Does religion dictate morality...another perspective?

[Howard Is]

But of course, there do exist very highly moral atheists too without they follow a religion

Thank you.
That’s a pleasant change from the current polarisation.
You’re doing well

 

[Spirit of Light]

Thank you.
That’s a pleasant change from the current polarisation.
You’re doing well

If I have been doing the polarisation of atheists that have not been on purpose, But I can agree that I do not understand how one can not believe in something spiritual. Spirituality has been a part of me since i was born, But of course, not everyone has that kind of upbringing.

 

[Howard Is]

If I have been doing the polarisation of atheists that have not been on purpose, But I can agree that I do not understand how one can not believe in something spiritual. Spirituality has been a part of me since i was born, But of course, not everyone has that kind of upbringing.

No, I wasn’t referring to you, just the general vibe on RF, and in the community.

I am one of those who has resolved atheism and ‘something spiritual’.

In simple terms, I experience plenty that is outside the nine dots.

I have too much respect for that something to pretend I understand it.

For me, atheism simply means not believing in a deity.

That doesn’t mean I believe the apparent opposite.

I don’t believe. I make that a practice.

I don’t seek or deny ‘something spiritual’, but there are events in my life, every day, that speak clearly of the wisdom which permeates nature, experience, whatever we call this manifestation.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Why hold onto the concept of "Morality" at all? that's the question. That bronze age superstition should be let go. There is no right, wrong, good or evil, it's all entirely relative.

Not really following you there...

Morality isn't a bronze age superstition concept.
That morality "is bestowed on us by some god", is bronze age superstition.

There is no Evil and Good in the world (capital "e" and "g"). They don't exist as independent entities. They aren't nouns. But they do exist as adjectives.

Morality is the practice of assessing impact of behaviour, starting from the position that human wellbeing and hapiness is preferable over suffering.
It's about ending up with a funciional group / society which can prosper and within witch you get to be free to live your life as you see fit, with the required opportunity to do so.

 

[Howard Is]

They aren't nouns. But they do exist as adjectives.

Very simple. Very important.

Joseph Weizebaum was a computer scientist who wrote a book which made something very clear to me.
“Computer Power and Human Reason : From Judgement to Calculation”

The subtitle says it all. I won’t attempt to précis the whole book, but I will share the observation he made which to him was the motivation to write the book.
He said that our culture is about the abdication of the capacity for judgement, which has been replaced by calculation.

I just now realised that I would need to write an essay to adequately express what that means, and the subtlety Weizenbaum expressed .

I think you can easily see what he means in the militant atheism which demands that only logic be our guide, and the way that such logic becomes reductionism and specious categorisations , which insist that use of words like good and evil must be treated as nouns and ridiculed out of our language.

Maybe a thread topic...

within witch you get to be free to live your life as you see fit

A bit of spell checking wouldn’t go astray, lol.
Unless you are a Wiccan.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I think you can easily see what he means in the militant atheism which demands that only logic be our guide, and the way that such logic becomes reductionism and specious categorisations , which insist that use of words like good and evil must be treated as nouns and ridiculed out of our language.

I disagree.
And I don't really see how you can think otherwise if you accept my definition of morality as a premise.
The implication is that once we have set the goals (maximising well-being and minimising suffering), from there we can pretty much use logic to analyse the consequences / impacts of our actions and decisions and see if it takes us closer to one or the other.


How else, if not through logical analysis of the behaviour, are we going to conclude what the consequences / impact of said behaviour is?

That very process is the means by which we can make moral judgements.

If not through that process, then which, I ask?

 

[Howard Is]

If not through that process, then which, I ask?

The observation that logic has been overvalued is not a call to abandon logic.

Note that Weizenbaum was a computer scientist. He wrote the first AI program that attracted much attention.

The issue here is the rejection of all the subconscious processes involved in making a judgement as opposed to a calculation.

It is sheer vanity IMO to assume that all of your intelligence is in the conscious personality, and its cognitive/logical activity.

There is another kind of activity going on in you. It is felt, sensed emotionally.

To write off your intuition, your gut feelings, your emotional response as though it is an aberration which undermines Logic is to deny what you are as a human being.

It is very fashionable to consider ourselves to be biocomputers. It is an understandable relief from the other extreme...magical thinking, superstition, religious belief.

It is also very naive, and in my view, almost juvenile.

You are composed of 75 trillion cells. Maybe 200 billion neurones, about the same number of glial cells. You have a process going on that is unimaginably complex.

