Do Athiests have morals?

[1robin]

Evolution and natural selection produced our survival instinct. We have legal codes because they increase the survival chances of our society and us. We have traffic laws because they decrease the risk of people getting injured or dying in traffic. We have a judicial system and laws to deal with and prevent immoral people from injuring or killing us. Legal codes all based on our survival instinct that came from evolution.

So you at best have a theory. You cannot show me a single nation that has a legal basis in evolution. Let me make this a little easier.

Here are some random types of laws that are famous.

Navigation Acts (1651)

laws passed to make sure that England controlled American trade according to the idea of mercantilism

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Sugar Act (1764)
British deeply in debt partly to French & Indian War. English Parliament placed a tariff on sugar, coffee, wines, and molasses. colonists avoided the tax by smuggling and by bribing tax collectors.

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Stamp Act (1765)
A law passed by the British Parliament requiring colonists to pay a tax on newspapers, pamphlets, legal documents, and even playing cards.

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Coercive Acts (1774)
called the Intolerable Acts by colonists, restricted rights of colonist in Mass. to hold town meetings, required all colonists to provide food and housing to British soldiers living in colonies

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Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)
created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries.

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Homestead Act (1862)
gave 160 acres of public land to any settler who would farm the land for five years.

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Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
banned Chinese immigration in US for a total of 40 years because the United States thought of them as a threat. Caused chinese population in America to decrease.

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Dawes Severalty Act (1887)
dismantled American Indian tribes, set up individuals as family heads with 160 acres, tried to make rugged individualists out of the Indians, attempt to assimilate the Indian population into that of the American

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Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)
First federal action against monopolies, it was signed into law by Harrison and was extensively used by Theodore Roosevelt for trust-busting. However, it was initially misused against labor unions

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Pure Food and Drug Act (1906)
the act that prohibited the manufacture, sale, or shipment of impure of falsely labeled food and drugs

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Federal Reserve Act of 1913
This act created a central banking system, consisting of twelve regional banks governed by the Federal Reserve Board. It was an attempt to provide the United States with a sound yet flexible currency. The Board it created still plays a vital role in the American economy today.

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National Origins Act (1924)
A law that severely restricted immigration by establishing a system of national quotas that blatantly discriminated against immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and virtually excluded Asians. The policy stayed in effect until the 1960s.

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National Industrial Recovery Act (1933)
Set by FDR to aide the recovery of the economy from the Great Depression. Supported and some cases enforced an alliance of industries. Called for industrial self regulation and declared codes of fair competition.

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Neutrality Acts (1930's)
Originally designed to avoid American involvement in World War II by preventing loans to those countries taking part in the conflict; they were later modified in 1939 to allow aid to Great Britain and other Allied nations.

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Social Security Act (1935)
guaranteed retirement payments for enrolled workers beginning at age 65; set up federal-state system of unemployment insurance and care for dependent mothers and children, the handicapped, and public health

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Wagner Act (1935)
Established National Labor Relations Board; protected the rights of most workers in the private sector to organize labor unions, to engage in collective bargaining, and to take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands.

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Lend-Lease Act (1941)
A program in which the United States supplied war supplies to the U.K, Soviet Union, China, France, and other nations in exchange for military bases in Bermuda and the West Indies.

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Taft-Hartley Act (1947)
outlawed "closed" shops (closed to non-union members), made unions liable for damages that resulted from jurisdictional disputes among themselves, and required that union leaders take non-communist oaths

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Federal Highway Act of 1956
This act, an accomplishment of the Eisenhower administration, authorized $25 billion for a ten- year project that built over 40,000 miles of interstate highways. This was the largest public works project in American history.

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Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965
abolished the national origins quota system, doubled the number of immigrants, and allowed admission of close relatives of the U.S. citizens outside those numerical limits.
20 Important Congressional Acts in US History flashcards | Quizlet

Now I do not want to know if you can concoct a scenario where by which you link these laws to evolution, I want you to show the creation of these laws by those who created them used evolution as their direct foundation.

 

[1robin]

You're talking about an idea that originated in the first decade of the 20th century and has since been eradicated. The concept of radical Social Darwinism, while not necessarily evil in it's premise, has not taken root anywhere - and that's not because the holy and righteous religious populations have rooted them but because even us heathen moral-less atheists realize that the human experience is more than the sum of it's parts.

If you're going to play this game you need to get some better toys.

