Moral Truth

[The Reality Salesman01]

I've seen a bunch of posts inquiring about how Atheists grapple with the concepts of morality. It seems that many are under the impression that without a divine law giver, there is no reason to think that it ought to matter whether or not people are raped. It's been implied that Atheists are merely at the whim of popular vote when it comes to a controversy regarding the objectivity of Rights or Wrongs.

I keep hearings the term "Moral Absolutes" being used as if Moral Absolutes is something other than an entirely conceptual term used by conscious beings to describe things we perceive as right or wrong. It's a lower case right and wrong because they aren't proper nouns that have their own nature. While it's true that rights and wrongs are conceptual and contingent upon human perception, this doesn't mean that the things they describe are entirely subjective. A first person account of the experience of being raped is not the sum of all that can be taken into account when trying to understand why they call it wrong. There could be an alternate universe in which the experience of getting a haircut is as traumatic on a person as getting raped, and so the inquiry of-why they feel that to be wrong would suddenly be useful. But in this universe, such is not the case and so one need not worry about why it's wrong to cut people's hair. What we do experience as wrong is not random. On the whole, there are consistencies in what human being consider to be wrong and behind the subjective description of those experiences there is objective data that can be used as a complimentary understanding of not only why something is wrong, but we can discover non-random prescriptions on how best to avoid the experience of wrong. Again, these words are descriptive tools that we use to describe aspects of conscience experiences and there's no reason to think that they have any meaning in any situation apart from them.

If a question such as "Why is something 'wrong' " is to have an answer, that answer will be within the understanding of the sorts of things that maximize the well being and positive mental states of conscious beings. I'm not saying that the entirety of good and the overall well-being is what makes an individual act right or wrong. I'm saying that there are right ways and wrong ways to push the arrow in a positive direction on an individual basis and that we ought to pursue the good ones and work to eliminate that bad ones. The reason we ought to behave in a good way is intuitively evident in comparison to the alternatives. If a psychopath takes pleasure in raping as many victims as possible, and in his mind that maximizes his positive mental experience, then we ought to try and understand why. We can look at abnormal moralities such as this one just as we can in any other domain of science. The occasional bad apple that may fall from a tree does not eliminate our understanding of the far more likely good apple. The more we understand about the tree and its environment; the more we can produce and enjoy the fruit of our investigation.


That being said, what the hell does believing a God says things are good or bad add to this understanding of how best to maximize the well being in conscious creature as?

Is something right merely because God says so? (Then rape could be right if God says so)

or

Does God recognize things as right or wrong based on some other form of criteria? (Your turn to think...)

[abaris]

Is something right merely because God says so? (Then rape could be right if God says so)

Well, wait till you get a load of Drich and company.

[robvalue]

I'm sure the vast majority of atheists go through their life without killing or raping anyone. What kind of world is it that theists are seeing? Sadly they've deluded themselves that the only thing keeping them from random acts of violence is some crusty book and weird myths. Well in almost every case, that's simply not true. Yet another myth religion has spun.

Morality is, or should be, about wellbeing. You consider how your actions affect everyone and every thing about you, and you balance up benefit and harm. It's not much more complicated than that. If God tells me to kill someone, that doesn't make it any more right than my next door neighbour telling me to kill someone. In either case, the answer is no, thank you very much. I don't know if theists can say the same? Never a straight answer given.

Why do you ignore almost everything the bible tells you to do? Because you know it's wrong. You can make excuses all day long and quote ridiculous apologist arguments, but the real reason is because you have a conscience just like atheists.

[Chad32]

Religion reverses everything. You can hardly get through any part of the old testament without stumbling on something immoral by modern standards, and it takes until the last third of the book before you start reading things like "love your enemy" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Things that aren't even original or unique to the bible.

If your moral compass is dictated by someone's opinion of something, that's the definition of subjective. if the only thing that keeps you from being a psychopath is the reward of heaven, or the threat of hell, that speaks more of your character than mine.

Social animals must have some sort of guidelines in order to coexist together. These guidelines are our morals, and they differ from group to group. Unfortunately what helps one groups survive is not always bets for someone outside of the group. The interactions between one group and another is often when morals start falling apart, and this is even shown in the bible.

Morals are subjective. the best way to tell if something is right or wrong is by objective means, like research. But then it becomes a matter of practicality, instead of morality.

When talking about morality, some people bring up things like rape and murder, and such. Rape and murder is always wrong. No matter what. The problem is that what some people consider rape or murder differs. Is it rape if the person forcing sex on the other causes them to orgasm? Some might say no. Of course objectively we know this is false, because enough stimulus will cause anyone to get hard. Just because that bus ride was rather bumpy, and my dick got hard of the seat, doesn't mean I'm in love with the bus.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Is something right merely because God says so? (Then rape could be right if God says so)

Well, wait till you get a load of Drich and company.

I'm no stranger to that....

