(August 22, 2018 at 7:23 am)Khemikal Wrote:(August 22, 2018 at 3:36 am)robvalue Wrote:
PS: Is it a good idea to let some authority tell you what is moral and immoral? I'd say no, but again that's a personal choice.
It can certainly be useful. We do this with children all the time. Our authority is a shortcut that provides a quick answer to a moral calculus that may be beyond a persons ability to do at some point in their development, particularly to questions that really do have important consequences regardless of their individual ability. When it's important to get it right even if they don't yet know why.
Thing is..that only has merit when we have reason to believe that an individual has a lessened or compromised moral agency. We expect our children to grow up and.one day, be able to do that moral calculus for themselves without reference to the crutch of our parental authority. If they grow up and..as adults..can only field the "because my daddy saidso" answer to the question of why some thing x is wrong....we've failed them, and they are..themselves..moral failures.
This has always been the utility of moral authority from on high, whether that lofty place is the state, our mommies and daddies, or the great big daddy in the sky. To an extent, we maintain those authorities even as adults particularly because our moral agency -can- be compromised at any moment..even if we're usually capable of seeing the problem and it's solution. When we want something so bad that we suddenly lose all moral sense. I think we've all wanted something, at some point..that we know is wrong, even if we can square the circle in our minds in the heat of the moment.
That's the long answer to "what puts atheists on par with theists, morally" - there is no equivalence. A committed theist espousing any flavor of divine command is a committed moral failure. They are perpetual children with a stunted moral agency. There can be no confidence in their ability to suss out right from wrong, whereas we can have high confidence that they will click their heels, shout jawohl, and take all the young girls for themselves..whenever that command comes down from heaven.
Thankfully, most of them are not so committed, despite their constant pious professions to the contrary.
Or I suspect some of them are psychopaths who honestly have no understanding of morality and never will, so they do need rules to live by. You can spot these psychopaths when they ask what's stopping an atheist from going out murdering and raping. If they have to ask that, then it's clear that they don't understand why people voluntarily choose to behave ethically.
