Moral Atheism

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Having been a theist since fairly early on in my study of philosophy, I’ve often contemplated on moral atheism. I’ve tried to figure out what justification there is for it. I’ve even tried asking a number of atheists, but found that they generally try to dip the question or change the subject. So I thought, though it has probably come up before, I’d start a topic on here.
Here is a a hopefully not too imperfect summation of my conclusions:

If man’s entire existence is inherently meaningless, then so is anything that he creates, or that is born in him. If there is no good reason for existence, then there is no good reason for morality, and the practice thereof. It seems clear to me that atheists should approach morality in the same way that they approach God: “There is no reason or evidence to support the belief that there is any meaning in morality, so it should be considered a ‘chance’ phenomenon”. Some atheists might of course reply, “Morality is a force which I feel inside me, and I would rather yield to that force than fight against it” - a perfectly fair reply. But what that person should surely never do is exhort anyone to morality, for, according to such logic, obeying moral law is simply a choice, and there is no right or wrong choice (right and wrong being both meaningless concepts themselves).

I don’t share this opinion, being a theist. I’m of the opinion that the ‘good’ is that which draws us together, towards our original nature, one of oneness, and leads us toward our ultimate goal, whatever specifically that may be. Hence, killing each other is bad because, not only does doing violence to ourselves (us all being a part of the one) make any sense logically, but killing and wars turn us back towards barbarous animalism, and will lead us to devolution rather than evolution. This is why I feel love to be the greatest force, for it is that which draws us together.

I don’t mean to antagonize any atheists with this. As I said, I’ve tried raising the subject before and it’s generally had a pretty hostile reception. I remember one person saying simply, “You just don’t like atheists, do you!”. Which is a preposterous claim, I assure you.

I’m interested in your thoughts on the subject, so that, if I’m correct, we can build on the theory, and if I’m mistaken, I can correct myself. For I’m a truth-seeker, and hopefully there are others on the board of a similar disposition, that surely being the aim of philosophy.

Hope I don’t sound at all pretentious, I’m pretty new to the board so I don’t know how we all communicate here yet. Oh, and it would be good if replies were worded in a fairly understandable way. I’m no academic, and I suspect there are plenty of laymen on the forum who would like to join in on the debates.

2

Well, there are a few different ways to approach this subject. First off, I think that equating atheism with nihilism is incorrect, there are many atheists who are not nihilists so to suggest that everything is inherently meaningless is to get off to a false start. By-and-large the idea is that we create our own meaning – think of it like money. In the modern world, a dollar’s value isn’t actually tied to anything. A dollar has value because we deem to have value but that value doesn’t actually correlate to anything other than similar human-constructs (like “The Market”).

One could also make an appeal to “happy nihilism” if one wanted to hold onto the nihilistic edge of the thing. I use this comic to demonstrate such a position:

Think about it, from the perspective of “hard atheism”, God does not exist. Theism is simply mistaken on this account. So for a theist to say that their life has meaning due to God can be read as life having meaning due to a human construct. Same idea, really.

Life is meaningful because we make it so.

As for morality, likewise, we make it so because it works. It is the engine that drives society. Some people argue that morality is rational, I’d actually argue the reverse:

Furthermore, it is worth noting that “atheism” never stands alone, just as “theism” never stands alone. The terms by themselves tell you pretty much nothing. Now terms like “Christian” or “Buddhist”, those tell us something. Kantian, Spinozaist, it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. To take atheism as simply meaning post-Christendom where it maintains all the ideologies of Christianity sans God is a mistake. It is, or at least ought, be something else entirely.

