Convention, the social contract, can have a similar function as 'objective/intersubjective truth' within a particular group for the atheist... but nobody wants to hear about that.

As C. S. Lewis explained, the pagan gods weren't simply altogether false but are instead to be understood as distorted images of the real one. — BenMcLean

The Jews don't put much divine stock in Jesus; he wasn't the Messiah according to them. Christians call Him God. Muslims say He was another prophet, superseded by Muhammad, and that Christianity has been polluted.

This isn't about truth. It's about clinging to stories, and that's what most adherents do.

Shouldn’t the atheist answer be, they are thinking like a fantasy, fictional novel writer? They make up contexts, make up players in that context, make up actions, throw in biology and psychology to claim some semblance of “science” or actual knowledge, pretend rules and laws and human speech can direct physics and human choices (as if we are not mechanistic followers of biological necessity), and call this “morality” until the next time when all variables may be thrown back up in the air where they belong and never actually left.

To the atheist, like Nietzsche, isn’t having a morality itself maybe the only possible immoral act? Because it’s an utter lie? To the atheist, shouldn’t the one moral choice we make be the choice to resist all moral judgment, particularly of our own impulses and actions? I think so. That is coherent — Fire Ologist

Atheism is a spectrum of philosophical perspectives with a historical lineage in the modern West going back at least 400 years. These perspectives have nothing necessarily in common with each other beside the fact that they remove the name of theos. My particular version of atheism assumes the following:

1) What we call immorality are practices by others which we aren’t able to understand in terms that allow us to justify them according to our own values. As a result, we blame them for our own puzzlement.
2) Cultural history takes the form of a slow development of interpersonal understanding such that we progressively improve our ability to make sense of the motivations of others in ways that don’t require our condemning them, precisely because we see their limitations as having to do with social understanding rather than arbitrary malicious intent. Advances in the social sciences in tandem with philosophy and the arts contribute to this development.

The proof is in the pudding. Either our social bets pay off and our models of behavior are validated by the actions of others, or they are invalidated and we have to start over with a modified scheme. We all try our best to make sense of others without having to condemn them, but for most the task becomes too overwhelming and they find they have no choice but to fall back on something like god-given moral foundations (or the empirical version : socio and neuropathology).

Convention, the social contract, can have a similar function as 'objective/intersubjective truth' — ChatteringMonkey

I agree. That fits neatly under categories of criminal and civil law. And maybe that is all we can do in this world to get along, is invent and agree upon ever-changing laws. Maybe we need to stop fantasizing about religion and focus on fantasizing about the utopian state constitution.

I just don’t see any need to call any of that “morality”. People who don’t agree with the secular law regarding murder are not “evil” or “bad people”. They are just wrong, irrational, not intelligent, have no foresight, avoiding consequences, impractical. But calling a person who murders despite our agreed convention a “bad person” or “evil person”? That seems folly, psycho-babble, and an unnecessary distraction. Because some day, a particular murder may be able to be argued as right, rational, smart, forward looking, necessary….

Underneath this discussion is the role and ontological status of universals and the application of these ideal platonic form-like inventions to particular, physical acts in the world.

Morality, and using “good versus bad” judgments of whole people, based on individual choices and discreet acts — I don’t see why an atheist would bother. Other than for political manipulation, meaning, even though “evil people” may be a fantastical concept, it sure makes for successful politics today while there are still so many fairy tale believers. And the left does seem to put secular law in the same position as moral law, just so they can still use all the moral terminology like “anti-abortionists are evil oppressors, and oppression is always evil” or “Trump is the worst person ever”.

Everyone wants to preserve morality - some because they think there is objective right and wrong, others to beat up on their opponents in the minutia of debate. Maybe we should all focus our debates on whether there is any such thing as an objective measure that could subject us all to the same judgment of “what is good and what is not.”

We just have to keep biting the apple - can’t help ourselves. “If you don’t do X, then you are part of the problem.” (We don’t want to let go of our ability to say that do we? Without morality, how will we really be able to manipulate each other??)

