Reconciling morality with atheism

[Preechr]

Kahl, you're an intellectual trainwreck. I've told you before, you're a really smart guy, but you are impossible to respond to. I discussion is like putting together a part of a giant puzzle: we can argue about what pieces fit where, or if the pieces we are looking at even go in this part of the puzzle... You don't do that. Not only are you running around the house trying to find random objects that you can demand should be puzzle pieces... dried up old dog poo from the yard, the basket strainer out of the sink... you are also eating the puzzle pieces we have.

You are all over the map. That's why I love having you around but mostly don't like arguing with you. You consistently misread or refuse to read what I say, then argue with the things you made up. The more I try to re-explain myself, the more confused you get... How is that productive? Then, when I stop beating my head against the brick wall that is your mind, you start insulting me, hoping to bait me into talking with you more.

I've said it before: simply make a point, Kyle. Keep it short and pithy and on topic, and we can discuss it. Write a paragraph then distill it down to one sentence. If somebody responds... and this is important... try to understand what they really mean instead of assuming beforehand that whatever it is they are saying makes no sense. You have a really annoying habit of arguing with people that actually agree with you. The last step is even more important: Once you have stated an opinion, you can't go back later on and contradict it, so you have to mean what you say the first time.

That is why I sent you those books. What you lack is a fundamental set of core beliefs, and I thought maybe reading about someone else's core belief system, even you you were to disagree entirely with it, might inspire you to develop your own. Sometimes I get fleeting glimpses at various ideas I think you really do believe in, but you have yet to tie it all together in a way that makes sense. Before you can help with the other parts of the puzzle, first you have to put together the part of the puzzle that is your own mind.

Have a Merry Christmas and stuff.

[kahljorn]

I don't have to have an opinion or belief system in order to criticize you. Also, my responses in this thread are "Cogent" and fairly easy to understand. It's not all over the place and it's not undistilled. So quit trying to pussy out of responding. Here's a distillation of everything I said: Atheists, as far as morality goes, are equal to religious people; they are in no better position of understanding "net values" and "Objective" morality than atheists are. Also, even if God existed, just like he designed natural physical law, he designed moral law; atheists can understand physical laws, so they should be able to understand moral laws.

I usually criticize you on topic, you just have a problem with seeing weaknesses in your opinions and belief systems.

I'll distill your entire opinion in this thread down to a simple statement: you're begging the question -- on the moral front.

stuff like this kills me though:

If our decisions actually connect us so precisely within society, much like electrical bonds connecting atoms, isn't that just a little too perfect for happenstance?

So like if eveeryone is standing in the same backyard and the sprinklers come on everyone gets wet, isnt that just a little too perfect for happenstance? Thus god exists and athiests can't be moral!

also I would contest the notion that "Our decisions actually connect us so precisely within society" if I felt like it. I don't think there is any amount of precision. It's just a chaotic mass of crap that adds to (but doesn't cause) a causal chain and we all happen to be affected by it because we are proximate to this causal chain since we all live on the same planet.

[Preechr]

Originally Posted by Emu

One of the questions I get asked (well, they don't ask me, but I hear it pretty often) is "If you're an atheist, where does your morality come from?"

Originally Posted by kahljorn

Blah, blah, blah... Also, even if God existed, just like he designed natural physical law, he designed moral law; atheists can understand physical laws, so they should be able to understand moral laws.

There we go... Allright, let's walk through this, using what we've learned in this discussion, Ok?

First, since Emu asked about a position on morality from an atheistic point of view, let's discard the stuff about God existing and designing out for now, as that is off topic, though fun to talk about in another context.

What we are left with is something like "There IS physical law, and there IS moral law, and if atheists can understand physical laws, so they should be able to understand moral laws."

Now, when it comes to "physical law," Sloth made the distinction between what he called "The Real" and the imperfect language we use to describe everything and how it all does what it does, which is perfectly acceptable. "The Real" can never be completely explained or understood by us as it is entirely too complex, but by scratching at the surface of understanding it all, we can see an underlying order to the universe and try our best to experimentally predict what will happen when we mix chemicals or drop things or shoot stuff into space.

Using what we have learned so far by scratching the surface of "The Real" has and will continue to produce tangible results that we call technology, which we find useful in medicine, communication, travel, cooking and blowing things up.

As you have stated, atheists can understand and use our understanding of "physical laws," or "The Real," just as well as any religious person can, all else being equal.

You have proposed that another "The Real" exists when it comes to morality, and it seems that you agree that it has a similar relationship to what we call the study of morality as the other "The Real" has to what we call the study of physics. For us to completely understand either, we would have to know everything there is to know about every reaction between everything from the beginning of time to it's end, all at once, which is impossible.

By scratching the surface of the underlying "The Real" of right and wrong, good and bad, though, we can gain at least a limited understanding of how the decisions we make affect the people and things around us and try to assign positive or negative values to them. Just like our study of physics has produced tangible results over the years, our study of morality has given us a clearer picture of right and wrong, good and bad, positive and negative.

No belief system, religious or secular, could possibly claim to fully understand "The Real" of morality completely... no more than any scientist will ever be able to completely explain the physical universe in more than an extremely general sense. Any given atheist is as able to comprehend this as was Jesus or Buddha, but we all benefit generally from trying to apply what we have figured out so far in such a way as to get the most positives out of our day to day decision making as we can.

As BPG noted, this is just a larger view of the kind of cost-benefit method Emu didn't feel right about, but I think it's a comprehensive enough theory to put us all on the same moral ground, which is what I think he was originally after.