Secular Morality?

[Starlight]

So you agree that moral consideration are completely subjective in your world.

Absolutely not.
1. The extent to which a given action is "benevolent" or "malevolent" is objective: When a person performs an action their motives and intentions are real and truly exist.
2. The meanings of words in English are intersubjective (based on a widespread or localized consensus among language-users): So what the words "right" and "wrong" are used to mean is intersubjective.
3. I and most other secular people use moral words such as "good/evil/right/wrong" to refer to #1: Therefore 'morality' (granting what I'm referring to by that word, ie #1) is completely objective to me.

So it's quite reasonable for you to argue with me that I'm using words wrong and am using moral terminology to refer to the wrong thing. What words do or should refer to is an argument we can quite reasonably have. If I call something a "footpath", you could say "no, you should call that a 'sidewalk' or a 'pavement'" and give some argument as to why I might want to consider revising my word usage. For precisely that reason, I sometimes find it easiest to drop all moral terminology out of my vocabulary when talking to religious people because they commonly don't understand what I mean by it and we end up talking at cross purposes, and instead I simply use words like "loving / benevolent / kind" etc because we share an understanding of what those words mean. But if I'm talking to another secular person I will typically use moral terminology instead to refer to the exact same things. Because my view of morality is descriptive and not normative, being able to use moral terminology is not essential to me.

So what I use the word 'morality' to refer to, and indeed what the vast majority of secular people in the modern world use the word 'morality' to refer to, is completely objective: Interpersonal interactions are real and can be positive or negative in nature. But it's quite possible for someone to say "I don't consider that important. There's something else I consider important, and I'm going to label that 'morality'." To which I simply respond that it's a free world, and they can use words however they like (well, assuming they can get other people to accept their definitions). My system of morality works just fine even without calling it 'morality', so I don't lose anything by letting them redefine terminology however they like.

But if two secular people reach the point of arguing about terminology, at that point it becomes little different to two religious people arguing "'Morality' is about following the Bible!", "No, 'morality' is about following the Koran!". The great thing about secular morality though, is that once two secular people have agreed that morality refers to the positive or negative nature of interpersonal interactions, there is fairly minimal further ambiguity. Whereas once two Christians have agreed that morality is about following them Bible, then what follows is endless squabbling over what the Bible allegedly says or doesn't say and how it should or shouldn't be interpreted.

[Truthseeker]

It is good to greatly simplify morality. Or to reduce it to something that even little tykes can like very much.

It's not so much a question of liking it, as accepting that rules of right and wrong behaviour, i.e. morality, are essential for a social species such as us in order to maintain the social cohesion required for our survival.

I thought people would recognize my post reproduced above as satire, but I see now I was mistaken. Sorry.

As for your argument--" . . . morality, are essential for a social species such as us in order to maintain the social cohesion required for our survival"--what would you say to those eco people who wants all of us to die out, stop making babies, mankind to become history forever. You and I and others are a cancer on Gaia. Why is that eco mindset wrong? If you somehow got caught in an argument with an eco gal who argues that way, would you just repeat that mankind should continue to live forever?

[Starlight]

I thought people would recognize my post reproduced above as satire, but I see now I was mistaken. Sorry.

I didn't realize it was satire either. I thought your observation that simpler systems of morality struck you as generally better than complex ones was a reasonable position.

As for your argument--" . . . morality, are essential for a social species such as us in order to maintain the social cohesion required for our survival"--what would you say to those eco people who wants all of us to die out, stop making babies, mankind to become history forever. You and I and others are a cancer on Gaia. Why is that eco mindset wrong? If you somehow got caught in an argument with an eco gal who argues that way, would you just repeat that mankind should continue to live forever?

I'm a passionate environmentalist and a lot of my friends are too, but I can't say I've ever heard someone suggest that humanity should stop existing entirely for the sake of the earth! So I suspect you're making this up and/or massively exaggerating and creatively interpreting a view you've heard.

My answer to such a hypothetical would be that questions of whether humanity ought to exist are outside the sphere of of what I regard as morality. Morality to me, is about assessing whether interpersonal interactions are positive or negative. So the question of whether humanity should exist at all is not a question that has anything to do with interpersonal interactions and thus not a question about morality. (Unless they're suggesting genocide to achieve their aims? Obviously killing people is immoral because it's a negative interpersonal interaction.) It's a bit like asking "Should I paint my bathroom blue or red? What is the morally correct answer to that according to your view of morality?" The answer is that paint colors are not a moral issue. You can decide it based on other grounds, such as personal preference, but not on moral grounds. Morality is not supposed to give you answers to every single question you might ever have in life, from what color to paint things through to philosophical questions of human existence, it only gives you answers as to how you might want to act towards other people in everyday life.

[Truthseeker]

I didn't realize it was satire either. I thought your observation that simpler systems of morality struck you as generally better than complex ones was a reasonable position.

It may be reasonable, but not necessarily correct. Maybe only one specific set of moral principles is the correct morality.

