CRDbulldog

As a newbie to the forum I want to first let the reader know my position on religion. Although I grew up in a Christian family, I am an atheist and have been so since at least my early high school years (I am now 51 years old). There was no big event that caused me to be atheist, it is just that the whole religion thing has never seemed very plausible to me. I have nothing against Christians with the exception of certain fundamentalist types who seem to believe that only Christians have the moral authority to determine right and wrong and it is their duty to get these beliefs incorporated into law. It is this type of Christian that has caused me to explore some Christian writings on the net.

I have read quite a bit now from Christian apologists stating that God is the basis of morality. They generally acknowledge that atheists can be moral people, but are only moral because they have chosen to act in accord with the morals laid down by God whether they realize it or not. While I appreciate the acknowledgment that an atheist can be moral, I strongly disagree with their sentiment.

I have also read with interest some of the moral arguments from the infidel's library in response to these arguments. While I agree more with their opinions I do not feel like they have captured the essence of my beliefs. I would like to present my view here. I have not yet thought these ideas through totally so bear with me. I need your comments to help stimulate my thinking.

First of all I would like to say I DO think there is an objective basis for morality. I do not think that one's morality, however, is a gift from God. Instead one's morality is determined by the principles one chooses to live his/her life by. I believe these principles are universal. They are things like integrity, tolerance, fair-play, and respect for others among others. I believe these principles are self-evidently good (try to argue against any one of them).

Since these principles are self-evident most people can easily recognize them. Thus, most people behave morally. Why then does not everyone? The reason is that to follow these principles often entail a cost (at least in the short-term). For instance, suppose you have promised a close friend that you would help him with a project at a specified time. Suppose that as that time approaches you find you have other needs - perhaps you have been given tickets to a big sportings event taking place at that time. What do you do? The easiest thing is to make some excuse and go and have fun. If your relationship with your friend is good enough, he will probably forgive you. No harm done, right? Wrong. You have lost trust. It will take some time for that to be regained. And if you do things like that enough times your friend will slowly drift away.

AFAIK, there is no study that suggests that any particular religious group behaves significantly more morally than any other. All groups are just about equally moral. The fact that moral principles are self-evident leads to the observation that there are a roughly equal proportion of "saints" amongst Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddahists, Jews, and atheists. The fact that it is often hard to live by these principles leads to the observation that there is are roughly equal proportions of "sinners" amongst these populations as well.

A Christian might say that these principles I have talked about are all well and good. But it is God who made them. Poppycock! These principles arise naturally out of the interactions between humans. I will use comparative ethology to give you an idea of what I mean.

Humans are a social animal. They live in a society unlike that of any other animal. Humans communicate between each other vastly more than any other species. The principles that are appropriate in such a society are often different than those of other animal societies. For instance, a male lion when he takes over a new pride will kill the cubs of the females within the pride as soon as he gets a chance. For a lion society this is a perfectly moral thing to do. The male lion will defend his position from other male lions trying to oust him. The fighting will eventually take its toll and he will lose. Males average only a couple of years as head of the pride. He cannot afford to have the lionesses spending a year of their time taking care of another male's offspring. Furthermore, by killing the cubs he brings the lionesses into heat much earlier than they would otherwise. Thus, it makes perfectly good sense that this type of moral behavior could evolve amongst lions.

But does it make sense for our type of moral behavior to evolve amongst humans? The Christian often portrays atheistic morals as hedonistic. One should only care for onself. They further imply that this is what one should naturally expect from evolution. This is simplistic and wrong. IF AND ONLY IF a person is on average capable of leaving behind more offspring by practicing hedonistic behavior is it to be expected from evolutionary theory. I submit that any general pattern selfish, hedonistic behavior is doomed to defeat.

We all know people we think are selfish. We generally do not like them. People who are generally not liked have a severe reproductive handicap.

Evolutionary theory has a rather large body of literature on the evolutionary benefits of altruism. Altruism in evolutionary biology is defined as a behavior that incurs a cost for the organism performing the behavior while at the same time conferring a benefit for another organism receiving the behavior. There are at least two cases where such behavior can be convincingly demonstrated to lead to a net reproductive gain. The first case is called kin altruism. Here the performer of the altruistic deed is directing it toward a closely related individual. The second case is reciprocal altruism in which the performer and the receiver are not closely related. For the purposes of my discussion on morality, this is the more important case.

