Can you justify morality without religion?
I have heard many atheists try and explain the moral code of which they live by, and it’s by far my favourite question to ask them, as I always receive a new and interesting perspective.
I have heard atheists suggest that there can be an objective morality if we agree on a subjective point; a derivative if you like. However, that doesn’t in and of itself make the morality objective. It’s like saying, “it’s objectively true that I must drink wine because we agree subjectively that I should be drunk” (that might be an odd example). It’s not objectively true. It’s objectively true on a condition (that we all think I should be drunk) but if we take away that condition, it’s not objectively true that I should be drunk.
So, say for example, you say, “it’s objectively true that you should not rape because it’s subjectively true that we should not make other people upset” then it is going off of the same principle. Even if the subjective claim is one held by many people, you cannot dismiss the subjectivity.
Morality is still subjective if it’s a derivative.
My question is if anyone can explain why they would believe this, and how it’s okay for morality to be subjective.
I have heard atheists suggest that there can be an objective morality if we agree on a subjective point; a derivative if you like. However, that doesn’t in and of itself make the morality objective. It’s like saying, “it’s objectively true that I must drink wine because we agree subjectively that I should be drunk” (that might be an odd example). It’s not objectively true. It’s objectively true on a condition (that we all think I should be drunk) but if we take away that condition, it’s not objectively true that I should be drunk.
So, say for example, you say, “it’s objectively true that you should not rape because it’s subjectively true that we should not make other people upset” then it is going off of the same principle. Even if the subjective claim is one held by many people, you cannot dismiss the subjectivity.
Morality is still subjective if it’s a derivative.
My question is if anyone can explain why they would believe this, and how it’s okay for morality to be subjective.
Comments (125)
Religion does not "justify morality" – the question makes no sense – so, of course, we can. Morality, like language more generally, is an emergent property of eusocial species such as homo sapien sapiens. Thus, morality, however primitive and parochial, must have (long) predated cults or religions, and developed along side, or in spite of, them.
Quoting Franz Liszt
True. Consider below, however, a proposal for 'moral objectivity' (i.e. ethical naturalism) which isn't derived from ... "if we agree on a subjective point":
i. Is 'nature' an objective fact?
ii. Are 'natural species' objective facts?
iii. Are each natural species' 'needs for maintaining health, capability and growth' (akin to Spinoza's conatus) objective facts?
iv. Is the (potential for) deprivation of any of an individual's 'species needs for maintaining health, capability and growth' (Harm) an objective fact?
v. If the (potential for) deprivation of any of an individual's 'species needs for maintaining health, capability and growth' (Harm) is an objective fact, then doesn't it follow that 'the knowledge of how & when to prevent or minimize (actual) deprivation' is objective as well?
vi. If 'the knowledge of how & when to prevent or minimize (actual) deprivation' itself is objective and thereby a capability of every functioning individual of a given natural species, then doesn't it follow that (adequately) exercising this capability is also a 'species need required for maintaining the health capability and growth' of individuals and, by extention, the species? [ iii ]
vii. If (adequately) exercising this capability is also a 'species need required for maintaining the health capability and growth' of individuals and, by extension, the species, then doesn't it follow that individuals failing to (adequately) exercise this capability are objectively self-harming (i.e. depriving themselves of at least one of their own species needs ...)? [ v - vi ]
viii.
'Ought' one to self-harm
(a) by harming others?
(b) by ignoring the harm to others?
(c) by ignoring the self-harm of others?
(d) by ignoring one's own self-harm?
ix. If the 'species needs required for maintaining health, capability and growth' are the natural ends of each individual [denial of this conditional amounts to a performative contradiction], then each individual OUGHT NOT to self-harm – fail to (adequately) exercise knowing how & when to prevent or minimize (actual) deprivations of 'species needs for maintaining health, capability & growth' – by preventing or minimizing (a) harm to others or (b) ignoring harm to others or (c) ignoring self-harm of others or (d) ignoring one's own self-harm. [ vii ]
x. The expression may be subjective but the argument, in so far as it isn't fallacious or invalid, is not only a matter of 'subjective preference' but is also conditioned by ("derived from") objective natural facts. Unless, of course, any or all are shown not to be the case ...
(Btw, my ingredients for this free-range gumbo consist mostly of various portions of e.g. Laozi, Confucius, Epicurus, Spinoza, John Dewey, Albert Camus, Iris Murdoch, Albert Murray, Derek Parfit, Philippa Foot, Clément Rosset, Owen Flanagan ... & Martha Nussbaum. Bon appétit. :yum: )
You forget that religious morality is subjective. All morality is subjective, but, as you say, we can choose to agree on a presupposition like, for instance, human flourishing being the goal for human behavior.
Remember that religious believers don't agree on moral positions even within their own tiny slither of religious dogma. Just take the Protestant faith in the Christian tradition.
Believers hold contradictory and often mutually hostile views on: the role of women in church and culture, gay marriage, capital punishment, euthanasia, human rights - to name a few hot issues. I have met Christians, even within the same church who hold views that gay people are morally wrong and will go to hell and by contrast, others for whom sexual preferences are of no interest to god. What does god think?
Herein lies the problem. Religious people base their morality on their subjective preferences of what they think god wants. Be very careful around people who think they know what a god wants.
But you could justify it to yourself, and I don't know if most people really need a philosophical justification to do good things anyway.
People form groups for survival. The purpose of a society or group of people is burden sharing, ie. if someone experiences a tragedy, the rest of the group can fulfill his or her role(s) either temporarily or indefinitely, with little to no or at least minimal negative impact on the overall survival of the group as a whole. The more burdens we remove from a group or society (the criminal minded, murderers, thieves) the less resulting pain, anguish, and just wasted time there is, thus benefiting the society and moving it forward if not for the simple reason there's more times to focus on work or leisure without worrying about/being weighed down by the negative emotions that result from said burdens.
Furthermore, the days of world wars have largely ended. So the lifeblood of the modern day economy is now trade, resources, services, etc. Say you have two lands, Pretoria and Esotropia. Pretoria has stricter laws, safer streets, and much less crime than Esotropia. Why would I want to live and work in Esotropia when I can do so in Pretoria? Show me a neighborhood or region whose streets are riddled with crime that people actually want to move in to that has a vibrant economy, and I'll show you a purple horse.
