After speaking with believers for some time, I’m often asked So where does morality come from? Why be compelled to be good without belief in God? Some times the questioner is genuinely naïve and cannot understand how I can function without belief in a god; other times the questioner believes he has stumbled on a fatal flaw to my worldview: while I may have valid points about epistemology or faith, naturalism fails at explaining ethics.

Of course, I respond with: So you have me to believe that without belief in God, you would kill, rape, enslave and torture others with impunity? If so, please by all means continue to believe. But if not, sophistry doesn’t make an argument.

There are numerous other objections to the claim that belief in God or religion provides a foundation to morality that I won’t tear into (it’s likely we’ll hit into them in the comments section), but instead, I’d like to explain that I do have an answer (So where does morality come from?), and while it may not be satisfactory for some, I think it provides a basis for a naturalist system of ethics.

Radio Lab has provided a superb synthesis of several scientific explorations into morality. While I’m sure most have heard of these thought experiments before, the neuroscience behind them is brilliantly conveyed in only an hour. Of course, it’s only a brief overview of a hefty subject. You can hear an .mp3 of it here.

And while you’re at it, you didn’t hear it from me, but someone’s leaked The Atheist’s Bible (.pdf)!

I realize now that my past few posts have been a bit off. Here’s one that begins at the limits and hopes to bring it back to a basic point.

I.

I hope it’s clear from what I initially wrote that in a tradition of poetry, the audience loses itself. One cannot pull back and see with a critical eye. What is required is a distance. Thus, this becomes a meta-conversation about distance and observation. We rely on eyesight, not listening. We don’t listen to the poet tell a story of a triangle and imagine; we discuss the triangle, an open conversation. We observe triangles, close our eyes, and think. This does not mean that listening or empathy is irrational while eyesight and discussion is rational, but this distance is one of critical thought and analysis. This is the Socratic method.

In modern physics textbooks, there usually is in the introduction a definition of ‘physics.’ It usually goes along the lines of, ‘Physics is…’ and then there is a list of things the class will cover, such as the study of light, sound, or movement. This means that physics is generally considered to be what physics do.

Continue reading The Outer Banks: A Follow-up

I. Prologue

Plato once wrote a text called The Republic, and it is commonly used today as an introductory text to political thought. It’s a heavy analogue, where a man says to Socrates, ‘What do you think of this?’ and Socrates says, ‘Well, this is what I think…’ and continues for eight or so pages. Then, another man says to Socrates, ‘What do you think of this other thing?’ and Socrates continues. And so it goes.

There are ten chapters, ten books, of this, and it’s very difficult to read. It delves into all manner of politics and social theory, how the heavens are arranged and how humans should be, but the last book, the last piece of ten, is strangely enough, on poetry. Eric Havelock’s amazing Preface to Plato makes clear that since this stands so far out from the rest of the book, that this chapter made people so uncomfortable, that for hundreds of years, a small piece was usually inserted in the margins of the chapter, going along the lines of, ‘It is unclear that this is part of The Republic’. In fact, some printers were convinced that this was not the work of Plato, and did not publish this last chapter, this 10th book.

What Plato said was that in the ideal society, far more nuanced than a mere utopia, there would be no poetry. This was not a totalitarian demand for the elimination of art; far from it. A far more plausible interpretation of what Plato meant is a matter of Homer and his antecedents. In Plato’s analogue of The Republic, in this last chapter, what Plato asks us to think of a society heavily indebted to the poet/leader. Has there ever been a moment in time where a John Wayne was a poet?

There has been, and everyone knows who he is. His name is five letters long. It’s easy.

Continue reading The 10th Book: Reason and Un-Reason

Ellen and Oprah, out of their shear magnanimity, have uncovered and shared with the humble masses “The Secret” (http://www.thesecret.tv) which has given untold wealth and success to all its bearers from ancient times untold. This 90-minute movie, made by down-and-out TV-producer Rhonda Byrne, reveals the amazing “Law of Attraction” upon which all the universe apparently rests, unbeknownst to most. This law alone, through the power of positive emotion, can attract to you love, health, bicycles, cars, houses, success, money, and more – all that you desire and the universe longs to give.

Continue reading Selling “The Secret”

The history of the world does not begin until the Shoah. It is the culmination of two thousand years of hatred and violence towards Jews, but the beginning of how Jews choose to survive in a world that thinks of them as a cancer. Everything today is understood in this light. As the engraving at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the first Holocaust memorial, reads, ‘Forgetfulness is the way to exile. Remembrance is the way to redemption.’ No one has ever given the Jews anything but sorrow.

I’ll be giving a brief overview on my thoughts on the subject, along with my impression of the general Jewish attitude the world at large. I could have talked about the religious implications for so many Jews and how some have rejected or refined their religion; I could have talked about the Shoah itself, but I will do neither of these things. This isn’t the time or the place. So sit tight for a bit and listen.

