Reconciling morality with atheism

[Emu]

One of the questions I get asked (well, they don't ask me, but I hear it pretty often) is "If you're an atheist, where does your morality come from?"

It seems like I've heard dozens of answers to this question, but subtracting the possibility of faulty memory on my part, none of them have seemed to be terribly satisfying.

I've been thinking about this question for the past few days and the best answers I can come up with are framed in terms of a cost-benefit analysis, which seems awfully cheap to me. For example, I don't attack people on the street because I don't want to get beat up myself. I don't rob banks because I don't want to go to jail. These are the most low-level, childish reasons for why I don't commit crimes.

Secondary (and more powerful) reasons being that I have no desire to hurt people. I don't attack people on the street because the man I just killed may have a family of his own, people who rely on him. I find this to be a much more powerful (de)motivator than not wanting to get beat up or go to jail, but this still feels to me like a cost-benefit situation. I could steal perhaps 200 dollars from this man, but the monetary benefit would be greatly outweighed by the painful guilt I would receive. It doesn't seem all that much more noble to say "I don't do this because I would feel guilty if I did" than it is to say "I don't do this because I would get my ass kicked if I did."

But in thinking about it more, it sounds even less noble and more childish to say "I don't do this because God told me not to." And yet, as a purely emotional response, I tend to have a begrudging respect for religious morality as a demotivator for immoral behavior.

Another answer from evolutionary psychology is that our morality is programmed into us by our genes -- our ancestors cooperated together and flourished out of a respect for human dignity that has evolved naturally out of us and has been passed down genetically. While I tend to lean toward this (I major in evolutionary psych), it subtracts the philosophical bit of the question and reduces it a little much for my liking. And following this line of thought, we're again brought back to the cost-benefit analysis -- it was more beneficial for our ancestors to act and to be genuinely moral than to fake it, and hence the genuinely moral people had genuinely moral children. And soforth.

I have yet to find an answer that doesn't feel cheap, somehow. I suppose maybe it's just the way the world is and that everything comes down to a cost-benefit analysis whether I like it or not. To remove this factor from the discussion is basically to say that something is wrong because it's wrong.

Now, I'm not going to pull a Kulturkampf and go out and live life on the edge because my morality feels cheap. I still believe strongly in the moral imperative to do good, regardless of where it came from, but that still doesn't answer the question.

[DuFresne]

All right, Here's my thoughts. I hope this makes some kind of sense. I'll admit that I don't really answer your question, though:

Non-theistic evolutionary morality, the kind often cited by atheists, relies on the precept that survival and cooperation are inherently "good." As long people have a drive for individual and special survival, our inborn genetic morality works pretty well to keep us from robbing, assaulting, et cetera. Theistic morality relies on the precept that pleasing a deity or deities is inherently "good," and as long as people have the desire to please the deity it seems to work fine as well.*

The problem with both cases, of course, is that there will almost always be people in any given society that will reject whichever given precept the society's rules are based on, or who break the rules for other reasons entirely. So neither system of morality is ever perfect. The best one can hope for is that the vast majority of people do ascribe to a precept and the morality that follows it.

But after you've established this, the question still remains of which system is more efficient. Short answer: I have no fucking idea. As an atheist, I assume that Darwinistic morality spawned theistic morality in all its forms. Was that out of necessity, or was it ignorance? Both? Something else entirely? I dunno.


*Speaking solely in terms of getting people to follow the respective rules. I'm not getting into the whole "but relijunz cauzd da warz!!!!!1" thing. That's another argument for another day.

[MetalMilitia]

This may be somewhat off-topic from the main point of the thread but as far as your initial question is concerned I think that a consensus of what is moral will generally be accepted, even over religious ideals. For example, though we may read in the bible that various people should be stoned to death for all kinds of minor transgressions, as the consensus that this is unacceptable has been accepted in the West we have decided to ignore the Bible in this matter. I'm sure in time the homosexuality issue will follow suit.

To me this suggests that the Bible isn't what gives us our morality. Instead it is simply selectively read to conform to the consensus we've cultivated in our society without any kind of divine intervention.

To the main question in this thread, I have no answer, but the wisdom of crowds has been commented upon by many authors. Why is it so hard to accept that a large group of people are smart enough to come up with a few simple rules and regulations which we can all agree on and which offer a benefit to society?

[Preechr]

To say that morality is genetic really strikes me as an intellectual cop out. While I'm sure fight or flight and self-preservation are foundationally instictive, to say these things "evolved" is to say they are evolve-able attributes... and I wonder in what ways our survival instincts have evolved since the Darwinian Process culled out those humans born with no survival instincts at all.

Additionally, survival instincts aren't exactly morality itself, but I'm trying to extrapolate your thought process from a point of athiesm... No higher power or order to things. I'm guessing extended morality would begin, for you, about there, right?

That's not exactly what you were on about though was it?

There's a book out there containing a collection of letters and speeches written by Einstein that I halfway read once, and in it he addressed his concept of spirituality. I don't remember exactly what he said, but I combined it with a little historical theology and have probably already mentioned it more than once in here... but anyways... The vast majority experience their religious beliefs from the basis of the "angry, vengeful God," which is the most primitive form of human religious belief. These folks are those that try not do bad things for fear of punishment, as you alluded to above.

The second group, which when combined with the first comprises about 99% of people, seeks to earn rewards by doing good things. This adds a layer of complexity to the first thought process by acknowledging the power of the higher order or being to reward as well as punish.

The third group, a very thin slice of the human pie by Einstein's reckoning, is mostly comprised, in his opinion, of those that rise to positions of leadership in their fields of study, be they scientists, theologists, politicians or policemen. These leaders in their field have developed a more evolved method of understanding spirituality and life. They see that decisions made and actions taken in the highest moral light possible not only work out for the best of the individual but also for the best of everyone involved.

This wonderful minority of men sort of "go with the flow" of life, rather than seeking reward for positive actions or avoiding punishment for sins. I think this gets us back to your question, but you might not like the answer. Many atheists like to point to Einstein as a fellow, but it seems to me that his belief system at least hints at an underlying order to life. If one's decisions are made in such a way as to benefit not only oneself but also everyone affected by those decisions, the decisions are considered to be correct and the actions taken through such consideration are generally at least more positive than others made more willy-nillily.

If such an underlying order actually does exist, wouldn't it have had to have been designed to be that way? If our decisions actually connect us so precisely within society, much like electrical bonds connecting atoms, isn't that just a little too perfect for happenstance? It's easy for an evolutionary psychologist like you, I'm sure, to disagree on the grounds that moral decisions have a positive influence on life and society and thus moral decision makers have a stronger chance at the Darwinian Russian Roulette Table.... BUT....

Whether you look at the times in which we find ourselves discussing this, or at Einstein's time, that of Jesus or even if we squint so far back as to the days of cavemen, that third way of living and deciding has always produced positive results, and it has never really caught on. There have always been more dick heads than moral people that concern themselves with the well-being of others, and there likely always will be.

Metal is right that popular acceptance of pure morality is an evolving thing, but that doesn't mean morality is evolving, rather only our acceptance of what I see as a constant.

I got home and went to look, unsuccessfully, for the book... which I believe was called Ideas and Opinions... in order to quote some Einstein for you and thus add a little credibility to my statements. I mean after all, if Einstein said it, it must be smart right?

