What are morals?
Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociopath
lol
Where do atheists' morals come from?
by dorayakii 94 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Gopher
If a person does the right thing only because a religion, a religious book, or religious leaders tell them they ought to do so, then their morals are external. Further, if a person does the right thing out of fear of eternal punishment or in hope of everlasting reward offered by a religion, again their morals are externally imposed.
Anyone (atheist, theist, agnostic) can do the right thing because it seems right and because they want to interact well with humanity. Morals needn't be imposed or rewarded by a belief system.
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Deputy Dog
nvrgnbk
Atheism is not a worldview. It doesn't carry any obligation to any kind of political or moral system. In that sense, it is amoral. Note that it is amoral, not immoral. Immorality is flouting the conventions of one's own morality; amorality is being without morality.
http://www.mwillett.org/atheism/moralsource.htmLooks like you agree that atheists have no morals?
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Mariusuk.
Morals are vague at the best of time, a religious person may see no harm in boinking a bird, an atheist may have an issue with boinking a bird before he knew her very very well. Your family, peer group and associates for the general basis of your moral code as far as I am concerned, God has nothing to do with it, if he did I would have no issue with genocide, infantacide, jealousy, petty anger and so and so forth
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dorayakii
Thanks for all your replies.
Deputy Dog: I believe their morality comes from God through nature as even the bible teaches.
I don't think the question can be answered so simply as "God is good, we were created in his image, therefore we are good".
Terry: Morals are the most practical behavior possible.
I tend to agree, Richard Dawkins in his first book "The Selfish Gene" postulated a similar theory: that our morals are actually extended acts of selfish behaviour on the part of our genes. He claimed that being ethical and upholding community morals may actually be a survival technique that natural selection has favoured, it may have nothing to do with genuine goodwill to others.
Such a theory though brings up plenty of questions and follow-on ideas which are distasteful. Christians have a hard enough time facing up to the evidence-bolstered theory that we evolved from "lesser" ape-like ancestors. The idea that our prized morality, which separates us from the unthinking animals, is a mere practicality, a positive outcome resulting from a selfish, dog-eat-dog system, is frightening to say the least. Not just to people of faith but to agnostics and scientists alike. (However, remember: the truth doesn't need to be rose-coloured to be true. We shouldn't let our disgust or fear of an idea affect its perceived veracity.)
Do you thinkDawkins is right? In the case that it is true, does "evil" itself actually exist? Is evil a real concept, or is it merely a human construct formed from the actions of our "selfish genes"? To what extent can Hitler be said to have been "evil"?
Does the absence of an absolute morality belittle the importance of moral behaviour?
Dorayakii... of the "not letting you off so lightly" class.
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fifi40
I think the answer is as simple as 'survival'
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funkyderek
Rapunzel:
Excellent reply.
Deputy Dog:
Really? As a theist I don't believe this, I can only speak for myself but, I don't think that athiests need Holy Books to act moraly (as Richard Dawkins says). I believe their morality comes from God through nature as even the bible teaches. See Romans 1
And where does God get his morality? Is anything God does automatically good or does he himself adhere to some external standard of goodness? If the latter, then there's no problem. Atheists can adhere to the same standards you imagine your god follows. If the former, then how is that any different from "might is right"?
I would like to know where morals come from, in the athiests universe (world view) when survival of the fittest seems to go counter to morality.
Morality has evolved because those with morals are better at surviving in the sort of environments in which our ancestors lived than those without. It's worth considering exactly which morals are common to all humans and why.
"Survival of the fittest" is not "counter to morality", it is an amoral statement of fact. Someone who believes in the fact of evolution will be no more compelled to kill the less fit than someone who believes in gravity will be compelled to throw people off cliffs.
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BurnTheShips
That was excellent Rapunzel.
BTS
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Narkissos
Hi dorayakii, nice to "see" you again.
One funny paradox in theistic morals appears in doxology (or "praise"). On the one hand monotheism assumes that all moral sense can be traced back to "God" and that, for this reason, morality is absolute (or, rather, absolute relatively to "creation"). On the other hand every time theists call "God" good, just, righteous, etc., they are actually judging him by logically independent standards -- otherwise the statements boil down to tautology.
From a different perspective atheism does call for questioning, if not the general principle of morality, at least the character and contents of the kind of morality historically borne by theistic tradition. It is all too common for atheists to simply assume that the core of Christian morality is essentially correct; in a sense, they thoughtlessly suscribe to Christian morality as being the "correct moral answer" and that they just have to reach this "answer" through a different line of reasoning.
Nietzsche's caustic comment about British writer G. Eliot in The Antichrist is very interesting from this perspective:
They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females à la Eliot. In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.
We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth — it stands and falls
with faith in God.
When the English actually believe that they know "intuitively" what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem. -
BurnTheShips
Looks like you agree that atheists have no morals?
No, all that says is that atheism itself is amoral. It makes no moral statement regarding atheists themselves. There are moral atheists, and immoral ones. As for me, I believe "good" ultimately comes from God. Morality is about being virtuous. It is the human expression of good in thought, word, and deed. Normal healthy humans, in being like God (whether they believe in him or not), have an inherent sense of good. Some choose to ignore the source of morality. I think that this in itself is a moral action. Too bad for them! BTS