You may not like me or what I have to say but oh well…
This is a circular arguement.
My problem with this is that this topic is a poor attack on atheism. It trys to say that atheist have no basis for their values. They come from the life they live and they do not need a noun-god to tell them what is right and wrong or a basis to base everything off of. Moral codes are totally made up but not irrational. A good book to read on ethics is Practical Ethics by Peter Singer. This will give a good understanding of ethics and does no base issues off religion or religous views.
Yeah, Singer. He's that guy that thinks an adult chimp's life is worth more than a newborn human baby's, and that eugenics is A-ok. I'm familiar. The original point of the thread was that ethics grounded on atheism can't rationally produce some of the 'higher' (as Samkhya says) standards such as great self-sacrifice, or anything outside of egotism. I don't see how what you said disagrees with that.
How very rebellious and free-spirited of them. I suppose atheists also wear their dress shirts with the top button undone, and ride their motorcycles without helmets from time to time. The scofflaws!
What does any of this have to do with rationality, again?
Really cause you’ve read the book and you obviously have this great ability to interperate everything the right way. So basicly you can’t see outside you little box.
Because ethics are not grounded religion or atheism.
What are you talking about? What does that have to do with anything.
Indeed. You really are wasting your time talking to this fellow. An an excersise, you may want to look at my last response to you, and my last response to prove-it, note how they differ, and ask yourself why that is.
You were talking about how cool atheists are because they don't need no god to tell them what to do- they are products of the lives they live, man! I was just further singing their praises. In short, you were rambling and I was making fun of you. Atheists are so cool, they don't need 'a basis to base everything off of'. If you want to get back to the point, explain to me what you mean by 'totally made up', and how it such a thing can still be 'rational'. Maybe I'll wind up agreeing with you- I'm a moral subjectivist in the end anyways.
If you are refering to this " They come from the life they live and they do not need a noun-god to tell them what is right and wrong or a basis to base everything off of. Moral codes are totally made up but not irrational." I am not talking about atheism or religion but values.
I agree, it is irrational for an atheist to put anything above himself. However, it is also irrational for a theist to do the same. It is only when God punish selfish acts and reward unselfish ones that it becomes rational for a theist to consider others above himself. But wait! What he’s really doing is aiming for a reward or trying to avoid punishment, so the theist is in fact acting for his own benefit after all…
I’m sure that many, both atheists and theists, would be willing to sacrifice themselves for others, without expecting a reward and without acting to avoid punishment. But in my mind those actions would be completely irrational and stupid. Do you agree? If not:
Do you think it is ever rational to act against ones own self interest? Explain (remeber to look at the whole picture, including all future rewards and punishment).
Do you think there are times when it is better to act in an irrational manner? Explain.
I don’t think there is any other way in which you can disagree with me – but please let me know if I’m missing an option.
Would you consider acting out of love to be irrational? Because the love you have for somebody else could superceed the love you have for yourself. So agains own self interest.
You'll need to argue for this. Many Christians, including most that I know, would say that Christian ethics aren't about behaving out of fear of punishment, they are about behavior out of love and respect for the authority figure. That is, you become a better person for God for similar reasons as you would buy your mom something for Mother's Day. Certainly some people only do that kind of thing because they feel like they have to, but that's a perversion of a sincere intent.
Assuming you provide an argument for what I said above, you’re still left with the same basic situation: Theists have a good reason for putting other humans above themselves (even if it does have an ‘ulterior motive’) and atheists do not.
I think the problem with these questions is that the usage of the word ‘rational’ is weighted. What did you mean when you used that word in 1? You didn’t mean ‘logically sound’, since only claims and not actions can be logically sound. As far as I can tell, you must have meant one of two things: either rational means “Doing what is in one’s best interest” in which case the question isn’t really asking anything, or else it means “Doing what is right” in which case it’s just a re-statement of the original problem. Yes, I think there are times when a person ought to act against of their own self interest.
Question 2 suffers a similar problem. What do you mean by ‘better’? If better means ‘rational’ then the obvious answer is ‘no’, but the question is pointless. If ‘better’ means ‘more ethical’, then the answer depends on whether or not morals are objective: if morals are objective, then the right thing to do is always the rational thing to do.