Unfortunately, the above is probably at best not even close to his words. I tend to blend things I read into other stuff I already know or believe. I do remember specifically that he, as a leader in his field, actually did ascribe the highest form of moral/spiritual existence to people like him, so I left that part in, though I think I probably disagree at least in part...

One thing I did add in that I know he never addressed is that among that third group must exist those that sense that positive path through life, but for whatever reason, choose to work against it rather than "going with the flow." It's just a triviality I guess, and not one that I've thought about much, but I think that's where we'd find actual evil.

I think the great religious works of man... the New Testament, the Torah, the Koran, even the various and essentially silly Eastern works... serve as a history of our search for truth through various means. I think that God is generally only representative, at least in our thoughts concerning God, of what we could be in the light of perfect truth and morality. Since I think that, I can see value in theology and religion as well as I can see that none of it has actually worked so far. It's a good starting point, and really nothing more.

That doesn't mean I'm an atheist, as you claim to be. I believe in a higher
order, and I think that necessitates a higher power. It seems to me that if mankind has devoted much of it's generated thought from day one to divining a clearer picture of God than what is immediately obvious, it would be pretty silly... and really even more arrogant than I am... to waste my time on it, given the abject failure of theology to tell us more than what we can already understand with a little clear thought and some soul-searching. I think it's far more productive to plunge the depths of the obvious and see where that leads rather than imagining fantasy realms of Angels and Devils and Kingdoms built in the Clouds and others in the Bowels of the Earth and Messiahs and Divine Sacrifices and Prophecies and Damnation.

The closest I've come to the traditional sort of spiritual fantasy, which is kinda fun... don't get me wrong... is to imagine God physically represented in the tiniest electrical bonds holding all matter together. Matter is what it is, but the bonds that hold the particles together into whatever fashion you sense them as matter why it is. This, I think, satisfies the traditional Western criteria for God: Omnipresent, Omnipowerful and Omniscient. Maybe in death the "why" for our own existence joins the whole, which would explain why nobody ever comes back, as that would likely rock.

Meh... that's fantasy... and it's tangential... so I'll leave it at that.

Now, please, somebody, call me stupid.

[MetalMilitia]

The closest I've come to the traditional sort of spiritual fantasy, which is kinda fun... don't get me wrong... is to imagine God physically represented in the tiniest electrical bonds holding all matter together. Matter is what it is, but the bonds that hold the particles together into whatever fashion you sense them as matter why it is. This, I think, satisfies the traditional Western criteria for God: Omnipresent, Omnipowerful and Omniscient. Maybe in death the "why" for our own existence joins the whole, which would explain why nobody ever comes back, as that would likely rock.

It also satisfies the age old religious argument that "god is in the gaps". :p

[Arioch]

As stated earlier in this thread, the popular misconception is that morality is derived from religion. This is a pure and total sham. I have very strong morals, and a well formed sense of right and wrong. I would go so far as to say, comparing myself to the religious people I know, I probably have stronger morals than a majority of them. And I haven't stepped foot inside a church for many many years.

I think having strong morals goes hand in hand with having a conscience as well as believing that the actions you perform always come with consequences, both/either good and/or bad. Having common sense plays a part too, I think.

I see far too many people who don't ever consider that what they do effects others. As a matter of fact, I frequently get annoyed by the things I see people do just for this reason. One could say this is derived from being intelligent, but I think it's more than that (see my 2nd paragraph, above).

Simply realizing as often as possible that the world doesn't revolve around you and that you are merely a cog in the great machine of humanity helps to keep one grounded and aware that what you see through your eyes is not just a figment of your imagination.

[kahljorn]

Well, morality doesn't come from religion but from "God." Morality coming from God doesn't necessarily mean doing what God "tells" you, though. God created the universe in a "Certain way," and that would mean the universe contains within it what is good or bad which is dependent on the way God created it. I guess you could always ask if God could make bad good, though, and then you might think that the universe has an inherent order which makes the good things good.

I think the reason why people say you can't find morality outside of religion is because religion stipulates that God creates what is inherently right or wrong. It seems like atheism wouldn't have this, but can't atheists look at the universe and see whatever inherent order there is which makes good things good -- outside of God? If morality is derived from some pattern of the universe, there's no reason to assume they can't see that pattern outside of religion.

[Big Papa Goat]

But I think some people would say that to believe in such a pattern for the universe requires one to believe that it has been in some sense laid out by God, or that belief in such a pattern is the essential characteristic of belief in God in any case. I mean, if you believe the universe has some kind of inherently ordered pattern, that's kind of the same thing as believing that there is a God laying out a pattern.
Now of course, you don't really have to believe in a 'religion' to believe in 'God', but by the sort of logic I'm describing there you couldn't really be an 'atheist' and still believe in morality since 'morality' essentially stems from the inherent pattern of the universe that can only exist if there is a God.
As for Emu's first points about the cheapness of 'cost-benefit' morality, just think about what the possible reasons for doing something could be though: basically it seems that you either do it because it's the right thing to do, or because it's the most benefical thing for you to do. The common atheist accusation that the religious are just 'doing what God tells them to do' doesn't really seem to get what 'God telling you to do something' really means. If God 'tells' you something, then assuming there is a God, then the thing he is 'telling' you to do is absolutely 'right', not just beneficial because disobeying God can get you in trouble with Him/obeying him can get you on his good side, because God, as the creator of the Universe laid down the basic rules of 'right' and 'wrong' in a very fundamental way. 'Obeying' what God 'tells' you is the essence of doing what is 'right' simply because it is 'right'. 'Religious' people that just obey the doctrines of their religion are basically just obeying rules, but this isn't so different from atheists obeying secular laws or for that matter the doctrines of various secular ideologies. Of course, secular ideologies can have doctrinal or scientific views of nature (or sometimes history or some such) that claim to have a similarly foundational understanding of 'right' and 'wrong' that religion does, which is to say that environmentalists, liberals, socialists, Nazis and Christians can all honestly say that their actions are not motivated by anything like 'cost-benefit' analysis but rather on an understanding of what is fundamentally right and wrong. It'd be nice not to ascribe to some cheap, Jewy 'cost-benefit' kind of morality and have some more 'noble' understanding of morality, but it seems that when you try to listen to God you can just as easily hear the Devil and not know the difference.

[AChimp]

Morality is just a set of behaviours that have been deemed acceptable and desirable by social norms that have evolved over time. What is moral for one group of people may not be moral for another; the only reason for this is differences in how various cultures have developed.

Part of the influence on this is religion, but "what's good for society to keep running" is also a major player in defining morality (even then, religion is just a tool for enforcing a prescribed set of social rules). It's not beneficial for a society to let people run around killing each other, hence why everyone thinks that killing people is wrong and the people who don't agree are labelled psychopaths. Wrap killing another person in the blanket of "self-defence" and suddenly it becomes acceptable, if not necessarily desirable.

Step back a few thousand years to gladiatorial fights, and suddenly killing people under a much wider set of circumstances is completely acceptable. I'm sure that there were a lot of Romans who thought that gladiators fighting each other to the death was "wrong," but they were the small minority and obviously didn't have much influence for a long time.

One hundred years ago it was considered immoral for women to wear pants, but I see a lot of women wearing pants nowadays. Are our morals sliding backwards into debauchery or are they just evolving with time as popular opinion changes?