3

I did actually mean to include a comment that my interpretation of atheism is a fairly strictly defined one. I’ve actually found that lots of people who call themselves atheists are rather just agnostics, who never really bother, or don’t really have any desire, to think about it. My point was that if an atheist follows his conclusion through logically, then the idea of morality meaning anything in itself becomes completely null and void. The psychologist in me tells me that the reason atheists don’t like to do this is because of the complete anarchy it would bring about. Everyone could do what they wanted, and no atheist could say “you shouldn’t do that”, because he would be claiming that should and shouldn’t, right and wrong, have meaning, when logically if there is no purpose to our existence, nothing to be gained from doing either, they have no meaning.
I don’t quite understand your logic though. I consider meaning as purpose. If life has no ‘inherent’ purpose, that is, we’re not here for any specific reason, then I would consider life meaningless. Any meaning that we design ourselves doesn’t count. Because as I said, surely any meaning created by a being who’s entire existence is meaningless has no meaning in itself. This might be a crap analogy, but making up your own meaning is essentially like saying ‘nothing + something = something’. When of course, the logical conclusion is that nothing can come from nothing - “Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit”.

4

So you are saying that money has no value?

Edit:

And I’d check that math. If we define “nothing” as “zero” (I think that is a noncontroversial statement) and “something” as “a positive real number N”, then it follows that 0+N=N.

5

I wouldn’t define nothing as zero, I’d define it as complete absence of anything, including numerical value. (Though, as I don’t actually believe in ‘nothingness’ (I’ll have to leave that for a whole other post) I may be mistaken). By calling nothing ‘Zero’ are you not essentially giving it value?
Money has no true value apart from that which man imbibes in it. And again, if man is a completely worthless being, then his creation is equally worthless.
Perhaps I could word it better by saying that, if man does not have a purpose, then all that which he considers ‘achievement’ is not so, for it serves no purpose.

I best reiterate that I don’t want to start any sort of terrible atheist/theist mass brawl.

6

Money has value because we value it- and that’s not any appeal to subjectivity, it’s just a consequence of what the word ‘value’ means. Even saying money ‘only’ has the value we place on it doesn’t make much sense, since there’s not some ‘higher’ or ‘stronger’ kind of value out there. The whole concept of value is based on that which the virtuous needs, respects or endears himself too, right?

EDIT: Also, we can have some fairly objective statements from this understanding. If you claim a penny is more valuable than a dime, then you’re wrong- even though value is ‘only’ a human thing. You’re in the system that gives money it’s value, so if you value pennies more (because they are bigger, or you like the color, say) then your values are defective. If on the other hand, you were on a desert island all by yourself, then it might be right for you to say that pennies and dimes are worth the same.

7

Hello, welcome to the forums.

I am currently an atheist, which followed a period of agnosticism, which followed a long period of fundamentalist Christian, just to give you some background information.

I’ll try to go bit by bit through your post to address some of the points, but let me start by saying relativity plays a vital role in answering the question.

These are some pretty big “If” statements, but I agree the conclusion you’ve drawn is true if those premises are true.

Relative to an infinite timeline and the gargantuan universe, I would say life and mankind’s existence is meaningless; however, we live in a much smaller world, on a much smaller timeline, which is why relative to the individual, life can be filled with meaning. Both can be true simultaneously, but the frame of reference is important. This is true of pretty much anything, from physics, to subjective experience. A frame of reference must first be established.

On the scale of an individual human on a 100 year timeline, subjectively life can be filled with meaning. We know humans are animals with certain tendencies, and these tendencies do not disappear with the knowledge that mankind will most likely one day be extinct. This does not evaporate our ability to love, appreciate, etc.

As you mentioned, there are very good reasons for morality if one prefers our civilization now compared to our civilization thousands of years ago. There is no way a society could be built to what it has today if murder wasn’t a crime. All of our focus would have to be on protecting ourselves, and none would be devoted to furthering technology in other areas like communication. If everybody lied to one another without a second thought, the exchange of knowledge would be pointless, as we wouldn’t know whether or not it was true.

You’ve even given a great reason, without intervention of the divine, as to why violence doesn’t make sense, regardless of an objective moral system:

I agree with this completely. Just knowing what many can accomplish, compared to only one, is justification for morality. We know that working together, we can progress much more quickly socially, technologically, etc., and we know that simply wouldn’t be possible if the person you were working with could kill you without reprocussion.