You make a decision, you act...and moments afterward you logically explain to yourself, cognitively, what happened. You create a narrative about an action which happened before ‘you’ even considered it.

That is a very superficial aspect of the whole being you are.

Art isn’t logical. Is it useless ? Is it wrong ? Is it dumb*** magical thinking ?

No. It is intuitive mind. Emotional mind. It is a crucial kind of human intelligence.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that” - Jerry and George

 

[Howard Is]

How else, if not through logical analysis of the behaviour, are we going to conclude what the consequences / impact of said behaviour is?

That very process is the means by which we can make moral judgements.

If not through that process, then which, I ask?

I hope my previous post went some way to answering that.

Whilst it is true that we use logical processes to understand the cause/effect relationships of our behaviour, it is our emotional intelligence which sets many of the goals to which that logic is in service.

Empathy is emotional. Empathy is the foundation of a good society, wouldn’t you agree ?

Without empathy, you wouldn’t be using logic to support civil behaviour.
Which is morality.

 

[sealchan]

We've all heard it…"You cannot be good without God." (A very good, sadly late, friend of mine, Dr. Robert Buckman actually wrote a book on the subject, titled "Can We Be Good Without God?" For the record, he though we could, but he was a secular Jew and President of the Canadian Humanist Association, so that's what he would say, eh?)

But then, it occurred to me just recently, when looking at the stats of how many people change their churches, and even their faiths, and the reasons for doing so, that there is a conundrum to be answered. Even people here, on RF, announce on a fairly regular basis that they've changed their church or the faith.

So what's the conundrum? Well, people change their church for faith for, essentially, one reason only...that their present church or faith is not providing them with what they need. I have to presume that means in the sense of satisfying their spiritual needs, but also in answering their moral questions.

And once they find the church or faith that satisfies their spiritual and moral needs, then they feel quite free to fall back on, "you cannot be good without God, and the God of my faith or church decides what is good."

But hang on a minute! Doesn't that mean that they, themselves, have actually made the choice? Whose morals, and whose spiritual needs, are in fact in play here? Certainly not the "god" of their last faith or church. I think you all know where I'm going? How would you respond?

The thing that irritates me most is when someone claims that they do not follow their own thinking (man's thinking) but only the Word of God. They make no allowances for the fact that at some point they must have evaluated God's Word for themselves in order to have accomplished such a feat of submission.

If I were God I would instill a more healthy humility, promote the state of not knowing and reserve a special layer of Hell for those who abdicate one of God's greatest gifts, the ability to think for yourself.

 

[sealchan]

The observation that logic has been overvalued is not a call to abandon logic.

Note that Weizenbaum was a computer scientist. He wrote the first AI program that attracted much attention.

The issue here is the rejection of all the subconscious processes involved in making a judgement as opposed to a calculation.

It is sheer vanity IMO to assume that all of your intelligence is in the conscious personality, and its cognitive/logical activity.

There is another kind of activity going on in you. It is felt, sensed emotionally.

To write off your intuition, your gut feelings, your emotional response as though it is an aberration which undermines Logic is to deny what you are as a human being.

It is very fashionable to consider ourselves to be biocomputers. It is an understandable relief from the other extreme...magical thinking, superstition, religious belief.

It is also very naive, and in my view, almost juvenile.

You are composed of 75 trillion cells. Maybe 200 billion neurones, about the same number of glial cells. You have a process going on that is unimaginably complex.

You make a decision, you act...and moments afterward you logically explain to yourself, cognitively, what happened. You create a narrative about an action which happened before ‘you’ even considered it.

That is a very superficial aspect of the whole being you are.

Art isn’t logical. Is it useless ? Is it wrong ? Is it dumb*** magical thinking ?

No. It is intuitive mind. Emotional mind. It is a crucial kind of human intelligence.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that” - Jerry and George

Thanks for this.

I myself am a huge fan of Jung's psychological types and my own view is of a multi-model epistemological basis for truth. Thinking and feeling are rational functions while sensation and intuition are perceptive functions. All four contribute to our sense of the truth and individually we have a bias as to which function is most valuable. But none of these modes are close to infallible and we need the diversity of their perspectives to remain viably adaptive.

 

[Howard Is]

But none of these modes are close to infallible and we need the diversity of their perspectives to remain viably adaptive.

Or even just awake.

 

[Howard Is]

Thanks for this.

That’s not a phrase I see posted all that often, so, thank you.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Whilst it is true that we use logical processes to understand the cause/effect relationships of our behaviour, it is our emotional intelligence which sets many of the goals to which that logic is in service.

