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I'm just going to say that I do not believe you are a "former leftist and atheist who's cringing at other atheists." This looks like the umpteenth iteration of a particular persona who keeps returning here.
The rejoinder you are complaining about is indeed a certain kind of smug gotcha line that's kind of cringe, but it's a rejoinder to an equally smug and cringeworthy argument. When theists try to play gotcha like that, they invite gotchas in return. This is why atheists who've gotten over their "arguing with evangelicals" phase usually aren't interested in that kind of debate. I'm fine actually talking about why I do or do not believe in God. But the sort of Christian who uses the "How can you be moral without God?" argument (usually followed by some variant of "You don't actually believe there is no God, you're just pretending") isn't interested in genuine discussion, but in seeing who can win the gotcha contest.
I think your Lizzo/Muslim analogy is kind of ridiculous. I don't personally care whether or not Ayan Hirsi Ali really believes in Christianity, but I can see why actual believers would care if someone is just wearing Christianity as a skin suit. You are overthinking the attraction to Islam; it's been pointed out here plenty of times that the left's infatuation with Islam isn't because of any intrinsic qualities of Islam (if it were practiced mostly by white people, they'd be condemning it as a Bronze age death cult). It's purely and solely because Islam is mostly practiced by brown third-worlders.
Well, I am interested in what basis do atheists build their moral foundations, if any. Generally it turns out to be some form of utilitarianism, if they have one, and I go "Oh, okay" because I'm not that convinced by utilitarianism. The ones that don't have any really considered basis just seem to tend to assume that it's in the water or the air that we'll be nice to each other, or concerned about the marginalised, or whatever, and they very vehemently deny that they are living off the remainder of the cultural Christian capital that formed such sentiments originally.
It's not an unfair question in itself. I was responding to the OP's complaint about the classic dialog:
Theist: "If you don't believe in God, what keeps you from murdering people?" Atheist: "Are you saying that it's only your belief in God that keeps you from murdering people?"
Obviously, that dialog does not result from either side having a genuine interest in the underpinnings of the other's morality.
I'd argue that retort serves a very useful purpose: Most theists haven't thought much about their moral foundations beyond "because god said so" and it might be the first time they've ever had to consider that. My dad can't even model what it would hypothetically be like to not believe in god. He just can't grok how an atheistic mind works re: morals or gratitude (and it's not because he isn't genuinely interested).
Most self-described atheists I know are the type of person who has actually considered some moral philosophy.
And I gotta say it's hilarious when Christians pull out the "[nontheists] are living off the remainder of the cultural Christian capital that formed such sentiments originally" line when so much of Western Culture, like say freedom of conscience, came about directly from Christians having to figure out how to stop killing each other. Secularism was a compromise.
There's no question Christianity has influenced Western Culture, but I rarely see Christians willing to talk about how much of "Traditional Christianity" had to be shaved off to get to where we are the last few centuries.
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Same as Christians, more or less.
There are good things and bad things. I prefer more of the former and less of the latter, both for me and for others.
At some point you have to accept an axiom. Atheists don’t get an extrinsic answer to the question of “why should I prefer good things?” Christians do, because Jesus is Lord, and by definition His preferences are correct. From the outside, though, this begs the same question: “why should I prefer what the Lord prefers?”
There's also that pesky problem of: "how do we know what The Lord prefers?" Many Christians have killed other Christians over this question, and I don't think it's been resolved.
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The ultimate basis of morality is our evolved brain structure. We have empathy that causes us to feel others' pain as our own and logic that allows us to deduce the consequences of our actions. everything else - from theology to utilitarianism - is just tinkering at the edges. In the final analysis I am a good person because when I do bad things I feel bad.
Yes I will agree that modern western culture is evolved from Christianity. This is evident in how compatible the Christian religion is with the modern Secular state. but it clearly isn't Christianity (alone) which brought us to where we are. For example, Nietzsche characterized Christianity as 'slave morality' but even that didn't stop Christian cultures keeping slaves for centuries - if anything slavery by Christian cultures was nastier than the slavery practiced by classical cultures that had no theological reason to spurn the practice. I think a genuine belief in a deity has a fairly marginal effect on how 'good' someone is.
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I'm a religious agnostic who thinks that utilitarianism doesn't make sense as a moral principle.
I give credit to Christianity for having helped to form modern morality, including my own, I just don't think that belief in Christianity is necessary for that morality to continue.