Reciprocal altruism is beneficial for the performer when (1) the cost of performing the altruistic act is relatively low, and (2) the performer has a reasonable expectation that if he is faced with a similar circumstance he has a reasonable expectation that a similar altruistic act will performed for him. The question arises - Doesn't reciprocal altruism promote cheating? Cheating here is analogous to immoral behavior. The answer is "Yes, it does!" If an organism can get away by receiving altruistic acts without performing any in return, he has a net gain in resources that should be able to be turned into reproductive success. Ah, but the operative phrase here is "if an organism can get away". Evolutionary theory predicts that in any species that practices riciprocal altruism, the members of that species will be very good "cheater detectors".

Recently this prediction was tested in vampire bats. Vampire bats live communally. They tend to hunt for prey alone at night however. These bats are small and have a high metabolic rate. They need a constant supply of blood in order to live. Generally, they animals they feed on have more than enough blood, but alas, they are nights when a vampire bat will fail to find any prey what-so-ever. This could lead to their death. It has long been noted that vampire bats will often regurgitate part of their blood feast for a totally unrelated individual. Recently it has been shown that the bats also are able to distinguish those individuals who take significantly more than they give and quit responding to their signals for blood. In other words, vampire bats are indeed good cheater detectors.

So how does this play into human society? My premise is that the principles I mentioned early are natural products of the type of society we humans live in. They are easily recognizeable. Humans generally are pretty good cheater detectors, thus it is the people who lives by these principles that are on average the most "fit", ie produce the most offspring. Morality then does not derive from God, but rather from Godless evolution.

Thank you for your time.

LaDorissima

Makes sense to me. It's what's known as 'enlightened self interest'. That is, we each act in our own self interest in the knowledge that we will benefit more in the long run by building/maintaining a co-operative society in which (ideally) everybody is healthy, happy and contributing to the resources available to all.

The majority of people recognise, to some extent or another, the benefit of behaving in a way that contributes to such a society and so we develop a code of conduct or set of morals that most people adhere to.

In my experience, whether somebody keeps the code or not has little to do with their religious beliefs (or freedom from them) though obviously they are influenced by their up-bringing and education. IMO, someone who has learned to think for himself is more likely to see the wider implications of his actions and behave in a 'good' way than someone who is merely obeying a set of rules imposed by his god or church leaders and therefore doesn't consider whether an action is 'good' or 'bad' in terms of its effect on society.

Many (perhaps most) of those who transgress the code see themselves as having been denied the benefits of the society they live in and thus entitled to disregard its rules.

LaD

CRDbulldog

LaDorissima, thank you for the response. As I said in my original post I have not thought through the implications of my theory yet. For instance, I have stated that the appropriate moral principles are determined by the structure of the society we live in. However, not all humans live in the same society. An agrarian Islamic fundamentalist community has distinct differences from that of the richer section of an American city, for example. Shouldn't the fundamental principles controlling interactions be different in these societies? Also within any MACRO-society are separate MICRO-societies (eg, class differences). Does this lead to people with different moral compasses based on their position within society?

I'm not sure. My initial belief is that overall human societies (even agrarian Islamic fundamentalist v. Park Avenue elites) share more similarities than differences and thus, share most of the same principles. But I suspect that if we could dissect a society finely enough we would find a heirarchy of principles. And some of the principles at the lower levels may be different and even opposed in different societies and micro-societies.

When you say:
<strong>
Many (perhaps most) of those who transgress the code see themselves as having been denied the benefits of the society they live in and thus entitled to disregard its rules.</strong>

It makes sense to me. But I wonder if these people could be living in a separate microsociety with different lower level principles? Let's take an urban gang as an example. There are rules within that society that these people follow. Some of these rules require strict sacrifices. Is that not a form of moral behavior? Again I'm not sure.

The problem to me is that it comes close to moral anarchy. That is, morals are what a person feels is moral, there is no objective morality. But, I feel like I know immoral behavior when I see it. If this is true then there must be some objective basis for morality. I firmly believe that SOME principles are universal. I cannot imagine any society without integrity playing a key role. If no one can be trusted then society would quickly fall apart.

