Quote of the week!

[Wildeblood]

It's impossible to derive morality from atheist precepts...

Nonesense!

Go on then.

[Smivs]

Well, it's nonsense because it's ambiguous as a statement.
Are you saying you can't have morality without a God? Or are you saying Being an Atheist somehow prevents you from being Moral? Or are you saying that Atheism is immoral?

[Wildeblood]

Well, it's nonsense because it's ambiguous as a statement.
Are you saying you can't have morality without a God?

I never mentioned God. I'm saying you can't derive any morality from atheism. Certainly not a moral code sufficient to form a stable society.

Or are you saying Being an Atheist somehow prevents you from being Moral?

Atheists can be moral, but their morality can't come from their atheism. They have to get it from somewhere else.

Or are you saying that Atheism is immoral?

Well I think that, but I didn't say it.

[Layne]

Well, it's nonsense because it's ambiguous as a statement.
Are you saying you can't have morality without a God?

I never mentioned God. I'm saying you can't derive any morality from atheism. Certainly not a moral code sufficient to form a stable society.

Or are you saying Being an Atheist somehow prevents you from being Moral?

Atheists can be moral, but their morality can't come from their atheism. They have to get it from somewhere else.

Or are you saying that Atheism is immoral?

Well I think that, but I didn't say it.

So you're saying that the only reason you personally /don't/ commit immoral acts is the fear of divine retribution? The threat of supernatural punishment is the only thing keeping you moral?

Atheists know that in a universe that is at best uninterested in us and at worst actively inimicable to our existence, we have only each other to rely upon. We know that to care for other humans, to take value in the bonds of society, to work together cooperatively are our best chance to continue as a species, to say nothing of the very real and valid emotional rewards such things provide. That is as fine a basis for morality as any culture can provide.

[SteveKing]

Atheists know that in a universe that is at best uninterested in us and at worst actively inimicable to our existence, we have only each other to rely upon. We know that to care for other humans, to take value in the bonds of society, to work together cooperatively are our best chance to continue as a species, to say nothing of the very real and valid emotional rewards such things provide. That is as fine a basis for morality as any culture can provide.

I agree here. There was probably a sense of 'moral' long before the cognative derivation of god(s). Gods were/are a construct to explain the unexplainable and unknown. They are perhaps less relevant (dare I say it) in these enlightened times [ducks], because a lot of the things we (the human race) couldn't explain are more or less understood now and logic commands us to believe therefore that everything is (and will be), ultimately, explainable.

Theology has just enabled man to record and express what we understand is moral to be able to measure it.

[Wildeblood]

There was probably a sense of 'moral' long before the cognitive derivation of god(s).

Traditional atheism* is the rejection of religion, if morality existed before religion, as you say, then it existed before atheism. So that morality cannot come from atheism. Humanism =/= atheism.

I'll repeat, you cannot derive any worthwhile morality from atheism. Take the very first moral principle that any & every society needs to get started: thou shalt not slit thy neighbours throat while he sleeps. What logical process can get you from the premise "there is no god" to the conclusion "thou shalt not kill"?

* I'm assuming that's what Day meant, when he said he lived in an atheist society; or is France full of crusading Dawkinsists nowadays?

[Diziet Sma]

So where do atheists get their morality from? Because they sure as hell have morals.. and from what I've seen, they generally live by them far more than most deists live by the moral code they profess to.

[Diziet Sma]

For a change of pace, here's something I just came across in a sig on another forum:

Debugging is at least twice as hard as writing the program in the first place. So if you write your code as clever as you can possibly make it, then by definition you are not smart enough to debug it.

[Disembodied]

There was probably a sense of 'moral' long before the cognitive derivation of god(s).

Undoubtedly:
http://www.livescience.com/26245-chimps ... rness.html

It's entirely possible that chimpanzees have what we might call a belief in some sort of supernatural. They can experience thunder and lightning, for example, or see the sun and the moon move and change, and might be curious as to what causes them. They may create mental models of what might cause these things, which might - I stress might - be the seed of what might be called "religious feeling". But their demonstrated sense of fairness - their morality - doesn't derive from this: it derives from their being social animals. Antisocial chimpanzees who don't share, or indeed who attack their fellows for no reason, are rapidly excluded from the group. That's the basis of morality.

I'll repeat, you cannot derive any worthwhile morality from atheism. Take the very first moral principle that any & every society needs to get started: thou shalt not slit thy neighbours throat while he sleeps. What logical process can get you from the premise "there is no god" to the conclusion "thou shalt not kill"?

"Thou shalt not kill" emerges long before any notion of "There's a big chimp in the sky who sees all and punishes killers". This is obvious, because before we can avoid doing what the big sky-chimp doesn't like, we have to know what the big sky-chimp doesn't like. Since the big sky-chimp exists only in our imaginations, we have to have developed a rudimentary moral code of our own before we can ascribe it to the big, imaginary sky-chimp. Therefore, "Thou shalt not kill" must precede "There's a big chimp in the sky who punishes killers". Therefore, morality must precede religion.