Love is a feeling. A feeling is a sensation of pleasure or pain. Therefore love is as rational as it gets (see my response to Uccisore below). However, isn’t love simply the feeling you get when thinking about the people you claim to love? It’s just a feeling, and that feeling is inside you. It’s really this feeling within you that you care about, and not the people you say you love…
Why should we love and respect the authority figure? Just because we should? You may say: “because it pleases him”. But then why should we please him? Why should you care what he feels? We again arrive at “because we should” (unless you have a better reason). If evolution or conditioning has made it so that you derive pleasure from doing so, then that is a reason. If the authority figure will punish or reward you based on your level of love and respect, then that is a reason. Why? Because pleasure and pain are reasons in themselves. Why is pleasure a reason in itself? Because it is what we naturally crave for. Why is pain a reason in itself? Because it is what we naturally try to avoid. They are rational by the very nature of man. But is “because we should” rational? “We should because we should” is circular, irrational, and thus an affirmative on question nr. 2.
Assuming the theist is rewarded/punished based on his level of “selflessness” and the atheist is not, then yes.
As I touched on above, a rational reason must not be circular. If you break down a reason into component parts and finally land at “we should because we should”, you have yourself a circular reason. However, if you finally land at “because I want”, you have discovered the very core of any reason of man. This is what I call pleasure, the driving force in man. It’s valid because it is real. It’s really as simple as: “We should because we do/want”. A theist have the best reason possible to believe in God, because he wants to. However, there may be beliefs that would have given him larger amounts of pleasure (but he either don’t know about them, or he sees the required steps as to painful to take).
If everyone is doing the most rational thing they can, how can I then argue that something anyone does is irrational? Because it is not me that see the action as rational. It’s only the most rational based on their understanding of the world. We could define the most rational action as the action that brings the largest amount of pleasure possible. But that would be like absolute truth – unknowable. What is rational is as relative as truth. But there exist better truths and better reasons – those that bring more pleasure than the others. That’s really the meaning of life, to find the best truths and the best reasons so that you can act the way that will give you the largest amount of pleasure. This is as valid for the theist as for the atheist, only under different premises.
I’m tired, and not sure how well I got my points trough. Please try to look at my post as a whole, and make use of some creative guesswork where my points may seem a bit incoherent. They are crystal clear in my mind, but may not have translated as well into written form this late/early
When and why?
Let me rephrase Q2: Do you think there are times when you should act in an irrational manner?
Sorry guys Samkhya right. Sorry Samkhya you are wrong.
First he/she is right because if you are really an atheist of her/his description then you can not believe in the purpose of life. And if you do not then why do you care. So if you care then you are not a true atheist. Ergo we are all believers and God is proven.
Huston we have a problem!
As it was mentioned earlier we are programmed by nature to “careâ€(you know those ugly hormones). So why if there is God and all the good stuff do you need all the programming and “enforcementâ€.
Jesse Ventura said “religion is for the weak mindâ€. I think he is wrong too. There are people who can fend and think for themselves and there are others who require a pack. In the animal kingdom they live side-by-side. In the kingdom of god we are animals.
i think you’ve hit the nail on the head (or at least one of the nails sticking up here).
buying mother a gift for mother’s day… or buying a friend a gift for their birthday is the result of a social construct. gift-giving is an incredibly important anthropological system. it crops up in all cultures. check out Marcel Mauss’s writing and also ‘the spirit of the gift’ by M. Sahlins.
but that’s by the by. we want to give gifts because it’s a social construct. this doesn’t mean that we’re forced into buying gifts. at least not forced in an obvious way, but there is societal pressure to do so.
so what’s my point?
basically this: that moral values are the same. we WANT to be moral because of different reasons. you want to be moral because you want to carry out the word of God.
