Why be good?

[SteelCurtain]

The answer is because it does not please me to be a shitty person. I have feelings and emotions and empathy. I do not want to cause harm. It makes me feel good to do good. So I try to do good as much as I can.

The question this begs is a big one, Randy, and one I'd like you to answer. Is the only reason you try to be a good person because of the fear of recompense? If you didn't fear hell, would you magically desire to rape and steal and lie all the time?

Mike-

Do you try to show up for work on time every day because if you don't you might get fired or lose a pay raise? We ALL act out of fear of the stick sometimes, don't we? Not always, but sometimes? Did you ever go to class to avoid failing even though you were hung over? Or take out the trash because you didn't want her going to bed mad at you when you had "plans"...if you get my drift?

I'm not dodging your question, but I think answering it on a personal level would take this thread in a very different direction.

So, I have to steer it back this way: if (hypothetically) if someone is going to scratch and claw his way to the top of the company ladder or get elected president or seduce the hottest woman in the room, etc., and these things are in his best interest, why shouldn't he prove or exert his dominance by taking that job, that woman, etc. regardless of how he does it?

Don't the strongest survive and weakest die off?

And if it is in the best interest of the strongest individual or society or nation, etc, to subjugate another individual or nation in some manner, so what? 

Why be good when outweighed by the advantages of being bad?

You really can't just have a normal conversation, can you Randy? Answer a question, no. Create a strawman, answer the question you wanted me to ask, sure.

So instead of answering the question, you're going to steer this towards some social Darwinism crap that no one here has even remotely suggested? What are you doing? Do you really think anyone here has actually intimated that 'survival of the fittest' is our objective morality? Have you read the thread?

Clearly not. It's not going how you wanted, so you're just plowing ahead so it fits your Word document.

[Whateverist]

Ironic what soul-less tools these self-proclaimed moral high grounders can be, continually projecting their worst qualities onto us.

[Alex K]

Meh, weak.

[robvalue]

I really have no idea what the point of this is.

All "religious morality" shows is that you can convince people to behave in certain ways if you give them a reason to. Very often that reason is fear. If you make them believe something truly horrible will happen (hell) if they don't comply, or they'll miss out on something incredible (heaven) then you're motivating them into compliance.

So motivation works, sure. So what? That has nothing to do with morality. You're just arbitrarily telling them what "good" means, and making the flawed assumption that any religious "moral" rules are actually moral in any meaningful sense.

Now here's some questions:

What exactly does "morality" mean to you? Be specific. Is it (a) striving to maximize wellbeing and minimising harm of life as we know it, or (b) something else?

If (a) in what way does religious morality do a better job of this than we do ourselves? How can we tell if it is doing a good job?

If (b) why should I care about this definition of morality?

[ignoramus]

The religiotards will just say it is god (yes, the one we don't believe exists), who made us to be moral (irrespective of where we think we get it from) and they're doing us a favour by trying to enlighten us.

And round and fucking round we go.
I'm suspecting if they were smart enough to understand logic, they wouldn't be religious in the first place.
They can then argue that we are also doing the same thing. Nobody wins here. We are what we are with no middle ground.

[robvalue]

The question a theist has to ask themselves is why they don't follow the word of their holy book blindly and literally.

Quite clearly, they don't. If they did, they'd be dead or in jail in most civilised countries. In fact, it's not even possible because of the contradictory instructions therein. Some may really think they do. But I guarantee you are jumping through huge numbers of mental hoops in order to twist things to mean what you want them to, not what they clearly say. Being an atheist gives me the ability to objectively read the words and not automatically translate them into what I want them to say, or what someone has told me they mean.

Once you "interpret" the text, you've made a subjective judgement of what the morality is, or are just following someone else's. Who has the authority to say what the "correct interpretation" is? Clearly no human. So unless you follow it all literally, it's just your opinion.

Don't get me wrong, I'm eternally thankful people do "interpret" the text. I'm just trying to show you why you do it. I believe it's because you are filtering it with your own sense of morality, which comes from within you, not from religion. If you want to copout and credit God for this innate moral compass, then fine. But then God is filtering himself, and not consistently so... If he gives us an inner compass, why confuse the matter with a book of contradictions and atrocities? And why give us all different compasses and not the same one? Is he helping us or fucking with us?

