Aerik Von

As "Gods" rules and laws really cannot be proven they could easily be discarded as nothing more than psychological projections of how we feel.

Simply put, how many athiests use Empathy as a moral guide instead of supernatural assurances?

ChrisJGQ

I try to. That isn't to say that I'm not acting this way for inherently selfish reasons, but that's another topic.

Jamie_L

Empathy. Desire for order. Security. The basis for morality is complex. Religious morality is based on all the same things, it just isn't honest about it.

Of course these things can replace religion. They already do. There is no world-wild moral truth that everyone follows, and yet we all survive. Each culture muddles through with it's own moral code. Christianity has already dispensed with many morals that people today feel clash with their empathy. That should tell us something.

Jamie

ManM

I have never come across a case where harm was considered moral for it's own sake. I think we do have a common moral foundation grounded in our nature. That foundation may be expressed differently due to belief or culture, but it nevertheless remains universal.

southernhybrid

Maybe, but then how do you explain that genocide is also universal? Even primitive primates practice it although not nearly as effectively as our own species. Jane Goodall describes such behavior in her accounts of observing chimps. Genocide has often been used with moral indignation to destroy populations that were perceived to be evil, savage etc. Jared Diamond, in The Third Chimpanzee, describes numerous examples of genocide throughout history. Men such as Thomas Jefferson, JQ Adams, Washington and others all thought it was moral and justified to destroy the native population.

Empathy is an important human trait but not all humans seem to experience it, or at least not in all situations. When it comes to pepole that don't share a similar culture or similar physical traits, empathy is often absent.

Most westerners empathized when Americans were killed in New York, but there seemed to be a lack of empathy when Afghan citizens were killed by collateral damage. In fact many Americans had righteous indignation about those killed by our bombs, even verbalizing that the people deserved to be killed. I don't think we can rely on empathy to be the basis for a universal moral system. It's ineffective and inconsistent.

In answer to your original question though, empathy often guides me in my personal moral code.

ManM

And that is a classic utilitarian calculation based on belief. I have never seen anyone try to justify genocide without making reference to some sort of higher good.

pug846

Okay, then prepare your virgin ears.

Genocide of Jews is morally good because Jews are intrinsically evil and need to be destroyed.

ManM, please for the love of good look up the naturalistic fallacy.

ManM

pug846,
Justify this. Why do you say Jews are intrinsically evil?

Done. Now what? Morality is uniquely human, and so I feel quite justified in correlating it with our specific nature. What would you correlate morality with?

Your.Master

ManM, he never said Jews were intrinsically evil. Hitler did, and he believed it, as did his Jugund etc. I believe there is a 99.8348% chance that that is what was being referred to.

Then again, Hitler was trying to revive the insane Germanic (you might call it Norse) religion of cross-dressing Thunder Gods, but I don't think that had anything to do with his Jewish genocides.

According to Hitler, not I, Jews were the source of all the problems with Germany, and therefore should be exterminated.

Although, I think he also said it was for the "Greater good" of the "Master race".

I'm going to go and hide my blue eyes now.

Writer@Large

For an interesting take on "Empathy as a moral guide," read Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick concieves of a quasi-religious philosophy called "Mercerism," whose cheif tactic is to unite all of humanity in empathic sympathy with its fellow humanity, through the form of an individual called Mercer [interesting Jesus overtones here--essentially, what if the story of Jesus had nothing to do with God, or Sin, or Redemption, but was powerful simply because we saw in Jesus a man in pain, a man with whom we could emphathize?].

Empathy, the book posits, is a uniquely human phenomenon (it's how they tell androids from humans) and as perhaps the only uniquely human phenomenon, it is empathy, for each other and for all living things, that should be the basis for our society.

Yes, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is the basis for the movie Blade Runner, but the book is much better (so true of 99.9% of book-to-movie adaptations EVER made), and the movie all but ignored the Mercerism idea.

--W@L

[ August 23, 2002: Message edited by: Writer@Large ]</p>