Chris OConnor wrote:

Movie Nerd wrote:After rebuking the caller for his rudeness, Matt when on to say that if the person is believing in something he knows to be false because of some personal benefit, then it is imperative to find what it is about that belief that is causing the benefit and figuring how to replicate it without the ties to the false belief.

I'm surprised Matt didn't simply say, "Impossible. One cannot believe in something he doesn't believe in. A person cannot believe in what he knows to be false. This is a contradiction in terms. A person can pretend to believe in anything they want, but if they know something is false they cannot actually believe in it."

He has said on another episode (I can't remember which one, or else I would provide the clip) that very same thing, that One cannot believe what their mind cannot accept.

The reason, I think, why he didn't say that here (besides dealing with the rudeness of the guy hanging up), is because in the context of the situation posed by the caller the beliefs are held on a superficial, pop-psychology level. We're talking about positive-thinking techniques and the like built around religion; it's like the Prosperity Theology espoused by Joel Olsteen and his ilk. This type of situation is a bit different from just believing in something you cannot accept on a higher level of thinking.

Robert Tulip wrote:Child sacrifice is a purported practice that sits on a moral continuum which also includes modern practices of adoption and abortion, and the common practice in primitive societies of allowing disabled children to die. It is not a simple matter to suggest a hunter-gatherer society should have the same compassion practices as a modern industrial society.

Robert Tulip wrote:It is simple. Ethics equals reason plus evidence. Revolutionary morality severs reason from evidence, placing ideology above facts. By contrast, an evolutionary morality seeks to learn from precedent, retaining what is good in existing practices.

Thanks for your reply Robert.
On what basis can you say that the Caanaanites were hunter gatherers?
Could they as human beings not possibly have known and understood that burning their children to death in sacrifice to their gods was morally evil?
Ethics equals reason plus evidence: How do you determine what is good in existing practices? Who decides?
In naturalistic evolutionary terms how can anything be evil or good? It's just a freak of chance that life started and it has no moral intent or purpose underlying it.What happens,happens and just is.
As a random un-purposed product of evolution how do your opinions on good or evil have any relevance? Is not survival the greatest good if any objective pattern can be discerned in evolutionary history? Surely then whatever means achieves survival and genetic self propagation justifies that end as it does in the animal world.
The French revolutionary ideology was rooted in the primacy of reason, yet you say it severed reason from evidence. As rationalists how did they fail to consider evidence since it claims to be based on natural evidence and reason and not superstition?
Were they just unreasonable rationalists?

Flann 5 wrote: On what basis can you say that the Caanaanites were hunter gatherers?

None. I didn’t.

Flann 5 wrote: Could they as human beings not possibly have known and understood that burning their children to death in sacrifice to their gods was morally evil?

The Judeo-Christian ethic of human rights and universal compassion has brought moral advances to many societies, including by its opposition to human sacrifice and cannibalism. But at the same time, these advances have been accompanied by massive destruction of cultural heritage, with lore and tradition condemned to the flames as devil worship. It is not simple to say that one group is morally superior to another.

Sometimes alleged moral evils of a primitive society are exaggerated in order to find a pretext for conquest and theft of their land. In a primitive society that wishes to prevent population growth due to the lack of technology to guarantee ability to feed itself, some level of euthanasia is actually very common. Given the level of spin that pervades the Bible, especially on this ‘promised land’ lebensraum issue, we don’t really have enough information to judge the moral standing of Jews v Canaanites.

Simply accepting the Joshua invasion justification on face value is naïve, ignoring the motive the Bible authors had to foment hatred to justify their cultural domination.

Flann 5 wrote: Ethics equals reason plus evidence: How do you determine what is good in existing practices? Who decides?

There will always be dilemmas where the evidence is insufficient to assess the actual moral harm of a course of action. But my point is that we can set moral goals, such as to maintain and increase human flourishing and ecological complexity, and then systematically assess actions in terms of their effect on these goals. Moral dilemmas only arise due to rational evidence that values are in conflict. My point here has been that the Biblical Ten Commandments provide a deeply flawed basis for assessing moral priorities. Having no other Gods before Yahweh is a recipe for justifying cultural genocide. A ban on coveting slaves might get some antebellum juices flowing, but is not exactly a relevant moral guide today.

Flann 5 wrote: In naturalistic evolutionary terms how can anything be evil or good? It's just a freak of chance that life started and it has no moral intent or purpose underlying it.What happens,happens and just is.

