Hello there, I'm an atheist

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Homer
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by Homer » Sat Oct 24, 2015 9:51 am

Apos wrote:
In order for this case to make sense as a imputation of atheist ethics, there needs to be a demonstration that the threat of punishment discourages immoral behavior. However, how can one claim to be a moral actor, if they do the 'right thing' because they fear punishment, as opposed to doing the right thing, because it is the right thing. I believe the second person is the truly moral person.
I agree with your "take" on the moral person doing the right thing. I'm pleased to see that a bit of your Christian upbringing has stuck with you. The person ought to do what is right because it is right.

You have not established much of a basis for determining the "oughts". Let us say that I have borrowed $10,000 from a very wealthy man, a billionaire. To secure the loan I have given him the title to my car to hold. The transaction is informal, there is no paperwork. Then one day the man, who is elderly and not as sharp mentally as he once was, sends me a letter thanking me for paying off the loan and included is my car title. I have yet to pay him anything. This gentleman will never miss the $10,000 nor will he be affected negatively in any way. I can surely use the money, as I am poor. How would you, as an atheist, establish what I ought to do? On what basis?

Tell me why my wife and I should, as we have done and continue to do, give money to assist the poor? For example, World Vision helps the poor in far away lands and we will never know who we have helped nor will they know us. There would seem to be no communal benefit in our helping them. I would think an atheist could reason that the greatest good in promoting the human condition would be to let those who are starving die. After all, isn't the world overpopulated with limited resources? And if the poor can raise themselves up they will want to consume even more limited goods and accelerate global warming, harming the rest of us.

I would say it is a no-brainer that punishment discourages immoral behavior.

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Paidion
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by Paidion » Sat Oct 24, 2015 2:51 pm

Is an action morally right because God commands it? Or does God command it because it's morally right?

As a person who believes the latter, I would like to answer the questions you posed to Apos. But I won't. At least not yet.
I want to know Apos's answers.

I will say, however that your "no brainer" is indeed a "brainer." In general, punishment does little or nothing to discourage immoral behaviour. However, it does encourage people to develop better methods of covering up their immoral behaviour. Here are two authors who have pretty well established the uselessness of punishment:

Changing Lenses by Howard Zehr

Changing Paradigms by Paul Redekop
Paidion

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Homer
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by Homer » Sat Oct 24, 2015 4:33 pm

Hi Paidion,

Perhaps it would be better to say "consequences" rather than punishment. Are you saying the thought of consequences never affected your behavior when tempted to do something wrong?

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ApostateltsopA
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by ApostateltsopA » Sat Oct 24, 2015 6:04 pm

Thanks Padion, saved me quite a lot of trouble digging up the punishment is useless citations.

Homer, I don't know if you can see it but your thanking my christian upbringing for my ethical sense is both arrogant and insulting. Please don't hang your biases on me. You have no idea how many unethical things I have seen done with a smile and sense of righteousness. As I have been at repeated efforts to show you, my ethics are bound up in a weighing of wellbeing versus harm. I am not the strawman that we atheists are often painted as by the believers who claim no atheist can be moral.

You should give to your charity only if you can do so with money you can spare and you know how your money is being spent. I don't know about the charity you mentioned but not knowing who you helped rings alarm bells to me. My recent giving has been to help refugees from the fighting in Yemen and here at home to help support young adults who have been regected by their religious families when they came out as atheists. How much do you credit christian values with these people being kicked out of their homes?

As for your starve the poor idea, I think it is clear that you would be decreasing the well being of everyone you treated so. The planet may indeed have limited reasources but we could do a much better job sharing them. We are also able to develop extra planatary resources and everyone we save can add to humanity.

When you say consequences you are possibly beginning to see the possibilities of a consequentialist ethical system. Unless you are just rebranding punishment.

/edit,

And I'm off my phone for a bit so hazaah full keyboard!

At any rate I realized I hadn't responded to your example about the person who had a loan from a forgetful, rich old person.

Rather than delve into the specific ethical choice here, I think your example shows you do understand consequentialism, at least subconsciously. In your example you have added several details to downplay the harm done to the person who lent the money and have worked up the details showing the person who borrowed it could gain in well being. To make a judgment call, I would need more information because you are presenting only a small slice of a much bigger pie. What if the rich person died and the person who had the loan was a beneficiary in the will? Should they pay back 10k of whatever they get to the deceased's trust?

