Atheism and morality

[Inigo]

No we're not and no it isn't.

Yes we are and yes it is.

Neener, neener, neener.

I've never been "instructed" to be moral. I've felt inclined to be moral(altruistic) because it makes me feel better about myself as a person

If you think something is "instructing" you to be nice, you better seek therapy before it starts "instructing" you to hurt people.

Well, not everyone has a moral sense. If atheism is true that is as much as can be said for altruism. IF you like it - if you're into altruism - then great. But if you hate it, then, well, you have no reason to be altruistic. The impression that most of us have (but not you, it seems) is that there is more to altruism than this. It is right to cultivate altruism and to exercise it in certain circumstances, and we have reason to be altruistic even if we just aren't in the mood or couldn't care less about it. That's what's distinctive about morality.
But you don't have a moral sense, so you wouldn't know.

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@Inigo

I lost interest in this thread after you avoided my post somewhere at the beginning... but I can't help to point out a crucial mistake of yours. The common theme that I'm picking up on is that you claim that [objective] morals "instruct". Saying that something *is* wrong doesn't mean one *ought* not to do it. The former is merely a statement, an observation, an opinion while the latter is a command. Your job is to take us through the philosophical minefield to get from A to B:

• Action x is morally wrong
  
• Action x ought not to be performed
  

There is a huge void between the two which you have just been assuming to be bridged for the last 15 pages. Any moral ethics 101 professor would strongly disagree with you.

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Yeah. Well the definition of altruism is still being bickered about in a lot of quarters. Technically a fly landing in a spider web for a spider to eat is altruistic according to the most common definition.

I consider helping someone without receiving anything tangible in return to be altruistic.

I don't consider a "feeling" tangible in that sense.

Sounds like you're an indirect realist...

Apologies for ignoring your post - I must have missed it somehow. My claim that morality instructs/favours/commands is a conceptual claim. It is just (in part) what I mean by 'morality'. So any attempt to analyse morality that identifies moral properties with things that cannot instruct is going to fail. It won't be an analysis of the concept of morality. Like I say, we have to make assumptions and that's one of mine. Everyone else makes it too: the normativity of morality is not in question, what is in question is how to explain it.

You point to Hume's 'is/ought' claim, namely that you cannot get an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is ironic as Hume is essentially making precisely the point I am making: morality tells you what to do. Descriptions don't. Telling you that a certain act is altruistic just tells you it is altruistic. It doesn't direct you - it isn't an instruction.
However, a description of an instruction - pointing out to someone that they are, so far as you can see, being instructed not to do something, is different. That is a description. And when we say that an act is 'wrong' we are describing: we are saying that the act has wrongness (that's a description). But what we are describing is the fact the act is one that we are instructed not to do.
A description of an instruction is not itself an instruction. But it draws attention to the fact there is an instruction. And that's what we're doing when we say that an act is wrong. We are drawing attention to the fact - or recognising - that there exists (or seems to exist) an instruction not to do this thing.

There is no need to get into a discussion of altruism. For the existence of altruism (of various kinds) is not in dispute. What is in dispute is what it would for altruism to have moral goodness. We don't just judge altruism to be altruism. We judge it to have moral goodness. It is that feature that I am wondering about. It is that feature that seems to require the existence of a god.

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[quote='FallentoReason']Any moral ethics 101 professor would strongly disagree with you.[\quote]

Well, that's certainly not true! First, there is a huge debate over whether you can get an ought from an is. The matter isn't exactly settled! On my view to say that someone 'ought' (morally) to do something is to describe an instruction. It is not to actually instruct. When I say 'you ought to be altruistic to some degree' I am not, if I am using 'ought' in its moral sense (the word ought is multiply ambiguous, which doesn't help) I mean 'morality bids you not do that'. I am describing, not prescribing. But what I am describing is a prescription.