Morality is an unavoidable biological reality, created by hormones, emotions and psychology. Morality justifies itself to the intellect, just like, sexual attraction or emotion. Logic doesn't justify morality, morality is woven into the logic we use by this biological reality. You can direct its shape somewhat but you can't turn it off, morality is a part of what it means to be human.
This is an assumption based on moral realism. One might as well cut the crap and declare supremacy.
It's kinda like a group of people who've never met, know nothing about each other, who come from different backgrounds, all agreeing that they should, together, host a dinner party (morality) but they disagree on the date of the dinner (differ with respect to what exactly they consider is good/bad).
In that sense then morality is objective for all agree that there's such a thing as morality. The differences that exist between morality of peoples can be pinned down to culture, religion, social factors, etc. and don't come as a surprise to anyone.
As for the nexus between god and morality, all I can say is morality necessarily had to precede god for it didn't we wouldn't have gotten to the point where we gave the matter of god any serious thought, granting evolution is true of course.
This is interesting! Can you say more about it?
There's nothing to it really. Some kind of morality/ethics must be in place for social organization, right? God entered the scene, so to speak, only after or, more accurately, only within long-established societies; it follows, does it not?, that morality preceded humanity's encounter with the idea of the divine. It's like saying "checkmate!" and then, with the same breath, announcing that you don't know the rules of chess.
Morality is the normal devolution of the atrophied human attribute of conscience so it must be subjective. Morality is conditioned values while conscience is a priori knowledge we are born with that can be remembered.
[i]1954
“We will be destroyed unless we create a cosmic conscience. And we have to begin to do that on an individual level, with the youth that are the politicians of tomorrow…. But no one, and certainly no state, can take over the responsibility that the individual has to his conscience.” Albert Einstein, in Einstein and the Poet – In Search of the Cosmic Man by William Hermanns (Branden Press, 1983, p. 141. Conversation in Summer of 1954)[/i]
But the sad reality is that it does appear that humanity as a whole does not want to remember and prefers the slavery of indoctrinated man made interpretations called morality to replace the perennial attribute of conscience.
I'm curious about your choice of title for this thread. It seems to have no relation to the question you pose, unless you assume, but neglect to explain, that you believe "religion" (whatever you may mean by that) provides a basis for an objective morality and doubt that anything else can. Alternatively, you may be trying to establish that if religion provides no basis for an objective reality, nothing else does either, thereby making the religious view of morality no less subjective than any other. Just curious, as I said.
I don't follow this. Whether religion predated morality is an empirical question, and since our history books don't go back that far, the best you can do is guess. I don't think you can logically deduce the history of human ethical and intellectual development.
It seems just as reasonable to assert that humans became interested in the source of their existence and the cause of everything (metaphysics) prior to their interest in right and wrong (ethics) and therefore God was inserted at that earlier stage. At least in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Chapter 1, verse 1 begins with a description of Creation, with ethical directives coming after that.
That's taking for granted the theory of evolution. I'm not going to do that, I need something more robust, something that isn't at the whim of empirical data and its interpretation.
Also, it requires being a hard atheist, which is just another a dogmatic position.
What if God placed that interest in the hearts of men to begin with?
Questioner: "Prove that you should be moral, Ciceronianus!"
Ciceronianus: "Why should I do that?"
Questioner: "Well, if you don't, then you haven't proven you should be moral!"
Ciceronianus: "Okay."
Questioner: "But if you don't prove you should be moral, you don't have to be moral!"
Ciceronianus: "Why shouldn't I be?"
Questioner: "Because you haven't proven you should be moral!"
Ciceronianus: "Why should I do that?"
Person: "Kill that person, Ciceronianus!"
Ciceronianus: "No."
Person: "Then prove that you shouldn't kill that person!"
Ciceronianus: "Why?"
Person: "Because if you don't, then you may kill him!"
Ciceronianus: "Why should I do that?"
So you really think it's more probable than less that any group of human beings sustained itself for generations without, more often than not,
(6th) not killing each other
(7th) not fucking each other's mates
(8th) not stealing from each other &
(9th) not lying to each other
only after they'd agreed to tell themselves a story about their deity "commanding" them not to commit those acts? Explain it to me, tell me what I'm missing – how such eusociality itself is not constituted by socialized habits, or norms, of 'help-more-than-harm' reciprocity before they're encoded (religiously / culturally) as "morals". Anthropological examples please. Or if not, a reasonable speculation on how it is even possible for a cultus of 'divine permissions & prohibitions' to precede normative moral judgments & conduct (which is like saying 'languages came before, or generated, speech' or 'minds came before, or generated, bodies' ...)
For a few individual humans, plausibly; but it's not "reasonable" at all for groups of humans to have concerned themselves with "the source of their existence" before being primarily consumed with securing their collective survival & procreating, which entails normative 'best practices' – group-survival strategies (e.g. pro burden-sharing contra freeriders) – for adapting to their natural environment as a group. Even Exodus depicts the ancient Hebrew tribes "wandering in the wilderness for 40 years" before they reach Mt. Sinai as "a people" (i.e. customary socio-cultural group).
Most Christians accept evolution. Not sure where the hard atheism comes from.
I really don't know how to approach this question from either an anthropological perspective or upon speculation. We seem to be referring to some sort of primordial man, right? Is this a single bacteria beginning to replicate in an unusual way or are we referring to whatever emerged from the sea to later grow legs, or however the story goes.
But let us assume we have a man who has the mental capacity of a dog, something I know a little about, having 4 dogs running about my house right now. If early man was dog like, I would expect it would engage in all sorts of community behavior designed for its survival. There would be norms within the dog group, but not norms formed around any ethical theory, but probably just formed around Darwinism. Whether these emerging dog men would first ask themselves the source of their emerging ethical awareness of whether they'd first wonder and opine about the source of the rain that keeps falling on their head, I don't know. I don't think, though, that you can simply look at the behaviors of these dog men and declare them cognizant of an innate ethical system just because they don't kill one another than can you do the same for ant, spiders, or lizards. That is to say, it is obvious that all sorts of organisms engage in survival seeking behavior that have no mental capacity whatsoever and no concept of ethics. I think it's reasonable to assume therefore that they might engage in behaviors that are socially acceptable within the group but not recognized as being morally anything.
