There are a number of professed atheists in this forum. I was curious as to what sort of moral imperative atheists are beholden to when presumably no one is looking. Speaking as a theist, I am constantly cognizant that there is a God who considers what I do and is aware of what I do, even though that awareness on my part may not always result in the moral behavior which I aspire to. But let’s take a fairly mundane example — say theft. We’re talking about blatant theft in a context where one could plausibly or even likely get away with it. I affirm to you that as a Christian, or more relevantly possibly, as a theist, I would never do that. Possibly it has just as much to do with my consideration for the feelings and rights of some other individual, who has “legal” possession of said items, as it has to do with my awareness of an omniscient creator who is aware of what I’m doing and who would presumably not bless me if I violated his laws. I mean, I care about the rights of other people. And, considering other moral tableaus, those of a sexual nature for example — I would personally never consider going to a prostitute for example, in that I feel empathy for that person, and how they are degrading themselves in the sight of God, and how I would not want to contribute to their degradation, so that my own human lust would never result in me victimizing another human being in that way. So in summary, there are all sorts of constraints on my personal behavior that stem directly from my belief in God, and I am honestly curious about the inner life of professed atheists in such matters. In other words, do atheists for example, in such junctures of moral decision, only consider whether they can get away with it, i.e escape the detection of human authorities? I am just honestly curious about the inner life of atheists in such matters.
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I don’t see how natural moral law can be reconciled with atheism. That there is an objective (absolute) purpose inherent in existence that provides a built-in moral architecture that informs our conscience about what we should do seems to me to necessarily require universal mind of some sort as the grounds of being and creator of existence.
If one wishes to avoid the intractable pitfalls of command authority and atheistic morality, they are left with natural law morality which requires a god where “what is good” is an absolute characteristic of its being, and so cannot “command” something that is not good to be good, just as god cannot command triangles to have 4 sides or command 1 + 1 to equal 3.
Why?
Show me an etic logic solution for the three cases of the island I presented.
In fact natural law morality might be incompatible with atheism; I don’t expect to be making arguments based on it, in any case. But my main question is, why are you able to, when I can’t, when it is simply an unproved proposition for both of us?
As an illustration, consider the mathematical proposition that P = NP. Nobody knows if it’s true or false. Let’s say you think it’s probably false, which is the majority opinion on the matter.
I however, decide to “assume/believe” that P does equal NP. The reason I choose to “believe” P = NP is that there could then be very fast algorithms for factorizing integers and for solving other important problems. I actually don’t care a great deal whether P = NP is actually true, it’s just that under my assumption, I am “entitled” to derive additional consequences which I find useful. “Under” your system, you are not “entitled” to derive these consequences.
Which makes no sense, correct?
Again, maybe I’m missing something, but that’s what your argument looks like to me.
There are situations in life where we expect all a sane humans to both recognize a “zap” and to understand that failure to heed the zap will be damaging to themselves. I call this running into the wall of the objective moral architecture – where you not only know the wall exists, but you also know that unless you heed the presence of the wall, you’re going to hurt yourself – perhaps even permanently.
The example I’ve often used is that of someone torturing a child for their personal pleasure. If we come across this situation, we must act – whether we are atheists or theists. We have a moral obligation to act that we can directly sense with our conscience. We are zapped. We feel it. If we ignore it, do nothing and walk away, the zapping continues and we are harmed – perhaps permanently – by refusing to do that which the zapping has told us we must do. We must intervene.
It doesn’t matter what society says, or what the law is, or even what the intersubjective norm is. In another example, we know we must not turn the Jews in to the Nazis looking for them, even if it means our own death. If a little old lady in line in front of us drops a $100 bill and no one is looking, we know we must give it to her or else we are harming ourselves. If we see a van with darkened windows driving slowly down a street after school lets out going from child to child and slowing down each time, we know we must act.
