I’m a newbie here so forgive me if this has been done before. I’m curious as to where other atheists (I’m an agnostic) derive their moral values from. I ask because I get bombarded from theists about how it is impossible for a person to be “moral” and to not , or rather doubt, believe the existence of God because apparently, all good comes from God’s teachings.
Thanks, opinions would be nice 
You can have your own morals. Surely theyre not wrong as long as they cause no harm or degridation to others? If you’re forced into religion then you have no freedom. And for someone to take away your freedom and force you into religion would be immoral right?
I believe in living by the Golden Rule ;do unto others what you want done upon you etc, but apparently to some people, that isn’t good enough. I’m not here to whine though. I’m just curious if there’s an unspoken code of ethics amongst other atheists that I don’t know of, lol.
I think this point kind of misses the point-it’s nice not to want to harm others etc, but the point is if there is no God, why should i bother not to harm others? If i can make up my own moral code then surely anything is permissable-there are no external commandments etc, whatever i subjectively decide is right or wrong goes.
Morals and ethics are social rules, if you wish to survive in a social setting there must be rules to follow hence, morals and ethics. They don’t have to be religious based just based on survival
My heart-and-mind?
There is good evidence that we have an innate moral grammar. The rest is just filling in spaces.
[size=150]…My discussion of a similar topic from an earlier post.
(Anonymous Atheist 1) writes:
“What are the morals we should follow? Whose morals are correct? How do we agree upon a common set of morals? or even what are morals?”
(Anonymous Atheist 2) writes:
"Atheism is making real progress with destroying religion.)
*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********
V:
Hi and thanks for your posts.
You’d like to get rid of ALL religion and replace it with human morals - but without any trace of God?
But you can’t decide on whose morals are the correct one’s to replace the religion based morals?
The Short Answer:
Destroying others always destroys peace.
It destroys your peace as well as the inner peace of the one’s that you destroy.
Look to the ‘God of Inner Peace’ and the ‘God of Nature’ for moral and ethical values.
Even if you dump Yahweh, you can never dump these two Gods and live a flourishing, healthy peaceful life.
See:
jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=342.0
The Long Answer:
There is no answer no matter how long you make it that gives an absolute answer, for we will always come up with exceptions to the rule with this subject.
The question of universal morals and laws are the subject of numerous college classes and even with a Ph.D., it still depends on the person and their spiritual health when they answer such a question.
The arguments always seem to be around Moral Relativism vs Objectivism vs Determinism vs Emotivism vs Ethical subjectivism vs Moral Absolutism and around and around they go.
Add a few more components to the equation, such as Universality, The Golden Rule of Reciprocity, Natural Law Theory, listening to the God of Inner Peace, Greater Good vs the Greater Right, Flourishing of the Species Theory and ‘Might Makes Right’ and people can get really stuck in analysis paralysis.
What is the best answer?
There is no best answer, other than it is a mix of all these in that yield us a ‘best fit’ equation to morals and ethics to live by.
All these concepts requires the individual to have thinking ability and a ‘conscious’ supported by spiritual values to come to the best fit for the circumstances at question. Humans have a conscious since they do not run solely by instinct as animals do. Without a spiritual based conscious they would turn to self-destruction.
This is a good topic to study up, for without having a feel for how this all works and without the fear of religion to keep humans in check, humans soon turn into monsters that sink to levels even below that of the beasts. You see, religion are humans brand of prepackaged morals. One just hopes that the various religious sects did a good job in developing the packages.
With atheists, many a time they lack spiritual values and are run by ill will, fear, hatred and a bloated ego. This goes for theists as well, so I am not singling out atheists as a problem. It just goes to illustrate that whether religious or not…it takes more to live a life at peace than belief in God or freedom from God.
I discuss some of these issues here:
jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … ?topic=4.0
jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=318.0
jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=380.0
You will never get people to agree on anything. Some are sick, some are well and the rest are somewhere in between. And some of the well ones get sick on other days and d it is the same with the sick ones.
The best we can do is to live ‘our life at peace’ and help promote peace within others.
There are 3 components necessary to live a happy life: CONTENTMENT, LOVE or COMPASSION and GRATITUDE. When we realize that happiness is there for the taking and it is independent from our circumstances it someday may sink in that there is nothing stopping us from being content and happy RIGHT NOW!
The choice is your if you have had enough pain. Examine which of these components is missing in your life.
