Why 'should' atheists be moral?

[The Grand Nudger]

Lets also mention that "because god" is a pretty empty reason. Haven't seen god punishing any immorality lately, god doesn't operate any prisons, he doesn't officiate at any trials. "Because god" is essentially saying "for no reason"...which was kind-of my answer to begin with..lol.

Many paths to the same destination, and all that jazz.

[Exian]

---

There is no independent reason to be moral, as a neutral universe doesn't care about us, our actions or what may be "good" or "bad".

From a human's perspective, most people have empathy. That allows you to have a feel for what it's like for other people to experience the results of your actions. Seeing someone suffer usually makes you feel bad, as you can reason that you would not like to suffer either. So at a basic level each person defines their own morals by what they think is and isn't acceptable to do to others based on the feelings the actions would provoke in them.

And as has been mentioned the side effects of being nice often make you feel good, and we understand that cooperation leads to a more pleasurable society for everyone.

But to answer why should we be moral: Because we care about other people. So we impose that "should" on ourselves. But the thing is, "being moral" isn't a consistent set of behaviours to be followed. Each person defines what is and isn't moral, so by definition they have decided what they should and shouldn't do. It's a tautology. From humanities viewpoint, we should be moral because it helps us all and we generally want a good society rather than chaos. We want health and happiness rather than harm and sadness. From a universal point of view, "should" has no meaning. We're all a bunch of atoms and stuff, doing what atoms do.

Of course you have unusual people like sociopaths who feel no empathy and as such will have trouble creating morals. The reason for them to be moral in a very broad sense is so they don't get punished by the law. But in a sense thats not being moral, it's following a code.

To me, morality is just about harm versus benefit for each action.

Thanks robvalue, I think this has been by far the best answer so far. So this empathy I think is one of the evolutionary reason why we are moral which I mention in my first post.

It seems as though having empathy can be seen as a disadvantage to people then. If it wasn't for having empathy you would have no problem doing things to benefit your life which would make the lives of others worse. As an individual (not for society as whole) can you think of empathy as a side-affect of evolution which you would be better without.

You talk about sociopaths who have no empathy so create their own morals and people having different definitions of what is moral to them. Do you not think it happens that there are people who agree on what should be moral but are choosing to be immoral anyway for their own benefit, therefore purposely knowing they are doing wrong.

---

I don't think you can detach individual benefits from societal benefits. Empathy and theory of mind are good for the community--a good community is good for the individual. Empathy is not a disadvantage to our current way of life. It would certainly be a disadvantage to feel bad for killing and looting if your individual survival depended on such actions, but then that's not a society; that's not a way of life in which morality would be brought up.

[abaris]

It seems as though having empathy can be seen as a disadvantage to people then. If it wasn't for having empathy you would have no problem doing things to benefit your life which would make the lives of others worse. As an individual (not for society as whole) can you think of empathy as a side-affect of evolution which you would be better without.

No empathy is the hallmark of a sociopath. Having empathy on the other hand is not exclusive to humans. There are numerous experiments showing that at least some higher animals like the great apes and dogs probably have it too.

[vincent150]

Do you care about people at all? If so, there's your answer. If not... well, you've already baselessly locked us out of using pragmatic concerns, so...

This is such a weird, inconsistent question you have. Theists might say not to be immoral because god, but I don't see you asking them the same questions you're asking me when I give you a secular reason not to be immoral.

Oh, I shouldn't be immoral because of god? Why not? Why shouldn't I just be an exception to that if I know nobody else will, so it benefits me?

... Well, why aren't you asking that to them, Vincent? Why are you pretending that "because god" is an actual answer to the question you're asking me? It's not; the same question applies to the theists. And they can't use hell as an answer to that question either, because you've discounted prison as a reason I can use, so obviously you're not content with simply referring to the consequences of an action as a reason.

Ultimately neither side has an objective sure shot answer to this question, but at least the atheist side appeals to things we know actually exists. And might I say, the inconsistency of your questioning, the focus on just pushing it on atheism, is very suspicious.

