I've heard theologians give the argument -- well, nothing would stop you from raping and murdering.

It's silly to claim these things, but it happens all the time in conversation about morality without religion.

As if people would really find it hard to find the difference between helping an old lady across the street and throwing her under a bus just for laughs. What, you can't find the difference between these two without asking god first?

geo wrote: That's a great way to phrase it: "private and optional." It's when people fall prey to group think and group stupidity that religion becomes so offensive. it's not belief in God. It's the institutionalization of ideas.

This is a difficult point to examine, because we might agree that to a large extent we do need 'institutionalization of ideas' in order to have coherent societies. So is it indoctrinated ideas about certain 'ultimates' that lead to the greatest harm? Or is it that we can't avoid unpleasant side-effects from the beliefs necessary to maintain an ordered society? We're always looking for the Goldilocks scenario, just right.

DWill wrote:

geo wrote: That's a great way to phrase it: "private and optional." It's when people fall prey to group think and group stupidity that religion becomes so offensive. it's not belief in God. It's the institutionalization of ideas.

This is a difficult point to examine, because we might agree that to a large extent we do need 'institutionalization of ideas' in order to have coherent societies. So is it indoctrinated ideas about certain 'ultimates' that lead to the greatest harm? Or is it that we can't avoid unpleasant side-effects from the beliefs necessary to maintain an ordered society? We're always looking for the Goldilocks scenario, just right.

We do have an institutionalization of ideas. I hadn't thought of that. Our very language is based on shared meanings.

I guess the problem is leaving it up to religion to determine our moral code. Only we don't really. We have laws to legislate our actions. You can't steal, or rape, or murder. There are laws against doing these things which I expect are much more influential than the idea of eternal damnation.

Belief in God is not an issue. Where we run into problems is when organized religion assumes the position of truth arbiter for the rest of us. Religious ideas are schizophrenic out of the gate. Such "truths" come through pretense—claims that their holy text come directly from God. So the three major revealed religions are based on lies, and this is hardly the place from which to build our social codes.

I'm sure Hitchens does a much better job explaining "private and optional" but to me they both come down to separation of church and state. Privately held beliefs are meaningful to an individual, but one can't transplant that meaning to others. Optional means freedom of religion, meaning that religious beliefs are one's own business, never imposed by the state or by any group. This would take us to Dawkins' idea that religious indoctrination amounts to child abuse, but personally I think he's on thin ice here.

Again, this comes down to the difference between subjective and objective. Religious ideas are always subjective. Our cultural ideals or shared meanings of moral "truth" should be based on something more objective. Is this what Sam Harris argues?

i think this is really starting to hit on it here over the last posts. really getting somewhere.

yes a personal sense of awe with accompanying thoughts as contrasted with a politicised literalised fascist dogma.

to me the distinction between the two boils down to literalism. (surprise!)

allah is god, no! yahweh is god, no! jesus is the only way.....etc etc etc

it reminds me of kids in the school yard yelling "my metaphor is bigger than yours."

thing is it makes people politically manipulable and pits them against each other and add a few wmd's in there or a military industrial complex and it's not so funny any more. cynical political forces can play literalists easily because they are already tuned into the basest level of thinking (if you could call it thinking at all.)

Dexter wrote:

ant wrote:

Dexter wrote:Good excerpt from Hitchens on this topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUnuLqfOBCc#t=2m50s

Those were shallow and unsophisticated comments on morality.
Although I grew to like Hitch, he was hardly a theologian. He was mostly angry at religion in general.

So what is the sophisticated response?

I've heard theologians give the argument -- well, nothing would stop you from raping and murdering. And don't forget Hitler and Stalin were atheists. What else you got?

Michael Ruse, for starters, get's it right re Dawkins, Hitch, etc:

Let me say that I believe the new atheists do the side of science a grave disservice. I will defend to the death the right of them to say what they do – as one who is English-born one of the things I admire most about the USA is the First Amendment. But I think first that these people do a disservice to scholarship. Their treatment of the religious viewpoint is pathetic to the point of non-being. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion would fail any introductory philosophy or religion course. Proudly he criticizes that whereof he knows nothing. As I have said elsewhere, for the first time in my life, I felt sorry for the ontological argument. If we criticized gene theory with as little knowledge as Dawkins has of religion and philosophy, he would be rightly indignant. (He was just this when, thirty years ago, Mary Midgeley went after the selfish gene concept without the slightest knowledge of genetics.) Conversely, I am indignant at the poor quality of the argumentation in Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and all of the others in that group

Regarding morals, I think it's stupid for anyone to claim that people could not be moral without religion in their lives. That simply is not true and certainly not a view that I am backing here.

I do not subscribe to Betrand Russels' belief that morals are the product of "herd mentality" nor do I agree with Ruse's claim that "Morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands, feet and teeth..., Ethics is illusory" That would make us little more than animals, or actually, nothing more than just animals.

