luvluv

Well if you read through the full thread I clarified it:

If you do not believe in God because he cannot be proven to exist, and yet you do believe in morals that also cannot be proven to exist, then you are being hypocritical.

However, you are not being hypocritical if the fact that God cannot be proven to exist has nothing to do with your athiesm. But of course that suggests that if God were to be proven to exist that you would still be an atheist, which is absurd.

Carlos

I'm not sure I follow this line of reasoning. If I understand you correctly, our beliefs should be consistent with respect to lack of proof. If that is the case, how about

If you do not believe in an invisible pink unicorn because he cannot be proven to exist, and yet you do believe in God that also cannot be proven to exist, then you are being hypocritical.

So how is it that theists are not hypocritical?

luvluv

Because theists make no claim to temper their beliefs only to what can be proven.

Jagged

Interesting. I keep seeing this same distrust of the self from you and other theists here.

I think the problem with your statement lies in the word "believe." As in: "you do believe in morals." Luvluv, I do not BELIEVE in morals. My morals are not something external to myself which I need to place belief in. My morals are only a part of who I am, tempered by a little reason and judgement on my part.

I don't need external proof to know my morals are "correct." In fact I do not care if they are correct. My moral standards come from the heart of my "SELF". I'm sure this must be hard for some theists to understand. I know I would've had a very hard time understanding it when I was a Christian. There's so much fear in Christianity that humans, if left to themselves, would want to do grossly immoral things. The idea is they need god to keep them from this fate.

But the truth is that humans without god are not any more immoral than the rest of the population. On abandoning god I did not feel the urge to go out and lie, cheat, steal, be cruel or dishonest just because I "could." I value life greatly and am perhaps more sincere about respecting all forms of life because I am doing it for my own reasons, not because I'm "supposed to."

Carlos

Right, I understand that - it is thus that you justify belief in God. But I don't think that addresses disbelief in the IPU. If we hold that theists must also be "consistent with respect to lack of proof", it would seem they would have to believe in IPUs or disbelieve and be hypocrites. But anyways...

I will concede that the "moral system" of an atheist is not based completely on a set of rational arguments. If that were the case, then it would follow that all atheists would have the same moral system (since reason would apply equally regardless of the values of the individual). I would argue that the moral systems followed by atheists make use of reason and values (which may vary from individual to individual).

So, whereas the atheist makes use of values for morals and reason for disbelief in God, the theist makes use of (internal) reason for morals and values for belief in God. Suppose we don't just look internally, though - transitively, the theist's morality is also based on values. After all, values dictate which God one believes in, which in turn determine what moral system one follows.

I cannot prove that a particular moral system is the rational one, true - but I do lead my life according to some sense of morality, whatever that may be. Your assumption presupposes that there must be a best/rational choice; I disagree. I would not call myself a hypocrite because I see morality as depending on values (for theists and atheists), and I do not expect my "belief" in morals to be equivalent to my (rational) "disbelief" in God.

ManM

My apologies for the posting delay.

Jamie_L,
If an individual is only cooperating with society to protect himself from harm, he is still only thinking of himself.

This actually fits into this discussion very well. You feel that killing people would be wrong, even if you had 10 months to live. I do too. Therefore, I would expect a moral theory to reach the same conclusion. A morality based on self-interest does not necessarily reach the conclusion that you should not kill people for fun. I strongly feel that killing people for fun is immoral. Therefore I cannot accept that morality based on self-interest is a good moral theory.

Keep in mind, the divine command theory of morality is simply repackaged self-interest. I don't agree with that one either.

A God-based morality is not necessarily less immediate. The one you mentioned is, but there are others which place morality at the heart of everything that happens. The key is that the theist can see the world as having a purpose greater than the self while remaining consistent with his theism. Can an atheist consistently believe in a teleology? If not, the atheist is forced into a moral theory based on self-interest.

Jagged Little Pill,
Let me address these 'assumptions' you have found in the statement: "I believe it is immoral to harm someone unjustly, even if it would ultimately further your own interests to do so. A person who believes that self-interest is at the root of morality will have a hard time making that statement while remaining consistent with their moral theory."

This is an observation, not an assumption. Do you think that a person who wins a lawsuit does not benefit at someone else's expense?

I inserted "unjustly" to avoid pacifism. Harming a person (eg putting a criminal in jail) is a necessary evil sometimes.

I did not mention or imply this anywhere. Having self-interest is not the same thing as believing self-interest to be the foundation of morality.

A self-interested person can have any number of moral theories. A person who believes that self-interest is the foundation of morality has a very specific moral theory. Do not equivocate a self-interested person with a person who thinks self-interest is at the root of morality.

