I take it that most (though not all) non-theists assume that atheism does not entail nihilism. More specifically, most non-theists don’t believe that denying the existence of God or the immortality of the soul entails that truth, love, beauty, goodness, and justice are empty words.
But as we’ve seen in numerous discussions, the anti-materialist holds that this commitment is not one to which we are rationally entitled. Rather, the anti-materialist seems to contend, someone who denies that there is any transcendent reality beyond this life cannot be committed to anything other than affirmation of power (or maximizing individual reproductive success) for its own sake.
The question is, why is the anti-materialist mistaken about what non-theists are rationally entitled to? (Anti-materialists are also welcome to clarify their position if I’ve mischaracterized it.)
If you hold an irrational belief, vilifying those who don’t hold it is a psychological tactic.
You think that it is not rationale, leave as the most reach people in the world with the people with real power until you get sixty and get hone, food, dress and health care for the rest of your life at the expenses of the taxpayers you fooled. I found it very rationale.
It was intended as dichotomy, this or that, but as two possible examples.
Then good behavior is irrational unless there are consequences for you.
Then you have good behavior only to avoid the consequences.
If you want a citation for Nietzsche’s criticisms of democracy, I’d have to wait till I got home — right now I’m traveling and away from my books for a while — but I’m pretty sure it’s in Beyond Good and Evil, among other places.
True . . . though, interestingly enough, most of the Greek thinkers whose works have survived the millennia were quite suspicious of democracy. (Plato’s pessimism about it in Republic is, I’ve been told, fairly typical of Athenian aristocrats — as they saw it, democracy is susceptible to being co-opted by charismatic demagogues, and that’s what led to the Peloponnesian War and Athens’ humiliating defeat.)
I was more sympathetic to it when I was younger, and I think it still works with regard to the kind of Christianity one sees on “the right”, which is very much bound up with resentment, with hatred of sensuality and pleasure, and anxiety about unpoliced sexuality. But when it comes to liberal and left-wing Christians, I’m much more inclined to adopt a Deweyan position (e.g. “the essence of religion is the religious attitude, and has nothing to do with any commitment to supernaturalism one way or the other”). Religious liberals and Deweyan non-theists do not, I have found, disagree on matters of substance; rather, they rely on different metaphors to express their existential orientations towards reality.
As Petrushka said I follow Jesus because is a rationalization for why I should behave in some way.
Where you want to go Allan? You are trying to say that following Jesus is irrational? We have to start the discussion about what is rational, but seems superfluous as atheist already admited that their good behavior is irrational.
Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree then. I’ll take my modest lifestyle and freedom over spending my final years in prison at the taxpayers’ expense. Not to mention one of his sons is in prison and the other hanged himself.
Hardly. Consequences are not necessary for any given behavior to be rational. It would be rather silly, however, if the are consequences to ignore them. As an example, there are, as far as I know, no consequences for my being polite to you on this forum, yet it is still perfectly rational for me to be such.
Blas,
Do you think Bernie Madoff is happy? Why would it be rational to follow in the footsteps of a deeply unhappy man?
One gets the impression that Blas and perhaps also WJM would not be persuaded by Plato’s argument that the tyrant is the unhappiest person of all.
WJM is right in that the cultural implications of theism are hugely pervasive, at least to the extent that Christianity greatly impacts us all.
There is much Nietzsche said about Christianity that still has relevance to the thinking of atheists, let alone moderate Christians. I include my thinking. It is not just right wing attitudes. For example, Jesus said much that was socialistic.
Christian cultural assumptions are something to be aware of for anyone. I may write an article on why I think Fred’s critique(s) of Christianity is still relevant.
And the “war on terrorism”.
Blas,
No. You’re the one who brought rationality into the discussion. I’m trying to understand why you challenge atheists on rationality (if they follow someone’s example) but don’t seem to think it matters in your choice of example. I don’t think it’s irrational to follow an example set by others, in and of itself. It’s how we learn. But you apparently do.
