mixed_biscuits
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I think you're conflating different terms here (values and facts/beliefs). Atheists would certainly not believe that there are absolute moral values.
Absolute zero is not a moral value.
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The God / Dawkins Delusion
- Thread starter polymorphic
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I think you're conflating different terms here (values and facts/beliefs). Atheists would certainly not believe that there are absolute moral values.
Absolute zero is not a moral value.
mixed_biscuits
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But we have already constructed religion uninfluenced, unless you think it was already part of the cultural scene in the African cradle of humanity.
mixed_biscuits
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If you're referring to the argument implied in the quotation I posted, well, it shouldn't be taken as an argument for God's existence. It's merely an argument for the goodness of people believing in God, mistakenly or otherwise.
re Richard's reference to the 'trustworthiness' hypothesis, we can then test Locke's contention by investigating whether atheists are indeed less moral than believers (especially in situations where they believe their actions to be unobserved) and consequently less deserving of trust.
It may be the case here that some false beliefs may lead to better outcomes than the corresponding true beliefs and that encouraging religious practice would be morally desirable.
This is what an atheist friend of mine had concluded before deciding to bring up his children within the C of E.
After all, there's no moral obligation always to privilege the factually true; just go with 'what works.'
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luka
Well-known member
i think in reality religious people tend to be bigots and hypocrites and if anything less likely to be moral than normal people but thats a side issue. i like what you're doing in this thread biscuits. someone needs to. dissensus has become very boring and commonsensical. in politics music and thought.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Tea, you should have a read of this:
http://www.happinesshypothesis.com/
Got lots of say about the positive value of religion. I know it looks like a horrible self-help book but it's very good - and it's all scientific with numbers and everything! So your eyes wont' fall out if you read it
I'm sure you've posted this link before, Dan, and while admittedly I haven't looked at it, I can't imagine what it could contain that might make me change my mind on this issue. Personally I'm quite happy enough most of the time, and in a more general sense I'm really not too keen on the idea of mass delusion being endorsed or defended because it "makes people happy". For one thing, it's easy to see how this kind of spiritual placebo effect can hamper efforts to actually improve the lot of poor people around the world. In the Christian view, for instance, the poor and downtrodden are blessed and will inherit the Earth, blah blah, so why try to improve their material condition in the here-and-how when eternal spiritual bliss awaits them?* It's just a psychological trick, like a 'Free Beer Tomorrow' sign except people really believe it.
*I think this is a major criticism of the work of people like Mother Teresa: no doubt she did a lot to ease the most acute suffering of the very poorest (who were ignored, if not actively despised, as 'untouchables' in the Hindu caste system) but she wasn't too interested in helping them escape their desperate poverty - because if they stopped being poor, they'd stop being blessed, right?
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scottdisco
rip this joint please
Luka is well qualified to discuss nihilism and dubious faith structures as he's a West Ham fan
Dusty
Tone deaf
I find it odd to think of someone as 'more trustworthy' because they do not commit socially unacceptable behaviour due to a fear of punishment from God rather than some internal reasoning of their own. They may suppress the behaviour, but they still might have the desire to do it.
mixed_biscuits
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The atheist is in a far worse position if this 'reasoning' (which is actually either an appeal to an innate concern for one's fellow men or coercion by sleight of hand) fails. As soon as A.N. Aughty Boy finds that this process inexorably leads to arbitrary assertions and punishment-by-peer power play, then it's sin-a-go-go. The only thing stopping him is his ability to play hide-and-seek.
But from God there is no hiding one's sins. Oh no.
