a look at a Dostoevsky saying...

[Immanuel Can]

That's totally illogical. One can't be moral only as long as there are no obstacles to being such!

That sentence doesn't make sense. Can you fix it?

I admit to it being somewhat fuzzy and perhaps not immediately understandable. However it does make sense if slightly revised:

One can't claim to be moral for only so long as there are no obstacles to being moral.

Does this make it a little more comprehensible?

Yes, thank you. I agree: one cannot claim to be "moral" when there's no reason why it might not be.

Atheism is amoral, in that it paints a picture of a world with no objective moral duties existing in it.

"No moral duties existing" implies the indifference of nature to any imagined morality.

"Nature" according to Atheism, has no opinions. Therefore "nature" cannot be anything BUT "indifferent" to morality.

In the human world such is not the case

Well, right: but if human activities are no more than another kind of "natural activity," then that adds no information. You'd have to imagine that "human" is some kind of thing exalted above nature, something special, something that, in contrast to the natural world, can not only have delusions of "morality" but also can justify those seemings. But Atheism insists men are just animals.

So the fact that human societies imagine something called "morality" doesn't imply that they're justified in doing so, or that they owe each other to have duties to such imagined codes. Nietzsche saw that.

We need more than the bare sociological observation that the human animals happen to have a strange affinity with an imaginary construct called "morality." We need to know that that morality refers to something objective and duty-conferring.

Morality, considered from an Atheistic view, is entirely dispensible, the moment it's inconvenient or inexpedient.

As noted above in my slightly amended version, morality of any kind which surrenders to that view cannot be considered moral in any sense of the word.

True: but that's where Atheism goes, logically speaking.

...conscience itself would need to be decommissioned

But wait: what aspect of the world, as construed by Atheism, tells us we have a duty to follow conscience? After all, isn't it when we stand to gain something significant, but suspect it may be immoral, that we are most tempted?

If I, say, want my neighbour's wife, and feel a strong yearning to do so, but conscience tells me not to, which of my feelings do I "owe" to obey? Is it my sex drive, which is very powerful, or my conscience, which may also be strong, or may be a little equivocal on the point...which one is the right impulse? They both are strong, both come from me...and at least the sex drive is considered "evolutionary": as for "conscience," Atheism has to think it's just a feeling, untied to objective truth...

So we have this pull called "conscience" telling us not to do it, but strong incentives to WANT to do it. Which one are we duty-bound to obey?

Whatever one's beliefs may be, having a conscience is not typically a matter of choice.

No, that's true: but obeying it certainly is.

Interestingly, this is one of the few points on which Dostoevsky, the Christian, and Nietzsche, the arch-Atheist, absolutely agreed. Atheism is inherently an amoral worldview. Dostoevsky thought it was a bad thing that it was that way; Nietzsche thought it was kind of a good thing, an opportunity for ubermenschen to take charge of things. But both of them realized the truth of it.

I don't believe it was that simple for either of them.

And yet you can read their conclusions, which are essentially sympathetic to the same realization. Both knew that no God means no warrant for morality. And when such opponents find they have to agree...

I think most here (hopefully) would understand that your version of morality is no morality at all or exist only on the most hypocritical foundation causing whatever is defined as moral to negate itself...in effect to be its opposite.

It's not "my version." It's the Atheist's. It rationalizes perfectly with his worldview assumptions, and not at all with mine.

Not so! This is your version of atheists who were never singular in their belief regarding it.

What I'm talking about isn't "what Atheists themselves always do or think." That may be inconsistent or even irrational. Are there not many religious people who do not live out all their creed enjoins them to do? Are there not Islamists who don't wear the hijab, or Jews who eat pork, or people who claim to be "Christians" and yet live like they aren't? If there are hypocrites and inconsistent practitioners in every creed and ideology in the world, why would Atheism be magically exempt from them?

Of course, Atheists are like other people: sometimes consistent, but sometimes not. That's why what I'm talking about here is not "what Atheists do," but what Atheism itself requires them to do, logically and consistently, whether the actual ones do it or not.

Atheism does not allow for any objective morality. Subjective "moralizing" is devoid of duty-conferring power: you can't be obligated to obey somebody else's subjective opinion. (They can beat you up if you don't, but that's clearly not a "moral" move on their part, it's just the use of force.)

It's all so very weird! Can it ever be truly and actually known whether there is or ever was a ruling entity called god responsible for everything on earth to the very fringes of the universe itself!

Why not?

It doesn't seem particularly hard to think that if such a thing were so, we would have some reasons to believe it, and plausibley that some people would even have experience with it. It might not be estimable from a skeptical distance, but it might be knowable experientially. We can't estimate if Boston or Chicago exists for sure, if we've never been there ourselves, or know if Taylor Swift is a real person or an AI construct, unless we've met her personally; but if we had been to those cities or met Taylor Swift, we'd be in an entirely different epistemological situation.

Why should this matter be any different from that?

[Immanuel Can]

So sure, Atheists can act morally, if they decide they want to. But what the quotation points out is that they can't know what any objective morality is, and they don't have any reason to remain moral if they find it is in their interests not to do so.

That's the point.

Sounds like atheists that are moral are very moral indeed then, since they aren't doing it out of a fear of god or a desire to be rewarded by God. It's not fear or desire that fuels them, but instead some mixture of virtue and empathy and maybe a few more things along those lines.

I like it. That sounds lovely.

They actually can't be "moral" -- at least, if you're using that to confer an approval based on objective facts on them. For Atheism denies the possibility of objective morality.

I think you're perhaps thinking that there's something inherently "moral" about doing whatever it is a person wants, regardless of objective morality or other people. But most people recognize that as nothing more than "self-will." In other words, you've accidentally confused "complete autonomy" for "morality." But morality and ethics always deal with the relations between people -- or between a person and something else that is assumed to "count" morally (a pet, the environment, whatever). So a person who is isolated in the "moral" situation has no moral concerns to act upon. There's nothing in the world he could owe a moral duty to, nobody to chide him if he does not, and nobody to praise him if he does so.

That's basic, in ethics -- whether secular or religious. Self-will is not morality. Morality has to do with one's orientation toward important others, not one's level of, say, smug self-satisfaction, or one's willingness to act as if nobody else matters.

Additionally, there is no reality to the concept "moral" afforded through Atheism. So an Atheist, by his own account, cannot possibly be "moral." It doesn't refer to anything real.

[Immanuel Can]

So sure, Atheists can act morally, if they decide they want to.

But that's true for theists also. We all know theists can be immoral.

I absolutely agree. There are Theists of various kinds, and within each kind, Theists of varying commitment. And all are fallible, at the end of the day.

So are Atheists, of course.

And also, isn't there a desire in theist to be kind to others, or is it only following rules - for example. And don't they want to follow God, which would be good from their perspective. So, aren't theists acting morally because they want to?

People generally don't "want to" always be good. And I don't mean that cynically, but as a sociological truism. Some of us want to be good most of the time, some half of the time, and some less.

But this is an interesting point. What are ethics and morality for? If we always want to do what's right, why do we even need these things?

And are you really saying that atheists can't go against their own desires if it might, for example, hurt someone?