I don't have any basis for my morality other than that I am accustomed to it since childhood, I sometimes feel guilt when I hurt others, and I have had a few mystic experiences, drug-fueled and otherwise, in which I felt that other sentient beings were the same thing as me, just looking at the universe from a different angle.
But I don't think that Christians actually have a good basis for their morality either. "God said that we should do it this way" does not actually get rid of the question of what to found morality on, since for me the natural reply even if I believed that God existed would be "Why should I care what God wants? Why is God's morality more important than any other?".
If an omnipotent, omniscient being thinks that A is good and B is bad, it would be an act of insane hubris to imagine that you could know better than him. The more so when this being has the power to sentence you to eternal suffering or bliss.
Would you still feel this way if you discovered that God said raping and murdering strangers for fun is always good?
There are already people who do that for a given definition of "stranger"
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You can't read minds, so you don't know what the being thinks. You might know what he claims to think, but you don't know if he's telling you the truth.
True, but Goodguy seemed to assume he knew what God meant but still didn’t see why God’s view should be privileged over any other. Your objection I understand; his I didn’t.
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FWIW this @futuristright-substack character also has an odd habit of referring to himself and his writing in the 3rd person which could be interpreted as either evidence of legit schizophrenia or of poorly executed sock-puppetry.
Ding ding ding!
While the writing style and specific hobby-horses are different, I'm getting a distinct Jetirk/JuliusBranson/EuphoricBaseball/DarkRationalist/[insert other alts here] vibe off this guy.
I thought euphoricbaseball and juliusbronson were almost certainly different people? EB was the teen liberation one issue poster and JB was the HBD and the Illuminati schizoposter.
Same guy, using different accounts for different topics. Accidentally outed himself by forgetting to switch accounts. Posted a post under one name, deleted it, then posted it again under the other. I wanted to perma-ban both accounts for sock-puppetry but got vetoed.
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You could just ban them. It's probably also worth banning 'thenether', who's more obviously ban evading. (I haven't looked closely enough to be confident in either case, but it seems likely)
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I think in a lot of cases, that is a sincere question. Most Christians are at least nominal deontologists, with God as the ultimate judge of what is right and wrong. If that’s the only moral system you know and can model, an atheist is going to seem like an ethically unmoored individual. In that context, the question isn’t a gotcha, but indicative of ignorance of utilitarianism.
Or a rejection there of.
Utilitarianism is an ideology predicated on demonstrably false premises that exists chiefly to help sociopaths, autists, and misanthropes reframe their negative behaviors as positive virtues.
As I have argued at length in the past, the so-called "AI alignment problem" has fuck-all to do with intelligence (artificial or otherwise) and is better understood as the "utilitarian alignment problem".
I really wonder how you're defining "utilitarianism" here such that other moral ideologies aren't predicated on demonstrably false premises. I rarely encounter critics of utilitarianism who can pass an ITT/Steel Man of what most actual utilitarians believe.
"Your belief system leads to horrible outcomes!" Well, thank god I'm a consequentialist so that I can adjust to edge cases and new knowledge.
There are many flavors of utilitarianism, but we use some simple version of it in life any time we're doing say cost-benefit analysis.
I have a hard time wrapping around any moral philosophy that isn't consequentialist, with rule utilitarianism being my preferred subcategory, in that if your beliefs aren't intended to lead to good outcomes (however those might be defined), what exactly are you trying to do?
Yes, there are many flavors of utilitarianism, but they are all predicated on the same fundamental lie. Namely that "utility" is both quantifiable and fungible. IE that there is some sort of commutative quality or equivalence between one person being x amount "worse" off and another being x amount "better" off.
The thing about reality is that it often forces us to make choices about tradeoffs where it is not really possible to assign particular numerical values in any "objective" sense.
Recognizing that doesn't defeat utilitarianism anymore than it does economics. We assign numerical values under uncertainty out of necessity all the time. We make the craziest things fungible. Fuzzy math tends to be a lot better than no math.
I'd argue utilitarianism is far more honest in its predicates than e.g. the lie that there are supernatural powers that dictate what the rules are or what virtue is. And I'll reiterate that no other moral philosophy has some immunity to weaknesses and fail modes on edge cases.
Sure, but but I'll readily accuse utilitarians of not just using fuzzy math, but no math at all. The supposedly mathematical nature of the philosophy is entirely a sham. No numerical values, no matter how fuzzy or how broadly bounded by uncertainty bars, are ever assigned, other than "number of people affected".
"Too much fake math" vs. "no math at all." Well okay then.