My answer to such a hypothetical would be that questions of whether humanity ought to exist are outside the sphere of of what I regard as morality. Morality to me, is about assessing whether interpersonal interactions are positive or negative.

Such a narrow definition! I wonder whether a boy's harassing the neighbor's dog is to you not a moral issue.

So the question of whether humanity should exist at all is not a question that has anything to do with interpersonal interactions and thus not a question about morality.

Wow, are you not even going to discuss the question of whether it's bad for mankind to continue to exist?

(Unless they're suggesting genocide to achieve their aims? Obviously killing people is immoral because it's a negative interpersonal interaction.) It's a bit like asking "Should I paint my bathroom blue or red? What is the morally correct answer to that according to your view of morality?" The answer is that paint colors are not a moral issue. You can decide it based on other grounds, such as personal preference, but not on moral grounds. Morality is not supposed to give you answers to every single question you might ever have in life, from what color to paint things through to philosophical questions of human existence, it only gives you answers as to how you might want to act towards other people in everyday life.

If I remember aright, we are supposed to use birth control measures or go celibate. Is that right or wrong?

[NormATive]

Not the point Homer.

Who's Homer? Is that your idea of an insult? LOL!

Try actually understanding the OP. Which is, pointing to "secular morality" as a prescription against religiously based morality is meaningless. Secular morality tells us absolutely nothing about what is right or wrong.

I understand the OP just fine. All of those countries have declared, by the fact that they EXCLUDE religious institutional domination, that secular morality is superior. Check the list - some of those countries were oppressed by religious rule.

Even our beloved United States was founded as a refuge FROM religious rule.

NORM

[Starlight]

I wonder whether a boy's harassing the neighbor's dog is to you not a moral issue.

Two reasons I consider it a moral issue: 1) The dog can be considered the neighbor's property and thus any harm done to the dog is essentially harm done to the neighbor. 2) Animals such as dogs have enough cognitive capacity for me to consider them sentient, so I am quite in favor of animal rights, and would therefore want to include human treatment of animals under the wider sphere of morality.

Does your Biblical ethical code of conduct provide you with any clear God-given answer to such a situation?

Wow, are you not even going to discuss the question of whether it's bad for mankind to continue to exist?

I'd personally prefer to continue to exist.

It seems to me that the Biblical answer to this question is pretty mixed. On the one hand apocalyptic world destruction is allegedly going to happen at God's command. On the other hand you could argue that humans ought to make an effort not destroy the world themselves because they haven't been given that authority. On the other hand you could argue that God would never let it happen until it's time for it to happen, so we don't need to worry. On the other hand, individual humans could see themselves as God's servants who believe they have been commanded to make it happen. So the Bible is all but useless as a source of morality on the topic.

But overall, if the Bible says God himself is eventually going to destroy the Earth and all life on it at the time in a massive apocalypse that causes great suffering for everyone living at the time, then the destruction of the world and the suffering of billions of people must be morally good, right?

If I remember aright, we are supposed to use birth control measures or go celibate. Is that right or wrong?

I think it's reasonable to encourage people to use birth control measures to limit population growth. Anyone who cares at all about the lives of their grandchildren and their grandchildren's grandchildren, has to consider the fact that the current rate of increase in Earth's population may well be unsustainable and have an eventually catastrophic effect on the quality of lives of people living on a resource-starved overpopulated planet. I think it's morally right to be concerned about the future wellbeing of people, and to consider how our actions might affect others both now and in the future.

[Tassman]

I thought people would recognize my post reproduced above as satire, but I see now I was mistaken. Sorry.

See Starlight's response which echos my reaction.

As for your argument--" . . . morality, are essential for a social species such as us in order to maintain the social cohesion required for our survival"--what would you say to those eco people who wants all of us to die out, stop making babies, mankind to become history forever. You and I and others are a cancer on Gaia. Why is that eco mindset wrong? If you somehow got caught in an argument with an eco gal who argues that way, would you just repeat that mankind should continue to live forever?

I've never heard that argument and I tend to classify new-agers as pseudo-religious nuts anyway. But that said, I thought the point of protecting Gaia was the realization that we need nature more than nature needs us and that therefore it was ultimately in our own interests to protect the planet’s natural resources. Isn't that the argument?

[Tassman]

Sure, and killing our fellow man, selfishness, greed, etc...are just as instinctive. Just as our religious tendencies are instinctive.

[seer]

Absolutely not.
1. The extent to which a given action is "benevolent" or "malevolent" is objective: When a person performs an action their motives and intentions are real and truly exist.
2. The meanings of words in English are intersubjective (based on a widespread or localized consensus among language-users): So what the words "right" and "wrong" are used to mean is intersubjective.
3. I and most other secular people use moral words such as "good/evil/right/wrong" to refer to #1: Therefore 'morality' (granting what I'm referring to by that word, ie #1) is completely objective to me.

