Atheism and Moral Values

[Ruminator]

In the Ouija board thread in the parenting forum Radar posted this and I didn't want to hijack that threads topic so here is the post and my question.

I personally feel like going to church is a waste of time and know that you don't need spiritual or religious beliefs to have strong ethics and an accurate sense of what is right and wrong.

Radar, I'm really at a loss to understand any logic in your saying that as an atheist you have "strong ethics and an accurate sense of what is right and wrong."

"Accurate" in relationship to what as an absolute value?

What can you base any moral value upon as an atheist that is absolute and should apply to everyone, or even just all other atheists?

Thanks for the help in understanding this.

How can you have a value of "right" or "wrong" that should apply if there is nothing absolute?

[limey]

So are you saying that for you only God can give an absolute value, Ruminator?

[Flint]

Isn't it also possible that cinging to the illusion of an absolute morality gives you a false comfort?

If one believes that the body of religious writings is simply a summary of man's theories of morality, then it isn't necessary to accept the supernatural aspects of religion to continue to use the practical moral constraints as a guideline. Even if they are absorbed indirectly through secular contact with other civilized peoples, and their religious sources are outright rejected.

What is the purported connection between religion and morality, anyway? In one interpretation, religion simply employs a supernatural enforcement division to punish people for not following the laws that they themselves thought of to begin with.

This is the argument: What came first, the chicken (morality) or the egg (religion)?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Ruminator

How can you have a value of "right" or "wrong" that should apply if there is nothing absolute?

Much the same way that religious people decide which god provides the absolutes in their life. But without the middleman.

[ZenGum]

What can you base any moral value upon as an atheist that is absolute and should apply to everyone, or even just all other atheists?

This is a well explored field in philosophy, but I never specialised in it.
Nevertheless, there is a frequently recurring (but bad) argument that we need religion to give us moral guidance, therefore god must exist. Not only is the inference invalid (needing something to be true is no reason for believing it to be true), the premise is false. The falsity of the premise is related to the question Ruminator has raised.

Is there some source of moral values which does not involve a god? Several sources have been suggested, the one I find most plausible is based on human nature.

There are some facts about humans that are true regardless of whether anyone believes them. I'll give some examples and show how they can lead to moral guides.

Fact: once a human dies, their death is permanent and irreversible. Moral consequence: killing humans is a serious matter and should not be done lightly.
Notice that almost all moral codes ban killing humans, although many then add in some exceptions: war, self defense, judicial execution, etc. but in most cases, killing a properly behaving member of one's group is forbidden. (Human sacrifice is about the only exception I can think of).

Fact: human children have a long period of dependency on adults. Likewise very old people need care from capable adults, but are worth keeping as a store of cultural lore. Moral consequence: family bonds are important and parents and children have various duties of care to each other. Likewise, to the degree that families are kept together by the sexual pair-bond of the parents, that pair relationship has a special value and is not to be betrayed.

Well that was two quick, rough and ready examples and I dare say people could pick them to bits with a bit of effort. They were just some examples I made up on the spot to illustrate the concept of humanistic naturalism.

Is this the sort of thing you're thinking of, Ruminator?

[DanaC]

The ability to co-operate and form relationships of mutual affection and dependency have been an evolutionary advantage. What we call morality is just an extension of the social rules which were the glue that held those relationships together. They are no more founded in God than are the greeting and grooming rituals of apes.

[Aliantha]

I don't believe in religion, but I have pretty high moral values although in some ways I have very low moral values, such as the fact that I don't believe sex is really a 'sacred' act between two people.

[regular.joe]

I maintain that to if it is true that there is no God, then there cannot be free will. Therefore we cannot make up our own beliefs or come to our own conclusions in any kind of morality.

[Flint]

Why would we need free will to form morality...if it's just an evolutionary by-product (as posited above)?

[regular.joe]

If we take as a true statement that the universe is "on it's own" with no director. Basically all can be brewed down to processes. Atomic to chemical reactions. It's too simple, all is predictable. Free will is simply an impossibility. The chemical stew and electrical apparatus that is our brain is just the result of a long line of processes with nothing intelligent behind it. There could be no such thing as morality. Morality implies the ability to make a decision using this so called free will, a decision which will lead to consequences, good or bad, perhaps in relation to our survival at least. No God, no Universal Director, no free will. No need for morality.

I am saying that if this is indeed true, we cannot take any credit for what we believe or do what we might call think. In fact this conversation is just a cog in the universal wheel, it has no meaning beyond that.

Hmm, Flint, I've just proven that we have no need for morality, in fact there can be no such thing. Wow, can I get a nobel prize for that?

[DanaC]

All is not predictable; though it may be understandable.

It's all processes and that's wonderful. That out of directionless processes, events and reactions, out come we. Marvellous. truly marvellous.

[Trilby]

god you guys are nerds.

*hugs*

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

If we take as a true statement that the universe is "on it's own" with no director. Basically all can be brewed down to processes. Atomic to chemical reactions. It's too simple, all is predictable. Free will is simply an impossibility. The chemical stew and electrical apparatus that is our brain is just the result of a long line of processes with nothing intelligent behind it.

...but I would say that those physical and chemical reactions (and more importantly, the complex patterns of their interactions - the software running on the nerual hardware) just are "you". That is all there is to being a conscious, thinking, feeling person. So if they are what is determining your behaviour, then you are, in the relevant sense, free.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

I maintain that to if it is true that there is no God, then there cannot be free will. Therefore we cannot make up our own beliefs or come to our own conclusions in any kind of morality.

I admire the clarity of this post, but the first inference has me stumped.

...if ... there is no God, then there cannot be free will.

Why not?

There is an argument which says that if there is a God then there cannot be free will (since divine omniscience implies perfect foreknowledge which seems to entail determinism).
There are also arguments that if we don't have free will, then there is no God (since the blame for the existence of evil in the world can then be attributed to the free will of humans, rather than God).

What's your reasoning, Joe?

[Pie]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

If we take as a true statement that the universe is "on it's own" with no director. Basically all can be brewed down to processes. Atomic to chemical reactions. It's too simple, all is predictable. Free will is simply an impossibility.

This has been addressed many times before. You might want to do some homework before you claim that Nobel! One cogent argument is called Godel's First Incompleteness Theorem, to wit:

Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.

Also, see references to quantum mechanics, Rice's Theorem, and many, many popular books.