Animals are not moral agents. Human beings, IMHO, have objective morals anchored transcendentally. They are moral agents.

ant wrote: Regarding morals, I think it's stupid for anyone to claim that people could not be moral without religion in their lives. That simply is not true and certainly not a view that I am backing here.

I do not subscribe to Betrand Russels' belief that morals are the product of "herd mentality" nor do I agree with Ruse's claim that "Morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands, feet and teeth..., Ethics is illusory" That would make us little more than animals, or actually, nothing more than just animals.

Animals are not moral agents. Human beings, IMHO, have objective morals anchored transcendentally. They are moral agents.

You've made some rather specious claims here. We're not animals? Morals are anchored transcendentally?

Actually altruism is a well-documented animal behavior. Do you have any basis at all to suppose that our morality comes from a different place?

geo wrote:

ant wrote: Regarding morals, I think it's stupid for anyone to claim that people could not be moral without religion in their lives. That simply is not true and certainly not a view that I am backing here.

I do not subscribe to Betrand Russels' belief that morals are the product of "herd mentality" nor do I agree with Ruse's claim that "Morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands, feet and teeth..., Ethics is illusory" That would make us little more than animals, or actually, nothing more than just animals.

Animals are not moral agents. Human beings, IMHO, have objective morals anchored transcendentally. They are moral agents.

You've made some rather specious claims here. We're not animals? Morals are anchored transcendentally?

Actually altruism is a well-documented animal behavior. Do you have any basis at all to suppose that our morality comes from a different place?

I don't believe objective moral values are relative. There is more to it than that.
We all can agree that rape, child abuse, torture, etc are abhorrently wrong.
Can you tell me then that you find it excusable for me to take your goods, wife, and children should we ever live in a pure state of nature simply because the herd ceased to maintain morals; that all I was doing was being the animal that I am?
If so, yours will be the first house I sack should that ever happen.

Who said altruism is not well documented? You're creating a red herring to avoid deeper discussions about what defines certain morals as being objective.

So, a tribe in south africa condones the rape of children not of their own. You support our non-interfearance with this tribe because morals are just relative, right?

I don't believe you can explain away objective moral values as being nothing deeper than the evolution of a toe or a finger.

ant wrote:

geo wrote:

ant wrote: Regarding morals, I think it's stupid for anyone to claim that people could not be moral without religion in their lives. That simply is not true and certainly not a view that I am backing here.

I do not subscribe to Betrand Russels' belief that morals are the product of "herd mentality" nor do I agree with Ruse's claim that "Morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands, feet and teeth..., Ethics is illusory" That would make us little more than animals, or actually, nothing more than just animals.

Animals are not moral agents. Human beings, IMHO, have objective morals anchored transcendentally. They are moral agents.

You've made some rather specious claims here. We're not animals? Morals are anchored transcendentally?

Actually altruism is a well-documented animal behavior. Do you have any basis at all to suppose that our morality comes from a different place?

I don't believe objective moral values are relative. There is more to it than that.
We all can agree that rape, child abuse, torture, etc are abhorrently wrong.
Can you tell me then that you find it excusable for me to take your goods, wife, and children should we ever live in a pure state of nature simply because the herd ceased to maintain morals; that all I was doing was being the animal that I am?
If so, yours will be the first house I sack should that ever happen.

Who said altruism is not well documented? You're creating a red herring to avoid deeper discussions about what defines certain morals as being objective.

So, a tribe in south africa condones the rape of children not of their own. You support our non-interfearance with this tribe because morals are just relative, right?

I don't believe you can explain away objective moral values as being nothing deeper than the evolution of a toe or a finger.

I said altruism is well-documented in many animal species. I then asked if you have any basis to suppose that human morality is derived from a different place then animal morality. Or do some animals have access to this transcendent morality?

There are cultural differences that account for varying social mores. But there is evidence for a genetic basis for morality. Since we evolved as social animals, it goes to show that we developed certain attitudes and postures that would aid in mutually-beneficial living arrangements. We have a non zero sum relationship that relies on playing nice with one another. How would a group survive if one of its members steals or kills others in the group? It would impinge on the group's very survival and the retribution would be fierce. The fact is, people will steal and will kill in some circumstances though for most people it goes against their nature. Throughout history it has been okay to kill or enslave members of other nations or tribes. Usually this goes along with some justification for violence such as they're just heathens, they're not really people (as it was said of black Africans). Does that kind of rationalization also come from the transcendental morality source?

