How Do We Behave?

[Girlysprite]

Frodo - the perfect moral is not clear. Over the world hundreds of factions are trying hard to find the best way to interpet the bible, and they all get different results. And really, I'd rather not condone slavery as part of the 'perfect moral'. Just an example.

I think much of our morals have progressed. Yes, I'd certainly call it progression against the ages where witchburning, crusades and slavery were accepted, and excused with, or even caused by the bible.

I think you and I have the capacity to know Girlysprite. What you are talking about illustrates the point perfectly. It was the secular morality of the time that slavery was right. The biblical angle promotes fair treatment that would put to shame most of dealings with people over other people nowadays.

Sure people have abused the bible by being amoral using it as their excuse. No one could ever say that they were following Christ or being perfectly moral.

I think you referred to this post when saying I didn't reply to it right?

As for slavery - it wasn't just the secular morality of the time. The bible is very clear in that slavery is accepted and normal. Some rules on tratment of slaves come across as quite ok. Others...not so very much. For example - you can't beat a slave to death. The rule goes on to explain that that just means that the slave shouldn't die within 2 days of the beating. If he dies after that, you're cool. It's also ok to have sex with female slaves. When it comes to treatment of all females in general, you'll find that their treatment is more akin to cattle and slaves then human beings. They are property.

I think that the morals of the bible were actually based on the general society rules and morality of that time. In that time, women were a possession of the men. In that time, slavery was totally ok. In that time, you could stone a woman to death if there is even a bit of doubt if she was raped or had sex with another man voluntarily. In that time it was ok to to wipe out complete villages that didn't belong to your tribe and take the little girls as slaves.
But that doesn't make it allright now. I think it didn't even make it allright in retrospect, but I guess that was just the culture of that time.

[Arcturus]

If you believe in God, then how to behave is simple: This life is transient and if you do good things you will spend the rest of eternity in Heaven, whereas, if you behave badly you go to Hell for eternity. If you truly believe in God, then you cannot question the morality of this because God, being perfect, could not be in error.

If you do not believe in God, then this life is still a fleeting transient moment compared to the age of the universe, but how to behave is not so clear. Since this is the one and only existence, then the only rational course is to pursue those things that serve your own ends and maximise the pleasure and happiness of your short vacation from the dark abyss of eternity.

With regard to the latter, this means that the only grounds for altruism is if you happen to be a person who enjoys putting others before yourself. If you happen to be selfish thats OK too. The only thing you need to avoid is breaking the Law, since this may take away your freedom which would diminish your existence. Apart from that, it is a free for all - a morality of ends?

Our innate moral tendencies do have evolutionary origins, which is what defines our view of good and evil. However, moral absolutism is a different story, as we would observe in religion. In such a case, stoning of adulterers would be considered moral in that particular culture.

Morality is a necessity in the survival of complex species; if all individuals of a particular species only live for themselves, this would result in competition among themselves, killing one another as a result. However, when individuals of a species have moral tendencies, they may help one another out, aiding their survival as a species and passing on their genes to the next generation. The closer the genetic similarity, the higher the tendency for 'altruistic' actions: for example, individuals of a family would tend to care for one another more than those from another family, while there is a natural tendency for racism unless given the knowledge that we are all of the same species.

[Girlysprite]

Good point Arcturus.
I know some theists wonder why there is so much violence amongst humans, when reading the evolutionary explanation of altruism. They wonder that if such behavior has a genetic component, why are we so nasty?
The reason is that people are mostly altruistic to those that he/she considers to be part of 'the group'. It is indeed a common occurance that when a conflict arises, the other side is made to appear less human. Slavery could exsist as long as it did because black people weren't considered real humans. And it also works the other way - people who try to bring peace often emphasize how much both sides have in common. They try to draw the other side into our 'group'.

This behavior is also clear in other group species. Chimps will mostly stick together, but sometimes completely wipe out another tribe of chimps without batting an eye.