Let me straighten all this out first.

1. I have never said atheists lack morals. I said that no ethical duties or morals have any relation to the objective fact of the matter. Both I and Christopher Hitchens can think murder is actually wrong. Only with God is it actually wrong. Theists and Atheist can both be repelled by a child being tortured but only if theism is true was the act actually wrong, without him it was only socially unfashionable. So atheists can be as moral as anyone, but without God those morals are merely preferences and opinions and not objectively true. So no more appeals to false sensationalism please.

2. I did mention a man who taught by Darwin's bulldog came closer than anyone to actually using nature to base morality on. That is not to say the potential for the idea has not been around far longer.

3. The bible recorded the idea things evolved thousands of years ago, but apparently it is such a horrid basis for moral foundations no one but Hitler was morally insane enough to try and use evolution for morality.

4. As for what Holy and Righteous people have rooted, that would depend. I can name dozens of nations (usually among the most advanced) they had the largest roll in sculpting, modern science which they dominated the creation of, but lets stick to what I know. The greatest, most benevolent, the most powerful, the most prosperous, and most advanced nation in human history was founded by a people 95% Christian. It is firmly rooted in Christianity, it has a bible in it's greatest monument's corner stone, scriptures carved into the marble of the capitol building, and it's greatest leaders have openly used Christian fundamentals to resolve the nations greatest difficulties and found it's greatest examples of exceptionalism. This is still largely true even after the secular revolution since the late 50's has begun it's corrosive inevitable effects.

I don't need new toys for this game, I need to give you a history of the game. In fact I don't know what game this is.

 

[SkepticThinker]

The fact so many switch sides over the course of their life and so many overcome being homosexual begs to differ. This is not going to be settled by a popularity poll anyway and I am not going to re-open this call.

Switch sides? You mean like suppressing your true sexual orientation in effort to fit into a society that harbours ill will towards homosexuals? I wouldn't call that "switching sides."

We don't "overcome" sexual orientation. These people that you're talking about that have "overcome being homosexual" are merely suppressing it. Conversion therapy is a sick joke that causes much more harm than good. I really have to wonder what research you've done on this subject that enables you to conclude that "so many overcome being homosexual."

I repeat, any single person in the world who has ever found themselves attracted to anyone ever, already knows that sexual orientation is not a choice. I know it. You know it. That guy over there knows it. Pretending that there's some sort of choice in the matter doesn't make it so.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I agree and have specified than many times. I however have no think this problem reverses it's self by geography and I am not going to have this same debate again. It's like tunnel out of one prison to find you tunneled into another.

I've given you stats on this before. So have others. The stats from the US are by no means representative of stats across the rest of the world.

 

[1robin]

Theism has nothing to do with moral codes. A person can believe in any god(s) he like and they don't need to supply him with any "moral codes" for him to be a theist. All that is required by a theist is that he believes in the existence of one or more gods. That's it. Theism has nothing to do with morals. A theist may believe in a religion with a god that supplies him with moral codes, but that is not a requirement for a theist.

Ok, from my title it is obvious what type of Theism I am referring to. However even general theism is separate from deism in that we believe in a personal God. Moral duties and values all virtually inherent to a personal God. I suppose if you try hard enough you could with a lot of care and under supervision of a Dr. of philosopher create a theoretical personal God who did not make moral duties or values but why would you want to. You know what type o theism I am referring to so why are you playing semantic shell games?

True because we can't survive without a healthy stable ecosystem.

Multiplying things that are not moral does not make the result moral. This is speciesm and if moral would be worse than racism. Without God humanity has no special significance, so to assign it primary significance and justify it's optimality at the expense of all other species is at best amoral, but if moral at all then immoral.

So if your survival instinct makes you jump out of the way of an oncoming car to avoid injury or death that is not something you "should do"? Should you have let him run over you instead?

Yes you can repeat what may be explained by instinct (which opens a whole new can of worms but for now I am granting that instinct is produced by evolution alone) but repeating it does not make it objectively right or wrong. All you can do is show it is consistent with your theory of evolution, even if it was consistent with the objective truth of evolution that is all you have shown, there is no moral property in nature. Even being objectively instinctually justified it is not to be objectively morally justified.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I believe my God stopped Hitler so I can't consider illogical hypotheticals. It's like a round square or a rock so heavy he can't lift. I am not going to force an explanation for how God did an logical impossibility. It could be than as in the days of Noah God destroyed the evil once it permeated all level of every society but I have no idea what would happen.

