Wow, my little statement really got some back talk.
I am a moral person. I do try to treat other people like I want to be treated. If nothing else, it’s nice to be able to say “Don’t cuss me out. That’s not how I treat you.”
I don’t steal, cheat, or lie unless it is absolutely necessary. I try to treat all people with a certain amount of respect and expect to get the same in return. I don’t mess with other people’s money, other people’s time or other people’s people. This saves me from about 80% of the problems of the world.
Life is hard. People deserve some respect for attempting to get through it without messing up other people.
That’s it for me. I don’t always succeed, but I try.
Also, Richard Dawkins came across this “New ten commandments” for atheists floating around the web.
Ignoring the more disturbing and nonsensical bits of Intelsoldier’s post, there is a core of sense there. The positive phrasing of the golden rule simply doesn’t work. You can’t do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If you followed this strictly, you’d be broke in days. I mean I want people to give me ten dollars. Am I then obliged to give everyone else ten dollars? Of course not. That’s why the negative formulation works better. I don’t have to give the homeless dude any money, but I am obliged not to steal the money he has.
I’m sorry Annie. I didn’t mean to offend you. Nor did I mean to imply you would do anything that I or folks in general would disapprove of. Your statement just stood out as the fundamental problem of morality. It struck me as odd that a fellow atheist would imply there is an objective standard for morality.
I try to follow the go kai (Five Precepts) of Buddhism as much as I can. I’ve never trusted the Golden Rule, it’s always seemed too …pat, maybe? Too self-satisfiedly all-encompassing for my tastes. The go kai is a lot less open to philosophising IMO:
abstinence from killing, stealing, lying, sexual misconduct and intoxication.
Of course, I philosophise about the strict interpretation of the last precept all the time And I must emphasise that the Precepts are a moral system that is taken up voluntarily, and is personal to the adherent. Otherwise, I believe in “Do what Society wants (as long as it doesn’t interfere with the Precepts)” as the rest of my morality. So obey the law, pay your taxes, sort your trash…these are all moral actions.
Oh, and IntelSoldier? I find the lack of empathy in that moral code turns me off it big time.
I don’t think that’s an exception to the golden rule. What do you really want when you’re in a competition with someone? You don’t want them to cheat, of course, but do you really want toi win because they deliberately didn’t play their best game? No, you really want to win because you were better, not because the other side let you win. So, even though it might hurt a bit, and it might stop you from scoring, you really do want the opposing player to try to tackle you and stop you. But you also hope that, in spite of him doing his best, you’ll get past and score.
I’ll mix things up a little: my moral philosophy is “avoid feeling guilty” + “avoid regret”. Now, guilt is a feeling I get for some not-precisely-defined reason when I do harm to people who I do not feel deserve it; when I make them unhappy, it makes me feel guilty. (Probably something to do with empathy; I’m not certain of the underlying mechanics.) So, the first half of my moral system keeps me relatively nice to people.
The second half can be divided into two halves itself: “Don’t do things you’ll regret” and “Don’t refrain from acting if you’ll regret your inaction later.” The first half there both keeps me from doing base stupidities, but it also restrains me from comitting victimless crimes, because I fear the long arm of the law. The second half of that causes me to make a lot of impulse purchases of limited availability items, and also causes me to act to help people when I feel that I will regret my inaction later, like if somebody was going to drown if I didn’t do something.
Since my moral code is based entirely on things that effect only my personal happiness, I suppose it’s as selfish as IntelSoldier’s. Nobody around me seems to mind it, though.
I’m a Christian and I don’t see that my moral code is different from most of the responses that I see here. I’m not so certain that my moral code actually comes from my religious beliefs – although my values are generally reenforced by them.
One difference that I do see between myself and some atheists is that as a general principle, I avoid ridiculing the beliefs that someone else takes seriously. It doesn’t matter whether they are Moslem, Fundamentalist Christians or atheists. I can disagree with them without making fun of them.
FTR, I don’t belive that specific words are “bad” unless they are used to hurt someone. I’m a grandmother and I don’t think there is anything morally wrong with smoking pot. The ultimate morals are compassion and love and then action based on those two things.
