Hawkingfan

I wouldn't go as far as calling it "absolute". With the risk of this getting moved to B/C, I must say that there are contradictory laws that god gives. But yes, I will agree that Christians generally agree on what is moral and what is not.
You seem to be implying that somewhere along the line, atheists everywhere have sat down together in some kind of panel and discussed The Standards of Atheist Morals. We haven't. We do not have any religious texts that dictate our morals. We just try and be good citizens by obeying the law.

Hawkingfan

Amen! It is interesting to note that rape is condoned in the "holy" bible, yet condemned in the Satanic Bible.

keyser_soze

If this is the moral contained in the satanic bible, I can only deduce that the world has grabbed the wrong book! The devil has fooled them all but a few, who worship the one true god(tm)....beezelbub! The moral and upstanding TRUE GOD.

Wiploc

Do you suggest that Christians can provide a better or more logical or more workable definition of morality than atheists? No way.
crc

DRFseven

Yes, and I'm saying that the way we decide between good and bad, right and wrong, is by the feeling of "rightness" or "wrongness" that we have internalized in very early childhood through socialization, mainly by parents/caregivers. This is BEGUN (I emphasize "begun" to prevent people from responding that their moral codes have changed since they were two) on a "pre-cognitive" level; a visceral phenomenon via conditioning, whereby, when requisite conditions exist, inculcation of feelings of right and wrong occur. The effect of this internalization of feelings is that, later, we can't tell WHY some things seem wrong and others right, we just know that we feel them. This is why many people think we are born with moral feelings (we aren't; we are born with the capacity, given certain circumstances, to take on the attitudes of our caretakers, whatever they might be). These moral feelings we acquire (sometimes known as "conscience") are very real and cannot be ignored.

What prevents us, when we understand the process of moral acquisition, from saying, then, that since there is no standard of right and wrong against which our own can be measured, we might as well abandon our personal standards? The answer is reason. As we mature, we perceive that some of the moral views have practical implications and these conclusions are added to our truth structures. So it seems that, for realizing goals, our moral feelings are "true."

BD, I'm not ignoring the rest of your beautifully and clearly written post, in which you were able to express the problem that many objectivists have with a seeming conflict in subjectivist interpretation of moral mechanism. I'm hoping this response addresses that problem.

AdamWho

Violent Messiah
Your critisism shows that you either don't know where morals come from or you don't undstand my statement

AdamWho
Violent Messiah
You say that morality is not the obeyed.
Morals are a reflection of your values. For instance, you value a positive relationship with your parents, therefore you treat them with respect; it is a choice based upon your values.

You do not respect you parents because somebody wrote it down in some book and told you to obey.

Violent Messiah
You are confusing morals and values. You may value raping and killing, however, you probably value freedom, your life and positive social interaction even more. The process of using your brain and working through conflicting values is call ethics.
The end result is a code of guidelines to live your life by which are called morals.

Just grabbing an arbitrary set of morals out of thin air or adopting a set because some one said so is not morality.

Morality requires you use your brain and choose.

A "moral commandment" is a contradiction in terms.

Violent Messiah

Secular Filipino

Yes, I know for there are many religions out there. My point is theists base their morality on God's word. It may be Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh etc. I'm not going to debate which is right. The thing I only want to know is the standard of morality of atheists....which brings me to your second reply.....

Then how do we know the objective....this is somewhat diverting to the principles of subjectibe reality and the concept of truth itself...oh well....

HawkingFan (I am too....I've read half of brief history...still trying ot finish it)

Human law?So your basis of righteousness is human law?Okei, that's an answer.

Adam Who

I understood your first post. Your first post did not contain all the explanations you have now.

Of course I know this.

LEt me give you a hypothetical situation:

If someone grew up not respecting nor obeying his good and loving parents, would he be immoral or not? Theists can say he is immoral. Atheists on the other hand would say what? And on what basis?

This is my basic question; nothing else.

AdamWho

Since I value positive relationships with my parents, then, from my point of view a person treating their parents poorly would be immoral. BUT it may not be from that persons perspective, they might value something more that contridicts the value of treating their parents well.

Perspective is everything, thats why there is no objective morality

The Other Michael

What about the parent who is good and loving to their child, but happens to be a hit man for an organized crime mob the rest of the time? Or someone who makes a habit of swindling widows and orphans? Does the child have an option to not respect or obey the parent then?

Or maybe the parent is quite good in all respects, but horribly ineffective at implementing the good desires, leading to catastrophes left, right and center. If the child sees that "daddy means well, but if I do what I'm told the fewmets will hit the rotary air circulation unit" can that justify not obeying?

You really need to define the situation in a fair degree of detail as "the right answer" can vary from situation to situation.

cheers,
Michael

DRFseven

An individual is drawn to respect someone or s/he is not, based on circumstance beyond the individual's conscious control. People are either drawn to respect someone or they are not.

Suppose a sincere and, in your opinion, good person were in love with you. Suppose you weren't in love with this person. Could you decide to love this person and carry through? I understand that romantic love is probably not contained in your personal moral code, but the dynamics are the same.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with the above, your basic question has not been answered. You are asking for the basis on which an atheist would deny the morality of someone else; right? That basis would be the internalized feelings of right/wrong acquired during childhood, rationalized by reasoning. It seems right that we do such-and-such. It seems wrong that we such-and-such. When we examine the reasoning, we see that it seems right or wrong BECAUSE it seems certain outcomes we deem negative or positive (such as survival or death) will result.