Where do atheists get their morality from?

[DeistPaladin]

You know, I've heard that statistic about atheists in prisons and I don't think that it really proves anything. All that proves is that atheists are better at avoiding getting caught. Which makes sense. When you spend your whole life living in sin, you're bound to be better at it than the amateur from the other side of the fence who occasionally crosses over.

I would agree it's important to avoid falling into the pitfall of assuming correlation proves causation. Other factors can always be at work.

Classic example is the rate of violent crime and ice cream sales. Both go up in the summer. A careless consumer of statistics might jump to the conclusion that ice cream consumption causes violent criminal activity.

Better statistics, because they involve a larger and more diverse population sample, are the health of societies as a whole when they are secular. Social studies have been done to show how secular Europe or Japan are happier and have fewer social problems for their lack of religion. In the US, "blue" states are also better off than "red" religious states.

There is no statistical evidence that atheism leads to moral bankruptcy.

[Cyberman]

The moral of the story then (see what I did there..?) is that statistics can be used to prove or disprove anything and that the figures on their own are essentially meaningless; as we are so often told, we need to view them in context.

I do wonder, though, how a certain segment of our membership would react if the figures did truly show that atheists made up the majority of criminals?

[KichigaiNeko]

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[Waratah]

I use to get my morality from the bible, But one day I just decided not to kill anymore for god. So much killing is needed according to the bible, kill witches, gays, kids who hit and curse their parents and so on blah blah blah.
I think I am a better person for not following the bible, don't you?

[greneknight]

I use to get my morality from the bible, But one day I just decided not to kill anymore for god. So much killing is needed according to the bible, kill witches, gays, kids who hit and curse their parents and so on blah blah blah.
I think I am a better person for not following the bible, don't you?

Not just that. You also decided not to rape the Midianite girls after killing all the Midianite men, women, non-virgins, boys, babies and livestock.

It's funny how I'm an altar boy and yet I never knew of this Midianite thing or indeed many of the funny bits of the Bible until I heard Dawkins on youtube.

[downbeatplumb]

Not just that. You also decided not to rape the Midianite girls after killing all the Midianite men, women, non-virgins, boys, babies and livestock.

It's funny how I'm an altar boy and yet I never knew of this Midianite thing or indeed many of the funny bits of the Bible until I heard Dawkins on youtube.

Had you read the bible or just heard the selected highlights at sermons?

[greneknight]

Not just that. You also decided not to rape the Midianite girls after killing all the Midianite men, women, non-virgins, boys, babies and livestock.

It's funny how I'm an altar boy and yet I never knew of this Midianite thing or indeed many of the funny bits of the Bible until I heard Dawkins on youtube.

Had you read the bible or just heard the selected highlights at sermons?

I'm not into reading the Bible much in the first place. But I know the liturgy like the back of my hand. As an acolyte, I can't hold on to the prayer book because I'm usually holding the candlestick during the procession or clasping my hands at the altar. So acolytes know the liturgy by heart. But the Bible isn't so important.

[liam]

the Bible isn't so important.

This.

Also, I don't know if this has been pointed out yet, but there is nothing in the conception of god (as creator, maintainer or w/e) that has any moral guiding characteristics. It doesn't seem unlikely that it was shoehorned into ancient ethics to save from complete skepticism. Hmm.

[Angrboda]

The God Effect

At first glimpse, what the New York Times dubbed the God Effect seems to support Prager's proposal. In what is known as the Dictator Game, (S&N hereafter) gave participants ten dollars and told them that they could keep or share as much of it as they wanted with a second player, whom they would never meet. Under such conditions participants keep all or most of the money for themselves, and that is just what S&N's control participants did.

By contrast, S&N primed religious concepts in the minds of participants in their experimental group by having them unscramble short lists of words to produce sentences. The lists included words like "divine" and "prophet," which were used in non-religious senses in the unscrambled sentences -- such as "her dress was divine." The point about such priming procedures is that the effects that they induce are, presumably, unconscious. Crucially, when their participants in the experimental group played the one shot, anonymous Dictator Game, they were significantly more generous than the controls, leaving on average $2.38 more. The religious primes seemed to have elicited greater generosity.

At Second Glimpse, Glimpses Matter

At second glimpse, however, S&N's findings cause as many problems for the view that religion makes people more moral as they provide evidences for it. Although twenty-four of their fifty student participants were non-believers, those atheists and agnostics, like all of S&N's participants, had been assigned to the control and experimental groups randomly. S&N found that these participants were just as susceptible to the unconscious God Effect as religious participants were.

More importantly, though, in a second study S&N provided evidence that the effects on their participants may not have been due to anything uniquely religious. This study was like the first, but S&N incorporated additional checks on their methods. Instead of students, their participants were community members (with fewer atheists), and they were questioned about the experiment afterward. S&N also used the scrambled sentences task to produce neutral primes for their control group and legal primes for a third group. Using words like "civic," "jury," and "contract," the latter condition yielded sentences like "he drives a Civic."

This second study replicated the God Effect, but it also revealed a comparable legal institutions effect. Participants in that third group proved just as generous as those who had had religious concepts primed. The questioning of participants afterward supported the unconscious impact of priming, since seventy-five of seventy-eight participants were unaware of anything connected with religion in the experiment.



Other studies suggest that any conditions that reduce anonymity in such economic games or that even unconsciously cue concerns about reputation generally will engender more moral behavior. A picture of two eyes on the wall, as opposed to a picture of flowers, was, for example, sufficient to significantly increase the payments for drinks in a lounge using the honor system. Religious concepts have what it takes to inspire better conduct, but the eyes have it too.

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I thought the following library of essays might be of general interest to readers of this thread.

Infidels.org: (Modern Library)

[Undeceived]

I thought the following library of essays might be of general interest to readers of this thread.

Infidels.org: (Modern Library)

As moral. As moral as theists, based on theistic morals? Where else might atheists get this standard of morality? From society, perhaps, which borrows almost exclusively from Christianity. Sure you can abide by Christianity's morals, and many atheists do. But by definition of evolution you have no objective morals. You are simply imitating culture to be accepted by culture. In the process, you validate Christian ethics as the most acceptable, tossing out one or two (such as adultery, abortion) to suit your own personal whims. Perhaps by 'having morals' you mean being generally good to other human beings. Yet according to evolution there is no good, just survival. Your 'good' is done out of self-interest. If you truly were altruistic, you'd contradict survival of the fittest. Why should anyone be impressed you can imitate out of self-interest? A monkey can do that. Moral atheism is an oxymoron unless the atheist defines a moral his own way. In such a case, what good is a subjective moral? Why should anyone be impressed that you can create your own idea of right and wrong? A monkey can do that too. Without altruism, ethics is just an act.