Why be good?

[Esquilax]

Ben-

You asked if I'm reading the posts. 

I am.

So you have absolutely no excuse for the continued strawman.

[Randy Carson]

Could it be that evolution doesn't play a role in the development of objective moral values?

*my bolding

Please can you stop using this term. It's clearly established that there's no such thing and that the term 'objective' in this context is a disingenuous misdefinition. I hope you'll prefer to engage honestly so that we can continue our discussion.

And I hope you notice the irony of your use of the term in a thread regarding morality.

Sure, Ben.

I can re-think the use of that term.

See? I'm reading the posts.

---

The question is: How did we get this sense of right and wrong? Evolution doesn't suggest that males should be polite with females...it suggests that the strongest and most aggressive mate when and where they please. That's just "survival of the fittest", isn't it?

So, in light of that, WHY should men be good on their dates with women v. taking what they want simply because they can like our ancestors might have done a few thousand years ago?

Your understanding of evolution is somewhat primitive.  As pointed out, fittest doesn't necessarily mean strongest.  In a social species, the fittest may be those who are able to mesh with the social relationships the best.  Therefore, evolution could promote sociability over your simplistic conception of self-interest.  In that case, following social mores such as don't hurt, don't steal, would be in the self-interest of the individual.  It's similar to kin selective processes; those in my social circle have genes similar to mine, so by being socially positive, I ensure the survival of my gene type.  That creates a differential reproduction in favor of those who have behaviors that are well adapted to the social nature of the species, rather than selfish behaviors.

You don't share the same morals as me, yet because you are of the same species as me, it's in my best interest, genetically, to protect you.

Jorm-

Stalin. 
Pol Pot.
Ferdinand Marcos.
Vladimir Putin.

How did each of these individuals use their wonderfully developed social skills (such as "not hurting" and "not stealing") to rise to a position of authority within their own respective societies?

[Esquilax]

Jorm-

Stalin. 
Pol Pot.
Ferdinand Marcos.
Vladimir Putin.

How did each of these individuals use their wonderfully developed social skills (such as "not hurting" and "not stealing") to rise to a position of authority within their own respective societies?

"If there's absolutely any variation at all, the rule is invalid!"

Do I take it, then, that every murderous christian is an individual argument against the existence of your transcendent moral laws? Or are you suddenly willing to see exceptions or variations when it comes to your side?

[Randy Carson]

.
Since others have addressed at length let flip this around on you. Why are Catholics less moral?Aside from the systematic fuckibg of little boys by your church, american Catholics are statistically speaking both less educated and more likely to commit crimes. Why is that?'

I just want to repeat this because I am afraid it got kind of drowned out, but I want you to address this

I'll be happy to address it...as long as you aren't merely asserting these things.

Please cite your sources, and I will review them and comment if I can.

Thanks.

[Esquilax]

I just want to repeat this because I am afraid it got kind of drowned out, but I want you to address this

I'll be happy to address it...as long as you aren't merely asserting these things.

Holy fucking shit, my irony meter!

[Randy Carson]

Last response of the night, folks. More tomorrow.

---

You've identified cooperation and the social contract and the reasons for being good. However, as important as these things are for peaceful and harmonious human interaction, they are still utterly inconsistent with the a worldview that only natural, material things exist. To be consistent with this claim, we'd be forced to admit that "being good" is really just a matter of personal conviction or group consensus, not an ideal that God desires for all of us to strive for.

Randy, you've made a big claim here, but you've given not a single reason why it is so. You've just asserted by fiat that a totally naturalistic worldview- which isn't atheism, incidentally, it's something else entirely that we may not believe- is inconsistent with the premises of cooperation and social contract... why do you think that? Until you actually provide an answer to that question, until you give me some reason to believe that that is true, that contains within it referents to the position I actually hold, rather than the one you imagine I do, then I have no reason to even entertain this claim. That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

---

If you've read all of the posts up to this point, you should have noted that the vast majority of the respondents to my OP have confirmed what I wrote. So, is that really such a big claim for me to make? If God does not exist (as everyone else but me accepts as true), then what IS the source of our understandings about "good" and "bad" and "right" and "wrong" if not "personal conviction and group consensus"? It seems to me that I've been overwhelmingly supported in this. Even by you here:

---

The really weird thing is, you provide the answer that proves you wrong in the very paragraph where you make the claim, because you're totally right: cooperation and the social contract are very important for peace and harmony. That's exactly the sort of world I'd want to live in, because it's demonstrably better for us all, as I said, and more importantly showed, in my first post. It's a simple matter of rationality; in a world where we all agree to certain rules regarding conduct, and recognize the value in cooperation, we are able to build enormous, sprawling societies filled with technologies and comforts that would have been unfathomable to the tribalistic cultures that preceded us, in addition to allowing us all to specialize in our knowledge and share that expertise with others. I am able to hold a job in a non-essential field, that I absolutely love, because the social contract allows me to rely on other people to produce my food, clothes, housing and so on; none of that would be true if the social contract were not present. The best possible world, for me as an individual and for my society as a whole, is one where we cooperate.