Where does a universal concept of right and wrong fit in with stuff like that? It doesn't because if you're an atheist you think the universe is just a giant machine running on a defined set of physical rules. You cannot rationally define the concept of "good" and "evil" because everyone would have a different opinion on what constitutes each based on any number of social factors.

The way I see it, the morals we have now won't be the same as the morals we'll have in 1000 years. You'll see similarities, but there will probably be some pretty big differences.

[Preechr]

All cultures have considered murder bad behavior, though many cultures have disagreed on what constitutes murder. Aboriginal tribes, much like your Romans or Old Dixie slave-owners, had a narrow view of what they considered real people, and most of these early societal types considered the murder of whatever they viewed as a real person less than moral. Roman Senators did not approve of the killing of another Senator with no just cause no more than did a slave-owner approve of the murder of another slave-owner. Slaves were considered to be property as were gladiators, not real people, like members of another tribe were considered to be more physical threats than fellow humans.

The examples you are giving highlight, as I said above, the evolution of our understanding of morality, not of morality itself. In 1,000 years, lying, cheating, stealing, rape and murder will still be immoral.

[Zbu Manowar]

Count me in with the 'religion does not equal morality' group. My morality comes from empathy. I do not wish to be hurt and neither should someone else. That's something I think is right. I think that morality, as seen through this lens, means that I control my own sense of morality. Society might include a baseline to keep it running, but nowhere in that system does religion come into play. If anything, religion is a force that defies personal morality due to the idea of an afterlife and the hidden bureaucracy within that thought, i.e. if I can kill a blasphemer, then I can supersede my own morality and still live with myself due to a reward--heaven.

Long story short, religion is not morality but a definite force against it.

[Preechr]

I'm not getting the impression anybody is actually hitching their wagon to my moral star here...

Here's an example in the form of theft: We consider stealing morally incorrect, right? Not that I've stolen stuff, but I have gotten things for free before... In my opinion, unearned property has less value to me than that which I have worked hard for and thus earned. Property that I don't really value that much is more expendable than that for which I have sweated and/or bled.

Hyperbolic or not, I have been stolen from. On these occasions, I have noticed the property for which I had worked was quickly ruined upon it's theft. I think this indicates the lack of value placed on stolen goods by a thief as relative to the value placed on earned property by the person that actually earned it... ie: me.

Now, I could fill this example out a bit more, but that might get in the way of my larger goal here: Being called names. Gibbery Glibbity Goo, please SOMEBODY call me naive and/or retarded then add nothing at all to the discussion and run off to post recipes in Blabber.

[ScruU2wice]

Morality is just a set of behaviours that have been deemed acceptable and desirable by social norms that have evolved over time. What is moral for one group of people may not be moral for another; the only reason for this is differences in how various cultures have developed.

Part of the influence on this is religion, but "what's good for society to keep running" is also a major player in defining morality (even then, religion is just a tool for enforcing a prescribed set of social rules). It's not beneficial for a society to let people run around killing each other, hence why everyone thinks that killing people is wrong and the people who don't agree are labelled psychopaths. Wrap killing another person in the blanket of "self-defence" and suddenly it becomes acceptable, if not necessarily desirable.

I think I'm with achimp on this one. We all live in a society where we interact with people who interact with people who interact with people. What their morals are to a degree affect what your morals are, Religion is just another leaf in that tree. Religion is a set of moral guidelines which were the foundation of society at one point, and has been shaved down until now it's just a band in the rainbow.

For all the people saying religion has not affect their morality, it doesn't directly. But you guys haven't lived in an atheist society that has isolated itself from cultures with religion in them.

But at the same time it didn't start with religion, it was just solidified by it. I'm sure it was frowned upon to covet thy neighbors wife before the ten commandments, I know that there are things in religion that were responses to what was already happening in society.

I do believe though that some of the morals that have with stood time such as rape, murder, theft; have a little bit more lasting power than a 1000 years

[Big Papa Goat]

I just read the thing about Einsteins 3 kinds of moral people, and I just thought; isn't it significant that all people basically have all of these kinds of morality depending on the time and the situation? I mean, we've all abstained from doing something out of fear of punishment before, we've all done something for a reward, and I'm sure we've all done something out of the sincere belief that it was best for all involved, even if it involved a bit of self-sacrifice. All three of these motivations are elements of human morality, and all human beings experience all of them to greater or lesser extents. But like I was saying before, I think it's a bit of a mistake to really identify any one of these sentiments as the 'highest moral light', since the desire to do good for 'everyone' has its own problems largely related to the difficulties in knowing what is good for 'everyone'. I suppose the point would be that what we generally consider 'morality' basically has to do with largely sentimental feelings of empathy; we are concerned with the plight or benefit of human beings around us, so we basically take pleasure in the well-being of the people around us, and we don't like seeing people suffer.
Empathy doesn't work for 'everyone' as well as it does for people we know well though, as Adam Smith said, a thoughtful guy who hears about the horrible deaths of a million Chinese people might think that that's a great tragedy, but he'd lose more sleep over the loss of his own little finger, or for that matter, over say, the painless death of his aged grandmother.
Now, Preechr says that Einstein and his 3rd group aren't exactly atheists, since their morality derives from the adherance to an underlying order to the universe that gives their actions their 'absolute' correctness, rather than merely consequentialist, cost-benefit correctness that Emu didn't like in the first place. But I don't know, like I said, people who believe they know the underlying order of the morality of the universe are being a little bit presumptious, and the assertion that these kinds of moral actors have always had 'positive' impacts seems pretty far from historically true, considering the long list of ideological atrocities from the French Revolution to the twentieth century, to say nothing of Christian and Islamic religious violence or for that matter the ubiquotous and perennial harmful effects of moralistic types that try to put their noses in to other peoples business. Think about the jerks that stole from you Preechr, what do you think motivated them? Assuming you're not talking about burglars or something there.

[Preechr]

Ok.. Let's try this: Physics. Are we arrogant enough to imagine that the other laws of Nature have evolved around us, or can we safely and humbly assume that Physics has always existed as it is and that our understanding of it's nature has grown with time?

Ethics and morality are a constant, not relative to the ability of mankind to understand them and use them to it's benefit.

Physics describes the nature of matter when it interacts with other forms of matter. Morality is the Physics of man's interaction with itself. Some physical interactions of matter are more beneficial to mankind than others in certain situations, just as some sorts of moral interactions between men have more value than others.

Is this really so hard to understand?

[AChimp]

You're kind of just grasping at straws now. I declare myself the winner of this thread.

[Big Papa Goat]

"or can we safely and humbly assume that Physics has always existed as it is and that our understanding of it's nature has grown with time?"
"Morality is the Physics of man's interaction with itself."
hmm, so then morality hasn't always existed then right? Not that I'm saying you're wrong about morality being in some sense constant, I mean, no one has ever really wanted to say that morality is a historical/social construction.

All I'm really saying is that everyday morality is basically just sentimental, based on natural tendencies we've always had. Evolutionary psych seems to be exploring this kind of reasoning, but Adam Smith basically had it figured out a while ago based on common sense observations like the one about the guy hearing about a million dead Chinese people. I think this is basically as good a way to look at morality as any, even if it isn't very 'philosophical'. Now, you could say that the sentimentalist view of morality, particularly insofar as it is based on evolutionary psych is reductive and cheap for the reasons Emu laid out, but at the end of the day, what do you really want a theory about morality to be? I mean, this theory is descriptively fairly accurate right?

