Atheistic forms of morality

[Elok]

Originally posted by Admiral
Your comment res Kant:

It's actually my understanding that Kant was not trying to create an ethics seperate from God, but rather was trying to create an ethics around a rational idea of Christianity.

Also, without going into serious depth, my reading of Derrida leads me to the conclusion that Christian religion precludes a real ethical system.

Kant is a bit obtuse, but yes, I do understand that he was some form of Christian. However, his ethics were not explicitly religious (and were mentioned to me in an earlier thread as an example of non-religious ethics). If you want to strike mention of him from the record, fair enough.

Your second statement bears discussion, assuming it's based on a valid criticism rather than one of the bajillion atheist strawmen floating around the internet (after a certain amount of time arguing on this subject, I'm naturally suspicious). Could you PM me, or start another thread?

[Odin]

Re: Atheistic forms of morality

Originally posted by Elok

*Morality is a good survival strategy, in Darwinian terms. Except it isn't, most of the time. Morality as most of us think of it includes some component of altruism, which is by definition NOT evolutionary beneficial. Altruism sacrifices your own interests without hope of return. It's a powerful human instinct and I think it's admirable, but from a survival aspect it's not too useful. Look at abolitionism in 19th-century America. What kind of crazy person is willing to risk violence and alienation for the sake of a powerless element of society?

Natural selection on the level on the organism cannot produce altrusim that is not reciprocal, but natural slection at the group level can (as long as a species is a highly social one that lives in tightly knit groups). So yes, evolution can create morality.

[Spiffor]

Despite being an atheist, my morals mostly come from the statement "Don't do unto others as you would not have them do unto you"

I generally believe that a more functional and cooperative society is a good thing, and I try to do my part to help it. However, like any other person, I sometimes don't do what my morality tells me to do. And I even occasionaly find excuses for the immoral behaviour.

[CrONoS]

Atheism is the final step for a man before he's ready to be embrace by God...

See you in heaven Atheist people...

[Elok]

Re: Re: Atheistic forms of morality

Originally posted by Odin
Natural selection on the level on the organism cannot produce altrusim that is not reciprocal, but natural slection at the group level can (as long as a species is a highly social one that lives in tightly knit groups). So yes, evolution can create morality.

Yes, because when it happens in a tightly knit social group, the activity becomes reciprocal as a result of everybody doing it. Like the way I'm told geese will drop back out of the flock to help along a wounded comrade, at their own risk. But that's a pretty knee-jerk thing. The geese do it instinctively. If you're ever a hurt goose, you can pretty much assume that others will at least try to help you back. Human beings don't act nice reflexively, except occasionally in a very minor way as engrained by social custom.

And in a sufficiently tight-knit group, such "altruism" differs little from egotism, as it strengthens the group one is a part of. You ensure that your companions will be in good shape to help you in the future. But look at other incidents in the animal world: I remember reading in some nature magazine about a species of seagull whose females will sometimes go into a mating posture when they see males with fish. When the male flaps eagerly down to mount, the female quickly turns her head around, snatches the fish from Romeo's jaws, and flies off in a rush while the guy sits there wondering what happened. In other words, this was the gull equivalent of gold-digging women. It doesn't happen often, but it rarely fails.

Or, look at lions. It's not very nice to wait for a hyena to hunt down an animal and kill it, then drive said hyena away from the kill with your superior size and eat it all. But lions have probably been getting away with that little trick since before the existence of human beings. It works. Is there a reason they shouldn't do it?

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Elok
Oh boy, we're off on the wrong foot already.

Nope, you asked a question and we answered, but probably not how you wanted

On that note, BlackCat: Lay off the vigorous offensive, sil vous plait. I did not mean to imply that religious societies are "perfect," or that Europe is the source of all evil, I was merely using well-known counterexamples (and arguing in terms of hypothetical moral dilemmas). For example, if we are to be moral for the sake of our loved ones, how do we condemn nepotism, or other obvious wrongs which may benefit those we love? And if we are to look beyond "mere survival," what context do we use to determine our values? Think Sartre. What you mean by reference to religious thinkers is beyond me; Kant's system of ethics was nontheistic, Mill was agnostic, and Sidgwick was afaik a secular humanist. Care to explain?

