Do Athiests have morals?

[leibowde84]

Sorry if I but in here but I have already explained this. None one has said morals did not exist before Moses. I have in fact said the opposite. We have always had a God given conscience and have either denied it or obeyed it. The law was given to Moses and others to confirm that our moral consciences are based in fact and the God ultimately grounds morality. Morality was not invented or claimed to be at Mt Sinai. You can mistakenly think for some reason I am unable to read as many evolution books as you but your unjustified in thinking I do not know more about my own faith.

You didn't address my claim at all. I am asking for your proof that shows that morality came from God when it seems completely reasonable that it arose through societal evolution. Can you provide your reasoning (apart from scripture and/or faith of course).

 

[1robin]

You didn't address my claim at all. I am asking for your proof that shows that morality came from God when it seems completely reasonable that it arose through societal evolution. Can you provide your reasoning (apart from scripture and/or faith of course).

Your post was not to me. I just happened to see it and wanted to point out I had already corrected an aspect of it before. I was not attempting to answer whatever you were asking of the person you responded to. It just contained a misunderstanding in one of it's premises.

 

[leibowde84]

Whether it happened at Mt. Sainai or at the beginning of time, you still need objective evidence to back it up if you are going to claim it as true. That's all I'm asking for.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

I am asking for your proof that shows that morality came from God when it seems completely reasonable that it arose through societal evolution.

Yes, we haven't seen that yet.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Most others have abandoned the attempt at contending with my two primary points

Your 2 primary points have been repeatedly demolished but you insist on clinging to them. What are we supposed to do?

 

[1robin]

Your 2 primary points have been repeatedly demolished but you insist on clinging to them. What are we supposed to do?

Let me stop laughing first. My two points have not yet even been challenged by a bad argument. They can't be. You must inescapably have one or the other. I can see that your not here to debate. Your here at least in my case to substitute personal commentary and what amounts to emotionally motivated punches in the wind where an argument should be. I will leave you to it and no longer respond at this time. Have a good one.

 

[Sapiens]

I have been researching evolution for over 15 years and all the various and contradictory moral theories it is guessed it justifies.

When I was an undergraduate the Diving Safety Officer at Cal invented a new unit of measure that he named after me. He described it as the maximum amount of effort that it was possible to expend for the minimum amount of data collected. If you have spend 15 years researching (I suspect that you mean reading Christian biases criticisms, not reading primary sources, texts or actually "researching" evolution) than we may have to rename that unit, since it seems that with all that energy invested you have somehow managed to learn nothing.

Let me ask you something. In the opinion of a great many scholars Hitler was the closest and human society ever came to using evolution, natural selection, nature as a basis for morality. Can you show how he was mistaken? and how you can know he was mistaken? You can use the paper you mentioned in your response if you wish but I have a pretty good familiarization with the idea.

Hitler was a believer in a crackpot theory that called itself "Social Darwinism" a philosophy that shares nothing what-so-ever with Darwinian Evolution save the work "Darwin." But in 15 years of study you should have learned that, or is it just that your ignorance on the subject is willful?

Keep in mind I do not claim that evolution maybe the best we could do if God does not exists. Actually that is not true, selecting only the best or most benevolent events in nature may be the best we could do. However using nature as a whole to ground morality would produce justice and injustice in like quantities and it lacks any objective way of determining which is which.

You keep saying that in the form of an unsupported claim. Try putting it forward as a supported hypothesis and see how long it takes for someone to effectively falsify your hypothesis. Is that too much to ask for someone who has put in 15 years of hard work studying the issue?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

My two points have not yet even been challenged by a bad argument. They can't be.

But they can be and they have, and your stubborn refusal to accept this had led us round and round the same pointless circle.
It's like you want to control the debate and run it down a very narrow rut according to your pre-determined assumptions and rules. And anyone who doesn't accept this is accused of not debating properly. It's highly frustrating to be on the end of.

 

[Cephus]

I did not say anything unsubstantiated claims. The only thing ever thought was true that is fully substantiated is that we think and there for are. If I had substantiated as my criteria no post would pass it. I said justified. As in not merely declared. Saying no it is not, or oh yeas it is fine if it is followed by an explanation for why it is justifiable and reasonable to believe not or why it is. That is what debates include and require and that is what I complained of not receiving and that is not I do in general. I suppose in over 10,000 posts I have done so a few times but in general I always include the reasons why I think a thing is or is not. Because that is how debates are done. Now if you want to challenge whether I do so in general or not then pick any post in the thread that is significantly long and do so. But if this is merely an emotional rant lets just forget it.