Ultimately, to me, there is objective truth, and morality is about self-regulation. It’s not about judging the acts and hearts of others. There can be no morality court here. Only moral instruction that one can put into practice or not. Besides the objective component, morality also requires a purely subjective consent and will and knowing choice. This component is so subjective and tied to the “heart and soul” of a person, that I can not possibly judge anyone else but myself. So the public component, the objective component of morality, is a discussion of what is good, what the law means; but anyone who says “I know the moral law absolutely and can see you are evil and you are going to hell” and points at anyone but themselves, is acting like God, which they are not, so they are being immoral, and don’t understand where morality lives.

We should stick to secular, civil, criminal law discussions around here. After 2000 years of western philosophy, philosophers have proven they suck at moral instruction.

Schopenhauer explained secular morality.

So, you are saying that goodness comes from God and we know this because the Bible tells us it's so?

I think the more likely explanation is that we evolved something called biological altruism. — Questioner

I am an atheist, I am not saying this as a believer. I am trying to provide a basic sketch of classical theism’s understanding of the good.

It's useful for atheists to understand the range of religious beliefs properly and not go after cartoon theism, which is the kind of problem we face when people like Dawkins seem to think that fundamentalism is all there is.

I am saying that atheist criticisms such as the ones you provided about morality do not affect the narrative tabled by many Christians, for reasons I have described.

The inerrancy of Bible is irrelevant to many atheist talking points. Note also that many Christians consider the Bible to be allegorical, not literal.

It's likely borrowed from Paul writing in Romans where he says even of ignorant gentiles that morality is "written on their hearts".
— Tom Storm

No, as a people of oral traditions, their history and moral codes, ideas of justice, etc. were engraved on their hearts long before the Europeans came along. They did not need to "borrow" the phrase from the Europeans. — Questioner

You can't say "no" the best you can do is say, perhaps it's this... and then provide evidence. The phrase “written on the heart” is classic Christian formulation. I said it was likely to be borrowed, but we cannot say for certain. Neither can you. But perhaps those tribal people you referenced did not use precisely that Christian expression at all and said something similar. We cannot determine the true nature of that quote, or even if it was actually uttered, from this forum.

The fact that religions seem to contain similar ideas leads perennialists to conclude that spiritual truth is the same across all traditions. Many academic Christians study other religions and regard them as also containing truth about the transcendent.

1) What we call immorality are practices by others which we aren’t able to understand in terms that allow us to justify them according to our own values. As a result, we blame them for our own puzzlement.
2) Cultural history takes the form of a slow development of interpersonal understanding such that we progressively improve our ability to make sense of the motivations of others in ways that don’t require our condemning them, precisely because we see their limitations as having to do with social understanding rather than arbitrary malicious intent. Advances in the social sciences in tandem with philosophy and the arts contribute to this development. — Joshs

I like this formulation a lot.

That completely inverts the issue in the question of the OP — Fire Ologist

Good.

See

I think that just as the cosmological argument proves the existence of God from knowing the existence of tables and chairs, so too the moral argument proves the reality of God from knowing the reality of right and wrong. — BenMcLean

Oli, your craving for certainty is not a firm grounding for belief.

It's useful for atheists to understand the range of religious beliefs properly and not go after cartoon theism, which is the kind of problem we face when people like Dawkins seem to think that fundamentalism is all there is. — Tom Storm

Yes, there are some good lessons from theistic texts. I think also that you underestimate atheists when you posit that they all blindly follow Dawkins. If anything, atheists are independent thinkers.

I am saying that atheist criticisms such as the ones you provided — Tom Storm

Where did I say I was an atheist?

You can't say "no" the best you can do is say, perhaps it's this... and then provide evidence. — Tom Storm

I can say no. I am sure of it. The evidence provided is the book I linked.

How arrogant to think that only Christians could come up with the idea of values being imprinted upon the heart!

The fact that religions seem to contain similar ideas leads perennialists to conclude that spiritual truth is the same across all traditions. Many academic Christians study other religions and regard them as also containing truth about the transcendent. — Tom Storm

Which supports the idea that morality is biologically based.