Why should I not be answering in an offensive way ? (that is if we understand offensive in the same way ). You might have thought no evil, but your OP still set up claims about "evil" europeans and that has to be shot down mercilessly - it improves you crediblity when you drop such things.

Same with the claim that religious societies are more ethical than nonreligious. That is the claim of your OP but it fails totally since many western societies are nonreligous and still have ethics.

About the nepotism, then the common trend is that what you would suspect isn't happening. F.ex. owners of companies aren't automatically giving the control to their children - so nepostism in the secular world are actually declining. That stiil isn't seen in relgious societies.

I really don't care what your references belived, what I cared about was how you used them - your OP may have been a troll, but taken by value, your use of references was quite religious. Please stand by your viewpoints and postings.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Despite being an atheist, my morals mostly come from the statement "Don't do unto others as you would not have them do unto you"

I generally believe that a more functional and cooperative society is a good thing, and I try to do my part to help it. However, like any other person, I sometimes don't do what my morality tells me to do. And I even occasionaly find excuses for the immoral behaviour.

But what do you do when society prospers by being obnoxious? For example, look at slavery again (I'm reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for one of my classes, so it comes readily as an example). In the earlier days of American colonization, before mechanization made the foul system more of an embarrassment than it was worth, it was the most effective way for society to process raw goods. There were a lot of crops to grow, etc., and not enough people around who would do it at low enough wages to make the process economical. Importing Africans and abusing them into doing it for us was enormously profitable at first.

The eventual Civil War was hardly inevitable; slavery was by that time an obsolete relic, one which the south refused to relinquish out of pure stubbornness. It proved to be wholly unnecessary as well. After the war, former slaves simply worked for the same old masters they had before, only for lousy wages in the place of lousy room and board. No need to use force, as they had nowhere else to go, only a variety of lousy-wage-payers to choose from. All in all, slavery wasn't too bad for American prosperity. It just happened to be perverse and degrading, and in the absence of preexisting values, what does that mean?

[Admiral]

Originally posted by Elok


Kant is a bit obtuse, but yes, I do understand that he was some form of Christian. However, his ethics were not explicitly religious (and were mentioned to me in an earlier thread as an example of non-religious ethics). If you want to strike mention of him from the record, fair enough.

My understanding of Kant:

Kant, interested in reason, attempted to reconcile reason and religion. This led him to the idea of what he called "reflecting faith," wherein we rely on inner moral conviction, rather than historical knowledge, to avoid sin. More specifically, we must suspend our belief in God, and prove our moral worth independant of any divine guidance. Kant argues that the only religion that can engender this kind of faith is Christianity, for Christianity frees us from the expectation of the Messiah; Christ has already died, and can offer no more guidance. Pure morality is therefore indistinguishable from Christianity, and Kantian moral theory is evangelical.

Your second statement bears discussion, assuming it's based on a valid criticism rather than one of the bajillion atheist strawmen floating around the internet (after a certain amount of time arguing on this subject, I'm naturally suspicious).

I'm going to retract my previous statement. To make it more topical:

Max Weber (if I recall correctly) talks about "the morality of ultimate ends." This is the idea, central to the notion that a system of ethics must revolve around religion, that we must in the end be responsible to God. I have seen an analysis of Derrida and Levinas (and for the record, it was last semester, so I may not remember the argument completely) that this idea of a responsibility only to God leads to an aporia between a person and the rest of the world. Also, it inevitably inscribes values or identities onto other people that is essentially inethical. Rather, we must understand others as ultimately Other, and accept responsibility to them. I'd go further into this right now, but must run, but I can assure you that the argument is very interesting. If you have loads of free time, I ran across it in Moral Spaces, edited by Campbell and some other guy whose name eludes me.

[BlackCat]

Re: Re: Re: Atheistic forms of morality

Originally posted by Elok
Or, look at lions. It's not very nice to wait for a hyena to hunt down an animal and kill it, then drive said hyena away from the kill with your superior size and eat it all. But lions have probably been getting away with that little trick since before the existence of human beings. It works. Is there a reason they shouldn't do it?

No. Why should they drop such a good way to get food ?