So just to review my stance:

On a universal scale, morality is non-existent and meaningless. But we don’t live on a universal scale, we live on a human scale, where it has meaning. If the meaning isn’t derived from a theistic source, however, then it must be somewhat subjective in nature, which I think is where the discussion of the matter lies.

There are, however, discussions that can be had about morality. We do it all the time (slavery, sexism, etc.), and I’d imagine we’ll continue to do it, regardless and often times in spite of theistic moral belief systems.

8

Thanks for the reply dorkydood.
So you are essentially agreeing with me by saying that the only meaning is subjective meaning? The whole point of the topic was asking whether there is a reason for moral atheism. By saying that all meaning is subjective you are saying the same about any meaning put into morality. If there is no objective purpose for man’s existence, then morality serves no objective purpose and can only be derived in a subjective manner, meaning that people can ignore it/heed it/interpet it however they like. So if a suicide bomber says, “It’s a good thing to kill loads of people”, he is essentially right (or at least, not wrong), in your view, because all morality is subjective. Correct me if I got that wrong.
The problem with that, of course (and by problem, I don’t mean that means it must be wrong), is that if everyone turns to atheism in the end, the whole of what we consider ‘society’ will crumble. Because our society is one which is built on some supposedly ‘objective’ morality, and if we all come to the conclusion that morality and law are only what we make them, then all those with reasoning abilities would take to doing whatever they felt like, whatever was ‘right’ for them. This seems to indicate that logical atheism will lead to the end of society, if not the end of the existence of the entire human species.
This is going to sound terrible, and I’m not meaning to make this personal, but doesn’t that mean that you need necessarily agree that, If I were to come along and rape your wife, you could not say that it was ‘wrong’, because morality is subjective?

EDIT: As for your comment about ‘accomplishment’, and that we can accomplish more if we work together than alone - Without meaning in our lives everything we ‘achieve’ is, as you said, only a ‘subjective’ accomplishment. Your comment also assumes that there is something more important than the self. Perhaps you might say ‘humanity’, in reply to that. But again, what is humanity? If humanity has no purpose, it is a meaningless concept. And saying that we should work “for humanity” is almost like saying we should work “for God” or “for the greater good”. But if the purpose of life is only what we make it, then indicating its a good thing if we ‘achieve more’ makes no sense, for ‘good’ is subjective as is ‘achievement’. In fact, that quote from Phaedrus in your signature indicates that increasing knowledge is a ‘good thing’. A completely nonsense saying if you believe all meaning to be subjective. For good is then whatever a man makes it. If there is nothing greater than the self, I suspect most men would want to spend their lives in self-indulgence and self-fulfilment. Increasing knowledge so as to pass it on to others would would strike very few as something that is inherently good for ‘the self’. The only reason to do it would be if you got something selfish out of it.

I thought of a good analogy to elucidate my original argument:
If a hammer, for example, is completely alone in the universe, without man above it to put it to purpose, then it’s existence is completely meaningless. Similarly, if man is completely alone, with no guiding power above him, nothing to imbue purpose in his existence, then his life also has no true meaning.
Some might argue that a person is above and in control of his life, so he can put it to purpose and that can rightly be called meaning. But a man’s ‘Person’ is not above his ‘being’ or his ‘life’, so that argument doesn’t hold up.

Forgive me if I’ve stumbled into ill logic. I just had dinner and now I’m feeling less clear than I was earlier.

9

As I’m not sure what the term “moral atheism” actually means, I’m going to assume that it means the basis for one’s morality (or how one believes he or she should rightly conduct him/herself in life) if one has no belief in a divine deity (let’s call it a god). I would then assume that, in your view, only god belief can be deemed as the appropriate foundation for one’s moral code of conduct, if you will. Please correct me if that assumption is wrong.

Once I understand this, I’d also like to know what your ‘baseline’ for morality actually is before I can offer anything to the discussion. So can you tell me your theory regarding the basis for moral anything? You note that you’re a ‘theist’, so I’ll take that to mean that you believe in the existence of a god. Is it the god as described in the Christian Bible? Or another version? Once you’ve identified it, would you please describe how you’ve derived your basis for morality according to this divinity that you believe exists?

