Why Some Atheists Reject Morality: The Other Side of the Coin

[tonechaser77]

It is the natural extension of a rejection of the absolute. If life just came out of nowhere then everything is pointless and objective, why shouldn't we just do as we please?

Morality cannot exist detached from God, and we see this in the godless death culture across the western world today.

Welcome to the forum. You and I are going to have some fun!!    I can tell already. 

How can morality be attributed to a being that shows no demonstrative evidence for existence? 

The bible?   and from the bible what? God? Enter your every-day run-in-the-mill circular argument.   

Absolutism?   -- I addressed this in another post but I'll post again:

Absolute moral law never refers to what humans actually do, such as what they say or what they think. It refers to what they ought to do. But such a law, even if it exists, is irrelevant and unknowable. Moral law is only relevant to the extent human beings are affected by it; some abstract law that doesn't affect the physical world just doesn't affect anything in it, like human thought. Furthermore, it isn't clear why it is "moral" as it has no relation with human morality. You might as well say that there is an abstract law that says how things are "Wright" or "Rong" - empty words that have no relation to human concepts such as "right" or "wrong".

The important part is not that god gave the law, even if he did, since what matters is not the law itself but rather its relation to human thought. The only meaningful sense of god making a moral law is that he made our moral nature. For example, He might have put in us a moral sense that works to identify what he deems right, or perhaps intervenes by whispering in our mind's ear (that, too, would then be part of human nature - it would be part of human nature in practice to frequently hear god's voice, and in constitution to identify it with goodness).

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the god who created us was malicious, and implanted in us a flawed sense of morality, one that says that right is wrong. In what sense would we be wrong? Not in any human sense. "True" morality might as well talk about "Wright" and "Rong" as far as we are concerned, it has no relation to human morality in this scenario. Because of this there can be no absolute morality. Even a god cannot provide anything except morality by decree. But saying that something is moral does not make it so, and making creatures with that sense of morality doesn't make it any more moral either. Morality is inherently relative - it is dictated by what someone considers right. Even an all powerful and perfectly good deity cannot be morally correct in some absolute sense; He can only be right in respect to His own thinking, which offers no real moral superiority to others' views except under His own morality. We aren't left with a lawgiver, but instead a dictator, passing judgment on his own creation by his own morality. This does not make his morality "right". If it conflicts with human morality, it is wrong by human standards, it is wrong for humans. god's nature is therefore irrelevant to morality.

I also addressed a much more plausible explanation invoking true Occam's Razor a few days ago that I invite you to review here: 

http://atheistforums.org/post-972999.html#pid972999

[Rhondazvous]

Here we go again....

ALL social species have evolved 'rules' for cooperation, altruism. kin selection. If they did not, the species would not have survived.

The more advanced the social species, the more rules of higher complexity they have. If we did not evolve our morality, empathy, altruism, etc, we would not have survived as a species.

I actually do exactly as I please. I rape, murder, steal, cheat, exactly as much as I please. The amount that pleases me is exactly ZERO. 

If you did not believe in a god, would you be out murdering, raping, stealing? If so, please, keep believing.

I wouldn't mind living next door to you. The Bible is no deterrent to rape, murder and stealing for someone who really wants to do it.

[abaris]

The Bible is no deterrent to rape, murder and stealing for someone who really wants to do it.

No. Under certain circumstances it can serve to enforce vile behavior.

What you're missing in your thread is the fact that what we call immoral behavior is simply human. It's neither tied to religion nor to it's absence. It's up to the individual to respect some basic rules of society. There is no safety belt provided by faith or it's absence.

[Rhondazvous]

The Bible is no deterrent to rape, murder and stealing for someone who really wants to do it.

No. Under certain circumstances it can serve to enforce vile behavior.

What you're missing in your thread is the fact that what we call immoral behavior is simply human. It's neither tied to religion nor to it's absence. It's up to the individual to respect some basic rules of society. There is no safety belt provided by faith or it's absence.

True. And that renders religion morally irrelevant as tonechaser said.

You have hit the nail on the head. Religion keeps people feeling guilty by pointing to things that are naturally human and making them immoral. Theists may be idiots, but they are brilliant idiots.

After 25 years of Christian indoctrination, I've had to violently reject everything I'd been taught so that I could examine what was really important.

[KUSA]

I actually do exactly as I please. I rape, murder, steal, cheat, exactly as much as I please. The amount that pleases me is exactly ZERO.

Wanna bet on that. Take the CumFart test.

[Chas]

It is the natural extension of a rejection of the absolute. If life just came out of nowhere then everything is pointless and objective, why shouldn't we just do as we please?

Morality cannot exist detached from God, and we see this in the godless death culture across the western world today.

The only death cultures I see are religious.

[Chas]

It is the natural extension of a rejection of the absolute. If life just came out of nowhere then everything is pointless and objective, why shouldn't we just do as we please?

How would life be objective if we reject absolutes?

What do you mean by "life be objective"?

[Pyrrho]

Have none of you ever heard of Poe's law?  Are you next going to waste time arguing against a member of the Landover Baptist Church?  (Of course, you ought not argue against a member of the Landover Baptist Church, because they are correct in all things.)

[Mr.wizard]

The whole concept of amorality confuses me, if a person rejects a certain moral code because the moral code is bad, are they not making a moral decision about the moral code? If that's the case I don't see how they would be amoral.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

It is the natural extension of a rejection of the absolute. If life just came out of nowhere then everything is pointless and objective, why shouldn't we just do as we please?

Morality cannot exist detached from God, and we see this in the godless death culture across the western world today.

You can do as you please but the busybodies will beat the crap out of you when you piss them off.