Moral Atheism

[aporia]

rainshine,

You’ve got it. Morality is invented for the harmonious organization of society.

Worth, like the value of money and atheistic morality, is an intersubjective concept. It doesn’t matter whether man has no “objective” worth given to him by God. We only care whether we value ourselves and each other, so we encourage each other to do so intersubjectively. Our worth is an idea we hold collectively, so it is very real, but it does not exist outside of our minds.

You are right that if there is no God, there is no common fact or object that explains why man is worth anything. However worth, value, dignity etc can still exist as cultural, intersubjective ideas. We believe in human dignity and worth, and the value of preserving human life and equality, because we together prefer the life that results. Not because God told us to.

About the Nazi’s idea of society and morality. There are no easy answers to how society should be organized. It’s something we have been figuring out for as long as we’ve been here. Human life has been one long experiment in finding happiness. We learn from our mistakes, sometimes we re-make and re-learn from our mistakes… but basically we use our experience and reason to determine what is moral or not. And we do it together, intersubjectively. Individuals can have moral opinions, but the morality that determines the shape of society is the one held by society at large.

There is no one opinion held by atheists about what our morality should look like, since atheism by itself is merely the lack of belief in gods and says nothing about morality. But most atheists probably feel that the present moral system in our society is basically good, though they may dissent vehemently with some of its particulars.

One last thing – religion holds much wisdom about morality born of experience and deep reflection. I do not think we should discard religious thought when searching for our moral bearings.

[Phaedrus]

Morality is a name applied after the fact to explain something we generally already know. My suspicion (supported by quite of bit of current research) is that our ideas of what’s right and wrong stem in great part from our biology and are “hardwired” to a large degree. While we may disagree on some things from culture to culture (eg food prohibitions or sexual mores) very few, if any, civilizations on Earth every sought to legitimize and approve wholesale theft and murder. Of course, history is replete with plenty of both, but in all cases I’m aware of said events were met with great revulsion by those involved.

Religion makes a grand show of putting the cart before the horse, claiming to have taught mankind “great moral lessons,” but all this bluster basically rephrases ideas at least as old as written language, and probably far older. Man invented God, then lent him morality.

[Wobbly]

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’ve always found it kind of hard to understand what it means for man’s existence to be “inherently meaningless”. For me, “inherent meaning” is a Christian conception, thus so is “inherent meaninglessness”. There is no “inherently” anything in regards to value judgments, which is what claims about man’s meaning is. Which makes nihilism a reaction to Christianity, where one denies the Christian god, but maintains the Christian value judgment about existence without god, which is that existence without god is meaningless.

However, if one denies that god has any role in meaning, meaning is left to the realm of man, is defined in terms of what man values, and it is no longer coherent for someone to say “inherent meaning(lessness)”.

[Ingenium]

@Rainshine87

I sensed a little hostility in your last post, though that may be due to the fact that you misunderstood my position.

Well, maybe so. Alternatively, this could be your sense because having your theism questioned as the foundation for your assertions about atheistic morality feels that way to you. You’ve made what I might interpret – should I choose to – as hostile statements about atheists (and that’s not even considering that you lump them into an homogenous amoral mass) but, as I’ve already stated, I can as easily attribute that to your inability to empathize with a morality that is based on something other than an irrational belief in an all-powerful supernatural entity. Remember, you’ve already chosen to do that. You’ve stated it openly and also noted in your OP that it’s why you’ve gone down this path of inquiry in the first place. Therefore, your choice is as subject to scrutiny on the topic here as your logic is. It has to be, because that logic is not founded on rationality, it’s founded on the choice to believe in a god. Characterize it however you will, you can’t change that. So you may indeed take the superstition as your basis and then offer up a logical progression to the development of your moral code, but you can’t go in reverse. Not rationally.

This is understandable, but I really do fear, for the reasons I have explained multiple times in this thread, that atheism, carried to its logical extremes, will lead to the death of society, if not the death of the entire species (unless science, some time soon, changes its viewpoint on God’s existence). I’m not just on an ego-trip, trying to convert people to act as my disciples. I really do not want man to degenerate or die, because I believe that we are one, and we are here for a purpose. This is why I see a value in Pascal’s wager (though an updated version) which others do not.

Oh my. So now you fear that the atheists are on a journey in which all of man is bound to ‘degenerate or die’? Maybe atheists aren’t as fearful of this as you are. Or maybe they see a significantly larger amount of evidence that massive death and destruction under the auspices of god belief could have a similar result.

I’m still waiting for you to carry atheism to its logical extremes. All you’ve done thus far is equate athism to moral relativity, without really justifying why, other than by stating you believe humans are ‘one with god’, and expecting that this proclamation makes your absolutist stance clear. Then you claimed that not having benefit of god’s will to guide them as to what’s really, absolutely, right, every person would think himself or herself ‘right’ and thus there would be chaos and doom on a planetary scale. Have I gotten the jist of it in a ‘Cliff’s Notes’ sense?

I can’t at the moment, I can only look around me - theorise. Which is what I am doing. My conclusion on our purpose, though perhaps being incorrect, is not wildly illogical, as you might think.

I don’t think it’s ‘wildly illogical’, just very human. I think it starts with a need (for a purpose, a meaning, perhaps fueled by the understanding at a deep level that we’re scheduled for death the instant we’re conceived). Then the creation of a hope (ultimate consciousness, eternal life, whatever), the building of a dream (god belief) and then backing into it to make it fit a logical structure, as best as one can. I have no problem with you working out the details of your belief in whatever way works for you. But when you decide that you cannot abide athism having a moral foundation because it conflicts with the structure you’ve built, then it seems reasonable to request that you step up to the plate with something of more substance than your own ‘theories’ and ‘feelings’ about our ‘oneness with god’. Which, of course, won’t be possible, will it?

Here’s your opening salvo:

“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…
If there is no good reason for existence…”

So the whole shebang is set up with these assumptions. Yet what about ‘man’s entire existence’ has been proven meaningless? What does such a statement even mean? And what support has been shown that there’s no good reason for existence?

And you go on…

…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”.

But there’s plenty of reason to believe that there’s meaning in morality. One could even say it’s self evident. So how did you arrive at such a presumption?

Now, I consider ‘good’ as ‘The will of God and that which aids in its implementation’. If implementing the will of God is ‘good’ then it is ‘good’ for us to do whatever is in our power to fully realise what his will specifically is.

Perhaps you could elaborate on this…if goodness then is the ‘will of God’, is it goodness because the god has willed it to be so, or is it goodness because the god recognizes it as good?

Would you describe this god’s will as free? Is it possible that the god could will something that resulted in great amounts of destruction and human suffering?

Moving closer to our true oneness, or becoming more like God, should, logically, help us to understand what his will is. So it is ‘good’ to come together, to synthesise. And what is the greatest force for synthesis? It is love! So, from this we conclude that love is ‘good’. This elucidates my logic.

This is an example of what I’ve described about moving backwards into ‘logic’. You set up the irrational claim of a god’s existence, claiming that then it’s a logical thing to become more like it. Because, of course, it exists. But as you have no rational foundation for the god claim in the first place, then how can you justify the rationality of moving toward it?

How could the atheist path be of greater morality, if morality is only subjective - what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ for any individual. In fact, the word makes no sense unless you are talking to me from the perspective of a theist. Is that how you meant it? Because otherwise it just says: “And in that respect, the atheist path is what I personally think is right”. Someone else might consider perseverance bad, because it is wasting energy on something which has no objective purpose.

