Bingo! Well said. Again, my major problem as an atheist wannabe: not can I be moral, but how do I find an intellectually satisfying (no sleight of hand please) explanation for a truly objective morality. How can Hitler be evil? How can I love my children? After all, love, good, evil - just like religion - are products of my brain’s neurotransmitters. Just an organism evolving through the evolution of culture, language, and environment. And just like religion (at least to be consistent), they are as much an illusion. For some reason, that thought could never help me sleep well at night. Not to mention that the materialist, atheist, there-ain’t-nothing-but-the-cosmos naturalist, seemed to speak more to a comfortable, affluent, well-to-do Western culture (or culture embracing Western ways), than to the person living in muck, filth, misery, pain, and death. The thought that I should proclaim the truth that we are all biological organisms, meant to be born, eat, breed, die, and that’s that, didn’t seem to be a comforting thought to those masses who will know little but suffering and death. Not that there aren’t atheists in foxholes. I’ve been told there are. But what comfort is there for those whose entire lives are nothing but a nightmare foxhole experience? Before I could proclaim such a doctrine to them, I needed to be sure. And because of reasons that Mr. Shea points out, I never got there (in fact, I did a bungee cord and went back past my agnosticism, into Evangelical Protestantism, and then this year, into the Catholic Church).
Dave G. | 12.22.06 - 9:27 pm | #

I think it more accurate to say that atheism cannot account for morality in an intellectually satisfying way (at least to my mind).

I disagree. But then, of course, I would hardly expect you to take any other stand, given your beliefs. Just as you would hardly expect me to agree with this statement.
Adrienne | 12.22.06 - 10:18 pm | #

Bingo! Well said. Again, my major problem as an atheist wannabe: not can I be moral, but how do I find an intellectually satisfying (no sleight of hand please) explanation for a truly objective morality.

Well, does an effective moral system have to be truly objective? Is there such a thing, in fact, as *truly* objective morality? Christian morality can hardly be considered to be such, given that the God (I'll capitalize it to play nicely) of the Old Testament had few qualms about ordering his followers to kill entire cities of people, including children and presumably pregnant women. Read Numbers 31, also, which strongly implies that Yahweh OK'd rape, or at the very least the giving of underage girls as booty to his chosen ones (after they had murdered everyone else of a given tribe).

Yet now Christians would tell you that killing the unborn is evil, no questions asked, even in wartime. But God and His rules aren't supposed to change over time. So I was taught in Catholic school, anyway. And that's certainly the least of things that Christians argue about, obviously. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many denominations.

I look at morality more from a pragmatic perspective. We can look at our most closely related primate neighbors and see that they don't wantonly murder each other senselessly in their own communities. They also exhibit some forms of altruism towards each other. Human societies likewise need a sense of order and stability to thrive. Children raised in war zones tend to be intellectually, emotionally, and even physically stunted. Humans do best in a relatively peaceful, orderly environment. Therefore, some sort of moral system makes perfect sense as a means of allowing the greatest number of humans to achieve the greatest good within a given social unit.

That doesn't mean that people won't argue over things, but then, Christians, even Catholics. certainly do that now. Is Communion in the hand a sacrilege? Is it ever OK for women to wear pants? Should parents let their kids read the Harry Potter books? Should mothers ever work outside the home? I've seen some mighty heated debates on these subjects on Catholic message boards.

But I'd encourage you to go to infidels.org and search the modern library to read essays on the subject that flesh it out quite more extensively than I have.
Adrienne | 12.22.06 - 10:30 pm | #

People who quote the OT - exclusively - to point out the problems with God's teaching, or just God Himself, don't usually understand the books at all, nor the point of them. Not that I'm an expert either, but I have some clue.

In short, the OT is about the Jews, who are The People of God. It's about this God and His People. It was important in the plan of Salvation, for the Jews to realise that they were His People and that He is One. They were surrounded by peoples on all sides whose religious beliefs were an abomination, so the Jews had to understand themselves as a People apart. Problems came in, of course, every time they deviated from God and went after strange gods.

But this is what the OT is largely about.

I don't know a lot more than this. Someone more knowledgable can take it up if they like.
Louise | Homepage | 12.22.06 - 11:33 pm | #

"God (I'll capitalize it to play nicely) of the Old Testament had few qualms about ordering his followers to kill entire cities of people, including children and presumably pregnant women."

You know that God had no qualms? You have expectations of the way God should behave? C'mon, Adrienne, you don't even believe in God's existence, but that doesn't keep you from moralizing about a being of your own invention.

Ask Job.

Ask Job.
Pavel Chichikov | Homepage | 12.23.06 - 1:16 am | #

Sorry, I mischaracterized what you said, Adrienne.

