Why be good?

[Cyberman]

Last response of the night, folks. More tomorrow.

[The Grand Nudger]

Still a dick that can't think of a reason to be good if not for ghosts?

I loved the "how is a third world dictator acting differently"..lol.. -not at all...that's the problem with third world dictators man.

[KUSA]

Why is it that Christards come here and say the same absurd garbage? They go around in circles and get wrapped around the axle in falsehoods.

Every argument they have is useless because no matter what they say, there still is no God. Take anything that this moron says here and insert any fairytale character in his story and it comes out the same. He might as well argue that morals come from pink elephants.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Jenny-

If you Google the terms "theory of evolution' and "natural selection", you can read about the "survival of the fittest".

If she wants to read about survival of the fittest, her best bet would be to google that phrase, not the other two. So that is exactly what I did -- I googled survival of the fittest. And do you want to know what the first paragraph of the first entry read? Of course you do. It was Wikipedia, naturally, and here's that first paragraph. Odd how it seems germane to this very conversation, don't you agree?

"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase that originated from an evolutionary theory as a way of describing the mechanism of natural selection. It is more commonly used today in other contexts, to refer to a supposed greater probability that "fit" as opposed to "unfit" individuals will survive some test. In these contexts, "fit" refers to "best adapted to the current environment," which differs from common notions of the binary 'fit' and 'unfit.'[citation needed] These ideas are not related to the biological concept of fitness (defined as reproductive success) which has led to popular misconceptions about the meaning of the phrase. In Darwinian terms the phrase is best understood as "Survival of the form that will leave the most copies of itself in successive generations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest

You see, Randy, what you've been told in this thread this whole time, that your conception of "fittest" is wrong and doesn't comport with the evolutionary context of the term, is specifically mentioned as wrong in the first paragraph of the first entry of a google search on the topic.

You seem to have researched differing views on evolution about as diligently as you've researched those other religions you claim to have investigated before settling on Catholicism as the most reasonable faith.

The reason we know about certain cultures such as the Spartans, the Visigoths, the Mongols, etc. is because they dominated those around them and survived. And within those "small groups", the alpha male led the group and passed on his genes through the offspring of the females he wanted. 

And this is based on what? Link to a reputable source for each of these claims, please.

But the lacuna is the transition from "survival of the fittest" to feeling warmth and empathy toward the weak and less fortunate members of the group.

Except that what you're being told has support, and what you're asserting doesn't. Your misunderstanding of simple phrases in the theory lead me to believe that your education in it is woefully inadequate -- or that you've read with filters in order to protect cherished ideas that cannot withstand the force of facts.

[robvalue]

Holy fucking shit on a cracker.

It amazes me that some people will actually deny reality. They will say, "No, that wouldn't happen" while it is happening.

Anyone who thinks morality comes only from God should visit England. Religion is dying a miserable death here. Yet you can safely walk around in the street almost everywhere. There are no atheists in a battle frenzy hacking apart anything they find with rusty axes.

It makes me sad to think some people see the world as a giant grand melee, with just the threat of a magical dictator keeping everyone from smashing each other to pieces. That is how little they think of their own species. It's kind of insulting, really, to people like us who can behave in a civil manner without fairy tales. Well, there's no such threat here. And we're doing just fine.

Anyone who really thinks that the wrath of an imaginary creature is all that is keeping them from becoming a barbarian is either a leashed dangerous psychopath, or else most likely entirely mistaken. If you want to see what following religion does to morality, look at ISIS. They pay way more attention to their "religious morality" than any Christian who makes endless excuses about why they don't follow their own morality.

Which would I prefer? The latter, of course. Keep making those excuses, it's far better than actually acting on the Bronze Age narration that passes for religious morality. I want theists as liberal as they can possibly be, because they tend to have much better actual morality.

[downbeatplumb]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-bWZwxAb6A

[robvalue]

*Lecture hat on*

Now, I'm not in any way claiming everyone is good. Of course not. I'm not even claiming every country or society is good. Some are fucking awful. But there are societies that are "good enough" and many of them are ones where religion is not much of a factor.

