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Absurdity of Morality Apart From God

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  • #76
    Originally posted by Tassman View Post
    Religious affiliation indicates the value system held by its adherents and interestingly, the least religious nations (including Norway) tend to be the most equitable and least crime-ridden, which seems to mitigate against God-based revealed morality.
    Indeed, I live in a pretty non-religious country which doesn't even give lip-service to religion the way Norway does - about 50% of people in the census here report no religion, and all our elected leaders in the past 20 years have been openly non-religious. And yet, here in New Zealand, we routinely rank the least corrupt nation on earth, and tend to be passionate about human rights, peace, equality, etc. I would say we are extremely moral as a nation, holding very strong values, and that the vast majority of people here think in (negative) moral terms when they think / read about the US currently.

    I was thinking recently about what exactly the moral values dominant in New Zealand tend to be, and I think the answers that most readily come to mind are "kindness" and "fairness". e.g. here is an official government covid poster:
    ?width=300&height=300.jpg
    And an American historian who visited New Zealand was so shocked during our elections by how the word "fairness" was in the mouths of every politician where he was used to hearing the word "freedom" from US politicians, that he wrote a book about it:
    41hbBfxwWoL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

    I also think "be considerate of others" and "equality" are solid contenders for core New Zealand moral values, but I think those are pretty much covered within the concepts of kindness and fairness and are other ways of saying the same thing.

    Secular humanism is NOT rooted in Christianity or any philosophical system. It derives from biology and natural selection. In short, our evolved instinct for cooperation and altruism promotes the social cohesion necessary for our survival as a social species. The same can be seen in other intelligent animals to a limited extent in simpler forms.
    One way in the past I've framed the basics of moral thinking are exactly against this evolutionary background of survival. In survival terms it's an absolutely key issue on encountering another human whether that person is going to attack / hurt you or help you. Due to evolution that threat-assessment is automatically done by the brain at a level so fundamental that even those who would want to avoid it cannot. Even those who stick their fingers in their ears and chant "I don't believe in athiestic morality" nonetheless automatically always assess everyone around them for positive/negative intentions toward others, searching out the threats, and narrowing in on those who are detect as not valuing others as possible threats. Working out who has positive intentions toward you and wants to help you, and working out those with negative intentions who want to hurt you, is just something humans fundamentally do and is a product of evolution.

    Everyone, consciously or subconsciously, spends quite a lot of brainpower trying to gauge the intentions and values of others and searching out whether they are positive or negative towards you and others around you. Since I would tend to say that "morality" is nothing but "valuing others" I would describe this as a 'moral assessment' of others that everyone makes day in and day other, even people who don't want to call valuing others as "morality" still do this assessment. It's not something they can escape from just because they make a thread to try to pretend atheists can't have morality. Such assessments of the values and intentions of others are utterly intrinsic to human nature as a product of evolution in a competitive and aggressive environment which has created structures in the human brain that automatically assess others for positive/negative intentions and values toward others. That is why valuing others is a fundamental universal moral code, which everyone automatically checks for adherence to. Even those who choose to call something else 'morality' still check for adherence to this moral code, they can't help but do so. And it is, of course, rational that they do so, because early detection of someone with negative intentions toward you is obviously in one's self-interest, and equally detection of someone with positive intentions toward you can bring benefits.
    "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
    "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

    Comment


    • #77
      Originally posted by Starlight View Post
      Secular humanism has an optimistic view of humanity, a high view of human worth, values this life not the next....
      An opinion which is meaningless. Why do humans have worth?



      Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

      Comment


      • #78
        To quote Dr. Max Stackhouse

        For those who seek to defend civil rights and liberties and see them as a way to love their neighbors near and far, the potential erosion of the legal protections of civil rights and liberties is a matter of immediate and pressing practical concern. This is so because it denies that there are inalienable human rights that stand beyond and above civil rights, which are granted by a state and thus can be withdrawn by civil authority. It makes human rights a function of state policy not a matter of universal principle. This points to a deeper threat, for it takes human rights outside the realm of universal, meta-legal norms that cannot be repealed by political authority, no matter how powerful.

        Martin Luther King Jr.

        “How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law, or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. ... An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality.”

        https://www.pewforum.org/2003/01/27/...n-perspective/
        Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

        Comment


        • #79
          Originally posted by Starlight;n1241736 I would say we are extremely moral as a nation, holding very strong values, and that the vast majority of people here think in (negative) [I
          moral [/I]terms when they think / read about the US currently.
          Today, maybe.