I don't see I ever suggested that anybody can't choose to "go against their desires" -- save, perhaps, an addict. I think ethics and morality are things that are supposed to help us "go against our desires," when those desires go awry. They're supposed to remind us of what remains "the right thing to do" in situations in which we are tempted to do or be something we should not.

But what the quotation points out is that they can't know what any objective morality is, and they don't have any reason to remain moral if they find it is in their interests not to do so.

And now you are talking about atheists and not just atheism.

Yes: but only about those Atheists who act with consistency with their own Atheism. I would suggest that many Atheists don't understand the implications of their own Atheism very well, and so live rather irregular lives: they refer to conventional or traditional or social "moralities," and reassure themselves that they're "good" people, based on those. But they have to believe, if they're thorough Atheists, that those things are delusions foisted on them by other people, not objective truths. Nietzsche really saw that.

As I point out above, all people are inconsistent creatures, and there are many Atheists who don't live out their Atheism, just as there are Jews who eat pork or Islamists who don't wear the hijab. That's just human nature.

This actually paints a poor picture of theists. They don't want to do the moral things but because they believe in God they do.

As Nietzsche said, and as Dostoevsky pointed out (or is claimed to have done), Atheists don't have a better reason to do good things; they actually have none at all.

What is your motivation for acting morally?

It starts with one's worldview, I would say. One has to decide whether one is living in a world that actually contains objective moral facts, or one in which those are merely individual or social illusions. And it goes on from there, to involve a great deal more: but how far do you wish to go with that question? I don't want to launch into something long if I've just answered as much as concerns you at the moment...

One thing's important to realize, though: there's no such thing as a morality that is not also some kind of "code." That's because morality, by definition, governs not just the individual's wishes, but his relations with others -- his mate, his friends, his society, the world...and so on. It tells us how the individuals are to treat one another, what they "owe" each other to do or be to each other. It defines their rights and duties, in relation to one another. A common precept or principle always governs both the actor and the person to whom he's acting. And that principle is what morality refers to.

You may formalize that code in writing, inscribe it in law, or just verbalize it as an agreement: but either way, it's a code. So there are no moral actors who are NOT responding to a code. The idea of the "self-driven-moral" individual is a myth, a contradiction, even.

[Iwannaplato]

I absolutely agree. There are Theists of various kinds, and within each kind, Theists of varying commitment. And all are fallible, at the end of the day.

So are Atheists, of course.

Sure, and their not unique in this way.

People generally don't "want to" always be good.

Sure.

And I don't mean that cynically, but as a sociological truism. Some of us want to be good most of the time, some half of the time, and some less.

Sure.

But this is an interesting point. What are ethics and morality for? If we always want to do what's right, why do we even need these things?

Yes, I think this needs to be looked at, perhaps especially for deontologists with a lot of rules. For those who are theists, one might wonder why God would give free will to creatures and then tell them to follow a lot of rules. Why not make nicer people? Or make other people fairly indestructible.

And I think any person who thinks they are moral might want to look at what that entails. If it entails, well I really am a person who wants to [fill in the blanks with horrible acts] but I know it's against the rules (or 'I won't get into heaven' or' I'll feel guilty'). What kind of moral person is that, really?

For me it is essential to not end up with one part of me the jailer for another part. And how do we know which part is good, really; the jailer or the jailed. Integration and getting to the root of things seems the only real path to being moral or good or being truly kind to other people from the heart.

And are you really saying that atheists can't go against their own desires if it might, for example, hurt someone?

I don't see I ever suggested that anybody can't choose to "go against their desires" -- save, perhaps, an addict. I think ethics and morality are things that are supposed to help us "go against our desires," when those desires go awry. They're supposed to remind us of what remains "the right thing to do" in situations in which we are tempted to do or be something we should not.

Which seems to happen to atheists and theists both. And man the communists, they knew how to pass around guilt and shame about acts.

Yes: but only about those Atheists who act with consistency with their own Atheism. I would suggest that many Atheists don't understand the implications of their own Atheism very well, and so live rather irregular lives: they refer to conventional or traditional or social "moralities," and reassure themselves that they're "good" people, based on those. But they have to believe, if they're thorough Atheists, that those things are delusions foisted on them by other people, not objective truths. Nietzsche really saw that.

Or these social morals seem both logical and emotionally right to them. IOW there are all sorts of reasons to want people to get along for practical and emotional reasons. And there's no need for a deity to on some level feel like a hypocrite if you hate people when they X, but you feel entitled to do X. One doesn't need a diety to feel something's off with that. So, sure if there 'atheism' includes the judgment that anything to do with religions or ever passed down by them is wrong or tainted, then they have a problem. But I don't meet many of those kinds of atheists.

This actually paints a poor picture of theists. They don't want to do the moral things but because they believe in God they do.

As Nietzsche said, and as Dostoevsky pointed out (or is claimed to have done), Atheists don't have a better reason to do good things; they actually have none at all.

Same response as above.

What is your motivation for acting morally?

It starts with one's worldview, I would say. One has to decide whether one is living in a world that actually contains objective moral facts, or one in which those are merely individual or social illusions. And it goes on from there, to involve a great deal more: but how far do you wish to go with that question? I don't want to launch into something long if I've just answered as much as concerns you at the moment...

One thing's important to realize, though: there's no such thing as a morality that is not also some kind of "code." That's because morality, by definition, governs not just the individual's wishes, but his relations with others -- his mate, his friends, his society, the world...and so on. It tells us how the individuals are to treat one another, what they "owe" each other to do or be to each other. It defines their rights and duties, in relation to one another. A common precept or principle always governs both the actor and the person to whom he's acting. And that principle is what morality refers to.

You may formalize that code in writing, inscribe it in law, or just verbalize it as an agreement: but either way, it's a code. So there are no moral actors who are NOT responding to a code. The idea of the "self-driven-moral" individual is a myth, a contradiction, even.

I actually mean you specifically. I realize the answer may have similarities, but I think at the very least it would be worded differently. When you feel an urge to do something wrong to someone, what stops you? What motivates the actions your consider good and am glad you carried out?

You're in the same position as atheists who care about other people. You have to trust that your sense of what is good or kind or not evil or not good are correct. You know humans are fallible, even in what they choose to give their authority over to for morality. Just because you chose a deity whose rules you try to live up to, doesn't mean you haven't made the mistake all those other theists have made who worship the wrong gods, from your perspective, or who interpret Christianity in ways you do not. All potentially fallible humans trying (for different and overlapping motivations to treat other humans well, those that are).

In your version of humans, they seem to have no motivation, unless it comes from their religion, in caring for other people and not wanting to be an ass. Unless they believe in religions that have incredible (and eternal) carrots and sticks.

[Immanuel Can]

But this is an interesting point. What are ethics and morality for? If we always want to do what's right, why do we even need these things?

Yes, I think this needs to be looked at, perhaps especially for deontologists with a lot of rules. For those who are theists, one might wonder why God would give free will to creatures and then tell them to follow a lot of rules. Why not make nicer people? Or make other people fairly indestructible.

That is indeed a good question. And Theists, I know, do ask it. It's kind of an obvious one, isn't it? I mean, any worldview needs to be able to explain why we need morality at all. Why do we humans find we need to debate ethics? Why isn't everybody just "good" all the time?