The goals of morality are already set and agreed upon.
They don't change on a case by case basis.

As I said: once the goals are set and agreed upon, reason and logic are the tools required to analyse impact/consequence of behaviour to reach a moral judgement conclusion.

Empathy is emotional. Empathy is the foundation of a good society, wouldn’t you agree ?

Yes. It's one of the things that inform the goal of morality: increase well-being, decrease suffering.

Without empathy, you wouldn’t be using logic to support civil behaviour.

Without empathy (and alike), there would be no need for such logic because morality would be irrelevant.
Cooperative human society wouldn't exist either.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Note that Weizenbaum was a computer scientist. He wrote the first AI program that attracted much attention.

So?

The issue here is the rejection of all the subconscious processes involved in making a judgement as opposed to a calculation.

It is sheer vanity IMO to assume that all of your intelligence is in the conscious personality, and its cognitive/logical activity.

There is another kind of activity going on in you. It is felt, sensed emotionally.

To write off your intuition, your gut feelings, your emotional response as though it is an aberration which undermines Logic is to deny what you are as a human being.

None of this is in contradiction with what I said.
These emotional aspects (like empathy etc) are covered in the goal of morality: increase well-being, decrease suffering. That's the "ultimate" goal that drives our behaviour. Or "ought" to drive our behaviour if we care about being moral.

Nevertheless, EVEN if the goal for some twisted reason is the opposite: increase suffering and decrease well-being, then STILL reason and logic is the tool that has to be used to analyse behaviour and see if the impact / consequence brings us closer to our goal or not.

In essence:
- logic and reason is the tool by which we find out the consequences of our actions.
- increasing well-being / decreasing suffering (=the goals set) are the standard against which we evaluate those conclusions in moral terms. For which, btw, we also require logic and reason.

Art isn’t logical. Is it useless ? Is it wrong ? Is it dumb*** magical thinking ?

No clue why you think defining what art is, is helpfull in this context.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Tell that to a murdering rapist, should you ever be unfortunate enough to meet one.

I once heard an atheist remark (I think it was Penn Gillette, the magician, actually), when the comment about atheists, having no god, are therefore "free to rape and murder anybody they want," who replied, "Yeah, and I've raped and murdered all the people that I want to...and that number is ZERO."

 

[pearl]

The question, is an act immoral because a church said so, or does a church say so because the act is immoral?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The question, is an act immoral because a church said so, or does a church say so because the act is immoral?

Considering some of the things that churches say, I'ld have to go with "neither".

 

[Howard Is]

I once heard an atheist remark (I think it was Penn Gillette, the magician, actually), when the comment about atheists, having no god, are therefore "free to rape and murder anybody they want," who replied, "Yeah, and I've raped and murdered all the people that I want to...and that number is ZERO."

I score a zero on that too.
Not because I’m logical.
Although I am quite skilled at logic.
But my reality is not a Karnaugh map.
Nor is it a relationship with imaginary beings.

‘The average person” is an imaginary being.

 

[Howard Is]

I once heard an atheist remark (I think it was Penn Gillette, the magician, actually), when the comment about atheists, having no god, are therefore "free to rape and murder anybody they want," who replied, "Yeah, and I've raped and murdered all the people that I want to...and that number is ZERO."

Being a very logical and intelligent person, I imagine that I could commit rape and murder and get away with it, if anybody could.

If I wanted to.

Which begs two questions ...

Why would I want to ?

And more relevant to this discussion...

Why would I NOT want to ?

The answer is NOT logical. It is about empathy, feeling, emotion.

I don’t want to because it is a horrible thing to do to someone, and everyone who cares about them. Also a horrible thing to do to myself.

I guess a person could say “Aha ! That’s your logic !”
If they really wanted to miss my point.

The gut reaction, the feeling, is what determines that choice. In simple uncomplicated English, it would be a horrible, subhuman, evil thing to do. And I don’t need to consult logic for one moment to know that.

In fact, if a person did need to consider logic to decide whether or not to rape and murder, I think that person is already 9/10ths degenerate.

Similarly, if their choice was based on religion or public opinion.

 

[stvdv]

I once heard an atheist remark (I think it was Penn Gillette, the magician, actually), when the comment about atheists, having no god, are therefore "free to rape and murder anybody they want," who replied, "Yeah, and I've raped and murdered all the people that I want to...and that number is ZERO."

Was this remark given (believed) by a religious person or a spiritual person or..? Tells a lot about the psyche of that person IMO

If it was given by a religious person then you better never try to convert them to Atheism. Imagine all these added rapists