Where do atheists get their morality from?

[Vincenzo Vinny G.]

What search terms should I put in?

"a serious post by genkaus"?

Somehow your search function suggestion doesn't seem to be well thought out.

But I'll take a look at your posts and see if they carry substance.

edit: I just noticed how far back 116 and 121 were. That's a very low frequency of substantial posts.

ok I found em.

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You're engaging with me now, in open self-contradiction to your own previous statement.

Read the bolded part. Then, kindly fuck off.

Why should I take such an openly self-contradictory person seriously?

I wouldn't give a flying fuck for what you do or do not take seriously.

You sound pretty serious right now, CD. Why don't you take a chill pill and relax?

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Genkaus told me he made two serious posts in this thread and wanted me to respond to them. I'll quote and respond here.

If you are an atheist, your morality undoubtedly IS informed by atheism.

The crux of your mistake.

Yours is not a rational position, it is a semantic one. A rational position is one where one considers the proposition "A God doesn't exist", and accordingly all the rational consequences of the position, be they epistemic, ethical, skeptical, whatever.

Your position is not rational, it's strictly semantic. Or definitional. "Atheism means no belief in God and that's that!" It's a convenient position to hold, burden-of-proof-wise. But flip the situation and consider the theist: "I'm a Christian theist. All I believe is that Jesus is God. Don't tell me about any problems in my worldview. I don't care nor am I interested. I'm a Christian and that's that." If a Christian said that, you wouldn't smile and nod and neither would I.

So when you say something of the sort, I bring my paddle out to give you a right spanking too.

A rational consideration of atheism takes into account not only the propositional truth of atheism, but also the outcomes that such a belief has on other, related beliefs. There is no other way to go about it. We're not debating dictionary definitions, we are debating worldviews. And atheism, being a position on the existence of God, is a worldview. And rational atheism, taking into consideration the worldview that is derived from it, has a serious moral problem.

And if you don't like rape, murder and child abuse, you should be concerned that atheism allows for the legitimization of these crimes. Sam Harris was concerned enough. Dawkins himself now feels the same way. So why are you trying to escape the problem by playing word-games?

The mistake you make is assuming that every part of a person's worldview is derived from his atheism, i.e., the proposition that god doesn't exist. The only rational epistemic or ethical consequences of that would be "god doesn't give any knowledge" and "god doesn't provide any morals". Atheism itself is usually a consequence of some other worldview which would entail its own morality which need not be connected to atheism at all.

Your error is to putting all the atheists in the same categorical worldview and assuming that since their worldview derives from their atheism (and not vice-versa), the same moral problems apply to all of them. I guess this is the result of theistic worldview often being derived in its entirety form the existence of god and you being incapable of imagining anything different for atheists.

The correct answer would be that atheism doesn't say shit about rape, murder or child-abuse being right or wrong. That doesn't mean the world view that atheist subscribes to doesn't have its own rules regarding it.

On your first claim genkaus, I'm afraid you are mistaken. I believe the question of whether you believe a God exists or not dramatically transforms what you RATIONALLY consider to be the moral way to live.

If you believe the God is your source of moral values, given most classical definitions of God you become, necessarily, a moral realist (ie, God exists outside of your mind, in reality, he is the source of morality, therefore morality is outside of your mind, in reality) and objectivist (God is the source of all truth. God exists outside of the mind, therefore truth exists outside of the mind).

Now this would be the case even if you believed that God existed but chose to not worship him or obey him. The mere fact that a God exists makes him the source of morality and truth, regardless of whether you are a follower or not.

So a lot of one's morality hinges on the question of atheism, and the above ought to explain how. But you already acknowledge this in your second point, which seems you are contradicting yourself: You acknowledge that morality and belief in a deity are linked. But perhaps you mean that a belief in God does not then provide specific moral propositions. Is that your claim?