Just as someone might equally consider perseverance bad because it’s wasting energy on an idea that has no logical basis. And there are plenty of critiques that could be made regarding adherence to belief in a divine entity. Not to mention moral absolutism. Like what a group of people might do if they believe they are achieving their as-revealed-by-god-purpose and come to view another group of people as standing in their way of achieving that god-given gift. You see, your theory, as all the “We are one with the big ultimate something” theories, only works, er, in theory, when everybody’s already gotten there. To the state of Oneness with the One, I mean. But human existence doesn’t actually work that way. Hopefully, you’ve read enough (human) history to have noticed this?

It’s worth pointing out that, to me at least, Buddhism appears something of a defeatist religion, the essential aim of it being to completely free yourself from the inevitable suffering of the material world. I might be wrong,

Yes, you are wrong. Although not about the ‘inevitable suffering of the material world’. That’s how the Buddha called it, too.

…but it seems then, that the only ‘purpose’ for Buddhists is escape from the material world and so ‘society’!

If you’d read the Buddha’s life, you might note that he actually lived in ‘soceity’ for 35 years after his awakening. And according to what we know of his time on the planet, he found absolutely no reason to smite, kill, bludgeon or crucify either his son or anyone else.

The cycle of reincarnation is considered a curse, and it is considered imperative to free yourself from this cycle, because material life is a bane. This seems to be equivalent to a desire for suicide.

The Buddha didn’t teach reincarnation. You’re confusing it with Hinduism.

…arch-skeptic Carl Sagan in the book. This “astonishing admission” was hidden away by Sagan in a single paragraph at the end of one of his last books:
“At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images “projected” at them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.”
Anyone who knows the level of Sagan’s skepticism will realise what a leap this is, and will inevitably be spurred on to take the subject a little more seriously, and to look into it more carefully.

Yeah, they might be spurred on to do that, unless of course they had actually read Sagan’s book. Because in it, the quote you provided was followed by this:

“I pick these claims not because I think they’re likely to be valid (I don’t), but as examples of contentions that might be true. The last three have at least some, although still dubious, experimental support. Of course I could be wrong.”

One thing that distinguishes science from pseudoscience is that it’s repeatable, the findings should be reproducable. Science is a collective enterprise, for a particular piece of knowledge to enter into the realm as proven according to scientific methodology (presumably since it then becomes a building block for further scientific inquiry), it has to be verifiable beyond one researcher’s enthusiasm to perhaps find some sort of separate ‘power of consciousness’ that could be characterized as simply a euphemistic quest to prove the existence of a soul. As of yet, we haven’t found reputable evidence that consciousness can exist independently, that is to say, beyond our highly developed, complex (and very physical) brains.

[tentative]

I’ve never understood why the concept of ‘meaningless’ raises such horror. If one begins with that term as base or ground zero, is that not freedom? We’re here. Meaning is whatever we say it is. This doesn’t mean that morality or ethics are relative, it simply means that we are free to create whatever system a society finds beneficial - which seems to be the historical pattern anyway.

Theists seem to need to appeal to some “higher authority” for moral guidance. “Please, daddy, tell me what to do.” The idea that the world might collapse if man found his freedom is speculation based on nothing but belief in belief…

This in no way negates much wisdom found in holy texts from all religions, it simply means that we may create whatever we find beneficial without checking with daddy.

[rainshine87]

I’ve been away for a while (my computer stopped working), but as I’m back, I’m afraid I’ll have to resurrect this topic, and so resurrect your loathing of me. Sorry for those of you who were getting sick of it, but after looking at a few of these latest posts, it seems people are still not understanding my original point. Either that or I’m not understanding their objections.
I’ve been mulling this topic over occasionally since my last post and I came up with a slightly re-worded version of my original argument which may help to elucidate my meaning. In reply I’d hope that rather than saying something like, “yes, but that is only the worst case situation”, or such like, people would tell me if they think it is correct or not, and if not, why so?

Morality can only be objective if the whole of mankind have some shared purpose. Such a purpose necessarily has to be given to them. If they have not been collectively put to purpose in such a way then ‘the meaning of life’ becomes subjective, for the purpose of each man’s life is then only what that individual makes it – nothing but a choice out of a near infinite variety of options. Morality is essentially a set of guidelines to serve some purpose. Unless all men share a collective purpose, then morality is different for every man. For each man gives his life a different purpose, and so requires different guidelines to succeed in that purpose. A large number of people may choose for their lives the same purpose, but that does not make their morality objective, merely inter-subjective. When a person who does not believe that mankind has a collective purpose advocates people to act ‘morally’, he is only telling them to act in whatever way will best help them to achieve their goals; and so for a man who chooses ‘ruling the entire world’ as the purpose of his life, conquering and murdering may to him become justifiable because, for him, it is logically ‘moral’. Similarly, if a man chooses ‘having sex with 1000 women’ as the purpose of his life, then the most reliable, and so most logical and ‘moral’, way for him to reach his end may be rape!

[Mad_Man_P]

@rainshine87

Morality can only be objective if the whole of mankind have some shared purpose.

What do you mean by “objective”?

I don’t understand this notion of morality…

To me morality means: “Code of conduct.”

A code of conduct is a social thing… outside society such a thing is called “nature”… we do what it is in our nature to do… in society we are asked to restrict ourserlves to a certain code, which a majority of it’s members can agree to enforce… in which case we still do, what it is our nature to do… we behave in order to be accepted into the group…

Such a purpose necessarily has to be given to them.

Or be inherent in them… morality may be no more than an extention of our instinctual desire to belong to a social group.

If they have not been collectively put to purpose in such a way then ‘the meaning of life’ becomes subjective, for the purpose of each man’s life is then only what that individual makes it – nothing but a choice out of a near infinite variety of options.

0+0=0

People do not “choose” what they need… people are not born desireless only to later “make up” desires to persue… there would be no motivation for doing so… which means we are necessarily born with desires… instinctual motivations…

The primary motive is to survive… any action which threatens survival is considered “bad”…

Morality is essentially a set of guidelines to serve some purpose.

Society… morality is what keeps a society together… “laws” are an extention of “morality”… morality serves to make us stronger by giving us a method of working together in peace.

Unless all men share a collective purpose, then morality is different for every man.

We all wish to live…

For each man gives his life a different purpose, and so requires different guidelines to succeed in that purpose. A large number of people may choose for their lives the same purpose, but that does not make their morality objective, merely inter-subjective.

fair enough… but can we not conclude rather safely that there is no such thing as “objective morality”?

After all… I cannot think of a single moral rule that all humans have observed at all times… It seems morality only has meaning if we choose to give it meaning…

When a person who does not believe that mankind has a collective purpose advocates people to act ‘morally’, he is only telling them to act in whatever way will best help them to achieve their goals; and so for a man who chooses ‘ruling the entire world’ as the purpose of his life, conquering and murdering may to him become justifiable because, for him, it is logically ‘moral’. Similarly, if a man chooses ‘having sex with 1000 women’ as the purpose of his life, then the most reliable, and so most logical and ‘moral’, way for him to reach his end may be rape!

Indeed… and such people do exist… But that does not mean we should accept them into our social group… they can rape all the women they can find before we catch them and either make them conform to our standards, put them in prison, or simply kill them. Which would be the “moral” thing to do given our disposition…

Might makes right after all…

[rainshine87]

@aporia

We believe in human dignity and worth, and the value of preserving human life and equality, because we together prefer the life that results. Not because God told us to.

I can’t help but think that you’ve worded that poorly. You make it seem as if everybody shares the same values system, and everybody would rather have a small amount of happiness for each individual than a large amount of happiness purely for themselves. This is obviously not the case, as is shown by people who profit through crime which damages others.

