Atheism and morality

[genkaus]

Waiting in the wings is the question of why these reasons are compelling if we don't actually believe in the existence of an afterlife, but I'll wait. Note however that your second syllogism doesn't seem to offer, in itself, any reason to prefer the formulation "a vengeful god who has control over your afterlife" to "an unforgiving and inflexible karmic law which will condemn you to an eternity of incarnations filled with suffering if you do not behave morally, as communicated by the uncreated and eternally existing Vedas." In particular, it's possible the Vedas issue from an agent and we are simply ignorant of their true source, so arguing that they require an agent is ineffective. The moral instruction contained in the traditional Indian metaphysics appears to offer an equivalent and equally rationally compelling reason for complying; why prefer one to the other?

Its funny how despite your claims of delusion and poor formal reasoning, you seem to be one of the few on this forum capable of rationally challenging my preconceptions. While I still believe that every known morality has an intelligent (or in many cases, semi-intelligent) instructor issuing its tenets, I realize that that need not be true for any hypothetical morality.

If we assume that the karmic law is true and a part of the universe, then the nature of morality becomes quite different. The instructions contained within it would be rationally derived from the facts of nature - not issued another hypothetical entity. For example, if we take it as a fact of karmic law that if you torture puppies in this life, then you'll be reborn as a puppy and be tortured in your next life, then the instruction that "you should not torture puppies" is not issued by anyone but acquired all the same by the instructee by joining that fact with his own self interest.

Such a morality would be about as "rationally inescapably authoritative" as Inigo's god-given one. You can still torture puppies if you don't care about being tortured as one in your next life and you can still torture them if you don't care about being tortured by the hypothetical vengeful god.

As a matter of fact, within the context of moral realism, this position would be even better than morality being issued by an agent. Not only does it remove the need for what has become a superflous extra, it'd also explain the existence of multiple moralities. If karmic law is a fact of nature and our moral sense something that we perceive this aspect of nature with, then each morality and moral theory would become the philisopher's explanation of it to the best of his perception. If an agent was issuing instructions, then many garbled versions of those instructions would indicate his incompetence at communication. But if it is a fact of nature, then we are simply taking our time in completely understanding it.

On a side not, the increase in human population would also suggest the validity of karmic law. In past, when our understanding of the law was worse, most humans would be reborn as bugs or flies. But now that we are being more moral, a lot of us are being reborn as humans - thus leading to higher population.

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First, no my original argument showed that morality required the existence of a supernatural agent with immense power over our interests. The 'catcher in the rye' god is still a god - still an agency with immense power over our interests. So the argument stands.

No, your first syllogism concluded that the instructive aspect of morals was the effect of an agent. Your conclusion of your second syllogism was that the agent from whom the instructions came was a supernatural agent with immense power over our interest. You cannot use the conclusion of syllogism #2 as support for the deductive validity of itself; that is a classic example of begging the question.

Even the first conclusion would be wrong. Even if there is an aspect of reality - like a natural law - that applies to human behavior, the instructive aspect of morality still wouldn't necessarily require an instructive agent. For example, the law of gravity would simply indicate that if you jump off the balcony, you will die. The instruction "don't jump off the balcony" is inferred by the instructee simply by combining that fact with the desire to live without the need for another agent. Similarly, all the moral law would require is statement of a fact like "if you are a dick then no one will talk to you". My desire to talk to others would automatically turn this into the instruction of "don't be a dick".