Sure it is - you have faith that “what you like” is better than “what you don’t like”. Keep in mind that the argument you need to produce is one that I should donate the money.
Same thing - you are taking for granted - that is, on faith - that people stealing is bad.
Nope, all of these assumptions ultimately go back to a faith-based assumption - that the continued survival of society is good, or that people shouldn’t starve, or something. None of these assumptions can be rationally established. You just have to assume that something or other is the [summum bonum.
The trouble being that any assumption is as good as any other. There is no way to show, for instance, that a society based on the dictatorship of the proletariat is any better or worse than one based on the idea of the Germans as the master race, or all men are created equal, or that America should die, or baseball is the only worthwhile human activity. Anything you like - it is all arbitrary.
You want to argue that society should survive. Why? Suppose you have two scenarios. One is that human society lasts for another five thousand years. The other is that everyone on earth dies tomorrow morning. What difference is there between those two?
If you want to argue “I just feel like human life has value”, fine, but that is a faith statement. Someone else may “just feel” like killing homosexuals has value, and there is no particular reason to believe that you are right and he is wrong.
Leaving aside the fact that this is as stupid as it is every time you post it, you are begging the question.
You are assuming, in the absence of any rational proof, that unselfish behavior is better in some sense than selfish behavior.
It’s not “faith”; it’s a fact that most people don’t want to be stolen from.
That’s not “faith” either; that’s our built in desire to survive.
No, it’s not. Humans are not blanks; we have built in needs and desires, and some societies satisfy those better than others.
In one version there’s a humanity; in the other there’s not. Since most people want to survive, the former is superior.
No, it’s an assertion of an opinion.
Because he’s a danger to other people, which gives other people a reason to oppose him. And because bigotry is destructive to society in general.
You are attempting to defend faith by defining it so broadly that the term is essentially meaningless. Probably because the narrower definitions make clear just how destructive and foolish it is.
< shrugs > History shows pretty clearly that it is, on average. That’s certainly a “rational” reason.
But do you see the problem? You can assert this, but you can’t justify it rationally.
So?
This is argumentum ad populum at best. Most people in America believe in God - therefore a morality based on theism is valid, right?
Again, until you can demonstrate in some way that society ought to survive, you are begging the question.
No, I am being consistent. Theistically based morality assumes that God’s will is a valid basis for morality. You are assuming something else is a valid basis for morality - survival of society, or majority rules or somesuch. But you haven’t demonstrated it - you just assume it.
I thought you agreed that morality based on irrational assumption is bad. If so, then we are clear - your assertions about your morality are as irrational as anything any theist has ever made. If not, then by all means let’s see your proof.
There is nothing that proves a society based on providing great happiness for me and unhappiness for everyone else is better than a society where everyone is happy. Certainly in the first one I’m happier. It’s not practicable in real life, of course, because no one would go along with it and because society has conditioned me into thinking it is good for people not to suffer.
That argument is silly. On some level as humans we must assume some things are correct. You don’t *know *you’re not a brain in a jar somewhere being prodded. You assume you are not and that the evidence provided by your senses is correct. You assume that the computer you’re typing on is actually connecting to the internet and not generating random answers.
Acceptance of reality isn’t faith in the sense of religious belief. I believe that Russia exists because to fake it would require an awful lot of effort given how common it is on maps, TVs, stories and whatnot. Accepting that some second string Babylonian storm god sent his son to Earth so that he would forgive us for killing him and wouldn’t have to torture us forever is different than accepting the existence of Russia. For instance I know places exist. I’ve seen evidence for places. I’m in a place now. I’ve never seen any evidence for Jesus, Zeus or Spiderman.
Morality evolved because it works better. Man isn’t a top predator, he doesn’t glide around snatching meals alone. He lives in groups and requires cooperation to thrive. I would be surprised if man didn’t have a sense of morality given what a profound advantage it is in any society.
It certainly isn’t a stretch to assume that society with happy people is superior to a society with unhappy people. I’ve been both happy and unhappy and know that happiness is a superior state. And I know that happy people around me are more likely to create a superior environment.
Religion is dressing up morality with bronze age mysticism, it doesn’t need to be there.
People who killed their neighbor and stole his wife tended to get killed by the neighbor’s brothers. it made sense for the priests to say the gods forbade this behavior, since healthy men were valuable and some couldn’t look ahead very far - or thought they could take the brothers. Remember that it was perfectly okay to kill the guy the next tribe over and take his - even our Bible says that.
I think that groups discussing ethics without god could prove valuable. I got married in the Ethical Culture Society, which seems to be one such group. More people would do this if there were one on every street corner, like today’s churches. I trust that there aren’t that many people who want some preacher to tell them what to do backed up by God’s fury - but I may be optimistic.
