Do Athiests have morals?

[Midnight Rain]

Do you recall the post number of that one long post of yours I put off responding to? I went back but could not find it.


We can all sit around and vote on whether we will pass a law or not. However what we cannot do is make that law related to an objective moral truth even if we all agreed to it. I for one would want to know that a person was actually wrong before I voted to hang him. If he merely violated a social fashion of the moment it would be hard to kill him for it. Also notice all the speeches made when war must be justified,. They all appeal to objective moral duties and values and not to popular opinion. Based on your criteria if the Nazi's would have won get war then killing Jews would have been a morally correct action.


I don't seem to be able to get anyone to actually address the issue that serves as my primary argument.


My claims are two fold.

1. If God exists morality has an objective foundation.
2. If he does not it does not.


My argument is not.

1. How we come to know what morals are true.
2. Or that we are incapable of making up rules without God.

I"ll go back to look for it. But my quick answer to the two questions is this.

1) Objective morality usually doesn't exist but we can define actions through love. We can be our own judge for self justification and on the macro level this functions as ethics. So no to objective morality in the sense that we have a defined right and wrong from divine inspiration.
2) What if god exists and morality still isn't objective? That is my position.

 

[Midnight Rain]

Do you recall the post number of that one long post of yours I put off responding to? I went back but could not find it.\

#357

 

[Midnight Rain]

There is a poster here that does read it. Sojourner is their name I think. Greek would be a good one to know.

It would be good to get his opinion on it. I have a friend who lives in Greece and he is a native speaker. To me he explained it has either definition since both would work. Back then they didn't care if you believed in another god or not and to think of other gods wouldn't have even entered their mind.

I am unclear why your referencing the homosexual thread. However:

1. I do have a dogmatic reason for denying the behavior as acceptable.
2. However that reason had no role in the arguments I made.
3. My arguments were simplistic secular cost analysis arguments and my faith had no role in them.
4. I do condemn the behavior from a position of faith but not homosexuals themselves. To me it is just another immoral behavior no different from ones I may engage in myself, yet still condemn. I do things at times that I cannot justify because I am a sinful and fallen person in need of forgiveness. I separate the condemnation of an act from the condemnation of a person.

I don't want to get into it in this thread. We hashed it out in the other thread and I have come to the conclusion you won't listen to what I have to say on the matter and that is that. We can continue to discuss the other matters of morality here though.

I did not even hint he was. The only reason his name was mentioned by was to indicate the parameters of my primary argument have been the same since the time of the Greeks and before. He was merely a book end, nothing more.
I do assume a persons theological orientation from their arguments at times. I see your a pagan, so my assumption was wrong. I will try not to make that mistake again.

Alright .

 

[Nietzsche]

I did not mention the golden rule and never claimed it to be unknown until the bible recorded it. I have actually said the exact opposite.

1. All men are born with a God given conscience. We generally believe the golden rule however the Golden rule is not true unless God exists to ground in a transcendent foundation. Without God it is merely a preference and not actually true.

And what makes you say that? Why is it not enough to say that hurting others is wrong in itself because we're all people, and we all do not want bad things to occur to ourselves? This isn't something observed purely in humanity. All other higher-mammals have an inclination not to harm their fellows outside of disputes over food, mating & territory(which really is just the first two writ large). I think that alone is reason enough to suggest that morality is something inherent to our condition, and that we created God(s) and religion(s) to explain it to ourselves.

2. The bible does not bring morality reality into existence by declaring it. It does however justify our inclinations about moral issues and places them onto a logical context by which they may be true.

Would it not be possible that it was the other way around? We are inherently moral and thus our religions would develop accordingly. Morality does not need to derive from a God or Gods, because whether or not there is or isn't we do exist and we do live, and because of that we are concerned with the welfare of our fellows so that we may be happy, safe & comfortable.

You are never going to answer a single question I ask are you. I did not ask anything about the golden rule.