What makes discussion superfluous is your insistence that people hold positions they do not.
Plato in his republic presented the dilemma of what have we to pursue the perfect justice or the perfect injustice. Calling the perfect justice a man that acts with justice but it is perceived by all as injustice and the pefect injustice a man that acts without justice but is perceived by all the others as a just man.
Do you remember what was his solution to make perfect justice better than perfect injustice? The same that 2000 years Kant found to make a morality possible. An eternal soul, a judgement after life with a Judge and punishment and rewards.
If you look at my answer I started it with a conditional
Allan Miller:
What makes discussion superfluous is your insistence that people hold positions they do not.
I understood that petrushka admitted she do not have a rationale for her good behavior and I didn´t see other comment saying the contrary.
I think you might be getting confused by the subtle difference of the words:
Rationale (noun)
1: an explanation of controlling principles of opinion, belief, practice, or phenomena
2: an underlying reason : basis
Rational (adjective)
1 a : having reason or understanding
1 b : relating to, based on, or agreeable to reason : reasonable
So, Petrushka may not have a rationale for good behavior, but that behavior is still rational.
Blas, you have typed a lot of words, but you haven’t presented a particularly interesting case.
To the extent you have argued for a theistic based morality, you have presented it as a utilitarian argument.
Specifically you have presented a crass and cynical utilitarian argument. Lie to the people in order to control them. Perhaps you don’t consider it a lie, but at best, all the religions in history are lies except the one true religion. So if there are utilitarian benefits of religion, they are benefits of lying.
The downside of this is that bad people are not necessarily stupid. They see the benefit of pretending to be pious. It gives them cover. Not only that, but they can become priests and mold doctrine to benefit themselves. Historically this has been what organized religions have done. Accumulate power and wealth.
But there is a more serious flaw in your argument. You assume that rationality requires unbridled selfishness. You are simply wrong.
Game theory is currently the highest and best rational analysis of how to maximize one’s interest., and game theory does not support unbridled selfishness.
So your analysis fails at every level. It fails to be self-consistently moral, because it supports lying. And it fails to be utilitarian.
Blas,
We’re going in circles. “I admire the example they set” is a reason to follow someone’s example. Of course, if you start the ‘yes, but why’ game, you soon get to a question I can’t answer. I could play the same game. And not everything is the result of a conscious decision. Do I need a rational basis for admiring pretty women?
If your reason to follow Jesus is that you fear Hell, that is certainly rational. It does not mean that fear of punishment is the only rational basis for following an example, nor that rationality is the only basis on which we do anything.
From which you conclude that no atheist has a rational basis for any aspect of their behavioural set?
Darwinits are fantastic joking with the meaning of words!
Sure I din´t make any interesting case. I only asked you if you do not have reason for good behavior, your answer was yes. Then I concluded that good behavior is irrational for atheist. That is consistent with the previous conclusion that atheism entails nihilism.
That´s all.
No all atheist, but the atheist that are commenting here.
You are distorting my position.
Of course I have reasons. What I do not have is a guidebook.
I’m going to assume that in your native language you do not speak or write by referencing every work to a rule book. Most people speak fluently. that is without thinking about sentence structure or grammar. Exceptions might include people editing text for publication or for a public speech.
An most people moral fluently. They do not consult a book or a table of benefits and costs every time they interact with other people.
The can do so because the capacity for fluent moral behavior is built into most people. they only need to be exposed to examples in early childhood. Just as they learn language without being taught.
For hard cases we have schools that teach rules of grammar, but they just polish the tendencies that are learned by example. Same for moral behavior. Most people do not need to be schooled to have the desire to be good. they pick that up from parents. We have rules to polish and refine manners and morals, not to instill them. And rules for hard cases.
For people who have no inborn tendency to learn morality, we have laws and prisons. People who have no inner moral compass are seldom stupid enough to be deceived by fairy tales. They often benefit from the trappings of piety, but aren’t inhibited.