To get back to Preechr, you really do seem to be reaching at straws with the physics analogy, unless I really don't understand it. You say that our understanding of physics has grown over time, but physics itself hasn't changed because of that. True enough in that respect, Heidleberg uncertainty principle notwithstanding, but think about morality like that. Morality is how humans interact with one another, but the way people interact with eachother is tremendously influenced by the understandings of morality that the different people have. Obviously in the physics analogy you forgot that physics is how things do behave, but morality is how humans should behave. I mean, this is the first thing you have to remember to avoid the obvious problem that 'morality' in a descriptive sense (=the sense in which physics understands the world) is definitely depenendent on the (prescriptive) understanding of morality, insofar as the 'way humans interact' definitely does change depending on the way those humans feel they should behave. But if you want to be prescriptive, then you have to abandon to an extent the exactitude of physics, because the exactitude of physics comes from the fact that the human science of physics is the description of the non-human nature of physics.
Think about this; if you substitute your definition of physics for your use of the term physics in the sentence about morality you get something like this after you get rid of all the verbal junk: 'morality is the nature of man's interaction with itself'. Then, if we perform the same kind of operation on another sentence we get: 'some sorts of the natural interactions between men are more benefical than others' (after we remove the verbal junk about 'value', replacing that term with one that means something). At this point we're back to cost-benefit analysis though that Emu didn't like in the first place. The only difference seems to be that your cost-benefit analyses are going to be a lot more complicated because they want to deal with benefiting the entire human race.

[kahljorn]

But I think some people would say that to believe in such a pattern for the universe requires one to believe that it has been in some sense laid out by God, or that belief in such a pattern is the essential characteristic of belief in God in any case. I mean, if you believe the universe has some kind of inherently ordered pattern, that's kind of the same thing as believing that there is a God laying out a pattern.

that's probably because you think the universe can have no order without a god personally constructing it but obviously there is some type of order, even if it is just one of causality. But who knows; although, you can say with certainty that if there isn't a god, and there is morality, then there must be morality without god.
All I'm really saying is that an atheist person could do an action, recognize the results and attach a value to that action and result. And then have a value system designed to achieve certain results which they value.

I like to think of God more as a variable to explain things than necessarily as a guy in the sky who dictates things out of his consciousness.

[Preechr]

if you were wandering through the forest and came across the ruins of an ancient city, would it be all that easy to consider that the rocks had somehow stacked themselves that way naturally? Without some sort of help?

All of the "variables" just happen to be set to the exact values that allow life as we know it, with all it's order we can sense, to exist... and if any of those knobs were turned just a hair... even the value of the weakest force in nature: gravity... everything would either implode or explode or by some other means cease to be... how could existence and nature possibly be through an evolutionary process? Without a design?

Think about it: all of the forces of nature have to be dialed in with exacting precision and forced to work together by strict laws in order for everything in the universe to exist without instant destruction of some sort happening. How could nature evolve into that? The process of trial and error, from Big Bang to Big Flush would involve immeasurable instants of time, and I have have to ask... who would you propose is learning from this process if not some sort of intelligent designer?

[kahljorn]

So somebody makes an argument that atheists can be moral and you attempt to argue that God exists?

All of the "variables" just happen to be set to the exact values that allow life as we know it, with all it's order we can sense, to exist... and if any of those knobs were turned just a hair... even the value of the weakest force in nature: gravity... everything would either implode or explode or by some other means cease to be...SO? What does that matter? IF EVERYTHING SUDDENLY CHANGED EVERYTHING WOULD SUDDENLY CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

how could existence and nature possibly be through an evolutionary process? Without a design?Isn't the idea of the Platonic forms kind of that there is an intrinsic form to existence which can't be deviated from? and that this form is underlying all existence, just by the fact that it exists?

To use your physics example: Can you change any of the natural laws? Can you make "force" be not forceful? For example, if an extremely large and heavy boulder landed on your head, could it possibly have less force than the force of a feather which is extremely small and light dropping on your head? Or would it always have to be like that?
maybe there are just certain types of constants. But who says those constants are "God," or mean the same thing that God means to us?

i know im opening myself up for something about WHEN THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED IF THINGS WERE CREATED SLIGHTLY DIFFERENTLY....

all of the forces of nature have to be dialed in with exacting precision and forced to work together by strict laws in order for everything in the universe to exist without instant destruction of some sort happening.That's not necessarily true. And an interesting question is if it's even possible for things to not work in some sort of precision.

who would you propose is learning from this process if not some sort of intelligent designer?Why does someone have to be learning? What makes you think existing has any sort of point...?

[Preechr]

Obviously in the physics analogy you forgot that physics is how things do behave, but morality is how humans should behave.

No I didn't. You are just rewording what I said in order to make it make less sense. I'll assume I said what I did in such a way as to render it incomprehensible. Let's try it this way: I believe Morality is the "Physics" of human interaction, in that the results of our interactions, to positive or negative effect, are the products of what in physics we refer to as laws. If the net value of my action is immoral, the result of my action will be negative, regardless of whether or not I understand the rules... just as were I to dump a spoonful of phosphorous into a glass of water I would likely get burned were I a caveman or a chemist.

I think that it's rare that we do what we should. I think it's the nature of man to behave in a self-destructive way, in general, but that the net products of our moral decisions is positive.

Now, you can try again to twist up what I said into something I didn't in order to finish me off in one post, or you can honestly process what I actually have said and ask me any question you like, as I have intentionally left plenty of room for discussion... if that's what you're after.

Either way, you win.

[kahljorn]

If the net value of my action is immoral, the result of my action will be negative, regardless of whether or not I understand the rules... just as were I to dump a spoonful of phosphorous into a glass of water I would likely get burned were I a caveman or a chemist.that's not necessarily true, at all. It might be immoral to kill, and then you kill a bunch of child rapists and it has a good result. Does that make it right to kill child rapists?
There's lots of things which can have good results, or even harmless results, but would be considered immoral.

uhh, and if you were a caveman and you killed someone what would the negative consequence be, exactly? Getting locked up in caveman jail? the demise of Mayor Cavemammon which collapses all of caveman society!? What if you stole another caveman's banana?
what does negative consequence mean, anyway, and in reference to what is it negative to? If I slaughtered the entire human race it might have a positive result in reference to the planet earth and the animals which live on it.

[Preechr]

So somebody makes an argument that atheists can be moral and you attempt to argue that God exists?

No... the original question was from where could an atheist build a foundation of morality if not from God? I attempted to answer that, but the discussion was diverted into this. I think it's pretty interesting. Do you object?

SO? What does that matter? IF EVERYTHING SUDDENLY CHANGED EVERYTHING WOULD SUDDENLY CHANGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here you go again. What I said was that if anything changed even slightly everything we know would not be able to exist at all.

Isn't the idea of the Platonic forms kind of that there is an intrinsic form to existence which can't be deviated from? and that this form is underlying all existence, just by the fact that it exists?

I don't know.

To use your physics example: Can you change any of the natural laws? Can you make "force" be not forceful? For example, if an extremely large and heavy boulder landed on your head, could it possibly have less force than the force of a feather which is extremely small and light dropping on your head? Or would it always have to be like that?
maybe there are just certain types of constants. But who says those constants are "God," or mean the same thing that God means to us?

i know im opening myself up for something about WHEN THE UNIVERSE WAS CREATED IF THINGS WERE CREATED SLIGHTLY DIFFERENTLY....

