Philosophy Now Forum

Harbal, I salute you! The foregoing is a work of genius.

Harbal wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote: So now if you can, do some actual philosophy: show me one moral precept that an Atheist must believe,

There isn't a moral precept that an Atheist must believe, in exactly the same way as there isn't a moral precept that a theist must believe. They are both the same in that respect.
Is that the right answer? It was a trick question, wasn't it?

No, a theist has whatever moral code is taught by the religion they ascribe to, an atheist has no such code, they need to make up their own, or do without.

thedoc wrote:[

No, a theist has whatever moral code is taught by the religion they ascribe to, an atheist has no such code, they need to make up their own, or do without.

But is there one moral precept that all theists must believe, because that is the criterion that IC says atheists are failing on.

uwot wrote:Harbal, I salute you! The foregoing is a work of genius.

Do you think IC will agree with you?

I like you, uwot.

Harbal wrote: But how can anyone possibly know the nature of God? And even if you could know, what objective evidence is there that the morality of God's law is superior to that of my conscience?

Usually the moral code expressed by most religions are an echo of the human conscience, there is very little variance, but some people claiming a particular religion will ignore or distort those codes to suit themselves. Just as some people (atheists or theists) will ignore their conscience.

thedoc wrote:...a theist has whatever moral code is taught by the religion they ascribe to, an atheist has no such code, they need to make up their own, or do without.

So do you think that the moral codes of all theists are equally moral?

Immanuel Can wrote:...any Theist is morally obligated when God commands something.

Morally obligated simply means that if a person wishes to behave according to a particular moral code, they are obliged to behave according to that code. Even Mr Can understands that much:

Immanuel Can wrote:In ethics, nobody is ever forced to do anything. But they are morally obligated, if a moral precept logically follows from their beliefs about the world. That is, if they choose not do it, then by the logic of their own belief system, they are morally bad.

From which it follows that if someone chooses 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' as a moral precept, it "logically follows that if they choose not do it, then by the logic of their own belief system, they are morally bad".
It looks trite, because it is trite.

thedoc wrote:

Harbal wrote: But how can anyone possibly know the nature of God? And even if you could know, what objective evidence is there that the morality of God's law is superior to that of my conscience?

Usually the moral code expressed by most religions are an echo of the human conscience, there is very little variance, but some people claiming a particular religion will ignore or distort those codes to suit themselves. Just as some people (atheists or theists) will ignore their conscience.

You do surprise me sometimes doc, although it's a lot easier to ignore a book than it is a conscience, and a handful of 'commandments' can't even begin to scrape the surface of the human conscience.

thedoc wrote: Usually the moral code expressed by most religions are an echo of the human conscience,

Well I'm human and I have a conscience so all I'm doing is cutting out the middle man.

Harbal wrote:Hey, maybe I'm not an atheist after all because I do actually think I should obey my conscience and I haven't got a choice about it, therefore, it's not arbitrary. Yet I don't believe in God.

Well, ask yourself what reason you have for thinking you owe your "conscience" anything. After all, it might give you twinges of guilt occasionally, but so what? If you can get over those, then from an Atheist perspective, why shouldn't you do that instead? And if conscience is merely the accidental product of an essentially chance-driven natural process, what makes you "owe" it to follow it?

I can't think of any reason you have to. You can choose to, of course, as can anyone...but you're never going to have to.

And consider this: could "conscience" be no more important than a sort of "vestigial organ" destined to disappear with evolution? Nietzsche thought something like that was probably true. And if so, isn't it the case that the more you ignore that conscience and make your decisions without regard for it, the more "evolved" you will be acting?

So far as I can see, there's just no way for you to show you owe that twinge anything. But if you can show otherwise, please, go ahead.

Theist ethics are a lot more complex --

That probably explains why theists seem to have a problem practicing what they preach, the complexity has a tendency to confuse them. I always suspected there must be a reason why it wasn't their fault.