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Well, it’s a small correction, but an important one. He is wrong in my view. He is right in his view. That’s where the subjective morality comes into play. But while his justification for it being “good” is that he is pleasing whatever God he worships per the words of the Koran, my justification that it is bad is as follows:

He is disrupting the normal function of society. Suddenly, there will be a large group of people who will no longer be able to work at whatever job they previously had. In addition, we all know how much it hurts to lose somebody close to us that we love, and he is taking away several people from their loved ones, causing great suffering. In addition, his justification for it being “good” is rooted in a religion that has no evidence whatsoever to back his claims, other than the holy text. My justification is obviously rooted in a reality that everybody can measure, observe, etc.

Why would society crumble? It is a common misconception to believe that without objective morals, everybody would run around raping, murdering, and pillaging. This simply isn’t the case, as everybody can see the benefit of creating laws that protect us without there being an absolute objective moral system.

I agree with Dawkins when he suggests that a person who isn’t murdering, raping, and stealing from people solely because they believe in a higher power who looks down upon such things is less moral than somebody who doesn’t do such things because they have respect, love, and compassion for their fellow man and society in general.

Morality only exists with mankind, which is why it’s subjective. It is a construct created by humans. I would still say it is wrong, even if you felt it was right. My arguments for such an action being wrong would be that:

A) Sex is something that carries an extreme emotional attachment for most human beings, especially for those in a monogamous relationship, and to force a person into committing such an act against their will, knowing it will cause extreme emotional hardship, is wrong.

You might think it’s right because it feels right, or because God told you to do it, or you’re lonely, etc., but after considering both arguments, I’d assume that most would agree it is “wrong” for the reason I listed, as opposed to “right” for whatever justification you could come up with.

If it makes you feel more comfortable, you could use the terminology that it evolves us or doesn’t evolve us. Allowing rape would not evolve us, as it would make our society less stable, it would cause emotional hardship amongst the victims and they would no longer be able to function as well in society, etc.

Define true meaning. If you mean there is no purpose greater than humanity, I agree.

We know our planet is eventually going to spiral into the sun, and that our entire solar system is eventually going to spiral into a black whole. Eventually, our entire galaxy is most likely going to cease to exist, and if I don’t believe in a superhuman interference to stop that from happening, then life, on a long enough timeline, is meaningless.

So that leaves us with two options.

A) We can kill ourselves now and save the trouble

B) Continue to exist and make the best of it

Now, being a product of evolution, I’m inclined to choose option “B,” because I prefer survival. In addition, I prefer survival where I feel confident walking outside knowing there are laws in place to protect me from being murdered so I can focus my attention on other things, such as music, art, .

So without somebody forcefeeding us what is “right” and “wrong,” how do we decide? Well, that would require great discussion, and preferably by the greatest minds alive today, to determine what would most evolve our species, and what wouldn’t. Taking this approach, there are many things you’d see that align with evolving us and being what many consider “right,” and not evolving us, which many would consider “wrong.” There are also some things that would beg the question, why the hell are we even debating this, like stem cell research, and other things that should deserve debate, like limiting the number of offspring people can have.

11

Any attempt to dismiss atheism because it is a “threat to morality” is a sign of cowardice. If, as the Christians say, the truth shall set us free - then isn’t it doubly hypocritical to suggest that one lie to themselves in the service of an idea such as morality? It is no longer necessary to refute religion with appeals to the sciences, which are themselves motivated out of a fundamentally Christian morality. Rather it has become ideologically unsound and therefore unworthy.

Man has no need of morality when man stops making the mistake of attributing to himself moral agency. This means disbelieving in the soul - which means embracing a sort of hyperreligiosity - enthousiasmos, the possession of the subject by the deity which today is still found in the sects which accept glossolalia. One who can envision a naturalistic philosophy with this component has overcome morality.