'Few' qualms. That's even better. It sort of humanizes God. Very nice. Very childlike.
Pavel Chichikov | Homepage | 12.23.06 - 1:22 am | #

Adrienne,

Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear, and for that I apologize. But the consistency wasn’t in the actual moral code, the consistency was where I got my moral code from. So let’s just say God is a fickle God. You never know where He is going next (I disagree, but for argument’s sake). Well, that is still where I get my moral code: from God, not the subjective reasoning of the day. If all of humanity were suddenly to say genocide is OK, and most beneficial for the species, then that would be bad. Why? Because I believe (and you might say I am wrong, but I still believe) that the God revealed in Scripture would say it is wrong, even if all humanity believes otherwise. For the atheist though, what happens if, a thousand years from now, humanity has accepted selective genocide as an appropriate way of dealing with overpopulation? Well, how could we say they are wrong? Can we say, “Look here, we are now the intellectual and moral zenith of human history, from now on, if any period in history disagrees with us, they’re wrong!”? Seems a bit far fetched, but what else can the atheist say? Oh well, we have evolved to believe genocide is wrong, but if humanity continues to evolve to believe it is OK, then it will be OK at that point? Today Hitler = evil, a thousand years from now Hitler = visionary. Seems those are the only two ways of dealing with the issue, and neither one helps me cuddle with my boys any easier. The thought that something beyond this world and the confines of human reason has established such moral boundaries (and no, it isn’t fair to take simplistic readings of Scripture and apply them to the whole of Christian reasoning), is at least consistent, and the objective basis for my morality. Genocide is wrong because of something beyond us, not because of majority rule or elitist reasoning. That’s what I meant by consistent. And it is from there that the objective comes from (rather than universal morality based on what makes me feel good, be it about my morality, or my reasoning prowess, it comes from God). Hope that clears things up. And have a safe and happy Holiday.
Dave G | 12.23.06 - 11:04 am | #

And yet, atheism has a long tradition of ignoring its own premisses and speaking as though Reason transcends Nature, .... This is either sleight of hand or, as I suspect, muddled thinking.

I think it is often both sleight of hand and muddled thinking. People will often skip over hard questions to justify what they believe. Simply make a statement and don't back it up. When questioned, don't bother trying to come up with a satisfying answer. I don't think it's a willful intent to deceive (which is what I think by "sleight of hand"), but it's more like a willingness to deceive yourself.

So, in short, I think this is muddled thinking, but I also think it is intentional.

It isn't just atheists and agnostics, lots of Christians do this too.
Greg | 12.27.06 - 9:08 am | #

Adrienne,

Sorry to say that you are wrong about the other primates. They do murder and rape and all that. My brothers who are biologists assure me of that, in spite of the nicey-nice depictions that we often see on PBS or Discovery.

But I can tell you as a student of the humanities (finishing my Ph.D. in English right now) that I have looked hard and can find no atheistic moral system which can stand up on its own principles and still produce outcomes that most people would be comfortable with.

Richard Rorty, for example, has developed a pretty consistent 'antifoundationalist' ethics, but under interrogation it is not able to condemn what the Nazis did during the 1930s and 40s because the whole system is based on a kind of cultural relativism that allows for no moral absolutes. Thus, like the monkeys, we would have to tolerate it when one tribe attempts to eradicate another.

If you are sincerely interested in Christian ethics and not just with torching straw men, you will need to spend some time considering the ways in which Christians have understood the sections of the Old Testament that you indicate.

I too had a pretty awful theological education in my Catholic high school, which led to me leaving the Church for a long time and becoming a vocal atheist (wavering into agnosticism on my weaker days). All that time I searched for a truly philosophically viable and consistent ethics that would also correspond with what my heart told me was right about how to treat people (no genocide allowed, folks). In the end, I had to admit that my prejudices against genocide, etc. could not have existed were it not for Christianity. And I have found no atheistic ethical system both holds up to its own principles and is capable of producing the right kind of 'prejudices' (protecting the weak against the strong, considering each human life as intrinsically valuable, etc.). All the ones that do lead to such conclusions or hold such beliefs are actually parasitical on Catholic culture or are logically inconsistent in some other way.

Adrienne, I won't put my email address into this box for fear of a deluge of spam, but I do authorize Mark to send it to you. I would love to email with you about all this, since these issues are rather complex. And I invite you to propose a way that atheism can produce the kind of ethics that we want without collapsing in on itself. I would argue that Catholic Christianity has spent the last 2000 years developing the most consistent and most humane ethics available to us, and I am quite willing to defend that claim rationally.

After years of studying the best that secular thinkers have to offer, I have found that I cannot trade my inheritance for a mess of pottage. And neither should you, Adrienne.

peace
dannyboy | 12.28.06 - 3:16 pm | #