Of which utilitarians do you speak? You're gonna have to cite specific cases for me to give any coherent response. There are certainly bad utilitarians out there with whom I disagree--SBF being perhaps the near-perfect case of being so good at math and yet so bad at basic decision theory (on top of the fraud).
Not every moral quandary requires particular math beyond considering general outcomes and scale, relative to alternatives.
Personally, I think a combo of secular humanism + rule utilitarianism + Tyler Cowen's "economic growth plus human rights" does the job.
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This seems to be less of a lie and more of the underlying assumption of modern egalitarianism. I disagree with it, sure, but the people who base their ethics on it seem to be sincere believers.
Yes, I agree that this an underlying assumption of modern secular liberal Atheism+LGBTQRST mindset. But I also think that's part of the problem.
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I disagree that most Christians are 'at least nominal deontologists', if only because I think most Christians do not know the word 'deontology'.
My guess would be that most Christians have a kind of 'folk morality' - they don't have explicit theories of ethics, but rather have an organic, messy series of moral convictions that they have not systematised, but which are heavily influenced by Christianity as they understand it (which depending on their tradition involves things like reading the Bible, what they learned in Sunday School growing up, what their ministers or pastors tell them, what they absorb via osmosis from other Christians, and so on).
Most Christians therefore probably endorse some strict moral rules or duties (e.g. the Ten Commandments), also endorse virtues (e.g. the Fruits of the Spirit, "let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus", etc.), and also are sensitive to consequences (e.g. "by their fruits shall you know them"). Depending on which of these things you emphasise, you can try to spin Christianity as deontological, virtue-ethics-focused, or consequentialist (of which utilitarianism is a subset), but I think any attempt to simplify it down to one of them would be misleading.
It seems more likely to me that there is no general consensus on these kinds of ethical theories among Christians. Rather, Christians as a group probably more-or-less endorse the ideas that they should follow moral rules, that they should strive to become good people, and that they should try to produce good outcomes for the world. And if you try to force them to consider edge cases where some of those principles conflict, as philosophers do in order to refine theories like deontology or consequentialism, I expect most Christians would umm and ahh and not have clear answers.
So with that in mind, what's going on with the, "How can you be good without God?" question?
I suspect it's probably just as simple as the fact that a lot of Christians regularly incorporate God into their moral reasoning. When faced with an ethical question, they ask themselves questions like what would Jesus do, or what does the Bible say about this, or they engage in practices like praying for guidance. If you do that a lot, you're from a community where that is the default form of moral reasoning, and you have very little experience with other people... well, people who don't do it are going to seem weird. Hence the question - how do you do morality, in a practical sense, without this framework? What framework do you use instead?
Most Christian denominations have such an idea as moral theology, and it's in practice treated as divine command theory by less well-educated believers. Better educated ones might have developed understandings of natural law, virtues, conformity to the will of God, etc.
Yes, there's certainly a more informed Christian ethical tradition that includes a great deal of reflection on this. However, my sense was that the question "how can you be good without God?" was mostly not a question coming from theologians. It was a lay question, and as such I'd bet that it had more to do with the practical experience of moral decision-making than it did with ethical theories as such.
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If there is no objective standard of morality or ethics, and if you do not have an authority from which you get such a standard, how do you arrive at: (1) sex is fine as long as all parties consent (2) women are equal to men (3) we should help the poor and needy (4) other standards which are not based on 'nature red in tooth and claw'?
It turns out to be some form of utilitarianism, and the exterior moral authority is Bentham or somebody. But Jeremy Bentham grew up in a Christian society, so the moral background to his foundation as an ethical being is derived from that, whether he knew it or not.
Basically, if we're springing off a purely materialist universe with nothing but the forces of evolution at work in forming us, how do we derive any standards? And if those standards are admitted to be purely subjective, then we can't condemn the past for burning witches or owning slaves, because that was their understanding at the time, and their standards were just as valid for them then as our standards about gay rights are for us today.
Basing your morality on utility, where that function is 'happiness' or some other measure, is an attempt to arrive at an independent objective standard of what is good and what is not, just as much as the project of religion.
I'm not sure how utilitarianism actually does any of that?
If we suppose that there is no objective standard, no objective normativity to the universe, and no authority or lawmaker capable of providing such, then there's only social convention, right? Moral rules are not different in kind to legal rules - they are shared fictions.
And obviously you could build a shared fiction on any foundation you like. Utilitarianism is one option, but in this hypothetical godless, moralityless universe, there are still plenty of other options. The categorical imperative is just as possible a candidate for foundation as is any concept of utility. Take your pick. All that matters is getting enough people to agree on it.