I already opened that up... you just missed it.

If so, nothing would exist.

That's not necessarily true. And an interesting question is if it's even possible for things to not work in some sort of precision.

Are you just arguing with yourself?

Why does someone have to be learning? What makes you think existing has any sort of point...?

For Physics to have evolved, that means it was subject to a process of trial and error, where an imperfect form of Physics was Darwinially outpaced by a more superior form until eventually our current model reigned supreme over all other lesser forms of Physics. Unfortunately, for Physics to be imperfect, the universe itself ceases to exist. If the force of gravity is .01 n/m off, the Big Bang can't happen, buddy.

There is no other Physics available. From the get go this is what existed. What are the chances of that happening randomly on the first go around?

Existence was intended, and intention always has a point.

[Preechr]

that's not necessarily true, at all. It might be immoral to kill, and then you kill a bunch of child rapists and it has a good result. Does that make it right to kill child rapists?
There's lots of things which can have good results, or even harmless results, but would be considered immoral.

NET value... NET

uhh, and if you were a caveman and you killed someone what would the negative consequence be, exactly? Getting locked up in caveman jail? the demise of Mayor Cavemammon which collapses all of caveman society!? What if you stole another caveman's banana?
what does negative consequence mean, anyway, and in reference to what is it negative to? If I slaughtered the entire human race it might have a positive result in reference to the planet earth and the animals which live on it.

You are answering your own questions.

Here's how I'm gonna answer you: If the net effect of human existence was a negative in terms of the world, as you seem to be proposing, then does committing immoral acts always or even generally result in a positive effect on the actor? Do you get where I am taking you?

[Preechr]

G'night Kahl... Nice to have you back.

[kahljorn]

Do you object?Clearly.

What I said was that if anything changed even slightly everything we know would not be able to exist at all.First off, you don't know that that's true, and neither do I. What if something completely useless and unnecessary changed. Secondly, to say something like, "If some essential factor of the entire universe changed then the entire universe would change" doesn't really prove anything or even say anything other than things would be different if they were different.
is it even possible that those things could ever change?


If so, nothing would exist.Nothing? Or something else?

Are you just arguing with yourself?Are you arguing with yourself by projecting your faults onto me or something i dont get it i thought we should be asking you if you're arguing with yourself.

For Physics to have evolvedPhysics evolved?

that means it was subject to a process of trial and error, where an imperfect form of Physics was Darwinially outpaced by a more superior form until eventually our current model reigned supreme over all other lesser forms of Physics.Or, things could have just suddenly changed. Maybe what happened wasn't evolution, but growth.

There is no other Physics available. From the get go this is what existed. What are the chances of that happening randomly on the first go around?The point of me bringing up forms was to bring up that it might not be random and there might only be certain types of ways things can work -- and those constants may not be the result of God. Or, if "God" is taken as a variable, maybe those constants are God.

Aren't there books about how evolution isn't "random" but tempered by the environment or something im not sure exactly!

[kahljorn]

What the fuck does net value mean when it comes to morality, and how could you even possibly go about adding it together?

Assuming that morality always results in good consequences is the most ignorant foolish sort of "Morality" I've ever heard of. I guess it has some obvious religious basis, but you're clearly relying on a presumption here which you haven't bothered to defend.

lol but i can see what you're saying i just think its gay and you haven't really put forth an argument, you've just said stuff that you think could be true. Your presumption is that what is good is what results in good consequences. My first objection is that things which might be bad can have good consequences, and actions which are good can have bad results. Your response is "Net.. value," whatever that is -- something incalculable and useless for any type of morality and for the basis of decision.
My second point is that, just because "good" things have "good" results, does not necessitate god's existence. What's that quote? "Is good good because it's good, or is good good because god wills it good?"

Can god will good bad and it will have good consequences -- and vice versa? Is it actually possible to change things in that way?

ps you said morality was the physics of human interaction or something didnt you so wouldnt killing the entire human race for the sake of the planet or something inhuman be "Immoral" in some sense? You see how complicated these calculations can be!

lol seriously though good things always have good consequences? that's so vague and ambiguous, and so useless for morality! How could you ever use that as the compass of your being unless you were omniscient and knew what would have the best result? You ascribe to a very deterministic view point. I think that there is some base "design" in which things can have good results, but it's not so concrete at all, and that doing bad things might have good results sometimes. But i don't think that's any reason to act badly. Do you?

you know the biggest complaint I'd level against "greatest net value" is seriously that actions might take forever until the cumulation of that value, when the universe ends (or matures), and the achievement of the ultimate point of existence (gods intent for the universe right) until you can decide what's right... and in that context what would wrong even mean? DOES IT EXIST? CAN THINGS HAPPEN CONTRARY TO GODS PLAN!?!?!?!?

didn't jesus dying save the entire world wasn't that a bad thing :O :O net value though got to keep that in mind it's okay to kill jesus because it has a good result! im rambling! later!

[kahljorn]

and why would someone need to believe in a god to know that good actions have good results?

[sloth]

I'll try and keep it short because this could end up a huge post, but I think preechr's analogy with physics is mistaken. It is important to remember there ARE no 'laws of physics', only linguistic conventions that more or less approximate the way the universe is constituted. It is difficult to imagine because we are so firmly ensconced in language, but there is no extra-linguistic correlative to the laws of physics--no laws 'out there' that our laws 'in here' are progressing towards. It just is. One might be able to predict with greater accuracy the outcome of a certain event within a given discourse--quantum physics, astronomy and so on--but if anything, the best we can hope for is an asymptotic approach towards some condition of very marginal error. I think Lacan uses the example of Heisenberg's Principle as an example of a physics that acknowledges this hard limit to the capacity for science to explain the Real.

The concept of a law appeals to the notion of 'truth', which is a condition and inherent prejudice of language. With the introduction of language, something can lie; something can be other than it is. This is why laws fail, to be replaced with new and more comprehensive ones. The matter is complicated even further when you think that, as subjects of language, there are necessarily things that elude symbolisation. I couldn't even begin to imagine how to approach the issue of morality, but hopefully it might clear up the fallacy that anything might be considered an onward march towards some kind of absolute truth.

[Preechr]

I'm glad you managed to keep that short. I would have hated for you to spend a lot of time on it. I think you just misread my comments, either intentionally or accidentally... but again I'll take the blame and try to re-explain...

To paraphrase, you seem to be saying that what we call "laws of Physics" are only vague guidelines attempting to describe how things in nature really work. Unfortunately, I was not referring to vague guidelines attempting to describe how things in nature really work when I used the term "laws of Physics." I was talking about the way things really work in nature. The constants... what ever you wish to call them. Light, for example, behaves in a very consistent manner. We can observe that and try to describe it, but that language is, as you said, imperfect. The natural laws (or whatever you wish to call them) governing the manner of light, however, fits perfectly in with the larger body of natural laws that govern everything else in the universe. That's what I mean when I say Physics.

Again, if you would like to suggest a better term I'd be happy to use it.

Would you like to discuss what I was actually talking about now?