What's illogical about it? Many evils occur on a day-to-day basis that are not stopped by the god you worship.

If Hitler won the war, you'd probably be sitting here saying that it's all part of your god's great plan and that us little peons couldn't possibly understand his mind. Like you do with the flood or "indentured servitude" (aka slavery).

The answer to my question is that we would be in the same boat.

And as far as I can tell, it was human beings that stopped Hitler.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yes we have rules, but if necessary we will break them all.
In fact they are broken every single day.

When people do that, we hold them accountable.

I will tell you how good these rules are. In the 80's most people do not know we came as close to full nuclear war than ever. No one cared about rules, no one cared about even survival, it came down to one technician in one USSR launch detection facility. He was asked if his gut feeling was that the signals showed a launch or a malfunction. I don't think he knew either way but guessed malfunction and so we were all not incinerated. We have not fought a world war since WW2 but if the way minor engagements are carried out indicates how WW3 will be prosecuted then it will truly be even worse. There is an old saying that we don't know exactly what WW3 will be fought with (we have many thing the German's only dreamed of) but WW4 will be fought with clubs. I was not aware of half of what we actually have even as a soldier but some of them are so bad we cannot even discuss them. Things that make gas ovens look like a vacation.

 

[1robin]

I've given you stats on this before. So have others. The stats from the US are by no means representative of stats across the rest of the world.

Even for me the post you responded to was a grammatical train wreck. How I can spell so many intended words incorrectly that are correctly spelled unintended words is abhorrent.

Of course stats vary by region. However unless they reverse them selves it won't matter. Maybe the 4% goes up or down a few percent, or the 60% is actually 40% or 80%. It is the dynamic that is behind them all that matters. Not relative magnitudes unless it is night and day.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Now I do not want to know if you can concoct a scenario where by which you link these laws to evolution, I want you to show the creation of these laws by those who created them used evolution as their direct foundation.

Here is a very nice paper on the subject. I suggest you take the time to read to it. It's less than 30 pages, not including the bibliography.
http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/papers/MoralHeuristicsLaw06.pdf

 

[1robin]

I think you should explore that thought a little more.

On what, your not saying anything?

 

[1robin]

Well, it took Him a long time. What was the trigger? 6,000,000 Jews was the limit after which things started getting a bit objectively immoral?

Not to talk of using Stalin to achieve that target.

Ciao

- viole

You do know I am talking about the God that let us kill his own son, do you not?

Pray tell how many Jews was enough? Is 5,000,000 the cut off? How do you know? Maybe 1,000,000? How do you know? Perhaps 100,000? How do you know? Maybe only 10? I don't care where you draw the line you merely invented a false criteria based on nothing. This is a typical false optimality argument.

If 6,000,000 was too many was 5,999,999 just fine? If you actually follow any or every false optimality argument you wind up with a God only allowed to produce redundant perfect copies of himself or if anything less to have disproven himself which is about the most absurd argument possible. God's covenant with the Jews was a two edged sword. On one hand they had greater access to divine truth, on the other they were held to a higher standard, and hated by the rest of the world. Your going to actually find some rational standards God should have but has neglected. You can't invent them and then condemn him by a law he is not responsible to. I can spend days on the reasons why I think God the ultimate explanation why Hitler's evil did not triumph but your argument has not even qualified for the peace at this point.

Your argument so far is meaningless but mine is only my opinion. I am making no claim to revealed of deducted fact here. I only have an informed opinion. So if you want to back up and run at this again be my guest.

 

[1robin]

Here is a very nice paper on the subject. I suggest you take the time to read to it. It's less than 30 pages, not including the bibliography.
http://www.cep.ucsb.edu/papers/MoralHeuristicsLaw06.pdf

I work in a defense lab and post between things breaking down and being repaired. So I can't fit 30 pages into my schedule. Please re-read what I asked and copy specifically what answers them from that link. If it actually does answer my questions as asked I may make time to read the rest.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Even for me the post you responded to was a grammatical train wreck. How I can spell so many intended words incorrectly that are correctly spelled unintended words is abhorrent.

I think I understood what you were saying. No biggie.

Of course stats vary by region. However unless they reverse them selves it won't matter. Maybe the 4% goes up or down a few percent, or the 60% is actually 40% or 80%. It is the dynamic that is behind them all that matters. Not relative magnitudes unless it is night and day.