In act this post disproves what you claimed. I said what I have done, explained what I have said, mentioned why it is true, and asked you to challenge it if you wish. That is a debate. If I had instead responded that you were merely full of it and stopped there then and only then would what you have said been true.

This just goes to show that, once again, you have no clue what that word means. The definition of substantiated is "provide evidence to support or prove the truth of." You cannot do that with the vast majority of things you think are true. The vast majority of things that go on inside your head, consciously and subconsciously, are not representative of objective reality. Keep in mind that by the definition of "substantiated", you would be required to provide evidence to support and/or prove the truth that they are, in fact, substantiated.

The fact of the matter is that you, like so many other theists around here, are playing word salad with the language. You're misusing terms like "substantiated", "faith", "evidence", "belief", all because you're trying to blur the line between rational positions and your irrational religious position. Now I don't know if this is intentional or not, but considering the number of times it's been pointed out around here and how the tactics never seem to change, I can't help thinking there's a tinge of dishonesty among many theist debaters, that or they are being willfully ignorant of the truth, which might be a bit more likely.

 

[Cephus]

Yes, we haven't seen that yet.

Nor, I suspect, will we ever see it.

 

[Sapiens]

Given his posts I don't think it's possible to deprogram him, he's too far gone. I tried my four points just to see if he was capable of recognizing the validity of the logic and reasoning behind them but no go. So any further effort is pointless. Since he doesn't understand that there are logical and rational reasons we should help each other instead of killing each other we must just be glad he's a Christian and believes that a god tells him not to go around killing people.

My concern is that people fall into and out of religions with relative ease. My moral system is internal and not dependent on a religious choice of the moment. Religionists, with their external, punishment based, moral systems are just a short step away from sociopathy or psychopathy. If their religion is dented, so is their moral structure. Perhaps that's why they fear atheists, they project and make unwarranted assumptions based on their own suite of failing and fears. I guess, to a degree, that's what we all do.

 

[ArtieE]

My concern is that people fall into and out of religions with relative ease. My moral system is internal and not dependent on a religious choice of the moment. Religionists, with their external, punishment based, moral systems are just a short step away from sociopathy or psychopathy.

As long as some religion provides them with an external moral system they are at least statistically less likely to do us harm than before. If religion doesn't work we have judicial systems taking over removing them from the rest of us. We shouldn't be arguing with 1robin we should be encouraging him because he's only doing what evolution and natural selection evolved him to do. We can't argue against his belief when his belief is the result of evolution and natural selection in the first place! If we manage to remove his belief we are worse off than before if he doesn't have logic, reason and common sense to replace it.

In our little town there are many different churches including a catholic, protestant and methodist. If we can encourage young immoral irrational people to join one of those churches that is much better for society than having them end up as criminals in prison. As an atheist I recognize that religion has an important function in our society.

"Psychologist Matt J. Rossano argues that religion emerged after morality and built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behavior to include supernatural agents. By including ever-watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.[17]The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival.[18][19] Rossano is referring here to collective religious belief and the social sanction that institutionalized morality."
Evolutionary origin of religions - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Monk Of Reason]

I do not think your getting it. Let me put it in list form

Your claim as I see it is that instinct or evolution is the proper root of our moral edicts and actions. Now you suggest the general idea behind that is some weird claim that morality and behavior is based on empathy and natural selection.

1. Natural selection is not a moral process of any kind. It is a cold hard piece of furniture we find in nature. It contains no moral property what so ever and is no more morally relevant than 1 + 1 = 2.
2. The greatest virtues which humanity exhibits and value in many cases exactly defy our survival instincts. And these acts include sacrifice that helps others (not that evolution justifies this action), but also includes acts where both the actor and those acted on all die. We give medals for a guy who wipes out a platoon of the enemy and loses his own life. In fact others give medals for wiping out those who were acting benevolently. In most cases we recognize the greatest moral actions as those which completely defy evolution.
3. BTW evolution justifies my own survival, or at best my tribes survival, not mankind as a whole. Every species on earth acts to protect it's immediate family at the expense of every other creature on earth. We have enslaved the rest of nature and even our fellow human beings in massive quantities to further our immediate needs. That is what evolution justifies. Attempts to sanitize what in reality justifies killing others that are not in our own tribe but compete for resources is absurd and intellectually dishonest.
4. Those who have acted on the principles include Hitler. In fact Hitler is probably the best example of a society based on naturalistic ideals. He used the social Darwinian philosophy that Darwin's bulldog taught by Huxley. I of course condemn Hitler but his actions were very logically derived from nature. I condemn him because almost everyone else uses objective moral principles that do not come from merely looking at nature. Just societies have been those that deny, rise above, and make laws beyond what nature would validate

Anyway I could keep this list up for many posts but I have to stop somewhere. The points is that our behavior has defied evolution far more times than it has obeyed it throughout history, and our laws and legal theories have never been based on evolution with the possible and very temporary exceptions like what I mentioned with Hitler. Hitler is the closest a society ever came to operating by natures law. Thank God enough of us were around that thought nature was a stupid basis for morality to stop him.
.