It's easy to get focused on the big things -- racism, genocide, rape, pedophilia, and so forth -- and forget that every one of us is somewhat less than perfect in our moral performance. So the question doesn't simply become "Why is evil out there, in the world?" It comes home much more: "Why is there moral failure in me?"

And I think any person who thinks they are moral might want to look at what that entails. If it entails, well I really am a person who wants to [fill in the blanks with horrible acts] but I know it's against the rules (or 'I won't get into heaven' or' I'll feel guilty'). What kind of moral person is that, really?

You're onto something there.

Maybe this is why secular ethics has ended up getting broken down into things like deontologies, consequentialisms, and various forms of virtue theory: one points out that ethics involves motives and rules, the second points out that it has something to do with outcomes, and the last points out that it has to do with character and persistence. But when we stand back and think about it, would we have any reason to say that any of that was wrong? Or would we be more likely to say that the deontologists have got ahold of part of the ethical picture, but the consequentialist have another part, and the virtue ethicists another...and possibly none of them -- nor all of them together -- has a complete picture of what we're really needing to look at when we talk about "morality."

I suspect that is the case. It explains why the three have some appeal to all of us, but none of them really seems to have enough, and why even combining them doesn't seem to exhaust the moral field properly.

For me it is essential to not end up with one part of me the jailer for another part. And how do we know which part is good, really; the jailer or the jailed. Integration and getting to the root of things seems the only real path to being moral or good or being truly kind to other people from the heart.

Is the "jailor" your conscience, or is the "jailor" social rules, or is the "jailor" some ethical theorist or religious guru? Can't all of those end up being our "jailors"?

But how do we know they're being "jailors," too? Isn't it possible that at least sometimes, some of those things are trying to "help" us to do the right thing, even if they often get it wrong? After all, we realize that we ourselves are not morally perfect beings; could we not think that at least sometimes, these so-called "jailors" are perhaps trying to rescue us from our own selfishness and blindness?

That's another level of complication to the field, is it not?

And are you really saying that atheists can't go against their own desires if it might, for example, hurt someone?

I don't see I ever suggested that anybody can't choose to "go against their desires" -- save, perhaps, an addict. I think ethics and morality are things that are supposed to help us "go against our desires," when those desires go awry. They're supposed to remind us of what remains "the right thing to do" in situations in which we are tempted to do or be something we should not.

Which seems to happen to atheists and theists both.

Oh, absolutely. I think conscience is universal. Like everything else in human beings, it's imperfect; but one thing that seems universal is the fact of a conscience, whether in perfect order or not.

And man the communists, they knew how to pass around guilt and shame about acts.

Absolutely. But for them, the situation was quite ironic: for being dialectical materialists, they actually had to invoke a kind of quasi-Judeo-Christian guilt, even while claiming to believe that there was no actual moral basis for guilt.

To give an example, they had to demonize a thing they call "oppression." But what, in the dialectical materialist way of understanding the world, makes sense of their claim that "oppressing" is "wrong"? Could we not equally suppose, from a strictly materialist set of suppositions, that "oppressing" is not wrong, but is merely a case of the better overcoming the weaker?

To beat this, Marxism has to deify that thing we call "history," and turn it into capital-H "HIstory," the new God-substitute. The make "oppression" to be "wrong" because it's "on the wrong side of History." That "History" is against it. But this new construct of theirs, capital-H "History," is really their version of a god...it replaces the real God, and performs His function of establishing to them what universal morality requires: that there should be no "class oppression."

Not for no reason, then, has Marxism been recognized for what it is: a sort of cultic religion, not simply a theory of "economics." It has its deity, to be sure: "History," as interpreted though Marxist guru's prophecies of the coming utopia.

And so they are able to generate guilt in their followers and in their opponents: but only by reconstructing a new "god" to back their program.

Yes: but only about those Atheists who act with consistency with their own Atheism. I would suggest that many Atheists don't understand the implications of their own Atheism very well, and so live rather irregular lives: they refer to conventional or traditional or social "moralities," and reassure themselves that they're "good" people, based on those. But they have to believe, if they're thorough Atheists, that those things are delusions foisted on them by other people, not objective truths. Nietzsche really saw that.

Or these social morals seem both logical and emotionally right to them.

I don't think it can be "logically." Nothing in Atheism warrants such belief. But "emotionally"? Absolutely. They are in thrall to their cultural suppositions, perhaps, or to their own moral preferences, perhaps. Either way, these things do "seem" right to them -- and just as "wrong" to people from a different culture or who hold to antithetical values.

IOW there are all sorts of reasons to want people to get along for practical and emotional reasons.

Yes: but those are different from what we call "moral" reasons. "Morals" only appear in cases of conflict between what we feel we want to do and what we sense we "should" do.

It's practical to eat three meals a day, perhaps. What need have we of morality in that equation? It's emotionally pleasing to pet kittens: what need have we of moral thinking when we are happy and the cats are purring? But if it's stealing a meal from somebody else or killing a kitten, then moral issues suddenly leap to the fore: suddenly we have to ask if the act we are considering is justifable or not. And we have to start rationalizing our choice.

So, sure if there 'atheism' includes the judgment that anything to do with religions or ever passed down by them is wrong or tainted, then they have a problem. But I don't meet many of those kinds of atheists.

Right. It's often been noted that Atheists live off the borrowed moral capital of religion. But the problem is that Atheism itself generates no morality. So it forces Atheism to be inconsistent: one has to say one believes Atheism is really true, but then act like a Christian when it comes to moral decision-making social behavior or charity.

And critics of Atheism rightly point out that this indicates a deep flaw in Atheism itself: it's inherently amoral. And I don't mean "immoral." If it were "immoral," it would be making people bad. If it were moral, it would be inducing them to be good. But it really does neither: it induces them to suppose that there are no moral markers we can trust, no moral precepts that are not culturally or personally arbitrary, and no duties we actually owe to one another. Nietzsche saw that clearly. So did Dostoevsky.

What is your motivation for acting morally?

It starts with one's worldview, I would say. One has to decide whether one is living in a world that actually contains objective moral facts, or one in which those are merely individual or social illusions. And it goes on from there, to involve a great deal more: but how far do you wish to go with that question? I don't want to launch into something long if I've just answered as much as concerns you at the moment...

One thing's important to realize, though: there's no such thing as a morality that is not also some kind of "code." That's because morality, by definition, governs not just the individual's wishes, but his relations with others -- his mate, his friends, his society, the world...and so on. It tells us how the individuals are to treat one another, what they "owe" each other to do or be to each other. It defines their rights and duties, in relation to one another. A common precept or principle always governs both the actor and the person to whom he's acting. And that principle is what morality refers to.

You may formalize that code in writing, inscribe it in law, or just verbalize it as an agreement: but either way, it's a code. So there are no moral actors who are NOT responding to a code. The idea of the "self-driven-moral" individual is a myth, a contradiction, even.

I actually mean you specifically.

Oh. Sorry.
Well, if you listen to some people on this board, they insist I don't. They don't really know me at all, of course; but they accuse me of all sorts of horrors they would fain impute to me: I'm "judgmental," I'm a "hypocrite," I'm "dishonest," and so on, they sometimes allege, but generally because they don't like what I say, and they make the rather human mistake of supposing that insulting the messenger will give them warrant for dismissing the message. So I let it roll of my back.

