Again, I apologise for taking so long to reply. I really enjoy moral philosophis debates, I just feel I want to devote some time to read back and try to make sense in my posts in a topic like this (as opposed to my usual spam), and I just haven't had the time the last 2 weeks.
Eminem, thanks for explaning your statement about atheists and moral. Of course I disagree with you.
I agree with what Tom has already posted, and I will also add my own comments.
Originally posted by Eminem:
<STRONG>I also do not deny that atheists can construct moral systems or codify ethical rules and regulations. I understand that Immanuel Kant and J.S. Mill were two such philosophers who created moral systems which could judge good or evil without reference to God. This fact is not surprising, however, if human beings - whether atheists or not - have indeed been made in God's image (Genesis 1:27), and have the capacity for moral awareness.
On the other hand, although many atheists do believe in the existence of an objective morality, I believe that doing so is inconsistent with the materialistic naturalism usually embraced by atheists. For instance, why not be a nihilist or an amoralist instead of a moral objectivist?
</STRONG>
I have several objections to your conclusions. IMO you they are based on some erranous assumptions.
1.You make the assumption that objective, absolute values are more true or better than relative moral values. I don't agree. Why should they? Objective, absolute values means that an act is judged the same regardless of situation, context, motive and viewer. Relative, non-absolute values mean that you consider all the above things. If we can't cleraly state a certain act is wrong during all circumstances, then we can't claim it's absolute and objective.
Did you read my prison camp example in the "Internet...evil" thread? If not, I post it again here:
A man is in a prison camp. The guards give him the following order: "rape this fellow prisoner, or we will execute you, him and all the other 150 people from you village". If the man goes ahead and perform this forced rape of his fellow prisoner, he would be judged as having acted immorally according to an objective, absolute moral standard, since rape is always immoral. According to a relative moral standard, the man can be judged as having acted morally, since he avioded the murder of a whole village by performing this act.
In a world full of complex situations and choices, where we can't act free of context and free of consequences, but also according to premisses set by other factors than our own free will, I argue that objective moral values are no better than relative moral values. A statement like "rape and murder is wrong" is only true if the alternatives are not worse, and sometimes they are even if you and I don't have to face choices like that.
2. You assume most atheists share materialistic naturalist views. But this is but one of an infinite number of different views an atheist can have. Remember, christians and atheists are not two comparable groups. Christians have a common manifest - the bible, whereas atheists can believe in anything except a god, since the definition of the word is only a lack of belief in a god, not a content.
3. You assume materialistic naturalist views can't be objective and absolute. Of course they can, they are just founded on other sources and principles than gods and holy scripts. Personally, I prefer relative moral values, but lots of naturalists have absolute moral values.
<STRONG>More problematic for the atheist, however, is the significant lack of accounting for intrinsic human dignity, human rights, moral obligation, and moral responsibility, which must first be in place before we can even talk about the relevance of morality.
</STRONG>
I agree with Tom here, that human dignity and rights are a
consequence of morality, they are the very reason why we should have a moral at all and part of the definition of the concept. Without the concept of moral, regardless if this moral was given by a god or evolved by selection, the concepts of dignity, rights and responsibility does not exist at all. You are saying that the atheist faces the problem that without a factor accounting for moral, there can't be a moral. Yes, you are right, but the same problem goes for any system of beliefs, religious or atheist. The difference lies in how and what factors we attribute the very existence of moral to. I'll develop my thoughts below, though.
<STRONG>What most atheists who hold to an objective morality tend to do is confuse epistemology (knowing) with ontology (being) on this issue. They say something to this effect: "Certainly we can know that it is wrong to rape or murder without appealing to God. We can say that rape or murder is wrong because it violates universal human rights, is an affront to human dignity, and destroys the social fabric." But the question for the atheist still remains: What is the foundation for universal human rights or human dignity? How did we come to be this way? What accounts for humans' being moral or having worth and moral obligations when they are the result of the same impersonal forces that produced rats and hyenas?
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Different atheists will answer this question different depending on what philosophy they have.
An atheist can be a vegan and claim everything living have the same rights and we should not kill a mosquito, wear leather or eat meat. Another atheist might be a utilist, a third might be an existentialist and a forth might be a materialist. All these people will give different motivations to why rape or murder is wrong, and they will all be derived from different fundaments.
