Atheist Ethics and Morality

[ManTimeForgot]

Playing devil's advocate (yes, I know; I have done that in every post responding so far ), I would have to ask why should I love life, my family and not cause harm to others? I'm not sure that morality has to come from a "higher being" ,if, you have in mind the biblical deity. I don't want to rape or murder. I also don't need threats from some imaginary realm of existence to be a good person.

I like compassion, virtue, love, and honesty. I like the rewarding and promising life that Humanism, secular or not, has to offer. But, I'm not sure I see the point to it . I abandoned Secular Humanism because I couldn't answer the big "why" questions in my mind. I'm exploring forms of religious Humanism and, so far, I find myself mostly attracted to Unitarian Universalism.

I realize that the questions may be impossible to answer. I realize that I may never get the answers that I want and I might not be satisfied. But if I knew, for certain, that this physical world was all that there was and there was nothing "out there" such as an external purpose that we were made for, then I will end it all. I'm hoping that there is a purpose out there and that we exist for a purpose. If I find philosophical naturalism convincing again, it's over for me. Seriously. I hope I never find it convincing and I'm going to keep searching for meaning. I'm happy about the possibility of meaning and purpose.

But as for "enjoying my life", why? To get answers, I have been playing devil's advocate in this thread. So far, I haven't gotten the answers but I'm very hopeful that at least my journey can prove fruitful and this thread may help me out a bit.

P.S. Where is Meow Mix? I thought she would have posted in this thread by now.

Life is uncertain. We know nothing (with the possible exception of tautologies) for certain (even then our conception of tautologies is probably flawed in some way). If you want a "definitive" answer to "What is the Meaning of Life" then you are not going to get one.

It takes a great deal of intellectual courage to be able to accept the fact that you are not guaranteed an answer to the "Big Questions." It takes a great deal of intellectual humility to be able to accept that you are not capable of answering every question or probing every mystery.

At the end of the day each of us do the same thing (some with greater scope than others) we choose to believe what ultimately allows us to be satisfied with whatever our current existence is. Some things simply must be accepted by fiat or you choose to remain uncertain. If you are unable to accept or handle uncertainty, then you garner a blind belief or faith in something.

MTF

 

[Ghost of a Rider]

I can't say that I did. I was dishonest a few times, which I sorely regret, and I vowed that I would never be dishonest again unless it was absolutely necessary.

All of us are dishonest at times but the question was: Were you more inclined to commit these wrongs as a secular humanist? Or, if you are still a secular humanist, were you more inclined to commit these wrongs as a moral relativist?

People who I now share an objective morality with? It was Murray Bookchin (an avowed atheist) who convinced me that objective morality was possible in the first place! Richard Carrier also argues that morality is objective. That is what his "Goal Theory" is about. It's an objective theory of ethics. He believes that moral facts exist and science can discover them. These atheists (and more) believe that objective morality is real and Secular Humanists should subscribe to them.

My response had nothing to do with atheist thinking on objective morality versus theist thinking on objective morality. Nor was it an argument against objective morality. It was meant to provide another perspective on the issue and show that believing morality to be objective does not change the fundamental moral character of a person.

Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but I understood you to say in the OP that, at one time, you did not believe in objective morality. You struggled with this idea at some point, consulted with a few intellectuals and philosophy experts and later changed your way of thinking and now believe morality is objective. Am I wrong? If not then my remark still stands; some of those with whom you now share a belief in objective morality would hate you or kill you or at the very least, would (have) judge(d) you for your secular humanism or for any number of reasons.

It ultimately makes no difference to human behavior? Playing devil's advocate, I would say that it does. Why? Because if there is no objective morality and people decide their own morality, then we cannot, in good conscience, condemn Hitler for his anti-Semitic crimes against humanity.

All you're saying here is that it makes a difference as to whether or not we are justified in judging others if morality is not objective. We could debate this one until the cows come home but the real question is: Does believing morality to be objective make any fundamental difference in moral behavior vis-a-vis believing it is not? Keep in mind here that we do not know if morality is objective or not and probably never will. All we can say is that Person A believes it is while Person B does not.

Why did Jeffrey Dahmer commit his immoral acts? Because he believed that there was no objective morality, IIRC.

Why did the terrorists fly planes into the twin towers on 9/11? Because they believed that there is an objective morality.

You need to remember one thing that I mentioned already: We do not know if morality is objective or not. So where does that leave us? With the belief that it is or it is not. Thus we have to resort to arguments that if it is not, we have no justification for judging others. IF morality is subjective then that would be true. But the argument gets us no closer to the truth.

 

[Splarnst]

A divine or supernatural being could give meaning to our lives. Suppose the purpose of our lives was to create a world of peace, justice, and freedom.

But if a divine being could assign you such a purpose, then you could choose to assign yourself such a purpose in exactly the same way, right?