We inherently care for each others at times, kill each other at times, eat each other at times, enslave each other at times, etc......... Here is the problem. Without God there is no standard by which we can know which one if any of those inherent behaviors are good and which are evil.

You asked about morality, of which the Golden Rule is an example of. An example that is found in all cultures and faiths, independent of each other, and more importantly for this discussion independent of the Abrahamic tradition.

I might be mistaken, and if I am then tell me, but you're positing that without God there is no reason to uphold morality, because somehow without a greater-than-human(or atleast non-human) font for which morality to spring it has no meaning. But that doesn't make sense. It's a trait found in all humans through all periods of time in all parts of the world. You can justify it from a purely material perspective, it holds exactly the same weight as the assumption it is derived from a divine source.

If there were a clear dividing line between atheist/non-Christian individuals being worse than religious people/Christians you might have a point to work with. But that isn't the case. Atheists/Non-Christians and Religious/Christians are just as good and just as bad as one another. Terrible people will be terrible with or without a God, and good people will be good with or without a God.

Does that make it subjective? Somewhat, yes. But it's subjective to both sides. There are just as many saintly non-Christians as there are deplorable Christians.

Are you ever going to answer any question I ask or demonstrate anything I request?

How am I not giving you an answer?

 

[Nietzsche]

There is a poster here that does read it. Sojourner is their name I think. Greek would be a good one to know.

I can read Greek.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

So do we have to know Greek to join the discussion? Do we have to debate the topic according to some particular philosophical rule?

 

[Midnight Rain]

So do we have to know Greek to join the discussion? Do we have to debate the topic according to some particular philosophical rule?

I can read Greek.

No. There was a tangent about the specification of the word.

Though part of his trial was Socrates tearing down the meaning of the word impiety and they go through five different definitions before coming full circle. They had no word for it but the word that they were attempting to define was Pious.

I just wanted Greek native insight onto the case on how it was defined as a form of atheism towards the gods, a lack of respect for the gods or on what account was the discussion?

 

[1robin]

Your points are formulated in such a way that they don't make any sense. Try one point at a time and rephrase it so that it makes sense.

I reread them. If you look at what they are a response to they make perfect sense. I don't even know how to make them any clearer. You say evolution always produces benevolent moral duties. That is simply not true. It produces nothing more morally relevant than gravity does. Just as what gravity requires is not a moral duty what evolution requires is not a moral duty. However evolution is even worse (or less applicable than gravity) because what evolution produces often contradicts it's self and is a matter of subjective opinion. Looking at nature or human history it is just as probable that it produces conflict as cooperation. Both nature and mankind's history is absolutely packed with violence, slavery, bloodshed, oppression, racism, etc...... which are just as evolutionarily based as the good things you cherry pick based on preference.

 

[ArtieE]

1. Our greatest moral achievements are for things that are not beneficial to survival. We build museums for and give medals to those that lose their lives in the execution of an objective moral duty despite the fact that they many times result in the net loss of life.

Your points are so vague and lacking in specific detail and logical reasoning and are so incoherent that they can't be answered. You are just producing word salad and blowing smoke without producing a single clear argument detailed enough to be answered.

 

[1robin]

We have no proof that God, if he does exist, would have created an objective morality. So it's a speculative statement anyway.

I thought your were going to try a prove God does not exist. I prefer that to what your doing here.

It is not true that we have created objective morality if God does not exist because that is impossible. You know what I have explained what objective means to you before. I can't keep doing it. What humans contrive is the exact thing that makes something subjective.

 

[1robin]

You still haven't proved that morality generally is anything to do with God. Moral codes existed long before the Abrahamic God showed up, and all modern secular societies have moral codes enshrined in law.

Do you have a shred of proof that human morality depends on God?

This is getting comical. You guys will not answer a single question I ask or provide a single proof I request. It is like your the same polarity as coherency and the two keep repelling each other. I am not defining objective morality for those I had done for before to no avail, and I am not answering questions or responding unless my requests are responded to.

