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Author Topic:   Morality without god
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


Message 31 of 1221 (677008)
10-26-2012 9:52 AM


It's nothing more than a prejudice - it's as 'ist' as regarding coloured people as lesser beings.
They need to be called on their assumptions every time comes up.

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 32 of 1221 (677014)
10-26-2012 10:27 AM
Reply to: Message 25 by Dogmafood
10-26-2012 7:18 AM


Re: All for nothing
I have gone to sit with people who were dying. They were unconscious and so did not even know that I was there. I certainly did not enjoy witnessing their death but something compelled me to be there.
Well if she was unconscious then I wouldn't be going. I go because she is awake and alert and recognises me and smiles. I'd rather just go home and play video games, but she deserves to be happy.
The term 'motivation' refers to what causes a desire. A desire to do a thing is selfish by definition.
I suppose I can't really say that an internally consistent concept that you have defined into existence is "wrong", but I see no good reason to view the world this way.
The selfish act would be going home a playing video games.
Going and visiting her is not selfish.
To say that they're both selfish is retarded.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by Dogmafood, posted 10-26-2012 7:18 AM Dogmafood has replied

Replies to this message:
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Jazzns
Member (Idle past 3912 days)
Posts: 2657
From: A Better America
Joined: 07-23-2004


(1)
Message 33 of 1221 (677017)
10-26-2012 10:53 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by frako
10-24-2012 11:56 AM


A shamless plug for my old thread that didn't seem to take off.
Scientific Morality? - (The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris)
The argument here is that not only can you have a rationally based morality, that it can also be a much better morality than those derived from religion.
Even if you don't want to discuss this topic, if you are interested in the topic of morality I encourage you to read this book. He also has some presentations on youtube that covers essentially the main points of the book.

If we long for our planet to be important, there is something we can do about it. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. --Carl Sagan

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by frako, posted 10-24-2012 11:56 AM frako has not replied

  
Rahvin
Member
Posts: 4032
Joined: 07-01-2005
Member Rating: 9.2


Message 34 of 1221 (677037)
10-26-2012 12:17 PM
Reply to: Message 26 by Dogmafood
10-26-2012 7:23 AM


Re: All for nothing
I don think that is stretching it too far. When I act in opposition to my conscience it can be severely uncomfortable.
It's a stretch because it expands the instances in which an act is considered "selfish" to the point that all acts are selfish. There can no longer be any distinction between a selfish and a non-selfish act, and the term becomes meaningless.
We can only ever do what we want to do among the choices available to us...but if we are to retain the concepts of "selfishness" and "selflessness," we need to continue to draw a distinction between those whose goal systems disregard others and those whose goal systems encompass empathy for others.
Serving your own goal system is always self-rewarding, but not all goal systems are the same.

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 26 by Dogmafood, posted 10-26-2012 7:23 AM Dogmafood has replied

Replies to this message:
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Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 349 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


Message 35 of 1221 (677104)
10-26-2012 6:45 PM
Reply to: Message 32 by New Cat's Eye
10-26-2012 10:27 AM


Re: All for nothing
I'd rather just go home and play video games, but she deserves to be happy.
You are treating her the way that you would like to be treated. You have a sense of reciprocity even if it is subconscious.
I suppose I can't really say that an internally consistent concept that you have defined into existence is "wrong", but I see no good reason to view the world this way.
It isn't my definition. It is the definition.
quote:
motivation/ˌmōtəˈvāSHən/
Noun: 1. The reason or reasons one has for acting or behaving in a particular way.2. The general desire or willingness of someone to do something.
You may wish to think that you are doing things out of the goodness of your heart but I maintain that it is all geared toward self gratification.
The selfish act would be going home a playing video games.
Going and visiting her is not selfish.
To say that they're both selfish is retarded.
Retarded? Really?
They are both selfish acts and the one that you actually choose to do is the most selfish. I know that this clashes with the colloquial use of the word but that is not my fault. I am not changing any definitions I am just pointing out what actually falls into the category.
You are motivated by your desires and nothing else. If you disagree with this perhaps you could identify some other motivation that does not rely on the satisfaction of your desires.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by New Cat's Eye, posted 10-26-2012 10:27 AM New Cat's Eye has not replied