          The prevalence and impact of racism toward indigenous Māori in New Zealand.

          https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-13721-001



          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

          Comment


          • #80
            Originally posted by seer View Post
            An opinion which is meaningless.
            I get you're trying to make a logical point here about meaning, but it comes across as a straight-out insult of the "your opinion is dumb" variety, which tempts me to simply reply with "your opinion is dumb". I think you need to be more careful with your wording. You are well aware, or should be by now, that I think saying something is "meaningless" is a nonsense statement, so I don't view your sentence as even making English sense. Things can't have objective meaning. Something is meaningful to a human. So, given I am a human and I presumably find my own opinion meaningful, a statement that my opinion is meaningless is obviously factually false, almost tautologically so.

            Why do humans have worth?
            Humans, as intelligent minds who make value judgements about the word, are the source of all value judgements and all judgements of worth. Worth only exists because of humans and is given by humans and is thus inextricably tied to humans. Humans as the source of all worth, inherently have worth.

            The prevalence and impact of racism toward indigenous Māori in New Zealand.
            Maori in New Zealand are a bit like Blacks in the US - an obviously distinct cultural and racial group who is socio-economically disadvantaged and overrepresented in the crime statistics and family violence statistics and underrepresented among the wealthy and successful and well-educated. There's a pretty fine line between people making accurate observations and generalizations that Maori are factually worse off, and negative racial stereotypes.

            As your link mentioned, New Zealand values equality and strives for it. New Zealand is often acknowledged as the colonial nation who has done the most to help its native people and the least to harm them. They weren't enslaved, there were no 'smallpox blankets' or systemic eradications of them, and reparations have been paid for what land was taken.
            Last edited by Starlight; 02-26-2021, 03:16 PM.
            "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
            "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
            "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

            Comment


            • #81
              Originally posted by Tassman View Post
              Religious affiliation indicates the value system held by its adherents and interestingly, the least religious nations (including Norway) tend to be the most equitable and least crime-ridden, which seems to mitigate against God-based revealed morality.
              Norway no longer has Norse value system due to Christianity. Attributing Norway's current state to lack of religiosity is, at the least, ignorance.


              Secular humanism is NOT rooted in Christianity or any philosophical system. It derives from biology and natural selection. In short, our evolved instinct for cooperation and altruism promotes the social cohesion necessary for our survival as a social species. The same can be seen in other intelligent animals to a limited extent in simpler forms.
              I'm not discounting human social evolution, but of cultures I listed, Christianity has the most equality. Aristotle was fine with Greek slavery. Seneca was fine with Roman slavery. Hinduism has a caste system. Confucianism had relational hierarchies. Christianity had Gregory of Nyssa who was not fine with slavery. The New Testament had a prominent female merchant and a deaconess.

              Please, though, keep not addressing the OP.
              P1) If , then I win.

              P2)

              C) I win.

              Comment


              • #82
                Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                That doesn't seem a very plausible claim. Secular humanism has an optimistic view of humanity, a high view of human worth, values this life not the next, whilst Western Protestantism has tended to teach the total depravity and utter sinfulness of humanity and the worthlessness of human nature and values the afterlife not this life. They don't have anything in common on the very issue where you are trying to pretend commonality.
                Western Protestantism isn't the full extent of Christianity.


                What an absurd statement. There are multiple mutually complementary reasons and rationales that point to human worth and human rights in an atheistic view, all of which have validity. It's a bit like trying to explain to a doubter why 1 plus 1 equals 2... there are many valid and correct explanations all of which have merit in different ways, but if someone obstinately refuses to accept any of them it becomes quickly very hard to explain something so basic.
                If want to demonstrate something like human dignity or human rights in the genome, go ahead. Calling the statement absurd doesn't make it so.


                If you agree it's possible, what exactly would the benefit of 'putting in the grunt work' be? Just as we can agree that 1 plus 1 equals 2 without putting in the grunt work of providing a formal proof, so we can agree on some general social ideas without putting in the grunt work to formally prove them.
                If you want to be intellectually lazy that's fine, but it's a tenuous framework at best.


                The "West" is usually viewed historically as originating from the Greco-Romans. Ancient Greek intellectuals like Plato and Aristotle were very influential repeatedly throughout Western history as their works were 'rediscovered'. The Roman legal system was massive influential for almost the entirety of Western history. Neither the Greeks, nor the Romans at the peak of the size of their empire, were Christians. The West was great before Christianity, and its founding nations and intellectuals weren't Christian.
                If the West was great before Christians, I suppose you have no issue with slavery.

                I'm not discounting the influence of the Greeks and Romans on Western development, I'm just not discounting the Christian influence. Here's a review, by an atheist, of a good book called Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World.

                The website in general is good as it debunks the embarrassment that is New Atheist.
                P1) If , then I win.

                P2)

                C) I win.