Please let me ask another question regarding this post of yours. Suppose you were offered the following: For the first 60 years of your life, you would have access to hundreds of millions of dollars to spend however you liked. You could own yachts, fancy cars, hang out with celebrities, whatever you wanted. All this money would be freely given to you, so this offer would not require any dishonesty on your part.
On your 60th birthday, you would have to report to prison to spend the rest of your life away from your loved ones. Let’s say they were not aware of this arrangement, so your family would obviously be shocked to see you taken away. On the plus side, you would receive free room, board, and medical care at the taxpayers’ expense.
Would you accept this offer?
This is a question for a sociopath. Someone with no empathy. It is not a question about morality, but about following laws.
Human society would collapse if everyone (or the majority of people) gauged every decision by the calculus of what they could get away with. tis is true of religious people also. Christians have been known to calculate whethwer they can repent on their deathbed and avoid punishment for a life of crime.
There’s a famous scene in Hamlet dealing with this.
The upshot is that there is no religious downside to being a murderer if you make a timely repentance. This is what becomes of rationalized morality.
You know my answer is no, but if wouldn´t have the resons I have I would take that offer.
From which you conclude that no atheist has a rational basis for any aspect of their behavioural set?
Blas
No all atheist, but the atheist that are commenting here.
I suspect those atheists consider your rationale as not rational.
Then your good behavior is based in what you was teached. Is rationale what you was teached? There are reason for your good behavior or you do what you were teached?
This seems contradictory and bit authoritarian
Well you are confusing morality with legality. There are many immoral people out there that get away with his morality but seems atheist don´t see them with the exception when they have bring the “evil argument”.
I´m sure they do. It would be irrationale they do not. But the point is not if my reasons are rationale or not for you, the point is that you do not have any rationale.
Please explain the difference. And explain why in Abrahamic religions, the rules of conduct are called the Law.
Even Jesus refers to the obligations to love God and love you neighbor as laws.
I have already explained why cooperation is rational. Please pay attention.
I find it interesting that atheists keep referring to “empathy” as the basis of morality. Why should I use empathy as the basis of how I should behave? Why should anyone?
William, empathy isn’t a calculus.
Empathy is an appetite. One likes sugar. One doesn’t choose to kike sugar.
One doesn’t choose to have or not have empathy. Empathy is an appetite that leads to cooperative behavior.
Your misunderstanding leads me to believe that you lack any internal desire to help others or be cooperative and can only understand morality in terms of externally applied carrots and sticks.
I find this discussion interesting.
My son is red-green colorblind. Which is kind of awkward because he worked for ten years as a photographer. He learned to color-correct images in PhotoShop. He was able to do this because PhotoShop has tools that analyze color attributes.
So he was able to form a rational perception of color without being able to see it.
I’m left wondering if religion doesn’t function as a kind of MoralShop, enabling people to form a rational perception of morality without being able to feel it.
Maybe I wasn’t clear on the meaning of your statement that Bernie Madoff’s course of action was rational then. What are the reasons you wouldn’t accept the offer? Obviously you have many, just like me, but perhaps you could explain a few.
I’ll go first: I can foresee that my eventual separation would cause me and my family great pain. The fact that my family would suffer would actually be the worst part for me, by the way. I know I would not be capable of suppressing this pain. So, just as I would not choose to lay my hand on a hot stove, I would not accept the offer.
I’m pretty much convinced that our loyal opposition here simply can’t comprehend actually feeling pain as a result of seeing it in others. I used the analogy of color blindness, and I think it’s apt.
I do believe that most people avoid causing pain, not because of rules, but because it hurts themselves.
So to expand on Blas’ call for rationality, I ask Blas, is it rational to avoid putting one’s hand on a hot stove?
