Atheists and Morals

[Green Eyed Lady]

Apr 26, 2012 9:59:15 GMT -5 cael said:

Oh yeah! Seeing as in seeing a god or seeing scientific proof otherwise

Ahhhhhhh!! I get you now!

[cael]

Yep! If my post didn't accurately convey it... I don't know! I wavered for a long time between thinking of myself as agnostic or atheist and kind of still do.

[Green Eyed Lady]

Apr 26, 2012 9:54:35 GMT -5 @smuttenchops said:

I will pray for you all...

I appreciate that. I could use all you've got!

[cael]

Doc?! ;D

[Green Eyed Lady]

I certainly had a crisis of faith several years ago, cael, so I really can understand what you are saying. Only you can come to know what you see as truth.

[Deleted]

Apr 26, 2012 10:03:34 GMT -5 cael said:

Doc?! ;D

I don't know for sure, but I've got a feeling.....

[cael]

See that's what I love about my church (I'm unitarian universalist) - we encourage each other to find our own truths and meanings. There are even atheists who attend my church who have for years. It's hard to make it not sound like a cult but we're really great, I promise

My mother always tells people "I'm a Buddhist, my husband is a liberal Christian, my daughter is a humanist and my son is pagan. And we're all UU"

[Green Eyed Lady]

I suppose any church could sound like a cult to those who hold different beliefs. I, myself, would never make that judgment....unless it was a cult, of course!

Seriously, tho. I found my peace. I wish that for everyone....whatever that peace might be for them.

[Green Eyed Lady]

My father was an atheist. He was also the best man I've ever known. I won't tell you that I don't worry about his eternity, but I believe you are either a good person or you aren't....and that there are rewards for those who are. And that's that!

[mmhmm]

Apr 26, 2012 10:07:20 GMT -5 cael said:

See that's what I love about my church (I'm unitarian universalist) - we encourage each other to find our own truths and meanings. There are even atheists who attend my church who have for years. It's hard to make it not sound like a cult but we're really great, I promise

My mother always tells people "I'm a Buddhist, my husband is a liberal Christian, my daughter is a humanist and my son is pagan. And we're all UU"

LOL! That sounds like our family, cael. We've got atheists, agnostics, and true believers all mixed together. We manage to get along just fine.

[Tiny]

Apr 25, 2012 10:50:42 GMT -5 thyme4change said:

In your experience, are athesists less moral or less principled than religious folks?

I think an atheist who has spent some time thinking about their 'morality' and 'ethics' tend to be more 'sure' of their morality and consider that in their actions/behavior - versus someone (atheist OR theist) who hasn't spent the time thinking it thru and making up their own mind. In the latter case their 'moral' actions are done because 'that's what they've been told to do' or 'that's what everyone else is doing'. They haven't actually considered what makes those actions 'right' or 'wrong'.
Slavery is an example - humans have been happily enslaving other humans for thousands of years. How do you 'know' it's right or wrong?

I do find most of my fellow atheists to be more knowledgeable about basic religious stuff (of many faiths) than some of the practicioners of those faiths. I know that doesn't really have anything to do with 'morality' but maybe more with 'questioning'... which is how an atheist figures out their moral code. I also find my fellow atheists to have given alot of thought and consideration to their own moral codes.

I think it's the introspection and questioning about one's morals that makes a person a better person versus someone who just follows along with what they are told to do - because that's what they are suppose to do. This doesn't mean that some of the stuff we all 'follow along with' isn't right or moral. It's just that the REASONs you follow along should have more of an explanation than "It's right!" or "It's what God wants!". This goes for both atheists AND theists. Some of the theists I know in real life that I'd consider to have actual belief in their God (or Faith) are the ones who also have a good grasp on the reasons behind their moral codes. They've done alot of introspection and questioning.

I find it odd that someone who is religious might have to make a choice between what their conscience (and alot of thought and maybe even some plain old rational thought/logic) tells them is 'right' and what their religion tells them is 'right'. This makes for good conversations with my theist friends!

I don't have the fortitude to suck it up and do/go along with something because God sez it's right and just, especially if I've worked it round and round and my sense of reason finds it wrong or unjust.

[Green Eyed Lady]

It's just that the REASONs you follow along should have more of an explanation than "It's right!" or "It's what God wants!".

I'm having trouble understanding this point. What more explanation do you need than "It's the right thing to do."? I suppose you could expound on that by saying, "It's the right thing to do because......" but it all means the same thing.

[Green Eyed Lady]

I find it odd that someone who is religious might have to make a choice between what their conscience (and alot of thought and maybe even some plain old rational thought/logic) tells them is 'right' and what their religion tells them is 'right'.