Does Pretzel think it's unethical for Fred to get 2 treats to his 1?
Quoting 180 Proof
I might be misreading the point of this reference. The ancient Hebrews were a people prior to reaching Mt. Sinai. Yahweh demanded to Pharaoh to "let my people go" which is what landed them in that great big desert in the first place. The giving of the commandments was not the beginning of the ethical system either, as that began with the Noahide laws, which occurs after the heavens were separated from earth, or however that story goes.
I beg to differ.
A cursory glance at wikipedia shows that though both Genesis & Exodus were compiled and "canonized" in 6th - 5th centuries BCE during the Babylonian Exile, both consist of much older traditional stories which biblical scholars & archeologists attribute as follows:
(a) "Moses" lived & died during the 13th century BCE (thus, roughly the time-frame of reception (establishing) the ten commandments @ Mt Sinai);
(b) "Noah" came from a composite of two different narratives from the 10th & 7th centuries BCE, respectively (with no mention of "the great flood" in any Hebrew narratives before "Noah" and that "the Noahide laws", which biblical scholars tell us, were extrapolated from the ten commandments by rabbinical authorities in the 2nd century BCE for inclusion in the Tosefta)
so there aren't any grounds for the claim that Mosaic Law was preceded by the "Noahide laws" and thereby not the beginning of a "divinely commanded" ethical system for the ancient Hebrews.
My point, though, that by mere dint of being a people for decades, at least, before Sinai, the tribes already had social customs & norms of interpersonal conduct for burden-sharing that discouraged-excluded free-riders – a functioning indigenous ethical system – which had maintained them with some sort of ongoing cohesiveness as a people, I think, still stands.
I don't assume that. It's unwarranted. We're talking about modern homo sapiens, like you & me, Hanover, during the Bronze & early Iron Ages, no farther back than than three millennia ago. No need to go back millions of years for dog-like "mental capacity". :roll: Even so, as I've pointed, morality is constitutive of our eusociality as a species, an adaptive by-product of natural selection. I can't think of a single long-sustained human society or culture, whether religious or not – whether Abrahamic or not – in recorded history that lacks some level of burden-sharing (i.e. help-more-than-harm normative reciprocity) that discourages-excludes free ridering ... morality; can you?
If morality is rules of behavior that I just follow and I don't contribute to their content, then yea, they'll have an objective basis.
But if the rule is to treat others as you want to be treated, I'm involved, and my personal feelings are central. Still, the golden rule is beyond me.
If I'm a nihilist, I act out of love to the extent I have any love for other people. As it turns out, the more I see myself in others, the more pity I feel, the more I celebrate their victories, the more I just do treat them as I want to be treated. There's no code to this. It's amoral.
I'm showing Genesis having been written in the 14th century BCE. https://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/how-old-is-the-bible. Exodus was written around the 6th. The compilation and canonization dates aren't evidence of the age of the story, but only sets out the date when it was compiled and then recognized as sacred. I also recognize that the bible isn't a single work, but is something pieced together and edited over time
Regardless, the Moses story had to come well after Noah. The world was wiped out and then started over and Moses came along much later. Quoting 180 Proof
I'm not committed to there being an actual Moses or that there's any historical accuracy to the Bible. The question isn't when Moses lived or died, but which came first, a belief in a creator or an ethical code. The point of this discussion is to decipher whether the metaphysical inquiry preceded the ethical inquiry.
Quoting 180 Proof
So Adam is man #1, he eats from the tree of good and evil, and then he recognizes being naked isn't right and proper, so he drapes himself with a fig leaf so all the world won't see his junk. That came way before Moses traipsed up the mountain and was provided a far more encompassing set of laws.Quoting 180 Proof
I can't think of any semi-advanced animal that doesn't have some sort of social structure that prescribes mating rituals, hunting and gathering systems, infant rearing systems, hierarchies, resource sharing, home building, etc. The social organization of animals is innate, but I don't equate that to an ethical system which decrees certain acts right and wrong from an ought/should perspective.
At some point in the history of man, the rules went from the unwritten, unspoken, and unarticulated law of the jungle to an actual written or uttered law. That is when, I'd submit, ethics entered the picture is some real way. Prior to that, it was just instinct. I still don't see why that ethical code must precede a people's recognition of a creator.
Sadly, many others thought this a good idea.
The Greeks, and for a long time others around the coast of the Mediterranean, looked instead to how one might flourish - following Aristotle, or be happy - following Epicurus - or at least not be miserable - following Zeno of Citium. Ethics was about how to become a decent person, not about following rules.
Unfortunately it is much easier to follow rules than to engage in self reflection and improvement. Especially when you can pay for a lawyer. Or Bishop.
And so we have a common way of thinking about ethics that is assumed in @Franz Liszt's OP, where the key question is not "how can I become a better person?" but "Which rules should I follow?"
Can you justify morality without religion? The notion that one might need to justify doing the right thing is ridiculous.
That would explain why they think the notion of ‘doing good things’ is objectively definable in the first place.
Not quite. Ethics was about what was good and wrong within the natural order of the universe. Aristotle termed it "the Golden Mean" it wasn't divine command theory, but ethics is based on natural law.
In the same vein, people agree that there is such a thing as the familiar and the alien, the understandable and the strange. The problem is that morality , and its judgments of what is right and what is wrong , generally comes down to these dichotomies, so that morality is just another word for the drive to enforce
conformity.
Putnam, following Quine said that is and ought cannot be disentangled since fact and value interpenetrate.
That strikes me as confused.
There is a difference between what is the case and what ought be the case. This is a difference in direction of fit. You can examine the world and change what you believe in order to match it; but ethics is about changing the world to match what you believe.
Not to the ancients it wasn't. Ethics was about the way the world was and conforming ourselves to that eternal order.
The OP formulates its question in terms of the subjective and the objective. That approach is fraught with misunderstanding. Much better to put the issue in terms of what one is to do next.
