Where do atheists get their morality from?

[Minimalist]

How do atheists know what is morally right or morally wrong? Is morality cultural, gut feel, are there any basic principled you can use? Opinions?

Hopefully, not from the same place that jesus freaks claim to get theirs.

[TaraJo]

My morality is simple: don't hurt other people, or hurt them as little as possible if I have no other choice.

That works, right?

Works a whole fuck of a lot better than getting your moral compass from a 2000 year old book that's been translated and re translated so many times nobody can keep track of what the original intent was. Especially good in that said book also contradicts itself regularly; I mean, really, what's the point to saying you get your morality from the Bible when the Bible can be easily interpreted to defend any absurd position out there?

[Cyberman]

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"Where do atheists get their morality from?"

Same place as you do. A combination of cultural upbringing, empathy for others, societal acceptance and other similar factors. As any other social species, humans demonstrate tolerance for co-operative members of the group and abhorrence for those who abuse and manipulate the group. That's why we applaud someone for helping an old lady across the road and lock up someone who mugs that old lady for her pension. In less enlightened times, people who violated the social mores for personal gain would have been punished by death or banishment from the group. This still happens in what we in the so-called civilised world (and America) might consider less enlightened nations, and most notably in the animal kingdom among other social species.

Any good to you?

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I can't disagree with most of what you said. I'm not sure I agree with this idea I think you said - that animals put each other to death or banish each other for violating social mores for personal gain. Most animals don't seem to have social mores so much as patterns of reactions. Some more intelligent social animals do seem to have something like primitive culture.

While it may be true of some animal species, particularly those we would regard as 'primitive' animals, it's probably not strictly true to say that most animals have patterns of reactions rather than what we would probably anthropomorphically call social mores, at least among the social species. What I really had in mind, and I probably didn't express it as clearly as I could have, is not that non-human social animals have social mores per se, but that the concept of punishing wrongdoers, those individuals who act against the society to cause harm or for personal gain (mating rights, food, etc), is not unique to us. Ever heard of a phenomenon known as a crow's court?

During my many years of roaming the countryside I witnessed what is called the Crows Court. This took the form of a fairly wide circle of over one hundred carrion crows and in the middle a solitary crow. There was a lot of cawing going on and after 15 minutes or so two crows stepped out from the circle. They moved towards the lone bird and began pecking at it. The bird being attacked offered no defence and after a couple of minutes two other crows changed places with the executioners and continued the savage attack. The crows forming the circle were very excited and noisy and this continued until the victim was dead. When the crows had dispersed I checked the victim and although there was little blood, its body was badly damaged and the eyes had been pecked out.

Also, rather more scholarly, there is this article in the journal Nature, issue 373 dated 19 January 1995. Unfortunately you need to be either a subscriber for $199 US or make a payment of £22 to read/download the entire document, but the abstract reads as follows:

Punishment in animal societies

T. H. Clutton-Brock & G. A. Parker

Although positive reciprocity (reciprocal altruism) has been a focus of interest in evolutionary biology, negative reciprocity (retaliatory infliction of fitness reduction) has been largely ignored. In social animals, retaliatory aggression is common, individuals often punish other group members that infringe their interests, and punishment can cause subordinates to desist from behaviour likely to reduce the fitness of dominant animals. Punishing strategies are used to establish and maintain dominance relationships, to discourage parasites and cheats, to discipline offspring or prospective sexual partners and to maintain cooperative behaviour.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

I still like "try not to be a cunt"

It's not mine,it's from an Aussie comedian whose name escapes me.

[Kayenneh]

Pad, it would be Jim Jefferies

[Whateverist]

How about "do unto others exactly as your overlord dictates in order to gain an infinite reward and avoid a monstrous punishment". Christian morality turns everyone into mercenaries or extortion victims. Not much moral worth either way.

[Angrboda]

A more general form of this question was posed in the recent Morality: Where do you get yours? thread. (My response in that thread is here.)

Basically, I endorsed the model from evolutionary psychology. However, as a philosopher, I realize this leaves some loose ends dangling. (I suspect the ends can be tied by way of understanding the nature of mind and the structure of thought, but that remains to be seen.) I'm grateful for the examples Stimbo has given. I was aware of the vast body of literature on animal morality and intelligence, but at this point I am largely ignorant of the subject, and as Stimbo noted, the examples most commonly given refer to animal altruism.

My thinking hasn't evolved much from that thread, other than to summarize my principle of ethics thusly:

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law."

While I borrow the phrasing from Crowley and Thelema, I intend a different meaning. In particular I emphasize two things.