I could give you my explanation for this, but it would turn this into a religion discussion, which is expressly forbidden here!

You raise some good points. But please understand that those of us who do believe have also come to our decision through meditation (I almost typed "medication"....LOL), study and questioning. Do not be lured into the mindset that those of us who believe do so only because the Bible tells us so or because our parents or Sunday School teachers hammered it into us. We are not sheep following blindly along. Just as you have come to your system of beliefs through study, questioning and meditation, so have we.

[Green Eyed Lady]

Hi, Lonewolf! I don't meditate in that sense. I was speaking more about deep thought. My mind only has one channel and it's usually just static.

[mmhmm]

Apr 26, 2012 11:18:18 GMT -5 Green Eyed Lady said:

I find it odd that someone who is religious might have to make a choice between what their conscience (and alot of thought and maybe even some plain old rational thought/logic) tells them is 'right' and what their religion tells them is 'right'.

I could give you my explanation for this, but it would turn this into a religion discussion, which is expressly forbidden here!

You raise some good points. But please understand that those of us who do believe have also come to our decision through meditation (I almost typed "medication"....LOL), study and questioning. Do not be lured into the mindset that those of us who believe do so only because the Bible tells us so or because our parents or Sunday School teachers hammered it into us. We are not sheep following blindly along. Just as you have come to your system of beliefs through study, questioning and meditation, so have we.

This is the religious discussion thread, GEL. The discussion of religion, far from being forbidden, is encouraged here. That's why the thread was created.

[Tiny]

Apr 26, 2012 11:18:18 GMT -5 Green Eyed Lady said:

I find it odd that someone who is religious might have to make a choice between what their conscience (and alot of thought and maybe even some plain old rational thought/logic) tells them is 'right' and what their religion tells them is 'right'.

I could give you my explanation for this, but it would turn this into a religion discussion, which is expressly forbidden here!

You raise some good points. But please understand that those of us who do believe have also come to our decision through meditation (I almost typed "medication"....LOL), study and questioning. Do not be lured into the mindset that those of us who believe do so only because the Bible tells us so or because our parents or Sunday School teachers hammered it into us. We are not sheep following blindly along. Just as you have come to your system of beliefs through study, questioning and meditation, so have we.

I do understand that many who do believe have put some effort into their belief. I admire people who have examined their 'faith' and who's belief has been retained or grown stronger or even changed.
Unfortunately, the majority of people I associate with only seem to observe their 'faith' on religious holidays or for religious ceremonies. They barely follow any of the major 'rules' of the religion. Some of them freely admit they know little about their faith/religious tradition and don't really seem to observe many of the rules/laws but still identify as X faith. I hope you see that this experience is what I was alluding to and NOT that all believers are blindly following along. I'm aware that many people put in the effort to define their beliefs and morality (I can mention a few people in my real life who I can say have soul searched on issues of morality).

To keep with the topic of this thread - there's alot of ins and outs to morality. One simplistic example is lying. We'd all agree that lying isn't right and hardly ever justified. But sometimes there are occassions when telling the truth can be unnecessarily hurtful and maybe even cruel - so do you lie or tactfully avoid the truth or do you just go with the cold hard truth? I'm sure we've all been in situations like this. Do you just go with 'what feels right'? or do you have some set standard for figuring out when a situation calls for the truth (even if it hurts you or others) and are your moral convictions strong enough to stick to that standard.

At this point I wonder if 'moral convictions' that you aren't 100% sure about (and you're just hoping for the best) but yet stick to them any better then 'moral convictions' you've given alot of thought to.

[Tiny]

Apr 26, 2012 11:18:18 GMT -5 Green Eyed Lady said:

I find it odd that someone who is religious might have to make a choice between what their conscience (and alot of thought and maybe even some plain old rational thought/logic) tells them is 'right' and what their religion tells them is 'right'.

I could give you my explanation for this, but it would turn this into a religion discussion, which is expressly forbidden here!

I understand. No need for explanations. I should have indicated that for me this is more of a Rhetorical Question but something that I enjoy thinking about or hearing other people's take on.
I find moral delimnas and thought experiments to be entertaining and thought provoking (and sometimes gets me to think outside my box) - NOT entertaining in an Internet Troll trying to encite posters to rip at each other kinda way.

For the record I subscibe to the 'debate rule' that states who ever knowingly calls names or knowingly issues a personal attack has admitted defeat or 'loses' and has nothing more to add to the debate. The same goes for general conversations - name calling/personal attacks indicate the person is no longer engaging in polite conversation and has most likely changed it to a debate and has admitted defeat/loss.
While I may inadvertantly step on toes (I'm lacking in some social skills ) I'm NOT here to intentionally do that.

