Posted on 09/30/2015 11:30:21 AM PDT by Heartlander
There are two atheist "memes" (to use a jargon term) that seem to me to be in prima facie conflict. I will not claim to be able to cite chapter and verse showing that the same atheist uses both of these memes. But I'm quite sure that there are atheists out there who have done so.
So these are not exact quotes from anyone but approximate statements that reflect things that I, and I suspect you, dear Reader, have heard and read.
Atheist meme #1: It is offensive to imply that being an atheist is in any way detrimental to being a moral person. Atheists can be just as moral as religious people.
Keep your eye on the ball. The question of what is meant by "just as moral" will be crucial.
Atheist meme #2: The idea that man is in any way special is speciesism derived from religious ideas like the image of God. Once we get rid of those religious concepts we can see that man is just another animal, though a highly evolved one. Man's continuity with the animals means that abortion, euthanasia, killing those in "vegetative states," and even infanticide are all "on the table" for ethical debate. The decision in specific cases should be made on the basis of utilitarian considerations without any notion that human life per se is valuable.
It should be pretty obvious that the proposals in atheist meme #2 are socially radical. They represent a departure from what a lot of people for a long time in Western society have thought of as moral behavior. Yet atheist meme #2 says that, once you are an atheist, you should consider them to be viable options.
Prima facie, this conflicts with atheist meme #1. It's pretty obvious that, if atheist meme #2 is true, atheist meme #1 is false: Atheism does make you a less moral person if atheism leads you to consider doing all those things or even advocating them.
Suppose someone wanted to hold both of these to be true. What could he say? He could try to say that, since the ethical system outlined in atheist meme #2 is actually correct, atheism doesn't really make you less moral. It just leads you to redefine what constitutes morality so that it allows things that previously (traditionally, according to Judeo-Christian morality, etc.) were not allowed.
The problem with that response is that it turns atheist meme #1 into a pointless tautology. If atheist meme #1 has a point in communication, it must be either to reassure people about atheist morals or to shame those who question them. Neither of these ends is served if "moral" in atheist meme #1 could mean "Moral according to norms radically redefined by atheists themselves." If that's the only meaning, atheist meme #1 is compatible with, say, finding that atheists are bank robbers at a much higher rate than the general populace, so long as they are following some atheist redefinition of morality that makes it okay to rob banks. But that would certainly undermine the point (at least if enough people noticed), because then people would decide that atheists qua atheists are less likely to be "nice people."
What this shows is that anyone who trots out atheist meme #1 but also plans to advocate atheist meme #2 is doing a bait and switch. Start by protesting about the morality of atheists. Trust that your audience will be lulled into accepting this claim by the fact that the intellectual atheists you intend to hold up for their consideration aren't right now breaking any laws or personally engaging in any gruesome actions (even if they are quietly, academically advocating them). They look like "nice people." Then later argue for the "enlightened," utilitarian ethics that you actually believe.
I have sometimes wondered, when atheists complain (a la meme #1) that others think they are less moral than theists, what they would say if asked, "What do you think of abortion, infanticide and euthanasia? Is your position on these matters at all influenced by your atheism? If yes, and if I consider your position grossly immoral, then why should you be offended to learn that I consider that your atheism makes you less moral?"
The funny thing is that I actually believe that the true positions on these issues are available by the natural light and hence do not require theism to understand. (Though theism helps. Human beings always find it useful to have more sources of information than strictly necessary.) I examined some of these issues in this essay. In Western society, however, the brand of atheism most commonly held is not some sort of virtuous, Platonic atheism that cleaves to the Good and accesses the natural light but rather some version of naturalism. And that is highly detrimental to moral insight.
I present my readers with the conflict between meme #1 and meme #2 in the hopes that it may be useful, either in talking with atheists or talking to others about atheism.
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natural light = Atheist meme #2
?
Either God defines it or the atheists define it. Who are you going to trust?
Good point!
Nope. Much as being religious doesn’t seem to interfere with being immoral. You’ve either got the goods to be good or you don’t.
There are definitely moral atheists. I know a couple.
However, even the moral-living atheists have a certain contempt and condescension toward religion. And, yes, as you so rightly point out, they use every wrong committed by someone religious as a condemnation of the whole.
Exactly wrong. When I do an altruistic thing it’s because I WANT to. There’s no promise of heaven, no reward, no punishment, just being who I can be. Altruism for the atheist is entirely BECAUSE of their worldview, it’s their worldview that said “be good, even though nothing special will happen”. Anybody whose altruism is based solely on the promise of heaven is the sociopath, they’re being good for reward, it’s completely self serving.
Funny stuff. And why, exactly, do you “want” to? Just because you feel like it, today? What causes you to want to “be good, even though nothing special will happen?” What’s “good?” Why is it “good?” Just keep peeling back the onion with “why?” What’s wrong with other atheists saying they want to “be evil, and do exactly as I please, with no regard for anybody or anything?”
Atheist morality is subjectivistic, relativistic, and permissive.It includes experimental lifestyles and alternative lifestyles which are anti-life,irrational moral equivalency, and irrational cultural equivalency. It also includes anti-principle morality such as pragmatism and anti natural rights morality such as utilitarianism.
Because I have a person I believe I am and want to be. It’s all about looking at myself in the mirror. Then of course there’s the social contract. It’s very easy to see that the more people that follow the basic rules the smoother life is for everybody. And of course we have enough immoral behavior from people who claim religion to see clearly that being tied to religion doesn’t make a person good. As I said in the other post, if you’ve got the stuff to be a good person you will be with or without religion, if you don’t you won’t.
These are things learned through Thousands of years of Human interaction. Not given out by an unseen sky God or a dead Jew the Romans nailed to a stick.
Easy; doublethink. Orwell was right.