Regret, self-loathing, a life of guilt and self-disgust – these are the emotional manifestations of ignoring the zap of conscience when one runs into the moral architecture. These are the sensations of a self damaged by the “zap”, of a self on the road to self-destruction.
Perhaps I misunderstood your original question.
My argument is that natural law cannot be logically derived from atheism; it says nothing about your capacity to employ it successfully in your life, even if you consider yourself an atheist. You are not physically required to rationally reconcile a model with other aspects of your worldview in order to use it successfully. Of course you can use it; you just cannot rationally reconcile it with atheism, IMO.
Where else can purpose be instantiated, except in a mind capable of an intention?
God doesn’t have a “view of morality”. God is the ground of all being and existence. God is what is good, and as the ground of all being and existence, inherently and absolutely instantiates what is good – not by command, opinion or decree, but by existential necessity. That is what makes “what is good” absolute and objective, even if – like anything else perceived by individual, subjective creatures – that objective good is subjectively interpreted and processed.
1. No.
2. Chimps are much stronger than people.
3. Gorillas don’t eat meat.
I have no idea why you posted these three questions, but it gives me an excuse to air a pet peeve:
If a poster has a point to make, I personally prefer they make it openly and with arguments. Just posting some questions seems like an attempt to score debating points by responding to an answer with “Gotcha, I bet you did not think of this!”
For example, I could imagine a hypothetical person responding to any atheist who does not give the same answer to all questions (all yes or all no) by saying: “gotcha, if people are just animals, why are your three answers different?”
Again, I have no idea why you posted these three questions. But thanks for letting me vent.
I wouldn’t try to argue him out of his view.
The perspective that natural law morality gives me is, first and foremost, many of my views and feelings about what is moral and immoral might be wrong. This view is not available, rationally speaking, to an atheist, because there is no objective standard by which one’s personal views/feelings might be in error in relation to. The atheist might “talked out” of a moral feeling they have, but that is just a process of rhetorically changing their feeling about a thing, not demonstrating them to be wrong wrt an objective standard.
The fact is, I don’t know if homosexuality is immoral. I doubt it, but that’s certainly no reason to try and talk someone out of their view that it is immoral.
Also, my view of objective morality with necessary consequences makes it clear to me that if the anti-homosexual person is himself being immoral, he/she will pay whatever price that is the consequence of their behavior. My only obligation is to act when the moral architecture makes it clear I should act. Things that to me are ambiguous or doubtful I just ignore.
As I said, I only strive to be good enough, not a saint. I just try to keep from obviously damaging my spiritual self when the moral architecture makes it clear how I should act.
An the atheist “calculus”.
But people are smarter than chimps. I was sure that instead of answer people here will find problems with the story. Immagine that the man have a gun.
Same than before.
Because always this ends in atheist claiming that their morality is as rationale as theist morale. But nobody show why. All of them hides behind usefullness asertions as “the golden rule”, the “overall utility” “it is not applicable to dictators”. So practical approachs can be usefull to show how that escapes are all impracticable. Atheist morl is only applicable to solve arguments between habitants of a condo, not moral problems.
I don’t think this question can be answered with a yes or no but must be answered with a ‘depends’ instead. In support of that I would cite the case of Owen Coffin on the ill-fated whaleship Essex.
ps; wjm, I’ll address the other post if I can find some time later today….or tomorrow perhaps.
I think the guy behind radical honesty gives an interesting interview:
here.
And perhaps Being?
This was what I was thinking of when I mentioned “Twilight of The Idols” and Pirsig (as “Phaedrus”).
Both Pirsig and Nietzsche stress the importance of the body also.
Another concept that informs my moral behavior/calculus is that personal liberty is an essential moral right; personal responsibility is an essential moral obligation, and free will is a necessity that must must be respected as much as possible wrt morality. IOW, god didn’t create us with free will and unalienable moral rights to liberty with the expectation that we should try and force each other to behave morally at all times, but rather with the expectation that we should attempt to behave morally ourselves as much as possible – but we have the freedom to not do so if we wish.