First, our wills are not radically free. What we as an evolved biological organism are capable of willing, what we find hard to will and what is easy, is defined as an artifact of our evolutionary history. Our wills have been refined over time to serve the needs of our selfish genes. And something peculiar about that will, is that it deviates significantly from rational models. For example, our behavior in the face of risk/reward expectation is not linear. (See Kahneman and Tversky, prospect theory.) It's also known that we respond overly aggressively to rule breakers and rule breaking, which makes applying the classic tit-for-tat strategy essentially void, as the players in the game, us, play by a different set of rules. (And those rules are geared to our survival as a social species.) Moreover, a large chunk of our will involves cooperative ventures like families, tribes, and societies, ventures in which our evolved psychology allows us to leverage language, culture and reason into assemblages which include things like agreeing to be punished if we break rules, and so forth, which result in a sophisticated will which takes many things beyond visceral desire into account.

Second is that our wills are what I call "cognitively opaque". We can inspect the results, for example by apprehending a feeling of wrongness when we contemplate some act, but the reasons for that judgement aren't accessible to our introspection — the reason we came to that apprehension is computed somewhere below consciousness. It's like math. If someone asks you, "What is 8 times 7?" the answer 56 quickly pops into mind, but there's no knowledge of how your mind determined it was 56, nor why it was able to accurately select the answer. Morality is the same way. We know that we feel murder is wrong, but not why we feel that way. And certainly there have been plenty of attempts to explain why the things we consider moral are moral, but these are all post hoc; they are attempting to explain the feeling, not attempts to suggest what moral feelings we should have. (e.g. if an ethicist attempted to argue that we should think of examples of the color orange next to the color blue as immoral; we would consider the arguments ludicrous, not on the basis of the argument he makes, but because it so clearly contradicts our intuitive moral judgement on the matter. Ethics justifies intuition, not the reverse.)

I was going somewhere else with this, but it has escaped me. Oh well. FWIW.

[greneknight]

How do atheists know what is morally right or morally wrong? Is morality cultural, gut feel, are there any basic principled you can use? Opinions?

I don't think it's at all a mystery where atheists get their morality from. What's truly surprising is where do we Christians get our morality from? It's easier for atheists because they just do the right thing. For some of us, we have to distinguish the immorality taught in the Bible in order to do the right thing. So it's less spontaneous for us because we must get round the hideous immorality that the Bible teaches.

[Atom]

How do atheists know what is morally right or morally wrong? Is morality cultural, gut feel, are there any basic principled you can use? Opinions?

The Golden Rule predates religious morality. It has been used by social animals (including man) for thousands of years.

Tsze-kung asked, saying, "Is there one word which may serve as a rule of
practice for all one's life?" The Master said, "Is not Reciprocity such a
word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others."

— Confucius, Analects XV.24

I did a study on Golden Rules a few months ago. Here's part of it

ARE ALL RELIGIONS THE SAME? A COMPARISON OF “GOLDEN RULES”
Christianity: Matthew 7:12 New International Version (NIV) 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
The Christian Golden Rule is far more comprehensive and inclusive than the comparable “rule” in other religions. Most other religions only say that you shouldn’t do bad things to others, an omission that leaves out the love and kindness that is the character of Christ. Some religions such as Islam and Taoism encourage only positive regard or include only some people. Christianity excels!
Judaism "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. That is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary" (Talmud, Shabbat 31a)
Does not tell followers to do good to others; tells them not to do bad. Applies only to actions that are substantial enough to qualify as “hateful”, rather than the Christian version which says “in everything.”
Brahmanism (a form of Hinduism) "This is the sum of duty: Do naught unto others which would cause you pain if done to you" (Mahabharata 5:5157).
Does not tell followers to do good to others; tells them not to do bad. Applies only to actions that are seen as “pain”, rather than the Christian version which says “in everything”
Buddism "Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful" (Udana-Varga 5:18).
Does not tell the follower to do good to others; tells them only not to do bad. Applies only to actions “you yourself would find hurtful”, rather than the Christian version which says “in everything”.
Islam “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself" (Sunnah)
Applies only to thoughts, not to action. Includes only to those regarded as “brothers”. Excludes women. Includes the judgment that one isn’t “a believer” if he doesn’t wish his brother well.
Confucianism "Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you" (Analects 15:23).
Does not tell followers to do good to others; tells them only not to do bad.
Taosim "Regard your neighbor's gain as your own gain and your neighbor's loss as your own loss" (T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien).
Applies only to thoughts, not to action. Lacks the important qualifier in Christianity, "in everything." Excludes those that are not perceived as neighbors.
Zoroastrianism "That nature alone is good which refrains from doing unto another whatsoever is not good for itself" (Dadistan-i-dinik 94:5).
Does not tell followers to do good to others; tells them not to do bad.

[Deicide73]

Morality is innate in all of us. To say that we didn't know right from wrong before the "burning bush" is ridiculous. I doubt very much we would have made this far if we didn't.