                Comment


                • #83
                  Originally posted by Diogenes View Post
                  I'm not discounting human social evolution, but of cultures I listed, Christianity has the most equality. Aristotle was fine with Greek slavery. Seneca was fine with Roman slavery. Hinduism has a caste system. Confucianism had relational hierarchies. Christianity had Gregory of Nyssa who was not fine with slavery. The New Testament had a prominent female merchant and a deaconess.
                  The Bible pretty explicitly condones slavery. It even has God explicitly saying so in the OT law. You're reaching pretty hard on this one and it becomes hard to take you seriously.

                  On the subject of female equality, the biblical passage about female subordination have long been used to oppose equality for the sexes. Literally one of the owners of this site, Mossrose, has super-backward views about women not being allowed to give men spiritual guidence etc.
                  "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                  "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                  "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                  Comment


                  • #84
                    Originally posted by Diogenes View Post
                    Western Protestantism isn't the full extent of Christianity.
                    True, and the re-legalization of slavery, following its near-complete-absence in the medieval period, came in the 15th century and following with the official permission of multiple popes, so the Roman Catholics have done quite a lot to affect the moral history of the West in a negative way.

                    If the West was great before Christians, I suppose you have no issue with slavery.
                    Christians trying to take credit for abolishing slavery after performing it for centuries is pathetic. It would be like me punching you in the face for a hour and then taking credit for the great moral decision of deciding to stop doing it.
                    "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                    "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                    Comment


                    • #85
                      Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                      The Bible pretty explicitly condones slavery. It even has God explicitly saying so in the OT law. You're reaching pretty hard on this one and it becomes hard to take you seriously.
                      In the time-frame of the OT, slavery was an economic necessity, as it was for all of human history until the Industrial Revolution. I agree the the New Testament doesn't outright say "you shouldn't have slaves", but it does remind earthly masters they have a heavenly master thus setting a praxis.



                      On the subject of female equality, the biblical passage about female subordination have long been used to oppose equality for the sexes. Literally one of the owners of this site, Mossrose, has super-backward views about women not being allowed to give men spiritual guidance etc.
                      Hence why I mentioned the biblical examples of Lydia and Phoebe, which I'm sure you knew given all atheists know the Bible intimately. I concern myself with the Bible, not Mossy's interpretation. Also, women not being allowed as spiritual leadership over men doesn't make them subordinate in all things. I have no problems with women being denied a pastoral role in the church and I have no issues with women being granted deaconess or educational roles in the church or having jobs outside the home. Hence the phrase "ideological vagrant".



                      Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                      True, and the re-legalization of slavery follow its abolition came with the official permission of multiple popes, so the Roman Catholics have done quite a lot to affect the moral history of the West in a negative way.

                      Christians trying to take credit for abolishing slavery after performing it for centuries is pathetic. It would be like me punching you in the face for a hour and then taking credit for the great moral decision of deciding to stop doing it.

                      I have no issue giving credit to Gregory of Nyssa as the first ancient thinker to question the morality of evil and that his justification for such question was due to his religious framework.

                      I find it odd you're willing to segregate ideology and practice when it comes to communism and Stalin but you're not willing to do the same for Christianity.
                      P1) If , then I win.

                      P2)

                      C) I win.

                      Comment


                      • #86
                        Originally posted by Diogenes View Post
                        In the time-frame of the OT, slavery was an economic necessity, as it was for all of human history until the Industrial Revolution.
                        If I were to agree with that statement, it would then become hard to give much credit to Christianity for the fact that slavery was ended once it was no longer an economic necessity.

                        Hence why I mentioned the biblical examples of Lydia and Phoebe, which I'm sure you knew given all atheists know the Bible intimately.
                        In my case yes, given I was a Christian for 25 years and wrote a book about how well/poorly different theologies were biblically grounded after extensive reading of academic literature regarding biblical interpretation. I would note that in general it's probably the more well-informed atheists who tend to dialog on the subject on the internet, while the less well informed don't tend to visit internet forums about Christianity, so your apparent skepticism and contempt on the subject of atheists' knowledge of the bible probably isn't at all warranted due to the biased nature of the self-selecting sample.

                        I concern myself with the Bible, not Mossy's interpretation.
                        It does get a bit eye-roll-inducing to have multiple posters in this forum telling me they're all absolutely and objectively following the bible's teachings... whilst espousing views that differ to one another.

                        Seer seems to think we should automatically believe and accept that his interpretation of the bible and the ethics he derives from it, and accept that his interpreted ethics are "objective moral truth". It's hard to take that at all seriously when others on this forum are getting quite different objective moral truths from the same source.
                        "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                        "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                        "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                        Comment


                        • #87
                          Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                          Humans, as intelligent minds who make value judgements about the word, are the source of all value judgements and all judgements of worth. Worth only exists because of humans and is given by humans and is thus inextricably tied to humans. Humans as the source of all worth, inherently have worth.
                          That makes no sense. If worth depends our value judgements then logically said worth can't be inherent since there will be disagreement. And there is no objective way to judge between differing opinion, save to offer another opinion, so on and so on..

