A person that commits murder and does not feel guilty is a person that turns away from his soul. I believe that any person that strays away from our values and morals is losing something very important.
So this is not a case of what would change in the world, as you put it, but what would change for the murderer. What kind of person will he be? I believe that every murderer suffers, in a sense, and again, I recommend you read “Crime and punishment”, it’s a masterpiece.
That being said, I would like to ask you a somewhat off-topic question about something you said:
There is no cosmic scorecard, no universal force or karma, nothing beyond what we have in the world in front of us. So I ask in, with that in mind, what is the actual moral imperative you feel that he must experience this weight and regret?
It seems to me that you are saying that the moral imperative I might feel is not ontologically grounded, since there is not higher power. But wouldn’t any morality then be not grounded in anything, if you accept both these criteria for what is legitimately moral and the atheistic worldview?
It seems to me that you are saying that the moral imperative I might feel is not ontologically grounded, since there is not higher power. But wouldn’t any morality then be not grounded in anything, if you accept both these criteria for what is legitimately moral and the atheistic worldview?
I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not smart enough to keep up with what you’re trying to say here. But if this is the “without god how can we have morality?” argument, I will just extend the standard reply that if you need a cosmic watchdog to prevent you from raping and murdering, perhaps your morality is not as pure as you believe. I believe the social contract and basic understanding that if we work together for the greater good, we all benefit, is basically enough to define morality when coupled with generations of evolutionarily-innate emotional responses that promote said well-being. I also understand that this morality, like all things, is not sacred, and thus capable of being influenced, being swayed, being wrong, and importantly evolving, adapting, and even rationalizing or coping with the difficult quandaries of human society that extend far beyond black and white. Again I don’t truly understand your question, but I tried to answer in earnest and hope that satisfies your curiosity.
edit: also I see you have been downvoted and feel compelled to tell you that I have not downvoted anything you’ve said. I know it doesn’t matter, but I think it’s relevant to the tone here.
While I would rather we talked about the other part of what I previously said, the one that relates to the murder, this is quite interesting too.
I was not saying that god is necessary for morality. I understood what you said previously this way: since there is no God or higher power, religious morality, and by extiention my supposedly religiously motivated statement(actually, I am not particularly religious) is unsubstantiated, to which I replied with an argument, that if this is the case, and if you apply the same criteria to every worldview, then no moral views are substantiated.
And I would like to address your counterargument. I did find it convincing when I was a “militant atheist” but now I recognise its inadequacy. It is arguing with a position that does not exist, it is based on a misunderstanding of an argument that theists often make. I will now expand on that:
When theists say that without God there is no morality, they mean that there is no objective morality. The argument is based on showing that the accounts of morality possible under atheism are contrary to our moral intuitions. Theists generally recognise that people can be moral if they are not religious, all of us have a sense of morality, since we are the “children of God”.
If there is no morality independent from subjective beliefs about morality, then, in practice, when someone says “this is immoral”, they are simply expressing their preferences. So if I say murder is wrong, this simply means I do not want it to occur, and I am urging everyone to not murder, so there is, in practice, no difference between subjective preference and morality, since morality is subjective.
So if we lived in a world where noone believed rape is wrong(animals do rape each other quite often), there is no sense at all in which the statement “rape is immoral” would be correct.
Since most people do not understand morality to be subjective in this way, this argument can be convincing.
Edit: another similar argument, is that atheists, while they can be moral, have no justification for their morality. It is also often misunderstood, and your counterargument is wrongfully applied, but I will not get into that.
No offense, but I don’t understand how this differs from my summary beyond just that you apparently enjoy pontificating. Like I don’t understand what part of what you said was supposed to be revelatory to me, I specifically told you that morality is not sacred; this isn’t news and I’m not ignoring or unaware of some secondary truth here. Yes, morality is influenced by society and thus yes it is subject to societal whims… Okay? But it’s also informed by generations of evolutionary response and the motivation is almost entirely overwhelmingly pragmatic. Your “bUt WhAt iF rApE sUdDeNlY oKaY” scenario is meaningless because there is no social benefit to that scenario. Morals are still founded a sort of pragmatic empathy; sure sometimes, maybe even often, we get this wrong, but we don’t need a guiding hand to teach us the basics of working together for the greater good. The question isn’t “will this send me to hell,” it’s “is this to the benefit of humanity?”