I would be interested in the comments from anyone on this regard. Thanks again for your time and the opportunity to organize my thoughts better.

pug846

CRDbulldog,

Welcome to the II. Nice to see yet another Texan.

Eh? Self-evidently good? Okay, integrity is self-evidently bad. There’s my argument. We’re even now, right? :smile:

Cute little anecdotes aside, are you trying to say there is some sort of necessary logical connection between breaking one of your self-evident principles and self-interest? Do I need to list the near infinite amount of counter-examples in which lacking integrity, fair-play, etc. will cause close to zero harm to the individual?

How would you measure how moral one group is, even if we were to agree with what you mean by moral?

[quote] The fact that moral principles are self-evident leads to the observation that there are a roughly equal proportion of "saints" amongst Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddahists, Jews, and atheists.

I’m really not following you here. Why should it (morally) matter if I leave behind offspring? Why should I choose a life strategy that will lead me to have a lot of kids or any at all? Why should I care if the herd doesn’t survive? You’re begging the question here. You’re sneaking in all of these unwritten premises and then saying, given that this is what we ought to be aiming for…x follows.

It often is the case that the moral principles we follow are influenced by our surrounding environment, but we what you want to derive is what we ought to be doing. And what the hell is a society anyway? I belong to a lot of different “societies.”

CRDbulldog

Thanks for the reply, pug846.

I do appreciate it.

And it is nice to be talking to a somewhereian.

You are essentially saying I am asserting integrity to be good without providing justification. I was. As I said I think it is self-evident. But you have challenged that assertion. Great! Now I will have to defend it. Without integrity as a genetal part of society then there could be no trust between people. Integrity involves the making AND keeping of promises. If you could not depend upon the word of another then how would you guarentee that you would get what you want? There are few alternatives. Some type of coersion is the most likely alternative. Can we depend on the integrity of others? Generally yes. But in a few cases, we cannot. What do we do? We avoid interactions with a person we believe to be untrustworthy. This avoidance means that we, in general, view a lack of integrity as being bad. Ergo, integrity is good. If we were even before, we are not now.

No, you don't. But it is my contention that over the long run, any sustained action not in accord with these principles will lead to harm being caused to the individual. As evidence of this I have suggested that we all know of people we feel are not acting in accord with these principles and these people tend to be the ones we do not like. That lack of goodwill is harmful and if spread across enough people will make life harder for these people. Do you disagree with this? If so you will have to give me an example where as a long-term strategy behaving in a manner not in accord with those principles is beneficial to an individual.

I am by no means an expert here. But to the best of my memory here is how it was done in some studies I have skimmed. First, you define a group. The studies I have read usually define groups as Christian-Catholic, Christian-Protestant, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddahist, atheist, etc. Next, you pick a measurable behavior that you can support as being immoral. Studies I have read include behaviors as those that tend to get people thrown in prison, abortion (important note: I do not think abortions are necessarily immoral, the informal study I read did, however), being a deadbeat dad, etc. If you want to argue that these studies are not well done, I wont necessarily disagree with you. But that is how they have been done.

You are correct, you did not follow me . Here is my premise again. I am saying that morals arise naturally. There are principles that determine the outcome of interactions between people. The best outcome will occur when we act in accord with principles that people generally recognize as being good morally. But how did we come to recognize these principles as being good morally? Here is where you lost track of my argument. I am saying that we EVOLVED to act morally. It really doesn't matter if you choose to have a lot of kids or not ... now. In fact, I have chosen to have only one and I do so for reasons I think are quite moral. But when we were evolving our morals, those people who behaved morally were afforded more mating opportunities than those who didn't. Thus, the genes (or possibly, the meme) for moral behavior was transmitted on to succeeding generations more than were any competeing genes (or memes). Sorry for not explaining that better in the original post.

You certainly do belong to a lot of different "societies". In the post just above yours I made several remarks about how I had not yet firmed up my ideas on "micro-societies" and the possible principles underlying these. Briefly, it is my belief that all the societies you belong to have more in common than differences. Thus, some principles are universal. I tend to think of these as the upper-level principles in a "principle-heirarchy" that govern the outcomes of interpersonal behaviors. I acknowledge there may well be different lower-level principles depending upon the group (or society, if you wish) that you interact with. These differing principles may well lead to conflicts between groups.

