Morality

[crud]

"Your question has been answered twice now."

OK, so all morals issues are summed up with a few lines of text...? righto.....?


I've briefly checked out youtube. most of the videos I watched there seemed more about attacking christian concepts then actually expressing the grounds for their own morals.
....So I thought I'd ask here...this is a atheist forum.
Thought you guys could make it a little easier, thought you'd be happy to try and clarify the confusion of someone with agnostic views.

whats the need for this aggression?

---

@ Rahul. cheers for actually engaging man!

Wasting time worrying/protesting/helping the Africans, seems to go against "survival of the fittest" in almost every way though.

[Baalzebutt]

"Your question has been answered twice now."

OK, so all morals issues are summed up with a few lines of text...? righto.....?


I've briefly checked out youtube. most of the videos I watched there seemed more about attacking christian concepts then actually expressing the grounds for their own morals.
....So I thought I'd ask here...this is a atheist forum.
Thought you guys could make it a little easier, thought you'd be happy to try and clarify the confusion of someone with agnostic views.

whats the need for this aggression?

You are the one that started the aggression, pal. The answers provided to you were succinct and specific. They don't need pages of explanation. If you are interested in long explanations, do a search on google. There are hundreds of websites that explain the concepts in detail. But don't expect us to do your research for you.

Now, if you want us to play nice, then you have to play nice. That means not discounting answers off handedly simply because you don't agree. You claim to want answers but when they at given, you discount them as insufficient. Not a good way to start, dude.

[Rahul]

@ Rahul. cheers for actually engaging man!

Wasting time worrying/protesting/helping the Africans, seems to go against "survival of the fittest" in almost every way though.

Actually there have been lots of study about altruism among humans and other animals as well. Lots of debate. One member of a species will help another member of a species with no obvious future gain to themselves. A lot of that help actually decreases somewhat the resources of the one that helps out.

A question that remains about natural selection is altruism. Why do we, and many animals, do good things for others when the results seem to offer no direct benefit to us? According to research, altruism is instinctive behavior that forms without cultural training in babies.

http://curiosity.discovery.com/question/...n-altruism

We don't really have all the answers for it yet. But the important aspect you need to realize is that this exists in non-human animals. And non-human animals don't have religion.

[crud]

I started no aggression what so ever?

"But don't expect us to do your research for you."
I assumed you guys would of already done it! so that's why I thought I'd ask

"You claim to want answers but when they at given, you discount them as insufficient."
There is nothing wrong with this.... if you were to ask "what was before big bang?", and someone replyed "GOD!" would you discount this as insufficient?
Maybe the answers were sufficient to you. They're not for me.



Does this topic of "morals" have no validity at all? I think it's a pretty important question!
To me it seems much more important, than just quote silly things from the bible and them laughing at the poor brainwashed people who believe it.



@Rahul
I know animals have no religion. I want to keep this topic separate from religion... But still this just proves that there is a "love", that seems(to me) to be contradictory to "survival of the fittest"

[max-greece]

@Rahul, thankyou
This is one example how something we call "love" could of evolved purely for preservation of the speices.

But in a wider context it doesn't really fit the mold.

Why do I care about the Africans starving to death?

Not sure that is the right question. Why do you care about Africans starving to death less than you care about poor people in your immediate vicinity is probably a better question. One I am not going to answer here - you think about it.

That you care at all what happens to people in Africa is down to empathy, which, along with love relates to morality. All of these appear to be evolutionary based but developed culturally. Its interesting to note that apparently ancient Roman society regarded empathy as a sign of a character flaw.

To me that confirms that Roman's had empathy (for their fellow human beings) but fought against it in much the same way as those seeking celibacy fight against their natural sexual urges.

It is an integral part of being human that there is a constant internal war between our different senses. On the one hand we crave love, we want to act in a moral fashion and we feel for our fellow human beings but on the other we are, probably, genetically rather mean with our resources. We give to charity but only usually a tiny fraction of our overall wealth - on the basis we might need it.

It appears that self preservation is the strongest urge. In some ways it drives morality and in some it opposes it.

Now let me re-raise the question I put to you in my last answer. Why do you feel that this is more nihilist that the concept that we are all basically bad and reliant on an external benign dictator to instil in us the few positive qualities we have. To me one of the most horrific qualities of religion is that it debases us in relation to an imaginary being that is supposed to be all-good but actually behaves incredibly badly.

[Rahul]

@Rahul
I know animals have no religion. I want to keep this topic separate from religion... But still this just proves that there is a "love", that seems(to me) to be contradictory to "survival of the fittest"

But, it seems to me that atheism brought to it's logical conclusions is; nihilism... Nietzsche is another who came to this same stance.
That morality is non existent, and the only purpose left of life is to pursuer our own maximum pleasure, by any means necessary.

...

So I'm here to ask how you guys deal with this dilemma?
What grounds for morality is there without some type of god(I'd probably prefer the word "consciousness") that we all come from?
nationality? power? science?

I apologize for my confusion. But are you changing your original premise now?

[crud]

No I'm not, I do believe in self sacrificing love and morals, both in humans and animals.

I'm just asking, where does this come from? whys it there? It doesn't seem to help survival, it seems to hinder it.

It just seems to make no sense(to me) from the atheist/naturalist/materialist point if view.

[Cato]

I don't necessarily invoke nihilism as the only alternative..

Yet, this is exactly what you did.

It just appears that way to me... hence me being, here asking for others opinions.

God vs. nihilism is your appearance of the ethical condition of our species? You obviously have internet access, but your dichotomy betrays a lack of sincere inquiry on the matter. Virtue ethics? Deontolgy? Pragmatism? Consequentialism?

[crud]

No I didn't, I said it appears that way to me... then, I asked "why is this not the case?" to the forum... so far Rahul, has been the only one who's engaged in that discussion.


Richard Dawkins said: "The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference."

^When people like dawkins say things like this, it sounds an awful lot like nihilism

[Rahul]

No I'm not, I do believe in self sacrificing love and morals, both in humans and animals.

I'm just asking, where does this come from? whys it there? It doesn't seem to help survival, it seems to hinder it.

It just seems to make no sense(to me) from the atheist/naturalist/materialist point if view.

There's lot of ideas. We don't necessarily know. We humans don't know everything. *shocker alert*

But obviously you, I, non-human species are proven to have morals without believing in a god.

So what is your question?

I don't see a logical reason why not having every answer to every question would lead to a logical conclusion that a god or "consciousness" is the reason why we exist.

You just skipped a heck of a lot of steps in that supposedly logical train of thought.

God of the gaps is a type of theological perspective in which gaps in scientific knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of God's existence.

That's a logical fallacy.