About the Nazi’s idea of society and morality. There are no easy answers to how society should be organized. It’s something we have been figuring out for as long as we’ve been here.

Your answer was nice, but my point was that Nazi actions cannot, from the atheistic point of view, be considered objectively wrong (not that I’m accusing anyone here of making such a claim, just pointing out a valid deduction). If Hitler had a certain ideal society - an end - then if Jews were a hindrance to that ideal, he was perfectly valid in destroying masses of them - a means to an end. You may well be of the belief that morality is “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”, as many people do, but you cannot state that as an objective fact, only a shared opinion. As long as an atheist does that, I see no problem with it. You might perhaps say that you would always make that quite clear, but I recently saw an atheist on some current affairs program talking about how we have a ‘moral imperative’ to do some thing or other. This is obviously misleading if he puts it across in such a way.

[rainshine87]

@Phaedrus

Man invented God, then lent him morality.

That’s surely just conjecture. I could just as easily say that man ‘bathed in the river before he knew its source’, or ‘walked before he understood physics’.

[rainshine87]

@Nihilistic

I’ve always found it kind of hard to understand what it means for man’s existence to be “inherently meaningless”. For me, “inherent meaning” is a Christian conception, thus so is “inherent meaninglessness”. There is no “inherently” anything in regards to value judgments, which is what claims about man’s meaning is. Which makes nihilism a reaction to Christianity, where one denies the Christian god, but maintains the Christian value judgment about existence without god, which is that existence without god is meaningless.

However, if one denies that god has any role in meaning, meaning is left to the realm of man, is defined in terms of what man values, and it is no longer coherent for someone to say “inherent meaning(lessness)”.

I would best define ‘inherent meaning’ as ‘pre-defined purpose’ - that man is a means to an end, was created for some purpose. So to be ‘inherently meaningless’ means that man did not come into existence for a purpose.

[thezeus18]

@rainshine87

Morality can only be objective if the whole of mankind have some shared purpose.

But does purpose need a god? I looked at it here. I asked theists to give some reason why purpose needs a god. They did not. Could you?

Such a purpose necessarily has to be given to them. If they have not been collectively put to purpose in such a way then ‘the meaning of life’ becomes subjective, for the purpose of each man’s life is then only what that individual makes it – nothing but a choice out of a near infinite variety of options.

Not true. We humans all share a universal purpose, to survive. Whether or not this is deep enough for you is besides the point, it’s a purpose and everybody has it.

Morality is essentially a set of guidelines to serve some purpose.

No, the Ten Commandments and the Bible are sets of guidelines. Morality is the categorization of human actions into “moral” and “immoral”.

Unless all men share a collective purpose, then morality is different for every man. For each man gives his life a different purpose, and so requires different guidelines to succeed in that purpose. A large number of people may choose for their lives the same purpose, but that does not make their morality objective, merely inter-subjective. When a person who does not believe that mankind has a collective purpose advocates people to act ‘morally’, he is only telling them to act in whatever way will best help them to achieve their goals; and so for a man who chooses ‘ruling the entire world’ as the purpose of his life, conquering and murdering may to him become justifiable because, for him, it is logically ‘moral’. Similarly, if a man chooses ‘having sex with 1000 women’ as the purpose of his life, then the most reliable, and so most logical and ‘moral’, way for him to reach his end may be rape!

This is not true. Morality is not the best theme of action to fit your purpose, morality is a categorization of actions based on how the doer receives benefit from them and how the action influences society.

Moral actions are those that benefit others, and benefit you mainly because they encourage others to act similarly, with the result being somebody does them to you. Moral actions, in short, are ones that you don’t necessarily want to do yourself but definitely want others to do.

Immoral actions are the opposite. They benefit you, not others, but would be detrimental to you if someone else did them. So, you want to do them yourself but don’t want others to.

If an action is weighed in its survival benefit to the doer, is immorality better?

Being moral, that is, doing moral actions, will usually be more beneficial than being immoral. Here’s why:

1. Because everybody would like everybody else to act morally, there are punishments for being immoral. If you are immoral and get caught, you are punished, whether socially or through an organized system.

2. If you do not get caught, it encourages you to be immoral again and to a greater magnitude, and eventually you do get caught, and your punishment is greater because of the greater immorality of your crime.

3. If you do get caught, yet are not punished, it encourages others to act similarly in similar situations.

4. Usually requires more effort

Now, even if the eventualities (for example, society’s collapse, or your getting caught) don’t happen in your lifetime, they’ll happen to your kids.

[rainshine87]

@Ingenium

Well, maybe so. Alternatively, this could be your sense because having your theism questioned as the foundation for your assertions about atheistic morality feels that way to you. You’ve made what I might interpret – should I choose to – as hostile statements about atheists (and that’s not even considering that you lump them into an homogenous amoral mass) but, as I’ve already stated, I can as easily attribute that to your inability to empathize with a morality that is based on something other than an irrational belief in an all-powerful supernatural entity. Remember, you’ve already chosen to do that. You’ve stated it openly and also noted in your OP that it’s why you’ve gone down this path of inquiry in the first place. Therefore, your choice is as subject to scrutiny on the topic here as your logic is. It has to be, because that logic is not founded on rationality, it’s founded on the choice to believe in a god. Characterize it however you will, you can’t change that. So you may indeed take the superstition as your basis and then offer up a logical progression to the development of your moral code, but you can’t go in reverse. Not rationally.

My theism is irrelevant to my deductions about atheism. I made it quite clear that my personal philosophy is no more than theory. From this ‘theory’ you weaned out of me my ‘logical deductions’ on what this meant in other areas such as ethics. I did exactly the same thing with atheism. I looked at the theory, ‘there is no God’, or perhaps more specifically, ‘man was not created by an intelligent being’, and then drew this out into my deductions about atheist morality. Where do you feel I went wrong?
I wasn’t saying that all atheists are amoral, but rather that, if we carry the original grounding beliefs of atheism through into other areas, morality to an atheist is a subjective concept.
I suspect the confusion has come about because the definition of ‘morality’ is different for theists and atheists. I think I’d be correct in defining thus:
Theism: Something created from without, applying to all individuals
Atheism: Something created from within, applying only to that individual ‘creator’
This might be poor, in that some theists who believe in oneness might be more likely to go for the second option. Consider the second as something rooted in the individual, and the first not.

I’m still waiting for you to carry atheism to its logical extremes. All you’ve done thus far is equate athism to moral relativity, without really justifying why, other than by stating you believe humans are ‘one with god’, and expecting that this proclamation makes your absolutist stance clear.

All I set out to do was to understand what atheist morality was, I have made it clear time and time again that my personal stance is irrelevant. My ‘stance’ has no bearing on whether 2+2=4. I didn’t say “atheists are obviously wrong because I believe something else”, I said, “this is what atheists believe, this is the logical deductions that can be garnered from such a belief”.

I don’t think it’s ‘wildly illogical’, just very human. I think it starts with a need (for a purpose, a meaning, perhaps fueled by the understanding at a deep level that we’re scheduled for death the instant we’re conceived). Then the creation of a hope (ultimate consciousness, eternal life, whatever), the building of a dream (god belief) and then backing into it to make it fit a logical structure, as best as one can. I have no problem with you working out the details of your belief in whatever way works for you. But when you decide that you cannot abide athism having a moral foundation because it conflicts with the structure you’ve built, then it seems reasonable to request that you step up to the plate with something of more substance than your own ‘theories’ and ‘feelings’ about our ‘oneness with god’. Which, of course, won’t be possible, will it?