[Ben Davis]

Since you haven't responded to my previous post, I'll try again.

Do you try to show up for work on time every day because if you don't you might get fired or lose a pay raise? We ALL act out of fear of the stick sometimes, don't we? Not always, but sometimes?

Sometimes yes. It's the 'Sometimes, no' that you should be paying attention to though because it means that there are reasons other than fear of authority which motivate ethical behaviour.

So, I have to steer it back this way: if (hypothetically) if someone is going to scratch and claw his way to the top of the company ladder or get elected president or seduce the hottest woman in the room, etc., and these things are in his best interest, why shouldn't he prove or exert his dominance by taking that job, that woman, etc. regardless of how he does it?

Once again, you've already been given the answer to this. I'm starting to wonder if you're reading the posts. It's because we don't act solely out of self-interest. Humans (most of us) have empathy, it's a result of our evolution as a social species. So we act with an awareness of the impacts our actions will have on others and, as equally important, the impact that others' actions have on ourselves.

Don't the strongest survive and weakest die off?

No. That's completely wrong. The 'fittest' survive. That means 'the most suited'. Darwin himself provided clarification that he observed it was generally 'the most adaptable' rather than 'the most specifically adapted' who survived.

And if it is in the best interest of the strongest individual or society or nation, etc, to subjugate another individual or nation in some manner, so what? 

It's not necessarily the case. Although history gives us plenty of examples where conquerors ruled by subjugation, there are as many examples where cooperation was the cause of social success. Humanity as a whole would not have reached the level it has if people, generally, acted solely out of self-interest and eschewed cooperation.

Why be good when outweighed by the advantages of being bad?

If you really think that being 'bad' is a more successful survival strategy than being 'good', then I'm glad you have a mechanism, however erroneous, that prevents you from acting on those psychopathic impulses. I hope you realise that psychopathies are experienced by a tiny minority of humans. The rest of us get the whole 'empathy' thing instinctively.

[Randy Carson]

I'm headed off to work this morning, but I promise to read each and every post in this thread. I may not respond to ALL of them since there is a lot of repetition.

BTW, I did see the headline at washingtonpost.com regarding the 500,000 year-old murder uncovered by scientists.

Half a million years isn't very long in the evolutionary scheme of things, but still, one has to wonder why we haven't changed very much.

Could it be that evolution doesn't play a role in the development of objective moral values?

If not, where do these things come from? Why be good?

Perhaps there are some answers in the posts I haven't read yet, so I'm looking forward to getting back to my computer later today.

Thanks for all your thoughts, everyone. This is great.

[pocaracas]

Hey Carson, have you tried to research other social species?... Probably best to stick with mammals
- Wolves
- Hyenas
- Lions
- Chimps
- Bonobos
- Gorillas
- Whales
- Dolphins

And then tell us which "objective moral values" are held by all and humans.

[Brian37]

I'm headed off to work this morning, but I promise to read each and every post in this thread. I may not respond to ALL of them since there is a lot of repetition.

BTW, I did see the headline at washingtonpost.com regarding the 500,000 year-old murder uncovered by scientists.

Half a million years isn't very long in the evolutionary scheme of things, but still, one has to wonder why we haven't changed very much.

Could it be that evolution doesn't play a role in the development of objective moral values?

If not, where do these things come from? Why be good?

Perhaps there are some answers in the posts I haven't read yet, so I'm looking forward to getting back to my computer later today.

Thanks for all your thoughts, everyone. This is great.

What do you mean we haven't changed? In what context? 500,000 years ago we didn't have doctors or computers. Just a few hundred years ago slavery existed. 

I would only say that religion ALL RELIGIONS have a tendency to scream bloody murder when their social norms are challenged.

Evolution, not old comic books, not fictional sky heros. Evolution explains why humans behave the way they do. Religions do not explain anything but local social norms. Our behaviors good or bad, are in our evolution. Religion exists as a gap fill argument.