Can Atheists be Moral? Can the Religious?

[Purple Knight]

Question for Debate: Can Atheists be Moral? Can the religious be moral?

I've heard the idea that atheists can't be moral, because physically, we're all just selfish apes, protecting and increasing our genes, and without some supernatural addition to this formula, good is not possible. The ape mother protects her child because that increases her genes. This act, the idea goes, is not moral, but selfish. Any time a human helps another human, this idea would apply.

I've also heard that religious people can't really be moral because whatever they do that is supposedly moral, they don't do it for its own sake, but for the reward. I've even heard that religious people can't be moral because their morality is unthinking. Random total obedience is morally neutral at best, so, the idea goes, if you're just blindly trusting somebody, even a powerful entity, that's not really morality.

Both of these ideas frankly seem to hold water so I'm curious if anyone can be moral.

[The Tanager]

So you think that every single time someone is miserable, they inflicted it on themselves, by living in a way other than God intended? But you also say abusing people, torturing them, does hurt them. So what if someone is living the way God intended, but others torture them every day in the worst way imaginable? If they can't be miserable, because they're living rightly, then it's like I said and there's no harm in torturing people, so there's no reason why people shouldn't do it. If there is harm, then people can be unhappy even if they're living rightly, because others torture them.

This is where this blissful Christian pacifist perfection thing breaks down. Either you can meaningfully hurt others or you can't. If you can't, then there's no reason for the pacifism. Maim, mangle, torture others all you want. It's nothing but momentary physical pain and can't cause meaningful harm. And if you can meaningfully hurt others, your idea that people can be joyous despite being raped and tortured every day is what breaks down.

I do think we inflict misery on each other as well. So, people living God’s way can experience “unhappiness,” but people can go through bad circumstances in different ways. That’s why Christians talk of “joy” even in the midst of pain. That doesn’t mean the pain is comfortable or desired. But, yes, deep down, there is a joy available by being grounded in who one is before God that is better than going through those experiences in a different way.

So how does it matter? If someone can be joyful, and in Heaven on Earth because they're living right, why in the world does anything else matter? What does it matter to? Why is it Hell to inflict meaningless physical discomfort on somebody, when you're not stopping them from being peaceful and joyous and in Heaven?

Well, in the sense of one’s own perspective on life, it doesn’t matter. That’s one point: we can be joyful even when in bad circumstances. But that perspective is that it matters. We don’t want people to live in bad circumstances (ultimately) because we have the mind of Heaven. We want to extend heaven, which means eradicating the abuse because that is a better circumstance. Yes, we can be peaceful and joyous in the bad, but that peace and joy calls us into seeking to eradicate the bad (as far as it relies on us).

Besides, what if God created people so that they can't be happy? Then we'd have to make our own happiness. And we'd have full control of it. We might not ever be able to achieve it, but we could fight for it, struggle for it, and that in itself is meaningful.

If God created them so they can’t be happy, then we couldn’t make our own happiness. That just logically follows. But let’s run with the general point I think you are getting at. A life where (1) we try to make our own happiness is conceivably better than one where (2) we are unhappy because of an evil God that makes it so. I agree with that. But what if (3) God designed us in a way to actually reach something that will make us happy? Isn’t this better than (1)?

What my point was that God decides what is good for himself. And the reason he gets to do this (or rather, that it trickles down to us and we say it is good if God kills a bunch of people) is that he is worshiped. So God is a very bad example of it not being about primate hierarchy. Even if God made us to be happy in a certain way, and not other ways, so it just becomes tautological that we should behave that way, this is about God's behaviour. He gets to do stuff that would be evil if we did it, and we call it good because... why? What reason, if not because he's on top?

I’m saying natures determine what is good, not personal decisions. If God made humans to flourish in a certain way and then decided to try to stop us from attaining that goodness, then God would be bad. But God would be bad because of how God designed things. Him being worshiped doesn’t change that from bad to good.

People who have that acknowledgment take it for granted. You wouldn't be able to maintain the idea that you were doing good, if no one, ever, in all your life, had told you so.

If the ‘no one’ includes God, then you are probably correct. I was saying that (1) people can be good for a reason other than wanting acknowledgement from others and (2) people acknowledging the action as good doesn’t make it good.

It would be no different than me just deciding that killing people is good and doing it. If we can't take the feelings of others into account, then one idea of what is good, is just as good as any other. I can't cut off your toe against your will and say that is good for you. You get to decide that. If you only care about what God thinks then it's about acknowledgment from God, but you have to have it from somebody. And the hard truth is that you might look in the Bible and try to apply it to your life, but since God might not exist, you can't ask him after the fact whether you did a good thing or not. You can only assume.