As James Allen wrote in As a man Thinketh:
“To think well of all, to be cheerful with all, to patiently learn to find the good in all - such unselfish thoughts are the very portals of heaven; and to dwell day by day in thoughts of peace toward every creature will bring abounding peace to their possessor.”
Early records for moral codes goes back to Egypt with the 42 negative confessions. Scholars think the 10 commandments came from these. Yahweh also dictated over 600 other commandments and rules for the Jews to live my. So, even in the old days, it was a tough job trying to follow the rules.
Nowadays we can take courses that deal with morals, values and making laws but when you finish them you are sometime more confused than when you started.
Does this mean we should chuck the whole thing and give up?
No, for is we gave it no thought we would really be into deep trouble.
We have to do with morals and values the same as we do with life. We live it the best we can albeit imperfectly and do this until the day we die if we wish to flourish.
I heard a story one time in a Yoga lecture that illustrates this point. “Range is of the ego - Form is of the soul.” The only thing we need to be concerned with is how is our form when it comes to our practice and our life.
Here is a sample college level course on ethical values
Facts and Values
Lives to Envy, Lives to Admire
Foundations of Ethics—Theories of the Good
Foundations of Ethics—Theories of the Right
Thoughts on Religion and Values
Life’s Priorities
The Cash Value of a Life
How Do We Know Right from Wrong?
Cultures and Values
Questions of Relativism
Cultures and Values
Evolution, Ethics, and Game Theory
The Objective Side of Value
Better Off Dead
A Picture of Justice
Life’s Horrors
A Genealogy of My Morals
Theories of Punishment
Choice and Chance
Free Will and Determinism
Images of Immortality
Ethical Knowledge
Moralities in Conflict
Conclusions
Sample college level course on natural law:
The Philosophical Approach
The General Nature of Ethics
Law, Nature, Natural Law
Principles of Natural Law Theory
Greek Ideas of Nature and Justice
Aristotle’s Clarification of “Nature”
Aristotle on Justice and Politics
The Stoic Idea of Natural Law
Biblical Views of Nature and Law
Early Christians, Nature, and Law
Roman, Canon, and Natural Law
The Thomistic Synthesis
Late Medieval and Early Modern Views
Hobbes and Locke
Natural Law and the Founding Fathers
Descartes, Rousseau, and Kant
Can Rights Exist Without Natural Law?
The Question of Evolution
The Paradox of Cultural Relativism
The Problem of God
Current Applications—Jurisprudence
Current Applications—Bioethics
Current Applications—Social Ethics
The Eternal Return of Natural Law
All Course titles Teaching Company
You will find just one area as a foundation for this subject will not do very well. For as much as I like natural law as a guide to living right. We can see the Nazis used the same natural law argument to purify the races when they came to trial.
Sound crazy?
In nature doesn’t the strongest survive?
Balance is of the utmost importance with our quest for truth. The Nazis left out the God of Peace in their calculations and had to pay the price to this God when judgment day came along.
The Greeks used to teach harmony and balance in the Trivium in their schools. In the ‘tenants of reason’ they went into much details with the subject of harmony breaking it down into proportionally, prudence, balance, fitness and aptness. Not subjects you hear a lot of nowadays.
Proportionality and harmony would be most welcome subjects taught nowadays. So do not do as many of my atheists friends do when they try to think with ‘manacled minds’ of self imposed prejudice. For the best fit with morals and laws we need to a balance many areas as one thing only goes so far with giving us a good life.
When judgments have to be made, mistakes can and will happen the best we can do is give it an honest effort with rational thought. The ancient Greek philosophers knew that when passion rules the mind, that the only job left for reason is that of the subservient task to find cleaver ways to satisfy the passions. They called it “putting passion before reason.”
Both these areas of passion and reason where the foundation of much philosophical discussion of ethics and virtue with the ancient Greeks. Once we put passions before reason we are using prejudice as the foundation for our building plan, and sooner or later anything built on lies will fall. Rationality hopefully can leave the personal prejudice out of the picture.
Always remember…“honor dies where the interest lies.”
Laws are advertised as reason without passion, but usually fall short of their goal. As the truth is that which does not change and man made laws always seem to change.
3 Components of Rationality
1 - Rationality requires reflection.
2- Rationality is the ability to anticipate consequences.
3 - Rationality requires adherence to certain standards.
This being able to ‘rest satisfied’ is something the perfectionists lack with their rationality and why they will never be at peace until they stop collecting concepts and start using the concepts of peace generations.