There are (rare) people born without the ability to feel physical pain. It seems more common to be born with a diminished capacity for empathy. Perhaps the word empathy can’t be understood because it is an unseen and unseeable color.
Blas,
Still bollocks, Blas, however small you wish to describe the circle. Extrapolating from a single statement to even one more individual (especially one who is reading and writing here, and can speak for themselves) is unwarranted.
Who is telling you you should “use empathy as the basis as how [you] should behave”? It seems to come naturally to the people that I like to associate with and, on a wider scale, share a community with. If you lack empathy, I suspect it’s too late for you to get the habit. Perhaps you live in a situation remote enough from the wider world that it doesn’t matter.
Jewish used to refer as The and The Profets. Also Jesus refers as him prefectioning the Law. But for christians is more common cal them commandments. At least in my countries.
Yes is a bit confusing, but you use the term laws independant of the source of the authority, but usually legality means the compliance with the objective laws that rules a society and given by the authorities of that society. Morality is the compliance with the own consciusness of what we think is good or bad.
Yes cooperation is rational, but it is not a reason by itself you do not cooperate because cooperate is good. You do for something , for good behavior , murderer , make attack with bombs for some reason or not.
Yes one do not choose to like sugar, there is no reason for like sugar bar evolutio did me in that way as there is no reason to behave in a particular way bar I´m done in that way.
Ok, you can argue that religion is irrational, that do not make that your good behavior is irrational.
You usually extrapolate from the beak finch of galapagos that a bacteria become a whale.
No matter you do not rationalize when you act in that way avoiding what hurts is rationale, and was the type of answers for rationale our good behavior from atheist, acepting that there is no rationale surprise me.
William J. Murray,
Like petrushka, I wonder if this may be something you don’t experience. It’s hard to explain sensations to those that lack them.
And you ask “why should I …”. No reason. It’s not a roadmap, carrot or stick. That’s the job of religion (or the law). If it’s the only thing keeping you from being mean, far be it from me to offer an alternative. I merely explain how it is for me – benighted subjective-moralist that I am.
It’s not primarily about how I want others to behave, whereas religion seems very much about control-of-others. This is why that question comes up over and over. How are we going to control everyone if we can’t give them Reasons to be Fearful? Libertarian my arse!
Give an example of something that is good or bad without reference to whether it helps or hurts someone else.
Alan & Petrushka,
Given the current state of the world and its history (not just physical violence, but corruption, fraud, oppression, institutionalized deceptions & manipulation, etc.), isn’t it more likely the case that you and maybe a small percentage of others have natural empathetic feelings beyond what most people have?
You are aware, are you not, of what large groups of people are capable of doing? And, what they are capable of ignoring for the sake of their jobs? Atheists like to point out the Catholic church, but what about the ongoing, historical epidemic of pedophilia and sexual abuse in the entertainment industry? What about entrenched systemic political corruption all the way down to the “grass roots” on both sides of the aisle? What about a media that attempts to dictate narratives compatible with a political agenda?
Are you aware of how many scandals have been covered up in the name of college athletic programs and to preserve the economic benefit of having a well-respected college in the community? Or what kind of scandals are covered up by various industries to protect their profit margin – like, for instance, the cruise business?
What about big business, working hand in hand with big government, to fix laws that bilk taxpayers out of billions, or mortgage future generations to the tune of trillions of dollars? Why is Washington DC one of the richest areas in the nation?
This is not a case of a handful of top dogs making back-room deals; this is a case of the rank and file profiting from unethical or immoral activities that generally keep their mouth shut. Every once in a while, though, we get a whistle-blower.
Around the world other cultures think nothing of killing, torturing or oppressing anyone with views different from their own. Ethnic genocide still goes on today. The adult and child sex slave business is booming worldwide. Warlords and dictators think nothing of starving sections of their own population.
Let’s remember that there have been studies that show that most people are more likely to behave morally or ethically if they feel like they’re being watched and if they are primed with religious concepts about right and wrong.