What was the initial plan for repayment? Does the person who borrowed the money have the means to pay it back? Will it cause them serious hardship and if it will why did they take the loan in the first place? Does the older person have a history of giving large gifts as "loans" to avoid taxation? Do they regularly forgive debts by forgetting they never got paid? All of this is relevant, so all I can say with your example is I do not have enough information to make a moral judgment.

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Homer
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by Homer » Mon Oct 26, 2015 9:40 am

Paidion wrote:
Is an action morally right because God commands it?
It might not have anything to do with morality, it might be a positive command which makes it right regardless of morality, as is the case with many of our laws.

Apos wrote:
Homer, I don't know if you can see it but your thanking my christian upbringing for my ethical sense is both arrogant and insulting. Please don't hang your biases on me.
Sorry if I offended you but you gave a rather Christian response and I would think some of your Christian upbringing, if that is what you had, would still have a positive effect on you. But then again I do not know what you were taught in your youth. I think there is a tad bit of bitterness in you. You should not have any grudge against Christ because of bad behavior on the part of those who claim to be followers of Him.
Thanks Padion, saved me quite a lot of trouble digging up the punishment is useless citations
I do not want to get side tracked into a discussion about the efficacy of punishment. That it is useless is absurd; I know this from experience. You can get into all sorts of ramifications such as what kind of punishment, how does punishment relate to consequences, etc. It can be readily acknowledged that punishment is unlikely to change the heart.
You should give to your charity only if you can do so with money you can spare and you know how your money is being spent.
If we are not willing to take any risk in our giving there will not be much giving done. As Christians we must be willing to risk being taken advantage of.
As for your starve the poor idea, I think it is clear that you would be decreasing the well being of everyone you treated so.
Agreed. But it would also benefit the strong and thus promote the survival of the fittest which is what most atheists believe "created" us. Our well being enhanced would counter-balance the harm so it would seem to be a wash if I understand your ethical system.
The planet may indeed have limited resources but we could do a much better job sharing them.
Yes, if everyone followed the teachings of Christ there would be very few hungry children.
All of this is relevant, so all I can say with your example is I do not have enough information to make a moral judgment.
The question is simple and straight-forward. You should be able to answer it as stated, the answer is easy for me. You appear to need a lot of detail to decide what to do as in your comments about helping the poor. Seems your ethical system is rather complicated. Sometimes an ethical question must be answered quickly without a lot of digging into the details such as whether a person should lie to save a life.

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ApostateltsopA
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by ApostateltsopA » Tue Oct 27, 2015 12:34 am

Homer wrote:Paidion wrote:
Is an action morally right because God commands it?
It might not have anything to do with morality, it might be a positive command which makes it right regardless of morality, as is the case with many of our laws.
Isn't that just a restatement of the first, something is right because god commanded it?

Homer wrote: Apos wrote:
Homer, I don't know if you can see it but your thanking my christian upbringing for my ethical sense is both arrogant and insulting. Please don't hang your biases on me.
Sorry if I offended you but you gave a rather Christian response and I would think some of your Christian upbringing, if that is what you had, would still have a positive effect on you. But then again I do not know what you were taught in your youth. I think there is a tad bit of bitterness in you. You should not have any grudge against Christ because of bad behavior on the part of those who claim to be followers of Him.
Thank you, I'm not bitter, but I do resent the implication that I am 'Christian' I suspect it is because the word has no meaning to me which is positive. For me it is neutral at best, and often negative. When I read you talk about 'Christian Ethics' I think you mean ethics like yours. Or perhaps ethics which are good. However I don't see your brand of Christian as any more or less Christian than that practiced by the Westbourough Baptists, as an extreme example. Both of you cite the bible, and a belief in Jesus. You may see yourself as a true Christian, and them as doing it wrong, but they probably see you the same way. For me to count one as "true Christians" and ignore the other would be to commit myself to a no true Scotsman fallacy. This is what I was trying to imply when I asked you about the christian values of christian parents who disown their children when the children come out as atheists, gay or both.