[robvalue]

I have heard people before say exactly that, if God says it's good then it's good. If God says rape that child and smash in that old lady's head with an iron, then it's good and you should do it.

Because we need moral guidelines, otherwise we'd just go around killing people. 2.5 million was it? Lead by example.

[ReptilianPeon]

Religions would have people believe one size fits all. Secular morality changes as new science enters the mainstream and opinions change (perhaps as a result of scientific discoveries). Secular morality has the goal of wanting to get better. Religion cannot change but the world around Theists has changed since their chosen texts were written so they have to make excuses for their texts. Both the Bible and the Quran have lots on the subject of slavery but people are in denial about those verses because they want maintain their belief whilst at the same time trying to be good citizens of the Earth. It's clear people don't want to keep others as slaves even though their chosen religious books allow them.

EDIT:
Whenever I see somebody who is of an African ethnicity who is homophobic it really bothers me. It bothers me because they were treated that way until only very recently, and in some places still are. It makes me wonder if they've forgotten the struggles of their ancestors, and the hardships they endured.

[ether-ore]

Does God recognize things as right or wrong based on some other form of criteria? (Your turn to think...)

I've been having this conversation with Surgenator over in "Religiosity, Spirituality and the Moral". I'll repeat my last post to him here:...

Ok, as I understand the philosophical definitions... well... first let me make a comment about the eternal moral law. As I said before that is a mystery to me. As far as I can determine from scripture, the eternally objective moral law is as eternal as God. In other words, there is no beginning to it. (So God Himself abides the law) However, that does not apply to the following:

All temporal laws extant on this earth are either subjective or relative because they originate from either an individual (subjective) or from a culture (relative). These are definitions from philosophy. Ideas or laws aren't floating around in the air, they come from people. By observation, formulation or whatever... however laws or standards are derived in the mind of men, those laws or standards come from either a person or a convention of people. I understand what you are saying about how cause and effect behave... but... Mere empirical observation of cause and effect is not the defining factor here... cognation and evaluation are; at least as far as philosophical definitions are concerned. Cognation and evaluation have their source in the minds of a person or persons. If the source is a single person, it is subjective. If it is a culture, then it is referred to as relative.

It is because people have different ideas about how things "ought" to be done, this is the reason for the disparity of legal systems in the world. You and I may be comfortable with observation of cause and effect, but others are not. This is why I pointed out Sharia law as an example. That system does not observe cause and effect in the same way as you or I might. Please believe me, I do understand why a scientific mind would consider cause and effect as the best source of moral law... I get it. But it is still subjective because it is filtered through a mind.

For the same reason, this is why there are so many religious denominations, even within Christianity.

I agree with what you say about the way the laws of thermodynamics work as opposed to that of the objective moral law. As I indicated, there is a lot of mystery about it and its application. I understand however, according to scripture, that on judgment day, we will be judged according to that law. This law (or as much of it as is expedient for us to know) has been revealed to us through the prophets. Keep in mind that some laws given by God are for our temporal welfare while we are on earth and do not carry eternal significance. Nevertheless...

LDS theology describes three possible states of existence after judgment day. The highest, or "Celestial Kingdom" is where it will not be in the nature of people to break any law. I believe the other two kingdoms, the Terrestrial and Telestial will have similar feelings. I think people will be content, peaceful and happy there and will not be inclined to break any law. I "imagine", as pure supposition, that if someone were to break any law within the kingdom they were in, they might get demoted to a lower one until at last they arrived at outer darkness where there is no light or knowledge. But the question is, why, if we know and understand the rules of whatever kingdom we are in, would we be interested in breaking them? There would be no reason. Once the penalty (if any) is paid, there will be no misery or fear.

Now, these three are described as kingdoms of glory, but there are also kingdoms which have no glory. And also there is "Perdition" or "Outer Darkness". to help you understand the relative nature of these places/states/conditions, the word 'glory' has to do with a level of intelligence/knowledge/understanding. The scriptures say that the Glory of God is Intelligence (He is all knowing... I don't like the word 'omniscient', it carries with it I think some incorrect connotations)and of course there are different levels of intelligence.

[Chad32]

That would be what we call an Uncle Tom.

[The Reality Salesman01]

I have heard people before say exactly that, if God says it's good then it's good. If God says rape that child and smash in that old lady's head with an iron, then it's good and you should do it.

Because we need moral guidelines, otherwise we'd just go around killing people. 2.5 million was it? Lead by example.

This is a really old theist dilemma put forward when the common god was Zeus, and it's been raised on this forum several times and each time it's either avoided like the plague or handled terribly by some of the very same theists that flounder about here today. This is the dilemma that makes it abundantly clear that theists are either incabable of moral thought or, it's never occurred to them that morality might require thought. Faith has always been enough and they've managed to push the barbarism
of the bible so far out of their minds that it's only during times like these that they're forced to confront it and ethically reconcile it with all of the contradicting verbal diarrhea they've baselessly asserted which lead to this point. Awfully quiet around here, eh?