[li]Religions provide a basis for laws and no groups can function without rules. Yes societies can come to have secular axioms supplant the religious ones, but invariably the religious ones come first and are the progenitors of the secular ones. Still secular systems that transcend religious ones can serve both for individuals and societies quite well. And have for much of the world.[/li][/quote]
I think a slight modification is needed here. A nation can toss out the old rules it inherited from religious belief and make new rules based entirely on secular beliefs. It has happened in the past. After the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War, Soviet Russia built its laws on the fully secular doctrine of Marxism. In the 1930’s, Germany built a series of laws on the beliefs of the Nazi Party. In the early 20th century, both Britain and America revoked some of their traditional laws protecting individual rights and allowed eugenics to move forwards. Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics, specifically said that he wanted to advance science as a replacement for Christianity. And there are plentiful other examples.
What they all have in common, of course, is that they did not last. The Nazis made it 12 years, the Soviets 72. Eugenics was brought to a halt and then reversed by mid-century. In each case, the underlying basis of what came before was recognized as sound. After the fall of communism, western society came back to widespread agreement that private property ownership was a decent thing. After Nazism and eugenics, we came back to widespread agreement that all humans deserved legal protection regardless of their genetic makeup. So in short, the Christian ideal re-asserted itself. Of course, the degree of recognition varied. In some places, people acknowledged that they were restoring the Christian ideal. In others, they avoided direct mention of the fact.
So in short, “secular systems that transcend religious ones can serve both for individuals and societies quite well”, but only when the secular system is similar to the religious one. When a secular system tries to totally junk the old religious system and build something completely new, it’s bad news.
Wrong. The Nazi’s weren’t secular, first off. And even if they were, both they and the Russians built systems that were similar to religious systems. Both required blind, stupid loyalty to silly notions. Just like religion.
Again, you are begging the question. Why do you assume that your morality is right, and that a morality based on God is not if you can’t produce evidence for either?
Acceptance of morality is.
Apples and oranges, don’t you think? You believe in Russia because you have seen the evidence. You don’t believe in Zeus because you haven’t seen any evidence. You believe in the validity of a morality even though you haven’t seen any evidence.
Why the double standard?
Again, you are begging the question. Why is whatever standard you want to use “better” than any other, or none at all?
You seem to be asserting that surviving is better than not surviving. What evidence do you have that this is so? Because those who don’t survive don’t survive? That’s a tautology.
Sure, once you assume that people being happy is superior to people not being happy, then you are all set. In the same way, once you assume that torturing puppies is better than not torturing them, then you are all set then too. What I would like is the basis for your assumption, and some reason to make such an assumption.
Okay, what does need to be there? AFAICT, your “dressing up” isn’t any better (or worse, or even any different) than any Bronze Age mysticism. It is equally unfounded assumptions.
You keep saying I just have to assume this. The point is, no I don’t, for the same reasons that you won’t assume Bronze Age mysticism is a good basis for morality. But if you have better reasons to assert that the survival of society as a moral standard than anything else, you won’t tell us what they are.
Isn’t it survival and advancement of the species? Whatever it is that gives us the desire to explore and discover scientific facts is IMO a part of what also pushes us to acknowledge problems in society and try to solve them. The quest for a Utopian society if you will. For whatever reason enough people do are about the human condition and how we can improve it.
The Nazis were extremely secular. That’s why they used the slogan, “National Socialism is applied science.” It was their proud declaration that they were completely abandoning the beliefs of earlier eras and advancing to a future where religion would totally disappear.
The Russians did not build a system similar to religion. They very proudly built a system intended to be the complete opposite of any religious system. That’s why the Soviet government completed outlawed the teaching and practice of religion as soon as they came to power.
Lastly, religion does not require blind, stupid loyalty to anything.
So now that you know the truth, you won’t be repeating those three mistakes any longer.
You’re getting bogged down with semantics. I assume that the universe does indeed exist. I also assume that I do indeed exist and that my senses provide a reasonable approximation of the universe, at least insofar as I can interact with it. I base the notion on survivability and happiness being preferable on the fact that I prefer to be alive and happy. In the same way I assume that you and every other human isn’t an evil Matrix program or an alien robot designed to fool me. If you’re human, it makes sense to me that you have a heart, a brain and other physical bits in common with me. Since I can communicate with you, I assume that you, like I, exist and can be rational and think. Although for most conservatives, I double check.
If you are like me, then you most likely prefer to be alive and happy. Well, what is the most sustainable model for me being alive and happy? I suggest that nature has built into us drives and impulses that do just that. We are friendly to our tribesmen. We help when they’re hurt and this in turn triggers happiness. Nature has provided a wonderful feedback loop to assist human survival. I do a good deed and I feel good about it.
Since we have no innate meaning or purpose, after all we’re just animals, then our sense of morality doesn’t have to have a meaning or purpose. I would say the purpose of human life is to find a purpose and to fit as much happiness into your brief window of conscious existence as you can.