12

How does the argument in the last sentence work? You wrote

P: Obeying moral law is a choice and there is no right or wrong choice
therefore
C: a person “should surely never” exhort anyone else to morality.

Your premise P just said there are no right and wrong choices. So what do you mean by “should surely never”? Does that indicate that such exhortations are a wrong choice? You just denied that there were right and wrong choices!

I understand you’re making a counterfactual argument; my point is that you are not inhabiting the atheist’s brain consistently enough to see how he would work.

Incidentally, my beliefs are along Xunzian’s lines…

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Dionysus

Well, depends on how you're approaching it front to back or back to front.  Yeah, if the argument is that atheism undermines morality, therefore we shouldn't listen to atheists, that's a bad argument.  But you can approach it from the other way around- it's [i]obvious[/i] that there's such a thing as morality, and therefore any system that can't account for morals as we experience of them has a defeater.  It remains to be seen if that approach works in the end, but it makes more sense.
14

But morality as an all-encompassing, universal truism is philosophically unsound. It presupposes as a rule some overarching purpose by which existence is justified, and then justifies this teleology through the use of morality. (e.g., ‘humanistic morality’, “murder is immoral because it would has a negative effect on the evolution of the species; ergo murder is immoral and evolution is morally good”). Dawkins tries to use this method of reasoning quite a bit.

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Dionysus

   Not if we approach it experientially.  We can take it as a given that we experience some things as good or evil, and then all we need to presuppose is that such universal experiences are presumed valid until we have a darned good reason to do otherwise.    If one of the consequences of affirming our moral observations is that there must be an 'overarching purpose by which existence is justified', then so be it- that's not a terribly controversial proposition, since most people already think so. In that case, there being a purpose for our existence isn't an assumption, it's grounded in observation, which is fine.
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Ok guys, forgive me If I take a long time to get through all your questions. I figured this is how it would be, masses of replies, all against me. I’ll try and answer them all though.

With regards to your first question, you pretty much have pegged what I mean. Yes, it seems to me the only reason to believe that morality has any objectivity would be that it originated from some source above us and is instilled in us for some purpose. Now, some might say that morality is in our genes, and that gives it objectivity, which is a fair point. But that doesn’t explain why we should yield to something, or consider it logical, just because it is in our genes. It may explain why we act ‘morally’, but psychically we seem to have outgrown our ‘base’, if you will, indicated by the fact that we can deny our instinct. Something being ‘genetic’ is not a good reason to assent to it if genetics and the whole of man in general is just an accidental meaningless phenomenon.

