Atheism and Moral Values

[Undertoad]

But I don't think atheists have any good reason for being good.

But you think that because you've never had to spend time being one and developing your own moral code. You've been handed one. Those of us who have had to develop our own moral code, man we know where it comes from: we think about stuff. But mostly we get it from our culture, as PH put so beautifully. And so do all Christians. They don't get it from the bible, or they would be slaveowners, and protest the eating of shrimp, or at least act more according to the teachings of Christ.

Back to Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development:

Level 1 (Pre-Conventional)
- 1. Obedience and punishment orientation (How can I avoid punishment?)
- 2. Self-interest orientation (What's in it for me?)

Level 2 (Conventional)
- 3. Interpersonal accord and conformity (Social norms)(The good boy/good girl attitude)
- 4. Authority and social-order maintaining orientation (Law and order morality)

Level 3 (Post-Conventional)
- 5. Social contract orientation
- 6. Universal ethical principles (Principled conscience)

How does religion get to #5 and 6? Maybe it's because I never spent any time being a believer, but I can't see it. It sure fulfills 1 and 2 perfectly. Of course it has to because it had to address a simpler people, spread through a simpler culture, developed in a time when there was no printing press, no understanding of the physical laws of the world, barely any education, and the average person died at age 35 without any leisure time to spend considering morality and ethics.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

But you think that because you've never had to spend time being one and developing your own moral code.

This is an interesting point. What's worth bearing in mind when the arguments start between the faithful and the faithless, is that many (most?) atheists start out as 'believers' because unless they come from an ardently atheistic household, they are surrounded by religion, even if of a secular nature. It's near impossible for Ruminator to understand my perspective because he's never been a non-believer (I am assuming). I suspect I find it easier to relate to his perspective because I was a believer before I became an atheist.

[Pie]

I'm from one of those rare, ardent-atheist households (I'm 3rd generation). I've been exposed to plenty of religious thought, mostly through catholic schooling.

I never saw anything there that passed occam's razor or the sniff test. :p

[Pico and ME]

Do we really look so lowly upon ourselves as a species that we need to be constantly kept in check so we don't go off raping and killing each other?

In prehistoric times, before religion, law, and government, we obviously weren't living a chaotic lifestyle of rape, murder, and pillaging. That would be completely unsustainable and with the population levels so low, humans would have been wiped out within a few centuries.

However, I would think that prehistoric mans behavior was more 'animistic' back then. I would gather that small groups would raid other small groups for their women and resources whenever they came upon them. Once the smaller groups became larger and larger, there needed to be more control over this tendency and if a group had enough resources then they had the power to enforce that.

Moral codes were created for group survival.

[piercehawkeye45]

Animalistic or Animistic?

This is the point I am trying to make. Do we have any evidence that supports our thought that we just raped and pillaged back then? While many human groups did migrate, many had to have been sedentary or else agriculture would never have evolved as a technique. And also, studies of recent hunter gatherer societies have shown a very low level of violence, backing up the theory that low violence was needed to not completely wipe each other out.

Even though there is a lack of evidence to support either side, I think the "rape and pillage" theory is complete bullshit.

[Phage0070]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

While many human groups did migrate, many had to have been sedentary or else agriculture would never have evolved as a technique. And also, studies of recent hunter gatherer societies have shown a very low level of violence, backing up the theory that low violence was needed to not completely wipe each other out.

This does not logically follow. Of course societies have a low level of violence; society was formed to prevent things such as violent interactions and would suppress such tendencies. You cannot look at a set of sorted data and conclude that sorting was not necessary because your data set is sorted already.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Phage0070

This does not logically follow. Of course societies have a low level of violence; society was formed to prevent things such as violent interactions and would suppress such tendencies. You cannot look at a set of sorted data and conclude that sorting was not necessary because your data set is sorted already.

I strongly disagree that societies were created to prevent violent interactions. Societies were most likely created in the same nature as writing, agriculture, and religion, with no planning.