Suppose that each of us had a "spirit" and that we did either created positive "karma" or negative "karma". Suppose that our "spirit" was reincarnated and what we were reincarnated as depended on what we did in the past and so if we had a miserable life it could be a punishment for bad "karma" in a previous life or it could be just bad luck.

So, is the real issue that our lives terminate and that nothing we do will matter forever? That's all I see being added with the supernatural element. Is that what you mean above? In that case, I think the solution is to realize that something doesn't need to last forever in order to matter now. You must have read and thought about this, so I'm not sure why this doesn't satisfy you.

 

[idea]

Conservapedia? Really? There were no facts, just bias spewing from that link.

don't want to go through the ref's huh? the ref's are not from conservapedia...

Study: Atheist Doctors Twice as Likely to Pull Plug - CBS News


A Marxist atheist trained in materialism, Harry Hay - a supporter of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA)


Page 2: Who Gives and Who Doesn't? - ABC News
Finally, the single biggest predictor of whether someone will be charitable is their religious participation.Religious people are more likely to give to charity, and when they give, they give more money: four times as much. And Arthur Brooks told me that giving goes beyond their own religious organization:"Actually, the truth is that they're giving to more than their churches," he says. "The religious Americans are more likely to give to every kind of cause and charity, including explicitly non-religious charities."
And almost all of the people who gave to our bell ringers in San Francisco and Sioux Falls said they were religious or spiritual.





The Real Murderers: Atheism or Christianity?

the greatest massacre ever imputed by the government of one sovereign against the government of another is 26.3 million Chinese during the regime of Mao Tse Tung between the years of 1949 and May 1965. The Walker Report published by the U.S. Senate Committee of the Judiciary in July 1971 placed the parameters of the total death toll in China since 1949 between 32 and 61.7 million people. An estimate of 63.7 million was published by Figaro magazine on November 5, 1978.
In the U.S.S.R. the Nobel Prize winner, Alexander Solzhenitsyn estimates the loss of life from state repression and terrorism from October 1917 to December 1959 under Lenin and Stalin and Khrushchev at 66.7 million.
Finally, in Cambodia (and this was close to me because I lived in Thailand in 1982 working with the broken pieces of the Cambodian holocaust from 1975 to 1979) "as a percentage of a nation's total population, the worst genocide appears to be that in Cambodia, formerly Kampuchea. According to the Khmer Rouge foreign minister, more than one third of the eight million Khmer were killed between April 17, 1975 and January 1979. One third of the entire country was put to death under the rule of Pol Pot, the founder of the Communist Party of Kampuchea. During that time towns, money and property were abolished. Economic execution by bayonet and club was introduced for such offenses as falling asleep during the day, asking too many questions, playing non-communist music, being old and feeble, being the offspring of an undesirable, or being too well educated. In fact, deaths in the Tuol Sleng interrogation center in Phnom Penh, which is the capitol of Kampuchea, reached 582 in a day."
Then in Chinese history of the thirteenth to seventeenth centuries there were three periods of wholesale massacre. The numbers of victims attributed to these events are assertions rather than reliable estimates. The figures put on the Mongolian invasion of northern China form 1210 to 1219 and from 1311 to 1340 are both on the order of 35 million people. While the number of victims of bandit leader Chang Hsien-Chung, known as the Yellow Tiger, from 1643 to 1647 in the Szechwan province has been put at 40 million people.
China under Mao Tse Tung, 26.3 million Chinese. According the Walker Report, 63.7 million over the whole period of time of the Communist revolution in China. Solzhenitsyn says the Soviet Union put to death 66.7 million people. Kampuchea destroyed one third of their entire population of eight million Cambodians. The Chinese at two different times in medieval history, somewhere in the vicinity of 35 million and 40 million people. Ladies and gentlemen, make note that these deaths were the result of organizations or points of view or ideologies that had left God out of the equation. None of these involve religion. And all but the very last actually assert atheism.



It is true that it's possible that religion can produce evil, and generally when we look closer at the detail it produces evil because the individual people are actually living in a rejection of the tenets of Christianity and a rejection of the God that they are supposed to be following. So it can produce it, but the historical fact is that outright rejection of God and institutionalizing of atheism actually does produce evil on incredible levels. We're talking about tens of millions of people as a result of the rejection of God.

link
Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history

Stalin's Brutal Faith



Religious Affiliation and Suicide Attempt -- Dervic et al. 161 (12): 2303 -- Am J Psychiatry
Religious Affiliation and Suicide Attempt"Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts"

The Journal of Medical Ethics article declared concerning the atheist and sadist Marquis de Sade:
“ In 1795 the Marquis de Sade published his La Philosophic dans le boudoir, in which he proposed the use of induced abortion for social reasons and as a means of population control. It is from this time that medical and social acceptance of abortion can be dated, although previously the subject had not been discussed in public in modern times. It is suggested that it was largely due to de Sade's writing that induced abortion received the impetus which resulted in its subsequent spread in western society.http://jme.bmj.com/content/6/1/7.abstract


philosophize all you want - but the facts are, the biggest murderers in history were atheists, atheists don't donate to charities, they support sick organizations like the man-boy-love-association.... and they don't respect life - they're more likely to pull the plug, encourage abortion, and finally, they're more likely to kill themselves...

once athiests start actually giving to charity, and doing things to promote life - only then will I consider their claims of being moral...