If you’re referring to Kant , the Quinean formulation amounts to a critique of Kant’s
idealism.
The harder question would be, why anyone would be moral without believing in a religion that rewards (or punishes) them for it.
Not in every particular, but in general yes.
A religious person must choose to follow what they think is the will of god, or to turn against it. They might think they have avoided making a choice, but they are fooling themselves.
Doing what is right for fear of punishment is ethics for three-year-olds. Adults take responsibility.
You have obviously not done any time in a Supermax prison - not many 3 year-olds there. You do what you are told or suffer the consequences. If god is a totalitarian bully and Mafia-style thug (and as written this is his character) then the divine command theory makes sense. Yes, it is God treating human beings like children or prisoners.
Of course the pious believer will say something like - I want to do what pleases god, goodness radiates from his nature and I seek to follow this.
The jails are full of vicious criminals who believe in god. There is nothing intrinsic to the idea which makes people behave ethically.
Yes, there are. They just have older bodies.
But you entirely missed the point that sometimes what you ought do is to put yourself in danger. Indeed, you do not even address the issue.
No the point I was addressing was your reflection about divine command theory.
Quoting Banno
People who live in fear do not take responsibility. They live in an altered state of awareness.
My understanding of morality is that it is intended to reduce the friction and conflict among people who are consistently fractious. Secular morality can ignore the god-man relationship which religious morality attends to.
Minimizing conflict among people is an objective advantage. An orderly society allows individuals to conduct their lives as they see fit (up to the point of interfering with other people's lives). Subjectively, individuals prefer to go about their lives without excessive disruption. We do not flourish when we are constantly disrupted (like, if you keep running over the tomato plants, you will get zero tomatoes).
Quoting Banno
This raises another point about morality: Three-year olds learn to obey their parents because they fear that their parents will punish them. Sounds crude, but it works because the brain is so structured that fear (limbic system) and proper behavior (frontal cortex) are linked. When that link fails to form, the result is sociopathy or psychopathy.
The 3 year old's fear turns into the adult conscience. Conscience isn't 100% reliable, but it is reliable enough to result in most people (75%? 80%? 90%? ...) conducting their lives "morally".
Morals, of course, can backfire when humans start killing each other to enforce their morality.
Dammit, I was hoping a limerick was in the offing. Well, I'll try one then.
[i]There once was was a species called human,
Who thought God cared what they were doin',
But the truth is He said that "For me, they've been dead
Since the Garden of Eden stopped bloomin'."[/i]
I think that is a legitimate position. I have often thought that the problem is this word 'morality' it contains so much baggage.
It can also be seen as a code of conduct that is largely shared by a community or culture. Codes are probably given a kick start by our apparent capacity for empathy.
Yes. Morality is individually applied but reflects the morality of the community. Sometimes individuals develop deviations from the standard morality, such as radical pacifism--rejection of all war, including just war. We may be able to do that when we bear the cost of the deviation. The pacifist pays the price. The community will reject moral deviations that impose costs on the society--fraud, arson, rape, bloody murder, riot, and so on.
Gay men once violated the standard Euro-American morality by engaging in deviant sexual behavior. Gay sex was not tolerated, even though homosexuality imposed no cost on society, except that it offended society, and by persistently violating morality homosexuals undermined the authority of social enforcers.
Sometimes the morality of communities imposes costs on individuals -- think of all the costs imposed by racial discrimination--costs for which society has generally had little interest in compensating. Blacks and other minorities have had to work very hard over long periods of time to change the operation of community morality (and have not been successful in many cases).
:up:
:smirk:
Let's agree to disagree on the historicity of the Torah and provenance of Mosaic Law; it's a minor aside which distracts from my point: in the last several millennia, there has not been a single society of modern humans without implicit – unwritten – morals (i.e. customary ways of being, as Banno puts it, "a decent person", etc), and most of which without Abrahamic – "divine command" – religion/s to monumentalize explicit "codes" for morals already extant and working.
Back to the OP:
A corollary to Plato's Euthyphro which is germaine to the OP's question is this:
Did the ancient Hebrews obey HaShem's "commandments" because HaShem said it's moral to do so?
An affirmative answer begs the question posed by the Euthyphro dilemma; thus, like sawing-off a branch while you're sitting on it, religion cannot be used to justify (or subvert) morality.
Or did the ancient Hebrews obey HaShem's "commandments" because they judged it moral to do so?
Ethical reasoning and traditions of civil disobedience begin here. In other words, morality can be used to justify (or subvert) religion.
:mask:
[quote=H.L. Mencken]Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Obedience is doing what you are told regardless of what is right.[/quote]
"... for good people to do evil – that takes religion." ~Steven Weinberg
[b]"Faith involves the teleological suspension of the
ethical ..."[/b ] ~Søren Kierkegaard
(re: A '"sacred" ends justifies – permits – any "profane" means' Theodicy :death: )
Then how can they possibly believe in God? Metaphorically?
I asked them. They aren't open to discussion.
Quoting Banno
For example, when I was a vegetarian, a Christian made clear to me that I was wrong to be a vegetarian, and he said, and this is from memory, but almost verbatim, that I am allowed to be a vegetarian, provided I concur that it is wrong to be one.
I kid you not.
I was so taken aback by what he said that I remembered it.
And this isn't the only such instance.
As long as I can remember, many people in my life demanded me to justify my moral principles.
And just look at forums like this: Posters demand justification of some other poster's morality.
Personal anecdotes aside, I don't see how one would be in a position of not feeling compelled to justify one's morality. It seems it takes a pretty strong, solid ego/sense of self to feel above such need for justification.
To which theists tend to respond along the lines that one ought to do what God commands not out of fear of punishment, but out of love of God -- that this is how one takes reponsibility.
Absolutely!
Quoting Dharmi
Since there is such moral diversity in the world, in order to navigate said diversity, one might acutely feel the need to justify one's sense of morality.
Further, other people may be intolerant of one and demand that one justifies one's morality to them. Such as when Christians demand that non-Christians justify themselves to them.
Why must I justify the fact that I won't kill some random stranger? Do you believe I should do that? Do you think I must have some reason not to kill some random stranger to refrain from doing so? If so, explain why. If not, don't ask me for a justification.