If you look at how writing started in ancient Egypt, Sumeria, and China, there is a trend in all three. These three did not copy or borrow a writing system from any other civilization and no one created it. In ancient Sumer, there was a lot of trade and with that trade came accounting. Traders would mark create symbols for what they traded. After thousands of years of making this system more complex, the product was a complete system of writing we now know as cuneiform.

Agriculture worked in a similar fashion. Since almost every crop we now use cannot be found in the wild means only one logical conclusion, they were genetically altered in the same way that we get house dogs from wolves. To do this, it takes thousands of years. All wild forms of wheat and corn could never sustain a human community and most do not even produce anything that provides any nutritional value so that means there could not be any planning involved. No one looked at ancient wild wheat and thought that they could create agriculture from it. It took thousands of years of chance, luck, and experimentation to find anything sustainable, and even then, hunting and gathering was still more efficient. So, having a society based on agriculture was something that had to have just happened and the switch was most likely very slow and gradual (over the course of thousands of years).

Societies, mostly came the same way with the use of agriculture. When humans were primary hunter gatherer societies, mobility was a must so a civilization in the sense that we have today could never have formed. But as agriculture came into play, people would have to start living in one place, and societies would slowly start to form. As with writing and agriculture, no one planned societies and it most likely just happened. So I do not see how violence would have any play into this. In fact, humans living 5000 years ago in agricultural societies had shorter lifespans and were on average shorter than hunter gatherers, which backs up the inefficiency of that early lifestyle.

To get to my point, I do not believe in any Daniel Quinn hunter gatherer utopia but I not see how we so easily believe that the hunter gatherer living was so brutal. Which is my original point of comparing morals with religion and morals with government and law. Everyone of us have been raised to believe that government, law, and religion (besides a select few) keep us civilized, but like our debunking of religion, I am starting to question government and law as well.

Note- This is not some anarchist rant but I mean in the same manner as the atheists have done in the defense of morals and religion.

Originally Posted by Pico and ME

I don't see why small groups of people wouldn't raid another small group for their resources. It wasn't just "raping' and 'pillaging", it was a matter of the struggle for survival when competing with other groups. I'm sure it wasn't all violent either. Some groups probably joined together as another means for survival.

I'm wondering how it was any different than our society today in that respect? We still do raid other countries for their resources, but just on a much larger and discreet way. As I said earlier, I'm not suggesting that it was any better in that respect 8,000 years ago (proportional wise) but I certainly don't see it as any worst either.

Its about sustainability. The population density was much smaller back then and as long as their was not a drought, most groups could live in peace without going into each others areas. But, in case of droughts, it would be very likely raids happened and some violence did occur.

Originally Posted by Flint

Oh, I'm sure things used to be brutal. I'm not saying it isn't within our nature to rape and pillage; just that, for the most part, we've come to an agreement that we aren't really into that kind of thing anymore. Exactly how it is that we've all agreed to voluntarily curtail our raping and pillaging tendencies is what is up for debate here. I, for one, say that to attribute this change in behavior to a the noodley appendages of a cosmic vigilante is the less likely than the Mama's fryin' pan theory. I don't see the need to include supernatural forces in the equation. It works without that.

From my knowledge, it seems that most raping and pillaging either comes from necessity or expansion (nationalism). The Vikings, Goths, etc didn't start raping and pillaging until their food sources started to become low. Rome, the Colonial nations, etc just wanted to expand for resources and nationalistic reasons. Just like genocide, raping and pillaging is most likely a very strong social force that happens when a group feels like they are under a strong pressure to survive or way too big headed. That also means that I don't think the raping and pillaging part of humans are over, just like the genocide part isn't either. We may consider raping and pillaging bad but our nation as a whole has never been threatened with starvation or elimination. Also, I would not consider our economic policies towards other countries to be anything close to moral.

[Ruminator]

I can see the "no kill" rule developing from a selfish survival need amongst the earliest hunter/gatherers. It would have soon been learned that mutual cooperation increased the success rates of hunts especially. Basic respect of "ownership" would of necessity for any cooperation to occur had to also develop at the same time.

[Phage0070]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

... Societies were most likely created in the same nature as writing, agriculture, and religion, with no planning.