[kahljorn]

ghrsgrs

[kahljorn]

lol ok ignore that what but seriously do you not see how what you're saying doesn't prove or even illustrate that atheists can't be moral, not even in theory? For one, like I said, atheists can understand physics, which kind of fucks over your entire analogy. Secondly, you haven't shown how they are really in any different of a situation in life. How do religiously moral people differ significantly from atheisticaly moral people, especially as far as recognizing "net values" and causation?

the only thing you got going for you is this whole gods plan thing which obviously only religious people can get in on it's a secret. GOD AND RELIGION ARE SYNONYMOUS! That's the only way your argument works. but my analogy kind of dicks that and so does almost everything else I said because religion doesn't put religious people in any better of a moral position than atheists, at least as far as the "net result" of moral learning and acting goes.

and you haven't even really told us anything other than the best morality is the one that's best. That doesn't tell us which one out of all the religious and atheistic moralities is the actual best. Nor does it actually tell us any qualities of it, other than it being the best. All you've really done is say that there is a best morality which is the best and apparently for some reason atheists can never know it or follow it on the basis of being atheist. NOT EVEN BY ACCIDENT! God forbids it with his pattern!

[Preechr]

Kahl, you are like my intellectual Curry.

I love you.

[kahljorn]

and you're my intellectual hot dog.

[kahljorn]

"If such an underlying order actually does exist, wouldn't it have had to have been designed to be that way?"

No, because, like I said, maybe existence is structured in such a way that it can never become anything else. You see how this refutes that? "Wouldn't it have had to have been?" Because there's no other option, right? but there is, and that option is that the world can only develop in certain types of ways because of some constants which are impossible no matter what to change, because it would be a contradiction.
Can god make things that are morally bad good and vice versa? Or are they morally bad because of the effect they have, regardless of the fact that god designed them to be bad?
i dont know i wish I had a better example maybe later.

The closest I've come to the traditional sort of spiritual fantasy, which is kinda fun... don't get me wrong... is to imagine God physically represented in the tiniest electrical bonds holding all matter together. Matter is what it is, but the bonds that hold the particles together into whatever fashion you sense them as matter why it is. This, I think, satisfies the traditional Western criteria for God: Omnipresent, Omnipowerful and Omniscient.Once you've gotten to recognizing this, why does god have to be a person or consciousness that has a will? Why can't it just be the basic fiber of existence? Why do people jump from, "Thing at the base of all being which sustains being -- or you could just call it being" to, "Guy who has a plan and built everything with a plan and there's a plan for the universe and we're a part of that plan and that plan is a good plan which will make us feel good and that plan was planned by a planner who can think and has consciousness and he's a lot like us!"

I think once you get down to recognizing the characteristics god must have he is robbed of any significance and glory and becomes a figurehead in existence just like the sun or any other presence in the universe. He's not some superior being with a word we should follow but just another natural law. there's nothing about that which should be impossible to comprehend for an atheist, not anymore than a religious person.

[AChimp]

I still think that I won this thread, but thanks kahl for backing me up! :bestthread

[sloth]

preechr, i'd be happy for you to dismiss the relevance of linguistics if you at least grasped the point I was trying to make, but when you talk about the 'constants' and 'the way things really work' you are implicitly appealing to an order that exists outside language. the problem is, light acts in a stable manner because we symbolise it, or find words for it, such that its behaviour can be described in laws. strictly speaking there is no light outside language: it exists in the same unbroken fabric of reality as everything else. its a prejudice of language that the word should precede the object, which you see throughout the bible - "and god said let there be light; and there was light" - and philosophy like Plato's forms.

it sounds like you read me as making a weak claim to the effect that (the) language (of physics) does not adequately explain the structure of the universe, but what i am trying to explain is that the very notion of structure is a sleight of hand introduced by language. it throws these ideas in front of itself and spends forever trying to reach them, which is why we may continue to refine the sciences, but a final, satisfactory scientific theory is necessarily impossible. hopefully this might explain why (imo) it a mistake to refer to the so-called hard sciences to demonstrate that there might be similar absolute truths in morality.

[Preechr]

Ok... Now I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, since you sound very sincere and, unlike Kahl, not just "going with your gut" and arguing for arguments sake (and badly.) You seem to know what you are talking about, though I don't yet.

With your first post, it seemed to me that you were trying to dismiss my thoughts by talking around them. Now that you've clarified your position, I'm actually more confused. Where I give you the benefit of the doubt is where I will continue under the assumption that you are talking WAY over my head, and I ask the same of you in that I really am trying to grasp your point, of view at least.

Let's start over here: the "unbroken fabric of reality."

That hints to me that you believe that the thing that we refer to as light and the other things we discuss in our sloppy and ultimately meaningless linguistic musings on the nature of reality do actually exist in some form "outside language" though we can never hope to completely describe that one eternal thread in that fabric that stretches out in all directions to infinity plus one until we can adequately describe all the threads and all their weavings and their weaver and his shoe size.

That is, in this discussion, what I would refer to as a minor, though entirely appreciable, point. My point is that that fabric does exist in reality. Everything is, whether we get it or not. I'm Ok with the idea that our study of nature's infinite complexity will never, ever be complete. I'm a deist, which means that I believe in a God we have no hope of ever understanding completely on any level. Just as, though, I believe the study of bits and pieces of Physics, even with the extremely limited capacity we have to understand what we are seeing, does produce tangible positive results on the quality of our lives in general, I believe in a similar "unbroken fabric" of decisions that connects us all, throughout history to the end of time, that, though we'll never completely understand it nor really ever be able to make great use of it, we will benefit from studying and attempting to apply to our personal interactions whatever knowledge we might be able to glean from such study, as ultimately futile as it may be.

[Preechr]

KAHL:

I WILL NOW RANDOMLY AND CHRISTMASLY RESPOND TO VARIOUS COMMENTS YOU HAVE SO FAR MADE.

Kahljorn: you said morality was the physics of human interaction or something didnt you so wouldnt killing the entire human race for the sake of the planet or something inhuman be "Immoral" in some sense? You see how complicated these calculations can be!

Preechr: No and yes.

Kahljorn: lol seriously though good things always have good consequences? that's so vague and ambiguous, and so useless for morality! How could you ever use that as the compass of your being unless you were omniscient and knew what would have the best result? You ascribe to a very deterministic view point. I think that there is some base "design" in which things can have good results, but it's not so concrete at all, and that doing bad things might have good results sometimes. But i don't think that's any reason to act badly. Do you?

Preechr: What I said was that there is, in my opinion, an underlying order to human interactions. Yes, these interactions are very messy and complicated, and No, we can never hope to fully figure out how they all interrelate, but the order still exists, and we can benefit from the search for patterns in our actions and the subsequent reactions caused by said actions.

To do this as efficiently as possible, we will have to factor in for an infinite number of possible impurities introduced into our experiments, just like chemists, and, just like chemists, we will ultimately fail in getting it "exactly right." In a general sense, if I lie to you, the net value of that action taken will likely be negative to me, you and everyone touched by that action. Sure, I can see a situation in which my decision to lie to you might actually stop you from killing a thousand innocent children (Yes, Kahl... I really do think you are sexually attractive dressed up in your mother's bathrobe and fuzzy Winnie-The-Pooh slippers...) yet that lie (value -1 in this theoretical "equation..." not to scale...) is morally insignificant when compared to the total value of the net positive moral decisions made by all those little kids you killed when I told you the truth.

