"I can distinctly remember kneeling in the darkened family room of my aunt and uncle’s house in Florida. With my eyes closed and my hands clasped reverentially in front of me, I recited the words that every Christian parent longs to hear from the lips of their children: “Dear Lord Jesus, please come into my heart and forgive my sins. I accept you as my Lord and savior.” I was four years old.
"My mother was raised in a missionary family, living in various places throughout Central America. Her parents were (and are) Southern Baptist missionaries, and she did not return to the United States until age 17. After graduating high school early, she enrolled at Columbia Bible College, where she met my father. My father was also raised in a deeply religious protestant family, so after their marriage, it seemed the natural course that they prepare for entrance into the mission field. When I was born, my family was living in a small apartment above a church in my father’s home town in Pennsylvania, where he was the youth pastor. After my brother was born three years later, our family began traveling around the country raising support to send us to South America. My childhood was spent moving from state to state, staying in whatever lodging could be lent to us by the host church, while my parents preached and performed to receive donations toward our mission. The final period of their training was completed at a “mission institute” in Missouri, where my family spent six months learning how to make sock puppets and crafts to teach children about Jesus.
"It was around this time, at seven years old, that I was baptized by my maternal grandfather in his church, south of Atlanta, Georgia. I don’t remember much of the ceremony, but I can easily recall the feedback I received from family and strangers alike. Everyone I met was delighted at my outward profession of faith. An elderly woman at the restaurant where we had retired to celebrate even gave me five dollars to congratulate me when she learned of my accomplishment. All of this went quite well with my temperament, as I’ve always thrived on attention and praise.
"Though my parents divorced not long after we left the mission institute and then settled in Indiana, my happy coexistence with religion as a way to be rewarded continued into adolescence. Beginning somewhere around age 13, however, and blossoming as I advanced through my teenage years, the very healthy sexual appetite that my current husband so appreciates began to assert itself. I play-acted sexual encounters in the dark of my bedroom at night, and in high school I found ample opportunity to explore this arena with other hormone-addled teenagers, both boys and girls. It was at this time that I found a conflict with the happy “Jesus Loves You” message that had been repeated to me throughout childhood. The rules taught in church had always seemed so easy to follow. Of course I would never steal or kill anyone! But now every Sunday the youth pastor repeated the peril of expressing this hormonal urge that came so naturally to me. Feeling ashamed, as being “in trouble” is still one of my greatest fears, I internalized my guilt, but couldn’t deny the pull of temptation.
"I lost my virginity at 17 to another virgin, who was likewise the child of evangelical parents. The next day, he was aghast at our transgression and swore we would never commit this crime again until our marriage. After a year of dating, the situation had so deteriorated in the home where I lived with my father and stepmother (who would later be diagnosed with a variety of mental disorders) that I moved in with my boyfriend’s parents. At first I was moved by their warm charity in welcoming me into their home. But from the moment I entered it, I soon discovered that every movement my boyfriend and I made was being scrutinized for signs of sexual behavior. Even though he slept in a separate room, accusations were constantly flung about. Feeling I had nowhere else to turn, after months of overwhelming pressure and condemnation, I agreed to legitimize our relationship through marriage. I was married on the morning of my senior prom in his parents’ living room, after which we returned to school on Monday as if nothing had happened.
"After graduation, my new husband and I ventured into the wider world of university together, where we lived in married-student housing. It wasn’t long before I learned, at our school of 35,000, that there are vastly different kinds of people in the world, all holding fascinatingly diverse opinions, and almost all of these people seemed infinitely more attractive than the man I had married. Within the semester I began an affair with a brilliant and witty, if cynical, classmate during a field trip to Chicago. This would shortly end in discovery, anger, violence, and tearful apologies. Terrified of venturing out on my own, I agreed to move back in with our in-laws and begin my penance. I read the bible daily, was not allowed out alone, and was even forced to accompany my husband during his delivery runs. But through all of this, I could not be genuinely penitent because that brilliant and witty if cynical young student had opened my eyes. I learned that all of the guilt and shame I felt had really been self-inflicted. There is no Jesus to be disappointed in me when I break rules recorded thousands of years ago in a scattered collection of parchment. Once lifted of this irrational burden, I was free to exercise my own considerable rational faculties in further testing the religion I had always known. Everywhere I poked, I found the fabric of arguments I’d always accepted to be thin as tissue paper. I would continue my sentence a few more months before gathering enough courage to leave my husband for good. I moved in with my mother until the new semester started and then returned to my studies at university. There I took a minor in Women’s Studies, learning a great deal about sexuality, gender, and how humans have felt and expressed the same stirrings in myriad ways for thousands of years. After graduation, I moved to Boston, where I am now married to a wonderful man who shares my open-minded, voracious curiosity, and together we vet the various claims of the world based on sound, logical principles.
"It took a while to let go of what had been so ingrained in me from childhood. Even long after I had mentally reconciled the lack of a supreme being, I still occasionally caught myself offering a silent prayer of thanks to the heavens when something fortuitous happened. I will always bear the scars of guilt and repression from my childhood in an evangelical protestant family. However I can now firmly state that there is no god, and that sex between consenting adults is most often a beautiful and wonderful thing, regardless of what your pastor says. Now, supported by my loving husband, I look forward to bringing children into the world who will grow up in an environment where their actions are judged not by adherence to an archaic code, but by the good or harm they cause themselves and those around them.
Erin Breda
Massachusetts, United States
This biography makes only three claims as far as I can tell. First, it is terrible to be captive of religion and religious people. Second, it is great to have sex between consenting adults without guilt – because there is no God. Third Erin and her husband use logical principles to vet claims of the world.
All reasonable people would concede the validity, truth and power of the first statement, I would think. Religion is a human construct around facts of non-human origin. The human construct can and will be perverted. And that perversion drives its victims into non-rational reactions, such as rejecting the non-human facts along with the rejection of the human construct and those who perverted it. In this sense, Christians are frequently the worst enemy of their own belief system.
For Erin, though, it appears that free sex, rather than free thought or intellectual freedom, was the driving force that led to Atheism. In her summary paragraph she lauds “ sex between consenting adults”, and never refers to sexual fidelity to her husband, which, were she my wife, would concern me. In fact, this statement illuminates a characteristic of Atheism: it demands no moral decisions or behaviors, and this includes fidelity, integrity, honesty, reliability, responsibility for the consequences of one's own actions, and all the qualities that mold “good” character according to Judeo-Christian values. Erin is free of all that. And I’m sorry for her pain with her family and early choices, but I’m still glad she’s not my wife, or my neighbor for that matter.
The claim of the use of logical principles is not validatable, because it occupies only a single sentence. Erin doesn’t elaborate on the source, if any, of her logic training, the extent of her knowledge of rational processes, etc. But I have found such claims by Atheists in general to be without merit, primarily because Atheists, once exuberantly “freed”, do not care to ground their “free thought” in any pesky absolutes, such as First Principles or syllogistic justifications; rather they are free from absolutes, absolutely free.
In fact, Erin rejects the "archaic" moral code of Judeo-Christianity, and now judges good and bad herself, defining it… well, apparently not at all. I’m sure she knows it when she sees it, and it isn’t any Ten Commandments.
I wonder how long relationships which are totally relativist last. If one never knows the morality-of-the-day of one’s partner, especially one with uncontrollable appetites, what is the basis for trust? It would be interesting to hear back from Erin in 7 year intervals, but I’m sure we won’t.
58 comments:
Stan,
I look forward to bringing children into the world who will grow up in an environment where their actions are judged not by adherence to an archaic code, but by the good or harm they cause themselves and those around them.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
Thoughts?
I guess it's a question of what they consider "good", and even "harm". I guess that's where relativity would enter.
Yes, perhaps I didn't state it well. When Atheists renounce a set of ethics, and then declare undefined "goods" and "harm", it is necessary to have those terms defined, because they can't mean what is meant under the system of ethics which they reject.
Erin's obsession with sexual freedom might be considered a "good" for her children as well, and self-restraint might be "harmful" to their little psyches under her self-derived code.
Or she might decide the opposite for her children and clamp down on them, it happens both ways.
The Atheist ethic is subject to their mood and whatever seems to be "good" for them at the time, or worse, whatever other people should do. So it's relative.
In some cultures, the norm is for a young woman to be given in marriage by the time she reaches puberty - so the problem of having an awakening sex drive with no morally right outlet does not occur.
It could be argued that expecting young people to remain virgins until their late twenties (ie after tertiary education) puts a burden on them that the Creator never intended.
That being said, Erin sounds like a self-righteous bubblehead. I notice that she never actually says WHY she decided to no longer believe in the religion she was brought up in - it sounds more like she decided she no longer WANTED it to be true, and so just found excuses to disbelieve.
I pity her children.
It seems very clear from the article why she left the faith - because she was seen as tainted and driven out of her parents' house after losing her virginity, kept under oppressive scrutiny at her boyfriend's parents' house, and was married off to him on the night of her high school graduation.
Change the setting, and it could be one of those stories you hear about arranged marriages in villages in India, except it doesn't end with Erin B. getting dragged out and killed by a pious mob.
I'm not sure I'd call her feelings an "obsession with sexual freedom" - more like, a normal human desire for general freedom. Fortunately, we live in a country where she was able to realize it. Go America!
Yes, freedom is a major motivator for Atheism. And it involves total freedom, once the pursuit is joined. Her focal point was first and foremost the satisfaction of her sexual appetites without any external influence to mitigate that pursuit.
The desire to be without any mitigating external influence is exactly what places Atheists in a position of distrust. How is one to expect commitment to principled behavior, if one has no principles?
And if America is the land of no principles, that is a serious deviation from our past, and the consquence of that will be cultural failure. Exulting in the lack of principles which is being installed in the New Atheist America is a symptom of character decay. What possible good outcome could that produce?
There is no reason to trust an avowed Atheist, precisely due to the lack of principles attached to Atheism. Any claimed principles are merely opinions conjured up to coincide with behaviors which the Atheist feels are beneficial... today, in a particular situation. I have yet to have an Atheist actually argue otherwise.
Proterozoic, the main point I see here, is that someone like Little Miss Sex-Drive there has zero business claiming her Atheism has anything to do with reason, evidence or science.
There's probably something wrong with the collective mindset of American-style "Fundamentalism", if it often produces people like that. Exactly what, I've insufficient data to be certain.
But if a professed faith in Jesus can vanish so readily when the individual in question no longer wishes to identify with that group, I have to wonder if it was ever really there to start with.
It sounds to me like Erin as young girl had just been saying what her parents wanted her to say, all along.
Childhood ideologies should always be reevaluated as a mature adult, after studying logic, rational thought and their grounding principles.
You and FrankNorman have such energy to condemn a young woman for having a sex drive, but barely a word for the people who picked her up at her most vulnerable and took advantage of her. I want to ask both of you, do you believe that her boyfriend/husband's family treated her fairly? Was she not justified to leave? Do you only have a problem with her leaving because she writes that she finds it important to have control over her own sexuality?
It appears that you have a particular distaste for the fact that she may have wished to have sex with individuals other than the one assigned to her under duress. Do you feel that she should be allowed to marry the person she wants, or do you think she owed it to those people to marry their son at the age of 18? Would she be more justified in leaving after taking a course in science or logic?
If I were told that the parents of the person I lost my virginity to at the age of 17 had decided that this person was to be my only sex partner for the rest of my life, I would take off, too. If I wrote about it, it would be with far more bile and invective than Erin.
As a parallel argument, I submit that it's possible to have more than one reason to leave Christianity. In addition to resenting connubial imprisonment, one can also feel that the religion's fundamental worldview is morally corrupt, or that its cosmology is completely divorced from reality, for example.
P.S. Stan, you make a sudden and enormous logical leap, from someone's desire to have sex with more than one person in their life to a "complete lack of principles." This is only the case if your principles come down to trying to prevent people from having sex in as many situations as possible.
An atheist can have an active sex life and still subscribe to principles of citizenship, self-discipline, responsibility towards others, and a commitment to accept unpleasant truths. Atheists can aspire to these things out of a sense of social obligation, self-respect, empathy, good upbringing; if all else fails, fear of punishment (albeit finite). This is why atheists are, at the very least, no more likely to engage in crime than believers; this is why secular societies are, on average, no more violent than religious ones.
Proterozoic said
”You and FrankNorman have such energy to condemn a young woman for having a sex drive, but barely a word for the people who picked her up at her most vulnerable and took advantage of her. I want to ask both of you, do you believe that her boyfriend/husband's family treated her fairly? Was she not justified to leave? Do you only have a problem with her leaving because she writes that she finds it important to have control over her own sexuality?”
First, I did not condemn the woman for her sex drive. The purpose of the analysis is to determine the Atheist’s reason(s) for choosing Atheism. Her relationship to those folks and her leaving them had no part in the analysis of her Atheism.