We can examine our actions to see what useful tools for finding peace we offer to others. This evaluation says a lot about our own practice of generating inner peace. When you practice peace promotion with others you will reap inner peace promotion. When you practice destroying others peace, you will reap self destruction of inner peace.
I suggest any atheists wishing to find inner peace within their life adopt the creed of the atheists (their version of prepackaged morals) and become secular humanists as a good first start.
The ‘informal creed’ of atheism.
An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of god. An Atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth for all men together to enjoy.
An Atheist believes that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction, and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and enjoy it.
An Atheist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment. He seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god. An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church.
An Atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said.
An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man.
He wants an ethical way of life. He believes that we cannot rely on a god or channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter.
He believes that we are our brother’s keepers; and are keepers of our own lives; that we are responsible persons and the job is here and the time is now.â€
“The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles”
• We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.
• We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.
• We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.
• We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.
• We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.
• We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.
• We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.
• We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.
• We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.
• We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.
• We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.
• We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.
• We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.
• We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.
• We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.
• We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.
• We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.
• We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.
• We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.
• We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
My vote?
Personally I am not here to save anyone’s soul…well, maybe my own soul if I got one.
I ‘save my soul’ by practicing what I preach when it comes to living by the rules of the God of Peace and the God of Nature.
But if the vote was up to me. I vote to keep religion. For it is the fantasy and delusions of atheists that atheism and freethought alone will fix all our woes.
Really atheists are not freethinkers for the most part and just as mind manacled as theists…see: jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=470.0
Maybe someday in the next millennium things will be different. But if the trends keep going with our chemical laden foods and stressed lifestyles we will only get worse and not better.
All we have to do is look at alt.athsism to get glimpse of what the world would be like if religion did not exist…scary.
People will always need something to concentrate their minds on as they live to avoid thinking about death, so religion plays an important part of this fixations.
The defiance based atheists use hate of theists to define themselves and to fixate on with their thoughts. So really the two camps are dependent one each other…who would the theists try to save if it wasn’t for atheists?
“Morality is doing what is right no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told no matter what is right.”
Take care,
V (Male)
Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
AA#2[/size]
Christ, VFR, that’s like topic assassination. The next time you make a topic, I’m going to quote the entirety of Kants ‘Critique’ in response.
I think Xunzian has it best. As social animals, people have evolved an understanding of how to function in societies, and similar moral codes can be found around the world and even in remote cultures, indicating that culture and ‘moral upbringing’ aren’t as important as we might suppose.
However, I don’t know if the rest is “just filling spaces”. Clearly, religious beliefs affect how people act, at least in the limited arena of voting. In that sense, how one fills the spaces is incredibly important.
Personally, I use my head. I insert knowledge derived from scientific investigation into my innate moral calculator, and get my moral actions out. The calculator is there, all it needs are properly informed initial conditions, and it will output moral actions reliably.
I think they stem from your own personal values, and they are also setup according to how you feel towards others. And sometimes they change by being numbed down. Some people are jerks, because of their environment (like new york), while most people down south are kind and generous.
Truth be told nobodys morals are objectively wrong or right.
Only morals can be objectively wrong or right if their is a supreme being that has set it in stone for all living beings.
Btw, there’s nothing wrong with that, just philosophically there isn’t obejective morals without an eternal connector that set it, and it must be able to communicate and be the greatest power. It could very well be the universe, if the universe could speak and told us it had a plan for us to be a certain way… but I think that’d be called God.
It’s one good point apologetists make, especially those who call God wrong or evil. But don’t let apologetists or young lee strobel readers use it to try and say we can’t have morals without a God, there’s nothing wrong as I see it with subjective morals, I believe it’s better to have different morals for different environments and situations.
Just remember, there are ethical traditions based on ideas independant of God. Bentham’s and Mill’s concequentialist theories are completely divorced from God and seek only a concequence maximization as a defining rule; Aristotles version of ethics (rightly named ‘virtue ethics’) are nothing beyond emulaition not requiring anything more than following someone of supposed just action. As well contractarianism (Rawls or some readings of Hobbes), right-based theories (Locke comes to mind) or even egoism (famous in Nietzche) all create ethics beyond the requirement of God. While they may not meet Christian (or whichever religion) values they do attempt to make theories of moral action without a religious worldview… and often make convincing cases. Rather than requiring the ‘proper’ interpretation of certain religious sources they rely on logical argumentation in order to mandate clearer rules of ethical action; they may not be in direct lines with traditional religous values but do offer quite a bit of valid argumentation worth reading.