To sum up, I accept the basic sense of morality instilled by nature in the same way I accept that grabbing a rock out of the fire is bad. Nature has in both instances provided feedback to shape preferable behavior.
You frequently bring up Communism and Nazism when talking about secular idelogies. I think the unspken implication you’re trying to make here is that secularism will always result in horrible stuff happening.
The majority of French (64%) are are either agnostic (32%) or atheist (32%). I don’t see any mass killings going on there, or in Great Britain for that matter, with 52% polled either agnostic or atheist.
Supposing I accept for the moment that “most morality is promoted by peer values”. It still raises an obvious question, where did those peer values come from originally and how did they progress over time?
For instance your claim about “killing, theft, and other nastiness”. (I’m assuming you meant to say that rejection of those things within the culture is universal, not that the things themselves are universal.) But that’s not morality by any meaningful definition. The Mongols felt great riding roughshod over everybody, exterminating millions, leveling cities, and destroying everything that looked remotely similar to civilization. Even if it’s true that they didn’t kill or steal “within the culture”, that would be small comfort to the people they killed and the civilizations they destroyed. By any meaningful definition, they were extremely immoral.
In short, to say that civilized people are civilized because everyone around them is civilized isn’t sufficient, because you need to explain how the civilization got there in the first place.
Then there’s the question of progress in morality. John Wesley came to America and was horrified by the conditions of slaves in the South and factory workers everywhere. He started the Methodist movement to demand the promotion of gospel truth in all areas of life, including politics and social justice. As a result, slavery was ended in the British Empire and numerous advantages were gained. John Muir’s deep Christian convictions led him to be the founder of the land conservation movement in the American West. Martin Luther King battled segregation because of his Christian beliefs. If those men (and countless others) had merely accepted “peer values”, the world would be much poorer as a result.
No it was like a religious system in that it required blind ignorant devotion. That you couldn’t naysay it or fear retribution from the loyalists. A perfect analog.
Ha. It requires you to make life changes based on a legends. Tell me, would you change your long distance carrier if Spiderman told you to?
And I trust that since you’ve learned how utterly wrong you were you’ll slink off pray for guidance?
These are your examples of rules based on secular beliefs? Your examples of tossing out the old rules inherited from religious belief?
Might I enquire of you how many of the ten commandments are enshrined in various legal codes today? It rather seems to me that, in general, we’ve pretty much kept less than half, and i’m not talking Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.
Private property ownership is the Christian ideal?
Like I said, current legal codes don’t really seem to have kept up with the ten commandments. Moreover, i’d say the vast majority of our laws aren’t correct or incorrect as far as Christianity goes at all. Beyond that, I seem to recall you have an interest in Catholicism; do we, for example, allow a criminal to go entirely free, should he express remorse for his crime? We’re still quite a long way short from the Christian ideal, to general approval. I imagine, actually, that my own view for what society should be like is more fully matched by society (British, anyway), than it does with your own particular vision of the Christian ideal; the question is, are those points on which you and agree asserted to because they are Christian, or because we agree to them?
I could turn it around on you, though. Name for me some religious systems that transcend secular concerns, the ones that govern or governed purely by religious issues, and I suspect you’ll find among them quite a few of the more unpleasant places to live or have lived.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me your position is that there is a set of ideals which a good system must have. That system can be more or less religious or secular in nature, and within those ideals there may be a certain amount of wiggle room, but as much as it has those ideals, it can be a decent society. I’d probably agree with that. My problem is that you seem to be assuming that those good ideals are inherently religious, or inherently of religion, in nature, because they have come up through history and for the most part in history people have been religious. That because of that, without religion, secularism could not have come up with them. Is that correct?
“Quote smack” apparently means to mislead by presenting a carefully chopped up quote out of context.
Now let’s turn to somebody with actual intellectual honesty.
So now that we have that established, you’ll obviously refrain from further attempts to mislead people on this issue.
You’re good at repeating this claim, but thus far you’ve failed to defend it.
Here you’ve got one thing right: atheists like Lenin (and Stalin and Mao etc…) did indeed punish anyone who spoke out against them.
Of course, in Christian countries nobody does so. We have free speech. So far from being an “analog” (I’ll grant it’s not a digital, yuk yuk), it’s the exact opposite situation. Your apparent belief that total censorship and free speech are exactly the same would fit feel in Orwell’s world. Which, you’ll recall, was ruled by atheists.
Cite?
No.
Apparently your atheist thinking has lead you to incorrect conclusions yet again.
Actually I think that few religions have placed such an emphasis on the afterlife as has Christianity and Islam (heavily influenced by Christianity), and the ancient Egyptians perhaps. Oh sure, the Greeks had Hades, but that was hardly the same, and the afterlife in Jewish thought is a minor subject at most. I fail to understand how the decline in belief is “one of the great unsolved problems of modern times.” Perhaps you can explain further how you mean that?
Anyway, I’d file a belief in the afterlife under my point #4, wouldn’t you?