Second, I do not have a problem with her leaving her situation with those people. I do not think there is any reference which could be interpreted that I did. What I commented on was that she when she left the people and the “religion” she felt justified in denying the existence of a first cause, which was a step beyond the logical denials she was experiencing.
”It appears that you have a particular distaste for the fact that she may have wished to have sex with individuals other than the one assigned to her under duress. Do you feel that she should be allowed to marry the person she wants, or do you think she owed it to those people to marry their son at the age of 18? Would she be more justified in leaving after taking a course in science or logic?’
Once again you have misinterpreted what I said. That she feels comfortable in dishonest, behind the back relationships indicates that she forges a morality which fits her own behaviors. Such a morality cannot lead to trust and beneficial relationships. No where did I criticize either marriage. But her logic is faulty, and her claims to logic and rationality cannot be sustained.
(continued below)
(continued from above)
”As a parallel argument, I submit that it's possible to have more than one reason to leave Christianity. In addition to resenting connubial imprisonment, one can also feel that the religion's fundamental worldview is morally corrupt, or that its cosmology is completely divorced from reality, for example.”
Of course. Those arguments are frequently made here, and have been analyzed. But those are not arguments she made. Her entire argument was from sexual freedom, so that’s what I discussed.
”P.S. Stan, you make a sudden and enormous logical leap, from someone's desire to have sex with more than one person in their life to a "complete lack of principles." This is only the case if your principles come down to trying to prevent people from having sex in as many situations as possible.”
That is an absurd reduction. The position which I took and continue to take is that character is important: honesty cannot be replaced by total freedom. If one is to commit, as in marriage, then character and honesty and self-denial will replace the commitment to lust for ” sex in as many situations as possible”. The issue is not for controlling other people’s sex lives. The issue is weighing character against total freedom; for people to engage self-control and to build character traits such as honesty and integrity so that they can be trusted by other people in their lives.
(Continued below)
(continued from above)
” An atheist can have an active sex life and still subscribe to principles of citizenship, self-discipline, responsibility towards others, and a commitment to accept unpleasant truths.”
The dishonesty of behind the back relationships prevents any claims to honesty, self-discipline and responsibility. I don’t know what you mean by “commitment to accept unpleasant truths”, especially since Atheists, at least Atheist philosophers, don’t accept the concept of “truth”, and also since Atheists refuse to accept the illogic of their belief system. Atheism is a leap of faith without evidence even being possible for supporting their religious position.
” Atheists can aspire to these things out of a sense of social obligation, self-respect, empathy, good upbringing; if all else fails, fear of punishment (albeit finite). This is why atheists are, at the very least, no more likely to engage in crime than believers; this is why secular societies are, on average, no more violent than religious ones.”
The major secular societies being China, North Korea, Viet Nam, Cuba and Russia, it would appear that the appeal to punishment is actually the major factor. The deaths incurred in instilling the secular ethic of the moment shows the claim to be false. Secularism is not restricted to social-democratic societies.
The term “can aspire” is key here. There is nothing in Atheism which posits any ethic. In order to have an ethic, the Atheist must acquire one somewhere else, or make up his own. There is nothing in Atheism that prevents Consequentialism, Alinskyism, or raw totalitarianism. There is no ethic within Atheism which prevents eating your homosexual lovers, a la Jeffrey Dahmer.
To claim an ethic as “Atheist” is false. Atheists can borrow ethics, such as Judeo-Christianity, or modify an existing ethic such as the Declaration of Independence, or create an ethic such as one of the three Humanism Manifestos (or wait for the next one), or claim that obeying regulations and not going to jail is an ethic. None of these derive from Atheism.
All ethics proposed by Atheists are merely their own opinions. There is no absolute grounding principle which gives any authority to these opinions. As Arthur Leff said, in order for an ethic to have authority, it must be derived and given by someone with impeccable moral credentials, a perfectly incorrigibly moral source, obviously incorruptible. Otherwise the ethic is just another human opinion, frequently an opinion which that human wants other people to behave by.
Atheism is an open vessel which is vulnerable to being filled with ethical opinions which match certain individual lusts, in this case sex, in many other cases, power. That is why Atheism is dangerous and Atheists are not trusted.
Proterozoic: To put it in simple terms - Erin gave her desire to "have control over her own sexuality" as you put it, as her reason for disbelieving in the existence of God.
But that is a total non-sequitor. It simply does not follow.
I must shorten your list of secular societies. Russia certainly isn't one, and its church grows more powerful as the country grows more repressive. North Korea has no church, but literally worships its founder as a supernatural figure.
I'll take your China, Vietnam and Cuba, and raise you Sweden, Norway, and the U.K. Secular governments, secular populations, low rates of crime, low rates of political repression.
You warn against the dangers of atheism while, ironically, making a consequentialist argument: that atheism makes people untrustworthy. To disprove this argument, I don't even need to argue that atheism makes anyone conduct themselves better towards other people. I simply need to mention the existence of majority-atheist societies with low levels of violence, both criminal and political.
You're correct that atheism doesn't have an inherent ethic of conduct - it's simply the extension of the principle that things should not be believed without evidence. An atheist may be free to adopt anyone else's ethic or make up his own; he just doesn't have the recourse of defending it because someone wrote it somewhere. You believe that this is a bad thing, but I think that it's good for people to have to do a little work to justify their actions and beliefs. If an atheist wants to eat his homosexual lover, he'll have to come up with a better excuse than "I was told to do so by a 12th-century manuscript."
However, you keep using the words "total freedom," and say that "Atheists, once exuberantly “freed”, do not care to ground their 'thought' in any pesky absolutes". But we are dealing with absolutes - everyone is. To disbelieve in God doesn't change the laws of nature, or human anatomy - or psychology.
Humans have the rudiments of a morality from birth - things like a sense of fairness, an ability to empathize with others (even non-humans), a desire to be liked and respected by others. Every ethical system, including Christianity, piggy-backs on inherent human qualities - they wouldn't have a single adherent if they didn't. We inevitably had to develop at least some altruistic, socially-minded tendencies, because the human race can only survive in numbers: to put it in prosaic terms, morality is nature's way to do game theory, and to balance caution with cooperation. A society of perfectly selfish and amoral individuals would simply die out or become subjugated by a society of individuals that are able to trust and cooperate with each other. This is why we aren't all psychopaths.
(continued)
This is also what gives rise to the tension in our political system, and between different systems worldwide - what Arthur Leff calls the individual's "dual self-image" as having both rights and beign a member of society.
I believe that the idea of a perfect ethic that comes from an incorruptibly moral, supernatural source is a pipe dream. What shape would such an ethic take, anyway? Is it a perfect rule-set of behavior for every situation? No ethic is like that - at some point, the practitioner has to start making judgment calls. How many genuine Biblical literalists does one see these days? Even in religious ethics, you either make a utilitarian argument ("Gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt, because their kids tend to get hooked on drugs"), or you appeal to authority ("Gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt, because God doesn't like them"). The second appeal would be universally satisfactory if true, in Leff's sense, but is even less satisfactory for someone who doesn't believe in the given authority.
And this brings us to something Leff neglected to discuss, which is, if the only genuine moral first principles can come from an entity whose EVERY statement is an absolute "performative utterance," then any such moral principles would not be suggestions or commandments - they would be laws of nature, inviolable. If God said that "thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain," thou would not be able to take it in vain. And this is where the edifice collapses, and Leff, in the end, is left to say that "it looks as if we are all we have."
P.S. To get back to Erin's article, I'll give you one point: sexual repression is not a logically sufficient reason to become an atheist (although it's an excellent reason to leave a given religion). Reading, I got the sense that she was never a particularly fanatical believer in the first place, and was going along with everyone else in her environment. I'm not sure on what basis you say that "she feels comfortable in dishonest, behind the back relationships." The only such relationship she was in was with her first husband. I don't see anything about implies that she plans to be unfaithful to her current husband. She seems quite fond of him.
Proterozoic said,
”Russia certainly isn't one, and its church grows more powerful as the country grows more repressive.
This doesn’t match boots-on-the-ground reports. Maybe you have statistics? Russia is not nearly as repressive as it was 20 to 90 years ago, under Atheist totalitarianism. But show us the statistics. Where is the evidence?
” I'll take your China, Vietnam and Cuba, and raise you Sweden, Norway, and the U.K. Secular governments, secular populations, low rates of crime, low rates of political repression.”
Rather like raising with match sticks in a high stakes game, but OK.
”You warn against the dangers of atheism while, ironically, making a consequentialist argument: that atheism makes people untrustworthy.”
You mistake the argument. Atheism doesn’t make people untrustworthy. Atheism places the Atheist (regardless of his adopted morals) in a position which he cannot declare a firm set of ethics, which others can depend on him to respect and to subject his behavior to. So viewed from the outside, Atheism gives no value system, much less a firm, consistent one, for the outsider to expect the Atheist to try to abide by. It is not an individual issue, it is a generic issue endemic to Atheism as a decision. And the argument is not consequentialist, Atheism is consequentialist.
So your argument which you make concerning “nice” Atheist societies would still apply, except that it is overwhelmed by the truly nasty Atheist societies which also exist. The argument is that Atheism is not an indication of the ethics or morals of the Atheist, and the “Atheist societies” argument shows the validity of that argument.
”You're correct that atheism doesn't have an inherent ethic of conduct - it's simply the extension of the principle that things should not be believed without evidence.”
And yet there is no evidence to support the belief that there is “no first cause”. That makes Atheism internally non-coherent, and by extension makes all Atheist logic suspect and necessitates logical analysis clear to the point of axioms. And watch your own assertions which you make without evidence (coming up).
”An atheist may be free to adopt anyone else's ethic or make up his own; he just doesn't have the recourse of defending it because someone wrote it somewhere. You believe that this is a bad thing, but I think that it's good for people to have to do a little work to justify their actions and beliefs. If an atheist wants to eat his homosexual lover, he'll have to come up with a better excuse than "I was told to do so by a 12th-century manuscript."”
I agree that everyone should be able to justify their beliefs. That is why I expect that of Atheists.
(continued below)
”However, you keep using the words "total freedom," and say that "Atheists, once exuberantly “freed”, do not care to ground their 'thought' in any pesky absolutes". But we are dealing with absolutes - everyone is. To disbelieve in God doesn't change the laws of nature, or human anatomy - or psychology.”
None of those things are absolutes – read Hume.
”Humans have the rudiments of a morality from birth - things like a sense of fairness, an ability to empathize with others (even non-humans), a desire to be liked and respected by others. Every ethical system, including Christianity, piggy-backs on inherent human qualities - they wouldn't have a single adherent if they didn't.”
I disagree. Fairness, for example should not be confused with self-centeredness. This is an example of the declaration of something as a “truth” without any evidence, most likely a derivative of personal experience and not any controlled experimental “knowledge”. The last sentence is a universal statement which is presented as a first principle, obvious by inspection: but it is not. And the evidence? Where is the evidence for this belief?
”. We inevitably had to develop at least some altruistic, socially-minded tendencies, because the human race can only survive in numbers: to put it in prosaic terms, morality is nature's way to do game theory, and to balance caution with cooperation. A society of perfectly selfish and amoral individuals would simply die out or become subjugated by a society of individuals that are able to trust and cooperate with each other. This is why we aren't all psychopaths.”
This is an evolutionary sociologist’s Just So Story; there is no evidence for this purely imaginary tale.
”I believe that the idea of a perfect ethic that comes from an incorruptibly moral, supernatural source is a pipe dream. What shape would such an ethic take, anyway? Is it a perfect rule-set of behavior for every situation? No ethic is like that - at some point, the practitioner has to start making judgment calls.”
But here’s the thing: I have no reason to think that your opinion is of any higher value than my opinion or anyone else’s opinion. What you think is a pipe dream is of no consequence to me – I don’t even know your name, much less where you get your ethics or how you behave. And that is the problem which Atheists and Ethicists have: there is absolutely no reason for any one to give credence to their opinions. And here you say it yourself:
”….but is even less satisfactory for someone who doesn't believe in the given authority.”
Exactly. Atheists pick and choose behaviors they prefer, and declare them to be moral / ethical. See the problem? Under that process there is no remaining morality or ethic. It’s all fluidly dependent upon personal proclivity. For the Atheist, not only is there no ethic which inheres, there is also no authority save for the individual Atheist. So there is no possible “universal” ethic, or even an identifiable ethic. It is just “behavior”.
(continued below)
”if the only genuine moral first principles can come from an entity whose EVERY statement is an absolute "performative utterance," then any such moral principles would not be suggestions or commandments - they would be laws of nature, inviolable. If God said that "thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain," thou would not be able to take it in vain. And this is where the edifice collapses, and Leff, in the end, is left to say that "it looks as if we are all we have."