It appears that in sub-Saharan Africa the majority of people living with HIV/AIDS (52%) are women. That's quite a different story than the one you're painting in the US.

Regardless, what is the "dynamic that is behind them all that matters?"

 

[jonathan180iq]

Let me straighten all this out first.

1. I have never said atheists lack morals. I said that no ethical duties or morals have any relation to the objective fact of the matter. Both I and Christopher Hitchens can think murder is actually wrong. Only with God is it actually wrong. Theists and Atheist can both be repelled by a child being tortured but only if theism is true was the act actually wrong, without him it was only socially unfashionable. So atheists can be as moral as anyone, but without God those morals are merely preferences and opinions and not objectively true. So no more appeals to false sensationalism please.

2. I did mention a man who taught by Darwin's bulldog came closer than anyone to actually using nature to base morality on. That is not to say the potential for the idea has not been around far longer.

3. The bible recorded the idea things evolved thousands of years ago, but apparently it is such a horrid basis for moral foundations no one but Hitler was morally insane enough to try and use evolution for morality.

4. As for what Holy and Righteous people have rooted, that would depend. I can name dozens of nations (usually among the most advanced) they had the largest roll in sculpting, modern science which they dominated the creation of, but lets stick to what I know. The greatest, most benevolent, the most powerful, the most prosperous, and most advanced nation in human history was founded by a people 95% Christian. It is firmly rooted in Christianity, it has a bible in it's greatest monument's corner stone, scriptures carved into the marble of the capitol building, and it's greatest leaders have openly used Christian fundamentals to resolve the nations greatest difficulties and found it's greatest examples of exceptionalism. This is still largely true even after the secular revolution since the late 50's has begun it's corrosive inevitable effects.

I don't need new toys for this game, I need to give you a history of the game. In fact I don't know what game this is.

1. False sensationalism? Were you not referencing Social Darwinism in the previous passage that I quoted? If you were referencing something else, then I apologize, though you may want to be more clear in your expositions about why laws based on an evolutionary premise only lead to things like Nazi death camps... The heading of this thread asks the question of whether or not Atheists have morals.. There are then 50 some odd pages of theists making arguments for how/why Atheists are amoral douchebags and that the only way that something can objectively be wrong is if God exists. The very premise of that idea is that a society completely devoid of a deity would not be able to come up with the same laws and regulations as we have today. Frankly, that's a sensationalist claim, not to mention quite insulting.

2. I'm not sure I follow. Social Darwinism, as we know it, could not have existed prior to the popular understanding of Darwinian thought, right? Has the concept, independent of the title, existed before - almost certainly. It's what the Spartans are known for - selective breeding and intervening in the process of natural selection, much like we do with dogs.

3.I'd like to see a reference of what you're talking about.

4.There's a lot of nationalism in this response and that's not something I care to get involved in. I will posit, however, that there are also incredibly prosperous nations with much lower crime rates, a much more level economic playing field, better equipped to promote healthier family units, full of much more egalitarian people and they are admittedly without a predominate religion. Wouldn't their existence kind of blow a whole in this entire argument? I mean, if even one atheistic nation is able to produce, for all intents and purposes, a more equal, just, and prosperous populace without the use of God, then doesn't that render the argument that God is necessary for the creation of morals to be moot?

Also, you can't blame the poor state affairs stateside on immigrants and the secular revolution. If you want to credit the prosperity of the United States to the Christian populace and Christian fundamentals, then you cannot deny the ills of the United States as being their responsibility as well just because it's inconvenient. You mentioned the 50s as being the turning point, right? Wasn't there some sort of great social and cultural disparity that had been going on in this country for, like, 200 years prior to that secular revolution which finally allowed a certain branch of our society equal social freedoms? Wasn't the stagnation of those freedoms fueled by those same Christian principles?... See what I mean? You can't cherry pick.

 

[SkepticThinker]

You do know I am talking about the God that let us kill his own son, do you not?

Pray tell how many Jews was enough? Is 5,000,000 the cut off? How do you know? Maybe 1,000,000? How do you know? Perhaps 100,000? How do you know? Maybe only 10? I don't care where you draw the line you merely invented a false criteria based on nothing. This is a typical false optimality argument.

