Do atheists have morals?

Ahnimus

angelica wrote:

In what discipline do these theories spring from?

Epistemology, it's used in Dev. Psyche and Psychology.

Abookamongstthemany

sponger wrote:

By "civil" I mean good driver's discount kind of civil. Were it not for our fear of the $300 traffic ticket and increased insurance rates, we'd all be doing 100 mph. Religion turns traffic cops into other-worldly, mystical beings who can be resurrected. Atheism reminds us of why that ticket costs $300, not just that it sucks to lose $300.

I break laws that could cost me more than $300 simply because the law has no good reasoning behind it. The traffic law has safety reasons and if I drove I would consider the safety of others and myself not just worry about the ticket.

angelica

The quote I used is referring the the general moral scheme that is learned. For example if a newborn is born sinful, good, or blank, it will still need to learn the applicable moral scheme it is born into. No matter what state it exists in at birth, it doesn't know it's own society's acceptable morals or ethics and must learn them.

Ahnimus

angelica wrote:

The quote I used is referring the the general moral scheme that is learned. For example if a newborn is born sinful, good, or blank, it will still need to learn the applicable moral scheme it is born into. No matter what state it exists in at birth, it doesn't know it's own society's acceptable morals or ethics and must learn them.

Does that apply to everything or just morals?

FYI innate purity and natural sin are pretty much never believed by anyone.

CorporateWhore

hippiemom wrote:

People who destroyed some percentage of their own offspring would not have passed along their genes at the same rate as people who never did so. It's quite natural that people who do a better job of caring for their children would gain the evolutionary advantage.

This "evolutionary theory of morality" holds absolutely no water. Let's quash it right now. It goes against science, namely. There is no scientific basis to believe that genetic material has been coded to give moral reasoning to any human being. Take a Aborigene (sp?) from Australia and raise him in a Catholic family and he'll grow up with Catholic morals, regardless of what his genetic information "says." Morality is not a scientific concept at all. Science cannot explain why humans find certain things moral and immoral.

Further evidence:

Instinctually, human beings are selfish creatures. They are imperfect. But, if I was told that I had to die so that a weaker, uglier, dumber human being could live, I would die (why not?).

Why? Your theory of evolutionary morality would tell me that it is right that the weaker human die so that I could live. That weaker human would desire that I live instead as well. This information would be coded into our "moral genes" to tell us that, in that situation, the stronger person lives.

Nonetheless, the stronger could choose to die if he believed it was right.

angelica

Ahnimus wrote:

Does that apply to everything or just morals?

FYI innate purity and natural sin are pretty much never believed by anyone.

The quote, itself, and my reference to it is referring specifically to morals.

Ahnimus

angelica wrote:

The quote, itself, and my reference to it is referring specifically to morals.

Interesting...

sponger

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

I break laws that could cost me more than $300 simply because the law has no good reasoning behind it. The traffic law has safety reasons and if I drove I would consider the safety of others and myself not just worry about the ticket.

In other words, you subscribe to the atheist's approach to safe driving.

CorporateWhore

sponger wrote:

All that's doing is taking atheism and putting the stamp of "god" on it. It's religion's way of plagiarising. It's like saying, "Secularism makes sense, but only because god created it." For those who don't desire to look deeper into the rationale behind "natural law", it is the end-all argument for religion's patent on morality.

At any rate, your analogy just kind of proves my point that religion, for now, keeps people acting civil until they grow out of their moral training wheels (ie religion).

The act of burning any one person or living thing is cruel, regardless of its age. What makes this cruel is our natural ability to have empathy, not the baby's innocence. There need not be an explanation for it. We as human beings just feel a natural sense of compassion for one another, most notably babies because we instinctively care for our young so as to promote the survival of our species. It has nothing to do with deservingness.

If I saw a serial murderer catch on fire and there was nothing I could do about it, I would not feel bad. Nonetheless, if I could put him out, I would. Still, I would not have compassion for him. I would feel he deserved his fate. I think most people would feel that way.

Additionally, the moral theory I offered you was stated by Saint Thomas Aquinas in a time when 100% of the people believed in God. He was not looking to some atheist and applying the rationale: he borrowed thoughts from Aristotle and built upon them to form the Christian philosophical perspective.

The reason that the natural law MUST be made by God is that God is the first mover who created all things, which Aquinas goes on to explain in his 5 ways. Although these take faith, faith is not separate from reason, but inseparable.

Abookamongstthemany

sponger wrote:

In other words, you subscribe to the atheist's approach to safe driving.

Only atheists care about everyone's safety?

soulsinging

i dont know about their morals, but i do know there aren't any of them in foxholes. i checked.

sponger

CorporateWhore wrote:

faith is not separate from reason, but inseparable.