Firstly, I agree with you that when a theist says God is their reason for being moral is a bad answer but it is there answer always. I'm asking this question aimed at atheists because I want people to be able to answer this question for when it is asked to an atheist by a theist.

I'm discounting fear of prison as a reason because you would not say that reason to a theist. They would immediately ask what if you knew you wouldn't get caught.

You say do you care about people which is the main question and is in reality the reason why atheists are moral. A theist will ask why 'should' you care about people if you don't believe there's a god. This is the question that I wanted answering.

[Exian]

It seems as though having empathy can be seen as a disadvantage to people then. If it wasn't for having empathy you would have no problem doing things to benefit your life which would make the lives of others worse. As an individual (not for society as whole) can you think of empathy as a side-affect of evolution which you would be better without.

No empathy is the hallmark of a sociopath. Having empathy on the other hand is not exclusive to humans. There are numerous experiments showing that at least some higher animals like the great apes and dogs probably have it too.

Yeesh. My poor use of hide tags caused you to quote what Vincent said as something I said. I fixed the hide tags. My apologies.

[abaris]

A theist will ask why 'should' you care about people if you don't believe there's a god. This is the question that I wanted answering.

Yeah, and there are about a gazillion threads already dealing with that kind of question. Theists ask that question constantly here.

[robvalue]

It's interesting to look at empathy as a disadvantage. I think you could make that argument, but it depends what the goal is.

If for some reason someone set themselves the goal of killing 100 people, then empathy would be a disadvantage. So empathy could be seen as a drawback from achieving personal goals or standing within a society. But the goal set is arbitrary, as life has no specific goal. And then it's kind of self selecting, someone who thinks killing is morally wrong is unlikely to set a goal of killing people, so it won't be a disadvantage.

Speaking personally, I do find empathy to be a disadvantage in some situations, within my moral code. For example, I may come across an animal that has been injured, is clearly going to die and is suffering. I would consider the moral thing to do is to end its suffering. But then my empathy can stop me carrying out my moral decision; it kind of misfires. I cannot bring myself to "hurt" the animal, even if I think it's in the animal's best interest. I feel guilty, and that I have been immoral.

Morality is complicated

[vincent150]

A theist will ask why 'should' you care about people if you don't believe there's a god. This is the question that I wanted answering.

Yeah, and there are about a gazillion threads already dealing with that kind of question. Theists ask that question constantly here.

Surprisingly I couldn't actually find this 'exact' question anywhere when I looked. It's always one of the questions I said I wasn't asking in my first post.

[abaris]

Surprisingly I couldn't actually find this 'exact' question anywhere when I looked. It's always one of the questions I said I wasn't asking in my first post.

There are countless threads about moral around. Some pretty recently. It's not that this particular question makes up the headline, but it's in there for sure. It's always being asked in pretty much the same way you did.

[LostLocke]

It seems as though having empathy can be seen as a disadvantage to people then. If it wasn't for having empathy you would have no problem doing things to benefit your life which would make the lives of others worse. As an individual (not for society as whole) can you think of empathy as a side-affect of evolution which you would be better without.

No empathy is the hallmark of a sociopath. Having empathy on the other hand is not exclusive to humans. There are numerous experiments showing that at least some higher animals like the great apes and dogs probably have it too.

I think even more than just what we consider 'higher' animals have some, if only a small amount, of empathy too.

And empathy is one of the things that got us to where we are today.
As has been mentioned many times, humans are a social species.
Had we lost our empathy and abilities to work together, or never developed them in the first place, along the way, we wouldn't be here having this conversation. What few humans, if any, that would be roaming the earth would likely be a 'primitive' animal version of what we see today.

Any animal that was "equal or superior" to us while we were developing would have had the capability of driving our population into the ground, or even near extinction, simply by the fact that while we, as a species, were beating each other up (figuratively and literally), they were able to cooperate to rob us of our resources, or even turn us into food.

We learned that working together help us forage, gather, and hunt for food more easily, while giving us a better chance to survive becoming something else's dinner.
If we had spent all our time in-fighting and doing anything we wanted to anyone else without concern, our outcome would have been very different.