Morality without Religion.

Your claims are horseshit precisely because "Atheists" (i see no reason to capitalize it) are not a doctrinal community in which all the members adhere to a belief set. The only thing which atheist means is without god. Granted, some people call themselves Atheists with a capital "A" and make a quasi-religion of their "unbelief." But it is not axiomatic that this describes all atheists, or even most of them.

Your continual comments to the effect that Atheists do this and that Atheists believe that are completely without foundation, and constitute an extended straw man.

Thanks, I caught that and almost posted about it. Completely agree. The guy weaves baskets from his occlusive take.

I don't accept the fact that one group of people (in this case Atheists) can feel their understanding of morality is superior to another group of people (in this case the Religious). When I switch the roles here (the Religious judging Atheists) we all agree... but appealing to a Universal moral standard is a religious idea. It is personal/cultural bias with no real objective claim to superiority.

I am an atheist (notice the lower case a), I don't believe in God. I am not an Atheist, my disbelief in God does not imply an understanding of some overall meaning in the Universe.

I don't have the faith that the Universe has any particular morality. The only morality is that which was constructed by social groups of primates which happened to evolve brains capable of abstract thought.

Let me take the murder example again. There is an evolutionary advantage to making sure that social animals don't kill each other. So it is not surprising that it is common to find moral rules about who you can kill or not in any society.

As I noted before, the rules about whom you are allowed to kill have varied widely from society to society. Many cultures find our willingness to kill the unborn quite immoral.

We accept homosexuality. We frown on polygamy.

Most people obviously going to argue (for the most part) that our way of thinking about any issue is blessed by some Universal truth. Of course, the Universe is cold and uncaring and willing to kill mass numbers of humans with no remorse.

Speak for yourself, please. I don't frown on polygamy at all.


Strawman.

That's your own thing, ebrown.

Lots of atheists are people who are simply void of belief in a god or gods.

Suddenly we have atheists who are only truly atheists if they have a capital A?

You're beginning to remind me of Frank.

(waves to Frank)

True enough, but I can't think of a single society where indiscriminate killing of just anyone at all was generally tolerated.

Who are you talking to? You're responding to your own post

Edit: Got it, Osso. No response necessary.

Approach this topic from a unestablished vantage point. Assume no moral standards have been agreed upon and the morality of various actions have not been quantified nor qualified. A blank slate.

Given the task to create a moral framework for a society what will you base it on?

I can't imagine for a second that a belief in a god or gods will ever be necessary in the creation of a functional moral code.

Further, I don't understand how a belief in a god or gods exclusively or otherwise could by itself be considered moral/immoral. I repeat, this seems like insisting that one's ice cream preference is a matter of right and wrong.

T
K
O

You protest too much. You've been saying that Atheists do this and Atheists believe that throughout this thread. Now you want to deny that. You're all over the road. It's a waste of time to attempt to argue anything with you.

Exactly Deist!

This is a perfect way to pose the question.

It is clear that you don't need any deities for a "functional" moral system. I think we all agree on this (I certainly haven't been arguing that deities are necessary).

The question is if you have several unrelated societies, each with a blank-slate morality (as they are in the process of forming a functioning society), will they come up with the same moral system? or with vastly different ideas of right and wrong? I think this question can be answered from history.

My argument is that there is when societies have developed their own ideas of right and wrong-- there is no objective way to judge between them when they conflict. Members of each society will largely feel that their values are correct and the values of societies are immoral (as is being shown in this very thread).

Setanta,

There are differences between Atheists and atheists. One of the biggest is the compulsive need to be anti-religion.

Nice dodge, but it does not alter that you have been attempting to peddle claims about what all atheists do and what atheists believe, and now you're just blowing smoke rather than acknowledging it.

In my experience, most atheists are pretty quiet about their atheism, until the religious begin forcing their beliefs on them. M O'Hare was a glaring exception.

O'Hare may have paid the price, too. She and her son disappeared under suspicious circumstances, if i am not mistaken.

Wow. According to Wikipedia, O'Hair and her two sons were abducted by a disgruntled former emplyee, who then extorted money from them before murdering them, mutilating the corpses and cutting up the bodies and burying them. An accomplice was also murdered. Gruesome stuff.

I recall reading about that, but time had made the details fuzzy. Thanks.

That's a pretty good post TK. You're improving.



We would jump on all the women first with or without their permission. Eat some grubs or fruit when in season and then go to sleep. And if it worked it would prove that Darwin was right and that is how a sensible organism had to behave in order to survive. And really, it it did work, as it might when fruit was always in season, as is possible in some Edenic climates, there wouldn't seem, on the face of it, looked at from a detached distance, as you do, to be any pressing reason to change.

It's very complex actually how we took ourselves from that to you jetting over to our hallowed shores, snapping the local flora and fauna and putting the pics on view to the world or at least that part of it that is interested in that sort of thing (notice that stacatto "that" sequence there) and the odd unfortunate who comes across them accidentally whilst desperately searching for some relief from the monotony of indifferent world weariness which so sadly afflicts many of us in this life of constant high excitement and bustling activity.

It is so complex that it is as irreducible to the human mind as the infinite is. Whatever one says about it can be laughed to scorn by anybody with an unestablished vantage point.



As a scientist I would base it on Darwinian morality and if that didn't work I would dream up a scheme based on some otherworldly principles, for want of any other choice, which I would claim had been revealed to me in a dream or on a mountain top and which would support the eminent position you have granted me as the one who says what goes and I would get the show on the road that way.

Of course I realise that there will be other scientists with the same idea and thus the competition would be between different ideas of the otherwordly principles, the blood thirsty Goddess say, and the winning revalation would come to the fore and be the first to set a man upon the moon. Such a feat btw is not an American one. It is a western cultural acheivement.

It is a bit like "insisting that one's ice cream preference is a matter of right and wrong." Except that there is a lot more than the pleasure on the taste buds of a lick at stake. If it is "right" that you have the choice of ice-creams and that can be traced to the revalation then the revalation must be right.

I understand ebrown's point with the first commandment.

For a certain subsets of people, it is immoral, according to their moral standard, not to perform acts prescribed by their religion. They have to do these things to be good people. Muslims have to pray so many times a day facing Mecca.

Setanta will explain why they face Mecca. He knows a lot about these things.