• ToothyMaw
    1.3k

    To believe that human morality, even the highest and most substantial, is in no way dependent on religion, or necessarily linked to it, is a fallacy.Rafaella Leon

    What about something like preference utilitarianism? It is based on a secular principle: the maximization of fulfilment of preferences. I don't see how it is related to religion at all, even if there is an overlap between the actions prescribed by said principle and a form of religious morality. I think you are being fallacious; a similar conclusion can be reached independently from more than one starting point.

    There has never been a “secular civilization”.Rafaella Leon

    The United State's constitution is entirely secular (despite the best efforts of evangelists and such).

    The atheists morality is only good because their conduct schematically — and externally — coincides with what the principles of religion demand, that is, that the very possibility of good lay conduct was created and sedimented by a long religious tradition whose moral rules, once absorbed in the body of society, began to function more or less automatically.Rafaella Leon

    So only religious morality, or derivations of it, are good? Religious morality is entirely arbitrary if one subscribes to the view that moral actions are obligatory merely because god commands them; this cannot be avoided unless one admits that moral facts independent of god exist. If this were true an atheist could be good for following a code of conduct entirely separate from god or religion. This would be a truly secular and objective morality. Are religious people willing to concede that their morality is as arbitrary as something more subjective that an atheist might subscribe to? I doubt it. Anything can be good with traditional religious morality; at least humanists draw lines and use reason to reach their conclusions.
  • Restitutor
    47
    Ok, cool.

    The first statement you made was

    morality comes from religionsRafaella Leon

    I ask a question

    What do you mean by this statement?Restitutor

    you then make the statement

    To believe that human morality, even the highest and most substantial, is in no way dependent on religion, or necessarily linked to it, is a fallacy.Rafaella Leon

    This is a rather cheap rhetorical trick often called a straw man argument. Instead of answering the question you were asked, you simply made your own statement (purposefully absurd) and then you said the statement you made was a "fallacy". Do you actual have any actual justification for the statement that morality comes from religion?

    ll civilizations were born from original religious outbreaks.Rafaella Leon

    You are a fan of making big statements that are not justifiable. Where is there any prof of this, where did you get from. Even if all civilizations were religious it doesn't mean civilization was born from original religious outbreaks. it just doesn't follow logical. It seems quite possible that people could have been religious long long long before they become a civilization. you are just saying stuff.

    There has never been a “secular civilization”Rafaella Leon

    depends how you define it, there are plenty of modern countries were the majority of people aren't actuary religious. But who cares?

    For an atheist, there is not even the concept of truth, in the end everything is relative to themRafaella Leon

    Linguistically how the heck placement of the word relative does not significance change the first half of the sentence. Would you actually care to justify this sentence?

    all “secular morals” are just an excerpt from previous religious moral codesRafaella Leon

    Justify this statement, were you there? are there any written records? is there any anthropological evidence or do you just think that if you say it confident enough people will believe you? I personalty suspect "moral" and "immoral" actions came first and then at some point these acts started to be seen as positive or negative by our fellows and we let each other know what we thought of each others actions first with proto language, and eventual started to attach words that signified our approval and disapproval of other peoples actions, these words would be the ancestors of the modern words moral and immoral. Probably sometimes after we started developing these words we probably started up with proto religion but who the hell knows. This is based on what we observe in chimps now and in theories of language development. The idea of god is just a more complicated and abstract concept than, (in cave man speak) that bad, you bad for doing that bad thing.

    The atheists morality is only good because their conduct schematically — and externally — coincides with what the principles of religion demand, that is, that the very possibility of good lay conduct was created and sedimented by a long religious tradition whose moral rules, once absorbed in the body of society, began to function more or less automatically.Rafaella Leon

    You say the strangest stuff. Its like you have only heard about atheists in some antiquated written by somebody who had never actually met an atheist and had an anti-atheist agenda.
    The actual deal is, people are religious have an intellectually unjustifiable belief in god which they use to justify their intellectually unjustifiable belief in moral absolutes. The all the vast majority of atheists are doing is skipping the belief in religion wail maintaining their intellectually unjustifiable belief in moral absolutes. Only very few atheists (like me) neither believe in truth or moral absolutes. I have taking the trouble to inquiry, and this thread is just one strand of my enquiry.