Complexity "confuses" everyone. Simple things are, by definition, easier to think about. But reality does not always offer us things as simply as we might like.

It's funny...Atheists often (wrongly) accuse Theism of being too "simple." Now the fault is that it's too "complex"? But you would think Atheists would not be so stupid as to forget that Theism has been a major focus of intellectual activity -- art, science, education, literature, philosophy, and so on -- for thousands of years, and thus that they might give their progenitors just a tiny bit of credit for knowing something. If the whole matter were as simple as the Atheist metanarratives wish us to believe it is, then what does that say about the entire history of civilization, and about the wits of our ancestors?

But in fact, Theistic ethics are a very complex business, one with a really impressive intellectual tradition...and if they are challenging to the people who think about them, just imagine how utterly opaque they are to the Atheist who merely dismisses the whole concept without thinking at all.

is not consonant with the expressed nature of God,

But how can anyone possibly know the nature of God? And even if you could know, what objective evidence is there that the morality of God's law is superior to that of my conscience?

Well, from a Theistic perspective, Who created your conscience? The One who could conceive, create and inform that conscience is surely bound to be "superior" to it, just as an engineer is bound to be a more complicated entity than the items he builds.

As for the nature of God, that could only ever be known with any degree of certainty if the Supreme Being Himself decided to make it known. Surely it's clear that we human beings would just be shooting in the dark if we tried to guess from our side, no?

Necromancer wrote:

Greta wrote:I do not believe it's possible for a sane person to deny evolution. According to creationists, all species were created at once. When? Life started a few hundred thousand years after the Hadean period ended. At that time there was hardly any oxygen in the atmosphere and the Earth was populated by anaerobic microorganisms. So how would all species be created at once if there's no oxygen?

Another vexing question: are the females of all species created from a male rib or is it only human females? What of female invertebrates? Were they formed from a chunk of male exoskeleton or internal organ? Then there's the young Earth creationists who completely discard reason and logic in favour of obvious legends. To that end, they are similar to the Flat Earth Society.

We routinely give such people control over our public policy and then wonder why everything is corrupt and pear-shaped. The point of theism is ultimately social and political - a "tribal"banding together of a group against "the rest". There is powerful in-group loyalty and often equally powerful out-group demonisation.

Just as humans banded together to control other species, theists have always banded together to control other people. Since their loyalty is only ever to each other, they govern more for their in-group than for the many (an example is how churches routinely covered up child abuse within their ranks, showing corrupt loyalty to their own even in the most extreme of circumstances). It's true that cronyism and corruption is far from limited only to theists, but hard-line theists necessarily take office with moral conflicts of interest as regards their attitude towards the many.

At this stage, a significant lobbying number of theists in the White House believe that humanity is on the verge of the apocalypse and the second coming. Thus, they have no interest in preserving nature. They are rooting for the apocalypse to come ASAP because that's when they will be rewarded and those they loathe will die.

Hi Greta! I see you. This issue isn't really so hard. It's only about finding common ethical ground! The Secular Humanists are already there so why don't all the nice Atheists just turn to Secular Humanism? There they can be joined by the Religious Humanists and thus the World becomes a bit more peaceful. Consider me therefore a Religious Humanist. The point is not to force you to be indoctrinated with Christian teachings. No, the point is only to agree on common ethical ground for society to be built on, no other agreement needed as such because all else is considered private and privacy is highly respected in Christianity (and other religions)! That is, we agree that privacy is kept, also lawfully!

Good?

Any atheists who are not humanists are either psychopaths (like their theist equivalents) or misanthropists (who tend to be disillusioned humanists anyway).

It comes down to spheres of concern. As a humanist, your interest is in all, not just your tribe.

Trouble is, religions are government-funded (tax free) special interest enclaves, paid with secularist taxes to represent their interests at the expense of the many. There are many practical issues to be dealt with - where people are needlessly suffering due to taxpayer funded religious interference in secular society - before a "truce" is possible. Secularists remain oppressed under the religious yoke, although the burden is thankfully far lighter than in the past, ie. we are killed by theists in lesser numbers today.