I don't have a grudge against Christ. As far as I am concerned he is a culturally relevant fictional character. Having a grudge against him would be like being angry at Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy or Zeus.

Homer wrote:
Thanks Padion, saved me quite a lot of trouble digging up the punishment is useless citations
I do not want to get side tracked into a discussion about the efficacy of punishment. That it is useless is absurd; I know this from experience. You can get into all sorts of ramifications such as what kind of punishment, how does punishment relate to consequences, etc. It can be readily acknowledged that punishment is unlikely to change the heart.
Fair enough. 'Useless' was slight hyperbole. However I will argue that when dealing with animals punishment is the least effective form of conditioning. When dealing with humans it reinforces the idea that might makes right, and undermines a truly ethical understanding of the world. If you want to get into this conversation we can, if not then please understand my statements here are not controversial.
Homer wrote:
You should give to your charity only if you can do so with money you can spare and you know how your money is being spent.
If we are not willing to take any risk in our giving there will not be much giving done. As Christians we must be willing to risk being taken advantage of.
I find this really interesting. Obviously there will be some risk in any endeavor, but I would seek to minimize that risk in the effort of doing the most good. I don't give less because I research my charities. I give what I can afford and because my funds are limited I put them where I know they will be put to good use.
Homer wrote:
As for your starve the poor idea, I think it is clear that you would be decreasing the well being of everyone you treated so.
Agreed. But it would also benefit the strong and thus promote the survival of the fittest which is what most atheists believe "created" us. Our well being enhanced would counter-balance the harm so it would seem to be a wash if I understand your ethical system.
You are misrepresenting survival of the fittest. It is not about the most physically strong surviving, unless that physical strength overcomes all obstacles. In humans our fitness is based on our social interactions and tool use, far more than on our physical strength. The thing which sets us furthest above the competition is our technology and science.

Furthermore we can study the success of various previous and current human cultures, and we quickly see that those who embrace the kind of barbarism you are suggesting do not fare well. It is in our demonstrated best interest to nurture all of our members to the best of our ability.
Homer wrote:
The planet may indeed have limited resources but we could do a much better job sharing them.
Yes, if everyone followed the teachings of Christ there would be very few hungry children.
This leads to a tangent. We can talk about the teachings of Christ if you like, suffice to say I disagree with you.
Homer wrote:
All of this is relevant, so all I can say with your example is I do not have enough information to make a moral judgment.
The question is simple and straight-forward. You should be able to answer it as stated, the answer is easy for me. You appear to need a lot of detail to decide what to do as in your comments about helping the poor. Seems your ethical system is rather complicated. Sometimes an ethical question must be answered quickly without a lot of digging into the details such as whether a person should lie to save a life.
No it isn't. I agree we have to make snap judgments, regularly. If I had to make a call on your example given the limited information I'd be inclined to have the person pay the loan giver back and make them aware of the error. However if they were going to starve trying then I'd probably change my mind, but I would want to know why they took the loan in the first place. If the loan was offered predatorily then we'd be looking at the sin of usury, right out of the bible. Or just jerky lending practices. If the lender made regular gifts in the form of "loans" then it would be clear that keeping the money is best, especially if we knew that trying to pay them back would cause them emotional distress, and they were in no financial distress. The details matter. You seem to understand this, and yet don't seem to want to admit it.

Ultimately, each situation for ethical judgment will be unique. Some, like slavery and rape being almost universally bad, are easy calls. The situations where someone could argue for these things are so absurd as to be called fiction. In actual practice they are effectively, always bad.

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Paidion
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by Paidion » Tue Oct 27, 2015 1:18 pm

Homer, if the morally right is tantamount to what God commands, then if God commanded you to kill your wife, would you consider this morally right? Some people have actually done such acts, believing that God commanded it. Because I believe God commands only what is morally right, I would know that I was mistaken if I thought God had commanded such a thing. That's why I think Moses was mistaken in recording that God had commanded the Israelites to kill. Jesus never depicted the Father as doing such things. Although Jesus regarded some of what was spoken by Moses and the prophets as God's word, there were some things that were recorded as having been said by God, about which Jesus was silent.

