believe in (or at least are open to the possibility of) a personal (i.e. God) or impersonal (i.e. karma) force that sees to it that virtue is rewarded and evil punished; and to rule out any explanations based on the existence of an immortal or immaterial soul in oneself or the other people one is compassionate to (e.g. “Compassion is good for the soul,” or “You will be rewarded in a future life”).
Well, isn’t that preferable to not being compassionate at all? Most religions would prefer that you grow beyond fear as a motivator for right behavior (e.g. "If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. ") But if the person wouldn’t be good without the threat of hell or the promise of heavenly reward, is that threat/promise better than nothing?
Anything that could motivate a materialist to compassion could also motivate a religious person to compassion; religious people just have additional motivators on top of that. (Religion can also, I’ll note, move a person away from compassion instead of toward it. It’s important not just whether a person holds religious beliefs, but what beliefs.)
As a believer, I have a number of motivations to be good and benevolent and compassionate (i.e. factors that actually make me so and/or tell me that I ought to be even when I don’t live up to it.) Some of those factors I share with the compassionate materialist; others I don’t. Among those that I do are:
Because of habit or upbringing or conditioning or whatever, it feels better to be compassionate. I feel a guilty conscience when I’m not.
I want to be able to think of myself as a good person. And I want other people to think of me as a good person.
I believe that goodness attracts goodness, that if I am a benevolent person other benevolent people will want to be around me and help me, and that to at least a limited, imperfect, Androcles-and-the-lion extent, goodness is rewarded and “what goes around comes around” or “you reap what you sow.” As a religious person, I believe God may have some hand in this, but even without God there would still be physical reasons why this might tend to be true.
It occurs to me that there are actually two things involved here: conscience, and empathy. Conscience being the inner botheration that comes with doing something I believe I shouldn’t, or not doing something I believe I should. And empathy being the tendency that all of us non-sociopaths have to suffer when we see others (even well-portrayed fictional characters) suffering, feel joy when they experience good things, etc.
Happiness is a good thing, both for myself and for everyone else. Also, suffering is a bad thing all around. Therefore, I’ll act to increase the happiness of myself and others, while avoiding any negative consequences. So in the slightly more concrete example of doing a favor for a stranger, I’ve made their day better, at little to no cost to my own happiness. And, as a bonus, selfless acts can make me feel happy.
I suppose that makes me a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism, though all else being equal I’ll take the slightly selfish choice. I.e. I’ll eat a piece of candy myself, rather than give it to someone who’d enjoy it just as much.
This sort of behavior also leads to a well-running society. There’s a lot of evidence that suggests that traits like empathy and altruism have evolved to allow us to live in big successful social groups.
FWIW, I’m an atheist. I do broadly agree with Thudlow Boink’s posts.