Oh, absolutely. I just meant that people came together basically because of "strength in numbers". This helped people hunt and other such mundane activities, but it also helped to keep people safe from other less friendly people. My point was that you cannot conclude people are naturally non-violent by observing that there is little violence in a system likely shaped in part by the threat of violence.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Phage0070

Oh, absolutely. I just meant that people came together basically because of "strength in numbers". This helped people hunt and other such mundane activities, but it also helped to keep people safe from other less friendly people. My point was that you cannot conclude people are naturally non-violent by observing that there is little violence in a system likely shaped in part by the threat of violence.

When did I ever use the phrase non-violent? This thread started with morals and religion, and going off that I compared morals with government and our society's current thought of humans being extremely barbaric before civilization. Because many have concluded that morals come from a social force, government, like religion, is not needed to create morals so therefore the hunter gatherer tribes were most likely just as moral as we are today, just much more diverse.

I already said I do not believe in any Daniel Quinn hunter gatherer utopia ideas and I never had said non-violent but I'm questioning where people get this idea that these people were constantly raiding eachother? Because you suggest that people created civilizations in response to attacks also suggests that these raids must have been on a high level to create such a revolutionary idea.

[Pico and ME]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Animalistic or Animistic?

Thats funny, I meant animalistic but spell check corrected my misspelling to animistic, which isn't really part of my philosophy.

I don't see why small groups of people wouldn't raid another small group for their resources. It wasn't just "raping' and 'pillaging", it was a matter of the struggle for survival when competing with other groups. I'm sure it wasn't all violent either. Some groups probably joined together as another means for survival.

[Flint]

Oh, I'm sure things used to be brutal. I'm not saying it isn't within our nature to rape and pillage; just that, for the most part, we've come to an agreement that we aren't really into that kind of thing anymore. Exactly how it is that we've all agreed to voluntarily curtail our raping and pillaging tendencies is what is up for debate here. I, for one, say that to attribute this change in behavior to a the noodley appendages of a cosmic vigilante is the less likely than the Mama's fryin' pan theory. I don't see the need to include supernatural forces in the equation. It works without that.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Flint

Exactly how it is that we've all agreed to voluntarily curtail our raping and pillaging tendencies is what is up for debate here. I, for one, say that to attribute this change in behavior to a the noodley appendages of a cosmic vigilante is the less likely than the Mama's fryin' pan theory.

Raping and pillaging is not just for cavemen. The Vikings did a pretty good job. Some of the Asians and plains Indians were pretty good at beating each other up, also. It's still going on, albeit more efficiently, in parts of the world like Africa.

I'm betting morality is a societal construct, with variables for different societies, but the common themes in these constructs (like no killing), were codified by the major religions, as a way of anointing Mama's frying pan with moral authority.

[Flint]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

I'm betting morality is a societal construct, with variables for different societies, but the common themes in these constructs (like no killing), were codified by the major religions, as a way of anointing Mama's frying pan with moral authority.

I agree, and this seems like he most logical, likely scenario. And from this, I can't understand the position that morality "comes from God" or "isn't possible without God" or that "you can't be a moral person if you don't believe in God" etc. as has been suggested by some.

[Ruminator]

OK! Guys this thread has become what I was hoping for, and more. My first thought was just to gain some idea of how an atheist acquires their moral compass and values. But its been great how this discussion has evolved. For me its the first time.

I love this, and its why I registered here... to be able to discuss without personal attacks all of our varied beliefs from our diverse backgrounds.

Dana you are right I'm sure about our not being able to relate well with what each other has been through in life. And yet in some ways more so. I was born into a strong christian family of a conservative type similar to the Mennonite faith. But in high school I joined a cult and scrapped my prior belief system. Upon learning that it was totally bogus, I have very carefully worked my way to where I am at spiritually today.
But I am learning from you guys so much! I hope to be able to contribute some things that are useful to you in return.

All that I am interested in is being able to calmly, and as friends compare notes between each other.
Smoothmoniker, and the rest, I am glad you joined this thread.

- Rumi