Frans de Waal and Barbara King both view human morality as having grown out of primate sociality. Many social animals such as primates, dolphins and whales have shown to exhibit what Michael Shermer refers to as premoral sentiments. According to Shermer, the following characteristics are shared by humans and other social animals, particularly the great apes:

attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group.. . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

You mentioned that people cannot be moral without religion in their lives. Seriously? Why then don't atheists go out and steal and kill more than their religious counterparts? Why our murder rates so low in Finland and Sweden—among the least religious nations in the world?

geo wrote:Morals are anchored transcendentally?

Humans have a difference in kind rather than just in degree from animals as a result of the evolution of language. Animals cannot discuss morality.

Abstract concepts are the essence of transcendence. Our capacity to share ideas about ethical meaning is grounded in biology, but goes beyond genetics into memetics, with ideas having an evolutionary history of their own in culture that to some extent is cut loose from the genetic mooring. We see that ideas are inherited as acquired characteristics, as features of nurture rather than nature. Animals certainly do hand on cultural knowledge, such as location of food sources, but it is highly dubious that animals hand on moral concepts in anything like the complex manner of human language.

I once saw some birds attack their baby for accepting food from humans. This seemed to be an example of moral teaching. In this case, it may even make sense to posit a transcendent anchor, in that the wild animals saw dignity in independence from humans and degradation in dependence. The kookaburra may not have words for dignity, but they use it as an operational concept.

John 1 says 'in the beginning was the word'. This means that the human capacity to represent things with ideas is the origin of the religious rebinding of matter into the unity of the cosmos as the basis of salvation.

DWill wrote:

geo wrote:That's a great way to phrase it: "private and optional." It's when people fall prey to group think and group stupidity that religion becomes so offensive. it's not belief in God. It's the institutionalization of ideas.

This is a difficult point to examine, because we might agree that to a large extent we do need 'institutionalization of ideas' in order to have coherent societies. So is it indoctrinated ideas about certain 'ultimates' that lead to the greatest harm? Or is it that we can't avoid unpleasant side-effects from the beliefs necessary to maintain an ordered society? We're always looking for the Goldilocks scenario, just right.

geo wrote:We do have an institutionalization of ideas. I hadn't thought of that. Our very language is based on shared meanings.

Dwill and I have previously debated the merits of Hitchens’ ‘private and optional’ line. I don’t like it, for much the same reason that I dislike Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria concept, namely that it cuts out the ground for both the moral claims of science and the truth claims of religion.

It is fine to advocate pluralism and respect for difference. Indeed any rejection of pluralism involves an arrogant assertion of intolerance. But this involves a fine point – in respecting others we also have to respect ourselves, and our own capacity to discern right from wrong and true from false. If others can ignore our views as ‘optional’, where do we draw the line? Acceptance of scientific facts should not be seen as optional – claims are either true, false or uncertain. And there are moral views that are held universally by all sane people.

Hitchens’ real agenda here is to denigrate religious views as insane, confining them to the private madhouse of church where they do not impinge on anyone else. As soon as we say a claim is optional we assert it has no evidence or truth content, and is mere sentimental fantasy. That seems to me far too harsh an assessment of religious ideas, as it dismisses their symbolic and archetypal meaning along with their literal uncertainty.

… Religious ideas are schizophrenic out of the gate. Such "truths" come through pretense—claims that their holy text come directly from God. So the three major revealed religions are based on lies, and this is hardly the place from which to build our social codes.

The schizophrenia only arises when religions defend claims that are absurd. There can be a coherent backstory. For example, if we see the dying and rising savior motif as symbolizing annual fertility cycles of the seasons we can find the story of Jesus Christ meaningful without having to believe any lies or errors. The problem comes when this allegorical symbol gets converted into literal faith, and, I would say, this problem arises with all supernatural claims. As soon as we say there is a supernatural realm that exists beyond nature we are perilously close to the mentally ill realm of delusion and schizophrenia.

I'm sure Hitchens does a much better job explaining "private and optional" but to me they both come down to separation of church and state. Privately held beliefs are meaningful to an individual, but one can't transplant that meaning to others. Optional means freedom of religion, meaning that religious beliefs are one's own business, never imposed by the state or by any group. This would take us to Dawkins' idea that religious indoctrination amounts to child abuse, but personally I think he's on thin ice here.

‘Optional’ is not simply the opposite of ‘imposed’. No one imposes on you to believe the earth orbits the sun, but you are mad if you think otherwise. The imposition comes from the weight of authority held by scientific knowledge. Acceptance of speculative claims that lack evidence should certainly be optional, but I don’t think atheists have sufficiently proven that all religious claims are meaningless speculation.

Again, this comes down to the difference between subjective and objective. Religious ideas are always subjective. Our cultural ideals or shared meanings of moral "truth" should be based on something more objective. Is this what Sam Harris argues?

This is a good way of putting it, except that it is hard to see that morality can ever be more objective than religion. Both rest on an intersubjective cultural consensus. Persuasive moral arguments often have an intrinsically religious dimension, pointing to people’s shared intuition of an ultimate truth.