You have created a parallel universe in which there is no free will. There is no reason to believe that a deity would wish to have such a situation, one where all creatures are automatons. But that would be a decision left not to us, but to the proposed deity, yes? Theism does not posit the scenario which you have put forth; it is unnecessary, so arguing for or against it is without value.
”How many genuine Biblical literalists does one see these days? Even in religious ethics, you either make a utilitarian argument ("Gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt, because their kids tend to get hooked on drugs"), or you appeal to authority ("Gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt, because God doesn't like them"). The second appeal would be universally satisfactory if true, in Leff's sense, but is even less satisfactory for someone who doesn't believe in the given authority."
Utilitarianism is marked by justifying the means by declaring the morality of the end; that is not part of Christianity in any sense. And the rejection of all moral authority is exactly the issue that makes Atheists without any authority whatsoever in their “moral” pronouncements.
”To get back to Erin's article,… (snip) …I'm not sure on what basis you say that "she feels comfortable in dishonest, behind the back relationships." The only such relationship she was in was with her first husband. I don't see anything about implies that she plans to be unfaithful to her current husband. She seems quite fond of him.”
All of her relationships before her current husband were either secretive or loveless or both. She extolled the virtue of such in justifying her freedom from moral restraint. She never claims that restraint from such sexual profligacy is desirable, nor that integrity is part of her personal worldview. What she claims is freedom.
The overarching point here is that Erin’s decision and worldview is not the “logical and rational enlightened and evidence-based" worldview that Atheism in general claims. Nor is it a moral worldview; it is a “freedom” worldview.
Evidence? Sure, plenty.
Under the Putin/Medvedev tandem, the Russian church is about to become the largest property holder in the country: link. The sleazy transition of power back to Putin has been endorsed by church officials, who called it "peaceful, friendly, and fair" link, while opposition candidates are being disqualified for bogus reasons link. Almost 70% of Russians count themselves as members of the Orthodox Church alone, only 16% call themselves non-believers link.
I'm not mistaking your argument. You didn't say that atheism makes people untrustworthy, you just said that it makes people unable to "declare a firm set of ethics," which is why "Atheism is dangerous and Atheists are not trusted." Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Fortunately, this isn't true - social trust correlates very strongly with income and education level, and negatively - with economic inequality and corruption, but has no strong correlation with religiosity or lack thereof. (What religion does very effectively is promote intra-group trust; however, it does so with rather prosaic mechanisms like social penalties, reputation, and ritual: link)
For a lagniappe, here's a ranking of U.S. states by church attendance: link and by Human Development Index: link.
The explanation is either that you CAN have ethics without religion, or that you can have low crime and a high level of social trust without ethics, or, in a reverse "no true Scotsman" fallacy, that people who say they're not religious but are trusting and law-abiding actually secretly are.
Moving on, I don't know where you got the notion that atheists don't believe in a first cause. Here, in fact, is Skeptic magazine with a hierarchy of 27 possible first causes, including a God: link. It's a truism that somehow, everything that exists must have come to be; however, in the absence of evidence, I don't see why it's necessary to commit, willy-nilly, to any particular first cause, much less to declare that this cause has some kind of opinion on whether or not we should eat meat on Fridays. We don't know yet how the universe came about.
What we do know quite a bit about is evolution and social dynamics, neither of which is a Just So Story. Here's a real Just So story: "God made the universe in 6 days, somehow got in green plants before the Sun and all the stars & galaxies in the cosmos [Genesis 1:12-19], and we know that this is all true because we've found it written on an uncredited papyrus."
Hume notwithstanding, it's uncontroversial that all animals have innate behaviors. Assuming that you're not a young-earth creationist, and accept evolution, then why should humans be mere behavioral blank slates from birth? Considering that "society" can be seen as part of our extended phenotype, why can't social behaviors evolve, even behaviors that are altruistic (i.e. ones that, taken in isolation, lower the fitness of the organism performing them, and increase the fitness of other organisms)?
There is, first and foremost, a strong theoretical basis for this. There's Hamilton's Rule for altruism in kin selection. There's John Maynard Smith's hawk/dove payoff matrix, which shows that resource sharing is an evolutionary stable strategy for a population, and will naturally place limits on aggressive behavior. There's Axelrod and Hamilton's famous 1981 simulation, which found that the optimal strategy for the Prisoner's Dilemma over multiple iterations was cooperation rather than selfishness or dishonesty - the "Tit-for-Tat" strategy, where the first move was to offer cooperation. (The amusing implication of this is that bacteria and lichens have discovered the Golden Rule way before Jesus did.)
Experimental evidence abounds. Animals with advanced cognitive function, such as birds and mammals, have shown the rudiments of empathy, morality and social conscience: see Russell Church's famous experiment with rats who stop eating rather than cause pain to other rats link. Here's an experment that showed rats helping other rats, even when it doesn't directly benefit them: link. Here's an experiment that shows awareness of fairness in capuchin monkeys: link. Here's a study on genetically-unrelated tamarin monkeys who reward altruism with cooperative sharing: link. Here's a whole book on the topic, from Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce: link.
Of course, maybe you believe that rats and monkeys have an innate sense of empathy & fairness, and humans don't. This is belied by experiments on infant morality, such as ones conducted by Warneken & Tommasello on altruism in human and chimpanzee infants: link. Here's another one by the same authors: link There's also evidence of the reverse, that not only is altruistic behavior in infants not solely motivated by material rewards, but rewards tend to actually weaken intrinsic motivation: link. Here's another study on grade-school children by Fabes, Fulse & Eisenberg: link. Paul Bloom of Yale wrote a good summary in the Times Magazine: link.
If you want studies on adults, here's a study based on information from the World Value Survey where people who were less accepting of selfish behavior (bribery, etc) reported being happier: link. Here's neural evidence for "inequality-averse social preferences" link Here's a study showing how damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in subjects eliminates their ability to recognize harmful intent: link. Here's an interesting experiment where researchers were able to affect subjects' moral judgment by using magnetic fields to interfere with the right temporoparietal junction: link. So much for "all fluidly dependent upon personal proclivity."
On a more philosophical level, it's funny how you keep invoking thinkers who weaken your case. Hume was not only a skeptic, but his theory of "sentimentalism" argues the exact thing that I do - that humans have an innate moral sense.
As for Leff, you seem to be untroubled by the paradox of divine providence. How do you reconcile free will with divine omnipotence and omniscience? Also, how did you resolve the Euthyphro dilemma - if we have free will to break God's moral law, what is it that makes it universal - the fact that God can read minds, or that he can cause infinite pain? How is the Christian God anything more than just an unusually powerful tyrant?
"Atheists pick and choose behaviors they prefer, and declare them to be moral / ethical. See the problem? Under that process there is no remaining morality or ethic."
Believers (including yourself, apparently) pick and choose the religion they prefer, and declare it to be the only true one. At least the 53% of Americans who change their religious affiliation at some point during their lifetimes: link. Moreover, they pick and choose the parts of their religion that they're comfortable with, and ignore the rest, as evidenced by the lack of stonings in our country of late.
P.S. Let's examine all we know about Erin Breda's relationships: she was forced into a loveless marriage at 18; had an affair that led to the dissolution of this marriage (which, while I would normally condemn infidelity as a breach of trust, I have no problem with, since I don't believe she owed any loyalty in her situation); now, an undetermined amount of time later, she's married to a person she loves and wants to have kids with.
On this basis, you have heaped contempt on her, calling her "sexually profligate," "comfortable in behind the back relationships," free of all "fidelity, integrity, honesty, reliability, responsibility for the consequences of one's own actions, and all the qualities that mold 'good' character," and have said that you wouldn't even want her as a neighbor (a sentiment, I'm certain, she fully shares). FrankNorman has called her "Little Miss Sex-Drive" and has said that he feels sorry for her children.
I suppose there is a drawback to lacking a belief in an afterlife - I can't genuinely hope that you and FrankNorman will be reincarnated as women, forced into marriages and left to deal with your situation in ways that don't offend the moral standards of self-righteous pecksniffs.
proterozoic,
I'm not sure what your point is here. It has also been shown that humans who receive no nurturing during the crucial years of infancy / childhood grow to be incurable sociopaths. (adoptions from Romanian orphanages).
If you are saying that empathy equals morality and even animals have it naturally so humans must also have it naturally, then I think that argument is incorrect.
Tests on infants and children do not reveal the natural, uninfluenced "state of nature" which humans inherit, unless the infants and children have not been influenced in any way by their environment, and the humans in their environment. This condition occurs only in situations of extreme neglect, and is not a suitable study subject for children raised by caring parents, who have influenced even their infants.
I think something may have gone wrong. I submitted my post in 4 parts. Did some of them not go through?
proterozoic,
Only one has shown up. Please try again.
Proterozoic,
I found two in the spam file, they should be up now. As for the fourth, I don't know where it went.
proterozoic,
Since this is getting to be very long, I will respond to your last comments first, and then your others.
”On this basis, [her abuse and bad fortune; ed.] you have heaped contempt on her, calling her "sexually profligate," "comfortable in behind the back relationships," free of all "fidelity, integrity, honesty, reliability, responsibility for the consequences of one's own actions, and all the qualities that mold 'good' character," and have said that you wouldn't even want her as a neighbor (a sentiment, I'm certain, she fully shares). FrankNorman has called her "Little Miss Sex-Drive" and has said that he feels sorry for her children.”
That you make excuses for her doesn’t help her case, which she argued sufficiently herself. I can again quote her own statements in which she proudly makes clear her position; your defense is not required, because she made the case herself.
”I suppose there is a drawback to lacking a belief in an afterlife - I can't genuinely hope that you and FrankNorman will be reincarnated as women, forced into marriages and left to deal with your situation in ways that don't offend the moral standards of self-righteous pecksniffs.”
And here you illuminate your own opinion of character, its necessity and its connection to honesty and trustworthiness in human behavior. Your apology for her current opinion, in her current situation, as an adult, one who claims logic and rationality through rejection, is merely an enabling of the perpetuation of poor character traits by making excuses for them. At what point do you stop making excuses for bad behaviors and start to recommend character modifications? Never, because well, she was in a bad situation, so her bad behaviors are permanently excused? Good character is optional?
Or are you merely arguing against a worldview you dislike, one where character relates to trustworthiness, which places consequences you don’t like on everyone regardless of their history? This appears to be the case, which leads to the obvious question:
Why should anyone trust you?
Seriously, what is it about your worldview that would give anyone the ability to trust that your actions would be responsible, as one would expect of a person with a known ethic containing responsibility as a value, as known from a higher source of moral authority than personal opinion?
Since you do not have that to offer, then why should you expect anyone to trust you?
So under these conditions, your moral judgment of me rings entirely hollow. Although “pecksniff” is a pretty good word, I must say, to use in moral judgment placed on others. Your moral outrage at seeing moral conditions seems to be an internal contradiction… unless your moral outrage is due to having morals which go counter to standard traits considered to be those of “good character”, leading to trustworthiness.
Proposition:
The holders of moral theory P are immoral “pecksniffs” as judged by moral theory Q;
If Q = P, then the judgment is internally contradictory.
If Q = !P, then the judgment is coherent, but one of the theories is wrong.
If P = [Good Character], THEN Q = [NOT Good Character]; therefore, Q is a theory that cannot lead to trustworthiness because it does not value good character.
110711 proterozoic
Proterozoic,
I addressed the last part of your comments first, above. Here is my response to your other comments:
”Under the Putin/Medvedev tandem, the Russian church is about to become the largest property holder in the country: link. The sleazy transition of power back to Putin has been endorsed by church officials, who called it "peaceful, friendly, and fair"
Surely you are aware of the Alinsky tactic of “wrapping in the cloak of morality” every Consequentialist move. It was also used by Hitler, who killed churchmen who wouldn’t promote his agenda, leaving only toadies in the churches, thereby allowing Hitler to pervert the church into a NAZI tool, stripping it of its essence while leaving an air of ecclesiastic authority and empty ritualism.
Now, the following is from your link, which you attempt to use to justify your claim, re: Russian religion:
”In practice only a minority of citizens actively participated in any religion. Many who identified themselves as members of a religious group participated in religious life rarely or not at all. There is no single set of reliable statistics that breaks down the population by denomination, and the following statistics are compiled from government, polling, and religious group sources.”
Since this first look into your links provides a specific refutation of your claim, I will presume that many, most, or all of your links do the same. I am not about to visit dozens of false leads.
Next,
”I'm not mistaking your argument. You didn't say that atheism makes people untrustworthy, you just said that it makes people unable to "declare a firm set of ethics," which is why "Atheism is dangerous and Atheists are not trusted." Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
Then we agree, I guess. Atheists cannot be trusted because of their Atheism.
Your litany of studies claiming no trust issues is belied by the constant complaining of Atheists themselves, who claim to be discriminated against, some of whom “stay in the closet” for fear of losing the trust of co-workers, even a few of whom claim that “religionists” want to burn them at the stake, and many other claims. Either these are truthful trust issues or they are paranoiac claims. Your position would be the latter, since trust issues don’t exist according to you.
