Atheism and morality

[paulpablo]

If you don't know exactly what morality instructs us to do how do you know morality is unified among everyone?

[Something completely different]

Moral values are shaped through time and have evolved out of 2000 years of human civilisation and learning.
So the agent that gave humanity it`s moral values is humanity itself and it is wrong to thing of moral values and codes of social conduct as something unshakeable and strickt.
They evolve and change and are the result of human learning.

So there is no god needed.

Actualy, arguing that a god gave us our moral values is somewhat insulting because it demands the precondition that mankind is to incompetent to create his own moral set of rules.
Other than that, if you look arround the globe you will see that what is moraly correct is perceived differently in different cultures - which means that there is no such thing as a international code of morals - hence making devine creation of such even more impossible.

[DeistPaladin]

Well, you might want to start by using standard terms correctly. A non-sequitur is a conclusion that does not follow.

Yes. I used the correct term.

So, just to be clear, the arguments were logically impeccable. If you can't see that, the problem is with you, not me.

Sorry dude but putting on a pompous demeanor does not make you look smart. I'm not sure who started that rumor on the internet but it's something you should know. Nobody died and made you supreme arbiter of rational arguments.

It is this second feature - rational authority - that implies the agent who is issuing the instructions needs to be a god.

Repeated assertions do not strengthen an argument.

These are awkward conclusions.

If by "awkward", you mean non-sequiturs built upon bare assertions, yes.

[Angrboda]

[CleanShavenJesus]

In terms of everyone here, I haven't been here for that long (6 months).

But I swear to god, I've seen at least 50 topics on atheism and morality.

Enough already!

[Fidel_Castronaut]

In terms of everyone here, I haven't been here for that long (6 months).

But I swear to god, I've seen at least 50 topics on atheism and morality.

Enough already!

Yeah but haven't you heard? You can't be moral and not believe in a god of some sort.

Presumeably you've also killed a good few innocent civilians because hey; anything goes when there's no dude in the sky watching everything you do.

[CleanShavenJesus]

In terms of everyone here, I haven't been here for that long (6 months).

But I swear to god, I've seen at least 50 topics on atheism and morality.

Enough already!

Yeah but haven't you heard? You can't be moral and not believe in a god of some sort.

Presumeably you've also killed a good few innocent civilians because hey; anything goes when there's no dude in the sky watching everything you do.

If we believed in God, then maybe we would stop eating so many babies.

[fr0d0]

<snippetty snip>
I do not think morality presupposes a morally good god.

In fact I think morality presupposes a vengeful god and I think vengefulness is not praiseworthy

Well that's confusing. After reading all of your posts this is exactly what I thought you were saying was your issue: that reason pointed to an external moral source.

You want to distance yourself from the Christian God because you find that god to be vengeful. I do not. I find that god to be fully just and morally blameless, and therefore subject to your rationale.

my argument - which I think challenges atheism - also challenges Christianity and a whole host of other religions.

On the grounds that the Xtian God is immoral? You contradict yourself surely?

I think the evidence for the existence of a Christian god just isn't there.

Well that's a separate question. One of knowledge.

I should also note that to account for morality's features I have not had to posit a god who has created us, or the universe or anything lik that. What I have had to posit is a god who has power over our welfare in an afterlife, that is all. The god in question, therefore, bears more resemblance to a Norse or Greek god than any more traditional one.

The Christian concept of God, from Aristotle/ Aquinas etc is that his goodness is rooted in creation/ him as first cause. That's what presupposes a perfect morality found in him. We cannot reason from a God capable of evil, as that model would implode with contradictions.

But at the end of the day, I am not a man of faith. I am not trying to find arguments for a god that I already believe in. I am just trying to understand what morality is, and my best attempt to do this has led me to posit a god. I'm not happy about this and the worldview that starts to emerge is really rather horrible.

I doubt anyone reasons from a God they already believe in. That would be ludicrous. Faith to you is something to derise, but I wonder if you even know what it means in the Christian sense.
Indeed, you are trying to justify atheism from the POV of already being an atheist.
Being honest with yourself is good enough.

[downbeatplumb]

My confidence in the truth of atheism has been shaken by my reflections on the nature of morality. Perhaps my reflections are poor and I am making some very great mistake. But I think that morality may require a god. That doesn't show a god to exist, of course, for perhaps morality is an illusion. But it reduces its credibility to some extent.

Here is why I think morality requires a god. first, however, I want to distinguish between moral phenomena and morality itself. I use the term 'moral phenomena' to refer to moral sensations (so, the deliverances of our moral sense) and moral beliefs. I take it as beyond question that moral phenomena exist. But it does not follow that morality itself exists, for morality is not a sensation or a belief. it is the thing sensed, the thing believed. To believe an act to be wrong is to believe the act has the attribute of wrongness. One has the belief, but whether the act really has that feature - indeed, whether such a feature exists at all - remains an open question.

Anyway, here was the though that first set me off doubting atheism. Morality is normative: it instructs, favours, commands. It is not enough for it to appear to do these things. A morality that does not instruct or favour or command is no morality at all. Morality actually does these things. This seems to be a conceptual truth about morality. Yet, for the life of me I find it hard to conceive of how anything other than an agent could do such things.

I won't ramble on further - I'll just see if I've made a mistake at this early stage! (for it gets worse!)

I fail to see your problem.
We have evolved as social animals.
No other explanation is required.

[Tonus]

No. I am saying that real moral instructions would have to be the instructions of a powerful supernatural agent of some kind because this is what it would take for there to exist instructions with which everyone has reason to comply whatever their interests.

If this were the case, then human societies would have had the same morals all along, which does not seem to be the case. There seem to be numerous important moral and ethical views that have changed over time, and even today different cultures have differing moral codes. If morals were "built-in" then we'd have been getting along just swimmingly over the past few thousands of years, wouldn't we?