Why 'should' atheists be moral?

[bennyboy]

Because that would be stupid, as you've conceded elsewhere when you acknowledged that a society where we don't do that is better than one where we do. Broken individuals may not have sufficiently developed moral sentiments of fairness and reciprocity, senses of guilt and shame, or sufficient empathy to refrain from preying on their fellow humans; but the majority do.

I believe he's asking a higher level question. Where does the moral dimension of moral questions come from in an atheist world? I may choose to eat that extra slice of pie, and I shouldn't because I don't like the consequences of eating it, but consequences alone don't make the should of not eating a piece of pie into a moral 'should'. No matter the consequences of eating that piece of pie, it doesn't become a matter for morals. Now if I choose to steal something, that shouldn't has a moral dimension that eating the pie does not, even though I may suffer just as much from both. The question I think he's asking is where does this 'moral dimension' come from?

I'd say any "should" just implies a goal: avoiding punishment, staying alive, etc. As for the moral "should," I'd say it requires only one philosophical position: that the welfare of others is as important as one's own welfare.

Or to summarize it, you could say the goal of morality is to be exocentric.

[Mister Agenda]

For those of you that refer to evolution as the basis for morality, do you realize that doing so reintroduces teleology into the process?

I suspect that is not actually the case. Evoluton is the proximate cause for our moral 'instincts', not their purpose.

If evolution leaves us with a human nature and acting contrary to it is not in the best interest of humanity, then “best interest” introduces intentionality, or desired ends, into the evolutionary process, at least where humans are concerned.

Our nature also includes anti-social impulses. Our 'moral intutition' is not the sum of human nature, else our history would have been a lot less violent. Because evolution is undirected, it does not favor pro-social over anti-social impulses, it only favors what leads to us reproducing successfully, and apparently a mixed bag of impulses does that job the best.

That’s not a problem for believers but it is for those who think evolution is a wholly undirected process.

It's only a problem for people who badly misunderstand how evoluton works...or have a blind spot regarding it.

There is a second problem with evolution based morality. It cannot adjudicate between conflicts between communities and individuals.

Huh. Maybe that's because it isn't teleological.

The reproductive advantage of one can easily become the liability of the other.

I really can't grok how you can understand evolution well enough to make that statement and understand it so poorly that you think evolution has done something that requires intention to explain. Don't you see the conflict between those positions?

Our moral sentiments make us care about doing the right thing. They aren't very good at telling us what the right thing is, especially in complicated situations. All they do is make us want to try. It takes experience and reason to arrive at better ways to organize our communites and adjudicate our conflicts. But without our innate empathy and sense of fairness as motivators, we'd likely be doing a much poorer job that we are, not that we still don't have room for tons of improvement.

I'm trusting here that by 'evolution-based morality' you're not talking about 'we should act this way because we evolved to act this way'. That would be a fallacy. We also evolved for males to have harems of 1 to 3 females on average, that doesn't mean I should have 2 wives.

---

Sure it is. Once you have rational beings capable of acting contrary to evolved instincts then morality has already started to play a role in how that species evolves. Mankind has now reached the point where we can effectively shape the direction of our own evolution by eugenics, genetic manipulation, selective abortion, etc. In so doing, people must make moral choices based on something other than their evolutionary history.

Our evolved moral instincts are altruism, empathy/sympathy, and our senses of fairness and reciprocity. Those sentiments are exactly what we need to temper our reason when making such moral choices.

---

So what are you saying, that reason is not reliable because it evolved. If so how is it possible to know anything at all?

Reliability and unreliability come in degrees. It doesn't follow that if our reason isn't always perfectly reliable, we can't know anything at all. And for the areas where our limitations are most problematic, we have devised methods and instrumentation to correct for our fallibilities and foibles. And whether or not you accept evolution, it is undeniable that our reason isn't perfectly reliable, so it seems that the idea that we can't know anything if our reason isn't reliable would be a problem for everyone regardless of whether it's that way because of evolution or some other reason

[Mudhammam]

The assumption here being that intellects aren't equally influenced by evolutionary development as any other process that allows a particular organism to thrive or fail in its environment.