You claim that I “can’t abide atheism having a moral foundation because it conflicts with the structure I’ve built”, but the differences between atheism and my personal philosophy came out later, and had no bearing on the primary statement on the subjective nature of atheist morality. You’re essentially calling me a ‘bad mathematician’ without pointing out what’s wrong with the numbers. Instead of criticizing my personal philosophy, please properly critique and pick apart my argument. Such an attack on my personal integrity without destroying my argument reeks of fundamentalism.
I’m also fully aware of the psychological argument against theism. In fact, if you cycle back through my posts, you’ll find me explicity pre-empting your use of it. I agree that this argument is possibly applicable in many cases. But I could equally argue that atheists are atheists because they can’t stand to believe that such suffering could occur in a world with a loving God. A perfectly valid psychological argument, but I don’t suspect you’ll accept it as an explanation of your atheism, just like I don’t accept your use of the prior argument against me. Though I wouldn’t deny the possibility, because it could be rooted in my unconscious, in which case I’d be unaware of it.

Here’s your opening salvo:

“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…
If there is no good reason for existence…”

So the whole shebang is set up with these assumptions. Yet what about ‘man’s entire existence’ has been proven meaningless? What does such a statement even mean? And what support has been shown that there’s no good reason for existence?

Perhaps we are not on the same page in regards to what the word ‘meaning’ signifies. I would take it as signifying ‘purpose’, something which exists for a specific reason. How would you define it? Perhaps I should simply have used the word ‘purpose’ from the beginning.

Moving closer to our true oneness, or becoming more like God, should, logically, help us to understand what his will is. So it is ‘good’ to come together, to synthesise. And what is the greatest force for synthesis? It is love! So, from this we conclude that love is ‘good’. This elucidates my logic.

This is an example of what I’ve described about moving backwards into ‘logic’. You set up the irrational claim of a god’s existence, claiming that then it’s a logical thing to become more like it. Because, of course, it exists. But as you have no rational foundation for the god claim in the first place, then how can you justify the rationality of moving toward it?

I find it curious how you drag the debate back into ‘does god exist?’ territory. Remember, my original post was not an attempt to prove that God must exist; nothing of the sort, in fact. I was just attempting to see things from the atheist perspective. In doing so, I came to a certain conclusion, and realizing the possibility that I may be wrong, I came here to ask some other people, so that they could either confirm my logic, or deliver me from error. Instead of helping me, you tease out from me my own philosophy (which I affirmed as subject to change) and proceeded to pick it apart. Why was this necessary? Could you not have just looked at my logic and confirmed or corrected it?

Just as someone might equally consider perseverance bad because it’s wasting energy on an idea that has no logical basis. And there are plenty of critiques that could be made regarding adherence to belief in a divine entity. Not to mention moral absolutism. Like what a group of people might do if they believe they are achieving their as-revealed-by-god-purpose and come to view another group of people as standing in their way of achieving that god-given gift. You see, your theory, as all the “We are one with the big ultimate something” theories, only works, er, in theory, when everybody’s already gotten there. To the state of Oneness with the One, I mean. But human existence doesn’t actually work that way. Hopefully, you’ve read enough (human) history to have noticed this?

Again, you’re picking apart my whole philosophy, which was not the subject of this debate, rather than the subject at hand. I feel like a man who’s walked into a cheese shop and asked, “where was this specific cheese produced?”, only to receive the reply, “what’s your favourite cheese?”, instead of an answer to my question. You then proceed to argue why my favourite cheese is inferior to another type, despite the fact that this is completely irrelevant to the question, “where was so and so cheese made?”, which was what I came into the shop for in the first place.

I’ll answer your question anyway, even though it’s liable to drag out even more questioning of my personal philosophy. I think we are already One with God. Think of God as like a blank piece of paper, and our individual persona’ as elaborate drawings on that bit of paper. The drawing comprises of both the paper and the picture formed on it. When you scrub away the drawing, the paper still remains - the paper is the unchanging part of our being, the drawing is temporary persona. (Of course, this analogy is bad in that it assumes the existence of a separate pencil, which I don’t necessarily believe to be the case - What I’m essentially saying is that mind and body are just temporary forms imposed on matter whilst the root of our being is eternal and unchanging).
This is just a theory! If you want to debate other aspects of my philosophy, PM me. Don’t carry it on in here where it covers up the original question.

One thing that distinguishes science from pseudoscience is that it’s repeatable, the findings should be reproducable.

Go and read Dean Radin’s book ‘The Conscious Universe’ and tell me that all of these things considered ‘pseudo-science’ aren’t repeatable. Seriously, read it and then come back to me and we’ll continue this debate - in a different post.

[rainshine87]

@Mad Man P

Morality can only be objective if the whole of mankind have some shared purpose.

What do you mean by “objective”?
I don’t understand this notion of morality…
To me morality means: “Code of conduct.”
A code of conduct is a social thing… outside society such a thing is called “nature”… we do what it is in our nature to do… in society we are asked to restrict ourserlves to a certain code, which a majority of it’s members can agree to enforce… in which case we still do, what it is our nature to do… we behave in order to be accepted into the group…

I have previously used the term ‘guidelines to achieve some purpose’, which is essentially the same as your ‘code of conduct’, assuming such a code is put in place as a means to an end.
The problem with this talk of society is that I have no choice of opting out of society. Point me towards somewhere that I can go and not be subject to other mens laws! By imposing law a man imposes his own personal ‘morality’ on everyone else, and then says if they ‘disagree’ with him, they can be punished. I’m not saying that this must be ‘wrong’, just rather that, if we think in atheist terms, this is the way it is. We essentially agree on this point.
However, by going against the laws of society, a man is not doing something objectively ‘wrong’, he is rather disagreeing. According to such a view, by killing millions of Jews, Hitler was not doing anything objectively ‘wrong’, he was just disagreeing with people who considered it ‘wrong’. Because right and wrong are subjective. This is correct is it not? This is what I am trying to get at.

Such a purpose necessarily has to be given to them.

Or be inherent in them… morality may be no more than an extention of our instinctual desire to belong to a social group.

This is an interesting point. I’ve been mulling over it a short while and I think I understand correctly that you’ve equated morality with the instinct for survival. Because all instincts seem to have been ‘useful’ for our welfare, I assume that you believe all instincts to spring from the one ‘instinct for survival’. If you believe they are separate, I would have to ask why, if this is a random, not intelligently guided, process, all the instincts were helpful to us. But if you believe that the instinct for survival is the one and only instinct and all these other sub-instincts are part of it, then I understand what you are getting at, and it’s an interesting idea, one of the most logical I’ve heard here so far. I would still require the question answered as to why, in a completely random process, out of all the possibilites, the one instinct which formed in us was the perfect aid to us - that does not seem very random. Again, I foresee you perhaps mentioning a ‘selfish gene’ (I’ve not read much Dawkins, but the concept sounds similar), but I might also ask why, in a completely random process, a gene would form which protects us. That seems thoroughly intelligent to me.