Rather than obligating me to police the attitude, beliefs and actions of others wrt morality, it obligates me to respect their free-will, personal liberty right to believe and do as they wish as much as possible, unless what they are doing necessitates my intervention because not acting will be damaging to my own spiritual self.
Violence is so much going against who I am, that to be violent or advocate violence makes me feel awful. It is like trying to carry something heavy uphill. Obviously violence is a strong taboo for most humans. I think I can do no other than say no it is not ethical.
The only thing I can imagine overriding that is saving the people I love most, and possibly self-defence. They are perhaps not ethical considerations, but they might override my moral aversion to violence. Or, I might still feel guilty about being violent in such situations.
The point is why no? And what about 2 and 3.
You are aswering no to the three cases? If yes, you are vegan?
So you ,ight override violence for saving people but not for extend your life?
1) Suppose the Malaysia Fly 370 crushed near a small desert island. There are two survivors in perfect health butas there is no food in the island they are starving. It is moral that one of them kill the other and eat it?
It isn’t immoral, but it wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do. Two people would probably have better odds of survival than one.
I eat meat. Peter Singer argues that other animals should have the same status as humans. I have to read his argument seriously and reflect before I can answer this.
3) Suppose that the island is reached bya rafting gorila. It is moral that the gorila kill the human and eat it?
I don’t know how gorillas think. Once… If I have a better understanding of that, and whether gorillas could see killing as immoral, then I could maybe answer.
Use the animals to find sustainable food sources on the island. They’d have a better idea of what is toxic. So again, killing and eating them is only immoral in that is probably a little bit stupid.
How do you make the determination that it isn’t immoral?
Well utilitarian calculations are logical. Perhaps Bentham might say Depends (more information needed), Yes, Nonsensical to your 3 situations. KN would know more about the development of that system. That touches on the important point, which is that you are denying a branch of philosophy.
Not at the moment, but I will get back to you when I’ve done more reading.
It depends. I might have the cure for some disease.
Of course, in the heat of the moment I might do something I later felt was wrong.
William J. Murray,
I should rephrase that. The are ethical arguments that would support this action in extreme situations and I think those arguments have validity. However, the fact that this action would be illogical if one wanted to maximise their chances of long term survival overwhelms any ethical debate here. It would not be moral or ethical simply because it would not be conducive to what should be one’s goal, in this situation.
Tl ;Dr It’s sort of a silly question
You could just as easily ask ‘why yes?’.
As I stated the answer to the question is not yes or no but it is ‘depends’ and I gave a real-life example of why that is so.
let’s work on one at a time, OK?
Have validity according to what measure or standard?
First, if I understand you correctly, the end justifies the means, correct?
Second, why “should” one’s goal be “long-term survival”?
Third, if my goal is “long-term survival”, does that mean that any action is moral as long as I believe it will aid in my long-term survival, such as turning the Jews over to the Nazis?
Blas, regarding your questions:
I once asked you if it was moral or immoral to torture a kitten, assuming you were paid a lot of monety. (You get to name your price)
Your answer, as I recall, depended on whether a child would witness the torture. I don’t recall that your calculus included any factor for the pain induce in the kittern, nor any factor of personal revulsion.
I find this a more realistic situation, because people are paid to inflict pain on animals. At least they were until very recently. Not even for medical research. For testing cosmetics. Pure vanity. No horrible diseases to be cured.
I would predict that people who consider animals to be meat robots are likely to be the same people who require some external authority to define morality, and people who consider animals to be objects of empathy are less likely to be interested in external authority.
ETA:
To me this seems a bit like what must happen with colorblind people ( I have lots of colorblind people in my family). If you can’t see a color, and that color is important to other people you associate with, you learn strategies for dealing with color matching situations. Perhaps you just ask someone. Perhaps you buy products that are pre-matched or labeled.
