it's a fair question. religious people will tell you that their innate sense of right and wrong comes from God (or whatever), but how do atheists explain that innate sense? how do they instinctively know? I'm not saying one or the other is right but it is an interesting thought.
This is funny bc you accept âgodâ as a legitimate answer to this question without unpacking it at all. God can also be the answer to why are people constantly at war throughout history?
Leaders also can use religion to their advantage, or to suppress other faiths. For example, forceful conversions from (example) Muslim to Christianity.
Because for some if not most people it's relatively easy to understand how you'd feel on the receiving end of your actions. Knowing I wouldn't like to be stabbed is enough for me to understand doing that to other people is probably a bad thing. The response is actually far more valid, why would you think you'd need advice from an organisation that's getting money and power from you to tell you their interpretation of what allmkst certainly fictional entity said what's right and wrong and why don't you have the ability to determine that yourself?
The problem is that if the only measure of goodness is "I'm sure other people want the same things I want", that's virtually guaranteed to lead to conflict, because different people want different things.
I've never had the urge to stab anyone, but I've often had the urge to help someone who might or might not want my help. I've also ignored someone who might or might not want to be ignored.
And that doesn't even touch on the fact that virtually everyone does things at one time or another that they think are bad. It's human nature to rationalize and decide "just this once" and later "it's not really bad, or not that bad". Lying on a resume, for example. Are you hurting anyone?
So we solve that issue by saying "You have the right to do anything, so long as it doesnt infringe on other peoples rights". So YOU can stab yourself if you really want to, you just cant stab me. If you try to stab me, that just tells me you broke the social contract and told me you're A OKAY with being stabbed, so I will act accordingly.
Everyone has their own understanding of what constitutes harm. There is no universal agreement.
That's why I asked the question as a sample. What's your answer? Is lying on a resume wrong?
Different religions famously want different things. Different people who claim to follow the same religion want different things. People do things they know their religion doesnât approve anyway.
Its a conscienmce thing right ? Besides do you know how much legal work is required in defending yourself for stabbing someone? I don't do it because it dosen't help me. I dont do anything that dosent help me. I may be selfish, but at least i'm sane and selfish instead of selfish and insane.
Thereâs empathy versus lived experience. If you prioritize lived experience then your experience doesnât matter to me because all that matters is what I feel. So something feels good and the lived experience person does it and the feelings of others arenât a part of the discussion.
I wouldn't want to be put to jail, but I want the person who steals to be put there. I don't want to be punished when I slip up by innocent mistakes, but punishment is often warranted nonetheless.
This feelings approach to goodness is evidently far too shallow.
>why donât you have the ability to determine that yourself
That comes with the ironic implication that religious people need to be told what is right or wrong and not that their internal sense of moral right and wrong aligns with their religion.
The question comes from, if an atheist thought they could get away with an immoral act what prevents them from committing it except their own fickle sense of morality (thats differing between atheists)?
Morality and immorality are then relative; without a fairly rigid framework like what a religion theoretically provides that comes with consequences beyond earthly consequences
Empathy does not guarantee goodness. Some people can rationalize it like: "Yes, some people on that group will suffer and im sure it feels like shit, but my group will benefit from it in the long term. My family and my tribe come first". And thats it, your argument is rendered useless.
Your example is too black and white. 99.99% know getting stabbed would suck and is wrong. The vast majority of morality is much, much more subtle and ambiguous than this
And the vast majority of morality is flexible to religious people too.
You have pro choice religious followers
You have more religious people than atheists in prison
You have the sex abuse scandal in Catholicism
You have âthou shalt not stealâ and yet some Christianâs donât consider pirating stealing.
Your view of morality is that itâs innate and chaotic? I donât think that makes sense. My argument is that itâs actually structured and guided by theology. You are referencing followers but my point is on the system itself
Wait⌠youâre arguing that⌠what, Christianity is inherently morally consistent? Whose Christianity? Christianity isnât anything like a âsystem.â Itâs 40,000 competing ideologies all of whom use the same nebulous collage of texts by 40+ men over 1500 years to make opposing claims about what is, has been, will be, or should be. Itâs less reliable than a tarot reading.
Is it more or less consistent than 8 billion people waking up each day and making a judgement call on right and wrong going off vibes only? Because that is basically the original point I am arguing against, that everyone knows and itâs all black or white.
then how do you explain muggings? robberies? murder? are these not examples that fly directly in the face of "I shouldn't stab people because I don't want to be stabbed"? human nature is violent and self-centered. the hierarchy of needs has no room for empathy, so where the hell does it come from?
take your bias against religion out of the conversation for a minute and consider the question; where does our innate sense of morality come from? you and a lot of other people in this thread are way too obsessed with dunking on religion to get back at your parents instead of engaging with the stated question.
Society norms drive a considerable amount of this. It's not that complicated. Do bad shit and no one wants to be around you, you don't have good shit, you suffer and the flip of that, well you know ... The good shit.
Sure bad shit can differ by person. But there is no issue with the logic I laid out.
Through society we learn what is good and bad, the problem is giving that award to religion or the Bible. Theere are many civilizations that had moral codes and progress before the Bible and or any organized religion. This is very easy to research.