 

[idea]

start with charity if anyone is brave enough -

let's compile a list...

a list of all the soup kitchens, and homeless shelters, and charity organizations and compare how many of these organizations are created and run by religious groups, vs. how many of these organizations are created and run by atheist groups..

list the:
charity
how many people it serves
what it serves
(not propaganda is not charity - it has to actually give someone something - like clothing, or food, or houses, or clean drinking water - not just preaching ideologies - there has to be something tangible to it for it to count)

we'll compare #'s of people, and tons of tangible items donated.

 

[Tristesse]

don't want to go through the ref's huh? the ref's are not from conservapedia...

Study: Atheist Doctors Twice as Likely to Pull Plug - CBS News


A Marxist atheist trained in materialism, Harry Hay - a supporter of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA)


Page 2: Who Gives and Who Doesn't? - ABC News
Finally, the single biggest predictor of whether someone will be charitable is their religious participation.Religious people are more likely to give to charity, and when they give, they give more money: four times as much. And Arthur Brooks told me that giving goes beyond their own religious organization:"Actually, the truth is that they're giving to more than their churches," he says. "The religious Americans are more likely to give to every kind of cause and charity, including explicitly non-religious charities."
And almost all of the people who gave to our bell ringers in San Francisco and Sioux Falls said they were religious or spiritual.





The Real Murderers: Atheism or Christianity?
link
Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history

Stalin's Brutal Faith



Religious Affiliation and Suicide Attempt -- Dervic et al. 161 (12): 2303 -- Am J Psychiatry
Religious Affiliation and Suicide Attempt"Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts"

The Journal of Medical Ethics article declared concerning the atheist and sadist Marquis de Sade:
“ In 1795 the Marquis de Sade published his La Philosophic dans le boudoir, in which he proposed the use of induced abortion for social reasons and as a means of population control. It is from this time that medical and social acceptance of abortion can be dated, although previously the subject had not been discussed in public in modern times. It is suggested that it was largely due to de Sade's writing that induced abortion received the impetus which resulted in its subsequent spread in western society.The Marquis de Sade and induced abortion. -- Farr 6 (1): 7 -- Journal of Medical Ethics


philosophize all you want - but the facts are, the biggest murderers in history were atheists, atheists don't donate to charities, they support sick organizations like the man-boy-love-association.... and they don't respect life - they're more likely to pull the plug, encourage abortion, and finally, they're more likely to kill themselves...

once athiests start actually giving to charity, and doing things to promote life - only then will I consider their claims of being moral...

I don't care where they're from, there weren't any facts in that link what so ever. I don't judge a link by who writes it, I judge it on it's own merits.

Ok, First off, we haven't determined whether or not pulling the plug is immoral. It very much depends on the situation.

Are you saying that it's atheism that turns people into pedophiles? I'm pretty sure the religious have the monopoly on that one.

Your third assertion about charity is mis-guided. Let me explain, there are atheist charity organizations, and many many atheists participate in them, including myself. Churches and religious orginizations also do charity and I applaud them for that, the difference however is that churches have become really good at charity for many reasons, one of them is the oportunity to prosolitize, they also get many tax brakes for charity, and well, they've been doing it for so long, it shouldn't at all be surprising that there are plenty of religious charity orginiazations, they benefit tremendously from doing charity. But If you don't think atheists or secular groups have charity orginizations you're just wrong.

This whole mass murder argument is so misunderstood. First, Hitler was not an atheist, as much as religious people would like to claim he was, he just wasn't. But to me it doesn't matter whether he was or wasn't, no matter what his personal beliefs were, he did attrocious things that have nothing to do with atheism. He had a fervent ideology that was dogmatic and not atheistic. And even if he was an atheist, which he wasn't, you can't get from atheism to any action good or bad.

Stalin happened to be an atheist, however, it wasn't his atheism that drove him to do the attrocious things he did. It was his perverse views on marxism, which is very much like a religion, it's dogmatic and non-questioning. Again you cannot get from, "I don't believe x, therefor I'm going to do Y." The logic doesn't follow.