All social creatures have "morality" of some kind that they instinctively follow. Behavior patterns and the like are there in almost all social creatures and the more advanced the social life of these creatures there is a proportional advancement in complexity of their moral thinking.

Ants or bees for example don't have social lives as they don't generally have ideas of self. Its not known that they actually have sentience for themselves on a measurable level or not but instead work as a system. They are a completely different function than the social lives of say wolves, chimpanzees and yes humans.

All of our moral systems do in fact give an advantage to survival. Depending on where the scope of your tribe is it could easily be just you, your family, your extended family, village, country, race, political association, species or all animals or hell even all life.

Every single moral aspect we may have of ourselves can be explained by evolution and reason. If you have one that is not then I would like to hear it. Though perhaps I should also note that bigotry, hatred, racism ect are also byproducts of the same mechanism that creates our moral thinking. So people like Hitler had morality (possibly. At least he played on them for the NAZI party and the German people). But that doesn't mean that his morality is acceptable by all.

 

[leibowde84]

All social creatures have "morality" of some kind that they instinctively follow. Behavior patterns and the like are there in almost all social creatures and the more advanced the social life of these creatures there is a proportional advancement in complexity of their moral thinking.

Ants or bees for example don't have social lives as they don't generally have ideas of self. Its not known that they actually have sentience for themselves on a measurable level or not but instead work as a system. They are a completely different function than the social lives of say wolves, chimpanzees and yes humans.

All of our moral systems do in fact give an advantage to survival. Depending on where the scope of your tribe is it could easily be just you, your family, your extended family, village, country, race, political association, species or all animals or hell even all life.

Every single moral aspect we may have of ourselves can be explained by evolution and reason. If you have one that is not then I would like to hear it. Though perhaps I should also note that bigotry, hatred, racism ect are also byproducts of the same mechanism that creates our moral thinking. So people like Hitler had morality (possibly. At least he played on them for the NAZI party and the German people). But that doesn't mean that his morality is acceptable by all.

Great comment!! You have expressed my own view on this subject better than I could myself. For that, I thank you.

And, I encourage anyone that disagrees with this view to read the below excerpt and respond with a moral guideline/rule that cannot be explained through reason and societal evolution.

 

[leibowde84]

Let me stop laughing first. My two points have not yet even been challenged by a bad argument. They can't be. You must inescapably have one or the other. I can see that your not here to debate. Your here at least in my case to substitute personal commentary and what amounts to emotionally motivated punches in the wind where an argument should be. I will leave you to it and no longer respond at this time. Have a good one.

Wouldn't you agree that, as a general rule, theories backed by physical (evolutionary) concepts should be given more weight than those based on supernatural beliefs. In other words, it seems illogical to jump to a supernatural explanation when a natural explanation exists. We are merely asking that you explain why you feel it reasonable to make this jump.

 

[ArtieE]

Wouldn't you agree that, as a general rule, theories backed by physical (evolutionary) concepts should be given more weight than those based on supernatural beliefs. In other words, it seems illogical to jump to a supernatural explanation when a natural explanation exists. We are merely asking that you explain why you feel it reasonable to make this jump.

Evolution and natural selection wired our brains to believe in the supernatural because it gave a survival advantage. In some people as they grow up this belief is replaced by belief in logic, reason and common sense and evidence and the scientific method, but in others the belief in the supernatural just stays on. The jump you are talking about is actually from the supernatural.
Is the Human Brain Wired to Believe in Supernatural?
Is the brain hardwired for religion? - HowStuffWorks

 

[viole]

Hello Viole. In a discussion with a person or group that cannot seem to get the subtler but undeniable elements of a claim the usual result is to appeal the most absurd or extraordinary examples. I have been doing just that. It is kind of difficult since secularists can't even grant the most extraordinary wrongs are actually wrong so we are a left with few alternatives.