”The explanation is either that you CAN have ethics without religion, or that you can have low crime and a high level of social trust without ethics, or, in a reverse "no true Scotsman" fallacy, that people who say they're not religious but are trusting and law-abiding actually secretly are.”
An “Either-Or-Or” argument is difficult to decipher. Especially one containing something called a “reverse fallacy”. The first “Or” seems to be a false dichotomy containing four variables with only two choices. If we eliminate the “social trust” issue due to its conjunction with lack of ethics, which is an impossible conjunction, then the dichotomy still has too many variables. So I will turn it back to you so that you can form a single variable, either-or, on-off, dichotomy. Or expand it somehow into a series of syllogisms.
As for the second “Or”, there is no telling what a “reverse fallacy” might mean to you unless you define the term.
So your argument is not accepted in its current form. Feel free to modify it and resubmit.
(continued)
”Moving on, I don't know where you got the notion that atheists don't believe in a first cause. Here, in fact, is Skeptic magazine with a hierarchy of 27 possible first causes, including a God: link. It's a truism that somehow, everything that exists must have come to be; however, in the absence of evidence, I don't see why it's necessary to commit, willy-nilly, to any particular first cause, much less to declare that this cause has some kind of opinion on whether or not we should eat meat on Fridays. We don't know yet how the universe came about.”
The argument progresses beyond first cause to the nature of the cause which had the capability to produce the universe and its constituents as we see it today. The argument that a cause must have characteristic Q if the effect has characteristic Q after the cause is asserted, is a robust argument. Atheists and materialists use it all the time:
“A material effect must have a material cause”.
It is this “rule” which drives Atheo-materialists to claim that there is no self, that there is no autonomy, that there is no consciousness, that there is no knowledge which is not materially derived, that life has no essence, that abiogenesis has to make sense… somehow…, etc.
But if this rule is applied to certain other things, then Atheists feel compelled to reject it under the Radical Skepticism rule: “you can’t know that”. Reversion to Radical Skepticism is an admission of argument failure. The second rule of Radical Skepticism is this: “you can’t prove that”, which is followed by a demand for “evidence”, which, under Radical Skeptic-Atheo-Materialism means material evidence.
In the case of a first cause, both appeals to Radical Skepticism fail, because the argument is in regards to non-material existence, which cannot be examined by science under its material limitations. It is a Category Error Fallacy.
The first cause argument is not an argument of material evidence, it is an argument of the likelihood of a non-physical, causal existence and its characteristics, given certain observations of the nature of the universe, including the first principles of logic.
BTW, eating meat on Fridays is an opinion of men employed in churches and has no bearing on the subject.
(continued)
”What we do know quite a bit about is evolution and social dynamics, neither of which is a Just So Story. Here's a real Just So story: "God made the universe in 6 days, somehow got in green plants before the Sun and all the stars & galaxies in the cosmos [Genesis 1:12-19], and we know that this is all true because we've found it written on an uncredited papyrus."
Even Stephen J. Gould admitted that evolution consisted of a series of Just So Stories, and in those very words. Dawkins admits that the evidence for evolution is implied and not material, but claims that the “mountain” of such implied evidence gives it the credibility of actual, factual evidence. The tendency to give undeserved credibility to implied evidence has erupted in evo-devo theories of the evolution of social dynamics, social contracts, etc., all of which are declared to be “plausible” stories, but which contain not a whit of evidence, either forensic or material. While this fails the materialist demand for material evidence, it is given a pass due to its congruence with Atheo-materialist ideology. So the entire evolutionary enterprise is Special Pleading.
Attacking the bible is not pertinent to the issue of a first cause; the entire paragraph above is a Tu Quoque Fallacy and fails to be a logical argument.
”Hume notwithstanding, it's uncontroversial that all animals have innate behaviors. Assuming that you're not a young-earth creationist, and accept evolution…”
I do not accept young earth creationism, and I do not accept evolution as proven, settled science worthy of inclusion in worldviews.
”…then why should humans be mere behavioral blank slates from birth? Considering that "society" can be seen as part of our extended phenotype, why can't social behaviors evolve, even behaviors that are altruistic (i.e. ones that, taken in isolation, lower the fitness of the organism performing them, and increase the fitness of other organisms)?”
You are willing to believe these unsubstantiated stories, but are unwilling to consider the characteristics of a first cause? In your own words, I see no reason to commit, willy nilly, to fabricated stories about what might have happened, given certain unproven and unprovable premises. And what you present here are just that: fabricated stories, starting with “why can’t”.
(continued)
”On a more philosophical level, it's funny how you keep invoking thinkers who weaken your case. Hume was not only a skeptic, but his theory of "sentimentalism" argues the exact thing that I do - that humans have an innate moral sense.”
And that refutes the statement, how?
Plus, the existence of an innate moral sense has been soundly falsified by the phenomenon of the adopted Romanian babies, those who had no nurturing during their infancy, who turned into sociopaths without consciences or morals. The moral sense was not present innately and it was not installed through proper parenting.
”"Atheists pick and choose behaviors they prefer, and declare them to be moral / ethical. See the problem? Under that process there is no remaining morality or ethic."
Believers (including yourself, apparently) pick and choose the religion they prefer, and declare it to be the only true one. At least the 53% of Americans who change their religious affiliation at some point during their lifetimes: link. Moreover, they pick and choose the parts of their religion that they're comfortable with, and ignore the rest, as evidenced by the lack of stonings in our country of late.
This paragraph is another Tu Quoque Fallacy, intended to change the subject so as not to address the issue presented, which is that Atheists choose behaviors they prefer (being unencumbered by external influences) and then declare that behavior to be ethical. This you address by painting a false picture of belief, which you then use to say “you too” (Tu Quoque). But despite the false picture Red Herring, we will stay on the subject.
How do you declare your own ethic? What is its source? What is the moral authority of that source? You avoided answering these questions which are essential to the issue of Character, honesty, and trustworthiness.
Now. Let’s examine your false picture, a Just So Story which you create for a specific purpose: to avoid the above discussion of Atheist ethics. The idea of picking and declaring a religion to be true, is false, as even the slightest consideration would reveal. Ask believers that you encounter what they think about the first cause. You will find that they have already considered the first cause and have decided that the likelihood of such an entity is high and that the powers of such an entity are unknowably great, etc. The rest are details, and involves finding a group which emphasizes the same details which you do. Some groups have invented interpretations which are rejected by some people. Foremost in this is Catholicism which separates the individual from God by asserting a human hierarchy. However, the fundamentals are still the same: there is a first cause with certain characteristics which are basic to all Christian varieties.
The link you give here, to a Pew report, refers not to religion change, where a person leaves Islam, say, for Buddhism. The report refers to turmoil within the singular Christian religion, where a person leaves one denomination for another, or becomes non-denominational. A large number of churches in my region are non-denominational churches. The fundamental beliefs remain the same, while the emphasis on details varies.
Stonings. This betrays a complete lack of understanding of the Bible. If you expect stonings, then you have not read the New Testament, and have probably scanned the Old Testament merely hoping to discover material which you find objectionable under your moral sense, derived under your personal moral authority, as is the trait of many Atheists.
Part I / V
Surely you are aware of the Alinsky tactic of “wrapping in the cloak of morality” every Consequentialist move. It was also used by Hitler, who killed churchmen who wouldn’t promote his agenda, leaving only toadies in the churches, thereby allowing Hitler to pervert the church into a NAZI tool, stripping it of its essence while leaving an air of ecclesiastic authority and empty ritualism.
Now, the following is from your link, which you attempt to use to justify your claim, re: Russian religion: xxxx
Since this first look into your links provides a specific refutation of your claim, I will presume that many, most, or all of your links do the same. I am not about to visit dozens of false leads.
Ah, my mistake. We just diverged in our definitions. See, the State Department document I linked to says that 100 million of Russians self-report as belonging to the Russian Orthodox church alone, and I thought, on that basis, that they could be called "religious;" however, your definition of a religious society appears to be one where most people don't just consider themselves Christian, for instance, but are also part of a well-oiled ritualistic machinery. By that standard, yes, Russia is certainly secular.
I only hope that you'll be generous enough to reverse your sight-unseen dismissal, on this basis, of every single other piece of evidence that I linked to.
I'm not aware of Alinsky, except for the fact that he seems to have been an enormous influence on American conservatives, who talk about him incessantly. However, I'm certain that in your reply, you can link to evidence that Putin has killed Orthodox churchmen who don't promote his agenda.
”I'm not mistaking your argument. You didn't say that atheism makes people untrustworthy, you just said that it makes people unable to "declare a firm set of ethics," which is why "Atheism is dangerous and Atheists are not trusted." Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
Then we agree, I guess. Atheists cannot be trusted because of their Atheism.
I'm afraid we don't agree. I barely got you to agree with yourself. You argued that atheism makes people untrustworthy, then said "You mistake the argument. Atheism doesn’t make people untrustworthy." In this reply, you finally acknowledge that this is indeed the argument you're making, but then go on to say that "we agree," even though I've been arguing the opposite this whole time. Is this some kind of mental judo?
Your litany of studies claiming no trust issues is belied by the constant complaining of Atheists themselves, who claim to be discriminated against, some of whom “stay in the closet” for fear of losing the trust of co-workers, even a few of whom claim that “religionists” want to burn them at the stake, and many other claims. Either these are truthful trust issues or they are paranoiac claims. Your position would be the latter, since trust issues don’t exist according to you.
This is an exercise in willful misunderstanding. If atheism was correlated with untrustworthiness, then places with more atheists would have lower levels of social trust. I brought a litany of studies that showed no such correlation. That's all. Persecution or ostracism of atheists in predominantly religious societies is an entirely different issue.
"An “Either-Or-Or” argument is difficult to decipher. Especially one containing something called a “reverse fallacy”. etc etc"
My argument: How does one explain the existence of societies with low levels of religiosity, low crime and high levels of social trust? Since we both believe that one must possess ethics in order to be law-abiding and trustworthy, then we must accept that it's possible to have ethics without being religious.
Part II / V
The "reverse No True Scotsman" was a facetious play on the fact that, whenever a Christian does something appalling, such as the shootings in Norway, one always hears arguments that this person couldn't have been a "true" Christian link. This is the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. Therefore, by the same token, atheists who are law-abiding and trustworthy must not be "true" atheists, but believers. It was a joke, and I don't actually believe this.
The argument that a cause must have characteristic Q if the effect has characteristic Q after the cause is asserted, is a robust argument.
Not when you consider emergent effects - simple rules applied over many iterations that give rise to complexity.
It is this “rule” which drives Atheo-materialists to claim that there is no self, that there is no autonomy, that there is no consciousness, that there is no knowledge which is not materially derived, that life has no essence, that abiogenesis has to make sense… somehow…, etc.
But if this rule is applied to certain other things, then Atheists feel compelled to reject it under the Radical Skepticism rule: “you can’t know that”. Reversion to Radical Skepticism is an admission of argument failure. The second rule of Radical Skepticism is this: “you can’t prove that”, which is followed by a demand for “evidence”, which, under Radical Skeptic-Atheo-Materialism means material evidence.
FIrst of all, where did you see me appealing to Radical Skepticism? Second, Radical Skepticism doesn't demand "evidence," material or otherwise, since the whole philosophy maintains that knowledge is impossible. Third, it's not a mainstream philosophy, since it's so unproductive; Bertrand Russell mocked it as frivolous insincerity.
When it comes to first causes, it's hard to apply the rule that “A material effect must have a material cause” to conditions before the existence of material or time. The first cause of the universe may or may not be unknowable - I'm making no claim either way. In any case, I'll reiterate: what reason do we have to prefer any one of the Skeptic's 27 potential first causes to the other?
If you don't like the "meat on Fridays" example, I can rephrase: "I don't see why it's necessary to commit, willy-nilly, to any particular first cause, much less to declare that this cause has some kind of opinion on whether or not we should rest from work on one day out of every seven."
Even Stephen J. Gould admitted that evolution consisted of a series of Just So Stories, and in those very words.
This is from an article by Stephen Jay Gould, where he used the example of wing evolution to discuss the concepts of functional continuity and functional shift. He didn't say that "evolution consisted" of just-so stories - in fact, he's discussing exciting breakthroughs in modeling the evolution of insect wings from a thermoregulatory to a flight functionality. The "just-so stories" comment referred to facile verbal speculation about evolutionary pathways, which Gould disparages in favor of math and experimental models. Concerning the insect wing model, he says that "We could not hope for a more elegant experimental confirmation of Darwin's solution to Mivart's challenge [confirming functional shift as opposed continuity]." The whole thing is right here. It's interesting reading.