People do not “choose” what they need… people are not born desireless only to later “make up” desires to persue… there would be no motivation for doing so… which means we are necessarily born with desires… instinctual motivations…
The primary motive is to survive… any action which threatens survival is considered “bad”…

Again, you make a thoroughly interesting point. I spoke about ‘choosing’ only because a few atheists have previously confirmed in this topic that they “choose their own purpose” for their life. Obviously you disagree.
So, according to you, the only ‘purpose’ for an atheist is ‘survival’? But an atheist knows that he is not going to survive, his reason tells him that. So every atheist’s life must end in failure, for survival is impossible. I think I’m beginning to understand what the existentialists meant about our existence being utterly absurd. Death is the atheists enemy in that it’s anathema to him, for it is the opposite of what he knows to be his only purpose. Though, in effect, even without death, surely a reasonable man would realize the absurdity of life as long as he believed that the creation of this ‘instinct for survival’ was a random occurence and itself serves no purpose?
You’ve set out a whole new perspective which I haven’t seen properly represented before. I’ll certainly ponder on this one a lot to see if it answers my original question about what morality is for an atheist - at the moment I’m thinking that according to you it is: that which we create in order to serve our instinct of survival, despite the fact that our instinct of survival is itself wholly random and serving no purpose, as well as the fact that we know we can only fail in this purpose, because of our inevitable death.
Don’t think that was me taking a pot shot at you, that’s just how it appears to me. I’m not saying it must be false because of that, as some might accuse me of doing. In fact, I’m compelled by your argument. It does make me realize better how certain existentialists like Amery and Sartre thought that absolute defiance of this ‘instinct’ was the only rational thing to do in the face of such absurdity; because our intellect helps us to realize that our only purpose’ survival’, is both pointless and impossible.

Morality is essentially a set of guidelines to serve some purpose.

Society… morality is what keeps a society together… “laws” are an extention of “morality”… morality serves to make us stronger by giving us a method of working together in peace.

Well, I think you’d be better off saying, ‘the instinct for survival’, the desire for society presumably being born of that instinct. Morality, then, is a way of avoiding death, which is anathema to our purpose: to survive. Yet, we know we’re all going to die anyway, so why do we continue paying attention to this pointless drive, why do we not scrap morality - it’s end being unattainable?

Unless all men share a collective purpose, then morality is different for every man.

We all wish to live…

That seems to confirm my understanding of your philosophy that the sole point of our life is survival. So objective morality to you is anything which serves the instinct for survival?

but can we not conclude rather safely that there is no such thing as “objective morality”?
After all… I cannot think of a single moral rule that all humans have observed at all times… It seems morality only has meaning if we choose to give it meaning…

My reply to that would be that we all wear sunglasses, but of varying different thickness, so the sun appears a different brightness to us all. Only once you remove your sunglasses can you see the true brightness of the sun. (This is a bad analogy because obviously if you stare at the sun you go blind, but I presume you understand my point).
This is only my opinion of course. But I don’t think that we can “safely conclude” that there is no objective morality just because at any point in history many of the population are automatons who only react to outside stimulus rather than using reason. Again, you might consider the idea of ‘automatism’ as just my opinion, though if you look at psychology and psychiatry you might see some ideas which would make it a fully conceivable theory. Why does a man seek revenge? It is not necessary for his ‘instinct for survival’, but he does it anyway because he is unthinkingly blinded by rage. He is an unreasoning automaton.

Indeed… and such people do exist… But that does not mean we should accept them into our social group… they can rape all the women they can find before we catch them and either make them conform to our standards, put them in prison, or simply kill them. Which would be the “moral” thing to do given our disposition…

Might makes right after all…

Exactly. The intelligent thing would seemingly be to kill them, as it takes less labour, and so puts less strain on others. Though you might argue that the prison system creates jobs, and so is an aid to the survival of workers. You’re actually really helping me to understand atheistic logic, and that’s not meant to sound clever.
I see that you’ve annulled my argument at the start of this post against society taking away the atheists freedom, now that you’ve confirmed that you do believe in objective morality as being ‘that used to fulfill the purpose that is born of the instinct for survival,’. If you think these people might offend again, you’d presumably be best off killing them, so that they don’t get the chance. So atheists support the death penalty, I assume? Hopefully my logic isn’t totally twisted here.

[rainshine87]

Morality is essentially a set of guidelines to serve some purpose.

No, the Ten Commandments and the Bible are sets of guidelines. Morality is the categorization of human actions into “moral” and “immoral”.

But you don’t disagree that morality is a means to an end. So something ‘moral’ would be something which helps to achieve that end, and something ‘immoral’ would be that which hinders achievement of that end. That to me would indicate ‘guidelines’.

Morality can only be objective if the whole of mankind have some shared purpose.

But does purpose need a god? I looked at it here. I asked theists to give some reason why purpose needs a god. They did not. Could you?

We need to distinguish between two types of purpose. There is that which is put to purpose by man, and that which puts man to purpose. Something only has purpose if it is a means to an end. If a hammer is not used by man to hammer things, it is just a lump of pointless matter - similarly, if man is not put to purpose by God, humanity is just a pointless mass of matter - purposeless. I can see that you might attribute to man some sort of purpose within the natural world, doing such a thing would mean that we could say that man has ‘purpose’. My argument has crumbled because I didn’t consider this. Though I need to confirm that you would be willing to attribute to man a purpose within the natural world.
According to your point, we can say that man ‘serves a purpose’ in relation the natural world. In terms of language, then, we can say his existence has ‘meaning’. The natural world may itself have no purpose, but man still can have purpose, correctly speaking. Because the universe is, according to you, an accident, it still seems to me wrong to attribute worth to something born from an accident. But that was not the point of my argument, so I concede.
Now I can see things from two different atheistic perspectives, which is more than I hoped for, so I’m glad this topic was as intricate as it was. I also got a better understanding of why many of the existentialists think of life as totally absurd and pointless. Hopefully the rest of you have learned something too, rather than just being constantly annoyed by me.

[thezeus18]

@rainshine87

Morality is essentially a set of guidelines to serve some purpose.

No, the Ten Commandments and the Bible are sets of guidelines. Morality is the categorization of human actions into “moral” and “immoral”.

But you don’t disagree that morality is a means to an end. So something ‘moral’ would be something which helps to achieve that end, and something ‘immoral’ would be that which hinders achievement of that end. That to me would indicate ‘guidelines’.

Well, sort of. I don’t disagree that moral actions are done to achieve a goal (survival), but so are immoral actions. The difference is in how they work towards achieving that goal. Immorality, like rape or stealing, is direct; you see something you want, and you grab it. Morality, on the other hand, works indirectly by influencing other people to act similarly; you help your neighbor in the hopes that he will help you. Immoral choices don’t hinder achievement of your purpose, they help it, but they aren’t as efficient or sustainable when living in a group as their moral counterparts.

Morality can only be objective if the whole of mankind have some shared purpose.

But does purpose need a god? I looked at it here. I asked theists to give some reason why purpose needs a god. They did not. Could you?

We need to distinguish between two types of purpose. There is that which is put to purpose by man, and that which puts man to purpose. Something only has purpose if it is a means to an end. If a hammer is not used by man to hammer things, it is just a lump of pointless matter - similarly, if man is not put to purpose by God, humanity is just a pointless mass of matter - purposeless. I can see that you might attribute to man some sort of purpose within the natural world, doing such a thing would mean that we could say that man has ‘purpose’. My argument has crumbled because I didn’t consider this. Though I need to confirm that you would be willing to attribute to man a purpose within the natural world.

Consider it confirmed.

According to your point, we can say that man ‘serves a purpose’ in relation the natural world. In terms of language, then, we can say his existence has ‘meaning’. The natural world may itself have no purpose, but man still can have purpose, correctly speaking. Because the universe is, according to you, an accident, it still seems to me wrong to attribute worth to something born from an accident. But that was not the point of my argument, so I concede.

The universe isn’t an accident. It wasn’t created for a purpose, but it’s by no means accidental.

Glad you’re satisfied!