But let me say this much: you are correct to suppose I aspire to be properly motivated and to act morally. If I fail (and we all do, of course) then it's because all humans do. But I don't aim to fail at that, so I accept your question as reasonable on that basis. Fair enough?

My answer is simple: I try to act morally because of my relationship with God. And I don't mean because I fear judgment or because I am enslaved to a code. I mean that when you know Somebody who is really wonderful, it really calls on you to change your behaviour. And when you owe that Person everything, gratitude compels you to behave gratefully.

In non-Christian terms, it's like meeting the girl of your dreams, and realizing that you're not ready to be the man of hers. So you have a strong motivation to step up and become a better man. If that's what it takes to act in a way worthy of the girl, you'll do it; and not because you think you'll fool her, nor because you're particularly wonderful; but because she is, and she deserves the best "you" that you can give to her.

If you realize that God is real, and if you realize how much he loves you, and if you learn all He has done for you, there can be but one response; and that is, to beg his help to start to become the kind of person who is worthy of that. That's the motivation.

You're in the same position as atheists who care about other people.

Not really. To be perfectly honest, I don't find other people instinctively motivational in this way. Like me, they're flawed. And like all of us, we're inclined more to be opportunists in our own interests than to prioritize the good of others to our own hurt. So human goodness is, at best, an equivocal and temporary thing.

To be perfectly honest, I think if I did not know God, I'd be quite a different person. I think I might be a good deal more like Nietzsche's overman. I know I don't lack the nerve to become that, and I'm not a reservoir of such personal goodness that I couldn't be induced to seen Nietzsche's logic, if I believed what Nietzsche believed; but as I am now, I find myself recoiling in horror from how incompatible that is with the God that I know.

You have to trust that your sense of what is good or kind or not evil or not good are correct.

But we can't actually trust ourselves always to be right in any other compartment of life. Human beings are flawed, as we both know: that's why we have discovered we need these things called "morality" or "ethics." So why would we now make the leap to think we were morally infallible?

You know humans are fallible, even in what they choose to give their authority over to for morality.

That is precisely the point.

Just because you chose a deity whose rules you try to live up to, doesn't mean you haven't made the mistake all those other theists have made who worship the wrong gods, from your perspective, or who interpret Christianity in ways you do not. All potentially fallible humans trying (for different and overlapping motivations to treat other humans well, those that are).

I'm not rule-governed, actually; as I was saying, I try to do the right things out of gratitude and desire to be closer to God, rather than to conform to some checklist. Of course it is possible to worship wrong gods, just as it is possible to fail to worship God at all. The point is rather to worship the right one; and that takes a two-sided search. One side of it is willingness to expose yourself to the options, instead of just picking an option and sticking with it. But another is to elicit the help of God Himself to help you to discern His true character among the many false alternatives that are on offer. For God Himself has made us this offer: "you will seek Me and find Me, when you seek me with all your heart." Or as Jesus Christ said, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened."

In your version of humans, they seem to have no motivation, unless it comes from their religion, in caring for other people and not wanting to be an ass.

No, I've never said that, nor implied it, I trust. People can certainly have motivations of their own to be good. But not all those motivations are good. And good is something that fallible people do irregularly; we are just as responsible for the things we do wrong, or for the goods we could have done but failed to do.

As I suggested before, somebody can be a total Atheist and give to charity, say. And let's call that "doing good." And he can have his own particular reasons for wanting to do it. But he won't get any such reasons from his worldview, from his belief in Atheism. Atheism has no moral precepts; all it invites its adherents to believe is that the world is amoral, so that the act of charity in question is unnecessary for him to perform, and fulfills no objective obligation at all. And, after death, he will receive no blessing for the amount of his own pleasure and benefit that he has had to give up in order to be charitable.

So logically, Atheism invites him to have reasons not to do it. Even so, perhaps his warm feeling of having given to charity will still motivate him. But that feeling won't do more than that. It won't make the act "good," nor will it make him a "good" person in any objective way, since there's no objective thing such as "good". He'll just be acting inconsistent with his Atheist beliefs....which he can freely do, of course. By Atheism's lights, inconsistency is not "wrong" either, nor is hypocrisy, if that's what it takes.

[Alexis Jacobi]

He clearly meant that without god, there are no moral inhibitions thus allowing him to do anything he wants or desires. In effect, there is nothing to prevent him from behaving like a monster. Of course, this too is total bullshit and doesn't make sense at any level. Being a god-believer has never made one moral or an atheist immoral. God or no god, human nature doesn't work that way.

Interesting issue …

To act in this world, to take action on any level in fact, is always morally problematic. The larger the scale of action, the more obvious the *immoral* consequences. When I first began reading Nietzsche I learned that Theodore Roosevelt was a reader of Nietzsche. I was living in Panama and musing on his Herculean accomplishment: wresting the district of Panama from Colombia; establishing a pro-American régime; and going forward with a colossal engineering project. The entire *spirit* seems so Nietzschean.

And God? Effectively God had been reduced to an irrelevancy.

To push forward in this world is to push forward with some other god-concept entirely.

The action (the Canal Project) can be seen as *monstrous* but not on a scale comparable to genocide or Total War. Nevertheless it has a creative, imposing, monstrous aspect that if intensified could be seen in that way.

There is no human activity that is not comparable, though perhaps far lesser in scope and intensity, to the monstrousness referred to.

In effect, there is nothing to prevent him from behaving like a monster.

I don’t think the implication here is bullshit. The issue is very real. But how one defines both monster and monstrousness is where it all hinges.

[Iwannaplato]

That is indeed a good question. And Theists, I know, do ask it. It's kind of an obvious one, isn't it? I mean, any worldview needs to be able to explain why we need morality at all. Why do we humans find we need to debate ethics? Why isn't everybody just "good" all the time?

It's easy to get focused on the big things -- racism, genocide, rape, pedophilia, and so forth -- and forget that every one of us is somewhat less than perfect in our moral performance. So the question doesn't simply become "Why is evil out there, in the world?" It comes home much more: "Why is there moral failure in me?"

Well, anyone can ask both of those questions and the latter question can give insight into the first but cannot completely answer the first. Unless you are secular and consider yourself all-powerful: perhaps if there are any real solipsists out there, though to me that's a tricky position to have as an atheist. I think you are more or less God in that situation.

You're onto something there.

Maybe this is why secular ethics has ended up getting broken down into things like deontologies, consequentialisms, and various forms of virtue theory: one points out that ethics involves motives and rules, the second points out that it has something to do with outcomes, and the last points out that it has to do with character and persistence. But when we stand back and think about it, would we have any reason to say that any of that was wrong? Or would we be more likely to say that the deontologists have got ahold of part of the ethical picture, but the consequentialist have another part, and the virtue ethicists another...and possibly none of them -- nor all of them together -- has a complete picture of what we're really needing to look at when we talk about "morality."

Sure possibly and religions tend to mix all three. Christianity certianly does.

I suspect that is the case. It explains why the three have some appeal to all of us, but none of them really seems to have enough, and why even combining them doesn't seem to exhaust the moral field properly.

1 focuses on following or not rules. 2 focuses on the effects of one's actions, ususally with some axiomatic rule. 3 does focus on the person, but generally in a deontological way: it's good to be noble - or a consequentialist way: noble people will increase ____________________.