A theory of morality based on self-interest conflicts with intuitive moral claims. I would expect a moral theory to conclude that killing people purely for entertainment is wrong. A theory rooted in self-interest cannot make that claim.

I have learned that cognitive dissonance does not bother most people. However, I suspect some people reading this forum do care about being consistent.

As Jamie_L mentioned, we do have access to morality on an emotional level. I am setting up a conflict between the emotion and the theory based on self-interest. If anything, I am affirming the self as a solid ground of moral intuition.

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: ManM ]</p>

Jagged

MM

Just because I act in self-interest does not mean I take leave of my sanity. There are a host of reasons it is not in my best interests to commit mass murder. The most obvious being I'd certainly be killed or jailed by the community.

You are confusing "self-interest" with "selfishness." My moral code is dictated by the former, you are assuming the latter is the only one possible without god.

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: Jagged Little Pill ]</p>

ManM

Jagged Little Pill,
I am aware that there are a host of reasons to not commit mass murder. However, even if all those reasons were to disappear, I would consider murder for entertainment purposes to be immoral. If someone wants to murder someone and knows with relative certainty that they can get away with it, a moral theory based on self-interest does not label that murder as immoral. Therein rests the tension.

I assume you are trying to differentiate between enlightened self-interest and immediate hedonism. If you will notice, my argument applies to both. Also, nowhere have I claimed the latter is the only one possible without God.

K

luvluv:

Sorry, I've been away for a while. I'm still catching up on all the things written in this thread, but I wanted to respond to your post so you wouldn't think I ignored it.

I would consider that a perfectly rational explanation for your belief in the existence of God. It says nothing about whether or not the belief itself is rational and it certainly doesn't say anything about the existence of God.

That is correct. There is a rational explanation for why I value my self-preservation, but my self-preservation holds no universal "goodness" or "truth" to it. I already said I don't believe in an absolute "right" and "wrong". This is just a restatement of my position. Unless you are somehow saying that the self-preservation instinct is irrational. I would say that it is neither rational nor irrational.

I could certainly be wrong about many things. I don't think that's ever been questioned. I also never claimed that valuing self-preservation was the basis for morality. I only claimed that I believe the behavior that we call morality is an evolved trait that helped our ancestors survive and successufully reproduce.


These examples are meaningless since they are counterexamples to a position I never claimed.

luvluv

Jagged:

I really wasn't posting this to question whether or not atheists can be moral (of course they can) I was only pointing out an inconsistency in their position. I don't know how you formed your caricature of what a theist must believe, or what he must fear, but they don't apply to me or most of the theists I associate with. My reason for posting this was not out of Nietzche-esque (is that a word?) panic that mankind without God would lose all moral bearings. I merely point out that if an atheist is committed to not believing in any entity, OR THE TRUTH OF ANY POSITION, without proof, then that atheist cannot commit to any moral principle as being right or wrong. So, while I do not think that you have any reason to question the existence of your moral sense, you should question whether or not what it tells you is true.

Which is fine, until you find yourself living in a society of people whose standards also come from their selves, and many of you disagree on essential issues. Then what? You don't live in a world by your self.

K:

Exactly. So the fact that you're self-preservation is determined does not make it rational. So self-preservation has no rational justification, yet you believe it to be a sound basis for morality. So you can believe in the truth of an idea without it being rationally justified. So why don't you believe in God?

So would you hold belief in God to be irrational or neither rational nor irrational?

I'm afraid there's no subcategory my friend. If you hold to a belief with no rational justification then that belief is not based on reason, and is thus irrational.

That works to a point but it fails at examples like the argument between the social darwinist and the utilitarian. It really doesn't help them resolve their conflict.

They aren't meaningless, they point to the fact that self-preservation does not always hold and thus it is not irresistiably determined. That would seem to give the lie to your argument that the whole affair can be explained away via evolution. It seems that in some cases one would be rationally justified and further morally right in NOT abiding by self-preservation.

For example, do you remember that plane crash into the icy river in Ohio (I think) a few years ago? A few people survived the crash but were stranded in dangerously icy waters. A rescue helicopter came by and let down a ladder to get the survivors to safety. One man continually refused the ladder and passed it on to other people in the slush. After a few passes when the ladder came back for the man... he was gone. He died so that others might live.

Now according to self-preservation, what this man did was not just stupid, it was morally wrong. But certainly, almost no one would agree with that. A man purposely giving up his life so that others might live was not being immoral. So it would seem that self-preservation must be justified rationally, because it would seem not to hold axiomatically or automatically.