Godless morality

[Wraitchel]

lol, yeah, I used to be an egoist too. Good luck making friends.

A friend who is not used for yourself, as you are (not as an imaginary thing you must 'become') is of no value in any case.
Every friend I have is a friend who is worth being a friend of.  I make no exceptions for incompetence in this regard.

If you are using  your friends for yourself, as you put it, do you permit them to use you?

[PipeBox]

lol, yeah, I used to be an egoist too. Good luck making friends.

A friend who is not used for yourself, as you are (not as an imaginary thing you must 'become') is of no value in any case.
Every friend I have is a friend who is worth being a friend of.  I make no exceptions for incompetence in this regard.

If you are using  your friends for yourself, as you put it, do you permit them to use you?

Friendship, even in the very logical, reasoned sense, is a give and take.

Of course AnnaM permits them to use her, if the uses are reasonable, so that she maintains the friendship to use them again in the future.  Note I am using the word "use" in the least cold way possible.  I mean everything from being given humorous jokes by friends, to bumming 5 dollars off them, to asking them to be god parents (guide parents, if you prefer).  Obviously the friends you rely on for some things will no longer count you a friend if you offer them nothing in return, so obviously AnnaM returns favors and has a sense of reciprocity, which I suspect falls under those ethical virtues.

I'd like to say that I really liked AnnaM's first post in this thread, and that I wholeheartedly agree, despite the fact that I've debated morality many times.  Morality is subjective, and always concerns how one individual feels about a given situation.  As such, it is a useless and superfluous concept, as the statement "It feels wrong," holds the same value as "It strikes me as morally wrong."  Morality is nothing but the feelings + knowledge of an individual, if that much, and it holds little comparison to the principles that have allowed our survival as a species and our personal success up to this point.

[AlP]

I have often wondered if I am a moral person. If I am, I think I am a moral relativist. My objection to morality is that the concepts of "right" and "wrong" are not real. They exist only in models of moral or virtuous human behavior. Yet people treat them as real things. And generally someone else (like the pope) wants to define them for me!

What I do know is that I make various trade-offs when deciding whether an action will have a good or bad effect on me and other people. I'm willing to call that morality so long as I can choose what "right" and "wrong" mean (if they mean anything to me). I also claim "virtue".

That accepted, as I see it, my morality is primarily a kind of consequentialism. That is I think the consequences of an action rather than the character of an action (for example the intent) or the character of the person acting (for example their virtue) form the best basis for judgment of an action. Although sometimes I do take intent into account as well, for example when deciding to forgive.

Virtue may be a reasonable way of attaining morality but I don't think a person's virtue is useful for judging their actions. Once they've carried out an action it's too late. Virtue had its chance. Now the action can only be judged through consequences and possibly intent.

I like consequentialism because consequences can often be quantified or are at least quantifiable whereas although I know my own intent, I can never be sure of the intent of others and they can never be sure of mine.

This is a model for how I judge actions. For each person concerned, I think I rate the consequences against the elements of an index (this is a model - I don't consciously do these calculations). It is something like the one below.

causes death?
improves health?
improves emotional wellbeing?
improves intellectual wealth?
improves material wealth?

Desirable effects become positive, undesirable ones become negative. The elements of the index are in order of importance with life being the most important. Some are easier to quantify than others but I think they are all quantifiable. Emotional wellbeing is a hard one but it's not impossible. Psychiatrists have tests for various kinds of emotional wellbeing. So it is at least quantifiable. I think it's interesting that my morality is based around quantifiable things. A religious person might be trying to please God. But they can't measure how many God-points they're getting.

Then I weight the elements of the index according to their importance and the result is positive (desirable) or negative (undesirable). Obviously I don't do an arithmetic calculation in my head, at least not consciously. And the index does not have units or a scale. This is just the best way I can describe what I think I do.

When several people are involved in an action, I weight them individually. I get the most weight. My friends and family get a higher weight than strangers. Animals get some weight depending on how much I empathize with them, although some of the elements of the index are not relevant to animals like intellectual and material wealth. I do not consider any other living things like trees. Sometimes I will assign a person a negative weight (in order to cause them harm).

Another interesting thing I think I do is I reduce the weights when I am considering taking no action as opposed to taking an action. For example, I may decide to let someone I don't like fall in a pond but I won't push them. I wonder what else affects the weighting?

So getting back to whether I accept the terms "right" and "wrong", I think I can now say almost but not quite, and only if I am allowed to choose what they mean. If the overall outcome is significantly positive, I can call the action "right". If it is significantly negative, I can call the action "wrong".

