Replacing Religious Morality

[henryp]

I'm fairly new to atheism, coming from a few decades of Catholicism. I gave up on the belief in God based on an All-loving God and eternal damnation being unable to rationally coexist.

I suspect it's a bit of a backwards way of becoming an atheist. I had been of the CS Lewis school of believing that the only way to create an objective set of moral laws was to work from a few truths that are necessary for those laws to exist and work my way back to some higher power. Murder is wrong. How do you make that an objective statement. You assign intrinsic value to the individual humans. Where could that type of worth come from. An all-powerful being could be a source of that.

The catch now, is that by crossing off the higher power, I've essentially ended up discounting my views on morality.

So my question is, what fits in it's place.

The answer I've heard in general is 'empathy empathy empathy.' But I'm a little confused as to what makes empathy so special. It is, afterall, just an emotional reaction. What sets it apart from rage, lust, jealousy, etc...

The idea of 'I wouldn't like it if you stole my stuff so I won't steal yours' operates in such a narrow spectrum of reason. The flaws being that if I have no stuff, there is no threat to having my stuff stolen. Or if I'm powerful enough that you can't steal my stuff, then I can steal your stuff.

I suspect this is why we see 'accepted' morality go out the window as we venture further away from comfortable middle class types. Similarly, you remove the threat of lawful punishment, and it becomes open season. Streaming copyrighted video certainly isn't causing any empathy problems.

The easier (and more prevalent unfortunately) answer seems to just be nice, because being nice is nice. And don't put much thought into why. We could probably chalk it up to evolution. We've evolved into ants who follow rules because it's for the good of the nest. And as long as we don't put to much thought into it, I suppose that's enough. But we are a thoughtful species, theoretically. We can see that we've been trained to act out of our own best individual interests. And rational thinking is supposed to be what kept us from just going along and buying into the God story to begin with.

Are we just smart enough to not know there is a God, and then just replace him with feelings that were more or less imposed upon us by a few thousand years of religious dominated rule.

Interested to see what the answers to this are. During my time on the other side of this discussion, I always felt when atheists were pressed on what they believe, they quickly became uncomfortable, and tried to shift things back to why religion was stupid. Now that I've 'switched sides' there is no religious nonsense to get in the way.

[Captain Colostomy]

Hi!

Your concept of what constitutes morality doesn't necessarily have to change just because you no longer feel there is an invisible hand guiding you. That same hand still is there...just instead of it being called 'god', you now call it 'wallym'. Don't let the realization tie you in too many knots. That said, 'don't be a douche' is a pretty good compass.

Welcome to AF!

[henryp]

Hi!

Your concept of what constitutes morality doesn't necessarily have to change just because you no longer feel there is an invisible hand guiding you. That same hand still is there...just instead of it being called 'god', you now call it 'wallym'. Don't let the realization tie you in too many knots. That said, 'don't be a douche' is a pretty good compass.

Welcome to AF!

If my religion happened to believe it was immoral to live past 50, should I still commit suicide at 50? That's an extreme example, of course, but I think it shows that creating a new belief system/retooling the current one to account for the absence of the alleged rules being set down by an all-powerful being is probably in order.

Things like "Care about homeless people" aren't as extreme as "Kill yourself at 50," but they are both things I don't really want to do. I did before, because I believed all humans had intrinsic value. You switch that idea out with "We're just fancy animals here for a short stay," and there are going to be some repercussions to a belief system.

Thanks for the welcome! I look forward to participating.

[Captain Colostomy]

We fancy animals don't live in a vacuum, though. Parents nurture, teachers teach, hell...farmers in foreign lands provide sustanance. If you only see need to concern yourself with others' well being due to commandments, etc...you're missing the big picture. We need each other. There is value in treating others as you would be treated. I don't need an invisible hobgoblin or his book of sage(obvious!) advice to know it, either.

[Optimistic Mysanthrope]

Is that a raven I hear? I do believe it just quothed.

If you only held those morals because of your faith, then those morals were never really yours to begin with.

If you like, you can think of it as replacing your faith based morality with a sense of social responsibility.

After all, what imperative is there to be a moral christian if you can do as you like as long as you repent? Worse still, Jesus taught that your deeds are irrelevant, the only thing that matters is faith.

