PandaJoe

No it doesn't, and if you are objective, you will be intellectually honest enough to admit it.

Wow, these single line assertions are pretty easy.

Goober

What horrifies me is when Christians claim that atheists have no morals, and that if they were an atheist they would happily steal, lie, rape and so on.

Great, they are only acting out of a selfish desire to get to heaven. I just can't believe that they would be so antisocial that they would have no concept of hurting other people, and would feel that there was nothing wrong about it.

I shudder just thinking that people could seriously claim this.

Division By Zero

I find it horrifying as well. They're admitting that they're only in it for the reward at the end... and then they have the gall to turn around and blame moral decay on atheists and secular humanists (though I must admit, I always find the latter very amusing).

I guess their logic goes something like "Belief in God is the only thing keeping me from being a serial killer. Therefore, all who do not believe must be serial killers."

Feh!

xorbie

Actually, I must say that I find the whole born again thing to be one of the better things about Christian theology (and there are very few....). People change, and while most do not change very fundamentally, I don't think that you should hold one's immoral actions against him or her forever (or for their entire lifetime).

Of course, fundy morality is not a logical system and should not be followed. However, no Christian that I know would argue that if you are a bad person and right before you die utter a blessing just to cover it up, you will go to heaven. The idea is that you really do need to fundamentally change your ways. I am all for this, and while I do not like Christianity, I think that people who do go through these profound changes and actually become better people should be aplauded, not mocked. (disclaimer: I know nothing of this case, and for all I know this guy is still the violent killer he always was)

Odemus

I'm an agnostic and a realist. If there is no god, morality is nothing more than a subjective assessment of the desireability of any given action.Unless you care to defend the postion that human morality would still have some sort of significance if an asteroid suddenly slammed into earth and sent us flying into the sun.

I'm not saying that athiests have no morals, I'm saying that without a god, morals are as meaningless as nature is indifferent.

Goober

Odemus, you are correct to say that morals are subjective. However, you make an unjustified leap from 'subjective' to 'meaningless'.

Morals are very meaningful and have great importance to the functioning of society. They may not prevent asteriods from slamming into the earth, but they do keep people from killing anyone they want.

Odemus

I contend that you make an unjustified leap by assuming that morality is meaningful because it holds so much importance to the functioning of society. How is the moral assertion 'murder is wrong' meaningful compared to the assertion 'murder is not wrong'? The Aztecs based their entire existence on appeasing the gods through human sacrifice.Certainly morality had great importance to the functioning of their society.

So I have to ask, what is good about keeping people from killing anyone they want?

xorbie

(note: this is from another thread, so it might not make perfect sense, but basically what I adress is how a system of morality can make sense without God)

Anyhow, this is my take on absolute morality. It can clearly exist without any God or even a "supernatural" force (such as karma). Several have been posited already by philosophers. The actual question is "why should people actually follow these objective morals?" or "what enforces these morals?" If, for instance, I say "Walking on your hands is always 'good' and walking on only one leg is 'bad' ", you would clearly say "who cares what you say?"

This is because there would be nothing to enforce my laws, which hinge on my arbitrary decision. However, many other philosophers have developed far more exhaustive definitions of morality which would apply to everyone. One example is J.S. Mill. With these types of moralities, the philosopher will argue that there is a reason to follow their rules. I believe the reasons fall under 3 categories.

(1) Human nature - This is basically saying that all people have certain qualities, and all people's lives will gain from doing certain things and not doing other things.

(2) Societal good - This one basically says that because of certain laws governing action, which can get failry technical actually, certain actions are better to take when in a society. These laws ARE NOT INHERENT in humanity, but arise out of population dynamics. Doing them will lead to a better society and thus a better life for you.

(3) The supernatural - Well, it couldn't be avoided. This one ranges from the God/heaven model to karma to the Dao... some of it actually has a lot in common with #1 and #2

This of course in no way shows how any objective morality proves God, although an argument could be made that incorporates #1 or maybe even #2, but I don't have one off the top of my head.

Goober

Odemus,

OK, I'll try to formalize some of my ideas about morality to show how I reached my conclusions, but I'm pretty much working this out as I go along, so I might need to change things a bit.

Here is my definition of an immoral action: An action that purposely or through negligence causes overall damage to the well-being of others. A moral action could be similarly defined.

Killing a person severely damages their well-being, and does not in general increase the well-being of any other people enough to compensate, hence it causes overall damage to the well being of others. Therefore it is immoral, and wrong.

On the other hand, the Aztecs thought that sacraficing people was okay, because they thought it appeased their gods and hence increased overall well-being. But they were wrong; there is no evidence for their gods existing, or that sacraficing people increased general well-being by getting their gods favour, so they were in fact mistakenly performing an immoral action.

Perhaps we should continue this in another thread? It is kinda off topic here, and if you want to continue much futher, I really think it would be better done in a different thread.

Anyway, I look forward to your criticisim.

sullster

Odemus,

Even if there were a god, human morality still has no significance if your asteroid slammed into the earth. We are an intelligent worm which has evolved in a brutally indifferent universe. You are saying nothing which is new.

It seems odd to me that a self-proclaimed agnostic would tie an absolutist connection between human ideas of moral behaviour and the existence of a diety. There are many schools of thought which explain moral behaviour without any tie to a god. Humanism from the Renaissance to the present day has advocated this.

Getting back to my original point that christian morality is a sham. By focusing exclusively on an after-life reward for believers, it has obscured the penalties for horrid human actions against other humans. Christianity has elevated belief into a state of moral purity and non-belief into a punishable crime.

A god who would reward a believer and punish a non-believer is obviously immoral because neither of these states are a moral position in the real world where we live. A god who would reward a murderous believer and punish a non-murderous non-believer is an exceptionally immoral god.

I am not going to believe in any god, especially an immoral one.