[fr0d0]

I think you referred to this post when saying I didn't reply to it right?

As for slavery - it wasn't just the secular morality of the time. The bible is very clear in that slavery is accepted and normal. Some rules on tratment of slaves come across as quite ok. Others...not so very much. For example - you can't beat a slave to death. The rule goes on to explain that that just means that the slave shouldn't die within 2 days of the beating. If he dies after that, you're cool. It's also ok to have sex with female slaves. When it comes to treatment of all females in general, you'll find that their treatment is more akin to cattle and slaves then human beings. They are property.

I think that the morals of the bible were actually based on the general society rules and morality of that time. In that time, women were a possession of the men. In that time, slavery was totally ok. In that time, you could stone a woman to death if there is even a bit of doubt if she was raped or had sex with another man voluntarily. In that time it was ok to to wipe out complete villages that didn't belong to your tribe and take the little girls as slaves.
But that doesn't make it allright now. I think it didn't even make it allright in retrospect, but I guess that was just the culture of that time.

Yes you got the right post GS.

I don't think you're challenging my view there. The bible is adjudicating on something that was very normal for the time yes. It was unique in promoting the view that slaves were humans to be treated as such. Remember people volunteered themselves to be slaves rather than face the alternatives... starvation etc.. Some businesses today would be better if they showed the same compassion for their workers. Same with morality. You'll notice that God is advocating fairness amid the seemingly terrible deeds.

[Angrboda]

I'm too lazy to read all this, so if jumping in the middle is a fail, feel free to write me a nasty-gram.

With regard to the latter, this means that the only grounds for altruism is if you happen to be a person who enjoys putting others before yourself. If you happen to be selfish thats OK too. The only thing you need to avoid is breaking the Law, since this may take away your freedom which would diminish your existence. Apart from that, it is a free for all - a morality of ends?

This is a mistake of assuming that atheism's ground for morality is in rationality. I will not claim to speak "for atheism", but I have at least three separate conceptions of godless morality come to mind without doing any research; actually four, Dan Barker's, George Smith's, Richard Carrier's and Sam Harris' -- though there may be overlap. In my view, man is not a rational animal -- man uses reason as a means to achieve ends, but our impetus is non-rational. A mother doesn't feel a bond toward her newborn -- that she would likely risk death to protect -- because she "reasoned her way" to that conclusion. I lean toward the evolutionary psychology view that the moral organ in man evolved to serve ends which at best are only coincident with the individual; evolution applies to species, and only conserves that which succeeds reproductively. Some proposed "replacement" moral codes, like unintelligent hedonism [1], irrationalist, and sociopathy, such may appear in the individual, but if they don't work in an evolutionary sense, nature will simply pass them by (explicitly, moral codes with fail will be outbred by moral codes with win).

That being said, I saw Dan Barker debate a Christian apologist on whether we can have "Goodness Without God". The apologist made a strong argument, a key feature of which was the claim that if atheists are moral, if they can know what is and is not good, it is because of God, not in spite of him. He made the analogy of a person who doesn't believe in air -- they might argue that air doesn't exist, but it does, and they are using that which they deny to argue with. If our moral sense can come from God, how do we know it doesn't come from God?

I'm willing to accept such an argument, so long as I can use it in my own. Perhaps, if we are moral it is only because of God, in spite of ourselves. However, if God does not exist, then we have been being moral and using our moral sense all along, so it obviously wouldn't then be on account of God. We may not know how morality works or where it came from, but the existence of morality cuts both ways; it cannot in itself implicate God. Prove God first. Before Darwin, we had no "mechanism" for producing the rich diversity of life on this planet, that doesn't mean naturalistic life processes didn't exist until we could explain them. Knowing "that" doesn't necessarily require knowing what, how or why. (Though I argue elsewhere that reference is somewhat empty, without meaning, until the blanks are filled in; if a Christian says he has a conscience, and I too say I have a conscience, we're not necessarily referring to the same thing.)