Continue reading We Don’t Turn the Other Cheek

One of the core conversations of this blog is unsurprisingly morality, for, I think, a couple of reasons:  First, theists so often use arguements for their superior morality or atheists inferior morality as a defense that it has become a natural, if problematic, part of The Debate.  Second, morality is cultural and social and has to due with the many ways our lives overlap, therefore it is important and any moral insecurity creates many fears within us.  Readers on this site should be directed to the posts in the ethics category for a review of the conversation.  Much more information is also included in the comments to these and other posts.

While surfing our connecting sites, I ran across the post "Virtue & Vice" on the blog The Black Tulip by Frieslander.  I think it would be an interesting read since it confronts some currently popular cultural assumptions held by a broad sprectrum of moral orientations. Continue reading The Ethics of Pleasure

In alternate dispute resolution (ADR), the conflict theory I like the best, it is the things you do not talk about that get you.  Negative outcomes (war, division, predjudice, hate) are more a product of the failure of cooperation on underlying issues than of the symptomatic events themselves.  For example: It is the failure to deal with a underlying economic inequality that leads to the war, not the diplomatic incident they broadcast on TV — but the economics are unlikely to become central to the dialogue, thus the conflict cannot be resolved.  Because the root issues cannot be solved, at best you can expect a win-lose outcome, at worst a lose-lose, but never a win-win.

Keeping this in mind, I would like to present a sensitive issue to our community here: sexual misconduct among Christian leaders.

Continue reading Cooperative Problem Solving: Church Sex Scandals

Sorry I haven't posted or been available for comments in a while.  I've had a couple of intense days….

I though with the holidays approaching (if you so choose to celebrate), we might take a short break at critiquing each other's deepest held values and claims and aim our intellectual cannons at Jolly Ole' St. Nick.

We've talked a lot in our dialogue so far about fictional beings and the irrationality of belief in them, how they may be used as proofs this way and that, etc.  It seems to me that it would be interesting for believers and atheists alike to talk about what you do with a popularly (near universally) promoted fictional character like Santa.  Many people know he's fictional (don't tell the kids), but our culture moves in mass as if he is real.  Many people tell their kids stories about him and give him credit for acts that they do.  There is currently a great market in selling myths about the man, and he seems to be pretty good for the economy.

Continue reading What to do with Santa?

Aaron Kinney from Kill the Afterlife is wondering about my thoughts on the origin of morality.  He wanted my take on the Euthyphro Dilemma [wiki].  I told him that I didn't know what that was, so he pointed me to the appropriate wikipedia article.

In short, Euthyphro is a dialogue authored by Plato where Socrates works with Euthyphro on the nature of the "pious".  Socrates enters into discussion with Euthyphro because he is the preeminent religious persona of the day, and Socrates has been accused of corrupting the youth by causing them to question the gods.  Since such a charge bears the penalty of either exile or death, the matter is pretty serious.

Here's a bit of the wiki to summarize the problem:

Socrates asks Euthyphro: “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” In monotheistic terms, this is usually transformed into: “Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it's commanded by God?”.

Continue reading The Euthyphro Dilemma

While searching for a plugin for this site, I ran into a blog post on Zy.ca about Richard Dawkins [wiki] recent speech at a University in Lynchburg.  In the post, Zyca says:

The whole exchange and his [Dawkin's] bit about atheists being fearful of revealing themselves in the US … disturbs me. It seems inconceivable that americans are so … fanatical, but then again their president is a strong believer in “your with us or against us” ideology so I could see it being true…..Basically his strongest arguement is that being an Atheist should not be a stigma … it shouldn’t prevent you from being elected, etc. It is creepy that it would be an issue … but more so, it is creepy that there would be a cohesive group of atheists imposing their beliefs upon others. I strongly believe in live and let live … but Neocons scare the crap out of me … so maybe there is a point to unity of atheist … mind, I consider myself Agnostic. Still, fervor is fervor and whether it is backed by faith or religion, it is still a very scary thing. 

I appreciate the oberservation and honesty from someone presumably outside to the US.  This impressed upon me the importance of our dialogue here.  It is interesting that this blog was started by two Americans, though our readership is not geographically limited.  I don't think either of us would agree that there should ever be such a society where certain thought systems are afraid of revealing themselves.  That amounts to truth-suppression, or, at the very least, gross insecurity on the part of the oppressors.  To say we believe our thinking is right as atheists, theists, or anything else is, of course, reasonable.  But to believe so deeply that others are wrong that you are willing to force their view into hiding or extinction is arrogance of the worst kind, unhealthy for the truth, and just generally evil.  Humans in general, and Americans in particular, could gain much by learning the art of humility. Since our talk of late has been a lot on ethics and the ethics of dialogue, I thought we might do some ethical work here on this blog and draft a atheist-theist ethical statement on the treatment of humans, specifically with regards to people of different truth-systems and their treatment. Continue reading Afraid to Be Atheist in America?