[henryp]

We fancy animals don't live in a vacuum, though. Parents nurture, teachers teach, hell...farmers in foreign lands provide sustanance. If you only see need to concern yourself with others' well being due to commandments, etc...you're missing the big picture. We need each other. There is value in treating others as you would be treated. I don't need an invisible hobgoblin or his book of sage(obvious!) advice to know it, either.

Here's how I've discounted our 'value'ing' of other people. You and I have money. Money, essentially, can saves lives via purchasing food, medicine, etc...

Every dollar you spend is a choice. I bought Grand Theft Auto. That's 60 dollars I could have spent on food for some starving person in Africa. My own mindless entertainment BY FAR outweighs any interest in that person getting food. As a religious person, I felt a bunch of guilt over this. Now I realize that this was silly, because there's no reason to care about people starving in Africa outside of society/religion telling us 'its the right thing to do'. The thing is, once you realize you've been conditioned, you can react to that conditioning. Probably something that sets us apart from animals a bit? Or maybe it's just a different type of conditioning trumping the original conditioning. Who knows.

You say there is value treating others as you would be treated, but to what extent? Maybe you are very nice, and don't buy a bunch of somewhat useless stuff when you could be spending it on causes that I'm sure you would appreciate in their shoes. But in the end, we make those choices with dollar after dollar and very few of them end up buying food for starving folk.

---

If you only held those morals because of your faith, then those morals were never really yours to begin with.

I've always believed there were two possible realities. One with God, and one without. I did not see them as overlapping. My belief in God stemmed from vastly preferring the realities of the existence that a benevolent God would entail.

When I decided God wasn't real, I automatically switched over to reality B.

If you like, you can think of it as replacing your faith based morality with a sense of social responsibility.

One thing you have to give to religious people, is that while the premise is severely flawed, God Says So is an iron tight conclusion. If an all-powerful being who runs everything says X, you can feel pretty comfortable believing X.

Sense of social responsibility? It's ingrained. Parents, teachers, religion, evolution. But there isn't a lot of authority in any of those things. People say X, so I should do X. But I know if I was born in Uganda, people would say Y instead.

If I'm looking to behave rationally, I think I need a bit more than other people say so, no?

[Raven]

Greetings fellow recovering Catholic. I never, even when I was a believer, gave a rat's ass what those damned penguins or that pontificating wretch in dog collar had to say about much of anything. They tried to convince me that I was damaged goods when I got here because some naked lady who talked with a snake ate an apple and then got her boyfriend to have some as well. My six year old mind was not buying that original sin nonsense. I was like "But I just got here! That just can't be true 'cuz I haven't had a chance to do anything wrong hardly!" And it did not stop there.

As I grew older, I just went with what my gut told me was right and did not pay them no never mind. I still went to Mass, but skipped confession. That always struck me as totally retarded. God already knew whatever I did, what did I have to tell some nosy skypilot about them for? Just did not make any sense to me. For that matter, I skipped Communion as well. I always regarded it as kind of sick. I mean, what kind of people eat their god???? And I'm supposed to believe that some priest is performing magic up there on the alter and turning bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ? That was something I just could not believe. So I didn't. And if I did not believe it why line up for it? So I went to Mass but skipped communion.

In those days it was, for me, a case of "Well, God gave us free will so I'm quite capable of figuring out what is right and wrong by myself. Sin? That was a bogus concept to me even back then. You had right and wrong, which was something people can figure out on their own. No God needed for that. I saw it as a both a personal and cultural thing, and I still do. We, both as individuals and as a society, figure out that on our own. Life is inherently something precious, so we tend to value it. Treating each other as we'd like to be treated is not much of a stretch for anyone who is not either clinically antisocial or a devotee of Ayn Rand. Perhaps you will disagree, but the above works for me. Welcome to the forum.

[Captain Colostomy]

A bleeding heart only makes for squishy shoes. But why does your recent lack of faith suddenly make you uncaring about 'people in Africa'? I'm no saint, but I do have that word I think you mentioned in the OP... 'empathy'. Taking care of needs and wants doesn't preclude you from a caring disposition.

I'm not following you, wally.

[Walking Void]

We fancy animals don't live in a vacuum, though.

Humans -> Africa -> Earth -> Vacuum



I even live in a Dyson Ball.

[Captain Colostomy]

We fancy animals don't live in a vacuum, though.

Humans -> Africa -> Earth -> Vacuum



I even live in a Dyson Ball.

So, like, you're a sperm?