That is another issue. I never said that we cannot sit around and look at nature and come up with rules for behavior. I said that doing so does not produce objective moral truth as it is pure opinion, that no society has ever done so (Hitler's Germany got as close to doing so as any have), and that if a single objective moral truth does exists it requires God. It is remarkable how often I get this type of unrelated response to my claims. We can deny objective moral truth, we can deny God, we can even invent rules by guessing and call it morality. I have never denied that. But that morality is not related to any objective moral truth what so ever. Oh and I have also said that would be among the worst possible foundations for morality if any society actually use it.

It is truly a marvel that what I say is misunderstood so badly. That is not my position it is the position of those who think we can invent objective morality. My position is the we are not a source of objective moral truth and can't be. Food is a bad analogy here because what tastes good is merely a subjective thing related to humanity.

So why what, I did not see anything that you are referring to by saying "So"?

We probably disagree because you contrive what you think is right or wrong based on preference and opinion, and I take morality from what I think to be an objective source that has given me not only a conscience but also the Holy Spirit who's purpose is to guide us into truth. We have completely different sources. I don't know your position on the death penalty, I am for the day after pill, promiscuity before marriage cannot be defended virginity is merely a corollary here, I am for voluntary termination of ones own life I have no idea how you feel about it, I am not opposed to gay marriage it's self. I am theologically opposed to the orientation and made secular arguments against any justification for acting sexually on that orientation as inherently detrimental. If we disagree it is probably because I theoretically use the moral locus of the universe as my moral source and you use opinion and preference. In most cases a secular evaluation supports my views but in others there is no secular argument that can be made. Not that a secular argument is determinative.

What? If a thing is objectively true it can still be rejected and denied. The Earth is objectively non-flat as a whole but that has no effect on people believing it is.

There is no force on earth that apparently can stop others from responding to ontological arguments with epistemological responses. The nature of morality has nothing to do with ho we come to know it.

So much for it? You did not say anything that had any impact on it. The universality of the knowledge of a thing has nothing what so ever to do with the actual nature of the thing. And I did not even make any claim to the actual nature of morality. I gave the conditions necessary for the nature of morality. With God it is objectively factual, without it is merely a contrivance based in opinion and preference and has no relationship to the factual truth of the matter because without God there is no factual nature to be in line with. If you think the universal agreement about a thing determines what a thing is then evolution is doomed before hand. It is claimed to be everything from red in tooth and claw to some idealized and arbitrarily sanitized foundation that can do no wrong.

Wow, there was some serious disconnect in this one.

Look, I am not saying that objective morality surely does not exist, despite its implausibility. Many things can possibly exist. Blue fairies and the flying spaghetti monster could exist. Jesus and objective morality could exist, as well.

But you are doing an extraordinary claim that deserves extraordinary evidence. Especially if we link it to the existence of God/gods or the morality of skeptics. I just fail to see this extraordinary evidence. I don't even see sub-standard evidence.

What I see is a confusing mix of some constituents:

1) People have a feeling of objective morality, therefore it is reasonable to believe that it exists. Unfortunately people, in general, have a feeling for many things: something beyond the natural world, fate, gods, a spiritual world, life after death, omeopathy and other weird things. That does not entail that it is reasonable to believe in the objectivity of all of them.

2) We all agree on some values, therefore objective morality exists. That does not follow, obviously, because we disagree on many other values, as we have seen.

3) Objective morality exists because it emanates from God. This just delegates lack of evidence of objective morality to God, Who lacks evidence as well.

4) Yes, but God does exist. Because objective morality exists and it is defined by what God approves. Or other equally circular variants thereof.

So, when all logical support evaporates, what is usually left is the real reason why people believe in objective morality: incredulity.

We believe in it, because the alternative is intolerable. Something in the line of: if objective morality does not exist, then all we believe is good and righteous has no absolute value whatsoever.

Love, helping the poor, self sacrifice, comforting the sick are ultimately "just" biological imperatives triggered by some circuitry inside a low entropic lump of duplicating matter. And people, in general, are not comfortable with that, understandably.

And, especially for spiritual minded people, having no absolute, universal and cosmic value, means having no value at all. So, what do they do? They arbitrarily extend our local values to the rest of the Universe or to metaphysics without the necessary logical or empirical warrant.

Which should lead to the logical conclusion that this is just yet another display of hubris or excessive anthropocentrism.

Ciao

- viole

 

[1robin]

When I was an undergraduate the Diving Safety Officer at Cal invented a new unit of measure that he named after me. He described it as the maximum amount of effort that it was possible to expend for the minimum amount of data collected. If you have spend 15 years researching (I suspect that you mean reading Christian biases criticisms, not reading primary sources, texts or actually "researching" evolution) than we may have to rename that unit, since it seems that with all that energy invested you have somehow managed to learn nothing.