As to your second question, I must say I’m a little unsure about whether to explain. Not because I think it rests on weak foundations (I’m always willing to be proved wrong), but because it might end with this topic descending into people tearing apart my personal theology and using that to show how I “must be wrong” in this because my other theological ideas are incomplete. I do not associate myself with any particular religion. In fact, I find organised religion goes against my ideals because it often sets out a dogma and says that there is nothing beyond that. The whole point behind Christianity, according to Jesus, was that it always keep evolving further towards perfection, and never stop moving until it gets there. “He who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God.” According to this conclusion most of the Christian churches are anti-christian organisations because they suppress growth (Yep, I’ve been reading Tolstoy).
I did look through my diary for an account I wrote of my current mode of thought on these things, but I can’t find it. So I’ll have to be brief.
I believe that we are all a part of God, or ‘The One’, if you’d prefer. Each one of us is “a splinter of the infinite deity”, as Carl Jung would have it. We are many and one, each being a center which reflects back on the whole. We are here for a purpose. That purpose I am not entirely sure on, but I tend to agree with Colin Wilson that part of it is somehow to “colonise this difficult and inhospitable realm of matter and to imbue it with the force of life”. I believe in evolution, but one thing that seems to be neglected is the obvious evolution of consciousness. I’ll quote again, because it’ll be more clear than if I try and explain it: “'Consciousness is trying to force entry into matter, as the sea might try to force a small hole in a dyke. ‘In the amoeba, then, you might say the impulse has manufactured a very small leak through which free activity could be inserted into the world, and the progress of evolution has been the gradual enlargement of this leak.’ A dog or cat is a bigger leak still. But man is the biggest leak so far.” This conclusion became much more clear to me upon reading Pierre Tielhard de Chardin’s ‘The Phenomenon of Man’. If you really want to get the jist of it, I recommend reading that. He also seems to have been greatly influenced by Plotinus, who I’m just coming to read now. The appearance of reflective consciousness in man seems to be a massive evolutional leap, us now seemingly having the mental ability to contemplate our reason for living and carry it out. All the animals previous to us have not had that ability, and hence they have remained generally inert and unable to progress and build.
As for my ideas on morality, I don’t pretend to have a perfect idea of what is moral and what is immoral. I believe morality is within us all, being inherent in the part of us, our consciousness, which is an aspect of God. This is why I believe it right to follow morality, for it comes from God, and us being a part of God, he has our interests, or rather we have our own interests at heart. I generally base my morality on the inner guide, but even more so on logic related to my beliefs, or ‘Logos’ perhaps, which I relate to ‘Universal Reason’. Universal love, for example, is surely logical, because we are all from the same source, not just brothers, but fragments of the same ‘one’ - ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ - and our purpose is the same, so fighting is stupid! I would love and forgive a murderer, because I see him both as my brother, and a man who has not realised his own true inner being, which leads him to thinking he is completely seperate from everyone else, as many of us do, which understandably leads to confusion and a lessening of love and caring for others. If you want my specific opinion on a moral issue, you’ll have to put it to me, though as I said, I don’t claim to be totally clear, because our consciousness is being rooted through the material body, and because the body retains many of our animal aspects, morality often becomes clouded or conflicts with instinct and animalism. So essentially I consider morality ‘objective’ but I realise that we aren’t all completely aware of it and we don’t all completely understand it. This is what leads to ‘sin’, in my opinion. I don’t, at this time, believe in a literal force for evil, any sort of devil. The devil seems to me an analogy for, firstly, the animal aspects of man which conflict with his spiritual self leading to error, and secondly, the product of the ego when it considers itself totally seperate and does not see the unity in all. As for hell, I consider it the state of distress that comes about when, after death, one realises that he has wasted his entire life in doing things counter to his own true destiny. I think morality is from our higher godly self, and is so logically something to aspire to, as well as being the pointer which will most greatly aid us in carrying out what we are here to do, which I believe to be a specific task. The common religious idea that we are just here to prove ourselves worthy is one I find barbarous and not fitting with an all loving God. Material life, cutting us off from our home and our true self, would to me seem unnecessarily cruel if it did not have a good reason. Though, as I’ve said, I don’t pretend to know exactly what that reason is, I have but theories and inklings. I am staying with this system at the moment because most of what I’ve thrown at it has fitted in like a puzzle. If I ever come across anything which smashes it to bits, I’ll be willing to think again.

If there’s any nonsense in there, that’s because I didn’t spend hours umming and ahhing over it. Hopefully it answers your question and elucidates to an acceptable extent my current system of thought, which is always evolving, I speak none of this as dogma.
Please, please, don’t let the whole debate move away from the original question and solely towards my own personal theism, which is what happened the last time I brought this up - ending with people essentially spitting bile at me and telling me what a pretentious, elitist, egotistical scumbag I was. Which is actually the reason why I chose to seek out a forum particularly dedicated to philosophy. I hoped that people in such a place would act towards me with their reasoning self rather than emotional one, and think my arguments through rather than, upon seeing they don’t fit in with their current world view, throwing them back at me.
I’ll get round to the other questions later, give me a chance to answer them please.
Thanks again for your criticisms guys. Peace be with you, and let’s not let this topic become bitter.

