Underlying Philosophy

Hi Sac, welcome to EvC! Well, as has been mentioned, this question itself follows from a false premise: that all or even most atheists arrive at atheism for the same reasons.Atheism casts an extremely broad net. There are some atheists who believe in the supernatural, simply not deities. There are atheists who think that deities are impossible; there are others who are simply not convinced that deities exist.There are even atheist religions - Buddhism is perhaps the larges one around today, but various forms of animism and nature worship don't believe in gods.It's simply not possible to ask what the "underlying philosophy of atheism" is, because there is nothing that ties atheists together aside from a lack of belief in deities. How could these "entities" arise in a Universe that is governed by a deity?Etics and morality are human constructs. We make them up, based on our own personal and cultural values. That's why so many cultures hold such different taboos - you and I might think cannibalism is reprehensibly immoral, but there are other cultures where this is not the case. Morality does not exist outside of the mind - it's something we make up so that society can function, and so that we can all live safer, happier, healthier lives than if we were all completely amoral.Note that children are not born with morality. It's something they learn. They have no sense of "property," for example, and so taking and sharing mean nothing to them until they are taught by their parents.There are many different ethical systems:One is Authoritarianism - an Authority dictates what is "good" and what is "bad," and that's that. Think the Ten Commandments and the Jewish Law. YHWH, in this case, acts as the Authority. If he says murder is bad, then it's bad. But then if he says to kill your son as a blood sacrifice, killing your son is good.Another is Utilitarianism - the relative "good" or "bad" of an action depends on its net effects in terms of harm or benefit. For instance, killing my neighbor would do him (and society) harm, and so it would be "bad." Donating to charity helps individuals and society as a whole significantly by harming myself slightly, and so it is "good." Utilitarian ethics is all about trying to maximize the benefit while minimizing harm done.There are many others. Sometimes they arrive at the same conclusions (both Christian Authoritarians and Utilitarians would agree that murder is bad, for instance) for completely different reasons. There is no singular "entity" we can objectively identify as "morality" or "ethics." There is no basic underlying assumption to atheism, any more than there is a basic uderlying assumption to simply not believing in Santa Claus.Do you believe in Thor, as an acutal living deity? I presume not. Does your lack of belief rest on some "underlying assumption" that Thor must not exist? Or are you simply not convinced due to lack of supporting evidence? ...if you're not going to talk about it, why bring it up? I'll just respond by saying I don't accept any of what you just said here. Perhaps you'd like to open a different topic to discuss those issues, since you don't want to talk about them here? "Abstract entities" like morality and ethics do not exist as objective entities at all. In other words, there is no ethical system that exists outside of the human mind; moral judgments are always subjective, and are the result of an individual's judgment and personal system of ethics. Marrying a 12-year-old is reprehensible on our society, but it is accepted in some societies, and was commonplace in even Western society in the past. Homosexuality is decried as a horrific crime by some groups, while other groups consider it to be perfectly normal and healthy.Why would we assume that such things need to come from a deity? We as human beings seem to be perfectly capable of making them up on our own.

Logic is essentially just a formalized way of telling whether a statement is consistent. I don't think that logic "exists" as some sort of "entity" outside of a human mind. I consider it more like mathematics - a human concept that simply serves to represent aspects of reality.I don't see how a deity is required to establish that if a statement contains two mutually exclusive concepts, that statement is not consistent.