So what are you saying, that reason is not reliable because it evolved. If so how is it possible to know anything at all?

Well, considering the general stupidity of people, obviously not. That is, reason is most definitely not reliable beyond the framework our experiences ascertain. Your question seems to indicate that you truly do not appreciate the strenuous efforts that led to and have sustained the scientific method.

[Neo-Scholastic]

So what are you saying, that reason is not reliable because it evolved. If so how is it possible to know anything at all?

Well, considering the general stupidity of people, obviously not. That is, reason is most definitely not reliable beyond the framework our experiences ascertain. Your question seems to indicate that you truly do not appreciate the strenuous efforts that led to and have sustained the scientific method.

I was thinking more along the line of reasoning as a method for gaining knowledge, including scientific inquiries, and not the application (flawed or otherwise) of that capacity.

[Mudhammam]

Well, considering the general stupidity of people, obviously not. That is, reason is most definitely not reliable beyond the framework our experiences ascertain. Your question seems to indicate that you truly do not appreciate the strenuous efforts that led to and have sustained the scientific method.

I was thinking more along the line of reasoning as a method for gaining knowledge, including scientific inquiries, and not the application (flawed or otherwise) of that capacity.

And you doubt that has evolved in much the same manner that vision, or a bipedal posture, or anything else that human beings possess for that matter, has? (Granted we're not allowing any "silver cords" with souls attached in this discussion). If so, one of us has proven the faculty of reason to be suspect.

[Indiveren]

People are moral because it benefits them. Being nice to someone benefits the person being nice because it makes them feel good about themselves. People don't steal or murder because it would hurt themselves to do so. Humans are social creatures, and we live in a society that pursues that. It is impossible in the current way we live to actually be able to do bad without having a reason not to do that. You might not get caught for stealing, but you will feel bad about it, because you still have to interact with other people. Humans fundamentally can not live in any other way but a fundamental way, that in and of itself prevents people from being inherently immoral. Those who are immoral, are immoral for a reason, they believe that their god says they should do this, or that there is a reason to go through all of the negatives just to do this thing.

[bennyboy]

People are moral because it benefits them.

They are also immoral because it benefits them. And yet some people act morally where there IS no apparent benefit.

[Indiveren]

They are also immoral because it benefits them. And yet some people act morally where there IS no apparent benefit.

Ok first, if you read my entire post you'd notice that I said that people often do things because it will make them feel good. You, most of the time, will not see that it makes them feel good, thus the apparently lacking benefit. Also along the lines of if you read my entire post, people are immoral because they think they have a reason to be immoral that outweighs the consequences.

[Neo-Scholastic]

They are also immoral because it benefits them. And yet some people act morally where there IS no apparent benefit.

Ok first, if you read my entire post you'd notice that I said that people often do things because it will make them feel good. You, most of the time, will not see that it makes them feel good, thus the apparently lacking benefit. Also along the lines of if you read my entire post, people are immoral because they think they have a reason to be immoral that outweighs the consequences.

Wrong. People often do unpleasant things and/or with which they disagree strongly but they still do them out of a sense of duty. The pride one may feel in doing one's duty may be a consequence but very rarely is it a motivator.

[Indiveren]

Wrong. People often do unpleasant things and/or with which they disagree strongly but they still do them out of a sense of duty. The pride one may feel in doing one's duty may be a consequence but very rarely is it a motivator.

What you just said categorises under a reason. As I said

people are immoral because they think they have a reason to be immoral that outweighs the consequences.

a sense of duty is a reason that outweighs all, so people do bad things because of that. Also why bring up the sense of duty thing in a thread talking about atheism, a sense of duty counts a lot more for theists then it does for atheists.

good work on misreading my post.