Part III / V
I'm not sure where the Dawkins reference is from, or what it means to say we don't have material evidence. Dawkins himself lists all sorts of different evidence. If you want a more paleontological bent, there's Donald Prothero's excellent book. On a more advanced level, there's John Maynard Smith's Evolutionary Genetics textbook, with an explanation of how it's possible to reconstruct the entire phylogenetic tree even without relying on any fossils. There's plenty of material on evolution, online and offline.
”…then why should humans be mere behavioral blank slates from birth? xxx ...”
You are willing to believe these unsubstantiated stories, but are unwilling to consider the characteristics of a first cause? In your own words, I see no reason to commit, willy nilly, to fabricated stories about what might have happened, given certain unproven and unprovable premises. And what you present here are just that: fabricated stories, starting with “why can’t”.
They're not unsubstantiated, since the "why can't" questions were merely a rhetorical introduction, after which I went on to list various mathematical models for the emergence of these behaviors, and link to a dozen different scholarly papers that provide experimental and obsrevational evidence, right in this comment: link.
To all of these, you counter that "it has been shown" that Romanian orphans grow up to be sociopaths. Where has it been shown? By whom? How old were the children? Were they healthy to begin with, or were they born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or other disabilities? Did they learn how to talk, or did they grow up feral? Do you have a link to this study?
And what does it mean to say "Tests on infants and children do not reveal the natural, uninfluenced "state of nature" which humans inherit, unless the infants and children have not been influenced in any way by their environment"? First of all, who and what hasn't been "influenced in any way" by its environment? Second, it's precisely our "state of nature" to be socialized. Human beings who aren't socialized don't reproduce. You might as well say that the only way to study "natural, uninfluenced" digestive metabolism is on starvelings.
This paragraph is another Tu Quoque Fallacy, intended to change the subject so as not to address the issue presented, which is that Atheists choose behaviors they prefer (being unencumbered by external influences) and then declare that behavior to be ethical. This you address by painting a false picture of belief, which you then use to say “you too” (Tu Quoque).
If the point you make is that "atheists pick and choose their beliefs" and religious people don't, then for me to argue that religious people also do is not a Tu Quoque; it's a Counter-Argument. There's a pile of books, each of which claims to be the One True Word of God. Unless you take it, a priori, that the religion you happened to be born into is the true one and simply never question your upbringing, at some point you have to decide which book is the One True Word of God. How does one make that decision, if not through a personal judgment call, that one "feels more true" than all the others? Or is there objective evidence that God exists and that one of the world's religions is the true one?
Part IV / V
How do you declare your own ethic? What is its source? What is the moral authority of that source?
My main principles are self-reliance and responsibility towards others.
These are founded on mutuality. I want to live in a society where people won't try to cheat me or sponge off me; therefore I find parasitical and untrustworthy behaviors contemptible in others. Since I'm just another person like anybody else, then these behaviors would be contemptible on my part, as well. If I engage in such behaviors, I will experience self-loathing, which I am keen to avoid. My desire to live among people who won't cheat me leads me to resent myself if I turn out to be the type of person who cheats others.
I have no way to rely on an absolute, supernatural source for this ethic, since I don't believe one exists.
It's hard not to "avoid the above discussion of Atheist ethics", since non-belief in God doesn't contain an inherent ethical position. I'm perfectly willing to discuss my own ethics, and I've spent a lot of time discussing the biological basis for social ethics.
Stonings. This betrays a complete lack of understanding of the Bible. If you expect stonings, then you have not read the New Testament, and have probably scanned the Old Testament merely hoping to discover material which you find objectionable under your moral sense, derived under your personal moral authority, as is the trait of many Atheists.
I have read the Bible, in 3 languages. The ideal Old Testament believer is an unflinching, ritual-bound patriarch who won't hesitate to kill in conquest or in punishment. The New Testament believer is an apocalyptic mendicant who's willing to sever all social ties for the sake of his religion. One doesn't see too many of either these days. Somehow, most people who worship the Bible manage to reconcile it with their creature comforts, and ignore the inconvenient parts.
WIth great relief, modern Christians use the Pericope Adulterae to absolve themselves of the need to kill people for trifles as prescribed by the Old Testament; I wonder if they're bothered by the fact that, for thousands of years, their God did require such punishments, before his sudden change of personality 2000 years ago?
The idea of picking and declaring a religion to be true, is false, as even the slightest consideration would reveal. Ask believers that you encounter what they think about the first cause. You will find that they have already considered the first cause and have decided that the likelihood of such an entity is high and that the powers of such an entity are unknowably great, etc. The rest are details, and involves finding a group which emphasizes the same details which you do.
It's unclear whether you consider the differences between Christianity and Islam, for example, to be some of those "details," or whether these are just the differences between Christian denominations. Either way, Jehovah's Witnesses, observant Catholics and Mormons would all be mighty surprised to hear that their differences come down to mere details.
Part V / V
Re: Erin Breda. You edited out and avoided acknowledging the most relevant sentence in my reply, which I will copy here again: "she was forced into a loveless marriage at 18; had an affair that led to the dissolution of this marriage (which, while I would normally condemn infidelity as a breach of trust, I have no problem with, since I don't believe she owed any loyalty in her situation)..."
This answers many of your questions to me concerning character, like "At what point do you stop making excuses for bad behaviors and start to recommend character modifications?" At the point where she willingly enters a relationship that is based on mutual trust. If she breaks trust in such a relationship, I condemn her. If she breaks trust in a relationship that she entered unwillingly under duress, I don't condemn her, since I don't believe that one owes to return trust or loyalty under coercion. If you want to make a case to the contrary, please go ahead.
You haven't shown any evidence, or even made a plausible conjecture that she herself has exercised coercion on anybody, or broken trust in a relationship she entered willingly, even as you heaped scorn on her. I saw this as an exercise in victim-blaming, and that was the reason I got involved in this discussion in the first place.
Response to Part I / V
”I'm not aware of Alinsky, except for the fact that he seems to have been an enormous influence on American conservatives, who talk about him incessantly.”
Alinsky wrote the book, “Rules For Radicals”, the consequentialist program for overthrowing American institutions which Obama taught in his Community Organizer days. It is the playbook by which the Leftists work their magic. If you have not read it, then you are not up to speed on the Progressive Movement.
”evidence that Putin has killed Orthodox churchmen who don't promote his agenda.’
I have no idea what Putin has done to control the Russian church.
”I'm afraid we don't agree. I barely got you to agree with yourself. You argued that atheism makes people untrustworthy, then said "You mistake the argument. Atheism doesn’t make people untrustworthy." In this reply, you finally acknowledge that this is indeed the argument you're making, but then go on to say that "we agree," even though I've been arguing the opposite this whole time. Is this some kind of mental judo?”
I think you are right here. Atheism does render people untrustworthy. By relieving them of all absolutes, Atheism grants them the freedom of relativistic logic, ethics and worldviews, all of which can change in a blink and without notice. For a while there I was trying to grant that some Atheists might actually be consistently honest despite their lack of grounded ethical support for that. I now retract that.
”This is an exercise in willful misunderstanding. If atheism was correlated with untrustworthiness, then places with more atheists would have lower levels of social trust. I brought a litany of studies that showed no such correlation. That's all. Persecution or ostracism of atheists in predominantly religious societies is an entirely different issue.”
So predominantly Atheist societies are trust inducing? Russia? China? North Korea? Cuba? Or do you mean the small, historically Judeo-Christian countries – only? You cannot cherry pick countries which satisfy your criteria and then rationalize conclusions form that.
” My argument: How does one explain the existence of societies with low levels of religiosity, low crime and high levels of social trust? Since we both believe that one must possess ethics in order to be law-abiding and trustworthy, then we must accept that it's possible to have ethics without being religious.”
Yes, it is possible to co-opt Judeo-Christian ethics, which are embedded and codified previously. That is not the case in truly ground-up Atheist societies which have no Judeo-Christian ethical underlayment. Even then, the French Revolution and the ensuing Terror and slaughter demonstrates a transition to Atheism, even in a western setting.
Being granted freedom and relief from ethics is not a formula for trust; other influences must compensate for the loss of ethics.
Reply to Part II / V
”It was a joke, and I don't actually believe this.”
Ah. OK.
” The argument that a cause must have characteristic Q if the effect has characteristic Q after the cause is asserted, is a robust argument.
Not when you consider emergent effects - simple rules applied over many iterations that give rise to complexity.”
Even in Atheist evolution arguments, the “emergent” concept applies only to living things. If emergent rules really existed, then Cause and Effect would not be reliable as a tool for science. The concept of “emergent” rules is not used anywhere in science except as a made-up explanan for otherwise troublesome anti-physics occurrences in the world of living things. Even standard forward looking biology uses neither evolution as a natural law from which to deduce biological factoids, nor does it use “emergent” properties to deduce biological factoids. It is obvious that “emergent” complexity is a necessary fiction required to sustain evolutionary ideology.
” Bertrand Russell mocked it as frivolous insincerity.”
Yes he did; he also invented a dual-substance theory to explain living agents.
Radical Skepticism is shown by its increasing level of refusal to accept anything that is presented in a series of arguments. The Radical Skeptic does not immediately refuse all knowledge; he does it in iterations, as arguments are introduced. And Radical Skepticism is compatible with Atheism, and the two share many features of rejectionism. The necessary position of Atheism that all knowledge is relative (since there are no absolutes) is indiscernible from saying that no knowledge is absolute. If there are differences between Atheism and Radical Skepticism they are minor and not easily uncovered.
” The "just-so stories" comment referred to facile verbal speculation about evolutionary pathways, which Gould disparages in favor of math and experimental models.”
All pathways are deduced via speculation from proximities and not from “experimental models”, much less experimental replication and non-falsification. That is exactly the failure of evolution, and the source of Just So Stories.
Reply to Part III / V
”or what it means to say we don't have material evidence…”
You have material evidence of instances of existence. The models of lineage or not based on material knowledge, they are hypotheticals. There is no lineage experimental data to support the hypotheticals, and none is possible. So the hypotheticals are given credibility which belongs only to religious beliefs: they cannot be falsified, they cannot be disproved:belief is an article of faith.
Faith might be justified or it might not. But it is not the same as empirical knowledge which has the advantage of objective confirmation through replication and demonstration. Replication and demonstration are the tools which give science its respectability as a source of objective knowledge – albeit contingent. Evolution wants this respectability, but in fact it is not capable of it.
” Do you have a link to this study?”
That’s a valid question. It was all over the news back in the ‘90’s after the Soviet Union broke up. Romanian babies were kept in orphanage cribs where they never saw humans except to feed them to keep them alive. Those with the most egregious treatment exhibited behaviors which were called at the time "sociopathic", including behaviors which did not recognize rules for behavior (ethical knowledge). Some of those children were actually returned due to their uncontrollability. Others fared better, after considerable attachment therapy.
A study is here:
http://www.center4familydevelop.com/helpromanian.htm
A discussion on RAD and pre—verbal PTSD is here:
http://www.psychopath-research.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9031
The web contains a lot of Romanian orphan stories:
http://www.examiner.com/adoptive-families-in-san-francisco/dying-to-be-adopted-romanian-orphanages-exposed
” First of all, who and what hasn't been "influenced in any way" by its environment? Second, it's precisely our "state of nature" to be socialized.”
Your point was that there is an inherited, inherent moral sense, right? Did you forget the point you were making? In order to isolate the evidence for that the above conditions must be met. Simple experimental design.
” If the point you make is that "atheists pick and choose their beliefs" and religious people don't”
That was not the point, of course. I was not comparing Atheists to anything but Atheists.
” There's a pile of books, each of which claims to be the One True Word of God. Unless you take it, a priori, that the religion you happened to be born into is the true one and simply never question your upbringing, at some point you have to decide which book is the One True Word of God. How does one make that decision, if not through a personal judgment call, that one "feels more true" than all the others? Or is there objective evidence that God exists and that one of the world's religions is the true one?”
Oh, it is a personal judgment call alright, but it is not merely picking one at random. It involves discerning whether a certain set of tenets is overall coherent, considering the nature of the texts and the writers and the contexts involved.
But that is all secondary or even tertiary to the basic concept of theism which is that there is a cause for the universe, and that is where Atheism stops the bus and gets off. The religious books and lots o’ gods do not factor into theism at its most fundamental level. Nor into Atheism.
Reply to Part IV / V
” My main principles are self-reliance and responsibility towards others.
These are founded on mutuality. I want to live in a society where people won't try to cheat me or sponge off me; therefore I find parasitical and untrustworthy behaviors contemptible in others. Since I'm just another person like anybody else, then these behaviors would be contemptible on my part, as well. If I engage in such behaviors, I will experience self-loathing, which I am keen to avoid. My desire to live among people who won't cheat me leads me to resent myself if I turn out to be the type of person who cheats others.