  
Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 349 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


Message 36 of 1221 (677105)
10-26-2012 6:46 PM
Reply to: Message 34 by Rahvin
10-26-2012 12:17 PM


Re: All for nothing
but if we are to retain the concepts of "selfishness" and "selflessness," we need to continue to draw a distinction between those whose goal systems disregard others and those whose goal systems encompass empathy for others.
Serving your own goal system is always self-rewarding, but not all goal systems are the same.
2 kids in a group of 10 each have a bowl of candy. One of them shares with the others and one does not. I agree that one would be called selfish and the other would not. My point is that both of the kids are driven by the same factor that is to satisfy their understanding of what is the right thing to do. One feels good because he shared and the other because he didn't. They both ultimately acted in order to satisfy themselves.
My point is that everyone's goal system is driven by their sense of self regardless of what it encompasses. I have no problem with the colloquial use of the terms but which words should I use to make the point that morals are born of and informed by our own sense of self preservation and what is best for the individual.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 34 by Rahvin, posted 10-26-2012 12:17 PM Rahvin has not replied

  
Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 349 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


Message 37 of 1221 (677106)
10-26-2012 6:54 PM
Reply to: Message 30 by NoNukes
10-26-2012 8:05 AM


Re: As A Man Thinks In his heart
So what benefit did Dr. A reckon up when he returned money to the shopkeeper?
He satisfied his sense of fairness. If he didn't suffer from that sense then he would have kept the money and satisfied his sense of profit.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 30 by NoNukes, posted 10-26-2012 8:05 AM NoNukes has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 38 by Omnivorous, posted 10-26-2012 8:59 PM Dogmafood has seen this message but not replied
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Omnivorous
Member
Posts: 3978
From: Adirondackia
Joined: 07-21-2005
Member Rating: 7.3


Message 38 of 1221 (677118)
10-26-2012 8:59 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by Dogmafood
10-26-2012 6:54 PM


Re: As A Man Thinks In his heart
Dogmafood writes:
So what benefit did Dr. A reckon up when he returned money to the shopkeeper?
He satisfied his sense of fairness. If he didn't suffer from that sense then he would have kept the money and satisfied his sense of profit.
--
One could also point out that he not only satisfied his sense of fairness, but also his sense of himself as an honest and honorable man--at no cost to his pre-purchase purse and, one assumes, at little post-purchase cost, since the transaction does not sound large.
Note that many classic cons start with a display of honesty involving small amounts--an example of the disarming power of such displays and not a suggestion that Dr A has since escalated to fast-changing large bills with the same hapless storekeep.
In addition, he was able to enjoy the rush of startled admiration from the shopkeeper, a not insignificant benefit to us social critters, and one that could be reliably anticipated. In a small community, he would have also enhanced his reputation generally.
A more interesting test of conscience would be discovering that the checked luggage handed over by the hotelier is packed, not with Dr A's superbly tailored bespoke suits, but millions in clandestine funds, unfortunately (for whoever temporarily stored it in the late checkout luggage room) in a suitcase identical to Dr A's.
It's only fair to point out that Dr A was analyzing the response of a close-minded religious person to a demonstration of conscience by an atheist and not the precise qualities or sources of that conscience.

"If you can keep your head while those around you are losing theirs, you can collect a lot of heads."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by Dogmafood, posted 10-26-2012 6:54 PM Dogmafood has seen this message but not replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 39 of 1221 (677121)
10-26-2012 9:35 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by Dogmafood
10-26-2012 6:54 PM


Re: As A Man Thinks In his heart
He satisfied his sense of fairness. If he didn't suffer from that sense then he would have kept the money and satisfied his sense of profit.
I think this argument is flawed. In either case, Dr. Adequate would have satisfied one sense and frustrated another sense. Surely you are not suggesting that Dr A had/has no profit sense.
So sense satisfying cannot be the sole explanation for which action Dr. A took.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by Dogmafood, posted 10-26-2012 6:54 PM Dogmafood has replied

Replies to this message:
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Blue Jay
Member (Idle past 2698 days)
Posts: 2843
From: You couldn't pronounce it with your mouthparts
Joined: 02-04-2008