One idea isn’t just as good as another if natures determine goodness (which is my view). This is not just caring about what God thinks. If an evil God is responsible for our natures, then it’s still the natures created that determine the goodness, not what God thinks. This is true whether a good God or an evil God created us.

And if the natures don’t have it in them to determine one idea is better than another (as I think atheism leads to), then taking one’s feelings into account won’t make one good better than another, either.

I have offered support. I'm trying to backtrack to an idea of selfishness we can agree on. At first I was using good and selfless interchangeably but then you said what I was talking about by good, meaning how the act was motivated, was more along the lines of selfish/unselfish. And I think we both agreed that if you give someone $40, to give $20 to charity, that when he does it, because he does it so that he can gain $20, it's a selfish act. If I go and beg God to turn me into a selfless person, so that people will stop abusing me, that's the same, right? Do you also agree that it goes forwards and backwards? The man might have to fill out a credit card application before he donates, or deal with the spam after he donates, but all of that is so that he can get the $20 profit, right?

I was asking for support for your view that if the first act is selfish, nothing that comes afterward could be called unselfish. In this scenario, the initiator is the one giving $40. That act is unselfish and is helping out the charity and the individual getting $20. And, maybe, this causes the individual to think through her choice and she eventually gives away $20 or more to help someone else so that even though she was first motivated by selfishness, she ends up doing a truly unselfish act.

As to the analogy, being turned into a selfless person will not guarantee that people will stop abusing you, so I don’t get the logical if-then you are using. But if your larger point is that we are seeking to become selfless for selfish reasons (it will make our life better), I’m saying that somewhere along the line God will try to get us to see that our life will become best when we stop having the selfish reasons drive us. We can start to do an unselfish act, even if we think our life may get worse. And that is where we find our life actually getting better.

I admit it so that spoils that. I knew it very early on. I wasn't keen on sharing, so my parents told me to share. Next time, I shared. When they said, "You just did that because we told you to," they had me. I realised I was 100% selfish when I was 5. I only shared to avoid being scolded. I only want to be a good person because I want to be treated like they treat each other.

Perhaps you are 100% selfish. Perhaps you are only 95% selfish. Let’s assume you are 100% selfish right now. There is still hope for you (and all of us); you can become more unselfish.

We both agree, a selfish act is one with a selfish motivation. If a person is 100% selfish, then everything they do has a selfish motivation. So how could somebody move past selfishness, if they never had an unselfish thought to act upon? I agree that if you have both, selfishness and unselfishness, you can ideally choose between them. However if you don't start with anything but selfishness, selfishness will describe the motivation for every action you take.

The options of selfishness and unselfishness are always in front of us. Those who have chosen selfishness over and over again will have a harder time choosing unselfishness, sure, but it can still be done.

Well we still have poor in our first-world societies, who worry where their next meal will come from. So imagine if we killed everyone in prison. Not with the expensive appeal process, just killed them. We could lift everybody out of poverty. If a society did this, would you ask of them to recreate poverty in the law-abiding so that hundreds of thousands of criminals could live comfortably and never have to worry where their next meal was coming from?

We could lift everyone out of poverty without killing those in prison as well. It’s not an either/or.

Obviously you can't go on a murderous rampage and claim it doesn't matter because your heart is pure. But both matter, and without purity of motivation, all actions are tainted with that motivation. They may be helpful to others anyway, but as far as being unselfish, it won't happen. Your own God says, you can't be doing it so that others will see. He forgets that he's one of these others and now, if I'm doing it so that he'll see, it's just as bad. And if I'm doing it for nobody's sake, it goes back to playing the harmonica while standing on one leg. That might as well be defined as good, or evil, it makes no difference.

I agree that unselfish good is better than selfish good. We can move away from doing good to get recognition (and social power) from our peers. We can move away from doing good to earn something from God. In Christianity, it’s not about being good to get heaven. God allows us in and then, we more and more, want to bring heaven about. We end up just wanting to do good to others. This is for nobody’s recognition, but is definitely for their sake (i.e., not for nobody’s sake).

[The Tanager]

I agree, but what makes that ought objective?

That God made it a part of who we are as humans. An intentional agent put it in our design. Atheistic worldviews, as far as those I’ve read and talked to, don’t believe nature is an intentional agent. An atheist needs to point to the intentionality in nature or come up with a different way to get the ought in. That’s why I see some theisms leading to objectivity, but all atheisms leading to subjectivity.

We are designed in such a way that each of us would truly be more happy/fulfilled/joyful/content if we acted in those moral ways.