                          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                          Comment


                          • #88
                            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                            If I were to agree with that statement, it would then become hard to give much credit to Christianity for the fact that slavery was ended once it was no longer an economic necessity.
                            I only said the seed of abolitionism was Gregory of Nyssa. I have no issue to saying the New Testament doesn't proscribe slavery outright as it doesn't. What it does do, within the confines of what it can practically do, is establish a praxis of treatment of slaves within slavery. Abusive slavery would have been antithetical to the New Testament's praxis.


                            I would note that in general it's probably the more well-informed atheists who tend to dialog on the subject on the internet, while the less well informed don't tend to visit internet forums about Christianity, so your apparent skepticism and contempt on the subject of atheists' knowledge of the bible probably isn't at all warranted due to the biased nature of the self-selecting sample.
                            My experience with atheists on the internet, including popular ones and "well informed" ones has never given me much reason to believe atheists on the internet are well informed either about the Bible specifically or Christianity in general. Internet atheism comes off to me as equal and opposite to fundamental Christianity.


                            It does get a bit eye-roll-inducing to have multiple posters in this forum telling me they're all absolutely and objectively following the bible's teachings... whilst espousing views that differ to one another.
                            While no interpretation is objective, interpretations would be remiss if they didn't include the examples of Lydia and Phoebe in how interpreted the Bible.


                            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                            The West was great before Christianity, and its founding nations and intellectuals weren't Christian.
                            I hate to disappoint you, but John Locke was a Christian and he is a pillar of modern Western political philosophy.
                            P1) If , then I win.

                            P2)

                            C) I win.

                            Comment


                            • #89
                              Originally posted by seer View Post
                              That makes no sense. If worth depends our value judgements then logically said worth can't be inherent since there will be disagreement. And there is no objective way to judge between differing opinion, save to offer another opinion, so on and so on..
                              Humans can, of course, have different opinions about what has worth. But all attributions of worth come from humans [assuming no alien civilizations for a moment]. So if you didn't have humans there wouldn't be any attributions of worth. So to the extent that anything in the universe is viewed as having worth that is a product of humans viewing it as having worth to them.

                              In your own worldview attributions of worth can come from God as well. That is simply adding one being with a mind to billions of beings with a mind who also attribute worth. So your own addition of God adds a negligible amount to the picture.

                              Beings with minds are the ones who attribute worth to things and thus the sources of the idea of worth. If none of them existed, the universe would be worthless/meaningless, but once one of them is in the universe and finding worth and meaning in things, then worth and meaning exist because they're creating it.

                              I think your confusion is arising because you're getting hung up on attributions of worth as compared to 'objective' worth. 'Objective' worth doesn't exist, period. It's a complete fantasy on your part, and it doesn't even make sense in English to speak about it. Worth is a relational quality that exists between two things - a mind attributing worth and the object to which it is being attributed. Someone attributing worth to something creates worth because worth is the value that object has within the mind of that person. Humans thus create worth by attributing worth to things, as would God if he were to exist. Saying things are 'worthless' if there are people attributing worth to them is a factually false statement, unless you mean it is worthless to you.
                              Last edited by Starlight; 02-26-2021, 06:43 PM.
                              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                              Comment


                              • #90
                                Originally posted by Diogenes View Post
                                I only said the seed of abolitionism was Gregory of Nyssa.
                                I would be surprised if the Western slavery abolitionists were reading much Gregory of Nyssa or getting their anti-slavery ideas from his writings. Gregory of Nyssa was an Eastern Orthodox church father who wasn't widely known or read in the West for quite a long stretch of time. I think you're rather fixation on a source here who's unlikely to have actually played much role in the eventual abolition of slavery.

                                My experience with atheists on the internet, including popular ones and "well informed" ones has never given me much reason to believe atheists on the internet are well informed either about the Bible specifically or Christianity in general.
                                My experience with Christians on the internet, including on this site, makes me think exactly the same about Christians.

                                Internet atheism comes off to me as equal and opposite to fundamental Christianity.
                                I suspect believing that makes you feel good and it's a self-motivated belief.

                                But ultimately, so what? Why should I care if atheists on the internet are militant or 'fundamentalist' (whatever that term is taken to mean outside a religious context)?

                                I hate to disappoint you, but John Locke was a Christian and he is a pillar of modern Western political philosophy.
                                Lots of people have had good ideas and also happened to be Christian. They're not mutually exclusive. But neither it is the case that one has to be a Christian to have good ideas, as the numerous influential intellectuals in Western history who weren't Christian demonstrate.
                                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                                Comment

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