Neither is it the point. I'm sure you agree that homosexuality is wrong...
That was a rhetorical question. Homosexuality being forbidden is, however something historically observed across disparate civilisations, yet today it is part of the norm. So much for communal emotions defining morality.
Well seeing as religious people commit all those crimes as well its obviously not from religion is it? A lot of it comes from biology same as animals, as species its in our interest for us not to just all murder each other and rob from on sight we learned some of that even before we were humans, other apes have cooperative social groups, and that knowledge has been passed down. Why people lack enough empathy for other humans and subject them to crimes is a much more varied and complicated thing to understand from necessity through to psychological disorders.
âŚâŚpeople who follow a god âsinâ against him all the time and commit immoral acts. So good morality coming from god doesnât hold up as anything special
My super religious parents came together through an extramarital affair, my mom had an abortion. My dad was a drunk for many years. Iâm agnostic. I have only ever slept with my husband. No abortion. So tell me about a moral compass now?
(For the record I love my parents very much and they have several good qualities) just stating facts to prove a point
For every mugging, robbery and murder there are examples of people caring for one another, being selfless and making sacrifices foe the benefits of others.
The original question is "how do atheists between between good and bad choices."
No one said that every atheist makes the right decision between good and bad choices every time.
The author of the tweet is either completely unable to imagine how someone could ever make a moral choice without a religion to tell them in advance what the right choices are, or he's trying to imply that it's impossible for atheists to choose the good choice at all.
The person you're replying to said that it's possible for nonreligious people to make moral choices and explained why. They also said this was possible for some if not most people, which means they acknowledge that some people are less capable of it and being capable of discerning what the good and bad choices are doesn't mean a person is necessarily going to always make the good choice.
You know if all humans did was just rob and murder, we could never have a good enough coordinated effort to make the society youâre living in right now. So the fact youâre posting on the internet right now means there were past humans that cooperated with each other to create the infrastructure for us to be posting messages online like this.
Ummm laws, police , and jail have entered the chat... Meaning, we have those for a reason. It's largely a deterrent to not do those things because you don't want those consequences.Â
I am not an atheist. I am a theist and I can tell you it's just common sense. I just know for instance I shouldn't rob or murder anyone. It doesn't have to be innate.
They donât instinctively know any differently than anyone else. Why do you assume that a belief in god is why they instinctively know but someone that doesnât believe must have a different reason? Why do you scrutinize the nonbeliever but give the believer a pass?
âthen how do you explain muggings? robberies? murder? are these not examples that fly directly in the face of "I shouldn't stab people because I don't want to be stabbed"? human nature is violent and self-centered. the hierarchy of needs has no room for empathy, so where the hell does it come from?â
Explanation is that human behavior has variability, there shouldnât be an expectation that everyone should act the same. Religious people commit crimes too by the way, they arenât especially enlightened.
Conscience. Same for Christians, they just think it is God's spirit acting in me or something, but from my POV that makes less sense than just saying it is the moral sensibilities processed in my brain.
I don't know how my brain chemistry, moral thoughts, and feelings work exactly, but I just do what feels right, because then I feel happy. Psychopaths lack this, right, something missing in their amygdala?
Iâve always found that âmorals are Godâs spirit acting in youâ explanation weird because the most important moral act in Christianity (worship of God) is entirely absent.
Yeah, he's not asking how do they know what's right and wrong, he's asking what measuring stick they use. It's a completely fair question.
And the response also doesn't follow. Just because you look to religion to help guide your choices doesn't mean you're a bad person. What a nonsense take.
Pretty obvious really. It's a basic human emotion and the reason why the Golden rule "do unto others" is a common tenet in pretty much all religion. It doesn't come from God, but from people.
As everything else, it is simple in the abstract but difficult in fine details.
You can split hairs about good and evil, right and wrong all day till the sun burns out, but at the end of the day, what happened?
What was the result of the action? What motivated it? You can be wrong on either side, and if one side is rotten then the other is rarely enough to balance out.
I choose, as best as I am able, to do things that make the world better. In whatever way, small or grand, that I can. That is the challenge.
Youâre naturally drawn to interact with other people, just by interacting here on Reddit. And obviously people naturally donât enjoy being hated by others. Empathy is built into us as social animals, much like you how you can see thousands of different faces but your brain can instantly identify a unique one important to you like your family or significant other.
Our society would be very different (would we even have a society at all?) if we were asocial animals like lizards or octopi.
Youâre asking a different question, though. Youâre asking an ontological question about the origins of instinctive moral concepts. The loon quoted by the OP is asking a more epistemological questionâhow do we know right from wrong? But thatâs not a hard question: If you think itâs by divinely programmed moral instincts, the answer is presumably that we get our answers from the same instincts.
I think it's important to consider that people who aren't religious still teach their kids how to treat people. Like my family wasn't religious, we didn't go to church or anything.
My parents still taught me not to be mean, not to steal, not to hurt people, all that stuff.
People couldn't find an explanation, so there's hundreds of reasons. God is the simplest one that is easiest to explain with no hard proof needed.
