ant wrote:Point is that there can not be nor ever will be an atheistic ethics.
Humanism? Varieties of Buddhism? While I won't defend atheist ethics as Robert does, I'll defend non-theist ethics. We don't need a god for morality.
ant wrote:There is no one thing to direct us to that condemns deviance and or harm against our fellow Man.
And that is a good thing. Imagine one source to dictate behavior for all time. Boy, how easy that would be to screw up and commit atrocities. Not to say we aren't capable of committing atrocities without. But I truly wish we'd had a secular ethics back in Roman times so it would have had time to grow and evolve.
ant wrote:Laws, social norms, consensus, nature, consequences, and the like do not provide ethical absolutes.
Neither does the bible. While you may think it is the bible that suddenly changed it's mind on whether or not slavery was okay, that simply wasn't the case. Not to say this lack of absolute morality is a bad thing. Absolute morality has many issues, as I've pointed out in many of the posts I've made in this thread.
ant wrote:Laws, norms, natural explanations, general consensus are always in flux. Hence, they are relative and transient.
As they should be. What is the biblical rule concerning cloning your child if he/she dies? What is the biblical rule concerning wiping out an entire species of mosquito if they carry a deadly virus? What is the biblical rule concerning uploading consciousness before someone is actually dead? Absolute morality is a silly idea, because the world is a transient thing.
ant wrote:What Feodor Dostoevsky meant was that if there is no law above Man then Man permits himself at any point in time make anything up he wishes to be Law. Just ask Pol Pot and Stalin.
Way to prove that there is no objective morality! I know, you'd point out that these men were atheists, which is why they had no higher law to follow. But what of the tens of thousands of rapists and criminals in our prisons that are devoutly religious? We're back to sin, then. I think Dostoevsky meant that while sin is in the world, men permits himself at any point to follow his desires. We should do away with the concept of sin, and instill secular ethics into everyone. Imagine if Hitler had modern secular ethics to follow(much stronger philosophy to satiate his intelligence) than the warped version of philosophy + christianity that he used to justify is actions. Imagine if Pol Pot and Stalin followed the same set of ethics. Imagine if all the religious criminals in our prison systems did the same, without the escape clause of forgiveness of sin to clear their guilt away.
ant wrote:It simply means that the relativistic worldview which is whats actually at issue here is utterly bankrupt because of its squishy ground.
You wish it were so. Can you give me some evidence please? Compare the followers of secular Humanism with those of Christianity and tell me, based on percentage, which have committed more crimes. Which lead more fulfilling lives? You're speaking out of your bung ant. Men like Pol Pot and Stalin had NO ethics. They didn't follow any popular non-theist brand of ethics, nor did they follow any popular theist brand of ethics.
Flann wrote:The persistence of the dark side suggests a fault somewhere though.
The fault is that we are agents within a causal web. You may blame it on sin, but that's a cover word for ignorance. I don't expect you to trust my word, but from my experience it's quite clear that what you call sin is the misunderstanding of the causal nature of human behavior. We are slaves to causation, and sometimes our desires and lusts win against our reason. Only with strong reasoning(and truthful reasoning!) can we consistently overrule our base desires.
This is the largest reason between secular ethics and religious ethics, and why religious ethics fails. With religious ethics, you have to follow rules. Your behavior is guided by something you believe is extrinsic, a watchful god. Using the watchful god as the good influence in your life, it often fails when we find ourselves in various situations. Hindsight says that sin tempted us, and we failed to resist it. But our sins will be forgiven, so no harm done.
With secular ethics, we understand that we only have varieties of free will. Using reason, we can see the possible futures of our different behaviors and choose the right one. By understanding how and why our behavior is governed by our own emotions and external stimulus, our reasoned ethics can more easily overcome base urges and influences. I speak from experience on both accounts here. Secular ethics truly is superior to religious ethics on a personal level.
In a nutshell, here are some differences:
1)Religious ethics is extrinsic and rule/authority based. Secular ethics is intrinsic and principle/reason based. The reason secular ethics is better in this case is that understanding why you must follow a rule is far more powerful than being told to follow a rule.
2)Religious ethics explains our ethical failures as sin, which can be forgiven. Secular ethics explains our ethical failures as residue of our evolutionary heritage and the fact that we are causal agents, which if properly understood can be overcome. Understanding why you behave a certain way is a far better tool to combat your own urges than to say we feel "sinful", especially when sin is forgiven.
3)Religious ethics cannot efficiently adapt to the changing times. Secular ethics is algorithm based, so any change is merely an input, and we can judge what is right or wrong very quickly. Abortion is a good example. As is cloning, and GMO foods, and contraception. Absolute morality causes people to be irrational on these issues. If we'd had secular ethics in Roman times, slavery would never have been condoned as long as it had.