Ok, to sum this all up. Atheists do give to charity, I'm proof of that. Atheism has nothing to do with mass murders. Please stop spewing mis-information to further your agenda.

 

[Tristesse]

start with charity if anyone is brave enough -

let's compile a list...

a list of all the soup kitchens, and homeless shelters, and charity organizations and compare how many of these organizations are created and run by religious groups, vs. how many of these organizations are created and run by atheist groups..

list the:
charity
how many people it serves
what it serves
(not propaganda is not charity - it has to actually give someone something - like clothing, or food, or houses, or clean drinking water - not just preaching ideologies - there has to be something tangible to it for it to count)

we'll compare #'s of people, and tons of tangible items donated.

Thats like saying lets compair how many brazilians vs. norwegians give to charity when located in norway. The vast number of people on earth are religious, there is no denying that, but there are numerous secular charity organizations.

 

[tumbleweed41]

once athiests start actually giving to charity, and doing things to promote life - only then will I consider their claims of being moral...

Secular Charities

• Amnesty International
• Doctors without Borders
• Oxfam International
• Rotary International
• UNICEF
• Wheelchair Foundation
• American Lung Association
• American Red Cross
• Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation
• Feeding America
• The Halo Trust
• International Committee of the Red Cross
• Lions Club International
• Meals on Wheels
• Peace Corps
• The Smile Train
• Afghan Childrens Fund
• KIVA
• Second Harvest
• Toys for Tots
• Habitat for Humanity
• The American Cancer Society
• The World Wildlife Fund
• The American Foundation for AIDS Research
• Americares
• United Way
• Fred Hollows Foundation
• Mercy Corps

etc, etc, etc.....

Once the religious start actually giving to charity out of humane reasons rather than religious obligation - only then will I consider their claims of being moral...

 

[E. Nato Difficile]

I like the rewarding and promising life that Humanism, secular or not, has to offer. But, I'm not sure I see the point to it . I abandoned Secular Humanism because I couldn't answer the big "why" questions in my mind.

Like I said in the post you ignored, this obsession with answers to the "why" questions is self-defeating. No amount of research or prayer will give you the answers to Why. All you can do is resign yourself to your lack of certainty and follow your path.

Even if there were a supreme being, how could we understand Him or what He wants? How would we know what's objectively right or wrong? And how would we know we knew?

The only thing we can do is live life as if it wouldn't matter if there were a supreme being or a universal morality. We have the responsibility to live according to our principles, whether or not we believe they're "universal"

-Nato

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

don't want to go through the ref's huh? the ref's are not from conservapedia...

It's not his job to write an argument for you. If you have a point to make, then make it. A link is not an argument.

Page 2: Who Gives and Who Doesn't? - ABC News
Finally, the single biggest predictor of whether someone will be charitable is their religious participation.Religious people are more likely to give to charity, and when they give, they give more money: four times as much. And Arthur Brooks told me that giving goes beyond their own religious organization:"Actually, the truth is that they're giving to more than their churches," he says. "The religious Americans are more likely to give to every kind of cause and charity, including explicitly non-religious charities."
And almost all of the people who gave to our bell ringers in San Francisco and Sioux Falls said they were religious or spiritual.

Speaking for myself, I don't give to the Salvation Army bell-ringers because I consider ther anti-gay policies to be terribly harmful. I give to other worthy causes instead.

The Real Murderers: Atheism or Christianity?
link
Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history

Are you sure this is a road you want to go down?

On a per-capita basis, the number of people killed by Mormons is probably up there with the regime of Stalin. However, there's a big difference: I can condemn Stalin for his purges; can you condemn Brigham Young for Mountain Meadows?

once athiests start actually giving to charity, and doing things to promote life - only then will I consider their claims of being moral...

I give to charity. Lately, my money's mainly gone to a few shelters around here as well as funds for various diseases (different forms of cancer, mostly). I also volunteer in a school mentoring kids in math and science, and with a local emergency preparedness group.

To top it all off, I also do my best to avoid supporting companies and organizations that do objectionable things, like use sweatshop labour, engage in environmentally harmful practices, or donate to anti-gay-rights groups.

Am I sufficiently moral for your tastes, or do you need to see my receipts?

 

[Matthew78]

you might enjoy reading "Mere Christianity"

an exert from it:
“… Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair. Not that men are unselfish, nor that they like being unselfish, but that they ought to be. The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviors in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is… most of the things we say and think about men would be reduced to nonsense if [we removed “Moral Law”]. [the Moral Law] is not simply a statement about how we would like men to behave for our own convenience; for the behavior we call bad or unfair is not exactly the same as the behavior we call inconvenient, and may even be the opposite. Consequently, this rule of Right and Wrong, or the Law of Human Nature, or whatever you want to call it, must somehow or other be a real thin-a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves. And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behavior is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior, and yet quite definitely real-a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us. “ – C. S. Lewis The Reality of the Law


as for the morality of atheists...
here are some interesting studies: link
check the refs at the bottom of the page if you don't like the site... then go through and argue with all of those refs if you care to...

one more link...