(4)
Message 40 of 1221 (677127)
10-26-2012 11:44 PM


My thoughts on losing religion
As most of you know, over the past 5-6 years, I've been slowly deconverting from my parents' religion, Mormonism. While going through this process, I have to say that I understand the religious viewpoint, though I realize that it's fundamentally flawed. I've had a real hard time gaining my moral bearings since "falling away," and it's done a real number on my self-confidence.
I've had to realign my worldview quite drastically. I still follow my Mormon lifestyle, but I mainly do it because of family pressures, comfort zones and a general conformist philosophy now: the fairy tale's pretty much over.
But, now everything just feels like arbitrary rules, like I could essentially make up whatever moral guidelines I want, and it would be just as valid as the guidelines that society makes up for me. I've pretty much accepted now that God isn't real, but it's still hard to get used to the idea that this is really how the universe is. It's really not a trivial thing to try to work through.
So, I completely understand why religious people can't imagine morality in the absence of their deity. And what really depresses me about this is that I have no idea how to share my perspective on it in a way that would make a meaningful difference.

-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)
Darwin loves you.

Replies to this message:
 Message 41 by Tangle, posted 10-27-2012 5:05 AM Blue Jay has not replied
 Message 43 by dwise1, posted 10-27-2012 5:31 AM Blue Jay has not replied
 Message 58 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-29-2012 12:49 PM Blue Jay has replied
 Message 61 by Stile, posted 10-29-2012 2:43 PM Blue Jay has not replied

  
Tangle
Member
Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


(1)
Message 41 of 1221 (677133)
10-27-2012 5:05 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by Blue Jay
10-26-2012 11:44 PM


Re: My thoughts on losing religion
BlueJay writes:
I could essentially make up whatever moral guidelines I want, and it would be just as valid as the guidelines that society makes up for me
"Do as you would be done by" pretty much covers it though doesn't it?
I doubt you could feel ok about theft, murder, rape etc no matter how much you attempted to rationalise it. Unless you're a psychopath, those are emotions that are hard wired into us like feeling happy, angry or sad. We can't avoid what we call morality by rationalising it away, our actions cause real feelings that are mostly outside our conscious control.

Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
 Message 49 by Omnivorous, posted 10-27-2012 9:25 AM Tangle has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 42 of 1221 (677134)
10-27-2012 5:18 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by Dogmafood
10-26-2012 7:41 AM


Re: As A Man Thinks In his heart
I am suggesting that a reckoning up of benefits is exactly what a conscience is.
Well, if you want to phrase it in that way, then the guy I was describing believes that there is no benefit to doing what is right in itself, that there is no pleasure to be gained in doing right rather than wrong in itself, and the only possible motive for doing so is that God will give you cake when you're dead. And if that is really an accurate statement of his psychological condition, then he actually has no conscience.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by Dogmafood, posted 10-26-2012 7:41 AM Dogmafood has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 45 by Dogmafood, posted 10-27-2012 8:18 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 43 of 1221 (677135)
10-27-2012 5:31 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by Blue Jay
10-26-2012 11:44 PM