How do we figure out what those ways are?

I think it is through reason. We can use reason to get a lot of these moral actions (and most human societies have agreed on basic principles throughout history). But there are at least two points to make about this.

One, reason must have a foundation to start from. Therefore, finding out through reason doesn’t necessarily transfer to every worldview. Theism provides a foundation (being created in the image of God is the Christianese) from which to reason to objective morals. Atheism doesn’t have a foundation from which the same reason will lead to objective morals (as far as I’ve ever come across).

Two, humans are limited in our reasoning abilities. Life is very complex and we aren’t personally working with omniscience here. Now, of course, some religions say we can work with Omniscience to help us out here. And that would be very helpful, if true.

[help3434]

That God made it a part of who we are as humans. An intentional agent put it in our design.

How is "we ought to seek the good of others, not their bad" part of our design? What does that mean?

One, reason must have a foundation to start from. Therefore, finding out through reason doesn’t necessarily transfer to every worldview. Theism provides a foundation (being created in the image of God is the Christianese) from which to reason to objective morals. Atheism doesn’t have a foundation from which the same reason will lead to objective morals (as far as I’ve ever come across).

You lost me. We agree about about using reason to derive moral values, but how does believing you were created in the image of God transform those reasoned values into being objective?

[The Tanager]

How is "we ought to seek the good of others, not their bad" part of our design? What does that mean?

Our “design” (if it is designed) involves physical characteristics (brain, heart, arms, etc.), as well as having certain laws impinge upon it. We must follow the law of gravity. Other laws are different, though. The law of logic presses upon us, but we don’t have to follow it. But, when we reason logically, we are fulfilling the purpose of those objectively true laws. Mathematical truths are the same. When we do our sums correctly, we are fulfilling the purpose of those objectively true laws. The ability and pull to reason correctly and to do mathematics is part of our design. And in both of those cases, we are happier when we reason logically and get math correctly (even if you don’t like doing math itself).

I’m saying there is a law like that, a moral law, that presses upon us that we don’t have to follow. When we perform morally good options, however, we are fulfilling the purpose of those objectively true laws. And we are happier for doing so.

You lost me. We agree about about using reason to derive moral values, but how does believing you were created in the image of God transform those reasoned values into being objective?

It’s a matter of having all the premises to reach the conclusion. Reasoning doesn’t tell us what to start with, it tells us what follows from what we start with. We probably agree with the conclusion that people should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood (UDHR, article 1). Let’s call that step Z. Okay, but why should we do that? What’s the previous step, step Y? Maybe because we think all humans have the right to be treated kindly. Okay, but why? What’s step X? Maybe we say because they were all born with an inherent dignity. Okay, but why? At some point this chain of explanation has to stop somewhere.

Reason can tell us why we moved from step to step, but it only works off of what is already there. It can’t give us what the first step is. On theism, our inherent dignity comes from being made in the image of God. We have dignity because God objectively instilled it in us at creation.

[Purple Knight]

Well, in the sense of one’s own perspective on life, it doesn’t matter. That’s one point: we can be joyful even when in bad circumstances. But that perspective is that it matters. We don’t want people to live in bad circumstances (ultimately) because we have the mind of Heaven. We want to extend heaven, which means eradicating the abuse because that is a better circumstance.

Extending Heaven just means making sure people understand they can be joyful even while being abused. The abuse is meaningless. It doesn't stop them from having joy and Heaven. So you can extend Heaven and abuse.

If God created them so they can’t be happy, then we couldn’t make our own happiness. That just logically follows. But let’s run with the general point I think you are getting at. A life where (1) we try to make our own happiness is conceivably better than one where (2) we are unhappy because of an evil God that makes it so. I agree with that. But what if (3) God designed us in a way to actually reach something that will make us happy? Isn’t this better than (1)?

It depends on what a person wants out of life. If they're content being told what they want, then more power to them. But to others it loses value. I don't find any happiness at all in giving to others and if I did have a bliss circuit that got tripped this way, I would just be being selfish by giving. That wouldn't make me happy.

I’m saying natures determine what is good, not personal decisions. If God made humans to flourish in a certain way and then decided to try to stop us from attaining that goodness, then God would be bad. But God would be bad because of how God designed things. Him being worshiped doesn’t change that from bad to good.

But you used God as an example of how good is not social hierarchy, when God is not considered good because of his actions but merely because he is God. And you imagine it's silly to look at other people who have had more success in being good people, to try to emulate them?

If the ‘no one’ includes God, then you are probably correct. I was saying that (1) people can be good for a reason other than wanting acknowledgement from others and (2) people acknowledging the action as good doesn’t make it good.