Was that for comedic effect or a serious claim. A diving officer named a unit of investigative efficiency after you? That's an unusual intro. Anyway.

I see we have got the obligatory indictment that the Christian must be ignorant if he claims something that the atheist does not agree with. I hope that some reasons for why you claimed that are forth coming. I don't like mere declarations, they make for poor debate material. When I became a Christian I knew God existed but I did not know the bible very well and had many questions. Some of the first I had were about creation interpretations and how evolution relates to them. I already had a slight secular understanding of evolution, so yes I did start out with the Christian take on it. I was surprised to learn the bible actually predicted evolution thousands of years before Darwin was born, that many orthodox and Cabalist biblical scholars had interpreted Genesis to include long spans of time and evolution and this was hundreds of years before any secular scientists had discovered anything that anyone reading Genesis would have been compelled to allow for. They simply read the text and got that result. I however wanted to see both sides give each take their best shot so I became obsessed with watching the best minds on either side of any evolutionary issue go at it after watching hundreds of hours and reading dozens of books. My conclusion was that evolution is (depending on the claim) one part evidence and 10 parts theory, it has definitely occurred but may have limits or boundaries, it could be used to justify behavior of any type because it contains behavior of all types, it is the most useless theory (even if perfectly true) I could even imagine, it is a cold uncaring and non-sentient process with no moral component what so ever, and that it contained no threat to faith. Being it is so useless in any practical application I eventually relegated it to the category of futility but along the way I developed a significant understanding of it's primary facets from several sides.

Now you can condemn that or accept it as sufficient but doing so before I even told you what I have done is invite suspicion concerning your motivation.

Hitler was a believer in a crackpot theory that called itself "Social Darwinism" a philosophy that shares nothing what-so-ever with Darwinian Evolution save the work "Darwin." But in 15 years of study you should have learned that, or is it just that your ignorance on the subject is willful?

There is no objective fact of the matter concerning Social Darwinism. BTW this is not a fraction as complex as you make it out to be. We can simply go and study what behaviors are practiced in nature and use them to justify any possible behavior even if they are contradictory to each other. Rape occurs in nature, altruism occurs in nature, tribal warfare and factions occur in nature, cooperation occurs in nature, killing of the young occurs in nature, protecting the young occurs in nature, killing the mates occurs in nature, life long pair bonds occur in nature, etc.......... Any behavior anyone wished to actualize has massive precedent in nature.

I did not say Hitler made an even handed evaluation of nature and patterned his behavior on it. Though he used Darwin's bulldog (Huxley) as his pattern. I said Hitler was the closest any society ever came to actually using natural law as a basis for ethics.

Exactly what mistake about Hitler did I make that should have been caught in 15years of study? What you said my claims were about him are not even true.

You keep saying that in the form of an unsupported claim. Try putting it forward as a supported hypothesis and see how long it takes for someone to effectively falsify your hypothesis. Is that too much to ask for someone who has put in 15 years of hard work studying the issue?

I get it your going to suggest that I am ignorant after 15 years of study. That is a reply that apparently is unavoidable to any non-theist but repeating every few lines is unnecessary personal commentary that makes it's claimant appear arrogant.

I made several claims to which you do you refer to as unsupported? Every claim I made I have recently supported several times over in my recent posts. Once you pick which supported claim you believe was unsupported I will then re-post the support for it.

 

[1robin]

But they can be and they have, and your stubborn refusal to accept this had led us round and round the same pointless circle.
It's like you want to control the debate and run it down a very narrow rut according to your pre-determined assumptions and rules. And anyone who doesn't accept this is accused of not debating properly. It's highly frustrating to be on the end of.

I tell you what I hate to give up on someone. I will take one last opportunity to get a debate from you.

Please find the best possible counter claim that overturns either of my primary claims and post it with the claim you think it overturns and I will either admit that it does or explain why it does not. Please take your time as this is the limit to the opportunities in your case, that I can justify any longer. Don't claim this mysterious thing has occurred, show it in fact has.

 

[leibowde84]

I tell you what I hate to give up on someone. I will take one last opportunity to get a debate from you.

Please find the best possible counter claim that overturns either of my primary claims and post it with the claim you think it overturns and I will either admit that it does or explain why it does not. Please take your time as this is the limit to the opportunities in your case, that I can justify any longer. Don't claim this mysterious thing has occurred, show it in fact has.

You claim that objective morality requires God. Robin claims that objective morality has developed through societal evolution and, as a result is subject to change through societal discoveries.

Both are plausible, but, objectively speaking, a supernatural explanation must be supported by objective reasoning to a greater degree.