A person that commits murder and does not feel guilty is a person that turns away from his soul. I believe that any person that strays away from our values and morals is losing something very important.
So this is not a case of what would change in the world, as you put it, but what would change for the murderer. What kind of person will he be? I believe that every murderer suffers, in a sense, and again, I recommend you read “Crime and punishment”, it’s a masterpiece.
That being said, I would like to ask you a somewhat off-topic question about something you said:
It seems to me that you are saying that the moral imperative I might feel is not ontologically grounded, since there is not higher power. But wouldn’t any morality then be not grounded in anything, if you accept both these criteria for what is legitimately moral and the atheistic worldview?
I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not smart enough to keep up with what you’re trying to say here. But if this is the “without god how can we have morality?” argument, I will just extend the standard reply that if you need a cosmic watchdog to prevent you from raping and murdering, perhaps your morality is not as pure as you believe. I believe the social contract and basic understanding that if we work together for the greater good, we all benefit, is basically enough to define morality when coupled with generations of evolutionarily-innate emotional responses that promote said well-being. I also understand that this morality, like all things, is not sacred, and thus capable of being influenced, being swayed, being wrong, and importantly evolving, adapting, and even rationalizing or coping with the difficult quandaries of human society that extend far beyond black and white. Again I don’t truly understand your question, but I tried to answer in earnest and hope that satisfies your curiosity.
edit: also I see you have been downvoted and feel compelled to tell you that I have not downvoted anything you’ve said. I know it doesn’t matter, but I think it’s relevant to the tone here.
While I would rather we talked about the other part of what I previously said, the one that relates to the murder, this is quite interesting too.
I was not saying that god is necessary for morality. I understood what you said previously this way: since there is no God or higher power, religious morality, and by extiention my supposedly religiously motivated statement(actually, I am not particularly religious) is unsubstantiated, to which I replied with an argument, that if this is the case, and if you apply the same criteria to every worldview, then no moral views are substantiated.
And I would like to address your counterargument. I did find it convincing when I was a “militant atheist” but now I recognise its inadequacy. It is arguing with a position that does not exist, it is based on a misunderstanding of an argument that theists often make. I will now expand on that:
When theists say that without God there is no morality, they mean that there is no objective morality. The argument is based on showing that the accounts of morality possible under atheism are contrary to our moral intuitions. Theists generally recognise that people can be moral if they are not religious, all of us have a sense of morality, since we are the “children of God”.
If there is no morality independent from subjective beliefs about morality, then, in practice, when someone says “this is immoral”, they are simply expressing their preferences. So if I say murder is wrong, this simply means I do not want it to occur, and I am urging everyone to not murder, so there is, in practice, no difference between subjective preference and morality, since morality is subjective.
So if we lived in a world where noone believed rape is wrong(animals do rape each other quite often), there is no sense at all in which the statement “rape is immoral” would be correct.
Since most people do not understand morality to be subjective in this way, this argument can be convincing.
Edit: another similar argument, is that atheists, while they can be moral, have no justification for their morality. It is also often misunderstood, and your counterargument is wrongfully applied, but I will not get into that.
No offense, but I don’t understand how this differs from my summary beyond just that you apparently enjoy pontificating. Like I don’t understand what part of what you said was supposed to be revelatory to me, I specifically told you that morality is not sacred; this isn’t news and I’m not ignoring or unaware of some secondary truth here. Yes, morality is influenced by society and thus yes it is subject to societal whims… Okay? But it’s also informed by generations of evolutionary response and the motivation is almost entirely overwhelmingly pragmatic. Your “bUt WhAt iF rApE sUdDeNlY oKaY” scenario is meaningless because there is no social benefit to that scenario. Morals are still founded a sort of pragmatic empathy; sure sometimes, maybe even often, we get this wrong, but we don’t need a guiding hand to teach us the basics of working together for the greater good. The question isn’t “will this send me to hell,” it’s “is this to the benefit of humanity?”
But is there a difference between preferences and moral imperatives?
Does it matter in any way beyond semantics?
Yes, of course it does.
How? Why?
Because the argument is based on what morality is. And this is a question about what it is.
Thank you for clarifying that you’re a religious nutter. I can now block your dumb ass in good conscience.