    Religion has undoubtedly helped shape and codify morality but there isn’t a shred of evidence that morality is dependent on religion. There are plenty of atheists that have a strong sense of morality and many people who profess religion that are deeply immoral. Sweden the second least religiose countries in the world and yet it takes care of its poor and needy better than almost any other country in the world. On the other hand, the Republican party that constantly professes religion is suing to allow insurance companies to discriminate against people based on pre-existing conditions. If I was one of people that the bible professes we should love and treat charitably I would chose living in Sweden over living in whatever dystopia the religiose republicans would create.

    The idea that over the longer term there will be a problem is kind of possible I suppose but there is no evidence for it. It seems much more likely that atheists will just keep on with their intellectually unjustifiable belief in moral absolutes and we will just keep on keeping on.
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k


    since all morality comes from religions, and they do not believe in an objective transcendent powerRafaella Leon

    this post self-destructs in its first sentence. Best not to engage - this poster is either deeply confused or trolling.
  • ToothyMaw
    1.3k

    People who are religious will normally, at least to some extent under-gird their moral structure with their religion.Restitutor

    Many religious people use Divine Command Theory to "under-gird" their normative moral beliefs reflected in revelation. Divine Command Theory dictates that moral actions are obligatory merely because god commands them. This makes morality totally arbitrary (if objective). In a way, god is the easiest solution to the issue of objectivity; many people just want morality to be objective so bad that they will bend over backwards trying to justify unjustifiable beliefs. Apologetics is an industry.

    Atheists often times have a more provisional morality, and humanists in particular are often rigorous in their justifications for moral actions; they don't start with a conclusion based upon faith and work backwards. They mostly want to improve the human condition, and, if one make this their goal, there are real, objective steps that can be taken, such as limiting emissions to fight climate change, or reducing factory farming. And so, while there may not be an objective morality, there are more or less reasonable beliefs, and, thus, actions, given certain assumptions.

    For me the idea of absolute morality that extends beyond what is self-serving is as unlikely as there being a white bearded god out there. I think that atheists carry on believing in absolute morality because the idea of morality is so emotionally and practically important to us. For these reasons we overlook the fact it doesn’t make intellectual sense.Restitutor

    If someone defines morality in a suitably robust sense one can justify any number of principles or actions. If one defines morality in terms of non-arbitrariness one can select only for moral actions that one's opinions, identity, or inclination have no bearing upon. Whether or not one should value non-arbitrariness is uncertain perhaps, but once one decides upon it, certain moral actions make more or less sense and some become absolute.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Rafaela, coincidence does not mean causation. In fact, it can not. Religion and morality, as you say, came into existence together. Well, maybe you did not say that, but let's assume you did, otherwise my argument falls down like a drunken tree. Therefore neither has created the other, since for creation a chronological preceding of existence is necessary.

    IN essence, I agree with you. But I also would say that religious morality was created for the needs of society; religious morality was just one more coercing force to keep the peeps behaving as they should. Come secular sociaties, the law took on an enormously big role in keeping peace and order. In fact, religion and morality and sin were fully exchanged to justice, law and crime. Secular societies need not have an operational ethical code, with complete buy-in, as the law takes care of that.

    This is not to say that we have no operational ethical code in secular societies. Yes, we do, and they are precisely what you said: remnants of the old school moralistic religious teachings.
  • Pfhorrest
    4.6k
    Thoughts both about what is real and about what is moral predate the differentiation of methodologies into religious and non-religious. In the earliest societies there were wise folk who were turned to by others for guidance both about what is true and about what is good. Wise folk passed their wisdom on to the next generation and so wisdom traditions were born: stories of how the world came to be the way that it is, parables about why doing this or that is better or worse. Those were both proto-religion and proto-science, as they hadn't yet diverged. It was just the accumulated knowledge, about both reality and morality, of a given civilization.

    As the structure and centralization and authoritarianism of larger civilizations developed, those wisdom traditions developed alongside that trend into religions proper as we now understand them. As they ossified their wisdom, both about reality and about morality, into an inflexible dogmatic form, continuing development of views about both reality and about reality became something contrary to that religious dogmatism, both the natural sciences as we now know them, and the less-developed normative equivalent thereof, secular theories of morality.

    TL;DR: prescriptive thought predates religion just as much as descriptive thought does.
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