17

Some good ideas there, but a few points:

  1. Teleology is a controversial notion by itself, but coupling that to evolution is quite treacherous.

  2. You are stuck in the Greek notion of the distinction between life and non-life, matter and energy. Naturally, this produces certain concerns when reductionist policies are applied to notions like “consciousness”; however, I would argue that these problems suggest that there is a fault in the dichotomy as presented as opposed to the information gained from study. I discussed on alternative in this thread. Actually, because the thread went on for a very long time and I am something of a broken-record, I actually repeated the argument twice! D’oh!

For an alternate theistic view, and my criticism of it, see this thread. Other discussions on notions of sentience and other implications that touch on what you’ve discussed can be found here and here

  1. In this thread there was a discussion on how morality plays out amongst rational beings. I think that myself and others made some pretty sound appeals as to why morality is beneficial to all involved (and therefore, why moral individuals and societies are more likely to thrive) so it posits a mechanism whereby non-theistic morality would arrive at many of the same conclusions that theistic morality does.

  2. I think your notion of morality lacks imagination. Is there truly no advantage of being moral aside from aspiring to be united with one’s godly self? Are there no advantages to it at all? To me, a system like that sounds awfully close to something that “thieves of morality” would espouse since it exists largely as a burden (a sacrifice of self) as opposed to a realization of the self. You almost circumvent that by aligning the self with God, but by proposing a fragmented henoism, I’d argue that you have atomic units who exist as such from the beginning and by all accounts it seems as though you think they also end as such. I guess I’m asking how separate are the pieces? Is it like an iceberg with many spikes above the water but it is completely united below the surface of the water or is it a large diamond that has been shattered into many pieces? The distinction is important. After all, if “the self” becomes a hollow entity/illusory, my objection is rendered moot.

  3. I liked the devil-as-animal part, but it is worth noting that many of our social elements are also animal elements. So, I think the notion that the animalistic part of our nature is satanic and our human nature is godly is a bit of a false dichotomy since there is a good deal of cross-talk between those parts. The angels of our better natures come from many of the same impulses that, when incorrectly channeled, lead to some of the worst aspects of human nature.

18

First of all… Welcome to the board rainshine87

I am curious as to where you are going with this… I perticularly liked the “we can deny our instinct.” and then “Something being ‘genetic’ is not a good reason to assent to it if genetics and the whole of man in general is just an accidental meaningless phenomenon.”

It’s not a bad reason either, friend… :laughing:
Why should we, after all, deny our instincts if there is no reason to?

There is no internal inconsistency on the part of the atheist here… if the belief is held that everything is essentially meaningless… then genetic hardcoded predisposition would be the ONLY drive. I can’t honestly think of any reason to reject it…

We begin giving things value based on those “instincts”. Milk tastes good… milk has value… mom gives me milk… mom is good…

You have yet to show any compelling reason anyone would have to reject their basic instincts… even if they are meaningless… that’s the default… why strugle? to what purpose? to what end?

The fact that we enjoy not fearing for our lives naturally leads to wanting an agreement not to try and kill eachother… that we enjoy keeping what we worked to get leads to agreeing not to steal from eachother… and so forth…

You are asking… “why be moral when it has no inherent value?” I’d say because it’s instinct… you point out “we can deny instinct”… I ask… “why should we?”

and you say?

19

If you are a truth seeker, buckle your seat belt. All roads lead to the same destination, there are not multiple places you will end up. I reached the end, seriously, just ask away and I can clear any cobwebs you have. But that’s just foreshadowing.

Moral atheism is not a very useful phrase.

Two distinct words with two distinct meanings.
Atheism: Having no religious beliefs.
Moral: A relative term describing a behavior as being “good” as opposed to immoral, or “bad”.
or
Morals - Rules one follows that are claimed to guide what behaviors are considered good, and what behaviors are considered bad.

Morals are not related to religion, they are related to what people deem to be good, or bad, and behaviors that are said to be good, or bad. Some people happen to use religion to this end, some do not. I will argue that if ONLY faith guides your morality (or anyone’s), then it’s actually immorality by any reasonable definition.

