You Lost One - Atheist Converts

[Sandra Craft]

If that's the root of you problem with morality, I think you're living in a dream world.  Toss moral (and I assume here you mean religious) beliefs all you want, people aren't going to mind their own business or be accepting and tolerant any more than they already are,

I beg to differ, us atheists are proof otherwise. For the most part we don't worry about "morality", if it doesn't impact us or make society unsafe.
Take homosexuality for example, who cares if it is moral or immoral or neutral, it is not a threat, so we don't care.

We're not the norm tho, are we?

[Sweetdeath]

If that's the root of you problem with morality, I think you're living in a dream world.  Toss moral (and I assume here you mean religious) beliefs all you want, people aren't going to mind their own business or be accepting and tolerant any more than they already are,

I beg to differ, us atheists are proof otherwise. For the most part we don't worry about "morality", if it doesn't impact us or make society unsafe.
Take homosexuality for example, who cares if it is moral or immoral or neutral, it is not a threat, so we don't care.

We're not the norm tho, are we?

Is norm determined by majority? Maybe that's how society sees it.

Sexual positions: what is the 'norm?' XD

[OldGit]

Sexual positions: what is the 'norm?' XD

Is that the one where you swing from the chandelier and stick your ....  no, maybe not.

[En_Route]

If that's the root of you problem with morality, I think you're living in a dream world.  Toss moral (and I assume here you mean religious) beliefs all you want, people aren't going to mind their own business or be accepting and tolerant any more than they already are,

I beg to differ, us atheists are proof otherwise. For the most part we don't worry about "morality", if it doesn't impact us or make society unsafe.
Take homosexuality for example, who cares if it is moral or immoral or neutral, it is not a threat, so we don't care.

We're not the norm tho, are we?

You are in a statistical minority as are people with red hair and Celine Dion fans. Only the latter represent a threat to society.

[Sandra Craft]

If that's the root of you problem with morality, I think you're living in a dream world.  Toss moral (and I assume here you mean religious) beliefs all you want, people aren't going to mind their own business or be accepting and tolerant any more than they already are,

I beg to differ, us atheists are proof otherwise. For the most part we don't worry about "morality", if it doesn't impact us or make society unsafe.
Take homosexuality for example, who cares if it is moral or immoral or neutral, it is not a threat, so we don't care.

We're not the norm tho, are we?

I've thought more about this (slept on it, actually) and there are places that have tried to do away with religion and religious morality, and the result was very far from accepting, tolerant people minding their own business. 

Also, I think blaming religous morality for all the bad in the world is a little one-sided.  If you're going for consistency, you have to count all the good that can be credited to religious morality as well as the bad.  For instance, German Xtians during WWII risking their own lives hiding or helping Jews to escape because it was the right, the moral, thing to do.  I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but that's one everybody is familiar with.

You can say, and probably correctly, that those people would have done that anyway without the influence of religious morality and just credited their actions to a different motive.  I certainly hope they would have, but that does tend to support my point about people being the same no matter what they claim inspires or justifies their behavior. 

You are in a statistical minority as are people with red hair and Celine Dion fans. Only the latter represent a threat to society.

I wonder what would happen if you bred them with Trekkies?

[Stevil]

I've thought more about this (slept on it, actually) and there are places that have tried to do away with religion and religious morality, and the result was very far from accepting, tolerant people minding their own business. 

Also, I think blaming religous morality for all the bad in the world is a little one-sided. 

My focus was morality in general, not just religious morality. But it is hard to argue about something when we don't have a common understanding as to what that something means.

With religion, I think it is possible to see that most religious wars or religious based oppression or atrocities were based on morality with the desire to enforce it on others.

So the real issue is not just the believed knowledge of knowing what is right and wrong but it is the belief that this right and wrong applies to others. If your morality only applies to the self (such as a personal opinion or personal values) then I have no problem with it. I personally wouldn't call this morality though. You can use your own personal opinion or personal values to influence law (I have no problem with that), but if you recognise it as personal opinion then you are likely to vote for things that affect you and not worry about things that don't affect you. You will be much less likely to want to needlessly oppress others.

The problem comes along when you think your knowledge of morality applies to others, you then become judgmental and possibly driven to control, oppress and even kill.

Sure in wars it might begin by a tyrant wanting to expand his empire. But often they need to win their own people into supporting the war effort. They do this be invoking morality, and getting their people to fight the Good fight against their Evil enemies.

I am certainly not saying that religion hasn't added some value to the world.

