I've seen a bunch of posts inquiring about how Atheists grapple with the concepts of morality. It seems that many are under the impression that without a divine law giver, there is no reason to think that it ought to matter whether or not people are raped. It's been implied that Atheists are merely at the whim of popular vote when it comes to a controversy regarding the objectivity of Rights or Wrongs.
I keep hearings the term "Moral Absolutes" being used as if Moral Absolutes is something other than an entirely conceptual term used by conscious beings to describe things we perceive as right or wrong. It's a lower case right and wrong because they aren't proper nouns that have their own nature. While it's true that rights and wrongs are conceptual and contingent upon human perception, this doesn't mean that the things they describe are entirely subjective. A first person account of the experience of being raped is not the sum of all that can be taken into account when trying to understand why they call it wrong. There could be an alternate universe in which the experience of getting a haircut is as traumatic on a person as getting raped, and so the inquiry of-why they feel that to be wrong would suddenly be useful. But in this universe, such is not the case and so one need not worry about why it's wrong to cut people's hair. What we do experience as wrong is not random. On the whole, there are consistencies in what human being consider to be wrong and behind the subjective description of those experiences there is objective data that can be used as a complimentary understanding of not only why something is wrong, but we can discover non-random prescriptions on how best to avoid the experience of wrong. Again, these words are descriptive tools that we use to describe aspects of conscience experiences and there's no reason to think that they have any meaning in any situation apart from them.
If a question such as "Why is something 'wrong' " is to have an answer, that answer will be within the understanding of the sorts of things that maximize the well being and positive mental states of conscious beings. I'm not saying that the entirety of good and the overall well-being is what makes an individual act right or wrong. I'm saying that there are right ways and wrong ways to push the arrow in a positive direction on an individual basis and that we ought to pursue the good ones and work to eliminate that bad ones. The reason we ought to behave in a good way is intuitively evident in comparison to the alternatives. If a psychopath takes pleasure in raping as many victims as possible, and in his mind that maximizes his positive mental experience, then we ought to try and understand why. We can look at abnormal moralities such as this one just as we can in any other domain of science. The occasional bad apple that may fall from a tree does not eliminate our understanding of the far more likely good apple. The more we understand about the tree and its environment; the more we can produce and enjoy the fruit of our investigation.
That being said, what the hell does believing a God says things are good or bad add to this understanding of how best to maximize the well being in conscious creature as?
Is something right merely because God says so? (Then rape could be right if God says so)
or
Does God recognize things as right or wrong based on some other form of criteria? (Your turn to think...)
I keep hearings the term "Moral Absolutes" being used as if Moral Absolutes is something other than an entirely conceptual term used by conscious beings to describe things we perceive as right or wrong. It's a lower case right and wrong because they aren't proper nouns that have their own nature. While it's true that rights and wrongs are conceptual and contingent upon human perception, this doesn't mean that the things they describe are entirely subjective. A first person account of the experience of being raped is not the sum of all that can be taken into account when trying to understand why they call it wrong. There could be an alternate universe in which the experience of getting a haircut is as traumatic on a person as getting raped, and so the inquiry of-why they feel that to be wrong would suddenly be useful. But in this universe, such is not the case and so one need not worry about why it's wrong to cut people's hair. What we do experience as wrong is not random. On the whole, there are consistencies in what human being consider to be wrong and behind the subjective description of those experiences there is objective data that can be used as a complimentary understanding of not only why something is wrong, but we can discover non-random prescriptions on how best to avoid the experience of wrong. Again, these words are descriptive tools that we use to describe aspects of conscience experiences and there's no reason to think that they have any meaning in any situation apart from them.
If a question such as "Why is something 'wrong' " is to have an answer, that answer will be within the understanding of the sorts of things that maximize the well being and positive mental states of conscious beings. I'm not saying that the entirety of good and the overall well-being is what makes an individual act right or wrong. I'm saying that there are right ways and wrong ways to push the arrow in a positive direction on an individual basis and that we ought to pursue the good ones and work to eliminate that bad ones. The reason we ought to behave in a good way is intuitively evident in comparison to the alternatives. If a psychopath takes pleasure in raping as many victims as possible, and in his mind that maximizes his positive mental experience, then we ought to try and understand why. We can look at abnormal moralities such as this one just as we can in any other domain of science. The occasional bad apple that may fall from a tree does not eliminate our understanding of the far more likely good apple. The more we understand about the tree and its environment; the more we can produce and enjoy the fruit of our investigation.
That being said, what the hell does believing a God says things are good or bad add to this understanding of how best to maximize the well being in conscious creature as?
Is something right merely because God says so? (Then rape could be right if God says so)
or
Does God recognize things as right or wrong based on some other form of criteria? (Your turn to think...)