....only on a "just because" basis. Nowhere in your post is it described just how it can be proven that god created the universe. And again, this is why I say that "natural law" is just an attempt to take atheistic morals and put the stamp of god on them. Even the most religious of people have to contend with common sense. And the way they deal with these feelings of common sense is by calling them common god sense. Even if secular humanism wasn't a recognized movement at that time, "natural law" is still just plagiarism of atheism because atheism is just another term for common sense.

Serial killers are not crucial to the survival of our species. You see them as a threat. That is why you do not feel empathy for them. Again, it has nothing to do with "innocence".

sponger

Abookamongstthemany wrote:

Only atheists care about everyone's safety?

Only atheism allows for the understanding of that safety.

CorporateWhore

sponger wrote:

....only on a "just because" basis. Nowhere in your post is it described just how it can be proven that god created the universe. And again, this is why I say that "natural law" is just an attempt to take atheistic morals and put the stamp of god on them. Even the most religious of people have to contend with common sense. And the way they deal with these feelings of common sense is by calling them common god sense. Even if secular humanism wasn't a recognized movement at that time, "natural law" is still just plagiarism of atheism because atheism is just another term for common sense.

Serial killers are not crucial to the survival of our species. You see them as a threat. That is why you do not feel empathy for them. Again, it has nothing to do with "innocence".

Well, I do not believe it is necessary to "prove" God's existence like Aquinas did.

God is God, "I am who am." What else is there to say? Because I know Him, he exists. Is it necessary for me to prove your existence by showing you your family tree? Or can't I just realize that you are typing to me from a computer and I could meet you face to face, probably. Right?

sponger

CorporateWhore wrote:

Well, I do not believe it is necessary to "prove" God's existence like Aquinas did.

God is God, "I am who am." What else is there to say? Because I know Him, he exists. Is it necessary for me to prove your existence by showing you your family tree? Or can't I just realize that you are typing to me from a computer and I could meet you face to face, probably. Right?

Right, in fact god is posting to this message board as we speak. If the only basis for "natural law" is that it is created by god, and that god exists because you just know that he does, then all you really need to do to explain your sense of morality is just say "because god said so."

But, I was under the assumption that this discussion was about more than "because god exists." It's about whether or not it's possible to have morals without having a deity to worship.

Your answer to that is simply "no" because god = morals because our reality was created by god. And by using that rationale, you are simply saying that your acknowledgement of god's existence makes you more moral than someone who doesn't acknowledge god's existence.

But, the way I see it, if god's reality really equated to morality, then we should all be capable of being moral with or without acknowledging his existence. The belief that we need to acknowledge his existence in order to be moral means that his reality has limitations. Of course, the problem with that is that a true god should have no limitations.

Then there's the belief that god purposely made it so that we would have to "discover" him in order to be moral, but I don't see how that doesn't equate to some form vanity. He waited a few thousand years before exposing us to his reality? Why?

Jeanie

hippiemom wrote:

Anyway, my guess on morality is that primitive societies with behavior patterns that we would call "moral" gained an evolutionary advantage because of those behaviors and were thus more likely to pass along their genetic material, which would account for why children too young to have absorbed any sort of religious teaching can be seen displaying compassion for others.

BINGO!!! You said it hippiemom, just what I was so ineloquently trying to get across! What a great mind you have.;)

Jeanie

cornnifer wrote:

in order for it to be pased along, it had to begin somewhere. How did morality evolve? How did it get there to begin with? Maybe i'm misunderstanding you, but it doesn't seem you are addressing that question.

So way, way, back when my relative crawled out of the swamp it killed something and had a bad physical reaction to what it had done then when it passed on it's DNA that program was written into it's cells so that it's offspring already equated killing as something bad. Not a particularly scientific sounding explanation I know, but I am trying!

hippiemom

CorporateWhore wrote:

If I saw a serial murderer catch on fire and there was nothing I could do about it, I would not feel bad. Nonetheless, if I could put him out, I would. Still, I would not have compassion for him. I would feel he deserved his fate. I think most people would feel that way.

And most people would feel quite a bit differently about that flaming serial killer if he were their son. People who bond with their children and protect them are more likely to pass on their genes than those who don't. Societies that work together and help one another are more likely to survive and pass on their genes than those who don't.

Anyway, I'm not going to invest a whole lot of time here. I'll just say that it's the truth because it IS. What else is there to say? I don't believe it is necessary to "prove" any of it. I have faith in it, therefore it is true.

Wow, I'm really starting to see why people like religion! It makes things so much easier!

gue_barium

Morality is probably one derivative of empathy.

catefrances

soulsinging wrote:

i dont know about their morals, but i do know there aren't any of them in foxholes. i checked.

i've always wondered about this saying. being an atheist i've always taken exception to it. but reading it now i can honestly say i am one atheist you wouldn't find in a foxhole in the first place. me being a pacifist and all, as well as an atheist. but somehow i doubt that's the sentiment being conveyed with that statement.