I don't know. Like I said, I can't imagine what that is like, to live in a world where one isn't demanded to justify one's moral principles to others. I simply haven't lived in such a world. I suppose it's a nice world to live in.
This does not remove the basic problem: what to do next. Ought one to love god? Saying "yes - because god says so" is quite circular.
You don't know whether I should kill some random stranger? Or you don't know whether I must have a reason not to kill some random stranger to refrain from doing so?
Many religious share your experience. I am not sure I understand where you believe you morality comes from.
Well, religious people generally don't seem to have any problems with circularity. So this one is on us, the outsiders.
I don't know whether you need to give a justification or not.
I don't know whether there is someone to whom you need to justify your moral principles, or whether there is no such person.
So much the worse for them. You describe a power imbalance in which you are the one asked to make the justification. Flip that around; seek a justification from those who demand you justify yourself. Learn to use Socratic method.
In that case, I'd say you don't know of a reason why I should have to justify my moral principles to others. Welcome, then, to the world in which at least the two of us don't think it's necessary to do so.
Why? It's not like they feel troubled by those circularities.
And invite their wrath?! Justify them beating me up (metaphorically or literally)?!
So what? Wrong is wrong, even if people think it is right. Racists are untroubled by their beliefs too. Does this mean we follow their lead?
What do you mean? IRL, power imbalances are the norm in most interactions. One cannot simply pretend they don't exist.
My point is that the theists themselves are not troubled by their circular thinking. They can go about their days just fine, and they pretty much rule the world, to boot -- and their circular thinking about God doesn't get in the way of their successful functioning.
What if circular thinking isn't as bad as philosophers make it out to be?
Clearly, it's bad for philosophical purposes, but it doesn't seem half as bad for everyday purposes. It would be imprudent to dismiss this.
I mean, learn to stand up for yourself.
Circular reasoning is a problem in a range of areas and not just confined to theists. You keep coming back to whether people are troubled or not by their logical fallacies. Sorry, but I can't quite work out the relevance. Most people with circular thinking are not troubled by it. Most people are not troubled by their lack of critical thinking in general.
I've very well aware of Christianity's totalitarian terrorism against those who disagree with them.
Stand up for yourself -- and get hit on the head, with nobody to blame but yourself.
The relevance is that they don't lose sleep over such things, while philosophers do. Now, who's better off?
Then how is lack of critical thinking a problem?
...then stand somewhere else.
It's obvious that if you are unaware of a problem it is unlikely to worry you. If not being worried is your preference then obviously the ignorant are better off. People make that crack all time, inside and outside of philosophy. It doesn't really get us anywhere other than stating the obvious.
During these 2000 years, there's been a steady development legally resulting in Human Rights (UDHR) as well as already entailed within given national laws here and there.
To say that this is purely subjective says that some people are far out, they don't relate to people in pain and in trouble. (f)MRI can indeed determine pains in people and perception of unwanted circumstances.
Yet those who enjoy hurt in themselves must be mentally disadvantaged to be in this state, again indicated objectively by the many instruments psychiatry has nowadays.
So when we get there, with the objective ethics, also relating to the children, Humanists appear more theoretical as a group than religious people who rejoice in doing good as God has instructed them. Humanists display weaknesses here because the World throw so many challenges at them. Even religious people struggle to keep faith so why would Humanists do better?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism.
Religious morality is subjective so there isn't really a difference in terms of foundational strength. Just see how differently people even within one religion, say Christianity, see issues like gay marriage, the role of women in church and society, capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion. They are all over the place on these issues, change with time and base their moral position on their subjective interpretations of what they think God wants.
People don't call each other ugly not due to some moral consideration, but because of the possible and likely repercussions. People don't make enemies for fun. To make people hate you is an evolutionary disadvantage, not a negative moral principle.
Morality is subjective because we are social animals and live in groups. All social animals must comply with the group's culture or be expelled from the group. Or at least pushed to the outer circle where one is more apt to be eaten by predators.
A moral is a matter of cause and effect and Cicero said we are compelled to do the right thing when we know what it is. We feel uneasy when we do what we believe is wrong. We might comfort ourselves by rationalizing why it is okay to do something we know is wrong but that does not change the fact that we do feel uncomfortable doing what we believe is wrong.
I wrote something and then realized that the word "religion" has to be defined further. Many ancient and modern animistic cultures that had no highly organized and human centric "religion" yet, still had natural links to spirituality and some hierarchies within these as a shaman might be. They clearly held objectively good moral values as they have been observed to have in modern tribal culture... certainly no less objectively ethical than modern judeo-christian cultures.
IMO and something I've held for a long time, is that modern religion is flawed by it's human centric message and more importantly, the division of all things from God, as opposed to the view that God is truly omnipotent and omnipresent in every single thing, animate and inanimate. It is arguable, that modern religions have been the cause for much of modern man's suffering, all in the name of "religion."
I'm new here and this is my first post. Thanks for having me! regards, mike
There is fair disagreement on capital punishment, euthanasia, abortion among all sorts of people. So what about access to C-pills while we issue the question of abortion?
Though there is also a contradictory relationship between doing evil (re Satanists/others) and being religious. No person can honestly say that doing evil and being religious is compatible. While it's also true that Satanists can very well be Atheists (as opposed to Humanists). Secular Humanism is theoretical, does not truly exist?
Modern, religious people in "western" societies have usually no problem with gay marriage, the role of women in church and society.
Besides, what God wants is defined by The 10 Commandments, the Golden Rule and the prayer at start of The New Testament (come thy will on Earth as in Heaven).
You say "modern" & "western" - modern Western secular humanism has brought many people of faith into the present time and changed the religious views of some. However, I suggest many Western Christians are far from in agreement with your views. Women priests, anyone?
Quoting DrOlsnesLea
Commandments are subject to interpretation, the intentions are often far from clear. The first 5 commandments of the famous 10 actually have nothing to do with morality.
But let's just take - Thou shalt not kill. The interpretations just of this commandment are endless. In what circumstances shalt thou not kill? Can I serve in the military and go to war? Some Christians say no. Can I kill a burglar who breaks into my home? Some say yes, some say no. Is capital punishment justified? Christians are divided on this issue. And on it goes.