We as human beings have a genetic interest in the flourishing of our species. So it is reasonable to argue that action that is conducive to human flourishing is good. The false postulate of a supernatural God only confuses moral reasoning.

Flann 5 wrote: As a random un-purposed product of evolution how do your opinions on good or evil have any relevance? Is not survival the greatest good if any objective pattern can be discerned in evolutionary history? Surely then whatever means achieves survival and genetic self propagation justifies that end as it does in the animal world.

The interesting thing here is that flourishing of humanity in our modern global technologized world actually requires an understanding of ecological complexity, and how our prosperity is intimately linked to the wellbeing of diverse species. The transcendentalist mentality that sees spirit as superior to nature is evil and deluded against this biological imperative.

Flann 5 wrote: The French revolutionary ideology was rooted in the primacy of reason, yet you say it severed reason from evidence. As rationalists how did they fail to consider evidence since it claims to be based on natural evidence and reason and not superstition?
Were they just unreasonable rationalists?

Communism has an anthem, The Internationale, which includes the line ‘reason in revolt now thunders’. But this claim is based on the false premise that social inequality is always irrational and unjustifiable.

All moral reasoning has axiomatic premises. My own reasoning focuses on biological complexity as the foundation of the good. I maintain that this premise is able to engage with evidence in a coherent way. But if your premise is that inequality is the root of all evil, you will fail to see that sometimes inequality can be rationally justified, and you will be blind to relevant evidence. That was the tragedy of Robespierre.

Such ideologically motivated reasoning is widespread. It also applies in religion, where reasoning is motivated by interests to expand the reach and power of institutions, a desire that can easily outweigh evidence of harm inflicted in pursuit of that end.

DWill wrote: Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart has nothing to do with the sort of take-no-prisoners discussion we're seeing here about religion. No one should shy away from the book thinking it's just more of the same.

Hi DWill, I fear you exaggerate the accommodation of this book to religion. It is more absolutist in support of materialism than your comment suggests.

DWill wrote: I don't think we need to make arguments tinged with politics to show that the only good option is to reject God as warlord, to condemn what that character commands.

It is deeply political to question the God of the Old Testament. Mainstream American Dominionist (MAD) Christianity largely ignores the New Testament, since Jesus presents inconveniently compassionate ideas.

DWill wrote: We don't need to call [God] racist or genocidal

Only in the sense that we don’t need to talk about the Bible. But it is quite hard to analyse the Bible seriously, let alone the Ten Commandments, without investigating the racist and genocidal ideas in the text. “No other Gods before me” is a call to cultural genocide and a racist assertion of Jewish manifest destiny and providential superiority. No wonder American Christians think of themselves as the New Jews.

DWill wrote:It's dismaying to see attempts to moralize murderous orders, to harmonize this God with a loving universal God.

Yes, that is a good point. The idea in the New Testament that Christ’s covenant of grace replaced Moses’s covenant of law involved just this dichotomy of murder and love. The God of Moses is a God of vengeance. The new values of mercy, forgiveness, love and grace introduced by Christ were meant to replace the murderous values of Moses, but Christ was crucified for promoting these ideas (in the myth).

DWill wrote:This God is an artefact of Iron age tribalism

Yes, and that is why the Ten Commandments in both versions (Exodus 20 and 34) are such an obnoxious morality. It is really strange that a morality aimed primarily at securing the political legitimacy of ancient Israel has come to retain such a prominent place in the modern world. We really need to base morality more on modern knowledge than ancient belief. Unfortunately there is a widespread hidden persistence of premodern colonial racism that finds the Ten Commandments a comforting ideology.

Robert Tulip wrote: It is simple. Ethics equals reason plus evidence. Revolutionary morality severs reason from evidence, placing ideology above facts. By contrast, an evolutionary morality seeks to learn from precedent, retaining what is good in existing practices. The problem with the Ten Commandments, both in their well known version from Ex20 of the tablets of stone broken by Moses and in the lesser known version from Ex34 of the replacements supplied by God, is that they present a revolutionary morality (have no other Gods = smash their groves) which denies any value to the society it is conquering.

You might have to further explain your position here Robert, based on Ant and Flann's terrorist kid ethical problem on another thread. I think I get what you're saying; in the absense of morality based on what some God has established (such as the Ten Commandments, some of which are repetitive, and some of which needs ammending in order to have any value, etc.), we must come up with other methods of establishing right and wrong in our society. In doing this, we turn to our reasoning and collective altruism. Am I getting in the right place of explaining your position?