Yes, there are some good lessons from theistic texts. I think also that you underestimate atheists when you posit that they all blindly follow Dawkins. If anything, atheists are independent thinkers. — Questioner

Where did I say they all blindly follow Dawkins? I’ve been involved in freethinker atheist circles for 40 years; there is a significant percentage who hold cartoon views of religion and their arguments often fail to understand the positions theists may hold.

Where did I say I was an atheist? — Questioner

Where did I say you were an atheist? The criticism you provided was a standard atheist talking point. I've commented on it from this perspective. And it’s not as though atheists don’t share views with other philosophical orientations. A number of Buddhists I know hold similar views.

How arrogant to think that only Christians could come up with the idea of values being imprinted upon the heart! — Questioner

But again, that’s an atheist-style riposte that many Christian thinkers would find amusing. From the position of classical theism the critique that other religions also have moral views misses the point. The point is all morality comes from the same transcendent source.

Now, I wouldn’t think this is necessarily understood as a position of arrogance (although Dawkins and Hitchens would probably characterise it that way); for many Christians it is a straightforward claim about how humans came to be and about the nature of human beings.

There are also more nominal Christians who would hold that all religions are broadly equivalent, while still regarding morality as reflecting God’s nature rather than existing independently of it. From this perspective, the classic Euthyphro dilemma — which asks whether something is good because God commands it or God commands it because it is good — is avoided, because goodness is understood as grounded in God’s very nature rather than being arbitrary or external to God. I don’t find this argument fully convincing, but I respect it.

The bottom line is that atheistic arguments that try to defeat theism by pointing out that non-theists have morality, or that there was morality before Moses’ clay tablets, often miss the mark. But you may think differently.

there is a significant percentage who hold cartoon views of religion and their arguments often fail to understand the positions theists may hold. — Tom Storm

Understood.

The criticism you provided was a standard atheist talking point. — Tom Storm

I'm sorry, what criticism was that?

The point is all morality comes from the same transcendent source. — Tom Storm

The point is that all morality comes from our evolution.

for many Christians it is a straightforward claim about how humans came to be and about the nature of human beings. — Tom Storm

Grounded in an ignorance of evolutionary biology.

because goodness is understood as grounded in God’s very nature rather than being arbitrary or external to God. I don’t find this argument fully convincing, but I respect it. — Tom Storm

Why do we need to respect points of view that are, imo, wrong?

The bottom line is that atheistic arguments that try to defeat theism by pointing out that non-theists have morality, or that there was morality before Moses’ clay tablets, often miss the mark. But you may think differently. — Tom Storm

I'm not trying to defeat theism. I'd hazard a guess that atheists aren't either. They are just saying, it doesn't work for them, as they try to understand in rational terms who and what we are.

A further note -

The Bible has been used to justify a lot of immorality - from the Doctrine of Discovery to the justification of slavery to the subjugation of women (Eve was the sinner) to the persecution of Jewish people, and so on....

there is a significant percentage who hold cartoon views of religion and their arguments often fail to understand the positions theists may hold.
— Tom Storm

Understood. — Questioner

:up: :up:

I'm sorry, what criticism was that? — Questioner

The idea that formed the basis of our discussion, that empathy came first and then religion, doesn’t really hold up as a critique or as an accurate depiction of what many Christians actually believe. That is what I was trying to point out, though I suppose it doesn’t matter much.

For me, what matters most is trying to understand the logic and reasoning of people whose views I don’t share. It’s easy to assume we have a winning argument because it seems sound to us. But the problem is that it often rests on assumptions (like scientism) that don’t align with the other person’s worldview.

All your other points aren’t linked to the discussion we were having and are separate lines of reasoning which have been explored on this forum a trillion times. You don’t need to convince me that religion is often wrong and can cause harm.

The point is that all morality comes from our evolution. — Questioner

If you mean the culture "evolves", anyone might agree. If you mean morality is influenced by biological evolution, fine. If, however, you mean that morality is purely biological, that is nonsense. Some moral codes suggest empathy for the oppressed; others suggest gassing the Jews. Are both the result of human biological evolution?