Just to clarify amoralism
Moral statements are meaningless. This means you cannot judge if a moral statement is true or false. e.g.
With the statement "Killing someone is immoral", I would say this is neither true nor false. I would need to know more details e.g. why is the person being killed? What state is the person being killed in? What is the goal that this action is being judged against (with regards to it being right and wrong).
If you think that you can answer true or false to the statement or similar statements, then you are being philosophically inconsistent unless of course you believe in objective morality. If you believe in objective morality then you need to assess from where does objective morality come? and how do people know of this objective morality and why do other animals not know of it?

[Sandra Craft]

With the statement "Killing someone is immoral", I would say this is neither true nor false. I would need to know more details e.g. why is the person being killed? What state is the person being killed in? What is the goal that this action is being judged against (with regards to it being right and wrong).

I would call it generally true, but concede that a lot depends on the circumstances.  I don't find this inconsistent at all, just an example of how morality is subjective, not objective.

My opinion of objective morality is the same as my opinion on the existence of a god -- I'll believe it when I see it.

[Stevil]

With the statement "Killing someone is immoral", I would say this is neither true nor false. I would need to know more details e.g. why is the person being killed? What state is the person being killed in? What is the goal that this action is being judged against (with regards to it being right and wrong).

I would call it generally true, but concede that a lot depends on the circumstances.  I don't find this inconsistent at all, just an example of how morality is subjective, not objective.

My opinion of objective morality is the same as my opinion on the existence of a god -- I'll believe it when I see it.

Sorry to get so analytical, (I am like that, too much I know) but trying to understand what is meant by subjective.
Does this mean:
1. each person has knowledge of right and wrong, however this knowledge differs from person to person
2. each person has defined different goals and hence assesses things against those goals and gets a subjective morality

If 1 then it makes sense that you can make a claim on a moral statement as being true or false. It might point to morality being built into an individual's DNA or past on from parents, relatives, friends, society, culture, books, movies, etc as memes.

If 2 then the person is using reasoning and experience, defining goals and assessing the world relative to those goals. There are no objective goals, these are subjective.
If the person using 2 makes a claim to a moral statement as being True or False, they are missing a crucial step. They are assuming the goal and assessing based on that. Thus their audience aren't made aware of the goal relative to their conclusion of True or False. Maybe you don't see it as important to articulate the goal, maybe you think it is obvious for all, so short cuts are fine.

Certainly as parents of children whom lack experience and reasoning skills, we instill "values" into our children through the power of our authority over them and our trusted relationship. This helps them survive in the early years. In the teenage years they then become their own person, reasoning kicks in, and they break the instilled values and them replace these "values" with their own. Maybe for religious people instead of building their own values they defer authority from their parents to their church, and thus are always dependent "children", rather than self sufficient, responsible "adults".

[xSilverPhinx]

Maybe for religious people instead of building their own values they defer authority from their parents to their church, and thus are always dependent "children", rather than self sufficient, responsible "adults".

It sure seems that way, if taking a generalised view. Looks like some at least haven't past through some step and remain children wanting others to solve their problems.

[En_Route]

I've thought more about this (slept on it, actually) and there are places that have tried to do away with religion and religious morality, and the result was very far from accepting, tolerant people minding their own business. 

Also, I think blaming religous morality for all the bad in the world is a little one-sided. 

My focus was morality in general, not just religious morality. But it is hard to argue about something when we don't have a common understanding as to what that something means.

With religion, I think it is possible to see that most religious wars or religious based oppression or atrocities were based on morality with the desire to enforce it on others.

So the real issue is not just the believed knowledge of knowing what is right and wrong but it is the belief that this right and wrong applies to others. If your morality only applies to the self (such as a personal opinion or personal values) then I have no problem with it. I personally wouldn't call this morality though. You can use your own personal opinion or personal values to influence law (I have no problem with that), but if you recognise it as personal opinion then you are likely to vote for things that affect you and not worry about things that don't affect you. You will be much less likely to want to needlessly oppress others.

The problem comes along when you think your knowledge of morality applies to others, you then become judgmental and possibly driven to control, oppress and even kill.

Sure in wars it might begin by a tyrant wanting to expand his empire. But often they need to win their own people into supporting the war effort. They do this be invoking morality, and getting their people to fight the Good fight against their Evil enemies.

I am certainly not saying that religion hasn't added some value to the world.

Just to clarify amoralism
Moral statements are meaningless. This means you cannot judge if a moral statement is true or false. e.g.
With the statement "Killing someone is immoral", I would say this is neither true nor false. I would need to know more details e.g. why is the person being killed? What state is the person being killed in? What is the goal that this action is being judged against (with regards to it being right and wrong).
If you think that you can answer true or false to the statement or similar statements, then you are being philosophically inconsistent unless of course you believe in objective morality. If you believe in objective morality then you need to assess from where does objective morality come? and how do people know of this objective morality and why do other animals not know of it?