Note: A lot of theists misquote Dostoevsky as saying that "If God does not exist, everything is permitted." The quote refers to the views of a character in the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" and even then, that exact quote does not appear in the text. Implying that Dostoevsky felt this way because a character he wrote did is nonsense; but there's more for the curious. See Dostoevsky Didn't Say It at www.infidels.org.

[1] The classic conception of hedonism involves pleasure at all costs. IMHO this is wrong-headed, as many costs associated with the stereotypical hedonism are distinctly not pleasant. The idea of seeking pleasure no matter how unpleasant the pursuit is incoherent. Three years ago, I lost 9 of my 10 fingers. Seeing as many of my hobbies, projects and ambitions depended on more dexterity than a single finger can provide, I had to reinvent myself in the image of these new limitations. I'm still in transition, but I have had to reshape what and who I am, and what my projects will be. In the meantime I have adopted a hedonism which simply means doing what I enjoy. We all place the pursuit of pleasure somewhere among a heirarchy of priorities (making room for making love), for this hedonist, hedonism is simply re-arranging things so that pleasure is higher up, and things like ambition, meaningful experiences and fulfillment are consequently pushed lower.

[HeyItsZeus]

Morality is basically what you believe is correct based on the way you are molded to think. Technically, morality has no importance but as humans we love it because it gives us a set way to act.

[Girlysprite]

Yes you got the right post GS.

I don't think you're challenging my view there. The bible is adjudicating on something that was very normal for the time yes. It was unique in promoting the view that slaves were humans to be treated as such. Remember people volunteered themselves to be slaves rather than face the alternatives... starvation etc.. Some businesses today would be better if they showed the same compassion for their workers. Same with morality. You'll notice that God is advocating fairness amid the seemingly terrible deeds.

Partly right, and partly horribly wrong. People could indeed volunteer to become a servant for seven years. However, there were also the kind of slaves that were taken as the spoils of war, divided amongst the conquerers like the rest of the loot. You sure can't tell me that was voluntary?

Also, I think that in a 'perfect' system, people shouldn't have to even choose for being a slave. Nowadays people can become servants, when they want and get paid for their work. What is wrong with that?

[fr0d0]

You seem to be saying that God set that up GS, rather than commented on it/ communicated at the time what was wrong with it.

I agree about a perfect system. But what we think of as perfect is our ways just like those ancient people thought of their ways. In every system we can refer to an ideal, which always tops what people have set up, because selfish interest sadly always figures.

[Girlysprite]

You seem to be saying that God set that up GS, rather than commented on it/ communicated at the time what was wrong with it.

I agree about a perfect system. But what we think of as perfect is our ways just like those ancient people thought of their ways. In every system we can refer to an ideal, which always tops what people have set up, because selfish interest sadly always figures.

Still, with the bible supposedly being the perfect moral guide, the question still remains if people would accept unvoluntary slavery as good. Whether god set up the slavery system or not is nor important - the bible is supposedly created by inspiration delivered by him (which should be the reason why it is perfect). No one could bother to write 'hey, keeping slaves isn't all that cool, actually'?
The slave thing is just an example I used to set up this debate by the way. There are a number of other rules and practices laid out in the bible that are iffy.

Of course, one can say 'well the way you think about it now is the spirit of this time'. However, if we are to accept the bible as the moral truth, the current time spirit should be transformed into...well yeah...a system where women have no rights whatsoever, gay people are stoned, and slavery is great.
Have a look in Saudi Arabia. I don't like that as a place to live. I think if we'd use 'bible morals', our countries would become much like it.

[fr0d0]

@Girlysprite: The bible never says that what it comments on is moral. It would be the same if it were written today... people would say: "well those aren't very good morals" ...but that's not what the bible is saying... what it's trying to convey is God's response to those attitudes and customs.

The bible reports on a morally perfect God. Trying to argue otherwise is like trying to argue that hot isn't hot. It's the opposite of the definition.