How Do We Behave?

[Angrboda]

I'm too lazy to read all this, so if jumping in the middle is a fail, feel free to write me a nasty-gram.

With regard to the latter, this means that the only grounds for altruism is if you happen to be a person who enjoys putting others before yourself. If you happen to be selfish thats OK too. The only thing you need to avoid is breaking the Law, since this may take away your freedom which would diminish your existence. Apart from that, it is a free for all - a morality of ends?

This is a mistake of assuming that atheism's ground for morality is in rationality. I will not claim to speak "for atheism", but I have at least three separate conceptions of godless morality come to mind without doing any research; actually four, Dan Barker's, George Smith's, Richard Carrier's and Sam Harris' -- though there may be overlap. In my view, man is not a rational animal -- man uses reason as a means to achieve ends, but our impetus is non-rational. A mother doesn't feel a bond toward her newborn -- that she would likely risk death to protect -- because she "reasoned her way" to that conclusion. I lean toward the evolutionary psychology view that the moral organ in man evolved to serve ends which at best are only coincident with the individual; evolution applies to species, and only conserves that which succeeds reproductively. Some proposed "replacement" moral codes, like unintelligent hedonism [1], irrationalist, and sociopathy, such may appear in the individual, but if they don't work in an evolutionary sense, nature will simply pass them by (explicitly, moral codes with fail will be outbred by moral codes with win).

That being said, I saw Dan Barker debate a Christian apologist on whether we can have "Goodness Without God". The apologist made a strong argument, a key feature of which was the claim that if atheists are moral, if they can know what is and is not good, it is because of God, not in spite of him. He made the analogy of a person who doesn't believe in air -- they might argue that air doesn't exist, but it does, and they are using that which they deny to argue with. If our moral sense can come from God, how do we know it doesn't come from God?

I'm willing to accept such an argument, so long as I can use it in my own. Perhaps, if we are moral it is only because of God, in spite of ourselves. However, if God does not exist, then we have been being moral and using our moral sense all along, so it obviously wouldn't then be on account of God. We may not know how morality works or where it came from, but the existence of morality cuts both ways; it cannot in itself implicate God. Prove God first. Before Darwin, we had no "mechanism" for producing the rich diversity of life on this planet, that doesn't mean naturalistic life processes didn't exist until we could explain them. Knowing "that" doesn't necessarily require knowing what, how or why. (Though I argue elsewhere that reference is somewhat empty, without meaning, until the blanks are filled in; if a Christian says he has a conscience, and I too say I have a conscience, we're not necessarily referring to the same thing.)

Note: A lot of theists misquote Dostoevsky as saying that "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." The quote refers to the views of a character in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" and even then, that exact quote does not appear in the text. Implying that Dostoevsky felt this way because a character he wrote did is nonsense; but there's more for the curious. See Dostoevsky Didn't Say It at www.infidels.org.

[1] The classic conception of hedonism involves pleasure at all costs. IMHO this is wrong-headed, as many costs associated with the stereotypical hedonism are distinctly not pleasant. The idea of seeking pleasure no matter how unpleasant the pursuit is incoherent. Three years ago, I lost 9 of my 10 fingers. Seeing as many of my hobbies, projects and ambitions depended on more dexterity than a single finger can provide, I had to reinvent myself in the image of these new limitations. I'm still in transition, but I have had to reshape what and who I am, and what my projects will be. In the meantime I have adopted a hedonism which simply means doing what I enjoy. We all place the pursuit of pleasure somewhere among a heirarchy of priorities (making room for making love), for this hedonist, hedonism is simply re-arranging things so that pleasure is higher up, and things like ambition, meaningful experiences and fulfillment are consequently pushed lower.