I have read from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. I thought the book was very unimpressive. While I appreciate your input, I hope you don't get any idea that I'm open to Evangelical Christianity; I'm not. Far from it.

Another thing, too. I don't have that high of an opinion about "Conservapedia". It seems too pro-Evangelical for my tastes. There are conservative atheists although the way I hear a few Christians speak, it's as though they think that Evangelicals own the copyright on what it means to be a "conservative" or even an American patriot, for that matter.

I do happen to think that there are some fine conservative thinkers although I think that they would prefer to be called "libertarian" rather than "conservative". I happen to like the writings of people like Thomas Sowell, Henry Hazlitt, and a few others who might be termed "right-libertarians". I think that if anyone is best classified as a conservative, it's folks like Sowell, Hazlitt, Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, F. Hayek, and others in the Austrian tradition of classical liberalism.

 

[idea]

Secular Charities

I did not ask for secular charities, I asked for atheist ones, and I asked for a list of tons of materials donated by them.

here is a quick list of charities that were started by atheists:
Atheist Charities
I can't find info on here of how many tons/year though?

example: from one very small denomination of one Christian church (only ~13 million people, a good chunk of which are not active) here are the stats of only one of their charity organizations:

LDS Church News - 'Helping hand' should reach out
'Helping hand' should reach out
“the Church has donated 1.1 billion dollars in humanitarian relief in 167 countries (1985 -2010)
61,308 tons of food,
12,829 tons of medical supplies and
84,681 tons of clothing

some example projects:

In 1988, for example, the Church teamed with Rotary International to eliminate polio. "As a young man in high school I witnessed firsthand the start of the polio epidemic in Salt Lake City," President Monson recalled. "Every day it seemed that someone at school came down with polio." The Church purchased sufficient polio serum to immunize hundreds of thousands of children against polio and donated refrigerators to keep vaccines viable until they were administered. Today 210 countries in the world are polio free. "One never goes wrong by helping a child," President Monson said.



Mobility Airmen assist with 18-ton humanitarian delivery
Mobility Airmen assist with 18-ton humanitarian delivery

Helping Hands, prosthetics delivered around the world - Odyssey Blog
Helping Hands, prosthetics delivered around the world
In one month: Nepal: 20; India: 300; Equador: 200; Dominican Republic: 80; Total: 600

Mail carriers collect two tons of food for Helping Hands | www.kilgorenewsherald.com | Kilgore News Herald
Mail carriers collect two tons of food for Helping Hands (in Kilgore, in one day)
“For more than 15 years, postal employees notified Kilgore residents of the effort through the mail and residents responded by placing boxes, bags, and even postal bins full of canned goods and dry food products by their mail boxes…."There was a fella out there on Peterson Road the other day that when the carrier pulled up, she thought it was his trash out by the road with all the bags. She said she filled up five of those tubs with all of his food." …McCann said occasionally the drivers had to make more than one trip to the same house to gather all the food. …Helping Hands (in Kilgore – just one little town) serves an average of 300 families per month through out the year.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I do hate talking about the #'s of it all

President Monson doesn't talk about the Church's worldwide humanitarian efforts in terms of percentages or statistics. He talks about them in terms of people — the Ethiopian child saved from starvation by Church-produced Atmit; the man living in East Germany behind the Iron Curtain who needed a pair of shoes (President Monson gave the man his shoes and wore his house slippers home); the baby in the Philippines who is healthy because his mother learned about hygiene.

but it is a good way to compare who is doing what.


we can look at how many tons are donated / population - we know approximately what percentage of the world population is Christian etc. etc. and what percentage is atheist (including all the atheist countries)... yes, obviously smaller populations support smaller charities, but we can look at the ratios: tons donated / population


for us: 1.1billion$ / 13 million members (obviously many of these members are inactive, more than half live outside the US, many in impoverished developing countries etc. etc.)

61,308 tons of food,
12,829 tons of medical supplies and
84,681 tons of clothing
= 158,818 tons / 13 million members

 

[idea]

I have read from C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. I thought the book was very unimpressive. While I appreciate your input, I hope you don't get any idea that I'm open to Evangelical Christianity; I'm not. Far from it.

Another thing, too. I don't have that high of an opinion about "Conservapedia". It seems too pro-Evangelical for my tastes. There are conservative atheists although the way I hear a few Christians speak, it's as though they think that Evangelicals own the copyright on what it means to be a "conservative" or even an American patriot, for that matter.