Basically, I have a theory. It is VERY SHORT on data and doesn't have much "meat" on its framework at this time. I don't expect anyone to take it very seriously at this point. I like it because it seems to make sense to me and there is some consilience with what I have learned from my own experience, what I learned from reading other people's work on ethics, and evolutionary theory. I am trying to put some more flesh on it. I would like to put enough flesh on it that it would make some testable predictions. These discussions help greatly. Thanks.

pug846

I’m from the “great” *cough* shit hole *cough* Texas as well. If you are located close to the Austin area, we are having an infidel gathering there soon.

I think you are mixing the real problem here. If our end goal is to have a cohesive society, then integrity, honesty, etc. are important ingredients. Those are pretty good strategies. But why should I care about a cohesive society? What if I want my end goal to be the killing of as many people as possible? You’re arbitrarily defining your end goal and then stating a number of different strategies to get there, but you aren’t providing justification for why having a stable society is a “good” thing.

So, the real strategy here should be that we all should want to appear trustworthy, etc., not necessarily be trustworthy. Shall I always act in accordance with your principles even if they hurt me in specific incidents? Let’s say I can lie at the grocery store to the checkout clerk and get away with a food item, where I have no reasonable expectation to get caught and can get away with it. What should I do?

Principles that we as a matter of fact do arise over time and change constantly. But in ethics, we aren’t talking about what IS a matter of fact, but what it OUGHT to be. Should morals arise out of agreements in society? You are just asserting that principles arise, but why should that matter? Ought I follow the principles my society dictates?
You’re making the naturalistic fallacy, and until you get around that problem, your moral theory can’t get off the ground.

CRDbulldog

pug846 again thanks for the reply.


Alas I'm presently in the Houston area.


I think the goal is to live the best life possible. Integrity, honesty, etc. are simply the best possible strategy to do so in ANY human society, cohesive or not.

If you want to kill as many people as possible then you are likely to be eliminated fairly quickly. You will cease to contribute. Your input into the next generation will likely be less than someone else who behaved in a pattern that most people would consider moral. In short, you would be an abberration. Weeding out harmful abberrations is one of the functions of natural selection.

Since most people can recognize behavior as being moral or immoral, I submit there is an innate moral code -- that innate moral code is its own justification. That innate moral code arose from a combination of the natural principles that I talked about above and natural selection. This determines what "ought" to be.

But here is the rub. You ALWAYS have a reasonable chance of being caught. The chance may be small but it is ALWAYS reasonable. We are a society that practices reciprocal altruism, thus, we are accomplished "cheater detectors" (see my original post). One prediction of my theory is that there is no way that in the long run you are going to come out ahead by practicing acts that go against the principles I talked about. Eventually, you will get caught and you will pay a price.

I disagree that the upper-level principles change over time. For that to happen human society would have to change into some form bearing little to no resemblance to what we have today. I think maybe the lower-level ones do change. I also think the upper-level ones are by far the most important. They matter because by following these principles a person will reliably (I predict) obtain more from society than if he doesn't.

When you apply the word "ought" I'm going to guess that you have somewhere in the back (or front!) of your mind a picture of someone becoming a martyr for some noble cause by opposing some immoral practice condoned by society. Let's make up a story of a person in the South during the early 1800's standing up publically calling for an end to slavery. We would judge that person to be very moral by today's standards. But look at the principles he is opperating on ... integrity, respect for others, fair-play. They are the upper level ones that I am talking about.

Let's examine the situation more closely. Suppose he stands up and says that he is against slavery on moral grounds. He gets called before a judge on the grounds that he has liabled a wealthy and influential slave owner. He apologizes before the court and slinks back into obscurity. He did not have integrity. He accomplished nothing. He was ineffective. OTOH, he sticks to his morals and maintains his position. He effectively communicates his opposition to slavery. He is more effective. His effectiveness is due to his following the principles I talked about.

Now, you might say that by backing down the person benefitted (he was not prosecuted), and maintaining a straight moral compass he suffered (he was prosecuted). But who lived the better life? Who did what "ought" to be done? I think the one who stayed the course.