But regardless of which approach two parents choose, for example, to raise their child under, most pegagogy, parenting and religious admonishments assume that one part of the self must suppress another, period.

IOW not merely...until you integrate you aggressive impulses we will put a rule in to not be violent against others and also to move back from people triggering you to the point where you feel you might lose control. The key word there is 'until'.

I think most moral systems secular or theist share a sense that we must have one part of the self either destroying, jailing, suppressing certain other parts....period, for the rest of time.

It's funny but much modern secular intellectual morality, either explicitly or implicitly, views the self as having a beast within, much as many Christians have viewed the self. They couch this beast in different ways, it's more a like an id for the secular people. But in the end in the name or rationality, maturity, logic we end up being admonished in similar ways at least structurally to how Christians admonished each other in relation to urges, emotions, expressing either of these.

Pagan and indigenous religions are different. They still have judgments that certain parts of the self can never be integrated but in general are much more tolerant of desire and emotion.

Is the "jailor" your conscience, or is the "jailor" social rules, or is the "jailor" some ethical theorist or religious guru? Can't all of those end up being our "jailors"?

Of course, but I was focusing on the inner one. A conscience nags and is part of the inner correctional system. It can use guilt and shame. But the conscience you cannot hear unless you really get quiet with yourself and all sorts of trained ways of suppressing, channeling, judging, distracting yourself from, even what gets called copining mechanisms are 'needed' to keep you from being bad. It's not a simple system in there. It's a clever powerful part of us that gets judged as the beast. In fact, what gets called conscience and the other jailors...they may make up just a small portion of the self.

But how do we know they're being "jailors," too? Isn't it possible that at least sometimes, some of those things are trying to "help" us to do the right thing, even if they often get it wrong?

Sure, in any given momen it may well be great that you suppress yourself. My criticism is aimed at the permanence this correctional system is set in place and further the lack of interest in or support for any approach to long term integration.

Oh, absolutely. I think conscience is universal. Like everything else in human beings, it's imperfect; but one thing that seems universal is the fact of a conscience, whether in perfect order or not.

And given its ubiquity it's rather amazing how little we talk about guilt vs. regret for example.
Or try to actually find out what that voice is and on what authority did it judge, for example, that 'I shouldn't have been so impatient with Sharon." What is this voice? Why are we assuming it knows more than the gut reaction that Sharon was using us? (I'm not going to go into details over my made up situation. Of course, there could be situations where the voice was right. Adn there could be situations where the voice was wrong. I am focused on the oddity that, generally, we don't discuss the voice(s). We don't try to help people separate out regret from guilt. We don't suggest people look at the splits inthemselves and consider integration. We focus on the acts. Give criteria. And it's not even on the table that we could be a single person, integrating the beast, the id, the sinful urges, whatever.

And man the communists, they knew how to pass around guilt and shame about acts.

Absolutely. But for them, the situation was quite ironic: for being dialectical materialists, they actually had to invoke a kind of quasi-Judeo-Christian guilt, even while claiming to believe that there was no actual moral basis for guilt.

To me this is common that conservatives or people on the right act as if the left don't have morals. My god the communists had morals. Yes, you're saying they had no foundation. But everyone but nihilists think there are axioms. Some get them from God or scriptures, others get them from what they consider obvious - like the value of the collective for many communists.

To give an example, they had to demonize a thing they call "oppression." But what, in the dialectical materialist way of understanding the world, makes sense of their claim that "oppressing" is "wrong"? Could we not equally suppose, from a strictly materialist set of suppositions, that "oppressing" is not wrong, but is merely a case of the better overcoming the weaker?

Again, you seem to paint humans without religion as noll points. They have no morality. But even animals have senses of what is inappropriate behavior in the pack, herd, whatever the social mammal group. We have built in moral axioms.

Nihilists and psychopaths view those as having no weight. But most humans disagree, secular and religious alike.

For you the secular person has no foundation for their axioms.
For the secular person you have no foundation for your justification of your axioms on scripture or whatever religious source.

You're both vulnerable to having others judge they have denied your assumptions.

I don't think it can be "logically." Nothing in Atheism warrants such belief.

This is confused. A person is not an atheist period. It's as silly as saying an atheist can't eat. Because there is nothing in atheism that gives grounds for cooking or justifies killing plants or animals or gives them any way to decide between eating rocks or apples.

Atheism is not some complete set of rules for how to live. For some it means a lack of belief in God. For others it means a belief there is not God.

From there given that they are humans, lots of social mammal values and perspectives come into play. They are not taken out of the game.

[Immanuel Can]

That is indeed a good question. And Theists, I know, do ask it. It's kind of an obvious one, isn't it? I mean, any worldview needs to be able to explain why we need morality at all. Why do we humans find we need to debate ethics? Why isn't everybody just "good" all the time?

It's easy to get focused on the big things -- racism, genocide, rape, pedophilia, and so forth -- and forget that every one of us is somewhat less than perfect in our moral performance. So the question doesn't simply become "Why is evil out there, in the world?" It comes home much more: "Why is there moral failure in me?"

Well, anyone can ask both of those questions and the latter question can give insight into the first but cannot completely answer the first.

Quite right.

Unless you are secular and consider yourself all-powerful: perhaps if there are any real solipsists out there, though to me that's a tricky position to have as an atheist. I think you are more or less God in that situation.

Well, you would be "playing God" if you then turned around and tried to impose a moral claim on another person. But I don't know that in the Atheist toolkit is the equipment to back any claim that even "playing God" is immoral.

You're onto something there.

Maybe this is why secular ethics has ended up getting broken down into things like deontologies, consequentialisms, and various forms of virtue theory: one points out that ethics involves motives and rules, the second points out that it has something to do with outcomes, and the last points out that it has to do with character and persistence. But when we stand back and think about it, would we have any reason to say that any of that was wrong? Or would we be more likely to say that the deontologists have got ahold of part of the ethical picture, but the consequentialist have another part, and the virtue ethicists another...and possibly none of them -- nor all of them together -- has a complete picture of what we're really needing to look at when we talk about "morality."

Sure possibly and religions tend to mix all three. Christianity certianly does.

I suspect that is the case. It explains why the three have some appeal to all of us, but none of them really seems to have enough, and why even combining them doesn't seem to exhaust the moral field properly.

1 focuses on following or not rules. 2 focuses on the effects of one's actions, ususally with some axiomatic rule. 3 does focus on the person, but generally in a deontological way: it's good to be noble - or a consequentialist way: noble people will increase ____________________.

Actually, virtue ethicists would refuse that summary of their view. They claim not to be an ethics concerned with action alone, but rather with how actions accumulate into an eventual revelation of general character.

Another way to say this is that deontologists and consequentialists are primarily concerned with what people DO, and virtue ethicists would focus on what people are BEING, in the process. That's why virtue ethicists insist that being moral is a long-term project: one has to see an overall pattern of behaviour, ideally one stretching over a whole lifetime, before one can say that a person has had good or bad character.

That's what they think. But like the other two, it seems incomplete to me. True, good character is part of the moral equation; but I don't think we can bypass moral action, nor do I think we can "weigh off" good against evil in arriving at an assessment of character.