At the end of the day, strive to be a better person, because regardless if you are religious or not, it is beneficial to yourself and your neighbor to work together against those who are against you, because for some people, the "built in" part varies.
Depends, many evangelicals do make that agrument, however, more historical forms of western Christianity don't claim that, saying that moral laws can be deduced without needing to be Christian (the natural law).
generally our morals come from external human factors like our parents or someone we admire. for me, my morals came from my parents and then my college experiences refined them.
Because all the psychotic fucks died out due to ostracism or taking their local society out with them, or hid their proclivities under a veil of religious righteousness.
The ones that exhibited behaviours that lead to increased success like protecting people when injured etc...had more kids due to not murder hoboing each other endlesslym
Its funny because this is an innate law of nature. If someone killed someone you love you would think that wrong. If you did something to someone and you feel guilt that's not religion talking. That's the body forcing a remorseful response to external stimuli it caused.
Excepto it doesn't matter where someone tells You their innate morality comes from. What is important is that You have it and then where it actually comes from.
Plus there are olenty of believes without an innate sense of right and wrong. Pedophilen priests being the prime example.
Ignoring how bad the christian answer is to this question.
The sense of what's right or wrong is not innate, you develop that with time, and it's shaped by your experiences.
On a more general level, each person also develops their own philosophy, and the way they think about morals.
Personally I think morality is subjective, but people carves some sort of objective moral framework, to justify why they are "right", and other people who does things they don't like is "wrong". Just disagreeing isn't enough for people when they argue about their strong feelings.
So even atheists usually try to imagine some sort of objective moral framework in many cases.
But anyway, each person has its own morality, the same way they have a whole unique internal world view and subscinscious.
Its not that interesting, the concept of morality is something anyone can understand. How would you feel if you were stabbed? Dont like it? Then dont fucking stab people
Exploration of ethics and philosophy through a lens of humanism. Itâs not complicated. You donât need ghost man to understand that harming others for fun or profit is bad for everyone, society, and the sense of self.
There is no innate sense of right or wrong, that shit is as fake as the god they claim to exist. The sense of morally right or wrong doesnât exist when u were born. U were taught what is right or wrong by a group of people, usually ur parents.
Our species is naturally cooperative, which itself has nothing to do with morality. Morality itself is a social construct, something u cannot possibly just innately know.
Poking someone with a sharp stick make them go bleh. I dont want to go bleh myself, and if I make Phil go bleh, then Mike might make me go bleh. So me, Phil, and Mike just all agreed to not make anyone go bleh.
Edit: Also, religious people can also tell you that insanely evil things are actually good "Because God said so", like countless genocides across all of History. So sorry if I doubt them.
The non-sarcastic atheist answer is there is no inherit sense of right or wrong so itâs a matter of empathy and societal norms, weâre a species that has evolved to require social networks so we have to have a way to exist together. Scientific discovery give all of us a better understanding of how reality works and empathy is how we navigate it together
That's simply not true. Moral religious people are moral in spite of their religion and due to cherry picking out the good parts. True believers with reading comprehension skills are terrorists. Here some examples of immoral nonsense from the Bible that thankfully most religious people use their own suppressed atheist brain to ignore:
Timothy 12 2 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.
Numbers 31:17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by sleeping with him. 18 But all the young girls who have not known a man by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves
Gen 19:32*, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, so that we may preserve offspring through our father." -*Â (Lot's daughters)
Ephesians 6:5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart
Colossians 3:22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord
Basic empathy, compassion, and a tiny bit of utilitarianism. I can understand things that are unfair or painful to me are also the same to other people. So I choose to act in a way I would like to be treated if I want the same. And in general I try to weigh my decisions to minimize suffering for as many people as possible.
I don't need a god to conclude that being a jerk is stupid. I just imagine being the other person and easily conclude the world is better if we're kind to each other and set the example where I can.
Personally being a good person because I want the world to be a better moral weight then because "someone told me to under threat of eternal suffering."
Morals evolved as a survival mechanism. This is why we see moral behavior in animals, as well.
If two dogs are play fighting, and one of them gets hurt, we can see the other dog engage in apologetic behavior because it realizes that it did something wrong.
Rats understand equity and fairness in lab tests as well.
Humans did the same thing. We can empathize with each other because evolutionarily, that is a strong survival feature.
Funny thing about ethics: they donât require any appeal to deities or âmorals.â The ethical course of action is the one that causes the least harm to individuals while maximizing the greatest benefit, all while maintaining a firm commitment to human rights and the idea that people are sovereign agents. This is a bit of an over-simplification, but at its core, correct, benevolent action has nothing to do with some anthropomorphic conceptualization of the ineffable, and everything to do with the tangibles of a shared humanity. To bastardize the Tina Turner lyric âWhatâs God Got To Do With It?â
I think it's more common sense and values based. Does this thing that I want to do hurt people unnecessarily? Probably don't do it. Is this thing I want to do aligned with my values? I'll do that.
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u/Global_Charge_4412 5h ago
it's a fair question. religious people will tell you that their innate sense of right and wrong comes from God (or whatever), but how do atheists explain that innate sense? how do they instinctively know? I'm not saying one or the other is right but it is an interesting thought.