It doesn't really work when I am trying to harm people though. Then my desired (harmful) outcome gets a positive result. It would be a perversion of the word "right" to describe a harmful outcome as "right". So I don't think I have any use for the words "right" and "wrong" at the moment.

I should also say that this is just an approximation of what I think is going on in my head. And I expect my morality to adapt as it encounters new situations.

If I had to come up with some virtues for myself, these sound about right. A nice thing about defining your own morality is you can choose virtues that already describe you Also, not all of these virtues relate to morality.

honesty (makes true statements)
integrity (does what they say they will do)
fairness (actions affect others equally)
empathy (understands state of others)
altruism (actions help other people, possibly at personal cost)
forgiveness (deals out punishments lesser in degree to wrongful act)
tolerance (allows others to do distasteful things)
respect (does not do things that others dislike - basically the golden rule)
wisdom (possesses useful knowledge)
reason (makes decisions and acts in a rational way)
tenacity (sticks to chosen goals)
industriousness (works hard to achieve goals)
competence (able to achieve goals)

Why have virtues? Maybe I don't need them but it seems to save reinventing myself every time I have to make a decision. Some, like empathy, are also probably hard-wired.



As an atheist, do you accept morality?

If so, how do you judge an action?

I suppose an atheist could deliberately adopt a morality from a religion like Christianity?

Or you could inherit one from previous religious belief?

Or you might have picked up morality just through exposure to other people's? I think that's probably how I got mine. I've never been religious.

Or you could invent one from scratch or at least modify an inherited one?

Has anyone else tried to write down how they think their morality works?

What would you choose as atheist virtues if any?

[newblueradio]

I've always believed in the Eight Virtues, personally.  But that may be because I'm such a huge Ultima fan!

Basically, it is an ethical code that takes three principles (Truth, Love and Courage) and balances them through judgment and experience.  Always adhere to one so long as it doesn't negate another.  For instance, always tell the truth, until that truth can cause more damage than good (whereby not telling the truth would promote love for others by withholding damaging truths, and the courage to stick by your convictions).  It is pretty simplistic, I'm sure, but I don't think basic human ethicality needs a lot of over-analysis.  If you strive to be a good person, your actions will reflect that more frequently than not.

But I say good for you, I'm tired of hearing from these atheists that give no meaning to anything whatsoever.  I know there has to be more atheists like me that think it is worthwhile to give meaning to these things, even if not done so by a divine force.  No matter how simple or complex your belief is, it is yours and that is all that matters.

[Kylyssa]

I think in terms of rules of behavior.  I don't make up the rules for each situation, I've adopted rules I've seen in action and agree with and I've invented a few of my own.  Many of these rules are based off of consequences but some are based off of personal values.  

For me, love and empathy are my major driving forces regarding moral judgments.  Is an action compassionate?  Is it of harm to anyone?  

Eh, I'll give more of an answer later, I'm hurting too much to think straight at the moment.

[AlP]

I've always believed in the Eight Virtues, personally. But that may be because I'm such a huge Ultima fan!

Wow your morality is based on a video game? That blows me away. I make video games for a living and while I've never made a game like Ultima I never realized people might base their morality on it. Jeez. I have to rethink some things...

I think in terms of rules of behavior. I don't make up the rules for each situation, I've adopted rules I've seen in action and agree with and I've invented a few of my own. Many of these rules are based off of consequences but some are based off of personal values.

For me, love and empathy are my major driving forces regarding moral judgments. Is an action compassionate? Is it of harm to anyone?

Eh, I'll give more of an answer later, I'm hurting too much to think straight at the moment.

That is very much as I thought until I decided to figure out what my morality really was to me and write it down. It's interesting. I challenge you!

[Sophus]

The rules don't apply to me.  

I don't live by "morals" either, since I see morals as an action to be applied in every situation. However each situation life throws at you is unique and needs to be solved when it is introduced. To lock into a mentality that says something is always wrong is mental slavery.

[newblueradio]

Wow your morality is based on a video game? That blows me away. I make video games for a living and while I've never made a game like Ultima I never realized people might base their morality on it. Jeez. I have to rethink some things...

At the time I played Ultima 4/5, which is when the virtues were introduced, I was at a very impressionable age.  And since the virtues made far more sense to me than a bunch of arbitrary rules invented by an invisible figurehead, I chose to adopt them.  Such a shame EA went and destroyed one of the greatest RPG franchises of all time...