But regardless of which approach two parents choose, for example, to raise their child under, most pegagogy, parenting and religious admonishments assume that one part of the self must suppress another, period.

Certainly. But that's necessary. Children don't enter the world as inclined to be civilized and share, but rather to scream when crossed and to bap their little brothers over the head. Nobody teaches them that, but somehow they all know how to do both.

So some part of the child does need training and redirection. Immaturity generally is punctuated by behaviours that are less than functional, sociable and moral.

IOW not merely...until you integrate you aggressive impulses we will put a rule in to not be violent against others and also to move back from people triggering you to the point where you feel you might lose control. The key word there is 'until'.

Yes, that's the idea. And by shaping children in this way, we don't just simply put them under our control or civilizational control; we enable them to control themselves, which becomes far more basic to their happiness and well-being.

I think most moral systems secular or theist share a sense that we must have one part of the self either destroying, jailing, suppressing certain other parts....period, for the rest of time.

Agreed. Or we might say that the function of morality is to tell us what to do when our impulses incline us to things that are not good, or fail to stimulate us sufficiently to pursue that which is truly worthwhile. That's another way of looking at the project of moral education.

It's funny but much modern secular intellectual morality, either explicitly or implicitly, views the self as having a beast within, much as many Christians have viewed the self. They couch this beast in different ways, it's more a like an id for the secular people. But in the end in the name or rationality, maturity, logic we end up being admonished in similar ways at least structurally to how Christians admonished each other in relation to urges, emotions, expressing either of these.

Pagan and indigenous religions are different. They still have judgments that certain parts of the self can never be integrated but in general are much more tolerant of desire and emotion.

We might ask, "How has that worked out for them?"

Tolerance of desire and emotion within reasonable and sociable bounds is one thing, of course; pagan bacchanalia and blood lettings are quite another. There's very little you'll ever see that's so out of his own control as a pagan witchdoctor or acolyte in the throes of his pagan ecstacies.

Civilizations are not built by indulgence, but by restraint, moderation, control of impulses. That frustrates our impulse for self-indulgence; but putting off of our immediate pleasures in view of long-term goals is how great building get built, great works of art created, great athletic competitions are won, great feats of exploration achieved, and so on. Morality serves a role in this, too: it tries to inform us of what needs to be suppressed so that the greater goods become available to us.

A good example of this would be the BLM riots. Once you have sacked and burned your neighbourhood stores in a frenzy of vengefulness and greed, you have no doubt satisfied your desire; but have you got a better or a worse neighbourhood left to you and your family? Or have you only further decimated your own possibilities?

But how do we know they're being "jailors," too? Isn't it possible that at least sometimes, some of those things are trying to "help" us to do the right thing, even if they often get it wrong?

Sure, in any given momen it may well be great that you suppress yourself. My criticism is aimed at the permanence this correctional system is set in place and further the lack of interest in or support for any approach to long term integration.

That's a complicated problem. Should we chase it further, or just leave it there?

Oh, absolutely. I think conscience is universal. Like everything else in human beings, it's imperfect; but one thing that seems universal is the fact of a conscience, whether in perfect order or not.

And given its ubiquity it's rather amazing how little we talk about guilt vs. regret for example.

Yes, quite so. It's all to easy for us to assume, because conscience makes us uncomfortable, that it's an enemy. But it's usually not. Sometimes it goes awry and burdens us with unearned guilt, it's true; but in general, it alerts us to the presence of a moral choice to which, perhaps, we have not been sufficiently attending up to now.

We don't try to help people separate out regret from guilt.

Ah, that's nicely put! Well done.

We don't suggest people look at the splits inthemselves and consider integration.

This is what the virtue ethicists are going to say makes their view better than deontology or consequentialism. They claim that they DO pay attention to the integration of the total personality.

But everyone but nihilists think there are axioms.

This is what I keep asking people here: WHY do they think there are axioms? Nothing in the world Atheism presents to us gives us reason to suppose there are any such axioms at all. So why do Atheists keep living and talking as if there are, when they can't even specify a one of them, and cannot give a justificatory reason why we are duty-bound to agree to it?

To give an example, they had to demonize a thing they call "oppression." But what, in the dialectical materialist way of understanding the world, makes sense of their claim that "oppressing" is "wrong"? Could we not equally suppose, from a strictly materialist set of suppositions, that "oppressing" is not wrong, but is merely a case of the better overcoming the weaker?

Again, you seem to paint humans without religion as noll points. They have no morality.

No, I'm just asking why the one story wins, and the other story is dismissed. I'm glad it's dismissed, personally; but I can see no reason from Atheism as to why the one is to be regarded more highly than the other. And both are certainly plausible ways of describing the situation.

In this, Nietzsche is against all the polite, conventional, modern Atheists like Dawkins, Dennet and so on. They try to stay "gentlemen" in the midst of making worldview claims that surely undermine any objective moral axiom that we must be "gentlemen." Nietzsche declared he was ready to be a savage, an overman, a winner in the game of strong-destroys-weak.

But even animals have senses of what is inappropriate behavior in the pack, herd, whatever the social mammal group. We have built in moral axioms.

I'm not aware of a single axiom composed by chimps or seatrout or paramecia. It looks very much to me like what they have is instinct, if anything at all. But to obey instinct is not anything like what we mean by "moral."

Nihilists and psychopaths view those as having no weight. But most humans disagree, secular and religious alike.

Yes: and that in itself is a remarkable observation. We really should not expect it to be so, given Atheistic suppositions. We should expect a world much more like the one Nietzsche described.

So why don't we have that? Because of the legacy of moral thought we've already created. But how did we do it? If nothing in the empirical world corresponds to morality, how on earth did it come about in the first place?

For you the secular person has no foundation for their axioms.

Just the Atheist. But I think there are really rather few of those.

'Secular" is different. "Secular" just means "non-religious." It doesn't mean skeptical. It doesn't imply Atheistic. So I can't say what worldview "secular" people may hold: but I can make definite statements about what Atheists must believe, if they want to live consistently with their own Atheism.

For the secular person you have no foundation for your justification of your axioms on scripture or whatever religious source. You're both vulnerable to having others judge they have denied your assumptions.

Ah, now you're onto something.

And you're right. Morality is presuppositional. That means that its form depends on the basic beliefs you have about what is real in the world around you. If two people believe differently about that, their moral deductions will be at least somewhat different, or even wholly different.

For example, because I believe in God, an Atheist could anticipate I would go to church. Because he's an Atheist, I could anticipate that he would refuse to do so. That doesn't mean an Atheist has never darkened the door of a church, or that I have gone to church every Sunday of my life. But it means that certain actions rationalize with, and make sense from, our basic suppositions about what is real. And the same is true of all moralizing generated by our respective worldviews.

However, I'm interested in how few Atheists find it possible (and even outright horrifying) to live as if what they claim to believe is really true. For an Atheist to adopt somebody else's conventional morality is surely a betrayal of his own commitment to the truth of Atheism. But most Atheists do just that: they behave like "good Englishmen," or "solid citizens," or even "humanitarians" -- all things for which they find no warrant by way of Atheism itself.

I don't think it can be "logically." Nothing in Atheism warrants such belief.

This is confused. A person is not an atheist period. It's as silly as saying an atheist can't eat.