My taxes help fund for their activities. If afflicted with the wrong disease I face a death of prolonged agony, humiliation and objectification. I help to pay for that. One of my best friends cannot marry his long term partner. I (and he and his partner) help to pay for that denial. This is wrong. I should not be funding anything but their charitable work with my taxes.

Why shouldn't just theists be kept alive interminably, if that's their faith, and let agonised dying secularists go? Do theists force this situation to gain that final deathbed conversion? (speaking of psychopaths ...). Why should religious gays be denied marriage. Marriage was not originally a religious institution but was taken over by the church, along with everything else.

And ... I know this last one is trivial but it must be said as a science documentary junkie, I find that presenters are increasingly going back over tediously obvious and basic topics - over and over - to try to win over what seems to be a growing population of philosophical Luddites. For goodness sake, people move on! I want to know ground breaking stuff, not another explanation why evolution is real and a big man didn't make the universe ...

Sorry, you are trying to be nice and my words scream "frustration" and "irritation" and I know I should be bigger than that but will probably be okay now that that's off my chest

Immanuel Can wrote:...if conscience is merely the accidental product of an essentially chance-driven natural process, what makes you "owe" it to follow it?

I can't think of any reason you have to. You can choose to, of course, as can anyone...but you're never going to have to.

You are forgetting free will, Mr Can. You don't have to follow your conscience as the sort of Theist you are, except in the no true Scotsman sense, that you wouldn't qualify as a Cantheist if you didn't. Someone who agrees with your metaphysics can still choose to ignore whatever conscience they have, and accept the eternal torture visited on them by the forgiving and loving god you both believe in. That might be an incentive to pore over ancient texts to discover what your conscience should be telling you, but you don't have to.

Immanuel Can wrote:...Theistic ethics are a very complex business...

Well, if you lack an innate sense of humanity and must depend on interpreting a book, it would be. But ultimately Theistic ethics is as simple as 'Be good and daddy will give you sweeties. Be bad and daddy will beat you.'

uwot wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:...if conscience is merely the accidental product of an essentially chance-driven natural process, what makes you "owe" it to follow it?

I can't think of any reason you have to. You can choose to, of course, as can anyone...but you're never going to have to.

You are forgetting free will, Mr Can. You don't have to follow your conscience as the sort of Theist you are, except in the no true Scotsman sense, that you wouldn't qualify as a Cantheist if you didn't. Someone who agrees with your metaphysics can still choose to ignore whatever conscience they have, and accept the eternal torture visited on them by the forgiving and loving god you both believe in. That might be an incentive to pore over ancient texts to discover what your conscience should be telling you, but you don't have to.

Immanuel Can wrote:...Theistic ethics are a very complex business...

Well, if you lack an innate sense of humanity and must depend on interpreting a book, it would be. But ultimately Theistic ethics is as simple as 'Be good and daddy will give you sweeties. Be bad and daddy will beat you.'

Can is a self-confessed psychopath. He admits that if his book didn't tell him not to go around killing people, and if he didn't fear eternal damnation, then he would be a mass murderer. He has no concept of 'conscience', which is why he can't understand anyone else having one. It's odd that there have been so many kristian mass-murderers. Perhaps they don't fear hell as much as Mr Can does.

Harbal wrote:

thedoc wrote:[
No, a theist has whatever moral code is taught by the religion they ascribe to, an atheist has no such code, they need to make up their own, or do without.

But is there one moral precept that all theists must believe, because that is the criterion that IC says atheists are failing on.

To my knowledge most religions prohibit murder, or the killing of one of your own. If there are religions that do permit murder, please let me know what they are, and corrupting the original text doesn't count, so Islam condoning the killing of Infidels, doesn't count.