[Xunzian]

First of all, I don’t see how being materially better off and better educated has anything to do with morality. Is that not more to do with Capitalism’s dominance among the more irreligious nations of the world? We could even postulate that having money and education means that you have got enough money to make sure that you are never left without something to do, and hence are never forced to sit and think about things to do with God. I know a lot of such people, most of them calling themselves atheists because they’ve never really given any though to it, and only know what they have been ‘educated’ to think. Namely, that the idea of God doesn’t fit in with ‘modern scientific understanding’ and that he’s not necessary to give man’s life meaning anyway.

We could approach the morality issue two different ways. We could take the Foucault-inspired track and say that the wealthy define what is criminal and moral as well as controlling the means of punishment so the transgressions that they commit are less likely to be legislated against and are less likely to be punished or we could argue along strain theory and say that those who are more comfortable within the system are more likely to conform.

Regardless, it is telling that atheists make up less than 1% of the prison population. Again, this doesn’t imply that atheists are more moral, but it does mean that they aren’t “immoral” at least by society’s standards.

As for “education” roughly 85% of Americans are self-identified Christians. That means that 85% of people aren’t educated not to believe in Christianity – quite the opposite, the vast majority are educated from birth to believe in Christianity.

I, myself, am quite poor because I’d rather spend my time in philosophy, trying to comprehend the nature of my life than wasting said life processing spreadsheets for a company run by a man who bathes in champagne. Am I a theist because I’m poor? No. I’m poor because I’m a theist (or a philosopher, anyway). I’m not saying it’s like that for everyone, but it’s worth taking into account. (Now I know why that guy called me ‘sanctimonious’.)

Nice but irrelevant. Good for you.

I suspect my dislike for Capitalism came across in all that, so it might be unbiased. The capitalist society appears to me to just put money in place of God. “If you don’t break the law and take your place in society, you can make as much money as you want.” This sounds to me like, “If you act morally and do what the church says you can go to heaven when you die.” A striking comparison, perhaps you’ll agree.

Well, I’m no capitalist and I do agree that segments of America have deified money. But that is a whole different discussion.

Your point about previous ‘nontheistic’ societies is an interesting one, but I can see a flaw in it. Though they don’t have specific ideas of a Godhead, they do have a significant ‘supernatural’ element. Traditional buddhist beliefs include reincarnation, life after death and karma:
“Following death, according to Tibetan Buddhism, the spirit of the departed goes through a process lasting 49 days that is divided into three stages called “bardos.” At the conclusion of the bardo, the person either enters nirvana or returns to Earth for rebirth.”
It’s worth pointing out that, to me at least, Buddhism appears something of a defeatist religion, the essential aim of it being to completely free yourself from the inevitable suffering of the material world. I might be wrong, but it seems then, that the only ‘purpose’ for Buddhists is escape from the material world and so ‘society’! The cycle of reincarnation is considered a curse, and it is considered imperative to free yourself from this cycle, because material life is a bane. This seems to be equivalent to a desire for suicide.
Taoism also has very noteworthy beliefs in what you might term ‘the supernatural’:
“Taoism places an emphasis on the unity of the universe, the unity of the material world and the spiritual world, the unity of the past, present and future.”
This seems to posit both a ‘spiritual world’ and a belief that being resides beyond time, which would presumably mean a taoist believes that he exists always, and so lives forever (that may be incorrect).
With regards to Confucianism, however, I’m almost tempted to agree with you. However, it seems to generally have an agnostic viewpoint in relation to all such things as God and the afterlife. Rather than denying the possibility of such things, it says ‘we cannot yet know such things’:
“Till you know about the living, how are you to know about the dead?”
Still, it’s food for thought, I’ll take it into account.

Good job on the research. I applaud that. However, my point is that they don’t derive purpose from these supernatural elements. Presence of supernatural elements alone is insufficient by your own metric.

Absolutely, I’m completely aware that the ‘God as a subjective construct’ argument is entirely plausible. However, it would be a mistake for me not to point out another alternative. You could consider the differences in religion as the differences in relativity theory and quantum physics. They’re are missing elements which mean that the two won’t completely fit together. Yet should we totally dismiss them just because of this? Is it not possible that they are simply missing the key necessary to make them fit together? Religion, philosophy and science are three parts of a puzzle which has many pieces missing, and until we find them these sections will not fit cleanly together and the whole picture will not be complete.

I don’t disagree. However, I think that god has shown itself to be a poor piece in that puzzle. I think it creates far more problems than it solves.

Perhaps the best way to proceed would be for you to explain to me why you think man has meaning without a God to put us to purpose.
(No, as I’ve explained, I certainly don’t believe myself to have entire access to truth. I hope it doesn’t come across that way. I try to repeat as often as possible that most of what I type is only theory or logical reasoning. I’ve explained why I think that we don’t, as individuals, have access to higher truth in my ‘partitioned hard drive’ analogy (itself, again, just a theory).

We create our own meaning. I don’t see what is so alien about that. I have motivations and desires and by building on them within the context of relationships, how could there not be meaning? There is meaning in everything we do because by the simple virtue of doing it we demonstrate that meaning is there – if it had no meaning, why would we do it?

[rainshine87]

@Xunzian

We create our own meaning. I don’t see what is so alien about that. I have motivations and desires and by building on them within the context of relationships, how could there not be meaning? There is meaning in everything we do because by the simple virtue of doing it we demonstrate that meaning is there – if it had no meaning, why would we do it?

Thanks for replying. You should probably cycle through the most recent sections of the post to see my definition of the word ‘meaning’, and the conclusions we have come to since then.

[Mad_Man_P]

@rainshine87

I have previously used the term ‘guidelines to achieve some purpose’, which is essentially the same as your ‘code of conduct’, assuming such a code is put in place as a means to an end.
The problem with this talk of society is that I have no choice of opting out of society. Point me towards somewhere that I can go and not be subject to other mens laws!

Within your own mind…

If you feel the desire to act in a certain way but find that you hold back because of an even stronger desire to be accepted within a social group… then you already know the effects of society on your person. In the absence of that social group, or the desire to be accepted by it, you would have acted on the original desire… whatever it may have been…

This desire to be a member of a concrete social group can easily be replaced by the desire to belong to an abstract group… in the form of an ideal. This ideal can then be the source of your morality… the instinctive desire for social belonging can be “fooled” to believe that this “abstract” ideal is an actual group which gives you strength or in some other way betters your survival… say by giving you access to an afterlife… in which case it becomes quite appealing… actual immortality…

According to such a view, by killing millions of Jews, Hitler was not doing anything objectively ‘wrong’, he was just disagreeing with people who considered it ‘wrong’. Because right and wrong are subjective. This is correct is it not? This is what I am trying to get at.

I agree… since I would say that there is no “objective” right or wrong… the killing of jews was neither right nor wrong inherently… but the consiquences of doing so proved to be fatel to hitler… He managed to make more enemies than friends… and so he was overpowered by his foes… on the other hand… when the romans invaded other cultures and integrated them into their society… they got away with it… and in fact they were praised for it. They managed to make friends of the invaded people more often than not because they brought with them new technology and an easier way of life…

This is an interesting point. I’ve been mulling over it a short while and I think I understand correctly that you’ve equated morality with the instinct for survival. Because all instincts seem to have been ‘useful’ for our welfare, I assume that you believe all instincts to spring from the one ‘instinct for survival’. If you believe they are separate, I would have to ask why, if this is a random, not intelligently guided, process, all the instincts were helpful to us.