I have no way to rely on an absolute, supernatural source for this ethic, since I don't believe one exists.”
Thank you for expressing that. Now might we think about the meta-issues? For example, your ethic is a personal decision, not based on any absolutes. You are the only moral authority for your moral theory.
Many Atheists express either Consequentialism or Virtue ethics as their preference. Both of those could well interfere with your pursuit of a desirable society. So are “tolerance” or “social justice” to be found in your personal ethic?
On the other hand, you expressed relativist ethics in your defense of the self-endowed victim of the above tale. How relativist are your ethics, then, given that certain situations justify bad behavior?
” It's hard not to "avoid the above discussion of Atheist ethics", since non-belief in God doesn't contain an inherent ethical position. I'm perfectly willing to discuss my own ethics, and I've spent a lot of time discussing the biological basis for social ethics.”
Yes. And I disagree that there is any credible evidence of ethics being transmitted biologically, or being contained in a biological encapsulation of some sort.
Reply to Part IV / V continued.
” The New Testament believer is an apocalyptic mendicant who's willing to sever all social ties for the sake of his religion. One doesn't see too many of either these days. Somehow, most people who worship the Bible manage to reconcile it with their creature comforts, and ignore the inconvenient parts.”
Apocolyptic mendicant? Most believers were regular people who flocked around to hear the good news. Paul worked as a tent maker when he was not in prison or on the road. The apostles were all executed as best as can tell. Christians were fed to the lions, etc.
Christians today are being killed for their worldviews in almost all parts of the Middle East and South Asia. They are disappeared in China. Most NGO's are Christian based and supported, and risk their lives in support of the indigent of all persuasions. Your perception does not match reality. The remaining workers in Joplin after the tornado wiped out a substantial portion of the city including hospital, schools, etc ... are Christian NGOs. That information is carefully not publicized in the secular media. There are still christian NGO's working in South for those who were victims of Katrina. On and on. The Atheists are all occupying places demanding a share of the wealth.
You saw no indication of a new covenant in the New Testament? And you think that Christians worship the Bible? Perhaps some do to some extent, but there is likely no one who will claim that the Bible actually is God.
How does this in any way refute a first cause? This whole Bible / Christian thing is a diversion from the issue.
It's unclear whether you consider the differences between Christianity and Islam, for example, to be some of those "details," or whether these are just the differences between Christian denominations. Either way, Jehovah's Witnesses, observant Catholics and Mormons would all be mighty surprised to hear that their differences come down to mere details.
You quoted statistics from a PEW report as I recall, one which was in regards to Christians only, certainly not Islam; Mormons are not Christian. Jehova's Witnesses are a large sect which is heretical to Christianity, which claims divinity for its own leaders, and denies the Bible to its adherents. So it’s outside the realm of the discussion, based on your own reference.
Reply to Part V / V (finally)(whew)
”At the point where she willingly enters a relationship that is based on mutual trust. If she breaks trust in such a relationship, I condemn her. If she breaks trust in a relationship that she entered unwillingly under duress, I don't condemn her, since I don't believe that one owes to return trust or loyalty under coercion. If you want to make a case to the contrary, please go ahead.”
Yes, thanks, I will. She should have settled her actual problem first, rather than engaging in bad behavior on her own … and that is my opinion, whereas your opinion places a subjective, relativist condition which allows a sliding interpretation: well, my wife doesn’t understand me; my husband is an ogre; I am a victim; etc.: so my bad behavior is excused. The assertion of victimhood as justification for bad behavior doesn’t absolve the actor for the behavior. Unless, of course, relativism in favor of any behavior of the victim due to a perceived status is the name of the game. Relativism is illustrated here as follows: Is it OK for her to have shot her coerced husband? To torture him first? Why not? Where does the relativity stop and absolute condemnation begin? Who gets to decide that? Based on what, mere opinion? If everyone gets their own volatile opinion, then there is no general ethic, and everything goes.
” You haven't shown any evidence, or even made a plausible conjecture that she herself has exercised coercion on anybody, or broken trust in a relationship she entered willingly, even as you heaped scorn on her. I saw this as an exercise in victim-blaming, and that was the reason I got involved in this discussion in the first place.”
She broke trust, regardless of how she entered the agreement. Coercion is not an issue. She broke trust, pure and simple. Coercion is your own condition placed on her behavior: if she was coerced then anything she does is OK. But that condition is not valid. The fact is that her behavior, however motivated, is justifiable on its own merits or demerits.
Victimhood is a popular worldview these days. Her own words declaim for everyone to read that consensual sex is OK, regardless of any other constraints. The constraints which you add in her defense are not present in her article. Moreover they are relativist and therefore changeable to meet any situation which arises in favor of the victim. So your moral judgment is opinion-based, and not based on any description of honesty, or faithfulness to contract, or trustworthiness. It is your opinion that a wrong justifies a wrong in return. Hardly a basis for trust. But the necessary outcome of a relativist ethic.
I apologize for taking so long to respond. This does go on for quite a bit.
"Alinsky wrote the book, “Rules For Radicals”,....
Interesting. I know plenty of liberals, and even some honest-to-goodness communists, but none of them have ever mentioned the guy. It's always come from some conservative source that's trying to make me scared of Obama. Maybe I'm hanging with the wrong Leftists.
I have no idea what Putin has done to control the Russian church.
I see, so that was just conjecture on your part. As a matter of fact, as far as I'm aware, Putin hasn't explicitly interfered in the structure of the Russian church. The alliance between his party and the Orthodox Patriarchy has been a mutually beneficial one, since the church gets government support and preferential treatment compared to other religions and Christian denominations. The government, conversely, gets a popular boost by patronizing the predominant spiritual institution in Russia, which has seen its membership more than triple in the past 20 years. It's like Bush and Evangelical leaders.
I think you are right here. Atheism does render people untrustworthy. By relieving them of all absolutes, Atheism grants them the freedom of relativistic logic, ethics and worldviews, all of which can change in a blink and without notice. For a while there I was trying to grant that some Atheists might actually be consistently honest despite their lack of grounded ethical support for that. I now retract that.
Where were you trying to grant that?
So predominantly Atheist societies are trust inducing? Russia? China? North Korea? Cuba? Or do you mean the small, historically Judeo-Christian countries – only? You cannot cherry pick countries which satisfy your criteria and then rationalize conclusions form that.
No, cherry-picking is bad. Which is why I made you a chart. I took 143 countries for which two pieces of data were available: the percentage of respondents for whom religion is an important part of daily life [Gallup Poll data from 2007-9], and the murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants [UNODC and other sources, for 2008]. I used murder data for 2008, to match it as closely as possible to the results from the Gallup poll; for countries where data was unavailable for 2008, I used the last available previous year. For a number of African countries that didn't have UNODC figures, I used WHO Cause of Death estimates for "Violence" (not counting war deaths) in this spreadsheet. (Your favorite example, China, did not figure in the Gallup religion survey; the most reliable numbers seem to come from a Shanghai University survey, which showed that 31.4% of Chinese considered themselves religious. I added the numbers in manually.)
Part II
I plotted the data points on a scatter graph: link. As you can see, there is a statistically significant R² = 0.121 correlation between greater importance of religion in everyday life, and the rate at which the inhabitants off each other. There are about 2 dozen extraordinarily violent countries whose murder rates are above that of Russia, and they are practically all above 80% religious! Moreover, with the exception of Russia, Belize and Kazakhstan, every single country on the list with a murder rate above 10/100,000 residents is more than 70% religious.
Now, since you left yourself an escape valve by asking if I mean "small, historically Judeo-Christian countries – only," I decided to control for those factors, as well.
I plotted the murder rate in all 143 countries versus their population. Guess what: link. The linear R² value for the trend is 0.003 - statistical noise. There is no correlation between population size and murder rate. Just to make sure, I also plotted murder rates versus population density: link. The R² value is 0.018 - again, barely a whisper.
The next part is harder, since your "historically Judeo-Christian" criterion is so vague. Russia and Cuba, for instance, are certainly historically Judeo-Christian, but they've been ruled for several decades by governments that are hostile to religion, so you don't seem to count them among the number (although, for the purpose of this graph, such countries should certainly be included, since one of the factors we're examining is the influence of religion on daily life - the purpose of this whole exercise is to compare how more actively religious countries fare against less actively religious ones). On the other hand, there are some African countries which are experiencing changes in their religious demographics, so while they may currently be majority-Christian, this may have been a recent development, and again, it's difficult to know whether they would qualify under your understanding of "historically Judeo-Christian." Lacking more rigorous definitions on your part, I have decided to use countries where either a 70%+ supermajority of the population currently identifies as Christian, or, if the majority identifies as irreligious, where the predominant religion previously used to be Christianity. This would seem to satisfy both the "historical" and "Judeo-Christian" criteria. Here is my data set for this graph: link.
And so, here is a graph of the murder rate vs. importance of religion in 73 countries that currently are, or have historically been, Judeo-Christian: Holy moly! The correlation is more than twice as strong than in the global chart, with R² = 0.289! Apparently, in Judeo-Christian countries, the more important the part religion plays in the daily life of people, the more frequently they killeth their neighbors.
(If you want a comparison between countries at a roughly equal level of development, here's a cross-national comparison study in the Journal of Religion and Society that looks at a number of prosperous OECD democracies: link)
Part III
Wait, it gets even better. These charts don't discriminate between different government types and legal regimes. Why don't we take data sets that compare communities within the same country, all of which exist under the same government and the same constitution? Fortunately, we have detailed information for all 50 U.S. States. I took Gallup data from its nationwide Importance of Religion survey, here: link. I plotted it against crime statistics from the U.S. Census bureau, here: link. (Chart # 308 - "Crime Rates by State, 2008 and 2009, and by Type, 2009".)
And, wow. The murder data shows most significant correlation we have yet seen, with a coefficient of determination of 0.366.
Burglaries: a stunning R² value of 0.409.
Larceny and theft: a coefficient of 0.191.
Aggravated assault: 0.107.
Religion comes off much better with regards to robbery and motor vehicle theft, which show a rather tiny bump of correlation between those crimes and the rates of religiosity: 0.056 and 0.023. And, finally, America's God-fearing folk are basically no more likely to be rapists than the less godly, with a statistically-insignificant R² value of 0.011.
Impressive, isn't it? I don't know how people in more religious areas fare when it comes to keeping the Sabbath and taking the Lord's name in vain, but they seem to have serious problems with not killing or stealing. What's more, not a single type of crime tracked by the Census bureau shows a negative correlation with religion. There is not a single type of violent or property crime about which you can say, "if you go to a more religious state in America, it will be less likely to happen to you." Not one. Not a single, solitary one.
Of course, you might say that this is all correlation, not causation. I won't disagree - for my money, the same social factors that cause high crime, such as low education, lack of economic prospects and so on, also cause high religiosity. But that leads exactly to my point - that the way to make people refrain from socially-destructive behaviors isn't to instill in them a belief in absolute natural law and the eternal cracking whip of divine punishment, it's to help them achieve education, intellectual stimulation and reasonably comfortable lives.
Now, it was a pain to crunch all these numbers and present them in graphs, but at this point my job is easy, since I don't face the inconvenience of defending a worldview that causes me to write things like "By relieving them of all absolutes, Atheism grants them the freedom of relativistic logic, ethics and worldviews, all of which can change in a blink and without notice. For a while there I was trying to grant that some Atheists might actually be consistently honest despite their lack of grounded ethical support for that. I now retract that." Unlike you, I don't have to reconcile the fact that higher religiosity clearly correlates with many types of criminal behavior with a belief that absence of religion causes one to lose all ethical and moral grounding.
I've shown you data that demonstrates, in the clearest possible terms, that being religious doesn't make people behave better, and being irreligious doesn't make them behave worse; and that, if anything, the opposite is true. How do you explain that?
Part IV
Yes, it is possible to co-opt Judeo-Christian ethics, which are embedded and codified previously. That is not the case in truly ground-up Atheist societies which have no Judeo-Christian ethical underlayment. Even then, the French Revolution and the ensuing Terror and slaughter demonstrates a transition to Atheism, even in a western setting.
Two things: First, given the data we have just seen, you'd have to somehow argue that Judeo-Christian ethics become more effective as a means of instilling a social ethic as they become more divorced from the actual religion they came attached to. Second, what exactly is a "truly ground-up Atheist society"? Is there a real-world example of such a thing?
Even in Atheist evolution arguments, the “emergent” concept applies only to living things.
No. The Mandelbrot Set is an excellent example of emergence in mathematics. A simple rule set [z(n+1) = z(n)^2+c z<1] results, over an arbitrary number of iterations, in a shape which is infinitely complex and self-similar.
On the simpler side, there are Iterative Fractal Systems. There are the 3- and 5-cycle islands of stability in bifurcation diagrams. There are Class III cellular automata.