This makes no sense. The question is whether a person or society considers an action good or not. That is completely subjective. You for instance may not consider slaughtering 800,000 Tutsi a good thing, but the Hutus did. There is no objective standard or rule that the atheist can appeal to, to judge between these two opinions. You of course are free to hold any opinion you wish, but again, that opinion is no more valid or correct than its opposite.

So what I use the word 'morality' to refer to, and indeed what the vast majority of secular people in the modern world use the word 'morality' to refer to, is completely objective: Interpersonal interactions are real and can be positive or negative in nature. But it's quite possible for someone to say "I don't consider that important. There's something else I consider important, and I'm going to label that 'morality'." To which I simply respond that it's a free world, and they can use words however they like (well, assuming they can get other people to accept their definitions). My system of morality works just fine even without calling it 'morality', so I don't lose anything by letting them redefine terminology however they like.

But if two secular people reach the point of arguing about terminology, at that point it becomes little different to two religious people arguing "'Morality' is about following the Bible!", "No, 'morality' is about following the Koran!". The great thing about secular morality though, is that once two secular people have agreed that morality refers to the positive or negative nature of interpersonal interactions, there is fairly minimal further ambiguity. Whereas once two Christians have agreed that morality is about following them Bible, then what follows is endless squabbling over what the Bible allegedly says or doesn't say and how it should or shouldn't be interpreted.

This is about much more than agreeing on terminology, or even knowing what is right or wrong. Epistemology (knowing what particular behaviors are right or wrong) can plague both the secularist and theist. The real question is about ontology - do objective, or universal moral truths exist? The theist can answer in the affirmative. The atheist can not apart from tortured logic. Which all leads to the deeper question which I already mentioned. What is man by nature. Was he created for a purpose, does he have inherent worth. Or is he merely the accidental by product of the blind purposeless forces of nature, void of intrinsic worth.

[seer]

I understand the OP just fine. All of those countries have declared, by the fact that they EXCLUDE religious institutional domination, that secular morality is superior. Check the list - some of those countries were oppressed by religious rule.

Whose secular morality is superior Homer? Cuba's? North Korea's? China's?

[Enjolras]

Whose secular morality is superior Homer? Cuba's? North Korea's? China's?

Whose theistic morality is superior? That of Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, Shiva, Krishna, Ra?

[Enjolras]

This makes no sense. The question is whether a person or society considers an action good or not. That is completely subjective. You for instance may not consider slaughtering 800,000 Tutsi a good thing, but the Hutus did. There is no objective standard or rule that the atheist can appeal to, to judge between these two opinions. You of course are free to hold any opinion you wish, but again, that opinion is no more valid or correct than its opposite.

Your god ordered genocide, so I'm not sure how you think you have the moral high ground here.

[seer]

Whose theistic morality is superior? That of Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, Shiva, Krishna, Ra?

Again Enjolras, the point of this thread is to show that by definition secular morality is no more valuable than theistic morality when deciding which behaviors are actually right or wrong.

[seer]

Your god ordered genocide, so I'm not sure how you think you have the moral high ground here.

Did I say I had the moral high ground? I do however believe the claim in my OP has been clearly demonstrated.

[Starlight]

The question is whether a person or society considers an action good or not. That is completely subjective. You for instance may not consider slaughtering 800,000 Tutsi a good thing, but the Hutus did. There is no objective standard or rule that the atheist can appeal to, to judge between these two opinions. You of course are free to hold any opinion you wish, but again, that opinion is no more valid or correct than its opposite.

What the Hutus did was not a loving and benevolent action, and it did not benefit the people they interacted with. That's a 100% objective truth that everyone can agree upon regardless of their views on morality. That's the thing with my morality: It's objective and everyone agrees with it even if they don't hold to my view of morality. It 'works' as a system of morality even when people say they don't believe it. It's like gravity - even people who don't understand anything scientific about gravity and who claim not to believe in science are still well-aware that things fall "down". So when talking to such people I would drop the word 'gravity' and just talk about things "falling downwards". It's the same with morality - everyone agrees with my basic observation that interpersonal interactions can be judged positively or negatively, but not everyone feels like calling that 'morality'. So my morality exists objectively and so works just fine even in the absence of their agreement that that's what the word 'morality' means because they already agree with my position. Whereas if a theist comes to me and says "X is moral because God says so" and I say "I don't believe in God" then the discussion is basically over: Their system of morality is totally useless as soon as someone doesn't accept some of their premises.

The real question is about ontology - do objective, or universal moral truths exist? The theist can answer in the affirmative. The atheist can not apart from tortured logic.

I don't think the theist can answer in the affirmative either, apart from by tortured logic. The idea that moral truths exist 'out there' somewhere like Platonic Forms seems pretty silly, even given the existence of God. The only sensible versions of morality as descriptive ones - eg "we use the word 'good' to refer to that which God has commanded" or "we use the word 'good' to refer to positive interpersonal interactions".

Or is he merely the accidental by product of the blind purposeless forces of nature, void of intrinsic worth.

Humans are the ones who attribute worth to things. So once humans exist they can quite happily attribute worth to their own existence, and to various other things which they label 'good'.