I think people can be good for good's sake. I don't know how to do this, but certainly some people have achieved it. I'm saying the acknowledgment is necessary, not that it is the sole reason. But to someone who has never done any good, they would be forced to seek out the acknowledgement as the primary reason (otherwise how would they know they had done good) and thus continue to do evil, because if you do it "so that others will see" then you're not really doing good.

One idea isn’t just as good as another if natures determine goodness (which is my view).

But how do you know if some act you've done is good? If you go from the Bible you have to run on a lot of assumptions, like it all being true and people being equal and THAT being the god that created us. You can't know that if Solomon or Samson does something and it is good, it'll still be good if you do it, not without the assumption of equality. You don't know where you sit in the pecking order and what that means for how your actions are evaluated, unless the Bible tells you.

And if the natures don’t have it in them to determine one idea is better than another (as I think atheism leads to), then taking one’s feelings into account won’t make one good better than another, either.

I was asking for support for your view that if the first act is selfish, nothing that comes afterward could be called unselfish. In this scenario, the initiator is the one giving $40. That act is unselfish and is helping out the charity and the individual getting $20. And, maybe, this causes the individual to think through her choice and she eventually gives away $20 or more to help someone else so that even though she was first motivated by selfishness, she ends up doing a truly unselfish act.

The motivation, in the case of selfishness, is what makes an act selfish or unselfish, isn't it?

As to the analogy, being turned into a selfless person will not guarantee that people will stop abusing you, so I don’t get the logical if-then you are using. But if your larger point is that we are seeking to become selfless for selfish reasons (it will make our life better), I’m saying that somewhere along the line God will try to get us to see that our life will become best when we stop having the selfish reasons drive us. We can start to do an unselfish act, even if we think our life may get worse. And that is where we find our life actually getting better.

I don't see how an act that results from a selfish motive can ever be called an unselfish act. If 100% selfish people could change from simply doing the giving thing over and over, I would be changed already.

Let’s assume you are 100% selfish right now. There is still hope for you (and all of us); you can become more unselfish.

I don't see how. I fill my life with copying the unselfish acts of others. It doesn't help because someone can always say, "Well, you're just doing it for yourself, ultimately," and they will always be right. No amount of steps removes something from its motivation. Selfish motivation = selfish act.

The options of selfishness and unselfishness are always in front of us. Those who have chosen selfishness over and over again will have a harder time choosing unselfishness, sure, but it can still be done.

You keep saying this, but if someone does not have an unselfish bone in their body, if they are 100% selfish, then I don't see how someone could choose to act on a motivation they simply don't have.

We could lift everyone out of poverty without killing those in prison as well. It’s not an either/or.

We probably could but that's not what I asked. I'm asking about limited resources, and whether you would ask a society that had overcome poverty and didn't have enough, to recreate poverty if it meant they no longer killed criminals?

I agree that unselfish good is better than selfish good. We can move away from doing good to get recognition (and social power) from our peers. We can move away from doing good to earn something from God. In Christianity, it’s not about being good to get heaven.

Then why is Heaven promised at all?

[help3434]

I’m saying there is a law like that, a moral law, that presses upon us that we don’t have to follow. When we perform morally good options, however, we are fulfilling the purpose of those objectively true laws. And we are happier for doing so.

Can you show that this is true? If it is, atheists have the same grounds for morality, it makes us happy.

It’s a matter of having all the premises to reach the conclusion. Reasoning doesn’t tell us what to start with, it tells us what follows from what we start with. We probably agree with the conclusion that people should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood (UDHR, article 1). Let’s call that step Z. Okay, but why should we do that? What’s the previous step, step Y? Maybe because we think all humans have the right to be treated kindly. Okay, but why? What’s step X? Maybe we say because they were all born with an inherent dignity. Okay, but why? At some point this chain of explanation has to stop somewhere.

Your morality is still as subjective as mine though. You may think believe its God objectively designed things a certain way, but you choosing to ground your morality on this axiom is a judgment call, and thus subjective. Same goes how you apply it, of course

[The Tanager]

Can you show that this is true? If it is, atheists have the same grounds for morality, it makes us happy.

Showing it is true is one thing; that’s the debate between objectivists and subjectivists. I haven’t been addressing that question. I’ve been asking which side of this debate atheism leads one to.

Yes, it would apply to theists and atheists equally. The question is what makes it apply at all. On theism, God makes it apply by intentionally designing our natures to include it. Atheism would have to account for (a) intention or (b) some other method. Atheistic worldviews don’t believe in ultimate intentions, so (a) is out. And I’ve never heard a (b) offered.