I think knowledge of what is morally right or wrong is internal to mankind, just as we have an internal recognition of colour. Of course, some people have a deficiency in colour recognition, and perhaps some have so in recognition of the moral. After Adam and Eve ate the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they and their descendants possessed this internal ability. You may well ask, "Why then, do not all people agree on matters of morality?" Besides the basic moral principles on which all agree, there is moral reasoning involved, and in that people do not agree.

It is said that there was a particular tribe in which the men always killed their fathers when they reached the age of 60. That seems to us a most immoral practice! But it was based on a false belief. The tribe believed that at whatever age you died, that age you would maintain in the afterlife forever. Thus to save their fathers from being old and sick and crippled forever, the men killed their fathers while they were still relatively young and healthy. Today, some of the practices which are considered morally okay, are also based on faulty beliefs. Some people think it is okay to abort a foetus, because of the belief that it is but a mass of tissue that is not human. Others believe (correctly) that that "mass of tissue" is a human being, and that to abort it is therefore murder. Now I will attempt to answer those questions you posed to Apos:
Tell me why my wife and I should, as we have done and continue to do, give money to assist the poor? For example, World Vision helps the poor in far away lands and we will never know who we have helped nor will they know us. There would seem to be no communal benefit in our helping them. I would think an atheist could reason that the greatest good in promoting the human condition would be to let those who are starving die. After all, isn't the world overpopulated with limited resources? And if the poor can raise themselves up they will want to consume even more limited goods and accelerate global warming, harming the rest of us.
First, I consider "sin" or morally wrong actions, to be those actions which harm other people or oneself. Conversely, I believe morally right actions to be those which benefit others or oneself. So your action in assisting the needy through World Vision is clearly a morally right action. Such actions ought (in the moral sense) to be carried out regardless of whether or not refraining from doing so would benefit some sub-group of society (or even the rest of society). As soon as we sacrifice some people to the benefit of others, the practice escalates, and soon their will be no one left except a few elite and/or powerful persons who happen to possess most of the resources, military and otherwise.
Suppose I borrowed $10,000 from a very wealthy man, a billionaire. To secure the loan I have given him the title to my car to hold. The transaction is informal, there is no paperwork. Then one day the man, who is elderly and not as sharp mentally as he once was, sends me a letter thanking me for paying off the loan and included is my car title. I have yet to pay him anything. This gentleman will never miss the $10,000 nor will he be affected negatively in any way. I can surely use the money, as I am poor. How would you, as an atheist, establish what I ought to do? On what basis?
You ought to repay the money you borrowed. For if you don't you have begun to become dishonest. And dishonesty escalates. Soon you will be harming others monetarily, and when eventually caught, you yourself will be harmed by others. Remember that all harm is sin. That is why it is wrong to lie in order to take advantage of others. In doing so, you are harming other people. Yet there are exceptions, cases in which there are moral conflicts. The example that has already been stated is that it is morally right to lie in order to save a life. The benefit you would provide outweighs any harm that might ensue.
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

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Homer
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by Homer » Tue Oct 27, 2015 5:05 pm

Hi Paidion,

You wrote:
Homer, if the morally right is tantamount to what God commands, then if God commanded you to kill your wife, would you consider this morally right? Some people have actually done such acts, believing that God commanded it. Because I believe God commands only what is morally right, I would know that I was mistaken if I thought God had commanded such a thing. That's why I think Moses was mistaken in recording that God had commanded the Israelites to kill. Jesus never depicted the Father as doing such things. Although Jesus regarded some of what was spoken by Moses and the prophets as God's word, there were some things that were recorded as having been said by God, about which Jesus was silent.
God commanded many things that are neither moral nor immoral, such as the "ritual" parts of the Law of Moses. And the very first command regarding the eating of the tree was such: a positive command, right because God said so.

For a number of years I read of "positive commands" or laws when reading the older theologians and I went right by assuming I knew what was meant when I didn't. But the term is (or was) a common one and can be found in Black's Law Dictionary. It simply refers to laws established by the one(s) in authority that are neither moral nor immoral. Rules regarding who may vote, how we drive cars, taxes we pay, etc. are positive laws.