Eating's a common biological process for all animals, of course. Morality's different: it crosses the old fact-value divide. We don't ordinarily need moral justification in order to eat; but we certainly do in moral issues.

Atheism is not some complete set of rules for how to live.

No, it's something much deeper, much more primary than that. It's a declaration of ontology. It tells a person what it's even "reasonable" for him to believe in, and hence what things he can "reasonably" take into account when making up his mind about things.

For some it means a lack of belief in God. For others it means a belief there is not God.

Well, "lack of belief" is just agnosticism: one is not actively refusing to believe, just postponing the decision in view of not having enough evidence on hand, perhaps even with an open mind, or even a willingness to be convinced if additional facts appear. That position also has it's problems, but they're somewhat different problems from Atheism's inherent problems, which are also more significant.

The second is the meaning of "Atheism," analytically speaking.

[Dubious]

"Nature" according to Atheism, has no opinions. Therefore "nature" cannot be anything BUT "indifferent" to morality.

Nature is a process without connection to anything except itself in which good and evil are completely devoid of any meaning which has so long been a quandary to humans.

But Atheism insists men are just animals.

Though of a special kind we are just animals. How can that still be denied? Humans share around 98% of their DNA with pigs!

We need to know that that morality refers to something objective and duty-conferring

...and what would make morality objective since all of it is/was created by humans, each age having its own perspectives and prejudices on what it deems to be moral? The only "morality" which can claim in the short view to be objective is that which is encoded within a society.

But wait: what aspect of the world, as construed by Atheism, tells us we have a duty to follow conscience? After all, isn't it when we stand to gain something significant, but suspect it may be immoral, that we are most tempted?

Yes! Conscience does not preempt an immoral or sadistic act in itself, but to perform what conscience prohibits you must overcome the resistance of conscience which can be extreme and psychologically debilitating if what is known to be deviant is performed anyway. There are consequences.

To repeat: conscience in its operation is not a matter of choice even though your will or urge may be strong enough to overcome it leaving extensive guilt trails and psychic scars in its wake.

So we have this pull called "conscience" telling us not to do it, but strong incentives to WANT to do it. Which one are we duty-bound to obey?

The one that's easiest to live with as a consequence of your choice.

Of course, Atheists are like other people: sometimes consistent, but sometimes not. That's why what I'm talking about here is not "what Atheists do," but what Atheism itself requires them to do, logically and consistently, whether the actual ones do it or not.

It's as incumbent on atheists to examine their behaviors on the whole as much as it seems to be binding upon theists to be programmed by scriptural authority which obviously never changes and therefore remains the most consistent. What is mandated remains unshackled to any inspection or introspection demands.

It's all so very weird! Can it ever be truly and actually known whether there is or ever was a ruling entity called god responsible for everything on earth to the very fringes of the universe itself!

It might not be estimable from a skeptical distance, but it might be knowable experientially.

Knowing experientially usually amounts to what one is convinced of personally. To know collectively, as manifest to all, at least requires an a priori basis. Even then to know absolutely, which no-longer requires any a priori status, is still impossible.

[Immanuel Can]

"Nature" according to Atheism, has no opinions. Therefore "nature" cannot be anything BUT "indifferent" to morality.

Nature is a process without connection to anything except itself in which good and evil are completely devoid of any meaning which has so long been a quandary to humans.

Then you agree. That's exactly my point.

But Atheism insists men are just animals.

Though of a special kind we are just animals. How can that still be denied? Humans share around 98% of their DNA with pigs!

"A special kind," you say? In what way "special?"

We need to know that that morality refers to something objective and duty-conferring

...all of it is/was created by humans...

That's what you believe, of course.

The only "morality" which can claim in the short view to be objective is that which is encoded within a society.

If that were true, then all morality would be is cultural imperialism.

...to perform what conscience prohibits you must overcome the resistance of conscience ...

Of course. But people appear to be able to do that without a great deal of difficulty.

So we have this pull called "conscience" telling us not to do it, but strong incentives to WANT to do it. Which one are we duty-bound to obey?

The one that's easiest to live with as a consequence of your choice.

That's Solipsistic Consequentialism. That's actually not morality, because it doesn't pertain to the relationships between individuals. It doesn't differ from simple "self-interest." If that were all morality was, we would never need morality at all. Selfish pragmatics would make all our decisions.

Of course, Atheists are like other people: sometimes consistent, but sometimes not. That's why what I'm talking about here is not "what Atheists do," but what Atheism itself requires them to do, logically and consistently, whether the actual ones do it or not.

It's as incumbent on atheists to examine their behaviors on the whole

By what standard can an Atheist "examine" his behaviours? He denies that any standard exists outside of himself. And "himself" is just selfish pragmatism again.

It's all so very weird! Can it ever be truly and actually known whether there is or ever was a ruling entity called god responsible for everything on earth to the very fringes of the universe itself!

It might not be estimable from a skeptical distance, but it might be knowable experientially.

Knowing experientially usually amounts to what one is convinced of personally.

No, experience is not that.

Experience imposes itself from outside the individual, often in defiance of what he would prefer to believe, and often changes his mind...almost as if by force. One has, perhaps, one's prejudices, then runs into a new experience, and bingo! One realizes one has been a fool all along. That happens to people quite a bit. It's not unusual for people to say, "If only I had known...."

If one is already "convinced of something personally," then it is not a product of experience, but of prejudice prior to all experience.

To know collectively...

There's no such thing as "collective knowing." Only individuals "know" or "don't know" things.

[Dubious]

"Nature" according to Atheism, has no opinions. Therefore "nature" cannot be anything BUT "indifferent" to morality.

Nature is a process without connection to anything except itself in which good and evil are completely devoid of any meaning which has so long been a quandary to humans.

Then you agree. That's exactly my point.

I'm not prone to disagree with facts whether it suits me or not. Others, of course, would never allow themselves to be limited by mere facts. If not for that, theism would have been routed a long time ago.

There's no such thing as "collective knowing."

...then call it a majority consensus on the probable.

[Dubious]

To act in this world, to take action on any level in fact, is always morally problematic. The larger the scale of action, the more obvious the *immoral* consequences. When I first began reading Nietzsche I learned that Theodore Roosevelt was a reader of Nietzsche. I was living in Panama and musing on his Herculean accomplishment: wresting the district of Panama from Colombia; establishing a pro-American régime; and going forward with a colossal engineering project. The entire *spirit* seems so Nietzschean.

That's a thought I'm sure Nietzsche would have deeply resented. T.R. would not have been an insightful reader. Ironically, Hitler negated Nietzsche as having any influence upon him except for some labelling adopted by the Nazis.

And God? Effectively God had been reduced to an irrelevancy.

How could it be otherwise? The god concept never explained a single thing in the whole of history! God is the epitome of useless when it comes to explaining anything except for its perverse workings in the psyche.

To push forward in this world is to push forward with some other god-concept entirely.

A new model is definitely in order in which humans are no-longer constricted by god but instead given a new center around which to revolve. Consider any such futuristic paradigm as a new Copernican revolution.

[attofishpi]

And God? Effectively God had been reduced to an irrelevancy.

How could it be otherwise? The god concept never explained a single thing in the whole of history! God is the epitome of useless when it comes to explaining anything except for its perverse workings in the psyche.