Given that moral statements ate meaningless, why would you want to know any more details about a killing?

[Stevil]

Given that moral statements ate meaningless, why would you want to know any more details about a killing?

I am trying to highlight the difference between morality and being capable of assessing actions with regards to a defined goal.
If I want to get fit, then going for a run is likely to move me towards that goal whereas sitting on the couch and eating a box of sugar donuts doesn't.

With regards to killing someone, if the goal is to maximise the amount of people alive, then if this person is shooting and killing many people, then killing this person may help to move towards that goal.

If I want to live, then engaging in a death match with a member of society may take me away from that goal.

So I am not sure how morality comes into it once we set goals. Unless of course your goal is to be a Good person, and you deem that you achieve this by acting morally, however you define morality.

I think many people think of themselves as good, thus strive to do the right thing. I would call this the illusion of morality :-)
I think if you break it down, people act out of survival, status quo and empathy

[Sandra Craft]

Sorry to get so analytical, (I am like that, too much I know) but trying to understand what is meant by subjective.
Does this mean:
1. each person has develops a knowledge of right and wrong, however this knowledge differs from person to person
2. each person has defined different goals and hence assesses things against those goals and gets a subjective morality

I would say both, more or less, and I'm not just applying it to individuals but to groups and societies and even large geographic areas.  I also mean that what is moral or immoral changes not only according to those things but to circumstances as well. 

It seems to me anything that's this elastic and conditional and subject to change is by definition subjective.  If it were objective, it would be an iron clad set of right and wrong that's absolute and unchanging no matter what the time, place, persons or circumstances.   And I have never seen that, not in the world I look around at, not in any history book I've ever read. 

I know some people, usually religious, imagine that an objective morality exists, but the fact that they have to imagine it -- that it's not obvious on its own -- and different groups have different ideas of what objective morality is, automatically makes it subjective in reality.  Am I defining the words wrong?   

[Stevil]

I would say both, more or less, and I'm not just applying it to individuals but to groups and societies and even large geographic areas.  I also mean that what is moral or immoral changes not only according to those things but to circumstances as well.

Would you say that "law" and "morality" are interchangeable as words?
If not, what would be the difference?

Law after all are the enforced rules of the collective society we call our nation, our country.
If the law says that it is illegal for gay people to marry, does this mean gay marriage is immoral? If the law says it is legal to own slaves does this mean slavery is moral?

[En_Route]

Given that moral statements ate meaningless, why would you want to know any more details about a killing?

I am trying to highlight the difference between morality and being capable of assessing actions with regards to a defined goal.
If I want to get fit, then going for a run is likely to move me towards that goal whereas sitting on the couch and eating a box of sugar donuts doesn't.

With regards to killing someone, if the goal is to maximise the amount of people alive, then if this person is shooting and killing many people, then killing this person may help to move towards that goal.

If I want to live, then engaging in a death match with a member of society may take me away from that goal.

So I am not sure how morality comes into it once we set goals. Unless of course your goal is to be a Good person, and you deem that you achieve this by acting morally, however you define morality.

I think many people think of themselves as good, thus strive to do the right thing. I would call this the illusion of morality :-)
I think if you break it down, people act out of survival, status quo and empathy

I understand now. In your previous posting, it sounded as if you wanted the information in order to be able to judge whether the bare statement that killing is wrong was true or false which was inconsistent with our shared  view that morality is in the eye of the beholder.

[Sandra Craft]

Would you say that "law" and "morality" are interchangeable as words?
If not, what would be the difference?

Law after all are the enforced rules of the collective society we call our nation, our country.
If the law says that it is illegal for gay people to marry, does this mean gay marriage is immoral? If the law says it is legal to own slaves does this mean slavery is moral?

The laws are rules that tell you what you can and cannot do, morality is about what you should or should not do.  What's legal and what's moral in a particular society are often enough going to be the same thing, but that's purely co-incidental unless you're living in a theocracy, and that's a whole other can of worms.

I think this co-incidental inter-mixing is to be expected since it seems to me that most morality is just a way of making decisions about what's  beneficial/detrimental -- both as individuals and as a society -- more personal, but that's just my take on it.

There was a time when far fewer people thought morality should not be legislated, and the examples you gave came from those times, which is how they eventually found themselves on the losing side of history and why it's inevitable (barring a Taliban West coming into being) those laws be overturned despite all the resistence. 

Another example is the abortion issue.  Sometimes abortion is legal and sometimes it's not, and the only thing that determines is whether or not a woman can do it without punishment.  Whether or not she should be able to do it remains up for grabs no matter what the law says, and there are always going to be large numbers of people who think the abortion laws are immoral no matter what they are.