Parents teaching their children how to behave is just part of evolution. We aren't born with all the knowledge we will need. And what is taught will depend on what the parents value as "morality". But notice how parents still do need to teach this, and theists fully expect this. Parents don't just teach children about jesus and leave it at that. What they actually do is probably closer to teaching them how to behave like an atheist would, and then attributing loads of things to religion and using it as a threat to help keep children in line. So the kids grow up thinking there is an actual link between the religion and their morality, because this idea has been drummed into them. And as adults, clearly, they still believe it. The fact that loads of people de convert and on the whole don't become the frothing maniacs they have been told they would turn into goes to show it just isn't true.

But that's just reality. If people are interested in it. If parents can't come up with a better reason to tell their children why they should behave well than "it will make jesus cry" or "there's a man in the sky who will burn you forever but who loves you" then they are pretty rubbish parents. Or, to be fair, they are parents who are suffering the effects of intense indoctrination and really do believe those things are the only reason.

*Lecture hat off*

[Esquilax]

If you've read all of the posts up to this point, you should have noted that the vast majority of the respondents to my OP have confirmed what I wrote. So, is that really such a big claim for me to make? If God does not exist (as everyone else but me accepts as true), then what IS the source of our understandings about "good" and "bad" and "right" and "wrong" if not "personal conviction and group consensus"? It seems to me that I've been overwhelmingly supported in this. Even by you here:

What did I say? Evidence "containing referents to the position I actually hold." Am I other people, or am I me?

But more importantly, you're changing around what you're talking about now, and I've noticed that so you're not going to get away with it; in the post I was responding to your assertion was that cooperation and social contract are inconsistent with a totally materialistic viewpoint, to which I pointed out that not only is that not atheism, but you've done nothing but assert it to begin with. Now you're acting as though I'm disagreeing with the idea that one's morality is drawn from personal or group consensus, but that wasn't what we were talking about a moment ago, and it's trivial anyway; of course morality is derived from personal conviction and group consensus, there are only persons and groups of persons to consider morality. Even god is a person, if we expand person to mean any thinking agent of sufficient complexity, which it is my position that we must do, in our considerations of morality, to avoid special pleading in favor of our own species. Doesn't mean that those determinations cannot be rationally based, nor that one cannot determine which is optimally better than another.

But there's nothing in this that is at odds with a materialistic viewpoint, given that humans are material, and groups of humans are material, and so on. So either you're changing the topic and hence making a response that is irrelevant to the point I actually made, or you're still just making a series of unjustified assertions about that point. Which is it?

I'm not buying it. When a lion kills a cub or runs off an older male in order to take over the pride, he is not thinking of what's better for the group...even though, ironically, his actions ARE what's best for the group. How is a third-world dictator acting any differently? Well, his actions may not be in the best interests of his country for starters, but he is still dominating the group in the same way the new alpha male lion is...by forceful takeover.

Randy, I've got some news for you. This may be hard to hear, so you may want to prepare yourself. Are you sitting down? Okay, here I go...

Humans aren't lions.

There, I said it. Humans aren't lions, and therefore the preconditions for what makes an individual human more successful are different for humans, than they are for lions. From the beginning, human beings have an evolutionary niche that prioritizes social grouping and cooperation, and if you'd take a moment to look at our goddamn history and think for a second, you'd see why that is; our dictatorships and our times of war aren't exactly our times of plenty, are they? Actually, they are times of mass death, starvation, and suffering. The times of our greatest prosperity are our peace times, our free-est countries are our better ones, the chances of you surviving and flourishing are leagues better when you are in a country that cooperates, and- and this point should be drilled into your head, though I have no doubt you'll pretend you never heard it if it's convenient for you- evolution happens to populations, not individuals.

But mostly that humans aren't lions thing. Amazing that you didn't get that yourself.

And yet, plagiarisim, corporate espionage, patent infringement, and even theft of cups of coffee, etc. happen all the time. Beyond that, I would agree with the balance of your paragraph.

Exceptions don't disprove the rule, else your christianity is just as false as my atheism, would you theists kindly stop with this childish "99% equals 0%" fallacy every goddamn time we discuss morality?