Here's an example from anthropology. The incest taboo is one universal human moral code. Some biology oriented types incorrectly claim it resulted from the greater likelihood of negative recessive traits for children of close relatives. However, in many simple societies (Australian aborigines, for one) one must not marry one's parallel cousin (mother's sister's or father's brother's child) but must marry one's cross cousin (mother's brother's or father's sister's child). The genetic closeness of the cousins is identical. The prohibition seems based on social and economic benefits for the couple and their children. the parallel cousins will be in the same clan as their spouses; the cross cousins in different clans. The marriage will cement economic and social relationships between the clans. Such relationships are clearly "cultural" (other societies may not have clans at all, or may organize them differently). So this form of the one, universal human moral rule seems cultural, not biological.

The point is that all morality comes from our evolution. — Questioner

I very much hope that we don’t revert to the idea of survival of the fittest in planning our politics and our values and our way of life. I have often said that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining why we exist. It’s undoubtedly the reason why we’re here and why all living things are here. But to live our lives in a Darwinian way, to make a society a Darwinian society, that would be a very unpleasant sort of society in which to live. It would be a sort of Thatcherite society and we want to – I mean, in a way, I feel that one of the reasons for learning about Darwinian evolution is as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives. — Richard Dawkins, in response to a question about whether survival of the fittest might serve as a basis for values

Dawkins often expresses this sentiment. It is one of the things I find agreeable in his public utterances.

Also, from Richard Polt, a Heidegger scholar:

I have no beef with entomology or evolution, but I refuse to admit that they teach me much about ethics. Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. Most, though not all, moral codes advise me to cultivate altruism. But since the human race has evolved to be capable of a wide range of both selfish and altruistic behavior, there is no reason to say that altruism is superior to selfishness in any biological sense.

In fact, the very idea of an “ought” is foreign to evolutionary theory. It makes no sense for a biologist to say that some particular animal should be more cooperative, much less to claim that an entire species ought to aim for some degree of altruism. If we decide that we should neither “dissolve society” through extreme selfishness....nor become “angelic robots” like ants, we are making an ethical judgment, not a biological one. Likewise, from a biological perspective it has no significance to claim that Ishould be more generous than I usually am, or that a tyrant ought to be deposed and tried. In short, a purely evolutionary ethics makes ethical discourse meaningless. — Anything but Human

Some moral codes suggest empathy for the oppressed; others suggest gassing the Jews. Are both the result of human biological evolution? — Ecurb

I'm glad you raised this point. Yes, they are - acted upon by environmental factors.

Empathy, fear, and hate are biologically imprinted. How they manifest in behavior depends on how they are stimulated.

I'd first like to note that empathy is the default position. We are born with the capacity for empathy. Research has demonstrated that even in babies less than one year old empathy is evident.

https://www.developmentalscience.com/blog/2012/12/02/is-empathy-learned-or-are-we-born-with-it

Here's a video of a 14-month-old comforting his crying mom - look at his face -

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Dar4dP6isGc

Then, of course, environmental factors work on its development. Probably the most important is that the physical needs of the child are met, and they learn empathy and love through modeling. This strengthens the empathy circuits in our minds.

Now - as to the "gassing of the Jews" during WW2 - that is a big question - At the pinnacle of this movement was one man - Hitler - who was a deviant from the norm -

Harvard psychologist Dr. Henry A. Murray prepared this analysis of Hitler for the Office of Strategic Services during the war -

Murray pegged Hitler’s personality as “counteractive narcissism,” a type that is stimulated by real or imagined insult or injury. According to Murray, the characteristics of this personality type include holding grudges, low tolerance for criticism, excessive demands for attention, inability to express gratitude, a tendency to belittle, bully, and blame others, desire for revenge, persistence in the face of defeat, extreme self-will, self-trust, inability to take a joke, and compulsive criminality. Murray concluded that Hitler had these characteristics (and others) to an extreme degree and lacked the offsetting qualities that round out a balanced personality.