It’s called “natural selection.”… and it’s not a “random” process… it’s quite goal oriented… if you do not survive long enough… you do not have children… and you do not pass along those instincts… so naturally… the surival oriented instincts are passed on to the next generation… the non-survival instincts die out…

If I instinctivly felt like diving off of cliffs… my chances of becoming a father would be severely diminished… and sooner or later all those with such instincts would be dead and gone… leaving all those who avoid diving off of cliffs to rule the world…

But if you believe that the instinct for survival is the one and only instinct and all these other sub-instincts are part of it, then I understand what you are getting at, and it’s an interesting idea, one of the most logical I’ve heard here so far.

thank you

I would still require the question answered as to why, in a completely random process, out of all the possibilites, the one instinct which formed in us was the perfect aid to us - that does not seem very random.

It’s still not a “random” process… natural selection is a (yup you guessed it) selective process…

also… “perfect” is not a word I asociate with anything human… we have been unable to create an enviroment devoid of danger… we have “anger” as an instinct… this would have been helpful if a wild animal had attacked our group… we would have motivation for defending ourselves by killing the animal… but in this day and age… such dangers are long gone… and anger serves no purpose… it only harms our survival at this point… I might get really angry and kill a person… then another person get’s angry because of what I did… and kills me… that’s hardly perfect…

hence the need for a “code of conduct”… and abstract “ideal” which we may fool our instincts to believe is our “group’s will”… and thus we are more readily armed to fend off the now harmful instincts… because this instinctive desire to belong to a group is stronger than most others…

Again, I foresee you perhaps mentioning a ‘selfish gene’ (I’ve not read much Dawkins, but the concept sounds similar), but I might also ask why, in a completely random process, a gene would form which protects us. That seems thoroughly intelligent to me.

again… it is not a random process… it’s quite selective… survival based selection… if I had a billion dice… and i threw them all in the air… stating that only the highest rolls would get through to the next round… chances are the loaded dice (which more redily land on 6) would end up being the only one’s left in the end… thereby favoring the loaded dice… likewise… nature favors the survival oriented “genes”… the rest get to die…

Again, you make a thoroughly interesting point. I spoke about ‘choosing’ only because a few atheists have previously confirmed in this topic that they “choose their own purpose” for their life.

they were probably referring to the “ideal” group people choose to be a member of… again… this choice is based on the percieved strength and quality of survival offered by the group… whether that group be an “ideal” or a concrete group…

Such as choosing which country to live in… based on how “safe it is”… and not just how pretty the landscape… what party to vote for… based on how those policies would effect your life, your country… ect…

We are not omniscient beings… so we make these choices based on inductive reasoning… depending entirely of our personal experiences with each group, instinctive disposition (we are genetically different after all…) ect… therein lies the “subjectivity”.

So, according to you, the only ‘purpose’ for an atheist is ‘survival’? But an atheist knows that he is not going to survive, his reason tells him that.

Indeed… and that is partially how we explain the existence of theism. It is a manifestation of our attempts at escaping death… in more ways than one… we create an ideal group (religion)… within which death is not a threat… we also create a code of conduct which will allow for a safe existence within the group (so we are stronger in this life)… and we add an unseen figure that serves as a judge or guide when there are questions to be answered… again to help us avoid conflict and risk danger…

The problem arises when we realize that these are fictional creations… and find that we are now unable to believe in them despite our best efforts…

Simular to when a child believes that everyone in the world is nice and plesant… but then realizes that there are actually “bad people” in the world which might hurt him… that child will be unable to ignore this fact when trying to avoid danger in the future, and become slightly more suspecious of strangers… because the belief has been shown to be false… It can not make him feel “safe” anymore… religion on the other hand can often not be shown to be false… and so the realization that it is “fictional” must come from within… through introspection…

So every atheist’s life must end in failure, for survival is impossible. I think I’m beginning to understand what the existentialists meant about our existence being utterly absurd. Death is the atheists enemy in that it’s anathema to him, for it is the opposite of what he knows to be his only purpose.

But then one might ask… how could the atheist have a purpose if there was no death? Death is necessary in order to have life… and life is necessary to avoid death… it’s the circle of life… (I feel like bursting into that song from lion king… )

Though, in effect, even without death, surely a reasonable man would realize the absurdity of life as long as he believed that the creation of this ‘instinct for survival’ was a random occurence and itself serves no purpose?

If you were a rock… would your existence be any less absurde? or If you were god?

existence in itself is an absurdity… the forms it takes are naturally equally absurde… There is no escaping absurdity… the best we can do is deny it…

You’ve set out a whole new perspective which I haven’t seen properly represented before. I’ll certainly ponder on this one a lot to see if it answers my original question about what morality is for an atheist - at the moment I’m thinking that according to you it is: that which we create in order to serve our instinct of survival, despite the fact that our instinct of survival is itself wholly random and serving no purpose, as well as the fact that we know we can only fail in this purpose, because of our inevitable death.

I hope that you see it differently now… it is precisely a purpose because it is not a “given”… death MUST be a threat for life to be a purpose onto itself…

life itself has death as a precondition for it’s existence…

Don’t think that was me taking a pot shot at you, that’s just how it appears to me. I’m not saying it must be false because of that, as some might accuse me of doing. In fact, I’m compelled by your argument. It does make me realize better how certain existentialists like Amery and Sartre thought that absolute defiance of this ‘instinct’ was the only rational thing to do in the face of such absurdity; because our intellect helps us to realize that our only purpose’ survival’, is both pointless and impossible.

Then what would be the motivation for “life”… if not “life” itself?

That life and death are contradictory should give you a hint of the impossibility of motivating “life” other than through “avoiding death”… denying all my instincts… i would intellectually come to the same conclusion… in any instence where I would experience a desire to live… I would experience an equal desire to avoid death… so only two possible outcomes can come from denying my survival instinct…

1. a re-affirmation of the life seeking instinct’s validity…
2. suicidal nihilism.

Well, I think you’d be better off saying, ‘the instinct for survival’, the desire for society presumably being born of that instinct.

fair enough…

Morality, then, is a way of avoiding death, which is anathema to our purpose: to survive. Yet, we know we’re all going to die anyway, so why do we continue paying attention to this pointless drive, why do we not scrap morality - it’s end being unattainable?

That is our purpose… if we did not… we would be motionelss… thoughtless… meaningless… lifeless… we would just die… and we would be survived by those who kept up the strugle despite the impossibility…

Perfection is also an unattainable goal… but that does not stop us from persuing it… nor should it…

That seems to confirm my understanding of your philosophy that the sole point of our life is survival. So objective morality to you is anything which serves the instinct for survival?

something to that effect… but keep in mind that doe to a lack of omniscience we are unable to determine accurately which moral code is the stronger and most survival friendly… “do not kill” seems to be a no-brainer… but some areas get slightly more complicated… and difficult to predict… and thus there is no known “solution”… in which case we decide to support a certain notion entirely based on subjective experiences and beliefs… making it an arbitrary choice… not an “objective” truth…

My reply to that would be that we all wear sunglasses, but of varying different thickness, so the sun appears a different brightness to us all. Only once you remove your sunglasses can you see the true brightness of the sun. (This is a bad analogy because obviously if you stare at the sun you go blind, but I presume you understand my point).
This is only my opinion of course. But I don’t think that we can “safely conclude” that there is no objective morality just because at any point in history many of the population are automatons who only react to outside stimulus rather than using reason. Again, you might consider the idea of ‘automatism’ as just my opinion, though if you look at psychology and psychiatry you might see some ideas which would make it a fully conceivable theory. Why does a man seek revenge? It is not necessary for his ‘instinct for survival’, but he does it anyway because he is unthinkingly blinded by rage. He is an unreasoning automaton.

Revenge is the desire to not only remove a proven threat but also to establish a certain truth within the social group… in that if anyone harms you or someone you hold dear… they will pay for it… this serves as a deterrent.