I want to be moral because my morality is in accordance with the values i have gleaned from the society in which i live… the values i feel to be right.
so i don’t see the difference. it’s just that out morals come through different channels.
and ultimately i believe that all morality is simply a mechanism for the smooth-running of society anyway. it keeps communities getting on well and gives us reason to punish, imprison and otherwise ostracise those who don’t comply. this keeps us relatively close-knit and allows society to form and continue.
if we had no morality we would live in constant fear of eachother because there would be nothing to keep anyone from raping, murdering etc… how would we develop trading, farming and social frameworks in such a world? we wouldn’t because we would have no trust. and we need trust to work together. looking at the animal kingdom, they have certain behaviour that is similar to morality. at least gregarious species do. solitary living animals tend to be more ‘amoral’… less interested in the welfare of others.
morality is an evolutionary advantage for gregarious creatures such as ourselves. it allows us to successfully band together and work together. this is why i say it’s irrational. because it’s pure instinct. Morality only steps aside for other instincts… such as anger or jealousy. in these cases, morality breaks down.
have you ever wondered why humans are the most powerful animals on earth? i think morality plays a large part. and this is why i see it as irrational… because it’s instinct. genetic. innate. howver you want to say it, it’s not something you really decide upon. whatever your specific morals happen to be, the fact that we have morals is innate.
so where they come from seems, to me, te be irrelevant.
does this make sense? i know i’m not very good at explaining myself. but i really want you to understand what i’m saying even if you don’t agree… and if you don’t agree i’d like to hear why because i am interested.
I am a subjectivist on morals, you should know. The answer to your question is that "People who don't love or respect God aren't religious folks, and thus, aren't the people I'm talking about." You could ask "Why should you do things that please people you love?", and I would respond that the very definition of the word 'love' answers that question. This ends up being subjective, because as it happens some people love and respect God and some don't. It remains a fact though, that those who [i]do[/i] love or respect God end up with a rational, coherent reason to follow some of the 'higher' ethical standards listed, such as self-sacrifice, once you combine that love with a belief that God has commanded us to behave in these ways.
Now, you could argue that an atheist could have similar grounding if it is just a fact that they love all other humans as much if not more than themselves, and you would be right. However, such love is not entailed by atheism, and from what I can tell, love of one's fellow man is not taken as a fact, it is taken as a moral demand, which some people question. Love of God and love of our fellow humans seem to differ in this regard- it may be because God is more deserved of love, or because God has created us with respect for him built into our natures, or some other reason altogether.
A person ought to act against their own self-interest when the loss to themselves is suffeciently small, the gain to someone else is suffeciently great, and the connection between themselves and the other is suffeciently strong. I don't think there's any absolute answer here- as others will point out, a person can 'give too much'.
Since I lean towards being an ethical subjectivist, I would have to say yes- there must be occaisions when rationality and duty go against each other. This is a purely analytic statement on my part though, since I can't actually think of any such situations. I take this stance only because if there were no situations in which the right thing to do was irrational, it would mean ethics are objective, and to this point I am not convinced of that.
Um, maybe when [i]you[/i] do it, it is. :slight_smile: When I do it, it's because I love my mother. Now, the fact that I get her a gift on a [i]particular day [/i]is obviously a social construct. Perhaps the fact that I get her flowers (for example) instead of a roast beef sandwich is a social construct. But I don't see either of those as the point of what I was trying to say: My point was that I get her gifts because out of love for her, not because I fear her wrath if I don't, or because I expect a reward. This point was in response to the 'reward/punishment' issues brought up earlier.
There is no difference, as far as you've taken it. The moral stuff you do is because you 'want to', the moral stuff I do is because I 'want to'. That wasn't the point Samkhya raised at all, though. Nobody denies that atheists have ethical systems.
The point is, as a religious person, it is rational and coherent for the 'moral stuff I want to do' to [i] include [/i] 'higher' examples of self-sacrifice, whereas an atheist has no good reason to include such behavior in the 'moral stuff they want to do'.
Thats fair enough, but is unrelated to the rationality of the actions. And I don’t see why a person who believes in Jesus and follows the commandments of the Bible, for the selfish reason of eternal bliss in heaven and the avoidance of hell, is not a religious person. In fact, I would call such a person rational (relative to his own understanding), and the others I would call blind.
Why should you do things that please people you love? The answer is the same as why you should do anything else: because you want to. The love is something that you are feeling – the other person could be an illusion, and you would still love them.