My son has learned to color correct digital images using tools in PhotoShop. He depends on an external authority for things that he cannot see himself.
I suspect there are a lot of morality-blind people in the world. This thread has a number of self-described morality-blind people. I can’t see why I should judge people for lacking a sense that I seem to have, and I think it’s a good thing that there are external guides.
But as with color, the “objective” source of standards is not some imaginary sky thing, but people who can directly sense moral colors.
Blas, tell me where the irrationality lies.
William J. Murray,
You can call it what you like. I call it hitting genetic and cultural restraint. The pilot in the story may actually be incapable of the feelings that act as ‘zaps’ amongst his fellow beings, so he needs the restraint of something outside. But we are most of us ‘zapped’ when we contemplate doing that which seems to us unfair – or – in a positive way, that which seems just or ‘right’. This is a common sense, as witness the preference for happy endings and baddies getting their due in popular culture, and the esteem in which those with integrity or ‘virtue’ are held, and the vilification of cheats and transgressors. You parody this as an ‘ice-cream’ morality, but the restraints are nevertheless keenly, and commonly, felt. You think it’s external – or you think it irrational if it is not assumed to be external. I don’t. We have shared heritage, genetic and cultural. It’s not a ‘thing’.
William J. Murray,
Nazi Germany is a popular location for the strawman. I’ll humour you though. The difference is that me turning over “the Jews” might ensure my long term survival, but many other people (since I’m seemingly handing the entire Jewish population of whatever Nazi occupied place I’m in) will die or at least be treated very badly. In the island situation, if I did decide to kill my Companion for food, only they would die. Already we are comparing one person dying and saving lots of people (for the short term, at least) to one person dying to increase the chance of one person living. It just isnt comparable.
Blas,
Don’t forget to answer my question.
keiths:
Blas:
keiths:
So what? What does that matter? Clearly I have goals that I strive towards regardless of how long my actions will reverberate into the future of humanity. They matter to me NOW, and the matter to the people around me. This is important enough.
Yes, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. I have the freedom to set goals for myself instead of having goals pulled down over my ears and have some external entity judge me without me having a say in the matter.
Same thing on theism, there is no ought there either. There is god’s opinion, but that does not obligate me to act on the matter. It might be in my own best self-interest to seek heavenly reward and avoid hellish punishment on the theistic model, but that does not MAKE it into my goals in life. It also seems rather lame that the fundamental basis for moral acts then becomes a selfish desire to be rewarded in heaven, or by being scared from hell.
You cannot derive an OUGHT from an IS. It does not follow from the IS: “God’s commandments are X and Y” that I OUGHT to follow them.
Blas, seriously, having a discussion with you on this subject leaves me with the impression you’ve never heard any arguments against your position ever, and never actually bothered to think much about it. I’m by no means an expert or well-versed in the philosophy of ethics, but you’re seriously in more need of some reading and reflection on alternative views that I.
The lack of any objective standard about what “good” means renders it a term that employs a rhetorical concept it is not entitled to under atheistic subjectivism. “Good” might mean “torturing children for fun” or “beating homosexuals” or “burning witches” as easily as “helping old ladies cross the street” or “volunteering time a the soup kitchen”.
While your example/characterization may not be technically irrational, it’s certainly deceptive in that it hides through phrasing the equivalence of good and moral with “whatever me and my mates feel like doing”. It would be irrational if you insist that what you and your mates do is in principle different from what anyone else and their mates feel like doing wrt what is “good” and “moral”.
You are apparently confused about the difference between a straw man and a hypothetical example. Nazi Germany is a hypothetical example of “end justifies the means” and “what one should do for their long-term survival”.
Of course it’s comparable and useful in examining your logic. Apparently, your argument is that ensuring your long-term survival morally trumps a single murder, but that your long-term survival doesn’t morally trump the likely deaths of several other people if you turn some Jews in to the Nazis. Is that correct?