[Wildeblood]

"Thou shalt not kill" emerges long before any notion of "There's a big chimp in the sky who sees all and punishes killers". This is obvious, because before we can avoid doing what the big sky-chimp doesn't like, we have to know what the big sky-chimp doesn't like. Since the big sky-chimp exists only in our imaginations, we have to have developed a rudimentary moral code of our own before we can ascribe it to the big, imaginary sky-chimp. Therefore, "Thou shalt not kill" must precede "There's a big chimp in the sky who punishes killers". Therefore, morality must precede religion.

If you want to agree with me, a simple "I concur" would be much more useful than a lot of puerile, deliberately inflammatory language like that.

[Disembodied]

Wildeblood: I have obviously offended you. That was not my intention, and I apologise.

[Layne]

They are perhaps less relevant (dare I say it) in these enlightened times [ducks], because a lot of the things we (the human race) couldn't explain are more or less understood now and logic commands us to believe therefore that everything is (and will be), ultimately, explainable.

An important philosophical aside here, though. We must accept that ultimately everything may not be explainable. Our bodies and our senses exist in three (perhaps four) dimensions, depending on the definition; the universe may exist in seventeen dimensions or twenty-seven or however many physics postulates these days. No matter how clever our understanding of the universe becomes, no matter how advanced our technology, there may ultimately always be parts we cannot observe or quantify with certainty.

The universe is at no point obligated to conform to human desires or expectations.

There are a few corollaries to this. One, it remains worthwhile for us to /try/ to study the universe, even accepting there may be parts of it that we can't fully understand, because those studies may still yield tremendous insights. Two, we cannot hide a god in those places. Just because we don't know what's going on there doesn't mean the supernatural is playing peek-a-boo in the hidden corners. And three, we have to accept, philosophically, that it's /okay/ to say, 'we don't know'.

The unexplained does not mean the unexplainable, and even the unexplainable does not mean the supernatural.

[Smivs]

Morality is a purely human phenomenon, and its origins have nothing to do with religion. Morality pre-dates religion as has been mentioned above. Religion is simply a way to codify morality, and indeed followers of one religion may well see the teachings of another as immoral. Others see religion itself as immoral, arguing that the 'laws' are the product of the minds of men (usually hundreds or thousands of years ago), and therefore, far from being holy these are just another expression of Man's desire to control other men.
Today of course we also have Politics which more or less does the same thing and just as badly. When the two combine, things tend to get even worse.
So in a World where we have different political systems, and different religious systems all trying to ram their own wildly different morals down our throats, it is ultimately up to the individual whether they side with one of the formal (political or religious) moral codes, or use their own brain to decide basically what is right and what is wrong, and how they are going to live their life. Thankfully as this type of person is likely to be more informed and thoughtful, they generally get it right.

[Day]

Being from an atheist society...

I'm at a total loss if you're serious or joking on the "atheist society" thing. It's impossible to derive morality from atheist precepts, and it's impossible to create a society without morality, so how could such a thing be, I wonder?

@Wildeblood: I'm totally serious.

I agree that culturally France was religious some time ago ; let's take the revolution (separation of church and state) and the 1905 laicism law as the two biggest steps in an atheist society direction. So our morality is derived from catholicism. From our point of view, it's improved on catholicism.

Now, I would probably agree that a society needs religion first, because moral arguments are complex and shared with difficulty, whereas religion is stories and shared easily. So religion would come before the ability to write, and complex morality after.

Now, american people would have no confidence into an atheist plane pilot, because he would have no fear from divine retribution in case of wrongdoing. French people would have no confidence into a religious plane pilot, because he would have no fear of death, as he believes in eternal life.

[Day]

Traditional atheism* is the rejection of religion [...]

* I'm assuming that's what Day meant, when he said he lived in an atheist society; or is France full of crusading Dawkinsists nowadays?

Well... Depends on people, newspapers, etc. You may have heard of Charlie Hebdo?
It's the last newspaper in a long list of anti-clericalist ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-clericalism ) newspapers.
Since the "Lumières" times (XVIIIth century), a rational criticism of religion, and church power in society, has begun. As the church fought the revolution, it lost everything. Even "God" was replaced by "a deity" for people wanting a deity.
I come from a particularly non-religious region, mother of the most powerful XIXth century syndicates, of the WWII rebels, etc. I was really surprised when I went in another region and discovered there a catholic university(*). They allow priests to teach!! But surely nobody may have any confidence in them. They're biased and irrational, unscientific. Yup, that's how people think in my region. But they don't make a fuss about it. No need to prove that God doesn't exist. The attitude is more "Some people need God like children need Santa".
So... It's an institutional rejection of religion into instances of power, and a disinterest in pompous fairy tales.

But... There is something new these last years.
The militant side of atheism is back, to fight muslim customs. But in the process, we as a society become a lot less tolerant of all religions, like catholics and jews.

(*): no priest was teaching here, except in theology.