-Mach

20

There is a reason to deny instinct. I suspect that much of instinct was instilled in animals for the propagation of life and survival. Now we’re to this point, with a population problem, we could do with ignoring our instincts to have children a bit less often. Though I don’t claim that reproduction is all of instinct, that would be naive.

You guys are doing exactly what I asked you not to. My personal philosophy is not the point of the topic, it was the logic behind moral atheism.

I will answer a couple of your points though Xunzian (Just to dig my own grave and all that).
Teleology has a few different elements (though I had to look the word up to be sure of its meaning, shows you that I’m still relatively new to philosophy). Whilst I currently believe in a final purpose for the existence of human beings in this form, I don’t necessarily believe that what we consider God created the material world. Though It’s a possibility, considering that recent studies in psychokinesis have shown that it is possible for mind to influence matter (read Dean Radin’s ‘The Conscious Universe’ for more on this, as well as how telekinesis has been scientifically proven). As for intelligent evolution, I seriously recommend you read ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ by Teilhard de Chardin!
Forgive me if I don’t understand your comments on matter and energy. But on my investigation into the paranormal, it seems very likely to me that conscious existence carries on after the death of the body. With regards to reductionist views of ‘consciousness’ I presume you mean the likes of people who say it is simply produced by the brain, which, if I’m not mistaken has similarly weak arguments to support it. Now, as for it being rooted in matter, it depends what we consider matter. There may be different levels of matter, many of which we are still unaware of. Such concepts are frankly a little further than I’ve gone with my philosophy, being not overly confident in the area of science. I certainly don’t agree that without this body we cease to exist. I don’t see the logic in cessation of existence, and I see no evidence for ‘nothingness’. Our consciousness may change when we die, but how can it cease to exist? I’m generally in agreement with Parmenides logic in regard to being and non-being (though I only came across his ideas very recently, having come to a very similar conclusion on my own about half a year ago), though the fact that we have never observed ‘nothingness’ directly or indirectly, and that all ‘empty’ space has fields in it so is not ‘nothingness’, play a part. That’s an argument I’ve dealt with elsewhere, but I don’t care to start it here, because it’s not the point of the topic. (I also had some ideas on being - that being itself is not necessarily slave to the law of opposites, for it is different than everything else. Whilst everything else relies on being, being surely does not ‘rely on itself’, for it is. Hence it is different and different rules may apply to it. That’s a just a theory I’ve been playing with.)
I don’t believe I said that the only reason for morality is to realise our oneness, did I? Perhaps I left out the comment which I meant to include, that morality also consists of the best elements to help us achieve our goal. It is the ‘guiding light’ if you will. Just as love is the force which draws us together. I don’t deny that there may be meaning in morality beyond ourselves. Does God have a similar idea of morality outside of the material world? We can’t possibly say at this point.
You make a fair point about my devil comments. I did simplify it somewhat so that I could be brief. I wouldn’t say that the animal nature in it’s whole makes up the devil, for as you say, there are many ‘good’ elements in animal nature.
As for the nature of our being, I consider it like the iceberg analogy, completely united below the surface, though I must reitterate that I am no academic in this area. I’m also not confident on whether ‘the self’ as we see it becomes null when we return (though I also don’t believe we instantly go back fully to the one when we die. I feel it more likely that our souls have to evolve toward that level). Reading Jung’s autobiography (or perhaps not, I read a lot, I can’t remember if that’s the right book) made me think about how necessary our individuality is in many ways. As I said, my philosophy is a work in process.
Talking of Jung, I’ll include a couple of quotes from him, because they seem relevant. Perhaps they will serve as counter arguments to your seemingly materialistic view, him being a man who really knew the mind well.
“It is an almost absurd prejudice to suppose that existence can only be physical. As a matter of fact, the only form of existence of which we have immediate knowledge is psychic…
…In themselves, space and time consist of nothing. They are hypostatized concepts born of the discriminating activity of the conscious mind, and they form the indispensable co-ordinates for describing the behaviour of bodies in motion. They are, therefore, essentially psychic in origin.”

Can we go back to the original topic now?