If 6,000,000 was too many was 5,999,999 just fine? If you actually follow any or every false optimality argument you wind up with a God only allowed to produce redundant perfect copies of himself or if anything less to have disproven himself which is about the most absurd argument possible. God's covenant with the Jews was a two edged sword. On one hand they had greater access to divine truth, on the other they were held to a higher standard, and hated by the rest of the world. Your going to actually find some rational standards God should have but has neglected. You can't invent them and then condemn him by a law he is not responsible to. I can spend days on the reasons why I think God the ultimate explanation why Hitler's evil did not triumph but your argument has not even qualified for the peace at this point.

Your argument so far is meaningless but mine is only my opinion. I am making no claim to revealed of deducted fact here. I only have an informed opinion. So if you want to back up and run at this again be my guest.

How about 0?

 

[jonathan180iq]

I work in a defense lab and post between things breaking down and being repaired. So I can't fit 30 pages into my schedule. Please re-read what I asked and copy specifically what answers them from that link. If it actually does answer my questions as asked I may make time to read the rest.

Those of us who are making the argument that morality can equally exist without a deity as with one are pretty much coming from the same understanding that our human concepts of good and evil, or of right and wrong...the very basis for our societal laws...are based on a simple evolutionary mechanism with an eye on survival. This paper describes that basis more eloquently than I think any of us are going to be able to do by typing on a forum.

If you don't have time now, just read it when you can. It will give you perspective.

If you want specific examples of nations who base their societal laws independent of the God of the Bible, then just take a gander through History. The Greeks and Romans, while granted had their own societal ills, were able to construct vastly prosperous societies and laws with deities all their own. Their concepts of right and wrong were not too dissimilar to what you and I know today. Is that not a worthy example?

Need something modern, the Czech Republic, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Austria even France... They all boast atheism as accounting for anywhere from 50-90% of their populations. They also all score very highly on the Human Development Index, Happiness Index, and things like that... Compare those statistics to those of the United States and you'll see that the secular revolution that you've mentioned as being part of this supposed downfall of our society is a cop-out. Our problems don't come from secularism, or from atheism. Morals, in places where the concept of God is a non-factor to most people, seem to be doing just fine.

 

[1robin]

Some things can be universally true which would mean that one could argue the point anywhere.

Here is an example. Is it universally true that you shouldn't put your hand in fire? I am pretty sure that I can convince people not to stick their hand in fire all around the world. That is universally accepted as a bad thing to do. There is no civilization or opinion that is held that we should stick our hands in fire as a good idea.

What if I have a cut that is bleeding badly and that is the only way I can cauterize it, what if I can I have a chemical on it that will instantly burn away but would only spread contamination by touching it with something else to clean it (like a biological weapon). I am just being problematic and over demanding here, but moral issues are even worse and are properly technical. In many cases lives, freedom, equality are at stake and so all kinds of "what about this case" "what about in these circumstances".

However I cannot remember what the argument was. I do not grant universality to faith in any concept I can think of, even if I grant universality of concept X I have no idea what that means. It certainly can't mean that X is a moral fact. Even if every believes in X, likes X, and wants laws made based on X that would still not produce a single objective moral fact. Was that the argument, I am guessing at this point?

 

[ArtieE]

Now I do not want to know if you can concoct a scenario where by which you link these laws to evolution, I want you to show the creation of these laws by those who created them used evolution as their direct foundation.

I refer to post number 1029.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

What if I have a cut that is bleeding badly and that is the only way I can cauterize it, what if I can I have a chemical on it that will instantly burn away but would only spread contamination by touching it with something else to clean it (like a biological weapon). I am just being problematic and over demanding here, but moral issues are even worse and are properly technical. In many cases lives, freedom, equality are at stake and so all kinds of "what about this case" "what about in these circumstances".

However I cannot remember what the argument was. I do not grant universality to faith in any concept I can think of, even if I grant universality of concept X I have no idea what that means. It certainly can't mean that X is a moral fact. Even if every believes in X, likes X, and wants laws made based on X that would still not produce a single objective moral fact. Was that the argument, I am guessing at this point?

I like the way you turned that around. Even something as universal as putting your hand in fire has exceptions. So true, also, is it that applies with the rest of all moral decisions. Which brings about the idea of context and general agreement within a society. This is where I am coming from when I say that there is still inherent value to subjective moral systems

 

[1robin]

I think you should explore that thought a little more.

I could write a book on why I hold that opinion. What is it you want to know?