Hitler's rise to absolute power depended on manipulating others - his inner circle probably had their own self-serving ambitions, too. What happened in Germany can be described as the cult of the leader.

Massive manipulative propaganda campaigns heightened hate and fear of "the other" - and the ever-present fear of reprisal from the Nazis - had most Germans at least passively accepting the persecution of the Jewish people, and not rally to their cause.

Of course, not all fell prey to hate and fear. It has been estimated that during the course of World War II 800,000 Germans were arrested by the Gestapo for resistance activities. It has also been estimated that between 15,000 and 77,000 of the Germans were executed by the Nazis.

And in the relative safety of the post-war era, in polls conducted by the US military government between 1945 and 1949, 77% of respondents stated that "The actions against the Jews were in no way justified," though this was after the war and many claimed ignorance of the extent of the genocide.

So, they knew what had happened was wrong.

The marriage will cement economic and social relationships between the clans. Such relationships are clearly "cultural" (other societies may not have clans at all, or may organize them differently). So this form of the one, universal human moral rule seems cultural, not biological. — Ecurb

This seems a matter of the cultural trumping the biological.

You've reminded me of something I read - "the sweaty t-shirt experiment" - which demonstrated that scent plays a role in mate selection, and females sniffing the T-shirts recently worn by males favored the scent of those whose immune response genes were different from their own - thus ensuring greater genetic variation in the offspring, which is cited as an evolutionary benefit.

https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/tdc02.sci.life.evo.sweatytshirts/sweaty-t-shirts-and-human-mate-choice/

Morality from a secular position is necessarily subjective. — Ram

This premise isn't true. The key is that you said necessarily. To counter a necessity claim, I do not need to show that all morality is objective, or even that all harm is objective, I only need one counterexample. For example, suppose I cut off someone’s arm for no good reason. The harm in that case is not a matter of opinion or private feeling. It is publicly observable, i.e., objective: an arm on the ground, blood loss, shock, the screams of the one harmed, the reactions of witnesses, the lasting impairment. Anyone can see what has happened, and anyone can see that nothing about this depends on my personal preferences.

Now you might say, “Fine, the harm is objective, but calling it wrong is still subjective.” But that is exactly where the word necessarily overreaches. In ordinary moral judgment, severe harm functions as a public defeater: if you cannot give reasons that others can evaluate as sufficient, the act is not merely “disliked,” it is impermissible. You can reject that grammar if you want, but then you are no longer describing morality so much as evacuating it. So, at a minimum, this one case shows that a secular moral judgment can be anchored in objective features of the world and in publicly assessable justification, which is enough to refute the claim that secular morality is necessarily subjective.

I say this as someone who is not a secularist, but as someone who allows for an expanded metaphysics.

The idea that formed the basis of our discussion, that empathy came first and then religion, doesn’t really hold up as a critique or as an accurate depiction of what many Christians actually believe. — Tom Storm

i did not feel like I was critiquing, just pointing out that substantiated knowledge points to a biological basis for behavior. What Christians believe does not change that fact.

But the problem is that it often rests on assumptions (like scientism) that don’t align with the other person’s worldview. — Tom Storm

I understand the term "scientism" to be a pejorative applied to people who believe science to be the only source of "truth." Is the assumption to which you refer?

I do understand the limits of science, but the process of science investigates this material world, and as we are part of that material world, scientific research has contributed a body of knowledge about our structure and function - about ourselves. I accept that body of knowledge as valid.

How that biological basis is manifested in behavior rests partly on external factors, resulting in diversity and variation within our species, in questions of religion, politics, philosophy, and ethics

Yes, different worldviews exist.

I very much hope that we don’t revert to the idea of survival of the fittest in planning our politics and our values and our way of life. I have often said that I am a passionate Darwinian when it comes to explaining why we exist. It’s undoubtedly the reason why we’re here and why all living things are here. But to live our lives in a Darwinian way, to make a society a Darwinian society, that would be a very unpleasant sort of society in which to live. It would be a sort of Thatcherite society and we want to – I mean, in a way, I feel that one of the reasons for learning about Darwinian evolution is as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives. — Richard Dawkins, in response to a question about whether survival of the fittest might serve as a basis for values

Yes, a good argument for having our political leaders get a philosophy education!