Very interesting isn't it - IT - God.

In that, it never ceases to amaze me that God has simply left the world to man and animal to do as its own will.

I wish an atheist or theist would start a thread as to Y if God exists, that it hides its existence - that it provides so much doubt and insists on so much faith, since surely there would be a reasonable answer.

[Iwannaplato]

Well, you would be "playing God" if you then turned around and tried to impose a moral claim on another person. But I don't know that in the Atheist toolkit is the equipment to back any claim that even "playing God" is immoral.

There are people who don't do that, but most people try to get other people to do things based on a wide variety of justifications. Most are basing this on apriori or conclusions deduced from their apriori. There are some people who just go for what they want and know this, even if they don't generally frame it that way when arguing with others. But theists and atheists alike claim to have the right to get other people to do things or not do things based on a variety of justifications.

1 focuses on following or not rules. 2 focuses on the effects of one's actions, ususally with some axiomatic rule. 3 does focus on the person, but generally in a deontological way: it's good to be noble - or a consequentialist way: noble people will increase ____________________.[/quote]

Actually, virtue ethicists would refuse that summary of their view. They claim not to be an ethics concerned with action alone, but rather with how actions accumulate into an eventual revelation of general character.

Sure, but I've never met anyone who didn't justify that in part on consequences of having good citizens, good fathers or mothers, good consequences. Further how is character shown, through actions. I'm not disagreeing about what their focus is. They focus on character and expect that for example kind actions will flow from the character. So, their pedagogical/parenting aims at character, but they are concerned about actions and evaluate character based on actions.

A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent.

from
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/#Virt
And everyone seems to be some mix of these three approaches.

Certainly. But that's necessary. Children don't enter the world as inclined to be civilized and share, but rather to scream when crossed and to bap their little brothers over the head. Nobody teaches them that, but somehow they all know how to do both.

So some part of the child does need training and redirection. Immaturity generally is punctuated by behaviours that are less than functional, sociable and moral.

I'm not saying we just let children do whatever they want. And there are stages in the child's own development regardless. They don't really get that there are other people at first, not the way adults do. You don't have to train them, you have to be with them and they will get this. They will go through Piaget stages also, regardless, and with this comes the intellectual idea that there are other minds/perspectives that they get on a cognitive level. And without the cognitive they can't have the empathetic.

We are not born tabular rasa is two different ways: 1) different babies have different temperments and tendencies 2) children develop via internal shifts. They get as an unfolding of their biology changes in their understand of what is happening, including the understanding that other people experience different things and have perspectives.

Children will want to get along with others. It's built into most children.

We can look at the parent and think they must 'now I will train my child to realize that I should not be forced to do whatever it wants me to do'. Or one can understand that a parent who while focusing incredibly much on the child's needs also takes care of her own needs is revealing to the child what life is like with others, naturally. And once the piagetian stages come rolling in the child gets this more at the thought level.

I think the tabula rasa idea and seeing the child as a kind of beast has caused all sorts of damage.

Agreed. Or we might say that the function of morality is to tell us what to do when our impulses incline us to things that are not good, or fail to stimulate us sufficiently to pursue that which is truly worthwhile. That's another way of looking at the project of moral education.

And for me the problem is the permanence of this. Impulses and emotions never get integrated, so there is always this internal control system rather than an integrated individual.

It's funny but much modern secular intellectual morality, either explicitly or implicitly, views the self as having a beast within, much as many Christians have viewed the self. They couch this beast in different ways, it's more a like an id for the secular people. But in the end in the name or rationality, maturity, logic we end up being admonished in similar ways at least structurally to how Christians admonished each other in relation to urges, emotions, expressing either of these.

Pagan and indigenous religions are different. They still have judgments that certain parts of the self can never be integrated but in general are much more tolerant of desire and emotion.

We might ask, "How has that worked out for them?"

Those religions and groups are coming back, with lots of adherants within the domintor cultures. But sure, it didn't go so well for groups that did not treat their own members with the kind of internal mechanical dominance the large dominator cultures did.

Tolerance of desire and emotion within reasonable and sociable bounds is one thing, of course; pagan bacchanalia and blood lettings are quite another. There's very little you'll ever see that's so out of his own control as a pagan witchdoctor or acolyte in the throes of his pagan ecstacies.

Rational approachs to domination have outdone any pagan excesses.

Pagans and indigenous groups never fully aimed at integration. But nothing approaches the cold-blooded violence created by the combination of rationality coupled with dominator religions and ideologies.

Civilizations are not built by indulgence, but by restraint, moderation, control of impulses.

And behind the scenes violence aimed at the weaker, slavery of various kinds etc.

But how do we know they're being "jailors," too? Isn't it possible that at least sometimes, some of those things are trying to "help" us to do the right thing, even if they often get it wrong?

Sure, in any given momen it may well be great that you suppress yourself. My criticism is aimed at the permanence this correctional system is set in place and further the lack of interest in or support for any approach to long term integration.

That's a complicated problem. Should we chase it further, or just leave it there?

It's part of my core reaction. Either way is fine for me.

Oh, absolutely. I think conscience is universal. Like everything else in human beings, it's imperfect; but one thing that seems universal is the fact of a conscience, whether in perfect order or not.

And given its ubiquity it's rather amazing how little we talk about guilt vs. regret for example.

Yes, quite so. It's all to easy for us to assume, because conscience makes us uncomfortable, that it's an enemy. But it's usually not. Sometimes it goes awry and burdens us with unearned guilt, it's true; but in general, it alerts us to the presence of a moral choice to which, perhaps, we have not been sufficiently attending up to now.

Yes, lots of guilt, at least partly conscious is one bad outcome. I think there are much more damaging chronic issues where we don't even know who we are and what we want because it took over so completely we don't even notice. The right often talks about virtue signaling, which was a spot on critique if often used in an oversimplifying way. But virtue signaling is not remotely restricted to the left. Conservatives/the right have virtue signaled just as much, just in their own ways, with overlap.

We don't suggest people look at the splits inthemselves and consider integration.

This is what the virtue ethicists are going to say makes their view better than deontology or consequentialism. They claim that they DO pay attention to the integration of the total personality.

But they don't. I like virtue ethics better, in the sense that it is aiming at a deeper sense. They want you deeply aligned with the values. In a sense a bit like how Jesus updated the 10 commandments. In that direction. But the assumption generally has been that you must conquer (though nicer verbs are used) those portions of the self not aligned with the virtues.

Sorry, got to start the work day.....

[Dubious]

And God? Effectively God had been reduced to an irrelevancy.

How could it be otherwise? The god concept never explained a single thing in the whole of history! God is the epitome of useless when it comes to explaining anything except for its perverse workings in the psyche.

Very interesting isn't it - IT - God.

In that, it never ceases to amaze me that God has simply left the world to man and animal to do as its own will.

I wish an atheist or theist would start a thread as to Y if God exists, that it hides its existence - that it provides so much doubt and insists on so much faith, since surely there would be a reasonable answer.

It seems hideously unfair that god would demand absolute faith in return for absolute silence. Under those conditions, why should god care what one's position is regarding ITS existence? It makes more sense to return the silence in an acknowledgement of equal indifference and move on!