If emergent rules really existed, then Cause and Effect would not be reliable as a tool for science. The concept of “emergent” rules is not used anywhere in science except as a made-up explanan for otherwise troublesome anti-physics occurrences in the world of living things.
You're confusing emergence with stochastic processes.
Also, I don't know which biological process - or, as you put it, "occurrence" - can be conceivably seen as anti-physics. The only thing that comes to mind is the rather primitive claim that life breaks the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which ignores the obvious fact that Earth is not a thermodynamically isolated physical system - it receives trillions of watts of energy from the Sun every second. You can have a localized, temporary decrease in entropy (such as life), while the level of entropy increases overall, across the entire physical system.
Even standard forward looking biology uses neither evolution as a natural law from which to deduce biological factoids, nor does it use “emergent” properties to deduce biological factoids. It is obvious that “emergent” complexity is a necessary fiction required to sustain evolutionary ideology.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean here. Of course, behavioral biologists have used emergence to model the behavior of bird flocks and insect colonies, and even traffic flow. It's an important concept in research and modeling of intelligence, both natural and artificial. It's ever-present in biochemistry and virology. I'm not sure what you mean by "deduce biological factoids."
” Bertrand Russell mocked it as frivolous insincerity.”
Yes he did; he also invented a dual-substance theory to explain living agents.
No, I'm pretty sure that was Descartes.
Radical Skepticism is shown by its increasing level of refusal to accept anything that is presented in a series of arguments. The Radical Skeptic does not immediately refuse all knowledge; he does it in iterations, as arguments are introduced. And Radical Skepticism is compatible with Atheism, and the two share many features of rejectionism. The necessary position of Atheism that all knowledge is relative (since there are no absolutes) is indiscernible from saying that no knowledge is absolute. If there are differences between Atheism and Radical Skepticism they are minor and not easily uncovered.
Part V
The only difference between scientific materialism/empiricism and Radical Skepticism is that they have nothing in common. It's not, and has never been a necessary position of atheism to say that "all knowledge is relative." I have no idea how you get from "there is no evidence that there exists a personal God" to "all knowledge is relative."
” The "just-so stories" comment referred to facile verbal speculation about evolutionary pathways, which Gould disparages in favor of math and experimental models.”
All pathways are deduced via speculation from proximities and not from “experimental models”, much less experimental replication and non-falsification. That is exactly the failure of evolution, and the source of Just So Stories.
Did you read the Gould article? Did you see the diagram that shows the results of the Kingsolver/Koehl experiments, and what did that tell you? The article illuminates one of the big questions in evolutionary biology, and one of the denialists's favorites: "what use is half a wing?" Experiments on aerodynamics show that an insect wing is only effective for flight when it reaches a certain minimum size. Any smaller than that, and there is no appreciable aerodynamic advantage. Once there is a big enough advantage to increase the survival fitness to an organism, the wing can grow or shrink via natural selection. But how does it go from no wing, to a big enough wing to confer an advantage? Well, the Kingsolver/Koehl experiments showed exactly how, and did it in the most elegant way possible, by showing how a functional shift can occur between thermoregulation at small wing length, to aerodynamics taking over at larger wing length, with the two functional curves dovetailing beautifully. It's not a Just So Story or a "speculation from proximities" - it's a classic experimental result.
You have material evidence of instances of existence. The models of lineage or not based on material knowledge, they are hypotheticals. There is no lineage experimental data to support the hypotheticals, and none is possible. So the hypotheticals are given credibility which belongs only to religious beliefs: they cannot be falsified, they cannot be disproved:belief is an article of faith.
Faith might be justified or it might not. But it is not the same as empirical knowledge which has the advantage of objective confirmation through replication and demonstration. Replication and demonstration are the tools which give science its respectability as a source of objective knowledge – albeit contingent. Evolution wants this respectability, but in fact it is not capable of it.
What you refer to as "evolution" is the science of biology. All of it. Evolution is the central concept in the entirety of biology, and has been for decades, and millions of man-hours of experiments. I mean, how do you even begin to talk about ecosystems without evolution? How do you even begin to look at predator/prey relationships? Where is cytology without the idea of endosymbiosis? How do you do taxonomy in the 21st century and ignore common descent? How do you do molecular biology and genetics without evolution, when cross-species comparisons of proteins and gene sequences clearly show divergence and speciation from a common ancestor?
You are correct that we can't prove (unless DNA is preserved) that any given chunk of bone that came out of the ground is actually the precise biological ancestor of any given living organism. But they can certainly make predictions, such as, "no therapod will come out of a stratum above the K-T boundary." They have been digging for a century all over the world, and so far, the prediction holds.
Part VI
If you want more, biologists can look at the morphology of anatomical features and see clear patterns of change over time. It's pretty simple stuff, if you know your way around a skeleton. You can look at dozens of transitional fossils from the Carboniferous and Permian and see how fish transitioned into amphibians, which diverged into synapsids and sauropsids. You can look at changes in limb morphology over time. You can see how thousands of species disappear in extinction events, and how new species radiate to fill in the niches they left behind. You can look at the limbs and spinal columns of terrestrial tetrapods and see that, up to a certain point in geological history, they were all adapted to side-to-side motion, just like fish. However, at some point, the lineage that would become mammals diverged, and their spines and limbs became adapted to moving along a vertical axis, which helped them run faster.
Or, you could forget fossils and look at comparative morphology, which shows, for example, that every mammal, whether terrestrial, aquatic, winged or burrowing, has the same body plan. Or you could look at bio-geographic distribution, and see that there are broad patterns to animal distribution; or you could look at taxa on geographically-close but isolated ecosystems and see that they're closely related, but have radiated and adapted to their environments. Or you could use DNA analysis to compare the genomes of various animals and plot the phylogenetic tree based on their differences; then, you could match that with the geographical distribution of their habitats and differences in their morphology, and be surprised at how closely all of these factors match. Or you could read about Richard Lenski's experiments with bacteria, which show the evolution of completely new traits in real-time, on an observable human timescale.
Or, if you want "replication and demonstration," you could read up on one of a million different experiments in fossilization and bone and tissue preservation, such as the one conducted by a paleontologist friend of mine who studies squid fossilization. There are dozens of tanks with dead squid decomposing in his laboratory, in water with different concentrations of calcite, which precipitate on the dead animal and crystallize around its outline (that's how soft-bodied organisms leave imprints in sedimentary rock).
At this point, you would really have to work pretty hard to fail to see the evolutionary patterns in terrestrial life. Of course, like you said, we don't have the option of replicating and video-taping the ENTIRE history of life. Would this be the only acceptable proof for someone of your persuasion? You have said that you believe in an old Earth; how long, do you believe, has life existed on the planet? Has it gone through any changes whatsoever? The animals that have existed in great numbers in the past, but don't exist anymore, and don't look like anything that exists today - where did they come from, and why don't they exist anymore? Where did modern animals come from, since they only appear in recent geological strata? Why are certain animals ONLY present in certain geological strata, and not others? In general, how would you propose that one investigate the history of life on Earth? What methods would you consider acceptable?
Part VII
That’s a valid question. It was all over the news back in the ‘90’s after the Soviet Union broke up. Romanian babies were kept in orphanage cribs where they never saw humans except to feed them to keep them alive. Those with the most egregious treatment exhibited behaviors which were called at the time "sociopathic", including behaviors which did not recognize rules for behavior (ethical knowledge). Some of those children were actually returned due to their uncontrollability. Others fared better, after considerable attachment therapy.
A study is here:
http://www.center4familydevelop.com/helpromanian.htm
A discussion on RAD and pre—verbal PTSD is here:
http://www.psychopath-research.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9031
The web contains a lot of Romanian orphan stories:
http://www.examiner.com/adoptive-families-in-san-francisco/dying-to-be-adopted-romanian-orphanages-exposed
I read the documents that you linked to. First of all, it seems that the use of the word "sociopathic" in reports on the orphanages wasn't medically rigorous, since a person can only be diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder upon reaching the age of 18 and having displayed a history of certain behaviors.
Now, the only statistical study of Romanian orphans was contained in the first link, which tracked children adopted at the ages of 8 to 68 months; the results are bleak, with most of the children experiencing delayed development compared to their better-tended peers in the West, lacking most notably in self-esteem, impulse control and social skill. However, the majority of them were able to assimilate and function; most of them didn't become the utterly dysfunctional sociopaths that you referred to.
I read up on Reactive Attachment Disorder - Wikipedia has an extensive article and bibliography on the topic. The disorder isn't very well studied, and diagnostics and treatment are still controversial. It's generally accepted that children that experience neglect or abuse in early life tend to lag in various areas behind their peers, as well as experience behavioral problems - this makes sense, given that human brains experience significant growth in the several years after birth. However, even in cases of severe neglect and abuse, "Not all, or even a majority of such experiences, result in the disorder [RAD]." What's more, this study on children diagnosed with RAD shows that they score lower on empathy tests than healthy children. Note that they don't score zero. Even children who have been given no affection early in life and are suffering from a severe behavioral disorder can feel empathy for others.
Of course, with enough effort, it may conceivably be possible to raise children into emotionally and intellectually stunted cutthroats and janissaries. However, the key word here is "effort." You would have to actively work to distort their natural tendencies - as the study on RAD-afflicted children shows, even neglect and abuse aren't enough to kill their sense of empathy completely. Likewise, if you tie a child to a wheelchair from infancy, you can make it so that they will be unable to walk later in life. However, to argue based on this that these children were born without the innate capacity to walk would be spurious, to say the least.
Part VIII
In addition, none of the data you cited begins to explain the findings of the Warneken/Tommasello study, which I linked to in my previous response, and which found that "after 20-month-old infants received a material reward during a treatment phase, they subsequently were less likely to engage in further helping during a test phase as compared with infants who had previously received social praise or no reward at all." These are children who are too young to have a concept of religion, have never heard of David Hume and are just beginning to understand human language. And yet, they were willing to help others, and were more motivated to do so if their actions didn't receive a material reward. Why would that possibly be, if not because of self-motivated altruism?
In conclusion, so far, you've only cited one piece of statistical evidence, and it does not support your belief that we are born without innate altruistic tendencies, whereas this thread has seen a good amount of evidence that supports my position.
Oh, it is a personal judgment call alright, but it is not merely picking one at random. It involves discerning whether a certain set of tenets is overall coherent, considering the nature of the texts and the writers and the contexts involved.
But that is all secondary or even tertiary to the basic concept of theism which is that there is a cause for the universe, and that is where Atheism stops the bus and gets off. The religious books and lots o’ gods do not factor into theism at its most fundamental level. Nor into Atheism.
You keep assigning beliefs to atheists that they simply don't hold. Please give me a single example of an atheist - Dawkins, or PZ Myers, or whoever, who actively denies that anything caused the universe to exist. Where in the world did you encounter such a view? From whom?
Conversely, it's not the basic concept of theism that there's a cause. The basic concept of theism is that there is not only a cause, but it is a) intelligent, and b) interested in human affairs. This, and not the idea of a first cause itself, is where atheists get off the bus. I'm perfectly willing to concede that there must have been a cause for the universe. I see no reason whatsoever to further conclude that this cause has a mind, takes any interest at all in our lives, incarnated itself as one of us in order to perform a blood sacrifice to itself, and is planning to judge some theoretical essence of our beings after death, based on immutable moral rules which it dictated to a handful of people in the Middle East over several millennia.
Now, back to you - how do you conclude all of this? And could you elaborate a bit on "discerning whether a certain set of tenets is overall coherent"? Just how do you go about discerning this?
Thank you for expressing that. Now might we think about the meta-issues? For example, your ethic is a personal decision, not based on any absolutes. You are the only moral authority for your moral theory.
Many Atheists express either Consequentialism or Virtue ethics as their preference. Both of those could well interfere with your pursuit of a desirable society. So are “tolerance” or “social justice” to be found in your personal ethic?
Yes, they are. Based on the same principle of mutuality that I expressed, I believe in tolerance for activities that don't cause harm to others.
I'm hardly the only moral authority for this principle. It seems to me that anyone with enough cognitive ability to form a "theory of mind" can relate to it.
Part IX
Apocolyptic mendicant? Most believers were regular people who flocked around to hear the good news. Paul worked as a tent maker when he was not in prison or on the road.
Jesus's message to his apostles was "drop what you're doing and come with me" (Matthew 4:18-22). I mean, the closest thing he had to an economic policy was "if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?". The whole "lilies of the field" part in Matthew 6 is an exercise in happy-go-lucky freeganism.
Christians today are being killed for their worldviews in almost all parts of the Middle East and South Asia.
Plenty of people are being killed for their worldviews. Communists have been extensively persecuted, as well. Persecution is not sufficient evidence of rightness. And what about Christians who have been persecuted by other Christians?
Most NGO's are Christian based and supported, and risk their lives in support of the indigent of all persuasions. ... etc
Statistics on that, if you would be so kind.