[weltschmerz]

I try to adhere to the tenets of Secular Humanism.

The Affirmations of Humanism:
A Statement of Principles
We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.
We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.
We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.
We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.
We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.
We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.
We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.
We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.
We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.
We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.
We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.
We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.
We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.
We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.
We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.
We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.
We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.
We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.
We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.
We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.
We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

[Green Eyed Lady]

Apr 26, 2012 11:47:46 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

Apr 26, 2012 11:18:18 GMT -5 Green Eyed Lady said:

I could give you my explanation for this, but it would turn this into a religion discussion, which is expressly forbidden here!

You raise some good points. But please understand that those of us who do believe have also come to our decision through meditation (I almost typed "medication"....LOL), study and questioning. Do not be lured into the mindset that those of us who believe do so only because the Bible tells us so or because our parents or Sunday School teachers hammered it into us. We are not sheep following blindly along. Just as you have come to your system of beliefs through study, questioning and meditation, so have we.

This is the religious discussion thread, GEL. The discussion of religion, far from being forbidden, is encouraged here. That's why the thread was created.

Ohhhhhhh. So sorry! I guess I didn't know there was a place where this type of discussion is allowed. Guess I don't get out of EE much, huh?

[mmhmm]

I'm with you, welts.

[mmhmm]

Apr 26, 2012 13:32:45 GMT -5 Green Eyed Lady said:

Apr 26, 2012 11:47:46 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

This is the religious discussion thread, GEL. The discussion of religion, far from being forbidden, is encouraged here. That's why the thread was created.

Ohhhhhhh. So sorry! I guess I didn't know there was a place where this type of discussion is allowed. Guess I don't get out of EE much, huh?

LOL! Guess not! A thread titled "Religious Discussion" should be a giveaway, though. I thought only I did things like that! ;D

[Green Eyed Lady]

Unfortunately, the majority of people I associate with only seem to observe their 'faith' on religious holidays or for religious ceremonies. They barely follow any of the major 'rules' of the religion. Some of them freely admit they know little about their faith/religious tradition and don't really seem to observe many of the rules/laws but still identify as X faith. I hope you see that this experience is what I was alluding to and NOT that all believers are blindly following along. I'm aware that many people put in the effort to define their beliefs and morality (I can mention a few people in my real life who I can say have soul searched on issues of morality).

I do see what you are saying and you are absolutely right. There are a lot of people who only give their faith lip service. I know plenty of them myself. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that someone (you) can identify the difference between saying one is a Christian and actually being a Christian. A lot of people have difficulty with that difference.

To keep with the topic of this thread - there's alot of ins and outs to morality. One simplistic example is lying. We'd all agree that lying isn't right and hardly ever justified. But sometimes there are occassions when telling the truth can be unnecessarily hurtful and maybe even cruel - so do you lie or tactfully avoid the truth or do you just go with the cold hard truth? I'm sure we've all been in situations like this. Do you just go with 'what feels right'? or do you have some set standard for figuring out when a situation calls for the truth (even if it hurts you or others) and are your moral convictions strong enough to stick to that standard.

That's funny because you've hit on quite a difficult issue. Weighing one sin against the other! Keep in mind that none of us is without sin and although I am a Christian, I'm about as far from being perfect as they come. So? I'd lie my butt off because in my heart, saving someone pain is the greater good. Later? I'll ask forgiveness, of course, as I own up to my sins. I've been doing a lot of that lately!

At this point I wonder if 'moral convictions' that you aren't 100% sure about (and you're just hoping for the best) but yet stick to them any better then 'moral convictions' you've given alot of thought to.

Another good question. Thing is? The more thought that I give to the things I have strong convictions about, the more questions I have. I think it's a constantly evolving process.

[Green Eyed Lady]

I understand. No need for explanations. I should have indicated that for me this is more of a Rhetorical Question but something that I enjoy thinking about or hearing other people's take on.
I find moral delimnas and thought experiments to be entertaining and thought provoking (and sometimes gets me to think outside my box) - NOT entertaining in an Internet Troll trying to encite posters to rip at each other kinda way.

I didn't think of you that way at all. You seem to be an intelligent human being who is always intersted in learning things about themselves and about others.

If you were a troll, you'd come in here and just tell me I'm stupid. Then you tell me to "prove it". And then I'd tell you to kiss my butt. And then people would eat popcorn. And the mods would tell us to cool it. And we'd start again the next day!!