And you say there is the matter of 'what God wants?' How do you know what God wants? You can't get to this without subjective preferences.
. Religion comes first, morality is only a by-product. If you make the by-product into the goal of human character, you will create such a troubled, miserable humanity – and for such a good cause. You are bringing the cart before the bullocks – neither the bullocks can move, nor the cart can move; both are stuck.
. How can a man be truthful if he does not know what truth is? How can a man be honest if he does not know even who he is? How can a man be compassionate if he does not know the source of love within himself? From where will he get the compassion? All that he can do in the name of morality is to become a hypocrite, a pretender. And there is nothing more ugly than to be a hypocrite. He can pretend, he can try hard, but everything will remain superficial and skin-deep. Just scratch him a little bit, and you will find all the animal instincts fully alive, ready to take revenge whenever they can get the opportunity.
. Putting morality before religion is one of the greatest crimes that religions have committed against humanity.
. The very idea brings a repressed human being. And a repressed human being is sick, psychologically split, constantly in a fight with himself, trying to do things which he does not want to do.
. Morality should be very relaxed and easy – just like your shadow; you don’t have to drag it with you, it simply comes on its own. But this has not happened; what has happened is a psychologically sick humanity. Everybody is tense, because whatever you are doing there is a conflict about whether it is right or wrong. Your nature goes in one direction; your conditioning goes just in the opposite direction, and a house divided cannot stand for long. So everybody is somehow pulling himself together; otherwise the danger is always there, just by your side, of having a nervous breakdown.
. I do not teach morality at all. Morality should come on its own accord. I teach you directly the experience of your own being. As you become more and more silent, serene, calm and quiet, as you start understanding you own consciousness, as your inner being becomes more and more centered, your actions will reflect morality. It will not be something that you decide to do; it will be something as natural as roses on a rose bush. It is not that the rose bush is doing great austerities, and fasting, and praying to God, and disciplining itself according to the Ten Commandments; the rose bush is doing nothing. The rose bush has just to be healthy, nourished, and the flowers will come in their own time, with great beauty, effortlessly.
. A morality that comes with effort is immoral. A morality that comes without effort is the only morality there is.
. That’s why I don’t talk about morality at all, because it is morality that has created so many problems for humanity – about everything. They have given you ready-made ideas about what is right, what is wrong. In life, ready-made ideas don’t work, because life goes on changing, just like a river – taking new turns, moving into new territories… from the mountains to the valleys, from the valleys to the plains, from the plains to the ocean.
. Heraclitus is right when he says, “You cannot step in the same river twice,” because it is always flowing. The second time you step in, it is different water. I agree with Heraclitus so much that I say unto you, you cannot step in the same river even once – because when your feet are touching its surface, the water underneath is flowing; as your feet are going deeper, the water on the surface is flowing; and by the time you have touched the bottom, so much water has gone… it is not the same water, that your step can not be said to be entering into the same river.
. Life is just like the river – a flux. And you are all carrying fixed dogmas. You always find yourself unfit, because if you follow your dogmas, you have to go against life; if you follow life, you have to go against your dogmas.
. Hence my whole effort is to make your morality spontaneous. You should be conscious and alert, and respond to every situation with absolute consciousness. Then whatever you do is right. It is not a question of actions being right or wrong, it is a question of consciousness – whether you are doing it consciously or unconsciously like a robot.
. My whole philosophy is based on growing your consciousness higher, deeper, to the point when there is no unconsciousness inside you; you have become a pillar of light. In this light, in this clarity, to do anything wrong becomes impossible. It is not that you have to avoid doing it; even if you want to do it, you cannot. And in this consciousness, whatsoever you do becomes a blessing.
. Your action out of consciousness is moral, out of unconsciousness is immoral… it may be the same action.
. I am reminded of an old story: A king was getting old, and he told his only son, who was going to succeed him, “Before I die you have to learn the art of morality, because a king has to be a model for everyone else in the kingdom; nothing should go wrong in your actions. So I am sending you today to my old master. I am old, he is even older than me, so don’t waste time. Learn everything intensely, totally, without wasting a single moment.”
. The prince went to the master and he was surprised – surprised by the fact that the master was a master of archery: “And what has archery to do with morality? Has my father gone senile?” But he had come to the mountains, so he thought, “It is better to see the old man at least once.”
. He went in. The old man was immensely beautiful and graceful, surrounded by an aura of silence and peace. He had been thinking he was going to meet a warrior, an archer, but here was a sage. He was getting even more puzzled. He asked the old man, “Are you the master archer?” He said, “You are right.”
. The prince said, “I have been sent by my father, the king, who is your disciple, to learn morality from you. I cannot see any connection at all between morality and archery.” The old man laughed and he said, “Soon you will see.”
. The prince said, “I am in a hurry. My father is old, and before he dies I want to fulfill his desire.” The master said, “Then get lost, because these things cannot be learned in a hurry. Patience, infinite patience is the very foundation of learning any art, whether it is archery or it is morality.”
. Looking at the old man’s eyes the prince remained, and he said, “When are my lessons going to start?” The old man said, “Just now they have started. Patience is your first lesson. And about the second lesson I should make you aware. The second lesson is that you will be cleaning the floors, cleaning in the garden, collecting the old leaves, throwing them out. Be very careful, because I may hit you with a wooden sword at any moment. Although it is wooden, it hits really hard. It has given many people fractures.”
. The prince said, “But I have come here to learn morality, not to get fractures!” The old man said, “That will come in its own time, this is only the beginning.” Puzzled, confused… but he knew his father, that if he went back empty-handed the old man would be really enraged. He had to learn. On both sides two mad, old people…. “And this man is trying to teach me morality by hitting me! But let us see what happens.”
. And the master started hitting him. He would be washing the floor, and suddenly a hit would come. He would be cleaning the path in the garden, and suddenly a hit would come. But he became surprised, within a week, that a certain intuition was arising in him. Even before the old man had approached him, he would jump out of his way. Whatever he was doing, some part of his consciousness was continuously alert the old man, where he was. And the old man used to walk so silently that it was almost impossible to remain conscious. But he started being conscious, because getting so many hits, his whole body was hurting.