 

[ArtieE]

I reread them. If you look at what they are a response to they make perfect sense. I don't even know how to make them any clearer.

Write one clear and concise logical and rational sentence. Follow it with another sentence equally clear and concise and logical and rational. In this way produce a clear and concise and logical and rational short paragraph. If you do it this way it might be possible to answer you properly by taking one point at a time.

 

[Nietzsche]

This is getting comical. You guys will not answer a single question I ask or provide a single proof I request. It is like your the same polarity as coherency and the two keep repelling each other. I am not defining objective morality for those I had done for before to no avail, and I am not answering questions or responding unless my requests are responded to.

Errr, I thought I gave you a pretty decent answer up there, post #384

 

[1robin]

We have no proof that God, if he does exist, would have created an objective morality. So it's a speculative statement anyway.

I do not think you have yet to make a single response that accurately reflect what it was in response to. Lets look again at that simplistic statement I made. Here it is:

1. If God exists morality has an objective foundation.

As can easily be seen this is a derivative proposition not a statement to a known existence of anything. It is an if x then y statement. I did not argue that X exists but merely that if it does then Y is the result. I hope that this was not your first attempt to demonstrate that God does not exist.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

What humans contrive is the exact thing that makes something subjective.

Yes, including God.

 

[1robin]

I deny your premise; divine command theory does not provide an objective foundation for morality, but a subjective one, given that your god is imagined to be a personal one.

Personal in that sense means able to decide. How does that affect what I said at all. I did not say God decided what morality was. I said his eternal nature defined what moral truth is. Hid nature is theoretically the most objective foundation possible. To say God is person is not to say he personally decided what morality was.

Perhaps something like Brahman, with a universe that is timeless and imbued with moral consequences that play out in karma, is a potential foundation for objective morality, but that is simply not the case with the god(s) of Abrahamic monotheism. Moreover, there's about as much empirical support for karma as there is for Christian morality.

Well that is out at the starting block because we do not have a timeless universe. So your foundation is out and I deny that you have done anything to show that mine is out so far. Only if God obeyed the nonsense given in the Euthyphro dilemma (and that type of God is not the biblical God) would what you say have even the opportunity to be true. However my God did not pick morality at his whim or from an external source. His eternal and timeless (unlike your universe) is what grounds moral truth. His commands merely reflect that eternal nature.

I am quite skeptical of moral realism in any event, beyond the cooperative and reproductive success strategies that are suggested by evolutionary theory. There's no reason to suppose it has any existence outside of humanity either way.

Now this is the first point you made that is applicable. I am not saying that moral realism is a fact. I am saying that given God it is and if minus God it can't be. I did not set out to prove which one of those propositions is the fact.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

I do not think you have yet to make a single response that accurately reflect what it was in response to

The problem is that you are trying to frame this debate in a very particular way, and insisting on certain assertions as already proved, and insisting that people have to respond in a particular way to your contrived positions. Sorry but I don't see why we should have to accept everything on your terms in a general debate forum.

It would be helpful if you started responding to the points that people are actually raising with you, that's how a debate usually works.

 

[1robin]

All societies have laws which reflect their moral code, so there's your standard. God is entirely uneccessary.

I never said God was necessary for us to contrive ethical rules that bear no relationship to objective moral facts (that can't exist without the transcendent). So I agree that without God all we have is legal opinion backed up by force. That is not objective morality it is a convenience.

 

[1robin]

You still haven't proved that though, it remains just an assertion.

What is there to prove? It is an unavoidable and necessary deduction. It is a proposition of the form if X then necessarily Y. Are you asking me to prove the necessary part? Are you familiar with moral theory?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

So I agree that without God all we have is legal opinion backed up by force. That is not objective morality it is a convenience.

That legal opinion reflects human morality and ethics. You still haven't demonstrated that "objective morality" exists. What is the evidence for it?