Is that what's happening in Baltimore? Or what happened in Ferguson? People stayed home and played parlor games because they knew that was better than going out into the streets and rioting?

Yeah, I'm sure everyone's lining up to argue that Baltimore and Ferguson, at the height of the rioting, was just an ideal, safe world that they'd love to live in 24-7. Actually think, before you speak.

I'm not specifying anything about you or me; however, if there is an opening when your boss retires...you do hope that YOU get the job and not one of your co-workers, right?

Sure, I like it when good things happen to me, so what? I'd even be disappointed if someone else gets the job, but you know what? I'll also be happy for their success, because it's possible to have more than one emotion at the same time, and I'll probably even congratulate them for it. Quit trying to extrapolate small, innocuous examples into enormous lifestyle choices.

God's laws are good because He is good. He gives us laws so that we become like Him.

So it's just whatever god says, then. So if god says murder is moral tomorrow, you'd have to agree, because god is good. So you're just following fiat command, the actual content of morality is irrelevant, and the idea that what you follow is in any way meaningful just went down the drain. Everything you understand to be moral could be inverted in a second, for no reason, and you'd just have to turn on a dime and accept it; your morality is more subjective than anything I have ever believed, so it's enormously rich for you to be prattling on about it the way you have. All the things you've tried attaching to atheism by fiat here stand an equal chance of becoming a part of your moral system as the things that are presently in them, yet they'll never be a part of mine, so where exactly do you get off arguing the way you do?

Nope. See above.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen a theist just take a prong of Euthyphro's Dilemma before, mostly they try to squirm out of having to do so because they have the sense to recognize how poorly both prongs serve their argument. You just went ahead and scuttled your entire position.

A flawed premise leads to this false conclusion.

But it's not flawed, you agreed to one of the prongs.

You may be right.

Or    it may be that atheists simply don't see 1) the incompatibility of holding evolution as the mechanism by which we have arrived on the world stage while 2) simultaneously denying that putting others' interests above your own is in direct conflict with the evolutionary process that got us here in the first place.

Okay, I linked you to resources on survival of the fittest earlier, so you are officially lying by keeping this up. Congratulations, you have now proved yourself to be dishonest.

[henryp]

*Lecture hat on*

Now, I'm not in any way claiming everyone is good. Of course not. I'm not even claiming every country or society is good. Some are fucking awful. But there are societies that are "good enough" and many of them are ones where religion is not much of a factor.

Parents teaching their children how to behave is just part of evolution. We aren't born with all the knowledge we will need. And what is taught will depend on what the parents value as "morality". But notice how parents still do need to teach this, and theists fully expect this. Parents don't just teach children about jesus and leave it at that. What they actually do is probably closer to teaching them how to behave like an atheist would, and then attributing loads of things to religion and using it as a threat to help keep children in line. So the kids grow up thinking there is an actual link between the religion and their morality, because this idea has been drummed into them. And as adults, clearly, they still believe it. The fact that loads of people de convert and on the whole don't become the frothing maniacs they have been told they would turn into goes to show it just isn't true.

But that's just reality. If people are interested in it. If parents can't come up with a better reason to tell their children why they should behave well than "it will make jesus cry" or "there's a man in the sky who will burn you forever but who loves you" then they are pretty rubbish parents. Or, to be fair, they are parents who are suffering the effects of intense indoctrination and really do believe those things are the only reason.

*Lecture hat off*

Sometimes there aren't better reasons for an individual to behave well than make-believe punishments.  That's probably why religion was developed to begin with.

And you of course skipped the most important part of secular 'good.'  And that's the law.  I've seen Oz.  That shit is scarier than a story about hell in an old book.

[Chas]

Holy fucking shit on a cracker.

It amazes me that some people will actually deny reality. They will say, "No, that wouldn't happen" while it is happening.

Anyone who thinks morality comes only from God should visit England. Religion is dying a miserable death here. Yet you can safely walk around in the street almost everywhere. There are no atheists in a battle frenzy hacking apart anything they find with rusty axes.

No, it appears only Muslims are doing that.