Your morality is still as subjective as mine though. You may think believe its God objectively designed things a certain way, but you choosing to ground your morality on this axiom is a judgment call, and thus subjective. Same goes how you apply it, of course

You aren’t talking about moral subjectivism, here. You are talking about the certainty of our beliefs about whether morality is subjective or objective.

[The Tanager]

Extending Heaven just means making sure people understand they can be joyful even while being abused. The abuse is meaningless. It doesn't stop them from having joy and Heaven. So you can extend Heaven and abuse.

No, extending heaven ultimately means eradicating all abuse, but in the meantime we can find joy even in the midst of abuse. It’s a lesser joy, but still a joy.

It depends on what a person wants out of life. If they're content being told what they want, then more power to them. But to others it loses value. I don't find any happiness at all in giving to others and if I did have a bliss circuit that got tripped this way, I would just be being selfish by giving. That wouldn't make me happy.

It’s not about being told what they want, but finding the contentment they’ve really wanted all along, but have failed in reaching while settling for lesser contentments.

But you used God as an example of how good is not social hierarchy, when God is not considered good because of his actions but merely because he is God.

But I think God is considered good/bad because of His actions.

And you imagine it's silly to look at other people who have had more success in being good people, to try to emulate them?

No, I don’t think that is silly. I’m sorry for any confusion my wording caused there.

I think people can be good for good's sake. I don't know how to do this, but certainly some people have achieved it. I'm saying the acknowledgment is necessary, not that it is the sole reason. But to someone who has never done any good, they would be forced to seek out the acknowledgement as the primary reason (otherwise how would they know they had done good) and thus continue to do evil, because if you do it "so that others will see" then you're not really doing good.

But this is still relying on your idea that the first link in the chain of reaction will continue to determine the outcome and can’t be overcome, which I find no reason to accept as true.

But how do you know if some act you've done is good? If you go from the Bible you have to run on a lot of assumptions, like it all being true and people being equal and THAT being the god that created us. You can't know that if Solomon or Samson does something and it is good, it'll still be good if you do it, not without the assumption of equality. You don't know where you sit in the pecking order and what that means for how your actions are evaluated, unless the Bible tells you.

No, you start with whether it is more reasonable that morality is objective or subjective. I think reason leads to objective morality. With one of those objective morals being the inherent worth of all humans (although that is harder to get to purely on reason).

One can go further from there (and other arguments) to the existence of God as the more reasonable view over atheism. Then you can get a more specific theism through other reasoning (which I think leads to Christianity). These all inform one’s moral sense. These aren’t running assumptions, but following reason.

And if the natures don’t have it in them to determine one idea is better than another (as I think atheism leads to), then taking one’s feelings into account won’t make one good better than another, either.

I agree.

The motivation, in the case of selfishness, is what makes an act selfish or unselfish, isn't it?

Yes, but I was saying while the girl’s first act was selfish (she wanted $20), she gains a new motivation for her next act (she emulates the unselfish person by giving the $20 or more away). You seem to be saying that since her first act was selfish, no subsequent act can be anything but selfish. I don’t see why you think that.

If 100% selfish people could change from simply doing the giving thing over and over, I would be changed already.

I don’t think less than 100% selfish people can change from simply doing that; I think we need God to change our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh by giving us His Spirit.

We probably could but that's not what I asked. I'm asking about limited resources, and whether you would ask a society that had overcome poverty and didn't have enough, to recreate poverty if it meant they no longer killed criminals?

I’m all for moral scenarios, but it’s irrelevant if it’s not the only actual option, so that’s why I answered the way I did. For the scenario, if one of the two must die, then I think the criminal should be the one.

In Christianity, it’s not about being good to get heaven.

Then why is Heaven promised at all?

I think this has the relationship backwards. We aren’t supposed to be good to get some other thing: heaven. We join heaven and then goodness flows out of that.

[help3434]

God makes it apply by intentionally designing our natures to include it.

But as you yourself have pointed out different things make different people happy. What do you see that leads to the the conclusion of objective morality by design?

[The Tanager]

God makes it apply by intentionally designing our natures to include it.

But as you yourself have pointed out different things make different people happy. What do you see that leads to the the conclusion of objective morality by design?

That's a separate question from what I've been addressing. We can move there, but I want to make sure we are on the same page on what I've been talking about so far. I've claimed that (1) theism could give us objective morality. You seem to be agreeing with that here and then asking, but why think morality is objective. I've also claimed that (2) atheism doesn't, if true, give us objective morality. Do you agree with that?

Once we get clarity on that, I'd be happy to discuss why I think (3) objective morality actually exists.