No worries. No need to get overwhelmed by multiple responses. My apologies, but then it is apparently true that you do not know what an underlying assumption is.That morality and ethics are human constructs is not an assumption - it is a conclusion based on evidence, some of which I posted.Allow me to explain in greater detail. If morality is an external, objective "entity," rather than human invention, then we should not see multiple systems of ethics, and different moral values according to culture.But that's exactly what we see. Moral values are a function of culture, not an objective, independently existing "entity." Different cultures have different values, and use different ethical systems. Some societies have communal property rights, and no concept of theft. Some are highly patriarchal; others value both genders equally. Some are highly accepting of outsides; others are xenophobic to the point of considering being an "outsider" to be immoral. Some consider nudity to be shameful and harmful; others consider it perfectly natural and normal. Some consider working on a specific day to be immoral; others have no such restriction.Babies are not born with any sense of morality. Their initial social instincts are selfish in nature - they want food, they want attention, etc. They have no built-in concept of property. They have no idea what "death" is, and thus no concept of "murder." They don't know about sexuality, and so don;t have any opinions on whether a given sexual orientation is moral or immoral. They don;t know what the Sabbath is, and so can't tell wehter working on it is good or bad.They don't even know what God is, and so cannot determine whether they believe in such a thing or not, let alone whether doing so is good or bad.Even in Authoritarian ethical systems, we typically see people decide for themselves what is right and wrong even above the dictates of the Authority. Most Biblical Christians who accept the moral authority of the Bible, for instance, would still identify even play-acting that one was going to sacrifice one's child to be horrifically immoral child abuse, or would condemn the Bible's instruction to execute rebellious children.I take this as evidence that suggests the conclusion that morality is the invention of social animals.It's not an assumption at all, even if you disagree with my conclusion based on the evidence. Yet those cultures had no concept of the Hebrew "God" before it was told to them. Various cultures around the world have worshipped nature itself; animal spirits; ancestors; multiple pantheons of wildly different deities; enlightened human beings; and all manner of other things. There is no evidence that any of them "knew" your deity and "chose" nott o worship him. The words of your book are not themselves evidence - they are an assertion that has not been supported. From my understanding, most cannibalistic societies that still exist are South American tribes.In any case, I am a member of Western society, and specifically I am a Utilitarian and a Secular Humanist. I value human life in and of itself, and judge morality based on the preservation of that life and the increase in its quality for the greatest number of people. I would judge cannibalism to be immoral if it involves murder. While I feel generally grossed out by cannibalism of someone who has died of natural causes, I see nothing ethically wrong so long as his family consents to the consumption of the corpse (because I value the potential emotional harm to the family).The cannibal himself may of course disagree, and that proves my very point - morality is not universal and objective, but is subjective and unique to individuals and societies.The fact that you or I can make a moral judgment does not make our moral values objective, Sac, even if we were to agree. The fact that others come to different moral conclusions in the same circumstances means that morality is subjective and is determined by the individual. No, you've made that assertion, but you haven't supported it with evidence. But the statement was not about someone who does believe in Santa. It was about someone who does not. To not believe in Santa, one could actively believe that particulars of the Santa myth are impossible, and thus there is no such thing. This, admittedly, requires that one have previously determined (by assumption or by other evidence) that the particulars of the Santa myth are impossible.However, one could instead passively lack belief in Santa simply because they have not been convinced. This requires no assumption at all - it doesn't even require a pre-existing conclusion regarding the possibility of the individual aspects of the myth. This would also describe someone who has never heard of Santa - if you've never heard of a thing, you can hardly believe it exists. Except for those who believe in many gods. Or those who have never heard of god.Or those who passively lack belief because they aren't convinced. Please, do tell me which deity I worship? I don't recall praying lately. Clearly you've never heard of Agnisticism. An agnostic does not know whether there is or is not a god, and believes that it is impossible to ever know.A better definition of fence-sitting neutrality I've never heard. It;s impossible to believe in atheism. Athism is defined by a lack of belief. That's like saying "I believe in not believing in Santa Claus." It;s utter nonsense. False dichotomy. You;re insisting that belief in dieties is binary, only two responses.That;s jsut not the case.Imagine for example a test question: "Do you believe in God? Yes/No"I know how you would answer. I know how I would answer.But how would an agnostic answer? An agnostic believes it's impossible to know, he neither believes nor disbelieves.How would a polytheist like a Hindu answer? The believe in many gods, and so answering "yes" would not be entirely accurate. Then let me rephrase.I presume you do not believe in fairies or leprechauns. Is that an accurate assumption on my part?

There is, however, a very, very large difference between understanding that evolution is the mechanism responsible for the diversity of life observed on Earth and the generation of new species, and subscribing to social Darwinism.I think you'll find that social Darwinism or any other version of deriving morality from a "survival of the fittest" mentality is not held by nearly any evolutionists, and moreover has nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of "underlying philosophy" for understanding evolution as a scientific principle.The underlying philosophy behind the scientific Theory of Evolution is methodological naturalism - the same as with any scientific theory. This branch of philosophy has little to do with morality and ethics.The Theory of Evolution no more suggests how we should behave towards other human beings in a moral or ethical context than does the Theory of Gravity or General Relativity.Social Darwinism is simply the result of racists and bigots using a scientific theory as a rationalization for their already-existing views, nothing more.Marxism, of course, is an economic model, and has nothing to do with social Darwinism. Marx, to my knowledge, never suggested that we should kill off the weakest individuals and let only the strong survive; in fact, that mentality seems to relate far more to capitalism, where without regulation the wealthy and strong inherently prey upon the weak and poor, than Marxist communism, where the poor and weak run the show.