IC is claiming that atheists don't have anything in atheism that addresses killing or murder, and he is correct. Some atheists are claiming that an atheists can still be a good person based on the dictates of a good conscience, and they are correct. Most of the argument is both parties talking past each other, saying the same thing, but from different angles.

thedoc wrote:To my knowledge most religions prohibit murder, or the killing of one of your own.

Prohibiting clearly doesn't prevent, so how is it even worthy of exalting those in a religion compared to those who are not? It all comes down to who you are as a person. Religion may be a steering/reminder mechanism for some, but who you are as a person is much more of the truth than whatever you claim to be affiliated with.

thedoc wrote:IC is claiming that atheists don't have anything in atheism that addresses killing or murder

And such a claim has no basis for being made into a useful claim. Atheism isn't a belief system, so how can something that is not a belief system have some sort of precepts? Such a claim has no more value than saying human beings are deficient because they aren't making cocktails on Mars. Humans aren't on Mars, and therefore have no reason to make cocktails there. Why don't you guys keep your belief-associated precepts to yourselves? Doesn't it seem absurd that you keep applying your theist expectations onto non-theists?

What atheists have is what's instinctively built-in to all human beings, whether or not they ever hear of, or have use for, any particular belief system. That's better, in my view, than anything that is concocted in a thousand different forms and layered on top as a mantle. What's below the mantle is all that really matters.

thedoc wrote:

Harbal wrote:

thedoc wrote:[
No, a theist has whatever moral code is taught by the religion they ascribe to, an atheist has no such code, they need to make up their own, or do without.

But is there one moral precept that all theists must believe, because that is the criterion that IC says atheists are failing on.

To my knowledge most religions prohibit murder, or the killing of one of your own. If there are religions that do permit murder, please let me know what they are, and corrupting the original text doesn't count, so Islam condoning the killing of Infidels, doesn't count.

IC is claiming that atheists don't have anything in atheism that addresses killing or murder, and he is correct. Some atheists are claiming that an atheists can still be a good person based on the dictates of a good conscience, and they are correct. Most of the argument is both parties talking past each other, saying the same thing, but from different angles.

It's a shame your god doesn't practise what he preaches, but then he created everything, so that must include hypocrisy.

thedoc wrote:To my knowledge most religions prohibit murder, or the killing of one of your own. If there are religions that do permit murder, please let me know what they are, and corrupting the original text doesn't count, so Islam condoning the killing of Infidels, doesn't count.

I'll bet it counts to the dead infidels. And by the way, "Atheist" is, from an Islamic perspective, pretty much the definition of "infidel."

IC is claiming that atheists don't have anything in atheism that addresses killing or murder, and he is correct. Some atheists are claiming that an atheists can still be a good person based on the dictates of a good conscience, and they are correct. Most of the argument is both parties talking past each other, saying the same thing, but from different angles.

I don't agree.

I have been saying that I agree with your second sentence since the very first moment I joined. But I have also been agreeing with your first sentence.

Your third, however, is not true: the Atheists have been avoiding the issue you list in sentence 1 by pretending I'm asserting sentence 2. But that's disingenuous on their part. They can see and read what I've written about that: that an Atheist can choose to be good, but is not in any way morally obliged to do so, since Atheists have no rational grounding in their worldview for categories like "good" and "evil."

We haven't been "talking past" each other at all...they know darn well what I mean. They're not illiterate, nor incapable of basic deductions. They just don't want to go where there reason will take them. So the Atheist set has been skating away from the real question like mad.

And I don't blame them: it's a decisive defeater for the idea of Atheist ethics. And they know it. So they play games with insults, distractions, avoidance tactics, quips, and so on. But you and I can see that for what it is; as can they. So the conversation turns into a colossal game of "let's pretend" on their part, as in "let's pretend I don't know where the rational road goes," or "let's pretend that if I make you out to be a bad person you can't possibly be telling me the truth," and so on.

But it's pretty transparent.