I understand your views, but I don’t think you understand how inconsistent those views are with the atheistic worldview. You look at yourself in a mirror and apparently “want” to maintain the “social contract” and make things “smoother.”
Why is adhering to the “social contract” a good thing? Why is “smoother” a good thing? Why shouldn’t you do as you please as the fittest, stomping on those you can to become the alpha of your world? Are your fellow atheists doing “evil” to stomp others? Who decides “good” and “evil” and “immoral?” By what standard? Why?
I hope you see my point. Atheistic moral standards are profoundly subjective, with as many moral standards as there are atheists, from complete sociopaths, to people like yourself, who has incorporated the Judeo-Christian moral worldview, at least partially, whether you want to admit it or not.
First, nihilism can’t condemn Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, or those who fomented the Armenian genocide or the Rwandan one. If there is no such thing as “morally forbidden,” then what Mohamed Atta did on September 11, 2001, was not morally forbidden. Of course, it was not permitted either. But still, don’t we want to have grounds to condemn these monsters? Nihilism seems to cut that ground out from under us.Second, if we admit to being nihilists, then people won’t trust us. We won’t be left alone when there is loose change around. We won’t be relied on to be sure small children stay out of trouble.
Third, and worst of all, if nihilism gets any traction, society will be destroyed. We will find ourselves back in Thomas Hobbes’s famous state of nature, where “the life of man is solitary, mean, nasty, brutish and short.” Surely, we don’t want to be nihilists if we can possibly avoid it. (Or at least, we don’t want the other people around us to be nihilists.)
Scientism can’t avoid nihilism. We need to make the best of it. For our own self-respect, we need to show that nihilism doesn’t have the three problems just mentioned—no grounds to condemn Hitler, lots of reasons for other people to distrust us, and even reasons why no one should trust anyone else. We need to be convinced that these unacceptable outcomes are not ones that atheism and scientism are committed to. Such outcomes would be more than merely a public relations nightmare for scientism. They might prevent us from swallowing nihilism ourselves, and that would start unraveling scientism.
To avoid these outcomes, people have been searching for scientifically respectable justification of morality for least a century and a half. The trouble is that over the same 150 years or so, the reasons for nihilism have continued to mount. Both the failure to find an ethics that everyone can agree on and the scientific explanation of the origin and persistence of moral norms have made nihilism more and more plausible while remaining just as unappetizing.
- A.Rosenberg, The Atheist Guide to Reality, ch.5
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Scientism shows that the first-person POV is an illusion. Even after scientism convinces us, we’ll continue to stick with the first person. But at least we’ll know that it’s another illusion of introspection and we’ll stop taking it seriously. We’ll give up all the answers to the persistent questions about free will, the self, the soul, and the meaning of life that the illusion generates.The physical facts fix all the facts. The mind is the brain. It has to be physical and it can’t be anything else, since thinking, feeling, and perceiving are physical process—in particular, input/output processes—going on in the brain. We can be sure of a great deal about how the brain works because the physical facts fix all the facts about the brain. The fact that the mind is the brain guarantees that there is no free will. It rules out any purposes or designs organizing our actions or our lives. It excludes the very possibility of enduring persons, selves, or souls that exist after death or for that matter while we live. (….)
The neural circuits in our brain manage the beautifully coordinated and smoothly appropriate behavior of our body. They also produce the entrancing introspective illusion that thoughts really are about stuff in the world. This powerful illusion has been with humanity since language kicked in, as we’ll see. It is the source of at least two other profound myths: that we have purposes that give our actions and lives meaning and that there is a person “in there” steering the body, so to speak. To see why we make these mistakes and why it’s so hard to avoid them, we need to understand the source of the illusion that thoughts are about stuff.
-Rosenberg, The Atheist's Guide To Reality, ch.9
Life is a results oriented business. If one pays attention to results you see the path to good behavior. And it makes your own life easier too. The person who is more trustworthy has more friends who value him more and can provide more assistance during life’s rough patches. The person who is more loyal to his spouse has fewer alimony payments. It’s not subjective at all. We have basic concepts that show us obvious morals. Once you have the concept of ownership you also get the concept of theft and can see it’s immoral. Once you have the concept of life you get death and can see the immorality of taking life. Once you have the concept of truth you also get the concept of lies and can see the immorality of lies.
In the end it’s about decisions. We decide who we want to be. We decide if we want to be moral or immoral. And we can make that decision with or without religion.
Really if you honestly think you cannot be moral without religion what you’re saying is that if you have a crisis in faith you will become a murdering, raping thief. If you don’t think you would become an evil person during a crisis in faith then you are admitting you (and therefore others) CAN be moral without religion.
Nihilism != atheism.
So that all starts from a bad assumption and then goes off into a whacky land. And really “scientifically respectable justification of morality” has been known for a long time. The social contract explains it all quite well. People are social animals, our society works best when certain rules are followed, those rules by and large coincide with the morals pushed by most successful religions. It ain’t tough.
“Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life.”
- Richard Dawkins – quoted from “The God Delusion”
“Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.”
- Steven Pinker
And they’re wrong. Their problem is that they forget we evolved an intellect that feels a need to examine the world and our place in it. So clearly preserving traits that tell us what is true about life help the species survive and truth is part of our fitness.
You can see that on a societal level, while western Europe developed this idea that reality has static elements that are always true, Asia developed an idea of a malleable world with constantly changing physical rules. When you grasp that reality is static you can have science and engineering, because you know that up is always up and down is always down and that the water will always push the wheel which turns the gears which turn the stones and grind the wheat. In a malleable reality you can’t have that. Which is why we jumped way past Asia in tech. Our evolved fitness for truth gave us the Industrial Revolution.
Not appreciated. You might want to start posting somewhere else.
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