Personally, I am neither. My answers to your questions are in brief: The foundation for universal rights are based on consciousness/awareness and the ability to know and experince suffering. From this, I derive the key concept of integrity.
The reason why humans have evolved into highly conscious beings with the ability to form moral concepts, can be explained in selection terms and is an important function connected to our dependency of social interaction and group living for survival. As highly aware beings with the physical (pain receptors) and emotional (emotion system) equipment to suffer, I think humans should have more extended rights than a mosquito. But, as highly aware beings with the possibility to control our acts and to manipulate the world we live in, we should also have responsibilites according to this.
Also, remember moral behaviour is not exclusive to the human species! If we study other species, for instance our close relatives chimpansees, we find many behaviours that are the same as we call "moral behaviour" when performed by humans. But humans have more advanced cognitive functioning than any other primates, so of course our social interaction, our societies and our moral structures are also more complex and at a higher level of abstaction. Also, a chimp can't usually tell us why he performed an altruistic act, whereas a human beings can. Again, the human awareness and cognitive abstraction level, is what makes us unique.
You believe the human moral came from god. I believe human moral developed as an evolution process increasing the fitness (ie the number of survirvors) of our species. To you, the foundation is god and the bible. To me, the foundation is facts from different scientific disciplies together with philosophy. You view the bible as holding a truth because you belive the text to be truth, wheras I view the bible as a literary text, no different from the koran, the Upanishades, the Islandic sagas or the Illiad.
<STRONG>The atheist has difficulty, not in KNOWING objective moral truths, but in GROUNDING this objective morality. It is hard to see how rape, murder, or torture would be wrong on an atheistic scale founded on some version of naturalism. The atheist can of course give the same reasons as theists as to why rape is wrong: "It violates the victim's rights!" or "It treats a person as a means rather than an end" or "It damages the social fabric." These reasons, however, PRESUPPOSE human dignity, human rights, moral obligations and responsibility.
</STRONG>
Again, moral values can't exist before a moral does. It is a moral system that makes us think rape and murder is wrong.
The bible and the christian moral system, is no different from any other moral system in so much as it attributes dignity and rights to humans. Thus, christianity presupposes human dignity and rights implicit, just as many other systems like humanism or the UN declaration of Human Rights also presupposes this . It's built in the system itself, it is what the moral system consists of. Therefore, the christian and the atheist both need something to ground human dignity, human rights and moral responsibilities on, and both have it, in their respective moral systems.
<STRONG>The decisive issue with which the atheist must deal is this: Which worldview best accounts for intrinsic human dignity, morality and equal rights - a naturalistic, atheistic one in which human beings are ultimately no different from mosquitoes and mice, or a theistic one in which human beings have been made in the image of pure, just, and loving God and have been granted worth and moral responsibility?
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IMPO there are many worldviews that secure equal rights far better than any religious system I know of.
I think you confuse and blend several issues here. A naturalistic atheistic worldview does not mean mosquitoes have the same rights nor the same responsibilities as humans just because human and mosquito DNA consists of the same four proteins, or just because we are all part of the eco system. Perhaps a militant vegan would say humans and mice have equal rights, and Peter Singer would say a healthy mouse is more worth than a human with a physical challenge, but both these represent extreme views not commonly held by naturalists or realists, even less among atheists in general. Personally, I would say we differ from mice and mosquitoes according to what I described above.
I know of no religion that accounts for equal human rights. Christianity and Islam are exclusive and view people with other religions as wrong and misled or misinformed. Also both religions state than men and women do not have equal rights, nor do gay people.
Hinduism is not exclusive, hindi accepts all other religions and gods as long as they are not exclusive. But the hinduism cast system is justifying and perpetuing a socioeconomic stratification of society. (Buddism, I don't know, maybe there is someone else here that has some insight in the Buddist moral system?)
<STRONG>If I had to wager on this question alone, I would (and have) side with theism. Theism has a lot less explaining to do in this regard than atheism. A moral world in which human dignity, moral responsibility, and human rights exist is natural and to be expected if there is a God, but un-natural, un-expected, and surprising if there is not.
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Believing in god means a moral exists because it is given by god. Believing in biosocially founded moral, is believing in a moral that developed and evolved naturally because it has an important function. Without it, our species would not survive.
I fail to see why a moral given by god is more "natural" than a biosocially evolved one? A world without gods is not an amoral world – it's just a world where the moral system is not connected to, justified by, or created by, a god but by other factors.