I do happen to think that there are some fine conservative thinkers although I think that they would prefer to be called "libertarian" rather than "conservative". I happen to like the writings of people like Thomas Sowell, Henry Hazlitt, and a few others who might be termed "right-libertarians". I think that if anyone is best classified as a conservative, it's folks like Sowell, Hazlitt, Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, F. Hayek, and others in the Austrian tradition of classical liberalism.

I'm not evangelical either

that is why I said go through the ref's - you might not like the site, but they make valid points about who the world's most notorious murderers are...

atheists (under the guise of communism) have murdered millions of people - orders of magnitude more than religious organizations.

link (I've read this quote many different places, just random google to find the quote again)
Marx states (to Robert Owen) that Communism begins with atheism - atheism is the first principle of Communism, and it is upon the principle of atheism that the Communist party of Russia established the Soviet Republic. The Christian State of Russia was desecrated when the Communists established it and replaced it with an atheist regime that Lenin founded on the principle that "any notion of a Lord God is an unspeakable abomination ... the most dangerous abomination, the most loathsome pestilence".


the point - words are cheap - let's look at what people are actually doing, and what different ideologies actually produce.

 

[Me Myself]

[/B]I did not ask for secular charities, I asked for atheist ones, and I asked for a list of tons of materials donated by them.

here is a quick list of charities that were started by atheists:
Atheist Charities
I can't find info on here of how many tons/year though?

example: from one very small denomination of one Christian church (only ~13 million people, a good chunk of which are not active) here are the stats of only one of their charity organizations:

LDS Church News - 'Helping hand' should reach out
'Helping hand' should reach out
“the Church has donated 1.1 billion dollars in humanitarian relief in 167 countries (1985 -2010)
61,308 tons of food,
12,829 tons of medical supplies and
84,681 tons of clothing

some example projects:

In 1988, for example, the Church teamed with Rotary International to eliminate polio. "As a young man in high school I witnessed firsthand the start of the polio epidemic in Salt Lake City," President Monson recalled. "Every day it seemed that someone at school came down with polio." The Church purchased sufficient polio serum to immunize hundreds of thousands of children against polio and donated refrigerators to keep vaccines viable until they were administered. Today 210 countries in the world are polio free. "One never goes wrong by helping a child," President Monson said.



Mobility Airmen assist with 18-ton humanitarian delivery
Mobility Airmen assist with 18-ton humanitarian delivery

Helping Hands, prosthetics delivered around the world - Odyssey Blog
Helping Hands, prosthetics delivered around the world
In one month: Nepal: 20; India: 300; Equador: 200; Dominican Republic: 80; Total: 600

Mail carriers collect two tons of food for Helping Hands | www.kilgorenewsherald.com | Kilgore News Herald
Mail carriers collect two tons of food for Helping Hands (in Kilgore, in one day)
“For more than 15 years, postal employees notified Kilgore residents of the effort through the mail and residents responded by placing boxes, bags, and even postal bins full of canned goods and dry food products by their mail boxes…."There was a fella out there on Peterson Road the other day that when the carrier pulled up, she thought it was his trash out by the road with all the bags. She said she filled up five of those tubs with all of his food." …McCann said occasionally the drivers had to make more than one trip to the same house to gather all the food. …Helping Hands (in Kilgore – just one little town) serves an average of 300 families per month through out the year.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I do hate talking about the #'s of it all



but it is a good way to compare who is doing what.


we can look at how many tons are donated / population - we know approximately what percentage of the world population is Christian etc. etc. and what percentage is atheist (including all the atheist countries)... yes, obviously smaller populations support smaller charities, but we can look at the ratios: tons donated / population


for us: 1.1billion$ / 13 million members (obviously many of these members are inactive, more than half live outside the US, many in impoverished developing countries etc. etc.)

61,308 tons of food,
12,829 tons of medical supplies and
84,681 tons of clothing
= 158,818 tons / 13 million members

An "atheist" charity makes no sense. Atheism is not a moral thing, is the non-beleiving in God.

"Atheism" won´t have a charity because it doesn´t have the need to say "We are good people because we are atheists" . Atheism doesn´t dedicate itself to that kind of propaganda generaly. Religion should because religion is based upon virtues and setting examples, etc is something that guides ahuman being, so it is normal that a religion makes propaganda of how charitable is it. but atheism is not a "guidence" system. Is the lack of beleif in Gods.

Is this honestly difficult to grasp?

It´s like If I tell you there is no specifically "blonde" foundation that helps the poor. Does this mean blonde people are not charitable? No, it means that there is no reason for charitable fundatins to be "blonde" because hair color is not something moral, is about biology. the same way, atheism is not a moral system.

Morality tells you how to behave in the universe. Atheism tells you a specific something about the universe that is not beleived on. (this case God) two different areas.

Did I make myself clear enough?



May I tell you also, there are a lot more religious people in prison than atheists.