[Kuciwalker]

Morality is codified human behavior. My morality is a set of axioms by which I attempt to describe how I behave, modified towards how I would like to think that I behave. Both how I behave and how I would like to think that I behave are consequences of the organization and structure of my brain, which is a consequence of my genetics and my upbringing. While I may reason formally or informally from these axioms, which I may have explicitly explored and stated or may merely understand implicitly without really thinking about it, there is no rational justification for the axioms themselves, nor need there be, since they are me. When a large number of people share a similar set of axioms, they can argue about morality with each other and enforce their common morality.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Elok
But what do you do when society prospers by being obnoxious?

I fight the obnoxiousness with politics. The aim of my morals isn't "the good of the society" as an alpha and an omega, but to contribute (at my induividual level) to mutual understanding and to a general feeling of broad sympathy for the fellow men.

And I don't really understand why you target this question at an atheist specifically. You could ask exactly the same question to any Christian who follows the Golden Rule. The only difference is that a Christian will follow the Golden Rule because it is in the Bible, whereas I follow the Golden Rule because it fits my particular worldview. Even though there is a difference in the reasons why we follow the Golden Rule, the applications of it are the same, and can lead to unclarities like any other broad principle.

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by Elok


But what do you do when society prospers by being obnoxious? For example, look at slavery again (I'm reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for one of my classes, so it comes readily as an example). In the earlier days of American colonization, before mechanization made the foul system more of an embarrassment than it was worth, it was the most effective way for society to process raw goods. There were a lot of crops to grow, etc., and not enough people around who would do it at low enough wages to make the process economical. Importing Africans and abusing them into doing it for us was enormously profitable at first.

The eventual Civil War was hardly inevitable; slavery was by that time an obsolete relic, one which the south refused to relinquish out of pure stubbornness. It proved to be wholly unnecessary as well. After the war, former slaves simply worked for the same old masters they had before, only for lousy wages in the place of lousy room and board. No need to use force, as they had nowhere else to go, only a variety of lousy-wage-payers to choose from. All in all, slavery wasn't too bad for American prosperity. It just happened to be perverse and degrading, and in the absence of preexisting values, what does that mean?

Ehrm, slavery was mainly based (wrong word) on religion.

[Elok]

BC: I made no such claim about religious societies being superior. I'm talking about individual moral decisions here. We can agree that some things are good and others are bad, and I want to know what's meant by "good" and "bad." I'm talking about our capacity to derive a system of ethics from a non-religious worldview. I think I shouldn't steal even if I could get away with it, because it is a sin against God and man (with theological implications, which I don't think I need to go into for the sake of this example). You (I assume) also think you shouldn't steal even if you could get away with it. Why?

The fact that some people behave decently despite being non-religious, and that some religious folk are total weasels, is interesting but not strictly germane. People can, undeniably, come up with systems to explain their urge for common decency that don't rely on religious belief. I just don't think the systems I've heard explain them very well at all. When the chips are down, they all seem to appear (speaking quite frankly) to beg the question: "You should be moral because it is the right thing to do." Which actually seems WORSE to me than "you should be moral because God says so," because instead of relying on a supernatural belief, it's purely tautological.

Again, I'm not trying to attack people here, I just honestly don't get it. Is there a secular morality that doesn't run in circles?

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Elok
When the chips are down, they all seem to appear (speaking quite frankly) to beg the question: "You should be moral because it is the right thing to do." Which actually seems WORSE to me than "you should be moral because God says so," because instead of relying on a supernatural belief, it's purely tautological.

In my case, I would say that it's "You should be moral, because we all benefit in the long run, including yourself". I actually think many morals (regardless whether they have a supernatural legitimacy or not) have been developed from this principle.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Elok
Again, I'm not trying to attack people here, I just honestly don't get it. Is there a secular morality that doesn't run in circles?

See my post.

My reason for trying to convince others of my set of axioms is that that is one of my axioms - that I should get people to behave according to them (e.g. don't kill people). My argument doesn't actually have to be formally correct as long as it convinces someone.

However, usually I argue from axioms that I have in common with others, that some thing or another is moral, and in those cases having a truly correct argument is important both for self-justification and for convincing the other party.