. It continued for one month. But in one month he became so capable that the old man was no longer able to hit him. The old man said, “You are really the son of your father. He was also very keen, intense, and total in learning; it won’t take much time. Your first lesson is finished today, because for twenty-four hours I have been trying to hit you, but you have been found always alert, and saved yourself.
. “From tomorrow morning you will have to be more alert, because the wooden sword will be replaced by a real sword. The wooden sword at the most could have given you a fracture, but the real sword may even cut off your head. So more awareness will be needed.”
. But this one month had been of such great learning… he was never aware that inside him there was so much possibility of intuitive awareness. He was trained, well-trained intellectually, but he had no idea of any intuitiveness. And he was not afraid even of the real sword, because he said, “It is the same. If you cannot hit me with the wooden sword, you cannot hit me with the real sword either. It makes no difference to me.”
. For one month the old man was trying in every possible way to hit him with the real sword, and naturally the prince became more and more alert – had to become, there was no other alternative.
. And one complete month passed, and the old man could not even touch him. He was very happy, and he said, “I am immensely satisfied. Now the third lesson. Up to now I was hitting you only while you were awake. From this evening, remember that in the night when you are asleep I may hit you at any time. Again it will start with the wooden sword.”
. The prince became a little worried – awake it was one thing, but when you are asleep? But these two months had given him tremendous respect, trust in the old man and his art, and also a confidence about his own intuition. And he thought, “If he says it, then perhaps intuition never sleeps.”
. And that proved to be the truth. The body sleeps, the mind sleeps, but the intuition is always awake; its very nature is awareness, but we never look at it He had to look, he had to remain alert, even asleep.
. The old man started hitting him, and a few times he got really bad hits. But he was grateful, not angry, because after each hit he was becoming more and more alert, even in sleep – just like a small flame, something remained alive in him, alert and watchful. And just in one month he was again able to protect himself even in his sleep. As the old man would come close, very silently, making no noise, no footstep sounds, the young man would jump up out of his bed. He may have been fast asleep, but something remained awake.
. And in the next lesson the real sword in appeared his sleep. The next morning the old man said, “Now the last lesson – I will be hitting you with a real sword. And you know my sword, just a single hit and you are finished. You have to gather all your consciousness.” The young man was a little worried, a little afraid, because the game was becoming more and more dangerous.
. In the early morning sun the old man was reading a book, sitting under a tree in the rising sun, and the young man was gathering the old leaves from the garden. Suddenly a thought came to him, “This old man has been hitting me for months; it will be a great idea… I should try to hit him and see whether he is alert or not.”
. And he was just twenty or twenty-five feet away, when he was just thinking this in his mind – he had not done anything yet – and the old man said, “Boy, I am very old, and your teaching is not finished yet. Don’t have such ideas.” The prince could not believe it. He came and touched his feet, and said, “Forgive me, but I had not done anything, I was only thinking… just an idea.”
. The old man said, “When you become fully alert even the sound of your thoughts is heard. It is the question of awareness. You don’t have to do anything, you just think and I will know. And soon you will become capable of the same – just a little more patience .”
. And soon the day came when he started suddenly becoming aware that the old man was thinking of hitting him… for no reason. The old man was sitting reading his book, but the idea came so clearly that he went to the master, and said, “So you are going to hit me again? Just a few seconds before I heard the idea.” The master said, “You are right, I was just thinking to finish the page and come. Now there is no need for you to be here. I know your father is old and is waiting for you.”
. But the young man said, “What happened about morality?” The old man said, ”Forget all about it.
. A man who is so alert can only be moral. He cannot harm anybody, he cannot steal, he cannot be unkind, cruel; he will be naturally loving and compassionate. You forget all about morality!”
. This awareness is what I call religiousness. The prince went back. The father was waiting and waiting, and he said, “Have you learned the whole art of archery?” The young man said, ”You sent me to learn the art of morality. From where have you got the idea of archery?” The king said, ”I sent you to learn morality, archery was only a device.”
. There are many devices, many ways and methods of meditation to create awareness, to wake up your sleeping intuition. And once it is awake, then there is no need to tell you what is good, what is moral, what is bad, what is immoral; your awareness will be decisive on its own. And it will be spontaneous, fresh and young, and always to the point, because all principles become dead. And if you try to fit your life according to principles, you also become dead.
. That’s what has happened to Christians, to Hindus, to Mohammedans, to Jainas, to all the people around the world – they are living according to dead principles. And those dead principles don’t fit with the reality – they cannot fit. Only a spontaneous consciousness…. The difference is something like this: you have a photograph of yourself of the last year, or maybe of your childhood, and if you don’t know that it is your picture of your childhood, you may not even recognize it – because you have changed so much. That picture is dead, it is not growing; you are growing.
. Morality is like photographs. Religion is like a mirror. If a child is facing it, it reflects the child; if an old man is facing it, it reflects the old man. It is always spontaneous, in the moment, responding to reality. A conscious human being is just like a mirror – he reflects reality and responds accordingly. His response is moral.
. So I am changing the whole emphasis from action to awareness.
. And if more and more people can become aware, the world will be a totally different place. A man of awareness will not go to war. Although religious scriptures say that to sacrifice yourself for your nation, for your religion is virtuous, a man of consciousness cannot follow that dead idea. To him, the nation itself is an immoral idea, because it divides humanity – and war is certainly immoral. You may find good names, good words – sometimes it is religion, sometimes it is political ideology, sometimes it is Christianity, sometimes it is communism – good ideas, but the reality is turning human beings into butchers.
. You are killing people whom you have never even met. And you know perfectly well that just as you have left a wife behind, crying, who will be waiting for you, just as you have left your old mother and father back at home, hoping that their son comes back alive, just as you have left small children… the man you are killing has also a wife, has also children, has also an old father and mother. And he has done no harm to you; neither have you done any harm to him.
. If the world becomes a little more conscious, soldiers will throw away their arms and hug each other, sit down together under a tree and gossip. The politicians cannot force all the armies to kill, to murder. Neither can the popes, the religious leaders convince anybody that for God’s sake you have to kill. Strange… because God has created everybody. Whomsoever you are killing, you are killing God’s creation. If it is true that God created the world, then there should be no war – it is one family; there should be no nations.