Kahljorn: yeah, well wut if won of thos kidz wuz HITLER?!?!!!one one

Preechr: Yep. It's very complicated. So is particle physics, but I think it's generally good that particle physicists are getting evaporated in the ongoing attempt to make me a way to someday, hopefully soon, beam me out of this discussion just like in Star Trek.

AChimp: Looks like I win once again! :bestthread Canada ROCKS!!!!

Kahljorn: lol ok ignore that what but seriously do you not see how what you're saying doesn't prove or even illustrate that atheists can't be moral, not even in theory?

Preechr: Did I say that? I don't think I did. What I believe, though I have not yet said it, is that atheists are fictional. They don't exist among those of us that possess enough cognitive ability to avoid drooling on our shoes. You know me... I don't look words up. I make up meanings to words, which is why I'm always right. Atheism is the belief that the belief in God does not exist, which is an obviously retarded thing to think.

Kahljorn: :squigly

Preechr: Yes, I know you never said that, but what did I tell you about letting me control a conversation?

Kahljorn: :domo

Preechr: Face it: Nobody on this planet has been raised through childhood with an intact environmentally unaffected view of a universe absent a Deity. Atheists believe in an absense of God, which is a belief in God.

AChimp: I Win!! I Win!! :rock

Preechr: Canadians and Atheist each make up about 6% of the world's population... about 9% combined... which is easy to discount from the 10,000 feet up view.

[kahljorn]

Preechr: Face it: Nobody on this planet has been raised through childhood with an intact environmentally unaffected view of a universe absent a Deity. Atheists believe in an absense of God, which is a belief in God.

Or maybe atheists know that the universe doesn't require a god and the thiests just believe in the absence of the lack of requirement of a god, which is a belief in the lack of requirement of a God. So it's really religion that's fictional!

Your statement is riddled with the presumption that god exists and that all thought is an attempt to get away from God, when really, I think at least, all thought is designed to understand "God."

Anyway, the other thing I said is that perhaps what athiests believe in when it comes to the universe and morality can be similar to what a religion thinks because the notion of "God" is kind of a label that attaches some type of trait but maybe "God" isn't something all that special, and maybe athiests can just attach a seperate label to the same thing and have the same understanding as if they considered it "God." Maybe they call it "Todd."

as to your pm response which you sent I thought of a better example than balls rolling down hills. Is it possible that a complex organism could work better with it's insides outside and outside inside? The mouth, eyes and nose could be where the stomach is, and the mouth could be some gross tube shaped organ. Is it even theoretically possible that such a thing could exist and thrive, short of having the universe inside it or something?
Does it require a God to make it like that?

The basic fiber of existence, if that's the best you can do when you get around to coming up with names for things, brings into existence"

Well, what is the first and most essential thing that is required for anything to exist? Existence?

I see the world and the universe as a beautiful and wonderful thing, and I find it very difficult to summarily write that off to happenstance.

Me too, but do you think that God personally painted the shit or that the various forces of nature formed it through a long process? I think God might be that process and the possibility of a process. How else could God have the qualities of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence?
But that's irrelevant. Whatever you're saying, the thing you're relying on the most is that things having a design, and being so beautiful, necessarily entails that there is a designer or artist behind everything. What I'm saying is that it's not necessary for there to be a designer, because there are certain things which likely could not be changed. It's just like you said, "If everything changed, then everything would change (or disappear)." But maybe, because of this, it is impossible to truly change.

Your basic fiber of existence is responsible for the perfection of the universe that contains us, as silly and self-destructive as we are.

I guess. Maybe that's just part of the design or something i dont know dude why don't you take it to the pastor. Oh wait here's an answer: I don't know maybe this is a contradictive statement! "SO PERFECT" "SO SILLY AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE." Perfection is self-destructive and silly, apparantly. Maybe the notion of perfection is silly and smug.

but your basic fiber of existence decided for whatever reason to hand us the reigns, at least from what I perceive your point of view to be.

Decide? Decision making authority? I don't know what to say about this right now, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it necessitates this being a "Decision." Why does the universe have to be some fucking dialogue for you are you insane or something. "What will you have, Mr. God" "i think I'll have an entire race of thinking human beings which contemplate my existence all the time but they can never guess it right because they never guess that I'm just a regular guy in a tuxedo."

and why do you think humans have the "Reigns?" What type of gangelous cockfaced deranged monster are you? More like left the reigns fucking dangling while he ditched the cart on the side of the road and we've been stuggling to grab them but we're only 1 mm tall.

[Preechr]

Most Cogent Kahl Post Ever!

[kahljorn]

I'm perfectly cogent. I just throw out too many unexplicated reasons which criticize your reasons, which you usually ignore.

[AChimp]

I'm good at winning threads, and I'm glad you've recognized this, Preechr!

[Preechr]

You are perfectly explicated at winning threads. Of this there is absomutibly lil doubt.

[kahljorn]

You're an intellectual pussy, preechr, you need to read some books besides Ayn Rand and the bible. Or maybe just think about things.

so are you going to respond to anything i said?

[Preechr]

Kahl, you're an intellectual trainwreck. I've told you before, you're a really smart guy, but you are impossible to respond to. I discussion is like putting together a part of a giant puzzle: we can argue about what pieces fit where, or if the pieces we are looking at even go in this part of the puzzle... You don't do that. Not only are you running around the house trying to find random objects that you can demand should be puzzle pieces... dried up old dog poo from the yard, the basket strainer out of the sink... you are also eating the puzzle pieces we have.

You are all over the map. That's why I love having you around but mostly don't like arguing with you. You consistently misread or refuse to read what I say, then argue with the things you made up. The more I try to re-explain myself, the more confused you get... How is that productive? Then, when I stop beating my head against the brick wall that is your mind, you start insulting me, hoping to bait me into talking with you more.

I've said it before: simply make a point, Kyle. Keep it short and pithy and on topic, and we can discuss it. Write a paragraph then distill it down to one sentence. If somebody responds... and this is important... try to understand what they really mean instead of assuming beforehand that whatever it is they are saying makes no sense. You have a really annoying habit of arguing with people that actually agree with you. The last step is even more important: Once you have stated an opinion, you can't go back later on and contradict it, so you have to mean what you say the first time.

That is why I sent you those books. What you lack is a fundamental set of core beliefs, and I thought maybe reading about someone else's core belief system, even you you were to disagree entirely with it, might inspire you to develop your own. Sometimes I get fleeting glimpses at various ideas I think you really do believe in, but you have yet to tie it all together in a way that makes sense. Before you can help with the other parts of the puzzle, first you have to put together the part of the puzzle that is your own mind.

Have a Merry Christmas and stuff.

[kahljorn]

I don't have to have an opinion or belief system in order to criticize you. Also, my responses in this thread are "Cogent" and fairly easy to understand. It's not all over the place and it's not undistilled. So quit trying to pussy out of responding. Here's a distillation of everything I said: Atheists, as far as morality goes, are equal to religious people; they are in no better position of understanding "net values" and "Objective" morality than atheists are. Also, even if God existed, just like he designed natural physical law, he designed moral law; atheists can understand physical laws, so they should be able to understand moral laws.

I usually criticize you on topic, you just have a problem with seeing weaknesses in your opinions and belief systems.

I'll distill your entire opinion in this thread down to a simple statement: you're begging the question -- on the moral front.

stuff like this kills me though:
If our decisions actually connect us so precisely within society, much like electrical bonds connecting atoms, isn't that just a little too perfect for happenstance?