Movie Nerd wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote: It is simple. Ethics equals reason plus evidence. Revolutionary morality severs reason from evidence, placing ideology above facts. By contrast, an evolutionary morality seeks to learn from precedent, retaining what is good in existing practices. The problem with the Ten Commandments, both in their well known version from Ex20 of the tablets of stone broken by Moses and in the lesser known version from Ex34 of the replacements supplied by God, is that they present a revolutionary morality (have no other Gods = smash their groves) which denies any value to the society it is conquering.

You might have to further explain your position here Robert, based on Ant and Flann's terrorist kid ethical problem on another thread. I think I get what you're saying; in the absense of morality based on what some God has established (such as the Ten Commandments, some of which are repetitive, and some of which needs ammending in order to have any value, etc.), we must come up with other methods of establishing right and wrong in our society. In doing this, we turn to our reasoning and collective altruism. Am I getting in the right place of explaining your position?

Thanks Movie Nerd, your comment here helps to explain why I made my earlier comment in this thread about slavery and genocide in the Ten Commandments.

From the opening post:

geo wrote:What should one believe after abandoning faith? What are the positive principles of atheism?

The faith of the Ten Commandments assumed that only Jewish (and later Christian) men who own property are persons. All others are subhuman chattels or reprobates.

This Biblical ethic is in basic conflict with the ‘all are created equal’ ethics of modern theories of ‘self evident truth’ and human rights. It is also in conflict with Saint Paul’s teaching that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, helping to illustrate how the Bible itself contains the seeds of its own redemption through the idea of a new covenant.

Flann’s question about revolutionary ethics is directly relevant to the opening post. Historically, the rejection of the faith thesis of the church led to a reason antithesis by the state, seen most violently in totalitarian communism. This revolutionary construction of reason as hostile to faith led to secular 'Laïcité' (link) and a failure to see any virtue in faith.

What is needed now is a new synthesis of faith and reason, reforming religion to become compatible with science. That is why I agree strongly with Bayer and Figdor that reason and evidence should be the positive principles of atheism, but question their language about ‘abandoning faith’. The polarising view of an atheist antithesis is philosophically superficial regarding the meaning of faith compared to the enlightened view of an integrating synthesis

My view is that we should recognise that the original intent of Biblical faith included a deep enlightened wisdom, a sense of allegorical symbolism that is compatible with reason and evidence. But this deep wisdom was covered over as the church simplified its dogmas for purposes of expansion, control and influence. So the challenge is to reinterpret and repurpose faith to recover and restore its original inner redeeming intent and meaning.

Ten Commandment theology plays into an ignorant redneck racism, where the Ninth Commandment ‘gecha hands offa mah slaves’ was seen as an ethical ideal. This backward mentality colours the whole debate about Christianity and represents the powerful political current that Richard Dawkins reacts to.

Dawkins says in The God Delusion that he respects liberal rational Christians like Spong, but sees them as marginal to the public debate about faith. Dawkins' problem is that faith is a vast system of fantasy and error, with real social and ethical dangers. My suggestion is that we should respond to this problem by reforming faith to make it rational, not abandoning faith.

Robert Tulip wrote:My own reasoning focuses on biological complexity as the foundation of the good. I maintain that this premise is able to engage with evidence in a coherent way. But if your premise is that inequality is the root of all evil, you will fail to see that sometimes inequality can be rationally justified, and you will be blind to relevant evidence.

How is biological complexity the foundation of good,Robert?

Robert Tulip wrote:This Biblical ethic is in basic conflict with the ‘all are created equal’ ethics of modern theories of ‘self evident truth’ and human rights. It is also in conflict with Saint Paul’s teaching that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, helping to illustrate how the Bible itself contains the seeds of its own redemption through the idea of a new covenant.

You seem to be saying conflicting things here about equality. Maybe you could clarify.

Flann 5 wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:My own reasoning focuses on biological complexity as the foundation of the good. I maintain that this premise is able to engage with evidence in a coherent way. But if your premise is that inequality is the root of all evil, you will fail to see that sometimes inequality can be rationally justified, and you will be blind to relevant evidence.

How is biological complexity the foundation of good,Robert?

Thanks Flann, that is a great question.

Life has evolved on our planet over the last four billion years. Over that long timespan, our genes have traveled around the galaxy about 18 times, once every 200 million years. There have been long slow periods of steady increase in complexity interspersed with occasional (six) catastrophic events where life has been simplified through mass extinction. We are now in the middle of the sixth planetary extinction event, and have the ethical power to reverse it.