. These are immoral things: the nations, the religions, anything that discriminates against people and creates conflict.
. A man of awareness will not be greedy, because he will be able to see that his greed will create poverty; and the people who will be starving and dying through poverty are his brothers and sisters. It does not matter whether they live in Ethiopia or in India; it does not matter whether their skin is white or black.
. Authentic morality is a by-product of consciousness. And the art of consciousness is religion. There is no Hindu religion, there is no Christian religion, there is no Mohammedan religion; there is only one religion, and that is the religion of consciousness – becoming so aware, so enlightened and awakened, that you have eyes to see clearly and can respond according to that clarity.
. A man of consciousness cannot be deceived by words. Mohammedans say that if you die in a religious war… how can there be a religious war? War is basically irreligious. But Christians, Mohammedans, and all other religions say that if you die in a religious war, your reward will be great in the other world. For this immoral act of killing people, you will be rewarded. But beautiful words “religious war”, cover it up.
. A man of awareness sees deeply and penetratingly through your words. Neither your God can deceive him, nor your holy books can deceive him, nor your nations, nor your politicians. He lives according to his consciousness. He has an individuality, a very crystal clear individuality – a pure mirror, unclouded by anything, with no dust covering it.
"Authentic morality is a by-product of consciousness. And the art of consciousness is religion. There is no Hindu religion, there is no Christian religion, there is no Mohammedan religion; there is only one religion, and that is the religion of consciousness – becoming so aware, so enlightened and awakened, that you have eyes to see clearly and can respond according to that clarity."
Just beautiful.
Eusociality (of a eusocial species like humans) comes first, religion is only a by-product. :eyes:
The core of eusociality is empathy (reinforced by natality) which is also the pre-cognitive, or instinctual, basis of morality. No sustainable group, no religion. Proof: there are countless non-religious groups; there aren't any group-free (i.e. private) religions. QED.
But you have to be accountable to your own decisions on what you perceive as morality.
And that is the difference between atheism and religion practitioner.
Those who practice religion don’t want to be accountable and those who don’t believe may perceive that accountability is not present or non existent.
So for morality to work properly you need to be accountable to someone or something.
The subjective is the route how the objective comes to us. In the anthropic principle, what is out there and what is in our heads exist at the same time.
About where morality comes from, I would say mostly from our "will to power", our instincts choose a version of morality that gives us the best chances to winning. A strong person would use strength to expand his power, while a weak one would go for whining and appeals to morality.
Certainly there is no universally agree-upon morality, just like it's not universally agreed-upon that the Earth is not flat and yet the Earth is objectively round. In this case, if "there is no objective morality, tell me what this (link is below) defense of ethical naturalism gets wrong. Much obliged.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/505773
What is harmonious? Living in harmony? Singing all the same song in harmony? No fights? No war? I'm not talking about the modern high-tec war in which whole cities can be blown away in a wink, but war between groups from which both parties emerge better although maybe at the cost of lifes, but who says human life is that important? Because god created it!
Is crime really that bad? Depends.
Happiness for all? What is happiness?
Etcetera. You can counter that what you wrote in your comment is commonly understood. Everybody knows what peace is. That's why people of Afghanistan (a country unknown by most people before the U.S. entered there to give the Mudjahedin a hand and some Stingers in their Jihad against the former USSR, thereby laying the foundations for the war on terror) support the taliban and not want the tali to be banned.
I'm a strong guy and women like me but I would' t even seriously think about using my strength and good looks to expand my power.
(No irony here...)
Harmony, socially, means everybody getting along with each other. Simple. I don't see the difficulty in grasping that concept in the setting of a group/community of indivduals. It, as far as I can tell, includes but is not limited to zero suffering of the kind intentionally inflicted by one individual/group on another.
Happiness is a state of mental and physical well-being, one we all, without exception, aspire to. You're overthinking it. Part of doing philosophy is to know when to stop philosophizing, right?
The gist of my post is, in the simplest sense, understanding the need for morality, which should be uniform across peoples, puts moral theories on a solid, universal foundation, the net result being objective moral codes - if we all want the same thing and we're all alike, we should converge on the same means (ethical codes) to get that which we want, no? That's, in my book, objective morality.
Quoting 180 Proof
Firstly, I don't quite get your point. Secondly, it doesn't look like there's a clear a boundary between politics and ethics although the past American president (Donald Trump) puts that idea into question.
What do you mean by getting along?
If you have to ask that question, maybe I should be getting along.
I would argue that scientific and moral truth are very much different things. Everybody can look at the earth's shadow on the moon and determine that it is round.
Yet we don't have such tools to reach a conclusion on what is an objective moral truth. I would argue it depends on perspective, a wolf wants to eat the bunny, so it goes with the "nature favors the strong" morality. The bunny doesn't want to be eaten, yet it is too weak to win in an open combat, so it with go with more of a Christian morality, making up an afterlife, where it will have green meadows, but the bad wolf would be frying on a pan. :D
Whether Afghans support Taliban is a very questionable proposition.
Why do you think it is objective?
Why not?
Morality needs no justification, but you can justify it without religion. However, you can't justify religion without morality. Religion is dope to help some cope.
I would say that people are build to overcome problems and once you present them with a society that does not have real problems, they would make up problems, be it climate change or systemic racism, to freak out about.
Ditto.
To be honest I didn't really understand it. )
Nicely put! :up:
:ok:
I believe in gods who created the world. But I don't get my morals or ethical systems or my rights and wrings from them. I just tell them to FO and stroll along happily. Maybe I am an exception...
Because I love people.
That's no answer. What means getting along? No quareling or fighting? Why not? It's nice to fight once in a while.
You're committing the status quo fallacy.
Can you justify religion without morality? I do. I believe in gods without hanging up my morals on them.
What is your gods demanded human sacrifice? Or persecution of heretics? Or denied access to birth control?
I don't listen to their demands. If they asked me that I tell them to go to to the toilet and wipe their dirty arses.
If they did that they would ask me to humiliate their own creation.