Are some theists afraid of atheists?

[emjay]

What's wrong with having empathy as the rational grounds for the notion of human rights from an atheistic perspective? It's perfectly logical and it requires no appeal to anything beyond what we experience directly in our own minds...

Empathy can serve as a useful guide. However, it is not a truly rational ground since it is based entirely on feelings and intuitions about the feelings of others. Maybe a logical demonstration will help clarify my position:

1. Human beings have innate emotional responses that include but are not limited to delight, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, compassion, contempt, envy, jealousy, etc.
   
2. Humans innately favor and seek to preserve the lives and well-being of themselves and their kin more than the lives and well-being of strangers and unrelated tribes.
   
3. Humans evolved to have innate emotional responses and prefer the benefit of their kin because they enhance fitness and confer reproductive advantages . Otherwise, those traits remain vestigial or have not yet been purged by natural selection.
   
4. The innate emotional responses and evolutionarily instilled preferences for fitness or reproductive advantage are instrumental goods.
   
5. The concept of human dignity means that every individual life is of absolute value in-and-of-itself, and not contingent on its instrumental value to any other individual or group.
   
6. Instrumental goods cannot ground absolute and non-contingent values.
   
7. None of the innate emotional responses or evolutionary preferences can ground human dignity.
   

In addition to the above:

1. Each of the innate emotional responses (that include but are not limited to delight, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, compassion, contempt, envy, jealousy, etc.) either enhance fitness, confer reproductive advantages, remain vestigial, or have not yet been purged by natural selection.
   
2. Determining which emotional response should serve as the ground for human dignity requires a means by which evaluate the value of each.
   
3. None of the emotional responses can be used as the means for evaluating emotional responses without engaging in circular reasoning.
   
4. Therefore, some standard other than innate emotional responses, like empathy, must serve as a rational foundation for human dignity.
   

Sorry for the delay... I've been a bit busy.

Hmm... I'm not sure we're talking about quite the same thing when we're talking about empathy. The type of empathy I mean is not limited to friends and family... kin groups and in and out groups... but instead with consciousness itself. And it's largely an active process that goes beyond innate responses; innate responses may be all that you have said, favouring certain groups more than others, but active empathy goes beyond it.

It does require assumptions, yes, but no more than we all realistically and naturally make in order to function in the world; namely that there are other beings with consciousness, ie that others are not p-zombies, and that they can suffer as we suffer. Subjectively we cannot know for sure that they do, but if we morally treat other beings... in the sense of trying to prevent harm to them...  as if they do, then no harm done if they don't, and harm prevented if they do. For instance if I contemplate hitting you, I cannot know for you sure that you would respond to pain as I do... and suffer; you could be a masochist or you could have some neural condition where you do not feel pain... but if I treat you as if you would feel pain in that situation, as I directly know from my own experience that I  would, then by refraining from hitting you, no harm done/no change if you would have reacted differently, and harm actively prevented if you would have reacted as expected. As such it requires no assumptions about what you would actually feel, but instead works preemptively based on what you would probably/potentially feel from my perspective. The same thing with animals; the less they resemble us, the harder it is to make reasonable assumptions about what their consciousness is like, if they even have it, but nonetheless, if we treat them as if they experience something like human pain, then if I refrain from stepping on an ant, no harm done/no change if they don't experience pain, but harm actively prevented if they do.

Where you talk about the value in and of itself of human life, I would place that in consciousness itself... so would also apply to any other form of life that has consciousness. You know my position... as a 'functionalist epiphenomenalist'... which I'm not looking to get into here... but which basically holds that we should be p-zombies but the mystery is why we are not. From that perspective, consciousness adds one important thing to the world, that from my view, doesn't need to be there... and that is suffering. Obviously there are good aspects to consciousness as well but, the existence of suffering IMO completely offsets that... I think we should be p-zombies and if we all were there would be no such thing as (phenomenal) consciousness and suffering... there'd be the brain states and all the same physical reactions, but not the experience. So I care about you because you have consciousness, and I do not want any being with consciousness to suffer; that transcends in groups and out groups. I guess you could say it's more abstract. Obviously I have my innate ways of thinking as well... in groups, out groups, anger, etc... all the evolutionary stuff you talked about... so this sort of thing is not always at the forefront of my mind, but nonetheless, it is how I see the world; that if we're lumbered with consciousness, and it does have this horrible capacity to create suffering, then the most important thing, morally, for me, is, to the best of my ability, not to add to the misery of the world, and prevent it wherever I can. And where each and every consciousness, as distinct/isolated, parallel, and unrelated streams, throughout history, is equally capable of all this suffering, it just magnifies the effect... the damage that the existence of consciousness does. So anything I can do to stop even one 'stream of consciousness' suffering is all important, because each has equal worth, and suffering is the same thing to all.

I don't know how all that fits in to the 'rational' scheme of things, but that's how I see it.

Whether you believe in God or not, if you can take the leap that human morals derive from empathy, then whether written by man... as atheism contends... or by God... as theists contend... either way the commandments in the Bible represent the extent of one person (God included) or group's empathetic thinking, in the form of moral laws; ie those laws exist to reduce suffering in the world.

There are both good and bad approaches to grounding human rights regardless of whether those approaches are theistic or not. For some theistic positions you may be right and I would not advocate them. I would like to give you a better understanding of the approach I think is most promising, but what I have already said is all I have time for at the moment.

Don't worry, I don't have much time either at the moment. I'm generally much happier on here with less frequent posting.