Moral standards

[Baqal]

@GodsRevolt
-You wait.
Justification?
And, sir, I find it quite amusing how you are refusing to tell me your moral standard.

[Whateverist]

Just think of all the scumbag Christian television personalities who have used money needed by old people barely getting by to buy gold plated bathroom fixtures. Or the ones who keep getting caught abusing drugs or having affairs with people in their own 'flock' or paying for a homosexual prostitute. God's commandments don't seem so very hard to disregard even for those who profess to embrace them as true believers. I wouldn't lose any sleep worrying about what atheists may do without this ineffectual device of yours.

You name acts done by Christians and seem to be labeling them as wrong, would it be different if an atheist was doing these things?

Or is the problem that Christians say things are wrong and then do them?

No it wouldn't be any different if an atheist was exploiting old people to the point where they had to make do with too little to eat or without all their meds.

Same goes for anyone, theist or atheist, who makes it a point to talk down homosexuality, sexual promiscuity or drugs when they themselves are indulging what they call a vice. Religious or not, it is a good idea to have your own house in order if you want to chide others on their behavior.

(You haven't addressed my chief point: that morality is like so many other phenomena in which we find our sensibilities align quite nicely with the vast majority of our peers.)

[ignoramus]

Unless there is an experiment that shows how bonobos react when placed against a separate community of bonobos and only enough resources for one?

The full length doco I watched was a controlled experiment where some food was between 2 cages with rope to each cage.

1 monkey grabbed it and started eating while the other watch.
Then the other decided try to get the food by tugging on the rope which he did. As soon as the other monkey started eating, the first one went completely ape shit.

They then tried the same experiment but this time, as soon as the first monkey started eating, a "human" moved the tray of food to the other monkey to eat. The first monkey was emotionless, like before the experiment had started. He showed no signs of anger or resentment towards the other monkey.
(he basically knew the other monkey was innocent and was therefore not angry at him)

[Esquilax]

The question isn't why life is preferable to death, but why the value on conscious entities, as you put it. Where does that value come from, because you seem to throw it in without much basis.

I would have thought this obvious: without conscious entities there are no moral actors, and hence no moral actions. A world without conscious entities has nobody to consider morality at all, making the entire exercise moot.

Meanwhile, consciousness, sentience and intelligence allow us to consider and construct moral frameworks, and to foster those things we would consider moral goods. Along with... well, everything else that we as sentient entities have managed to build. I submit to you that these are things worth preserving, and that complex life has inherent worth based on its abilities to accomplish all this.

Is this the standard you present? To begin by maintaining life and then go from there down a hierarchy of values?

It's a general rule, based on the observation that the sentient entities that construct moral frames and act in moral ways generally like being alive. It doesn't preclude, say, euthanasia in situations where your life becomes so painful that its continuance causes you more harm than good, for example. But it's a good start in keeping with our status as biological organisms.

[Zen Badger]

Same place Theists do, from society.

If history had ended up differently and we all lived in a Nazi society, would that be moral society?

By the standards of that society, yes.

Don't forget that in your own holy book it states quite unequivocally that a rapist must marry his victim. This is your gods law.
Do you consider that moral?
If not then you don't get your morality from the bible or your god.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If history had ended up differently and we all lived in a Nazi society, would that be moral society?

If God had ordained a society in which racial superiority, genocide, murdering children, and pimping out your virgin daughters were part and parcel of daily life, would that be a moral society?

Boru

[Zack]

I think trial and error has a lot to do with morals. Thousands of years of interaction have taught us what is generally acceptable or unacceptable. It wasn't that long ago when torturing and killing the "heretics" that you read here was not only moral but your duty and path to salvation. It still is in some places. What happened? Did god change his mind or did people start to see through the bullshit and stop believing in religion's claim to be the universe's sole purveyor of morality?

[Bad Wolf]

The way I understand the bonobo experiments is that when a conflict arises the alphas or dominate members take control of the situation, dole out justice as they see fit, and the rest submit.

This is only keeping order under the might is right rule.

Just so you know, Bonobos are one of the most peaceful apes ever. I don't think they ever actually fight at all. There is no 'might' involved in their morality system. They just have orgies. I can think of a few members who would love that.

[Dystopia]

Morality comes out of human nature and necessity. A good secondary source would be the declaration of human rights

[Ben Davis]

In an atheist world, where do the standards by which moral actions are measured come from?

In a nutshell, individuals who work well with others have a higher level of survivability. This has resulted in human development of behavioural frameworks which we call morality or ethics. There are 4 main sources, regularly documented, which provide a naturalistic (i.e. non-supernatural) basis for these:

1. Instincts for social behaviour. These are evolutionary traits which results from thousands of generations of interaction. Over time, brains which are more adept at particular types of social behaviour have been selected for which has resulted in an innate propensity towards commonly beneficial behaviour.

2. Education. We are taught values by our parents/guardians which they believe (or have evidence for) will provide us with a greater level of survivability and/or success as we develop. The social aspects of this education are integrated with our instinctive social behaviour to form moral/ethical value-systems. These systems tend to be more successful at coping with complex human interactions because they can cope with a greater level of variety/variation and still provide value-adding outcomes.

3. Experience. We tend to layer personal experiences over the top of our instincts and education as we receive real-world feedback on our actions. This facility allows us to tailor our value-systems to our situations, generally providing more successful results in their application. This increases the sophistication of our systems, catering for a greater level of variety/variation.

4. Authority (some see this as a subset of Education). We tend to develop behavioural role-models. This can save us time as we don't need to rethink every situation/dilemma, we can just apply our role-models approach. We can also be our own Authority because humans are habit-forming creatures. This is a fairly unsophisticated approach, requiring little labour which makes it successful though it doesn't cater very well with variety/variation.


The rabbit-hole goes far deeper than that but this is a reasonable overview. By comparing value-systems, we can see that religious-style morals fall heavily under category 4 while non-religious ones tend towards category 3.