If there were two people on the island with you, would you kill them both (if you could, and if the meat wouldn’t go rotten) to ensure your long-term survival?
This raises the question, why does it matter how many other people will die if your own survival is at stake? This points to some as-yet unspoken moral principle that apparently trumps even self-survival. What is it? Is killing other people wrong, except when it is only one other person and your own life is at stake?
That seems to me to be a rather shaky moral principle to try to support. Are “other people” equal to you in moral worth, and so killing one for your own survival is morally neutral, but killing more than one a moral negative? Which means that turning one person in to the Nazis is okay, but more than one is not okay?
Correct!
Wrong!
It’s subjective with respect to any made-up set of rules: Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, WJMism. It’s all subjective. There are similar subjectivisms and there are many similarities as many adopted social rules make practical sense. But it’s all subjective.
Makes sense as “[Feels] Good” might mean “torturing children for fun” or “beating homosexuals” or “burning witches” as easily as “helping old ladies cross the street” or “volunteering time a the soup kitchen”
I certainly experience a “feels good” sensation when being in a position to help someone out and I often rationalise it as sowing a seed where someone might return the favour one day. And of course that happens.. The mistreatment and killing of infants also happen in modern society. Not sure whether the “feel good” factor is a main driving force in those situations.
Utilitarian calculations maybe logical but impossible to calculate as FSCO/I and uselees as it. Can you apply utilitarian calculations to explain your answers?
I´m not asking what are you going to do. I´m asking if it is moral and what is your calculus to decide. Seems that your starting point it is not use violence.
Nothing, build a morality with that. A morality applicable in the real life and not in the behavior of the people in a condo.
Actually my point is much more pedestrian, more or less GIGO. Do you have any reaction to my P = NP example, by the way?
I think I will give up for the moment, as Alan Fox’s most recent post gets to a similar issue more effectively.
When you would try to understand that God is not the old man sitting in a cloud that meet Homer simpson I will try to answer the question.
Blas and William:
Do you use math and calculations to construct sentences?
People do not generally engage in logical analysis when deciding how to behave.
Your extreme cases are just that. Extreme. Very few people ever wind up in situations where survival depends on killing another person who is completely innocent.
There have been a few documented cases of cannibalism — Donner Party seems to be one. But I don’t think there is any evidence that anyone was murdered.
People are much more likely to murder when they are told by an authority figure that it is for a good cause. Even more so if it is for the glory of God.
Left to themselves without authority, people in desperate situations often cooperate. Cooperation seems to be the modal tendency for humans.
That is exact the point, you choose your goals, thee is nobody that judge you. Then there is no ought to. There are no consequences. Nobody cares what your goal is. You want to save the world others wants to impose Islam in america.
If you admit that you do not have oughts, I will try to explain why God´s commandments are oughts.
Yes always the same end, I do not understand.
That examples are though experiments, moral rules are tested with the extreme situations to see if they stands. If you want other more real examples there are plenty.
Blas,
Are you really that desperate to avoid the question? Clouds and Homer Simpson have nothing to do with what I am asking.
My question:
William’s MO, in a nutshell:
1. Take a subjective sense of morality, and label it ‘Objective’.
2. Take an irrational mess, and label it a ‘logically consistent conceptual framework’.
3. Heap scorn on those who haven’t made the same mistakes.
Yes, you’ve hit on a great analogy.
Theists and atheists both can be morally-colorblind. If you don’t have internal access to moral reasoning as the “normal” members of your family do, then perhaps you can cope by using their enumerated rules instead. As you suggest, you can correct your answer to some moral question by checking it against the Handbook, just as your son (I think) corrects colors by comparing his answer to the hex list.