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padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
we're not talking about absolute moral values tho, we're talking about perceived-to-be absolute moral values, which is an entirely different order of thing. your argument is that it doesn't matter what people believe so much as it does how that belief influences what they do. well: the Inquisition, all the Catholic v. Protestant wars, the conquistadores, persecution of & re-education for homosexuals, endorsement of slavery (the childern of Ham & so on), persecution of Jews, opposition to birth control, etc ad infinitum. that's just Xtianity, surely we could go on w/litanies of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu etc offenses. clearly non-religious persons & regimes, some avowedly atheist, have committed similar offense, some lesser & some worse; this isn't an argument for the morally superior history of non-belief. it is to say, tho, that a belief that your moral values are absolute, when in fact they aren't, is a v. dangerous jumping off point, as it leads to a rigid belief in one's own rightness rather than the ability to think critically & evaluate. (unsurprisingly, non-believers/skeptics tend to be slightly more intelligent on average than dogmatists, tho it's difficult to say which direction causation runs in that relationship)
you haven't said anything that even remotely convinces for the superiority of "absolute" religious morality over secular, non-religious morality, & I doubt you will, either.
go do it then. go do a double-blind study & report back on your findings. or don't. either way, don't offer up anecdotes about your "atheist friend" & C of E as proof of anything.
right, religious belief is such a great deterrent. b/c it's not as if deeply religious people sin constantly.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I meant a society now, not a society at the dawn of human history, i.e. :
Tentative Andy
I'm in the Meal Deal
There seems to be a lot of dubious points being made in this thread. I don't think I have quite enough grasp of the required concepts/vocabularly to refute them all, but to make a start:
In my experience, it is definetly not just theists who believe in absolute moral values.
Of course, this does not mean that those atheists who believe in absolute values are always right to do so, just as religous believers are not always so.
But that feeling of absolute moral certainty about one's actions, which is what m_b seems to keep claiming is the special preserve of the followers of a religion, in fact seems to apply to people across many different belief systems, including those with no place for a creator.
(Again, I think it's also worth bearing that this feeling of moral certainty might not always be a positive thing, if it means one's moral views are made immune from doubt, reasoned debate, evidence to the contrary and so on).
Edit: I guess a much briefer version of my position would be to say that the widely-repeated 'if God does not exist then everything is permitted' view is in fact bullshit.
In my experience, it is definetly not just theists who believe in absolute moral values.
Of course, this does not mean that those atheists who believe in absolute values are always right to do so, just as religous believers are not always so.
But that feeling of absolute moral certainty about one's actions, which is what m_b seems to keep claiming is the special preserve of the followers of a religion, in fact seems to apply to people across many different belief systems, including those with no place for a creator.
(Again, I think it's also worth bearing that this feeling of moral certainty might not always be a positive thing, if it means one's moral views are made immune from doubt, reasoned debate, evidence to the contrary and so on).
Edit: I guess a much briefer version of my position would be to say that the widely-repeated 'if God does not exist then everything is permitted' view is in fact bullshit.
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padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
quite a few people have been on to that particular scam over the centuries. the Wobblies were particularly good on it, in re "apple pie in the sky when you die" & so forth, the way in which the clergy (or at least, the Church establishment; there are always at least a few radical individual priests or pastors) functioned as another tool to keep the downtrodden pacified.
another criticism of Mother Teresa might focus on her staunch opposition to both contraception & abortion, in a country that surely has a surplus of unwanted children (thanks, moral absolutism!). she also took $ from & supported the Duvaliers of Haiti, those great & humble Christians. plus, fun fact: the Catholic Church -still- requires "proof" of miracles for beatification. in this case it seems prayer to the Mother cured a woman's tubercular tumor. just by coincidence, of course, she happened to be on anti-TB medication at the time.
grizzleb
Well-known member
Haha, that's such a ridiculous point - "if you brought up children in a certain way they would almost certainly believe you and not make up something which is complex and dense that has otherwise evolved over centuries of time."
People would do well to have a watch at the latest 'Storyville' avaliable on bbciplayer, about a bunch of youngsters who escape from some mormon cult in the american midwest. Really eye-opening and touches on much of what's being discussed here.
Richard Carnage
Well-known member
I wasn't referring that that quote, actually. It was more the second book of An Essay Of Human Understanding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_Concerning_Human_Understanding
mixed_biscuits
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That's all right, because I wasn't trying to argue that God exists by using Locke.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
you'd think so, wouldn't you? but people keep saying that religion & religion alone can fill some kind of specific void in the human being, so it seems necessary to point out that there's no proof of that, & that there's no reason to think a religion-less society - that is, one in a world in which religion was completely unknown, rather an atheistic state in our own world (in which the state is trying to impose non-belief onto believers) - wouldn't be just fine.