The difference between ethical atheism and nihlism is that ethical atheists have more faith

[The Reality Salesman01]

I don't see what theists could have against arbitrary morality. That is after all what all morality is, especially religious morality. The only difference is that secular morality is based on man's experiences and reason, and religious morality is supposedly based on what god says.

Secular morality: Murder is wrong because it deprives the victim of their right to live, and has demonstrable negative effects on the people the victim is close to.

Religious morality: God tells us that murder is wrong, and so therefore it is.

@jstrodel
You seem to be confusing the possibility of an objective or absolute morality as the only way a good person can be honest with themselves about what is truely good or right. That is to say, that in the end, long after the world is gone, why would anything that we do actually matter unless it was grounded in some absolute truth of what is objectively right or wrong.

For example, if I killed somebody, why would it ultimately matter? If all we are is thinking beings arbitrarily going through space and time (or space-time : ) ), how could anything we do really matter if not grounded in some teleological order or law? You seem to be questioning the relevance of moral actions of the present compared to their relevance long after we are gone.

To suggest that a murder is not objectively wrong in the immediate present if it is not teleologically affirmed absolutely doesn't quite make sense. Especially not to the family of the victem. The relevance of the act in question is relative to the time of occurence. This is what makes the idea of Absolute Morality difficult to affirm, not to mention the lack of any universal morality which supports the concept of moral relativity.

Think about space time as an analogy. It is all relative. Morality is relative to the time and place of the event being placed into the moral filter. There is no absolute time, and there is no absolute morality. The history of mankind illustrates this perfectly. The absence of absolute time doesn't allow us to choose a different continuum any more than the absence of absolute moralty gives us the right to kill whomever we please. The ability to reflect on our thoughts grants us that makes us human. The desire to ask my self why before I act on a thought or instinct. We make words like "right" or "wrong" to describe our conclusions. These should not be confused with rules as nothing of the sort is absolute.


Nothing that you said even remotely addresses the very serious questions raised by the post. Where does the victims "right to live" come from? To be an honest atheist means to reflect on the nature of these concepts. Is your knowledge that there is right to live stronger than your belief in absolute, unguided atheistic evolution as the means by which life was created? I do not think you can have both.

Why do people have a right to live more than ameobas? You may say "because people feel pain". But there are a million other considerations. What it is about people that makes them special?

Religious morality and secular morality are totally different. Religious morality says that people are created with a certain nature, and to disagree with that nature is to rebel against God. Things are not only prohibited because God forbids them, they are prohibited because that prohibition is part of the divine order of the universe that is established.

Secular morality simply invents categories, although usually those categories are related to Judeo-Christian values and past precedent, and are worth taking seriously, even if you are nihilist. But practically, there is no reason to accept those categories and believe they have more authority than some other category that you invent.

---

Why are you so closed minded?

---

I do not need moral absolutes to be a participant in the political process. I can use the politic process to follow my own arbitrary preferences.

That is exactly what I was talking about in the previous post, and that would make you cynical and a bad person.

---

Nothing makes us better. Seriously. We're all just collections of atoms facing a completely indifferent universe.e

Labeling your position existentialism instead of nihilism does nothing to counter the nihilistic tendencies it would create in people that hear what you believe. How do you educate children? How do you teach them the difference from right and wrong when there is no reason to obey it?

What is a 'good person'?

A good person is a person that lives in a way that is consistent with how people are created to live.

You get your morals from the culture you're raised in. The morals in the US are going to be very different than the morals in China (for instance, individualism vs "for the greater good").

That is true that you get your morals from the culture you are from, but that does nothing to deal with the problem of cultural relativism. What if you have a choice to either fight in the Chinese military or the American military. How do you know which country to serve? Should you follow Hitler because you were born in Germany.

Nothing that you have written comes close to dealing with the problem of moral skepticism.