 

[Matthew78]

All of us are dishonest at times but the question was: Were you more inclined to commit these wrongs as a secular humanist? Or, if you are still a secular humanist, were you more inclined to commit these wrongs as a moral relativist?

I wasn't more inclined to commit these wrongs as a Secular Humanist. In fact, when I was a Secular Humanist, I felt more inclned to be honest, loving, and compassionate. My reasoning, at the time, was that this was the only life that we would get so it's best to make best with the only life that we are at least certain that we have.

My response had nothing to do with atheist thinking on objective morality versus theist thinking on objective morality. Nor was it an argument against objective morality. It was meant to provide another perspective on the issue and show that believing morality to be objective does not change the fundamental moral character of a person.

Okay, I misunderstood your point. I was a believer in objective morality until I became a Secular Humanist. At first I believed that morality was probably relative and subjective. This seemed confirmed when I read an article by former preacher-turned-atheist Farrell Till. I became convinced by the writings of Bookchin and Carrier that morality was objective.

Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but I understood you to say in the OP that, at one time, you did not believe in objective morality. You struggled with this idea at some point, consulted with a few intellectuals and philosophy experts and later changed your way of thinking and now believe morality is objective. Am I wrong? If not then my remark still stands; some of those with whom you now share a belief in objective morality would hate you or kill you or at the very least, would (have) judge(d) you for your secular humanism or for any number of reasons.

This is true. Besides, those who I now share a belief in objective morality would hate me or worse for being a Secular Humanist, yes, but I'm not sure why this would matter.

All you're saying here is that it makes a difference as to whether or not we are justified in judging others if morality is not objective. We could debate this one until the cows come home but the real question is: Does believing morality to be objective make any fundamental difference in moral behavior vis-a-vis believing it is not? Keep in mind here that we do not know if morality is objective or not and probably never will. All we can say is that Person A believes it is while Person B does not.

I think it does make a difference in terms of moral behavior. It surprises me that Secular Humanists who believe that morality is relative or subjective behave in morally good ways. I'm happy that they do but I'm puzzled by their behavior.

Why did the terrorists fly planes into the twin towers on 9/11? Because they believed that there is an objective morality.

I think it's more accurate to say that the terrorists believed not so much in objective morality but in moral absolutism. I regard this as being different from objective morality. Absolutist morailty is what has caused some terrorism in the past and it will continue to do so.

You need to remember one thing that I mentioned already: We do not know if morality is objective or not. So where does that leave us? With the belief that it is or it is not. Thus we have to resort to arguments that if it is not, we have no justification for judging others. IF morality is subjective then that would be true. But the argument gets us no closer to the truth.

I don't need to be reminded of this. I agree with you that we don't know with any ultimate certainty that morality is objective. I agree; it's a belief that it's objective or not. Perhaps the best we might get to is the categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant. IIRC, Kant argued that while we could not use objective morality to prove or argue persuasively that a supreme being existed, we should live as though a divine lawgiver existed (I hope I'm paraphrasing Kant correctly; my apologies if I have not)

 

[Matthew78]

But if a divine being could assign you such a purpose, then you could choose to assign yourself such a purpose in exactly the same way, right?

I suppose you could, but, playing devil's advocate, suppose I asked in the case of the latter, why bother? A difference might be that with a divine being, existence and life exist for a purpose, and that there is a purpose for existence. We could choose to assign a purpose for our own lives but if the existence of the universe and life is incidential and never existed for a purpose in the first place, I couldn't see much point, if any, to assigning purpose or meaning.

So, is the real issue that our lives terminate and that nothing we do will matter forever? That's all I see being added with the supernatural element. Is that what you mean above? In that case, I think the solution is to realize that something doesn't need to last forever in order to matter now. You must have read and thought about this, so I'm not sure why this doesn't satisfy you.

No, that's not the real issue. (Playing devil's advocate..) suppose that we were biological immortal. Suppose that not only were we immortal but still, we were the sum of our cells, and all that existed was just the phyiscal cosmos. No purpose or meaning to our cosmos or existence. Just a series of incidental events that has led to the present moment. I still wouldn't see any point to existence or any point to morality or meaning, though. If life didn't continue to exist beyond the grave and our lives terminate at some point but still our existence is for a meaningful purpose, then I might see the point of living lives imbued with meaning and morality.

 

[Me Myself]

I suppose you could, but, playing devil's advocate, suppose I asked in the case of the latter, why bother? A difference might be that with a divine being, existence and life exist for a purpose, and that there is a purpose for existence. We could choose to assign a purpose for our own lives but if the existence of the universe and life is incidential and never existed for a purpose in the first place, I couldn't see much point, if any, to assigning purpose or meaning.