Another problem, doesn't this go against my evolutionary hypothesis? Actually, in this limited case it does. But I think this case is an abberation. I do not think that the majority of people in the south who did not object to slavery were waffling on their morals. I believe that within their society they were still better off by practicing those upper-level principles. They just practiced them differently. Perhaps they only included people they felt were their equals as members of their society in which they felt it necessary to behave in accord with the principles. From the vantage point of today we have no problems seeing they were wrong. But from their vantage point I suspect the view was quite different. The point is that they still had to practice these traits. And even in the that society the average person was better off by living by those principles.

echidna

Hi there CRDbulldog.

You seem to be justifying morality in macro terms. Understandable OK. But how do you translate that into your personal morality ? Purely on the basis of conformance, that if everyone did it the race suffers ? Not adequate IMO.

Doesn’t macro-morality lead to the conclusion that it’s wrong to kill a million people, but killing a single individual really doesn’t make a difference ?

FWIW, I’m not sure about objective morality but I agree as far as I see the human virtues of integrity, compassion, altruism as universal human traits, quite probably hardwired by our DNA, acting not so much as absolute rules, but as moral signposts to our behaviour.

LaDorissima

Apropos of detecting cheats, you might find <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2190147.stm" target="_blank">this</a> interesting.

LaD

Marz Blak

Hello, CRDBulldog. I, too, and a new member/visitor. Your post is an interesting one, and I’d like to respond. I am by no means anything like a student of philosophy in general, much less ethics in particular, so please excuse any clumsiness you (or any others) might perceive in my reasoning or presentation. I am new here, have already learned a lot, and hope to learn more and get better at it as I go along.

That said….

You propose the existence of objective moral principles, and proceed to lay out what is in my view a pretty well-reasoned argument. But in my opinion your argument is not for the existence of an objective morality, per se, but is, rather, a good rationalization of a sort of a certain ethical construct being optimal from a sort of utilitarian view, along with some reasonable conjecture as to its evolutionary basis.

In other, simpler words, I think you’ve done a good job arguing that there exists a set of ethical principles that might be universal from the standpoint of optimizing human happiness and prosperity; but I would argue that to jump from this argument to a conclusion that such ethical principles are therefore _objectively good_ requires one to slip in an assertion that human happiness and prosperity are _objectively good_ things in and of themselves. I believe that this is a (very common but) unfounded assertion.

I don’t see how, when one deems something to be good, one can avoid adding the qualification of whom or what it is good for. For example, in this case, one could argue that, given a finitude of planetary resources, human prosperity necessitates the lessening of available resources of other types of living organisms, or at the very least increases the possibility of such lessening. So it is good for us, but maybe not so good for them. Is this in any sense _objectively good_? Only if one presupposes that humans are more intrinsically, _objectively_ valuable in some way than are other life forms. I am not even sure that it makes sense to try to think in these terms. What is the rubric by which one assigns an objective, intrinsic value to life? Is a dolpin 'worth' more than a dog? How does one judge? (Just so you know, I am the sort of person who argues with vegans on the grounds that the ethics of not eating animal products displays a blatant and possibly unfounded bias in favor of animals over plants .)

That’s one way I have a problem with your approach. Another way is to imagine a sort of extreme or total sadist, or masochist (either one works just as well)—a person for whom comfort and prosperity were quite literally anathema, and what we think of as discomfort or torture paradoxically (from our view) caused sensations of pleasure…. I think you can see where I am going with this: if people act in ways that increase this person’s comfort (if he’s a masochist) or require him to act in such ways (if he is a sadist), then while their ethical systems might increase overall happiness, they certainly don’t do anything for him! So again, I think you are falling back on utilitarianism (greatest good for greatest number) as being valid in some overarching or objective sense, which I believe is at the very least an arguable proposition.

I hope this all makes at least a bit of sense, and that I haven’t said anything that all you bright bulbs here aren’t rolling your eyes at. If I have made any such gaffes in reasoning, I’d appreciate any comments that would demonstrate them to me.

[ August 14, 2002: Message edited by: Marz Blak ]

[ August 14, 2002: Message edited by: Marz Blak ]</p>