It’s rational because they want to please God, and therefore derive pleasure from doing so. The actions are not self-sacrifice sub-total, because the pleasure outweights the pain. Let’s take the example of Jesus on the cross that has already been mentioned (and assume the story to be true for this example). Is it not reasonable to assume that Jesus gained more pleasure from picturing millions of souls saved, than the pain he would experience from the sacrifice itself? And afterwards, he knew that he would be seated by the right hand of God in heaven for eternity.
It’s neighter entailed by atheism nor theism, per se. We require a defined ethical system, such as Secular Humanism or Christianity, before anything beyond the very existence or not of God can be said to be entailed.
The way I see it, it only differs when defined differently in the relevant ethical system. On the personal level, such a difference would probably be entirely subjective. However, it is also possible, as you say, that God (or perhaps evolution) created man with this special God-love built-in – but I see no evidence for that…
That’s what I would define as irrational, but your response is “yes” to the next question, so…
On the deepest level you believe in right and wrong because you feel that’s the way it works. In other words, it gives you pleasure to think the way you do. That is not irrational, but it’s irrational to deny this as the core reason. God may have placed this feeling there, but it’s still a feeling within you. You are yourself the measure of all things, and it can’t be any other way.
PS! You should probably include who you are quoting, especially when quoting severel people in one post. This way people don’t confuse the quotes from me and the ones from from prove-it, for instance, as being from the same person.
To use a very mechanical example, say that you love ten people. Are you constantly walking around with the feeling of love for each and every one of those ten people, 24h a day, every day? Of course you could say that love is stored in your memory, and is there all the time. But I would say that it only becomes part of you whenever you feel it, whenever the brain sends the memory to your consciousness.
Because the person is only an image in your mind. The person could have been an illusion, and you would still have loved him/her. In fact, the person as you see him/her is an illusion. Why? Because you are only seeing a mental image, just a reflection of the person in objective reality. In order for you to really care about the person, and not an image, the person would have to be a part of you – not as an image, but an actual part of your mind.
The love of other people is an abstraction. I’m not saying that abstractions are useless, only that it is useful to know them for what they actually are.
But from what you said, now my question is does it make an act of love irrationl?
Sure. People act out of jelousy all the time but some of the time and very rarely they do something that is good, or helps more than just them. Those moments of temoprary insanity where the person does something they would never normally do but they like what they did. Like when a peron comes home and catchs their partner cheating on them. Normally they are a calm, quiet, collective person but now he/she looses it and beats the crap out of them. And when in court for something they plead temporary insanity they really don’t regret acting irrational.
Love is a form of pleasure, acting out of pleasure is not irrational. So in general, no.
I agree. Sometimes one may be “lucky”, and an irrational act may turn out to be for the better. However, if the person believed that his act would lead to the best result, he didn’t really act in an irrational manner in the first place. One should always attempt to act in a rational manner, so that one can predict the result and not simply leave it up to chance (an exeption could be in fun and games, where the unpredictability is part of the fun).
There are two flaws to your argument: (1) your premise, that absence of a belief in a deity entails that “there is nothing that can be more important for an individual than his own life [and that i]t is irrational to seek the others’ happiness at the expense of one’s own happiness” is false, and (2), even it it was true, one could not criticise it as eschewing values that genuinely are (rather than merely purport to be) “lofty”, or contend that it was “despicable”, since it is incoherent to evaluate a theory of value; a conception of goodness cannot itself be good or bad: only true or untrue.
but love is the same deal: it serves a purpose: i.e propagation of the species (sexual love) and keeping the community and family close so that they look after each other and have a greater chance of survival (affectionate love).
it’s not about fearing anybody’s wrath… it’s about doing things because we want to. i never disputed that. i’m just saying that the reason we want to is, ultimately, a biological and psychological mechanism which is innate. which is the same as what i think about morality. as i thought i had explained.
This thread is ridiculous.
1:Ethics and morality are not mutually exclusive.
Ethics can be founded on causality and real world events, not just some abstract objective ‘morality’ that we all must answer to for fear of punishment from some universal arbiter.
2:The idea that ones behavior must hinge on the proposition that there is/isn’t a god seems to me completely unfounded.
We act how we act because it feels good to do so.
3: Assuming ones stance on this issue (is there/isn’t there a deity) must define in total ones ethics is a proposition with no support, and plenty of counter evidence.