Have you ever seen the TV show “what would you do”? In those shows, the vast majority of people ignore it when an injustice is going on in front of them, or when someone appears to be harming someone else – if not physically, then via abuse or some kind of scheme. About the only time you get a majority of people to do something is if a child is involved.
I think that given the facts available, the two of you (and others here)are being extremely naive about what most human beings are like, and what they would do if fully released from a belief in some form of Divine justice and moral obligation.
Eat too much?
I’m pretty sure I’m more empathetic than most males (of which I am one). And I accept that this is a spectrum trait.
But so is verbal fluency, a spectrum capability.
My argument is that moraling is a built-in capability, like language, and we pick it up without being explicitly taught. Most people are morally fluent without having to engage in extensive rationalizing. One doesn’t have to justify cooperative behavior. We do it because it feels good and because it is natural.
Temptation is real. But we learn to resist temptation the same way we learn to accept delayed gratification. At our mother’s knee, so to speak. It’s a natural part of growing up.
Most of us do not require draconian consequences attached to decisions. We want to hold our head up among friends and relatives. a slight nudge here and there is sufficient to keep us on the road.
My point would be that for people who don’t have this childhood training or who are incapable of achieving an inner moral compass, religion doesn’t offer any benefit. In fact it offers concealment and camouflage. There are immoral people, but they will cheat at religion just as they cheat at everything else.
William J. Murray,
I would describe myself as cautiously positive in the matter of human nature. I certainly don’t think that everyone’s nice, nor all capable of being nice, nor that nice people are nice all the time. I lock my doors at night. But it is striking how commonly we recognise the same ‘good’ and ‘evil’. You might see that as resulting from theism’s instruction on the matter. I think that is certainly influential, but I do think that theism’s strictures themselves were grounded in a base of shared genetic/cultural understanding of (what we call) right and wrong. It’s how we are able to have conversations about it, even if we disagree about the ‘right’ approach to an ethical framework.
One sees this commonality in the response to popular culture. It is designed to have mass appeal (it sells), and that appeal is to our sense of fairness and justice. Oppressors and bad guys lose, we cheer the hero for their integrity, courage and kindness to the weak. We get lumps in our throats at the appropriate points, feel a grim satisfaction when the villain finally gets theirs … we are being manipulated, but willingly so.
What happens on the screen is what we’d like to happen in reality. We want the triumph of good over evil. The thing that makes me trust human nature is how broadly that ‘want’ is felt. (To the extent, for some, that if it ain’t gonna happen in this life, it damn well better happen in the next!).
I don’t regard theism as inherently bad for society, but nor is it always in opposition to evil. As a human construct, it is subject to human frailties. I don’t think my society is worse now (when theists are dwindling) than say in the Middle Ages when everyone was a believer (and could be hanged for a loaf).
I think that on aggregate, people are behaving better because no one is starving.
I realize the “no one” part of that isn’t literally true, but it’s closer to true than it has been in human history. I think we can say there are no purely economic reasons for people starving. Starvation as it remains is a political tool.
People are, on average, richer than in previous centuries, and in those places where most people have food and a place to live, violent crime has diminished.
Perhaps bread does more than Milton can, to justify morality to man.
Do you also believe your family members and coworkers, i.e., those you know well IRL, would behave like ‘wild animals’ without the constraint of religion?
(*edited for clarity)
socle,
Yes, my ‘naivete’ is based on some substantial experience of people. I’ve encountered some twats, but ‘decent’ seems to be the default setting. (Even some twats are ‘decent’, they’re just twats! 😉 )
petrushka,
Certainly a factor. Our morality is somewhat idealistic and circumstantially modified.
The people I know personally, theists of various stripes as well as atheists, all seem quite capable of empathy. Either the “loyal opposition” are outliers or they recognize, consciously or not, that admitting to empathy greatly weakens their position that morality derives from gods.
I prefer to think it is the latter.