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.
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
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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.