So like if eveeryone is standing in the same backyard and the sprinklers come on everyone gets wet, isnt that just a little too perfect for happenstance? Thus god exists and athiests can't be moral!

also I would contest the notion that "Our decisions actually connect us so precisely within society" if I felt like it. I don't think there is any amount of precision. It's just a chaotic mass of crap that adds to (but doesn't cause) a causal chain and we all happen to be affected by it because we are proximate to this causal chain since we all live on the same planet.

[theapportioner]

I'm not going to read all this... if some of what I say has already been discussed, I apologize.

First, I think we ought to disambiguate the problem into several distinct questions. This is one area where ambiguity creates confusion.

1. What is the origin of morality?

2. What is the justification for morality?

3. What is the best explanation for morality?

A theory that best explains the origins of morality may not provide the best justification of, or explanation for it.

For instance, evolutionary psychology may provide a sound account of the origins of morality but not the best explanation for it, perhaps because it fails to capture the richness of our moral life.

[Preechr]

One of the questions I get asked (well, they don't ask me, but I hear it pretty often) is "If you're an atheist, where does your morality come from?"

Blah, blah, blah... Also, even if God existed, just like he designed natural physical law, he designed moral law; atheists can understand physical laws, so they should be able to understand moral laws.

There we go... Allright, let's walk through this, using what we've learned in this discussion, Ok?

First, since Emu asked about a position on morality from an atheistic point of view, let's discard the stuff about God existing and designing out for now, as that is off topic, though fun to talk about in another context.

What we are left with is something like "There IS physical law, and there IS moral law, and if atheists can understand physical laws, so they should be able to understand moral laws."

Now, when it comes to "physical law," Sloth made the distinction between what he called "The Real" and the imperfect language we use to describe everything and how it all does what it does, which is perfectly acceptable. "The Real" can never be completely explained or understood by us as it is entirely too complex, but by scratching at the surface of understanding it all, we can see an underlying order to the universe and try our best to experimentally predict what will happen when we mix chemicals or drop things or shoot stuff into space.

Using what we have learned so far by scratching the surface of "The Real" has and will continue to produce tangible results that we call technology, which we find useful in medicine, communication, travel, cooking and blowing things up.

As you have stated, atheists can understand and use our understanding of "physical laws," or "The Real," just as well as any religious person can, all else being equal.

You have proposed that another "The Real" exists when it comes to morality, and it seems that you agree that it has a similar relationship to what we call the study of morality as the other "The Real" has to what we call the study of physics. For us to completely understand either, we would have to know everything there is to know about every reaction between everything from the beginning of time to it's end, all at once, which is impossible.

By scratching the surface of the underlying "The Real" of right and wrong, good and bad, though, we can gain at least a limited understanding of how the decisions we make affect the people and things around us and try to assign positive or negative values to them. Just like our study of physics has produced tangible results over the years, our study of morality has given us a clearer picture of right and wrong, good and bad, positive and negative.

No belief system, religious or secular, could possibly claim to fully understand "The Real" of morality completely... no more than any scientist will ever be able to completely explain the physical universe in more than an extremely general sense. Any given atheist is as able to comprehend this as was Jesus or Buddha, but we all benefit generally from trying to apply what we have figured out so far in such a way as to get the most positives out of our day to day decision making as we can.

As BPG noted, this is just a larger view of the kind of cost-benefit method Emu didn't feel right about, but I think it's a comprehensive enough theory to put us all on the same moral ground, which is what I think he was originally after.

[kahljorn]

That was a long, pointless post. What are you, a politician?

[Preechr]

There you go again... arguing with somebody that agrees with you...

What are you, a woman? A badger?

[kahljorn]

Ya? I don't care if you agree with me, I care that I read a post about you summarizing the thread and ending it with, THATS SOMETHING WE CAN ALL AGREE WITH, rather than actually responding to any thoughts in the thread.

We know how to read preechr, and what you said didn't even add to the discussion.

[Preechr]

Lmao... What we have yet to determine is whether or not YOU can read, lil buddy... Somewhere you invented the idea that I don't believe that atheists can be moral and that I sit around reading the Bible. Go back and read through what was actually written and you will see that all you've been doing is fighting strawmen and arguing with yourself... You have agreed with me all along, Kahl.

I thought the time off might have done you good.

...and now comes the time when I stop responding altogether and you start calling me a pedophile or something. Have fun!

[kahljorn]

last i checked the dumb stuff you said was dumb regardless of if you agree with me or not :(

[Vanhelm13]

I think that everyone creates their own moral code as they are raised by parents, and their community as a whole. I think that it's a matter of exposure. If someone was raised in a place where raping puppies was a cool thing to do, then that person would be like "Raping puppies is fine" while (for the most part) we would disagree.

I mean, being the moral less atheist I am, I think raping puppies is fucking awesome.

[Big Papa Goat]

I don't know how this thread got this long, as far as I could tell, the last word was had by the Canadians on the first page.

[AChimp]

Seconded.

[kahljorn]

ya somebody brought up cultural/moral relativism and the entire search for morality ends. The entire problem with cultural relativism in any type of argument is that, just because cultures have differing meanings of good, doesn't mean that the good doesn't exist in some constant form which just hasn't been discovered yet (or has been and just isn't recognized as such).

Don't social philosophers usually ignore the concept of cultural relativism in any setting, except as a standard of objectivity for research purposes, because it's meaningless and pompous? You just end up whitewashing the world in something like nihilism, and not really discovering anything. WELL ITS ONLY GOOD BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE AT THESE TIMES DECLARED IT GOOD AND IT WORKED FOR THEM SO THE GOOD ISNT REALLY GOOD AT ALL SO WE CANT EVEN TALK ABOUT IT AT ALL.
"I WANT TO MAKE THIS LAW BUT I KNOW THAT IN 100 YEARS SOMEBODY WILL PROBABLY DISAGREE WITH IT." stuff like that happens or should happen logically (if you're consistent)! Eventually in order to make any sort of law you have to go out on a limb AND BE AFRAID THAT YOURE WRONG, completely ignoring cultural relativism. If you didn't, then things would be exactly the same in 1000 years.
Cultural relativism is a good argument ender but it's not really a good argument it's kind of like an appeal to ignorance or something like that, it's completely meaningless, but it sure sounds meaningful. Pointing out that there are different moralities and we don't know which one is REALLY right or maybe all of them are right! is pretty weightless. It doesn't mean that there isn't a "Right" morality just because we don't know it.

I don't think that noting cultural and moral relativism exist, and throwing in sociological utilitarian calculations of this relativism, really reconciles atheists with morality. All it really does is reinforce the problems with atheists and morality ;/ I mean maybe you could extend it as a critique of religious thought but that would be gay and pointless anyway.

the reason people say that atheists and cultural relativistic type people can't really be "Moral" is because they have no objective standard to look to, outside of law which isn't a good standard of morality AS ACHIMP BROUGHT UP because it reflects the standards of the time, so what is good is only temporally good because people believe it's good. With God giving us certain morals we have an objective moral standard to look to which supposedly persists throughout time; however, atheists and relativist type people can't or don't see this objective morality (unless they see what I was talking about).

Obviously there's millions of better ways to argue against this than bringing up relativism.

oh ya and finally the utilitarian benefit of an action is only one way to calculate if something is moral or immoral, and it's not like such calculations aren't without critique.