I think you can see that many of the commands in the scripture are positive in nature, not moral. There are many in the OT, and some in the new such as assembling together, observing the Lord's supper, and being baptized.

Now consider this:
if God commanded you to kill your wife, would you consider this morally right?
I do not believe that will ever happen, but what about God's command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, an act the would be morally wrong for sure. But Abraham, man of faith that he was, did not hesitate but promptly set off to carry it out. God's command to Abraham was right because God commanded it.
(my question to Apos):
Tell me why my wife and I should, as we have done and continue to do, give money to assist the poor? For example, World Vision helps the poor in far away lands and we will never know who we have helped nor will they know us. There would seem to be no communal benefit in our helping them. I would think an atheist could reason that the greatest good in promoting the human condition would be to let those who are starving die. After all, isn't the world overpopulated with limited resources? And if the poor can raise themselves up they will want to consume even more limited goods and accelerate global warming, harming the rest of us.

(Paidion's response)
First, I consider "sin" or morally wrong actions, to be those actions which harm other people or oneself. Conversely, I believe morally right actions to be those which benefit others or oneself. So your action in assisting the needy through World Vision is clearly a morally right action. Such actions ought (in the moral sense) to be carried out regardless of whether or not refraining from doing so would benefit some sub-group of society (or even the rest of society). As soon as we sacrifice some people to the benefit of others, the practice escalates, and soon their will be no one left except a few elite and/or powerful persons who happen to possess most of the resources, military and otherwise.
I agree. The question was meant to clarify Apos' ethical position.

My question for Apos:
Suppose I borrowed $10,000 from a very wealthy man, a billionaire. To secure the loan I have given him the title to my car to hold. The transaction is informal, there is no paperwork. Then one day the man, who is elderly and not as sharp mentally as he once was, sends me a letter thanking me for paying off the loan and included is my car title. I have yet to pay him anything. This gentleman will never miss the $10,000 nor will he be affected negatively in any way. I can surely use the money, as I am poor. How would you, as an atheist, establish what I ought to do? On what basis?

Paidion's answer:
You ought to repay the money you borrowed. For if you don't you have begun to become dishonest. And dishonesty escalates. Soon you will be harming others monetarily, and when eventually caught, you yourself will be harmed by others. Remember that all harm is sin. That is why it is wrong to lie in order to take advantage of others. In doing so, you are harming other people. Yet there are exceptions, cases in which there are moral conflicts. The example that has already been stated is that it is morally right to lie in order to save a life. The benefit you would provide outweighs any harm that might ensue.
We agree.

I suspect the following sums up Apos' ethical system; he can correct me if I'm wrong:
Legal positivism denies the existence of natural law and accepts only the justice implied in the law of the state: it says that you can’t determine the law by looking for underlying rational or spiritual processes. The law is seen as a construction of the general will of the people of a state, and cannot be wrong, because a whole people can do no wrong in creating their own laws for their own state. Rights in positive law are freedoms or protections which are written down in statutes and legally enforceable.
If there is no God there is no such thing as natural (moral) law. And since it is in our head naturally, how to explain it? We have a conscience that eats at us when we do wrong because we know naturally that we have done wrong.

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ApostateltsopA
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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by ApostateltsopA » Mon Nov 02, 2015 1:53 pm

Homer,

I'm having a hard time believing you are reading the things I post. Your legal positivism is just moral relativism with a different name. I've repeated myself, ad nausium it seems, on this topic. What is it about my position that is indistinguishable to you from relativism?

Do you plan to answer any of the questions I posed to you?

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Re: Hello there, I'm an atheist

Post by Paidion » Mon Nov 02, 2015 5:27 pm

Hi Apos,

I just wondering if you might clarify your stance as a self-declared atheist.

Most theists define "atheist" as one who disbelieves in God, that is, who believes that God does not exist.
They also define "agnostic" as one who neither believes that God exists nor believes that He doesn't exist.

In visiting atheist sites myself, I have discovered that most who claim to be atheists do not differentiate between "atheist" and "agnostic."

I would be happy to know where you stand on the matter.
Paidion

Man judges a person by his past deeds, and administers penalties for his wrongdoing. God judges a person by his present character, and disciplines him that he may become righteous.

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