Atheism, A Grim Position?

[*steve*]

Religious ethics fills in the blank with something supernatural. "Pleasing God", "Getting admission to Heaven", "Achieving Nirvana", whatever.

Atheist ethics fills in the blank with something in this world. What is the purpose of human life? We have our choice on that. "Promoting the health and happiness of my family, friends, adopted circle, and our descendants." "Contributing to the long-run survival of human civilization". "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure." There are a million possibilities.

I get that. So then if "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure" entailed killing redheads because it was pleasurable, does that go against atheist ethics? If so, how?

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You are conflating existential nihilism and ethical nihilism. The "philosophical ideas" you are using as the basis for your theology require a basic upgrade.

How so?

[Esquilax]

I get that. So then if "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure" entailed killing redheads because it was pleasurable, does that go against atheist ethics? If so, how?

For ethics to be functional, for it not to be the relativistic strawman that a lot of theists seem to want to characterize it as without god, it needs to be blind. You need to be considering your maximum pleasure without knowing what you'll be within the society you'll be in at the time you live your life.

Put simply, ethics are not about you, they are about us. All of us. When you say that killing redheads is pleasurable to you, first of all I have to say I find that unlikely, as a normally functioning human brain has empathy that would prevent that; statistically few people think like that. But more importantly, since ethics does not concern itself solely with you and what you want, if your idea of maximized pleasure subtracts pleasure from someone else, then it is rationally untenable as a position. You might still hold it, and nobody can force you to change your mind on that, but you cannot make it jive with the way ethics works without adding in a whole lot of special pleading, making exemptions for yourself that do not appear in a normal execution of ethical considerations.

So the short answer is, yes, that goes against ethics.

[Forsaken]

I get that. So then if "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure" entailed killing redheads because it was pleasurable, does that go against atheist ethics? If so, how?

There is nothing such "atheist ethics".

[*steve*]

Wrong: the ultimate basis is called "reality," of which we are individual components thereof, with objectively verifiable natures as biological beings. Due to this, some positions, like genocide and torture and all that, are not equally defensible, and are, in fact, indefensible. You just need to rationally reason through these things, keeping in mind the facts of our biology and the world we live in.

Ok, here's how this would go. I'd ask you why they are indefensible. You'd offer an answer, then I'd ask why that? Next answer. Then I'd ask why that again? On and on. There is no stopping point if there is no ultimate basis of value so any answer would eventually go nowhere or just be a personal (or group) preference. In that case any other position would be just as equally defensible.

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I get that. So then if "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure" entailed killing redheads because it was pleasurable, does that go against atheist ethics? If so, how?

There is nothing such "atheist ethics".

From your previous post "Atheist ethics fills in the blank with something in this world"

[Faith No More]

Ok, here's how this would go. I'd ask you why they are indefensible. You'd offer an answer, then I'd ask why that? Next answer. Then I'd ask why that again? On and on. There is no stopping point if there is no ultimate basis of value so any answer would eventually go nowhere or just be a personal (or group) preference. In that case any other position would be just as equally defensible.

Not true, but even if it were, as someone that gets his morals from his interpretation of god, you'd have even less of a defense. You'd having nothing more than how you interpret the will of a being you can't prove exists, which would be no more valid than the other millions of intepretations of the will of a being no one can prove exists.

Try making sure you're on solid ground before you go attacking others.

[Esquilax]

Ok, here's how this would go. I'd ask you why they are indefensible. You'd offer an answer, then I'd ask why that? Next answer. Then I'd ask why that again? On and on. There is no stopping point if there is no ultimate basis of value so any answer would eventually go nowhere or just be a personal (or group) preference. In that case any other position would be just as equally defensible.

So essentially you just want to be a child, when engaged in adult discussions of moral concerns, and just say "why? why? why?" every time anyone gives you a satisfactory answer to a question, until you get to a point where they either admit ignorance or just declare it as axiomatic, upon which time you pretend the umpteen other answers suddenly don't exist, because nyah nyah, you don't know? And your idea of an ultimately satisfying answer isn't one arrived at by rational thought and consideration, but the simple fiat assertion that "magic space wizard said so!"?

Honestly, if you're not willing to come to this conversation like a mature adult then don't even bother.

As it happens though, I do have a stopper answer for your nonsense, so let's see: why is genocide bad? Because it goes against the well being and safety of conscious entities, which is the foundation of complex ethics. Why? Because morality requires conscious moral actors in order to self sustain. Morality needs to concern itself at base with the lives of conscious entities because without conscious entities there are no actors to perform moral actions, nor to consider them as part of any given moral framework. Non-living objects cannot take part in a moral system, only conscious, living beings can.