I admit the analogy breaks down in detail – the hex code is totally arbitrary and constructed solely by agreement of the coders, but it is 100% agreed upon internationally, while our various moral Handbooks are not totally arbitrary but also not 100% agreed upon between various clans. The are the sifted results of 200000 years of language-using social primate evolution with a few bizarre elements thrown in as historical accidents. (Thou shalt have no other gods before me, example 1. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, example 2)
The problem in discussions like these is when theists of various stripes claim that all Handbooks are either the direct word of god, or can only be valid if we presuppose that some god-type Authority exists to provide the grounds for the rules.
Well,no, that’s just creationism in a nice suit. They say complex working biology can’t have evolved without the direction or direct interference of a god. They say complex working morality can’t have evolved without the direction or direct interference of a god. No surprise that someone like WJM has chosen to believe in both an unevidenced ID for biology and an unevidenced Authority for the realm of moral decisions.
No doubt they’re wrong on both. We know enough about how biology works to know that evolution occurs without an Intelligent Designer. We know how it happened that humans got color vision and why, sometimes, some humans don’t get it. Now we don’t know enough about how consciousness works to be sure that morality evolves without a godly author, but we do know that animals other than us exhibit all the building blocks of moral behavior. We do know that people with psychopathic disorders exhibit different patterns of brain excitation than “normal” people. We know enough to make testable hypotheses. Since we know the creationists/IDists are dead wrong about biology, why would we even begin to give them the benefit of the doubt in regards to the basis of morality? Just because they put on a nice suit? Nah, fooled me once, shame on you, fooled me twice, shame on me.
Yes it does. Your question shows the concept you have about God. If you would have a reasonable idea of God were trying to delete the comments with that question.
And so can you. The problem lies not in our actual behavior – as I have repeated many times – but in whether or not we can rationally reconcile our behavior with our worldview premises. One can make the case that we act and think the way we do because of genetics/culture – but the philosophical problem lies in that genetics/culture can be used to rationally support any behavior at all by the very fact that the behavior exists, either in an individual (genetics) or as a society (culture).
If it is considered a matter of genetics & culture to exterminate Jews, toss imperfect babies off a cliff, drown female infants in the river, mutilate the genitalia of young girls and boys, blow up buildings full of innocent people, burn witches, etc., then one has no principled basis by which to consider any of those things “immoral” other than “that just happens to be the way my genetics and cultural conditioning has programmed me”, because the same principle that you would use to rationally consider it immoral can be used to rationally consider it moral, and there is no objective right or wrong to it.
The thoughtful atheist that applies the principle of “genetics & culture” must admit that for those who considered such things moral, they are in fact (inasmuch as moral facts can exist under such a premise) moral. Just the same, they are also immoral.
The hypothetical situation that would provide light on this would be that if we were transported, with our current mindset, to a culture where such things were considered moral, would we (in the case of cultural conditioning) be willing to change our minds and do as the Romans do when in Rome? Or, in the case of our particular genetics, would we be morally justified to oppose such practices if we simply cannot change ourselves to abide by such moral behaviors?
Morality is a set of oughts – how people ought behave, what they should do. If people ought behave however their personal genetics and cultural conditioning has led them to behave, then calling a genetics & cultural conditioning-based set of preferences “morality” is inherently a self-negating equation. Such a premise doesn’t describe how one ought behave, but rather how one does behave – regardless of if they are a saint or a sociopath, obey the cultural morals or not. What can they do other than what what genetics and culture conditions them to do? Unless there is something that can overrule genetics & cultural conditioning, what we ought do can only be what we actually do, and how we ought think about it can only be what we actually think about it.
Genetics & Cultural conditioning provide the physical “is” of one’s preferences and proclivities wrt behavior. Under this paradigm, “all things are permissable”, and “all things are moral”. It renders “morality” an inert, non-substantive concept, only used rhetorically to manipulate others by implying the meaning it has under theism.
Now all you need is the list of oughts and their source.
Saying such a set is required is just an assertion.
I require lots of money in order to be happy, but it doesn’t appear because I desire it or say I require it.
You need to demonstrate that your set exists.