[adimagejim]

First let me say, if Moses was a real person, there was a reason it took him 40 days to come back down from the mountain. He was desperately trying to create a social contract he figured would be beneficial to everyone gathered on the desert floor below waiting for guidance. Then he employed the whole burning bush thing to give it the authority to stick.

Why start a discussion of morality this way? All morality to me, regardless of its inception, is a simple attempt at perfecting a social contract. The commandments, the constitution, UN charter, magna carta, etc.

For those who prefer a personal moral or ethical code, I would ask, if everyone adopted your code would your society be genuinely workable? Answer honestly. If so, go for it.

My morality is based on three simple notions. Is it true? Is it real? Will it harm others or myself physically, intellectually or emotionally? If I get a yes to the first two and a no to the last one, it's a good decision. Do I regularly fail my own three point test? Yep. And it usually ends badly.

Nice topic!

Jim

[SteveS]

Hey AlP, I like this morality post -- plenty to think about.

My basic feeling is similar to yours in that I think consequentialism makes the most sense, although I certainly do think it is important to take intent into account.  For example,

It doesn't really work when I am trying to harm people though. Then my desired (harmful) outcome gets a positive result. It would be a perversion of the word "right" to describe a harmful outcome as "right". So I don't think I have any use for the words "right" and "wrong" at the moment.

I think your system still works fine, it's just that intent becomes important here.  Why are you trying to harm another person?  If you have a justifiable reason for causing the harm you're contemplating, then no problem.  If a guy is asking you for your bank account number because he is trying to steal from you, then I think lying to him is certainly justifiable.  Are you harming others by lying?  Maybe, but if they're trying to harm you, you have the right to defend yourself, don't you?  Or, what if somebody is trying to release poison into a water supply, killing everybody for miles around indiscriminately?  Isn't it okay to kill that person to stop them?  Isn't it "right" to do so?  I guess I'm just totally okay with saying that an outcome that may be harmful to one particular person (or a whole category of people) isn't necessarily wrong, and could certainly be right, without perverting any terms.

Regarding virtues, I've got issues with them.  They're only "good" in particular circumstances for particular reasons.  If some internet psycho starts hunting down avowed atheists and killing them, and asks you "Hey, where does that SteveS dude live so I can go kill him?", and you know the answer and tell it to him, I would certainly not consider your "virtue of honestly" to be very "good" in this circumstance.  In fact, even if you took me, personally, out of the equation I'd still feel the same (i.e. if they asked, "where does John Generic Smith the atheist live?" - doesn't matter, my feeling would be the same, it just wouldn't distress me quite as much ).

[Heretical Rants]

I'll try and list the criticisms of each.

Secular issues with religious morality:
1) The profit/guru/high supreme priest/whatever essentially determines what is moral. This gives him absolute power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. He can use this power to make people do pretty much anything and still believe that it is right. He can justify genocide.
2) The focus is doing God's will, and not doing what is right. Would you stand up to a corrupt God? How can you claim to know what God's will actually is?
3) It forces its moral system on other cultures: For example, Proposition 8 in California.
4) It has a bad track record. There is even a discussion on this islamic forum about [url="http] which is worse: Christian child-beating or Muslim wife-beating.
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Religious issues with secular morality:
1) The individual/society/culture/whatever determines what is moral. They may be fallible, and furthermore, how dare they claim to be able to make such judgments as should be left to God?
2) There is no sin, so even if something is against God's will, it may not be considered wrong.
3) There is less of a sense of guidance. Without God's help, you have to decide what is right on your own. What if you decide wrongly?
4) There is a notably corrupt non-religious leader in history: Joseph Stalin.


If you think my list is incomplete or biased, please feel free to make your own list or add to this one.

[AlP]

I would have to think some more to add anything to your list. I found the religious criticisms of secular morality list interesting. I have never considered any of the items on the list. My current model of religious moral thought goes something along the lines of "do whatever I'm told by my true religion". Were you religious at some point?

[rlrose328]

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Don't put quotes around the web address... I made the same mistake.  

[Heretical Rants]

//why%20doesn't%20link%20work

Don't put quotes around the web address... I made the same mistake.  

I tried it without the quotes first, before I remembered that the standard code uses quotes.

I would have to think some more to add anything to your list. I found the religious criticisms of secular morality list interesting. I have never considered any of the items on the list.

Those are the criticisms I have encountered that were actually more than "Yer a SLAVE of SATAN, ya dogs!~!"

[kendoll]

Atheists are immoral. We explain clearly here
www.conservapedia.com/Atheism

Anyone who disagrees is free to attempt to rebut the article.