I have no doubt that many Christians are, in fact, devoted and selfless people. But the Bible is a large book, and, as I wrote earlier, people tend to cherrypick their favorite parts. For every Christian humanitarian, there is one who practices and promotes the "prosperity gospel," or just things like putting God on money or praying for the auto industry with SUVs on the choir podium - mercantilism and idolatry so crass that, even as a godless heathen, I feel downright embarrassed for these people.
The Atheists are all occupying places demanding a share of the wealth.
I'm assuming you refer to the OWS movement. Do you have statistics on their religious affiliation?
You saw no indication of a new covenant in the New Testament? And you think that Christians worship the Bible? Perhaps some do to some extent, but there is likely no one who will claim that the Bible actually is God.
No, straight-out divinity is the claim made of the Quran. Christians do, however, believe that the Bible is the unerring and literal word of God, right?
I did see an indication of a new covenant in the New Testament, but it leaves as many questions as it answers. Such as, what caused the sudden 180 degree change in God's personality between the two Testaments, from a voraciously cruel tribal weapon of mass destruction to a universal, race-unconscious, loving God? How is it that God used to believe in and extensively practice collective punishment, but doesn't anymore? Why is it that, for thousands of years, God preferred one nation to all others, but doesn't anymore? How is it that, for thousands of years, God demanded the death penalty for trivialities such as working on the Sabbath, but has stopped doing so? Did he mellow out?
Finally, the New Testament didn't change the basic moral assumption of your religion, the keystone of its whole arc from Adam to Jesus - the idea that one person can pay for the transgression of another. Are you not bothered by that?
You quoted statistics from a PEW report as I recall, one which was in regards to Christians only, certainly not Islam; Mormons are not Christian.
Actually, the Pew report looked at religion in general, but, given American demographics, the largest categories ended up being taken by Christian denominations. The other religions were all shunted off under "Other."
Also, how are Mormons not Christian? They seem to think they are.
Part X
Jehova's Witnesses are a large sect which is heretical to Christianity, which claims divinity for its own leaders, and denies the Bible to its adherents. So it’s outside the realm of the discussion, based on your own reference.
How does it deny the Bible to its adherents?... I've known Jehovah's Witnesses, and they could quote you chapter and verse as well as anyone.
Catholicism also claims divinity for the Pope, with scriptural basis. Are all 1.147 billion Catholics on this planet not true Christians, by your standards?
Yes, thanks, I will. She should have settled her actual problem first, rather than engaging in bad behavior on her own … and that is my opinion, whereas your opinion places a subjective, relativist condition which allows a sliding interpretation: well, my wife doesn’t understand me; my husband is an ogre; I am a victim; etc.: so my bad behavior is excused. The assertion of victimhood as justification for bad behavior doesn’t absolve the actor for the behavior. Unless, of course, relativism in favor of any behavior of the victim due to a perceived status is the name of the game. Relativism is illustrated here as follows: Is it OK for her to have shot her coerced husband? To torture him first? Why not?
"Not shooting or torturing someone" isn't an obligation that you only take on when entering a traditional monogamous relationship with a given person. Sexual exclusivity is. Therefore, if the traditional monogamous relationship that one finds oneself in is invalid (due to coercion, for example), one has no moral duty to carry out the obligations that come with being in such a relationship. A pretty logically-consistent view, don't you think?
She broke trust, regardless of how she entered the agreement. Coercion is not an issue. She broke trust, pure and simple. Coercion is your own condition placed on her behavior: if she was coerced then anything she does is OK. But that condition is not valid. The fact is that her behavior, however motivated, is justifiable on its own merits or demerits.
Ah, now that's interesting. Coercion is not an issue? I wonder if you hold this attitude as a general principle, or only when it comes to sex? Does this view of yours also apply to work, for example? In an employee/employer relationship, for instance, the employee's part of the bargain is to work diligently, not steal and not deliberately sabotage work equipment. If someone is being forced into servitude, are they still obligated to uphold their end of the "bargain"?
Victimhood is a popular worldview these days.
Victimhood is not a worldview. Perhaps you have been lucky enough to live a life that has spared you first-hand experience with abusive families; but I haven't. I can assure you that victimhood at the hands of a patriarchy, religious or otherwise, isn't something cooked up in cultural studies journals; and women always get the worst of it. I have a scorching hatred for this institution - for fathers who bend and destroy their daughters' self-regard, and mothers who help them. I have only hatred for these traditions that take women and turn them into bonsai trees, kitchen appliances, maidservants. I have seen women processed like this over the course of decades, I have seen their bright, hopeful eyes go dull; and even when they set themselves free, the scars never truly go away. I have only hatred for institutions whose ideologies offer moral justification for this, the neighbors that pretend not to hear through the walls, the clergymen who always place a greater moral burden on the woman, the evangelists of submission and obedience, the apologists for rape and abuse. Yeah, it's personal.
Part XI and last.
Her own words declaim for everyone to read that consensual sex is OK, regardless of any other constraints. The constraints which you add in her defense are not present in her article.
No, she didn't say that it was OK regardless of any other constraints. She said "sex between consenting adults is most often a beautiful and wonderful thing." I don't disagree with her - sex between consenting adults can be quite a highlight. I suppose you could fault her for failing to provide a stack of qualifiers, such as "unless one gives the other gonorrhea," or "unless they're on top of an anthill," or "unless they should be performing a heart transplant," or "unless one of them is betraying someone they promised to be loyal to, of their own free will." I guess you'd have to ask her what her list of exceptions is.
Moreover they are relativist and therefore changeable to meet any situation which arises in favor of the victim. So your moral judgment is opinion-based, and not based on any description of honesty, or faithfulness to contract, or trustworthiness.
I hope I have demonstrated sufficiently that my moral judgement is based on precisely those things. A contract that is entered under duress is not valid.
Best regards.
Your comment is a record breaker. I will respond as time allows, possibly at the rate of one segment per day. You put in a lot of work, and definitely deserve a response, but it will take some time.
Thanks for the effort, and what appears to be a considered response. Umm, make that, book.
Proterozoic,
Re: Chapter xi:
What she actually said was this:
"However I can now firmly state that there is no god, and that sex between consenting adults is most often a beautiful and wonderful thing, regardless of what your pastor says."
One can reasonably presume that this was still in the context of her behavior, not on an anthill or other absurdities. Plus her rejection of Christian morals is made explicit; Pastors would not condone sexual behaviors between non-married partners. Your favored interpretation stretches credulity beyond its elastic limit.
"A contract that is entered under duress is not valid."
An implicit contract which is betrayed is still a betrayal. Your defense of her betrayal seems quixotic.
Addressing the Protozeric Papers, CH 1, 2, 3 ( I think. I have not gotten to CH 4 yet).
”Apparently, in Judeo-Christian countries, the more important the part religion plays in the daily life of people, the more frequently they killeth their neighbors.
Your data actually shows that Christians and /or religious people do more killing? Amazing.
Here's some context for correlational analysis:
"Correlations do not necessarily prove a causal connection between two variables. John Maynard Keynes has sad that 'sensible investigators only employ "r" to test or confirm conclusions at which they have arrived on other grounds'. (A Treatise on Probability). The fact that two variables are correlated my be a wholly fortuitous matter. It was once discovered that the expenditures of the British navy were correlated with the growing consumption of bananas, but this proves nothing concerning their connection."
Logic, An Introduction; Lionel Ruby; Lippincott Pub; 1950, pg 468.
”What's more, not a single type of crime tracked by the Census bureau shows a negative correlation with religion. There is not a single type of violent or property crime about which you can say, "if you go to a more religious state in America, it will be less likely to happen to you." Not one. Not a single, solitary one.”
It also doesn’t say that you are more likely to be killed or violated by a Christian.
”Of course, you might say that this is all correlation, not causation. I won't disagree - for my money, the same social factors that cause high crime, such as low education, lack of economic prospects and so on, also cause high religiosity. But that leads exactly to my point - that the way to make people refrain from socially-destructive behaviors isn't to instill in them a belief in absolute natural law and the eternal cracking whip of divine punishment, it's to help them achieve education, intellectual stimulation and reasonably comfortable lives.”
Here is the crux of our disagreement, I think (although I barely remember the discussion we were in three weeks ago – I could read it again, but until forced to, I think I’ll just deal with your current comments).
Education, intellectual stimulation, and comfortable lives are all fine objectives, IFF they are achieved by the disadvantaged individual under his own steam. It is fully agreed that all obstacles such as race, poverty, neighborhood, etc should be removed as opportunities are made equally available to everyone. But the individuals who do not possess any traits of integrity of character will not succeed, even under ideal conditions. There are two possibilities; to instill traits of personal integrity and character development, or to give the comfortable lives outright. The latter choice is the direction our society has chosen in the past, and it has factually failed. Failure to accept character development is a persistent trait of leftist virtue ethics: egalitarianism and “social justice”.
(Continued)
(continued from above)
”Now, it was a pain to crunch all these numbers and present them in graphs, but at this point my job is easy, since I don't face the inconvenience of defending a worldview that causes me to write things like "By relieving them of all absolutes, Atheism grants them the freedom of relativistic logic, ethics and worldviews, all of which can change in a blink and without notice. For a while there I was trying to grant that some Atheists might actually be consistently honest despite their lack of grounded ethical support for that. I now retract that." Unlike you, I don't have to reconcile the fact that higher religiosity clearly correlates with many types of criminal behavior with a belief that absence of religion causes one to lose all ethical and moral grounding.”
(…)
I've shown you data that demonstrates, in the clearest possible terms, that being religious doesn't make people behave better, and being irreligious doesn't make them behave worse; and that, if anything, the opposite is true. How do you explain that?”
You admit that your data does not produce causation knowledge. You have not proven that religion, as an ethic, causes more crime, nor that religious people are crime prone. In fact, your finding that murder rate is linear with the population of countries suggests an independence. It is possible that religious countries have more laws to be broken, and more strict judgment values. It is possible that there is more social pressure to obey laws in more religious countries. But more to the point here, there is no reason to believe that religious people are perfect; there is no basis for such a claim, and I hope that I have not made that claim. My claim is as you state it: “By relieving them of all absolutes, Atheism grants them the freedom of relativistic logic, ethics and worldviews, all of which can change in a blink and without notice”. Your data in no manner refutes this. There is no ethic whatsoever attached to Atheism. Any ethic which an Atheist assumes for himself comes from something other than Atheism, and is accepted as a personal opinion without any moral authority other than that of the individual Atheist. There is no single, generally accepted ethic that can be identified with Atheism.
(continued)
(continued from above)
Yet the conclusion of the report you link to is this:
” There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms (Aral and Holmes; Beeghley, Doyle, 2002). It is the responsibility of the research community to address controversial issues and provide the information that the citizens of democracies need to chart their future courses.”
From this we should conclude that we should all just chuck all beliefs and ethics based on external sources, and opt for personal opinions based on varieties of theories from Consequentialism to utilitarinaism to egalitarianism / social justice based on Virtue Ethics, or any other ethic which is convenient to our personal behaviors so as not to place the inconvenience of ethical violation on our psyches. The need for moral authority no longer exists, and whatever works at the moment is “good”.
We can see the effects of this in the vaunted secular EU, which is run by unelected officials, and where parasitic irresponsible sub-nations are currently draining the economies of the more responsible ones with little stomach for “character change” toward responsibility. This coming collapse is egalitarian / consequentialism in real time, at the national level.
As for the dysfunction of the USA, I cannot but think that the relativism that has seized the religions here has compromised the culture, hand in hand with the bombardment of dysfunction in the form of televised entertainment and media dysfunction. Proclaimed beliefs are no longer an indication of actual ethical values in terms of absolutes; entire denominations have gone over to relativism.
Further, theism alone is not an ethic; it does give an external moral authority for an ethic. Atheism has only one’s own opinion for moral authority.
So we shall see in the not-too-distant future just how it is that Atheo-secular Europe and its policies fare; for one thing, Europe might well be Muslim before too long. The inability to discriminate or be discriminating has its pitfalls.
proterozoic,
Thanks so much for defending my wonderful wife from this judgemental jerk. I really enjoyed watching you thrash Stan's ridiculous assumptions with your much more clearly thought out and well supported arguments.
I will never understand why some people confuse a lack of belief in supernatural beings with a lack of ethics, or why they assume that their arbitrary rules from their religion are in any way ethical. You demonstrated very clearly that religion and ethics have not a thing to do with each other.
My wife is an absolutely amazing person who escaped a repressive and dogmatic upbringing to become the most caring and thoughtful person I have ever met. She is kind, honest and considerate of others. The attempt at slut-shaming that Stan has perpetrated here absolutely disgusts me. It's pretty obvious that he feels extremely intimidated by a woman who actually enjoys sex.
Don
Go ahead Stan, I dare you to post this.
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