I'd also nitpick that there isn't an exterior moral authority for utilitarianism; Bentham is of only historical interest. At any rate, if we live in a universe without objective values, then the only thing there is is whether we collectively decide to adopt utilitarianism (or whatever it may be) as a kind of shared code of conduct. That's it.
This is true of some utilitarianisms, but not all, I would say? I think this is a fair criticism of e.g. Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape, which rests, ultimately, on the unjustified assertion that 'human flourishing' or 'human welfare' is good and therefore morality is the maximisation of this good. But J. L. Mackie takes a utilitarian position (or rather, a nuanced one he calls a kind of 'rule-right-duty-disposition utilitarianism'), and he does this after bluntly admitting that there is no objective standard, there are no objective values, and this is just an attempt to try to figure out how humans can live together in a way that he and many others would find congenial.
And that's a fine explanation. I'm saying that there is no reason to say that religion is made-up or fake or the rest of it, because it's all made-up and fake. There is no objective universal law of mercy for the downtrodden. If we invent a standard we want to apply, then it doesn't make a difference if it's "god say love our enemies" or a utilitarian philosopher. One is, by this measure, just as real as the other. Saying "but god does not exist" is no objection, because nothing exists to make rules except how we decide we want to make rules, and if I want to have a god who is a rule-giver, that works just as well as creating a philosophical basis for maximising human flourishing. We're both pulling our justification out of the aether.
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How is it an "unjustified assertion" by Harris to define "the wellbeing of conscious creature" as an axiom on which to build moral principles?
You have to start somewhere and there's literally no way to do that without asserting some kind of value/goal (or establishing a deity's authority to dictate).
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Some might say this has already happened.
I certainly manage it. There's no inherent contradiction between moral relativism and considering your own morality to be better. Anyone claiming otherwise is engaged in the same kind of delusion as free will.
It only seems like that's "not allowed" to someone who earnestly believes that there's even an objective source of morality to go off in the first place.
You can claim "By my own standards, my morality is better" but you can't impose your standards on the past, because you have no idea what future generations, with their standards, will say about things you think neutral or even innocuous. If there is no objective standard but "what we think best at the time" - yeah, maybe we know more about some things now. But if they didn't know that back then, then they can't be blamed for not holding the same standards. You wouldn't burn a witch because you don't believe in witches. What would you do if you did believe in them? What do you do now, when you do believe some thing or person or cause is not just wrong, but actively evil and harming humanity?
I don't dispute that at all, I simply don't think anyone can do better, or if they claim to do so, they're grossly deluded or lying.
Maybe one day we invent or discover a hyper-compelling form of morality such that almost all people adopt it. Or we become better at memetic engineering and find some that sticks. They still won't be objective, but that's an impossible objective in the first place.
Burn them. If it was today, you'd bet I would do quite a bit of research to make sure I wasn't killing innocent people, which would hopefully dissuade me, but if I was evidently convinced.
I think I have better epistemics than average, but I'm not so full of myself that I think that if I were a medieval peasant, I'd immediately form the Enlightenment.
Like so many people around today, that I can see with my own eyes and interact with online? Live and let live, evidently. The only people I've ever burned are pregnant women, which sounds really bad until you realize it was in the context of cauterizing surgical bleeds.
In the limit:
[To Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati religious funeral practice of burning widows alive on her husband’s funeral pyre.]
-Charles James Napier
So you agree to let widows be burned, so long as it's online and you don't have to do anything about it?
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Or a rejection thereof, which could be based on a number of different grounds. But nah, some people would rather just assume bad faith in their interlocutors when an issue cuts them too personally. That is particularly present here.
Nah. I have seen this discussion many times, and those exact arguments always come out. Kind of like your "Ooooh, did this cut you personally?"
I only assume bad faith when bad faith is evident.
I mean, your comment was imagining a completely fictitious interlocutor and concluding bad faith for all of them. Literally zero "evidence" for any bad faith to be "evident", except the type of evidence you have conjured up in your mind for your fictitious interlocutor. Glad to know both what your standard of evidence is (literally imaginary) and what your interpretation of the spirit and rules of this forum is.
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There's an interesting Calvinist perspective that I respect for taking a firm stance on the Euthyphro dilemma. The good is that which is loved by God, and it is the fact that God loves something that makes it good. In this sort of worldview, you really can ask the question, "How can you be moral without God?" because morality does not exist as a concept apart from God.
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