Why?

... Oh, the answer is exactly the same one as the answer to the last "why?" and it's equally cogent as an answer to this one. Morality really does require moral actors to be a thing, thus the self sustenance of morality features them as a necessity. It's an answer which strikes down to the very core of morality, it's ultimate existence, and it does so without invoking magic, or theism, or any such unverified crap. If you don't answer that last "why?" with anything but what I just gave, morality itself ceases to exist, and you cannot ask any further why questions.

Game, set, match. Do let me know when you'd like to play a grown ups game instead.

[The Grand Nudger]

Example, a person has their hand caught in a bear trap. No help coming. They can cut off their own hand to live without the hand or die. Crappy choice but it is an option.

Nothing to do with mitigating circumstances though.

It's easy to get sentimental about these things. Another example, if you could save the lives of 100 million people by killing a hundred innocent children, would you do it?

Me? No. This, in my estimation, is closer to a mitigating circumstance....but not a realistic scenario, and it's still missing the push that would land it squarely in the camp.

However, I understand your indignation about a God who would let some poor guy suffer so that life could exist. The other mitigating thing, at least in my theological ontology is that, that guy's suffering is literally God's suffering as well. This comes from an ontology that I call an aspect monism or in Vishishtadvaita a qualified monism. The poor soul is an aspect of God.

You present this as a dichotomy, I asked you to demonstrate that such a dichotomy was present and a factor with regards to life. Unless you can do so..........eh?

The suffering of the antogonist is not necessarily a mitigating factor in what the antogonist does to another. If this were so, a person who got his jollies off by slicing up girls -while he sliced himself up- would have a defense. He doesn't. Neither does this concept of god on these grounds.

I know it still sounds cruel. People are tempted to make God out as some sort of Big Daddy or Big Mommy where shit should never happen. Just ain't so, in my view.

Right, shooting straight for the drain. But why, then, invoke mitigating factors that are neither mitigating factors, demonstrable, or even relevant? If you're content to believe in an incompetent god just let that god be incompetent. Right?

[Forsaken]

In that case any other position would be just as equally defensible.

Believing that "other position would be just as equally defensible" is exceptionally insidious - it sets up a (false) notion that god is the default position from which the non-believers have strayed.

[*steve*]

Put simply, ethics are not about you, they are about us. All of us. When you say that killing redheads is pleasurable to you, first of all I have to say I find that unlikely, as a normally functioning human brain has empathy that would prevent that; statistically few people think like that. But more importantly, since ethics does not concern itself solely with you and what you want, if your idea of maximized pleasure subtracts pleasure from someone else, then it is rationally untenable as a position. You might still hold it, and nobody can force you to change your mind on that, but you cannot make it jive with the way ethics works without adding in a whole lot of special pleading, making exemptions for yourself that do not appear in a normal execution of ethical considerations.

So the short answer is, yes, that goes against ethics.

I wouldn't approach this using the term "ethics" (Forsakens term) because it is such a complicated topic. I'd use terms like "right" and "wrong" instead because they are more intuitive. However, so if I get this right, you are saying that killing redheads "goes against ethics" because it is against normative ethical considerations ("normal execution of ethical considerations"). So does that mean the defense against killing redheads is just an appeal to what is normative? Why use what is normative as a defense? Why not just what I want?

[rexbeccarox]

I get that. So then if "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure" entailed killing redheads because it was pleasurable, does that go against atheist ethics? If so, how?

For ethics to be functional, for it not to be the relativistic strawman that a lot of theists seem to want to characterize it as without god, it needs to be blind. You need to be considering your maximum pleasure without knowing what you'll be within the society you'll be in at the time you live your life.

Put simply, ethics are not about you, they are about us. All of us. When you say that killing redheads is pleasurable to you, first of all I have to say I find that unlikely, as a normally functioning human brain has empathy that would prevent that; statistically few people think like that. But more importantly, since ethics does not concern itself solely with you and what you want, if your idea of maximized pleasure subtracts pleasure from someone else, then it is rationally untenable as a position. You might still hold it, and nobody can force you to change your mind on that, but you cannot make it jive with the way ethics works without adding in a whole lot of special pleading, making exemptions for yourself that do not appear in a normal execution of ethical considerations.

So the short answer is, yes, that goes against ethics.

(bold mine)

I dunno. I screamed, praying at the TV yesterday, that someone would KILL ANDY DALTON *rawr*



... and my prayer came true.

OK. He's not actually dead, but still...