Re: My thoughts on losing religion
I'm offering my experience hoping that it might help you.
I became an atheist around the age of 12 or 13. I had been attending a mainstream Protestant church with our neighbors before that and chose to be baptized around the age of 11. About a year later, I decided I needed to starting taking this religion stuff seriously. Since we were supposed to believe what was in the Bible, I started reading it, from the beginning. I didn't even make it all the way through Genesis before I realized that I just simply couldn't believe any of what I was reading. And since I couldn't believe it, then I couldn't be a Christian, so I left peacefully. During high school I learned more of Christian history, which does not recommend that religion in the least. And early in college the "Jesus Freak" movement kicked in around 1970, which brought me in contact with fundamentalism, which strongly reinforced that I had made the right decision to leave Christianity. And then "creation science", which I started learning around 1981, was just icing on the cake.
So, as a young teenager right after I left the faith, I remember going through the thought process about morality and what to base it on. If I didn't believe in God, then it made no sense to use God as the basis. Fortunately, I had not been raised with an explicitly religious view of morality. I didn't learn until several years later that my father had left the faith because of the hypocrisy he saw; for his mother's sake, he continued to attend church until he turned 21. And while my mother was nominally Protestant, she didn't attend church.
So the moral training I was raised with was not overtly religious with arbitrary rules, but rather it was in the spirit of doing right by others, of courtesy, and of compassion. As a small child, I would open the door for others and continue to do so a half century later. Twice as an adolescent with fiercely bubbling hormones, married women to whom I was very much attracted basically offered themselves to me, but compassion for their husbands (one I knew, but the other I didn't) led me to decline their offers -- ironically, it turns out that my ex-wife had been cheating on me, so then so much for karma. In the discussion on this topic, some see fear as the main motivation for morality, whether that be fear of God's punishment of fear of the disapproval of others. Rather, I feel that compassion and empathy are much more important in morality.
Back to my thoughts while deciding what to base morality on. As a Boy Scout, I ended up choosing the Scout Oath and Scout Law. Yes, I was going through some eye-rolling at public religious pronouncements, but our troop leadership was based more on the Army model, so I didn't have too much of that to deal with. Later as a Scout leader myself, I learned that Lord Baden-Powell had pronounced the Scout Law to be superior to "thou shalt not" pronouncements (such as the Ten Commandments, though not explicitly named in that BSA magazine blurb) because "thou shalt" positive standards are superior to negatives. What I also did not learn until later is that Baden-Powell's Scout Law had only 7 points as opposed to BSA's 12 points and did not include a blatantly religious point, even though that religious point explicitly includes religious tolerance, which BSA does not practice (I was expelled from BSA for being an atheist, but only because BSA does not practice Scout Law nor its own published policies). But still, the positive values of Scout Oath and Scout Law were what I chose to aspire to.
In addition, I continued to think about morality. In 1985, I wrote down my thoughts, which I've posted here: AN EVOLUTIONARY BASIS FOR MORALITY. The thesis was that morality is the social lubricant that enables us to not only live with each other but also to be able to function together as a society.
So that is what I am offering to you. I hope that it is helpful.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 40 by Blue Jay, posted 10-26-2012 11:44 PM Blue Jay has not replied

  
Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 349 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


Message 44 of 1221 (677139)
10-27-2012 7:38 AM
Reply to: Message 39 by NoNukes
10-26-2012 9:35 PM


Re: As A Man Thinks In his heart
I think this argument is flawed. In either case, Dr. Adequate would have satisfied one sense and frustrated another sense. Surely you are not suggesting that Dr A had/has no profit sense.
No I am not suggesting that. I am confident that he has a highly refined sense of profit that is calculated instantaneously and without error. I am saying that when he did the moral calculus his sense of fairness carried more weight than his desire for profit. As Omni points out, I imagine that there is a point when the profit would outweigh his sense of fairness.
So yes, not all desires can be simultaneously satisfied. Conscience is the mechanism that does the calculating and decides which action will bring the greatest reward. What I don't see is this other element that enters the equation and somehow causes people to behave in a manner that they understand to be ultimately detrimental to themselves.
Acts of kindness and apparent selflessness are a result of our genetic hardwiring that takes advantage of the fact that cooperation is beneficial. This is the foundation of our moral landscape. God comes into it much later as an attempt to codify and reinforce the behaviour under threat of torture and death.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 39 by NoNukes, posted 10-26-2012 9:35 PM NoNukes has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 46 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-27-2012 8:25 AM Dogmafood has replied
 Message 101 by Perdition, posted 11-06-2012 4:07 PM Dogmafood has replied

  
Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 349 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


Message 45 of 1221 (677142)
10-27-2012 8:18 AM
Reply to: Message 42 by Dr Adequate
10-27-2012 5:18 AM


Re: As A Man Thinks In his heart
...then he actually has no conscience.
I don't disagree with what you are saying beyond pointing out that everyone has a conscience.
If conscience is a mix of our wiring and our experience then it is just that the religiously motivated conscience has been hijacked. A natural tendency that has been superimposed with the overtly carrot and stick approach of religion.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 42 by Dr Adequate, posted 10-27-2012 5:18 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
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