No, you’re not taking it too literally; you’re just (deliberately, I think) missing the point. The idea of the Golden Rule is to treat others the way you would wish to be treated in moral terms. Honestly, fairly, respectfully – whatever kind of moral treatment you’d like to get from people. That’s independent of your interaction on a practical level, based on the different social roles you describe.
And compassion only for people similar to yourself must be really easy.
Anyway, as for my response to the OP – I guess, like all of us, I have a mental image of how people should interact in a society, and I try (sometimes failing) to live that way. People can make the world a Heaven or a Hell.
I think IntelSoldier’s moral system is much more common than one might suspect, it’s just that most similarly-minded people probably wouldn’t describe themselves like that. My brother, for example, is pretty much exactly like this.
My moral system? I’m pretty sure it’s just me. That is, my biology. I suspect we’re more driven by our genetics (and biology as a whole) than we’d care to admit. Our fine and noble words are more description of what is going on than actual drivers of it. Consider these two variations of the Trolley Problem: Tower
You’re in a rail yard control tower and see a trolley blindly speeding down the tracks toward five track workers. They will all be killed if you do nothing. However, you can switch the trolley to another track where only one worker will be killed.In studies, about 90% of folks given this problem will opt to switch the trolley. Footbridge
This time you are on a footbridge over the tracks and the trolley will pass under you headed for the five workers. Next to you is a very large man. Pushing the man onto the tracks will kill him but derail the trolley saving the five workers.In this case, about 90% of people say they will not push the man.
These two cases are essentially the same: your action kills one man and your inaction kills five. So why the big disparity in how we react? fMRI studies show that different parts of the brain become active for the two scenarios producing two very different “gut feels”. The detachment of the tower allows our rational, analytical centers to prevail. The intimacy of the footbridge variation triggers emotional centers in the brain more.
Is it more moral to kill one than to let five die? Yes. No. It doesn’t matter what rules we try to generalize. Our biology is driving the decisions. So what is my moral system? I don’t think it matters what I post-rationalize it to be. I have my “gut feel” that is kept in check by the prevailing “gut feel” of others.
I understand the point that you’re trying to make, and maybe I’m nit-picking, but I actually disagree that happiness is good. Without trying to hijack the thread, happiness is neither good nor bad. It can lead to good things (eg, taking good care of my family makes me happy) and it can lead to bad things (eg, having things I like makes me happy, thus if I should steal the things I want). Even without adding unusual things, it’s easy to justify obviously immoral acts. For instance, let’s say I want a pack of gum, if I shop-lifted it from CVS, they wouldn’t even blink an eye at it, thus negligible decrease in their happiness, but measurable increase in mine. Or another example, say there’s a grumpy old man in the neightborhood that no one likes and has no living family, is it moral to kill him because it would make just about everyone in the neighborhood happy that he’s gone?
Further, as some have pointed out, there are certain unusual things that make people happy that wouldn’t be moral either, such as sadism/masochism. Using this sort of system would seem to result in a sort of moralistic capitalism, where he who has the most ability to do what he thinks promotes the most happiness sort of becomes the defacto representation of morality.
I understand that you value it, but what I really want to understand is why? Without explanation, it’s no more valid as a basis for morality than those who value wealth, comfort, or even religion.
I think this is a misinterpretation of the golden rule, much like another post upthread that was refering to how it doesn’t make sense to treat a professor how he’d want to be treated, because he’d want to be treated like a student. That is, the rule is very general and trying to apply it to those sorts of situations doesn’t make sense. That is, treating them how I’d want to be treated isn’t saying treat them exactly the same, it’s specifically specifically refering to behaviors that carry moral value.
For instance, if I treated him in every way how I’d want to be treated, I’d want to challenge him, assign and grade coursework, etc. Those are amoral behaviors, and so I would say are outside the scope of the golden rule. I think it more specifically refers to behaviors like respect, courtesy, etc. That is, if I were the professor, how would I want my students to treat me? The moral behaviors to which I think the golden rule refers transcends the actual nature of the relationship.