For the record I subscibe to the 'debate rule' that states who ever knowingly calls names or knowingly issues a personal attack has admitted defeat or 'loses' and has nothing more to add to the debate.

I second that. I've also done it on occasion so I won't pretend to be holier than thou!

[thyme4change]

We'd all agree that lying isn't right and hardly ever justified.

I don't agree with this at all. I lie every day, and it is totally justified. If I told everyone the truth of what I was really thinking, I wouldn't have a job, I wouldn't have friends, and I would be divorced.

Lying is justified every time your insecure wife says "Do these jeans make my butt look fat?" Lying is justified when your boss says "I'm the greatest boss in the world." Seriously, I think the truth is extremely overrated.

[Green Eyed Lady]

I like to think that motivation matters!



Please, please PLEASE let it matter!!

[Green Eyed Lady]

LOL! Guess not! A thread titled "Religious Discussion" should be a giveaway, though. I thought only I did things like that! ;D

It should be....if one ever checked the home page and looked at the different boards. I use the "New Topics" thingy and rarely even look anywhere else. Guilty of being not overly observant. I'm glad to know this is here.

[Deleted]

I really dislike being pigeon holed into a certain religious or non religous designation.
Just sayin,

[mmhmm]

Apr 26, 2012 13:51:31 GMT -5 Green Eyed Lady said:

LOL! Guess not! A thread titled "Religious Discussion" should be a giveaway, though. I thought only I did things like that! ;D

It should be....if one ever checked the home page and looked at the different boards. I use the "New Topics" thingy and rarely even look anywhere else. Guilty of being not overly observant. I'm glad to know this is here.

<grin> I'm guilty of popping into a thread without reading the thread title, too. Probably, we all do it. At least, it's nice to know I'm not alone in my off-topic-ness (or, on-topic and not even knowing it). ;D

[Green Eyed Lady]

Apr 26, 2012 13:57:09 GMT -5 @joey said:

I really dislike being pigeon holed into a certain religious or non religous designation.
Just sayin,

Who did that to you??? Point them out and I'll put gum in their hair!!

[Virgil Showlion]

To me, if there is no Creator who has defines right from wrong, "morality" is an exercise in irrationality. "Ethics" are a perverse holdover of social survival instincts. If one embraces the truth that survival itself is ultimately meaningless in the absence of a defined purpose, the only logical system of values follows from hedonism.

If you enjoy helping others, establishing societies, preserving the world for the purposeless generations to come, then do so. If you wish to die in a single night of drug-induced sexual ecstasy, then do so. If you enjoy rape, torture, murder, then do so joyfully and without inhibition. No physical or scientific law condemns you. Your actions have no impact on the ultimate trajectory of the universe. "Universality" is the folly of philosophers who think in finite time, who assign value to the emotions and well-being of others (of entire societies, even) for no reason other than their personal sense that we "ought to" value these things even if we feel no innate compulsion to do so.

And truly, if meaningless survival and propagation is our lot, if our development as a species is governed solely by the whims of unguided evolution and Darwinist selection, one would expect that the outliers—the killers, torturers, sexual predators—are chaotic agents with productive roles in the continued evolution of our society and our species. They exist because natural forces demand they exist (assuming random evolution works to edify over time, which itself is a completely unprovable assumption on an infinite time horizon).

Thus, in a very real sense, "ethics" are the bigotry of a community incapable of discounting the emotions and well being of others in the pursuit of their own self-gratification. And not surprisingly, most take refuge in associating these ethics with what is "right", based on what they think should be of value, based on ethical postulates, and so on... in an endless succession of circular logic that would be comical if not for the fact that the process itself creates a sense of fulfillment within the "ethical" individual.

As for me, I believe in an almighty and eternal Creator. I believe He set in place moral and spiritual laws that are every bit as real as physical laws such as gravity, and I believe He sanctified a special purpose for mankind. I believe that hedonism, rape, murder, torture, cheating, hatred, covetousness, deceit, adultery, and any number of other things are wrong because they transgress His Law. And if you consider me irrational or plainly deluded to believe these things, we share a common sentiment in that I consider the ethics of Plato, Hegel, Marx, Kant, Nietzsche et al. every bit as contrived.

Put in mathematical terms: you're seeking the Pareto optimum in a universe of Nash equilibria, where the objective function tends to zero absolutely with probability one.

Unfortunately, the majority of people I associate with only seem to observe their 'faith' on religious holidays or for religious ceremonies. They barely follow any of the major 'rules' of the religion. Some of them freely admit they know little about their faith/religious tradition and don't really seem to observe many of the rules/laws but still identify as X faith.

Isn't this the truth.