Your mistake in thinking is terribly obvious, but since you allude to it more specifically below, I'll deal with it there.

---

Oh...I was about to comment, but let's continue on...

---

Can atheists justify, according to atheist principles, why they believe it is "wrong" to pollute oceans, cut down rain forests, or hack into someone’s bank account and steal their life savings? If the stronger members of the human species engage in such behaviors in their pursuit of dominating the weaker members, and if there is no God and therefore no transcendent, prescriptive moral law given by God to guide us into knowing what is right and what is wrong, then on what grounds can atheists legitimately oppose such behaviors?

Literally every part of this paragraph is factually wrong. Congrats, on that.

For starters, there are no atheist principles beyond a lack of belief in god; it's a position, not a worldview. So your first question is entirely malformed, but it's also answered in my first post, so hey.

As for the rest... I didn't realize that morality was all about me. Because it's not; morality is about the best possible guidelines for the entire group. Special pleading is what you're thinking of, where one is determining morality for themselves, but everyone else has to leave me alone and not do the same to me as I'm doing to them. It's by definition an irrational stance to take; you don't get one set of rules for yourself and another for everyone else, because there's no justifiable reason to do that.

---

I'm not buying it. When a lion kills a cub or runs off an older male in order to take over the pride, he is not thinking of what's better for the group...even though, ironically, his actions ARE what's best for the group. How is a third-world dictator acting any differently? Well, his actions may not be in the best interests of his country for starters, but he is still dominating the group in the same way the new alpha male lion is...by forceful takeover.

---

Incidentally, when you talk about the strong dominating the weak, you're describing Mad Max world again. Hell, you're describing every piece of dystopic or post-apocalyptic fiction we've ever created, in broad strokes. Oppression by a stronger force, unjustly, is a hallmark of the genre, and I kinda don't want to live in a world like that. Do you want to live in a dystopia, Randy? What makes you so sure that you'd be the strongest, rather than one of the ones being dominated? Pure assumption? The odds are against you, against any individual, just by numbers alone, you know. And hey, I work in media, I write books for a living, do you think I'd have any reason to continue doing that if people could just steal my earnings or product from me whenever they wanted? Do you think, say, pharmaceutical companies would continue making life-saving drugs, if people could just steal them whenever they wanted? You think farmers would farm, under those conditions? You think doctors would operate? Hell, you think you'd be able to get something as simple as a cup of coffee, if the barista couldn't be reasonably certain that he wouldn't be robbed of that coffee instead of paid for it?

---

And yet, plagiarisim, corporate espionage, patent infringement, and even theft of cups of coffee, etc. happen all the time. Beyond that, I would agree with the balance of your paragraph.

---

Gee, it's almost as if the entire edifice of our society relies upon the social contract, and that society is more valuable for every single individual member than the short term gain one might get in predating other people until they too get predated upon...

---

Is that what's happening in Baltimore? Or what happened in Ferguson? People stayed home and played parlor games because they knew that was better than going out into the streets and rioting?

---

Oh, and also? I just plain don't want to dominate other people... well, except maybe consensually, in the bedroom. I tend to like other people, I see their value as discrete entities and I'd prefer that bad things not happen to them because of that. Why? Are you saying that you do want to dominate and hurt other people? Why do you want that?

---

I'm not specifying anything about you or me; however, if there is an opening when your boss retires...you do hope that YOU get the job and not one of your co-workers, right?

---

if there is no God and therefore no transcendent, prescriptive moral law given by God to guide us into knowing what is right and what is wrong, then on what grounds can atheists legitimately oppose such behaviors?

Okay, let's talk about transcendent, prescriptive moral laws, shall we? Where do they come from? You say they're given by god, but does god give them to us because they are good? Or do they become good, because god gave them to us? What is the reason god gave us these moral laws, in your view, essentially?

---

God's laws are good because He is good. He gives us laws so that we become like Him.

---

If the moral laws come to us via god because they conform to what is good, then moral goodness exists separate from god, and it both does not require him, and can be determined without him, via rational inquiry.

---

Nope. See above.