I also think going “well, what if I’m a masochist” is missing the point. How many people that are masochists would really believe it is moral to inflict pain on other people? The golden rule is, IMO, a very reasonable rule of thumb for the vast majority of people, and for those that have those sorts of odd quirks, I also imagine that most of them realize that, that is simply an exception in their case.
Point taken, and though I’d like to argue on that point, it seems outside of the scope of the OP, in that it seems to me specifically about how atheists determine morality, such that the actual existence doesn’t matter.
I agree that it’s probably fairly common. What shocks me is (1) the objective self-awareness to recognize and describe such a selfish code, and (2) the apparent pride in it.
I disagree with this. I think it’s more important to state things in the affirmative. That is, morality isn’t just about what you shouldn’t do, it is also about what you should do. Morality dictates that you shouldn’t steal… but it also dictates that we should help those less fortunate than ourselves (which, btw, doesn’t necessarily mean giving money to a bum). I think this message is also apparent when Jesus summarized the 600+ (?) laws into two simple ones, particularly a slightly different statement of the golden rule in “Love your neighbor as yourself.” That is, it’s not doing to other people what you would “want” them to do to you, it’s about loving them because you’d want them to love you.
But, again, you’re taking it entirely too literally with $10. And, besides, wouldn’t that same sort of interpretation apply to the “happiness” paradigm? If I give a lot of people some money, it will generate lots of happiness compared to my relatively minor unhappiness at being broke… therefore it is moral to give everyone $10.
Fortunately for me, my moral system disagrees with you…however I’d be perfectly willing to hang around in your vicinity while you’re giving away all your cash, -as long as I get there early. I don’t mind taking a donation while you’re still wealthy, but taking your last ten dollars would make me feel guilty.
Fortunately for me, my moral system disagrees that giving money out to everyone who happens to near me is a way of helping those less fortunate than me.
I find that the Threefold Rule common to Wicca and other pagan belief systems is the single most used rule in my moral toolbox. Basically, all it says is that everything you do comes back to you–three times over.
The nice thing about the Threefold Rule is that it forbids nothing. If you wanna be a dick, go at it–but you can’t complain when everyone is three times the dick back to you. Send out good feelings, helpfulness and joy–get back three times as much.
The really great thing about it is that it makes me mindful, not just of what I do but of what I want to do. I can decide, after studying an issue and thinking over the likely repercussions, that I wish to make myself an agent of karma by lowering the boom on someone. I have budgeted for the payback and I’m ready when it comes. Of course, sometimes the good one does in this manner outweighs the actual harm to the specific person who is the focus in which case the backlash is often ameliorated.
It doesn’t matter that there is no objective accounting of the positive and negative energies created by my activities–it’s enough that I’m aware and mindful of what I do that makes the difference. I tend not to do things from impulse or reaction because I’m too aware of what it’ll likely bring me. There doesn’t need to be an accounting system, because the Threefold Rule is just a codification of a natural rule–that you get what you pay for, reap what you sow, sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. You make people around you feel good and happy and they want to be around you–and will more often than not consider your feelings when they decide their own actions. Act like a prick and make those around you miserable and they won’t give a flying fuck about your feelings and needs.
Works for me–so far nobody hates me enough to try to fuck me over!
I’m seriously not trying to nit-pick, but I don’t get the difference between “preferable” and “good” in this context. That is, both imply that maximizing happiness will necessarily produce moral results. Perhaps you’re using a different definition than I am?
That is, I udnerstand the argument to mean that morality is doing that which promotes the maximum contentment/pleasure/satisfaction. I would argue that my scenario about killing the grumpy old man meets this criterion (it makes most of the rest of the neighborhood happier at the expense of one man’s unhappiness), yet this action is clearly immoral.
And I must emphasise that the Precepts are a moral system that is taken up voluntarily, and is personal to the adherent. Otherwise, I believe in “Do what Society wants (as long as it doesn’t interfere with the Precepts)” as the rest of my morality. So obey the law, pay your taxes, sort your trash…these are all moral actions.