I have no beef with entomology or evolution, but I refuse to admit that they teach me much about ethics. Consider the fact that human action ranges to the extremes. People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — Anything but Human

Yes, mostly I agree with this quote (I meant to copy the entire quote, but for some reason it did not copy), except for one thing - he seems to be dissing science for not doing what it was never meant to do. Pure science does not enter the realm of ethics. That is not part of its mandate.

But scientific knowledge may be applied to philosophy.

your craving for certainty — Banno

Isn’t that epistemological, if not psychological? And craving for X means I don’t have X, so I don’t see the relevance of certainty.

Isn’t this OP more a question of ontology, and of a how morality arises? What morality consists of? What happens when you take God out of moral argumentation - is there any morality left to speak of?

I think there is. But not if we also jettison objectivity - objectivity being something like a more universally equalizing playground against which moral agents respond and interact.

Just because I believe in objectivity, and find it sort of a priori in the mix with morality, it doesn’t mean I know anything of the objective world, let alone know it with certainty. I still may not know good morals - that is the epistemological inquiry.

I am just saying, seeking a morality bereft of objectivity, void of any objective measure or component, hampers the exercise to the point of never yielding a morality.

A purely conventional morality will never satisfy, or justify impulse and instinct control. A conventional morality is purely speculative as to purpose and function. Like a “better world” and “the right thing to do” may be folly.

Will there ever be a time when human beings will not have to use a ladder carefully when getting down from the roof? Maybe, but my method for determining the right way to get off the roof, using a conventional ladder, is not pure 100% convention; my decision to obey, like the shape of the ladder, are both also formed by the impact of an objective world, a world influencing all of us regardless of the conventions we make of it.

proof is in the pudding. Either our social bets pay off and our models of behavior are validated by the actions of others, or they are invalidated and we have to start over — Joshs

Where is the pudding found? You say “validated by the actions of others.” Are both of these sources (in the pudding, and actions of others), these pieces of the picture of morality you create, mere conventions? Are other people and the measurements once shared between them merely conventions? This picture you paint includes an objective world in itself. The pudding where proof can be measured “the same” among multiple actors.

Murder isn’t just wrong for me, or because you and I agree it is wrong for us. We discovered things about the world shared among fellow human beings that compel us all to recognize and admit: murder is bad in itself. If we don’t think so, why would we bother arguing morality with anyone who disagrees? Why would we think we could ever agree on what was moral and what is not, without an objective world, a laboratory of sorts to prove things and validate theories of morality?

murder is bad in itself — Fire Ologist

That’s right. Killing isnt bad in itself, murder is. The sentence ‘murder is wrong’ is a truism, since the word already means ‘wrongful killing’. The fact we have a litany of words expressing judgements of blame and immorality doesn’t guarantee we will all agree on what situations justify assessments of wrongfulness, even though we can all agree that the words connote things which are designated ‘bad in themselves’.

Now - as to the "gassing of the Jews" during WW2 - that is a big question - At the pinnacle of this movement was one man - Hitler - who was a deviant from the norm - — Questioner

Explaining the Holocaust as the result of one deviant individual is unpersuasive. Hitler was elected, and he didn't personally kill any Jews. Hundreds of thousands of Germans did.

More important, that's beside the point. I was simply using the Holocaust as an example of humans lacking empathy. There are hundreds of other examples: Witch killings, Inquisitions, slavery, communist executions and gulags, etc. etc. etc. All suggest a lack of "biological" empathy.

The video you linked is also unpersuasive. 14-month-old children have learned a lot, and become enculturated. Indeed, you must be familiar with reems of research suggesting that babies who are not cuddled fail to grow, fail to learn empathy or sympathy (sympathy being the better word for what you are getting at then empathy), and are handicapped in other ways.