---

If the moral laws are good because god has given them to us, then they are fiat command alone, and the actual content of the laws is irrelevant, when compared to the authority of the commander; in that situation there's nothing transcendent or morally good about the specific set of moral laws we've been given at all, just in obeying whatever the law giver decides to give us. If that were true you would have no reason to oppose any given behavior at all, because if god changed the moral laws tomorrow then that behavior could be moral. God could make it so that dominating the weak, murder, all kinds of things, would be moral, and you'd just have to go along with it.

So which is it, Randy? Is god irrelevant to morality, or is morality irrelevant to god?

---

A flawed premise leads to this false conclusion.

---

Doing so would be intolerant and would have the net result of the atheist forcing his morality on others -- the very thing atheists object to in the first place.

I don't think you actually understand what we're objecting to, regarding religious morality, Randy. I really, really don't.

---

You may be right.

Or    it may be that atheists simply don't see 1) the incompatibility of holding evolution as the mechanism by which we have arrived on the world stage while 2) simultaneously denying that putting others' interests above your own is in direct conflict with the evolutionary process that got us here in the first place.

---

I'll be happy to address it...as long as you aren't merely asserting these things.

Holy fucking shit, my irony meter!

---

Calm down.

When I've been a member of the forum for 30 days, I'm allowed to begin linking to reference material.

And you can believe I will.

Randy, if you are going to quote this much, please learn how to do it so you are not misquoting and mis-attributing posts. Also, please use hide tags so we don't have to scroll through 10 screens of post.

[dyresand]

Use some proper formatting and hide tags...

[Ravenshire]

Ben-

You asked if I'm reading the posts. 

I am.

So, it a reading comprehension issue then...

[dyresand]

Ben-

You asked if I'm reading the posts. 

I am.

So, it a reading comprehension issue then...

I wonder if this forum has a text to speech plugin...  

[Jenny A]

You forget that I live in and have been educated in a particular society and largely share that societies morality.  So yes I have strong objections to both genital mutilation and burning widows on funeral pyres.  But the people who live in those countries might not, yet they consider themselves to be moral.  Obviously the standard is subjective.

However, a subjective standard does not mean one can't argue that one set of morals is better than another.  It's just the the appeal can't be made to a higher authority such as god.  By the way, you do realize that both of these objectionable practices are at their roots religious practices.

Jenny-

Let's broaden this a bit just for a moment.

Suppose an alien race arrives on our planet with a completely different set of values. 

They immediately rape all earth women in order to impregnate them while killing off all earth males. )BTW - Rape is considered a good thing on their planet because females should be honored to be the recipient of the males attention and seed. You won't mind that now that you can see their point of view, will you?)

Oh, and the reason they've come to earth is to begin farming us for food. So, your offspring, cute little mutants (you'll be bearing a litter, actually), will be consumed by the male who mated with you.

Now, remember, in their culture, rape is not wrong. Nor is the subjugation and consumption of humans.

So, why should this alien race be "good" when it is in their best interest to do otherwise?

Have they evolved differently? Or not at all? Or is evolution really not such an adequate process by which to develop "good" and "bad" behavior?

In case you haven't noticed, "good" is an almost entirely inter-human concept.  We eat other animals all the time, farm them, use them as labor, try to eradicate them when they get in our way.  Do you have moral complaints about my use of an exterminator to rid my house of carpenter ants?  To the extent we have any empathy for other animals it's spillover from the empathy we have evolved for each other.

Is a tiger immoral if it eats a person?  No.  Killer bees?  No.  Dangerous to humans yes.  Immoral no.  They, like hurricanes are outside our moral structure.  Your proposed aliens would be the same.  I would assume that if they made it to earth they must be a very inter-cooperative culture or they couldn't have mastered the tech and assembled the resources to get here.  So they would have a morality of their own concerning each other.  Whether they would have any spillover empathy for us, is another question and the answer is it would depend upon how they evolved. 

BTW just a note about biology that even Genesis gets right:  each according to their kind.  Those aliens would not be able to breed with us and would be very unlikely to be sexually compatible with or sexually interested in us either.  So you can take rape right off the table.  But sure, they might eat us, enslave us, or just plain eradicate us.  And no god would lift a finger. And from their point of view, there might not be anything immoral about it.

---

When I've been a member of the forum for 30 days, I'm allowed to begin linking to reference material. And you can believe I will.

What a lame excuse:

One very important exception to the the 30/30 requirement is when external links/videos/images are used within discussion or with the intention of discussion. While we would generally advise new members who haven't met the 30/30 stipulations against posting threads with the sole intention of linking to an external site (whether advertising or not) or starting your own discussions based on external content, we do of course allow you to link to external sources when it is warranted. For instance you can post external content if using it as evidence in a discussion or you can post a YouTube video if it is relevant to an ongoing discussion.

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