Zulu

Hi all,

Can anyone offer an explanation as to how Atheists can have a 'higher meaning' or a sense of morality.

I'd like to refute the statement that 'it is logically impossible for atheists to have a morality where humans have a higher worth than bacteria'.

Thanks!

-Zulu

brighid

<a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/morality-and-atheism.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/atheism/morality-and-atheism.shtml</a>

Please visit the above link from our Library and you will find a number of excellent articles addressing this topic.

Brighid

Zulu

Hi,

The library sure contains a wealth of interesting of information.

I was wondering if you could point me towards a very specific essay addressing the intrinsic 'worth' of humans be superior to that of bacteria.

Maybe this can be addressed with a very general essay concerning morality and Atheism...I'll look into it.

Thanks,

-Zulu

Jamie_L

I would say that humans don't have higher worth than bacteria, except to other humans.

I would argue that "higher meaning" and morality are two entirely different things.

Morality is a social framework that provides guidelines for behavior. It's purpose is to protect and support individual humans as well as the larger society. No "higher meaning" or "higher power" need exist for this framework to exist.

In fact, different societies with vastly different beliefs all have moral frameworks. To me, this would indicate that no particular belief system is required to generate a moral structure. All you need are a bunch of people living together.

Jamie

jlowder

You need to read Created from Animals by <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/james_rachels/" target="_blank">James Rachels</a>. Rachels is a distinguished professor of moral philosophy, and he discusses this issue at great length.

Jeffery Jay Lowder

[ October 19, 2002: Message edited by: jlowder ]</p>

dangin

Humans are worth no more and no less than bacteria. As has already been well said above. Humans are only important to you(and me actually) because we are humans.

More importantly we are animals, get your brain wrapped firmly around that fact and the world makes a lot more sense.

vixstile

Does anyone here think its even possible that someone could not have some kind of morality?

I don't.

Psycho Economist

I don't think it's possible. Even sociopaths have a sense of right and wrong. It just doesn't influence their decisions.

dangin

I do. Our morality, which so many people consider to be innate, is actually pavlovian training from our infancy. Those of you who are parents, as I am, know what I am talking about. It is a constant battle to shape your child into a social being.

Any human can be made without any moral sense. Simply give birth to one, feed it, and nothing else. Do not nurture it, do not talk to it, do not allow it to observe your behavior, raise it in a vacuum. You will have an animalistic sociopath on your hands, that is actually more of an unsocialized ape than anything we would recognize as human.

If you don't think it is possible, I can introduce you to two guys who were raised in a chicken coop by their poor white trash parents. They were taken away by the state when they were still under the age of six, but they are permanently stunted in mental, emotional, and psychological abilities.

We are animals, we have no instinctual morality, we are simply well trained.

Psycho Economist

I didn't mean to imply that morality was innate, just that a non-feral child (and I guess that was a bad assumption) would recieve some sort of knowledge of right and wrong (whether they had the capacity to use it or not) from learning by examples all around him or her.

(I forgot that all quoted text is bold; that wouldn't work for emphasis.)

[ October 17, 2002: Message edited by: Psycho Economist ]</p>