Evolution involves constant random mutation. Only those changes that are adaptive succeed. Each successful adaptive mutation within a stable system makes the overall ecology more complex, adding a new feature, enabling a more efficient and effective economic use of the available niche.

The deep wisdom of planetary nature is embedded in cultural and natural diversity. The more diverse a system is, the more robust it will be against shock. But when a massive shock does occur, such as the inflicting of predators and pathogens and disruption of climate, a highly sensitive and diverse ecosystem can rapidly degrade. The result is that genetic resources which evolved over millions of years can suddenly be totally lost.

A rainforest or a coral reef are examples of highly biodiverse ecosystems. Wanton and careless destruction of these places which contain symbiotic life forms far older than humanity is a great evil. Understanding these systems is the essence of the human soul, understanding how we relate to natural creation.

If we can see how human flourishing is intimately connected to the preservation of biological complexity, we can start to gradually shift away from the alienated and destructive false dogmas of religion, and especially from the most evil teachings of all, those which interpret salvation as escape from the earth. Real salvation, understood as the future flourishing of life, is about connection to the earth, not separation from it.

In this context, I would like again to mention the origins of Christianity in Gnostic wisdom. The original Gnostics taught that the world is evil. What this means is that the constructed fantasy world of patriarchal religion is evil, not that the natural cosmos is bad. In Greek, cosmos means world (as in cosmopolitan as citizen of the world). So when Gnostic texts say the cosmos is evil, they do not mean the stars and planets are evil, but just that the false Yahwist dogma of a patriarchal controller is evil. The vanity of imagination uses religion to establish a spiritual order, but this imagined creation is fallen out of the natural grace of biodiversity into the corruption of ideological dogma. So understanding the value of biodiversity is absolutely central to an understanding of what is really good.

Flann 5 wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:This Biblical ethic is in basic conflict with the ‘all are created equal’ ethics of modern theories of ‘self evident truth’ and human rights. It is also in conflict with Saint Paul’s teaching that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, helping to illustrate how the Bible itself contains the seeds of its own redemption through the idea of a new covenant.

You seem to be saying conflicting things here about equality. Maybe you could clarify.

There are two successive main covenants in the Bible, the Mosaic covenant of law and the Christian covenant of grace. These covenants are in conflict, but many Christians don’t understand the theology very well.

Paul explains in Romans 6:14 and elsewhere that Christians are not under law, but under grace, as a central teaching about why Jesus Christ is the messiah. This distinction between law and grace means that the covenant of the law of Moses, explained in the law of the Ten Commandments and the res of the Torah, is superseded by the covenant of grace brought by Christ. Christians, in Paul’s view, are therefore not saved by works of the law, but by the forgiving grace of Christ.

This shift from law to grace as the basis of the covenant relationship with God involved a changed ethic regarding equality. Where the Ten Commandments assumed the inequality of social status based on ownership of property, Christianity imagines a future world of equality. This is not an equality of outcomes in the communist sense, but rather an equality of opportunity based on merit in the capitalist sense, and a transforming and liberating equality of respect based on the central Christian principle that the last shall be first in the Kingdom of God.

Robert Tulip wrote:This shift from law to grace as the basis of the covenant relationship with God involved a changed ethic regarding equality. Where the Ten Commandments assumed the inequality of social status based on ownership of property, Christianity imagines a future world of equality. This is not an equality of outcomes in the communist sense, but rather an equality of opportunity based on merit in the capitalist sense, and a transforming and liberating equality of respect based on the central Christian principle that the last shall be first in the Kingdom of God.

The thing about equality from a communist sense, if I'm understanding your post right in sumarizing it this way, is that the early church as established shortly after Christ's ascension was practically communist. Not in the way it's bastardized in the former USSR and China, but as was originally intended.

Think about it: when people converted and joined in withthe church, they sold their possessions and property and the money made was distributed evenly among the group. Everyone's needs were thusly met, and there wasn't an upper, middle or lower class in this setup. There was a communion among men, women and children, and inasmuch it to me seems comunist in practice.

It's interesting how people's interpretations of the teachings of Christ have shifted over the years. Even today, the USA brand of Christianity is very different from other places in the world, such as Mexico.

DWill wrote:Just so we're clear on this point: Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart has nothing to do with the sort of take-no-prisoners discussion we're seeing here about religion. No one should shy away from the book thinking it's just more of the same.

Good point. But I still feel I'm off topic by asking this question:

Is anyone planning on reading this book?