We now have a different “revenge” system… we call it “justice”… you commit a crime… we punish you.

Exactly. The intelligent thing would seemingly be to kill them, as it takes less labour, and so puts less strain on others. Though you might argue that the prison system creates jobs, and so is an aid to the survival of workers.

And I might also argue that killing people at the drop of a hat would make society less “survival” friendly… we are all non-perfect… and we are all aware that under certain circumstances we too might commit a crime one day… and in that event… we would like to avoid death… and so a balance is struck… no death… but we still remove the threat… via prison… and in the future perhaps by mental rehabilitation… chamicals… or some such cheap solution compared to prison…

You’re actually really helping me to understand atheistic logic, and that’s not meant to sound clever.

I’m glad I can help

I see that you’ve annulled my argument at the start of this post against society taking away the atheists freedom, now that you’ve confirmed that you do believe in objective morality as being ‘that used to fulfill the purpose that is born of the instinct for survival,’. If you think these people might offend again, you’d presumably be best off killing them, so that they don’t get the chance.

Either that… or keep them in prison for life… or at least until they are too old and unable to be any threat… or something else…

the problem of the “death penalty” is that we sometimes get the wrong guy… and find out after we killed him/her… and that MIGHT make people in that society a bit uneasy with the thought that this “wrong person” could have been them… I know it would bother me a bit… and thus it’s not the simple solution you make it out to be…

So atheists support the death penalty, I assume? Hopefully my logic isn’t totally twisted here.

It kind of is… i’m sorry to say… it’s true that killing other people is not inherently wrong… sometimes it is in fact “good”… the trick is to do it when it serves to further the survival of one self and by extention, one’s group (we need them to survive). Given sufficient understanding… one’s group actually becomes the whole of humanity… as a race we would be that much stronger and better equipped to survive any threat than we would be seperated into nations… regions… families… ect… the ultimate goal would be to create a global unity among all people… and eliminate all war and all conflict… dedicating ourselves 100% to science and finding a way of prolonging life and perhaps… a way to achieve immortality… who knows…

[Xunzian]

I’ve read some of it and insofar as I can tell, your meaning only works if humans aren’t sapient creatures.

[rainshine87]

@Mad Man P

It’s called “natural selection.”… and it’s not a “random” process… it’s quite goal oriented… if you do not survive long enough… you do not have children… and you do not pass along those instincts… so naturally… the surival oriented instincts are passed on to the next generation… the non-survival instincts die out…

But why is natural selection an intelligent process? It seems to have reason, but how can something non-conscious have reason? Why has the universe been a series of correct decisions? Why did it get this far unless there is some sort of Plotinian Reason-Principle guiding it?

again… it is not a random process… it’s quite selective… survival based selection… if I had a billion dice… and i threw them all in the air… stating that only the highest rolls would get through to the next round… chances are the loaded dice (which more redily land on 6) would end up being the only one’s left in the end… thereby favoring the loaded dice… likewise… nature favors the survival oriented “genes”… the rest get to die…

So you believe that, originally, there were lots of self-destructive and dangerous instincts?

they were probably referring to the “ideal” group people choose to be a member of… again… this choice is based on the percieved strength and quality of survival offered by the group… whether that group be an “ideal” or a concrete group…

No, I think they were referring to deciding what purpose they put their own life to, as in what to do with their life, what to set as their goal.

Indeed… and that is partially how we explain the existence of theism. It is a manifestation of our attempts at escaping death… in more ways than one… we create an ideal group (religion)… within which death is not a threat… we also create a code of conduct which will allow for a safe existence within the group (so we are stronger in this life)… and we add an unseen figure that serves as a judge or guide when there are questions to be answered… again to help us avoid conflict and risk danger…

I could support the existence of an afterlife by bringing in the theory of the impossibility of ‘nothingness’, and so ‘cessation of existence’. Not only has ‘nothing’ never been directly observed, but it has never been indirectly observed, and in spacial terms, is practically impossible. If you say that it is possible to become nothing, you are saying that nothing ‘is’, and so nothing is something - “no thing is some thing”. Then it is not ‘nothing’, and so nothing is not a reality. An argument produced against this is that, if the correct meaning of ‘nothing’ is ‘negation of being’, then something that doesn’t yet exist, not ‘being’, can be called ‘nothing’ correctly, it being the same as ‘non-being’. But in making such a statement, that ‘non-being is’, or ‘nothing is a reality’, we assign being to it. And if you assign being to non-being, it cannot be non-being, for we create the absurd paradox – ‘negation of being is a form of being’. It might be useful here to bring in a theory of forms, but this is really for another topic, so suffice it say that, if something cannot become ‘nothing’, it can only change to ‘something’ else. This doesn’t show that ‘persona’ cannot dissipate, but I would consider persona just a particular ‘configuration’ or ‘form’ of matter. It does however, show that it is impossible for any thing to become no thing. Sorry, that really was for another topic wasn’t it. I’m doing what I earlier criticized others for doing, changing the topic.

The problem arises when we realize that these are fictional creations… and find that we are now unable to believe in them despite our best efforts…

How do you consider this a problem? Because you are no longer deluded and realize the horror of reality?

If you were a rock… would your existence be any less absurde? or If you were god?

Well, if you were a rock, no, it wouldn’t. But a rock cannot make the choice to end such an absurd existence, a human can. As for a God, this depends on whether a God exists for a reason.

existence in itself is an absurdity… the forms it takes are naturally equally absurde… There is no escaping absurdity… the best we can do is deny it…

Deny that it is an absurdity, or deny existence entirely?

Don’t think that was me taking a pot shot at you, that’s just how it appears to me. I’m not saying it must be false because of that, as some might accuse me of doing. In fact, I’m compelled by your argument. It does make me realize better how certain existentialists like Amery and Sartre thought that absolute defiance of this ‘instinct’ was the only rational thing to do in the face of such absurdity; because our intellect helps us to realize that our only purpose’ survival’, is both pointless and impossible.

Then what would be the motivation for “life”… if not “life” itself?

That life and death are contradictory should give you a hint of the impossibility of motivating “life” other than through “avoiding death”… denying all my instincts… i would intellectually come to the same conclusion… in any instence where I would experience a desire to live… I would experience an equal desire to avoid death… so only two possible outcomes can come from denying my survival instinct…

1. a re-affirmation of the life seeking instinct’s validity…
2. suicidal nihilism.

Why motivate life if it’s pointless? It becomes clear to me that the only logical thing is suicide. Why continue with a life when you know how absurd and pointless it is. The only reason I can see is fear of death.

That is our purpose… if we did not… we would be motionless… thoughtless… meaningless… lifeless… we would just die… and we would be survived by those who kept up the struggle despite the impossibility…

Why should we not “just die?” If we’re not living for any reason other than ‘our survival instinct is telling us to’, then, being able to see through this deception, we have the possibility of saying, “no, I won’t do it.” Defiance! Why continue with a charade?

the problem of the “death penalty” is that we sometimes get the wrong guy… and find out after we killed him/her… and that MIGHT make people in that society a bit uneasy with the thought that this “wrong person” could have been them… I know it would bother me a bit… and thus it’s not the simple solution you make it out to be…

Why would you care whether you live or die? This is something I can’t get my head around.

Given sufficient understanding… one’s group actually becomes the whole of humanity… as a race we would be that much stronger and better equipped to survive any threat than we would be seperated into nations… regions… families… ect… the ultimate goal would be to create a global unity among all people… and eliminate all war and all conflict… dedicating ourselves 100% to science and finding a way of prolonging life and perhaps… a way to achieve immortality… who knows…

Why would you want to survive if you know that your survival serves no purpose?