No, that's not the real issue. (Playing devil's advocate..) suppose that we were biological immortal. Suppose that not only were we immortal but still, we were the sum of our cells, and all that existed was just the phyiscal cosmos. No purpose or meaning to our cosmos or existence. Just a series of incidental events that has led to the present moment. I still wouldn't see any point to existence or any point to morality or meaning, though. If life didn't continue to exist beyond the grave and our lives terminate at some point but still our existence is for a meaningful purpose, then I might see the point of living lives imbued with meaning and morality.

Life has as much purpose as you want to put in it. Hell, I´ve hardly seen a purpose that is not inside life, life is not only not purposeless, but it is fullpurpose, you yourself even while saying there is no purpose are a human being and thus a purpose making machine. The looking for apurpose in life has become your purpose. You can´t hide what you are, you make purposes happen.

As for morality, true morality, the one that comes from the heart, makes you happy. Not because of an afterlife reward, but because there is little emotion that can compete with the smile of a loved one a lot of times, and when you love everybody, your happiness can really exceed the 9000

 

[Matthew78]

Like I said in the post you ignored, this obsession with answers to the "why" questions is self-defeating. No amount of research or prayer will give you the answers to Why. All you can do is resign yourself to your lack of certainty and follow your path.

I read your intial post. But I wasn't sure if I wanted to respond to it or not. At first glance, there was nothing that I saw which hasn't been posted before. My initial thought was that if I responded to it, I would be repeating myself unnecessarily. So I didn't respond.

Nato, if you believe that my "obsession" with the "why" questions is self-defeating, then that's fine. I hope we can respectfully disagree on this. If you think that I'm just wasting my time dwelling on these questions, that's fine. We can stop it at this. I want to continue my search. If you think it's a waste of time to do so, all I can say is that I agree that each of us are welcome to our own opinions. If you think no amount of research will answer my questions, will, I will just treat that as your opinion. If that upsets you, well, then I imagine quite a number of things are going to upset you in life.

I don't need to just "resign" myself to my uncertainty and "follow" (my) "path". I could always opt out of just living altogether although I don't see any reason to unless I became convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that philosophical naturalism was true. I am not convinced, any more, that it's true and I hope I don't come to that conclusion ever again.

Even if there were a supreme being, how could we understand Him or what He wants? How would we know what's objectively right or wrong? And how would we know we knew?

I honestly don't know. I don't know if it's possible to "understand Him" or his desires, supposing that he has any. As for what's objectively right or wrong, it would probably be a "best-guess" approach. We wouldn't know for certainty. In the end, it's a best-guess approach as with so much else in life.

The only thing we can do is live life as if it wouldn't matter if there were a supreme being or a universal morality. We have the responsibility to live according to our principles, whether or not we believe they're "universal"

Well, we can live out lives as though it wouldn't matter if there was a supreme being or universal morality, but I'm not sure why I would want to. As for the "responsibility", now I see question-begging at work. I would play devil's advoate and ask where do we get our responsibility and why it matters as I have been doing, but I'm not sure either of us would get any satisfaction from the discussion.

Thanks for your input, Nato

 

[Matthew78]

I'm not evangelical either

Okay, mind if I ask what you are?

that is why I said go through the ref's - you might not like the site, but they make valid points about who the world's most notorious murderers are...

I would but I suspect that I know the point that they want to make. Atheism leads to moral nihilism and moral anarchy, and so it makes murderers out of people. Christianity posits an objective morality and makes people into saints so people should become Christians. (No thanks; I abhor Christianity as much as I abhor anything)

atheists (under the guise of communism) have murdered millions of people - orders of magnitude more than religious organizations.

link (I've read this quote many different places, just random google to find the quote again)
Marx states (to Robert Owen) that Communism begins with atheism - atheism is the first principle of Communism, and it is upon the principle of atheism that the Communist party of Russia established the Soviet Republic. The Christian State of Russia was desecrated when the Communists established it and replaced it with an atheist regime that Lenin founded on the principle that "any notion of a Lord God is an unspeakable abomination ... the most dangerous abomination, the most loathsome pestilence".

the point - words are cheap - let's look at what people are actually doing, and what different ideologies actually produce.

If I came to agree with you, that atheism is what led to moral nihilism (i.e. "everything is permissible") and to people murdering, then, I would most likely become a deist. I would become a deist and a religious Humanist like a number of our founding Fathers, unless I decided to become a pagan, a Wiccan, or something like that.

 

[Me Myself]

If I came to agree with you, that atheism is what led to moral nihilism (i.e. "everything is permissible") and to people murdering, then, I would most likely become a deist. I would become a deist and a religious Humanist like a number of our founding Fathers, unless I decided to become a pagan, a Wiccan, or something like that.

the fact that you are using God as a tool to become moral is such a clear indication that morality is somthing bithin the human being which he seeks inevitably.