Also, it is interesting to point out that modern athiests often attack theists (however rightly or wrongly) for being amoral because their moral beliefs are so much more difficult to justify. There is little consensus between different Christian authorities as to specifics of ‘Christian’ moral behaviour … concequentialists true to Bentham, at least, less dissention.
Edit: Borked up an example. Kant was religious, I realized this after hitting the submit button.
We also have to separate at least two questions out of this that can be expressed as “Where do atheists get their morals”.
The first question is more precisely expressed as “Do atheists have good reasons for behaving in ways the rest of us call ‘moral’?”
The second question is “Do atheists have just grounds for calling the behaviors they prefer ‘moral’?”
I think people of all stripes can give good reasons why they don’t rape, murder, and steal. What’s more important is, can people of all stripes justify calling those reasons moral reasons, or are (a)theists in fact driven primarily by non-moral considerations?
Is a moral system just any collection of rules that keeps a person from doing the 10-20 evilest things I can think of, or is there more to it than that?
I am a nihilistic immoral or amoral atheist.
Therefore I don’t get anything.
( I am under the impression that there is only necessity and non necessity.)
I personally don’t understand atheists who hold subjective forms of morality since such a perception is really a extended product of objective religious morality.
I think most of us are hard-wired to be social and hence moral beings. The specific content varies somewhat from culture to culture, but there are common themes. This includes atheists, theists and everybody in between. This means that when we screw up our conscience punishes us. Even the nihilist finds herself plagued by conscience the value of which she will deny. It appears that about 2% of the population is amoral. I doubt that there is a strong correlation between the anti-social personality and a specific religious orientation, but I am unaware of any studies.
In wanting to maximize my own happiness within a group setting, how does this translate to an objective religios morality? Bentham NEVER included religion in his talks, and his purely hedonistic calculations are based only on hedonistic gain with minimal loss.
How are we hardwired to be moral?
Keep in mind that animals are amoral and man at one point was a amoral momentary creature himself.
I completely believe morality is a social form of theatrics and nothing more.
Civic determinism was created simaltaneously with objective religious forms of moralism since the first societies were dominated by priests or shamans.
Even though contemporary civic determinism has divorced itself away from religious inclinations it couldn’t shake itself away from morality the only threat of punishment amongst the masses that justifies subjugation for without a objective morality of a god one must find another moral theme to herd the masses and thus was born moral subjectivism to serve that purpose without that of a god yet the connection of it’s metaphysical properties is ever present.
Simple. I draw my morals from the golden rule, do unto other as you would have done unto you.
And be highly perceptive of what others may want that differ from you. And sometimes we think we don’t want upfront honesty but sometimes its the only way we can grow. I enjoy people who are rude, especially the whole cinema asshole character that soon opens up to show they’re hard but smart and caring. But its’ hard to find people like that, most are too scared to be honest because people won’t like them, when in fact it could draw people if used correctly. I know some of the people i’ve respected the most have been this way.
For example I knew this guy, big asshole, never liked him, one day he did or said something kind and it was a big deal. However, if it was someone who was alway… well u get the picture. Same thing with teachers. If you start nice kids will love you then take advantage, then you gotta get mean and they hate you. Start mean, slowly show kindness, they always feel it’s buried and they know how you can be, more respect comes in turn from that type of fear.
First, I would hope you would have been able to identify feelings akin to those I previously described in yourself. Let me repeat them:
“This means that when we screw up our conscience punishes us. Even the nihilist finds herself plagued by conscience the value of which she will deny.”
So we begin with feelings which, if you have them, you know are more than “a social form of theatrics.” These include compassion which is inability to bear the suffering of others. As I pointed out most people have these feeling to some degree or another.
Then, looking outward, we observe that moral behavior is a subset of social behavior in mammals and not limited to the human species. For example, if an otherwise healthy human mother withheld care for her infant child we would find her behavior immoral. And yet non-human mothers nurse care for and protect their babies. Darwin argued that the moral sense arose from the sexual, parental, and social instincts that have evolved in mammals generally and especially in humans. The ethics of social engagement are rooted in mammalian emotional systems that cause us to seek intimacy. The individual ontogenesis of these systems are developed in the social environment during our extended childhood.