Atheists who believe in objective 'right' and 'wrong'.

**Unelias** · 10-26-2011 02:37 PM

Originally Posted by Dreams4free

All of what you are saying can be explained through natural selection. People that fucked their sisters propagated retarded babies that didn't survive. Killing your own offspring, for obvious reasons, is a gene that if existed would quickly die out. Etc etc etc, until what you have left is hunter gatherer groups that got together. Hunters that didn't hoard food and trusted each other overcame other groups of humans that lived in solidarity quite easily.

Not all of it. Only the basic instinctual behavior. I personally think that too much is loaded on genetical aspects and less considered what the actual changes in your brain happens when you are brought up and interact with society. Genes affect, I agree that, but not nearly all is there. The mere moral differences in cultures supports that. Also, fear of punishment is very big factor. It shackles us to act in a way that society considers morally right.

Originally Posted by Dreams4free

All of our moral impulses are connected to impulses that allowed us to survive.

That might be true, but I'd say that it is more about our own survival than survival of the human race. Take stealing. Taking items that belonged to others has probably always been true. Even earliest hunter gatherers protected their bow and arrows and other tools with great care. But after society began to evolve, people started to form cities, tribes and nations. That could be the turning point when thievery began an actual profession. The punishment was usually brutal, death or torture. Still thieves have basically organized everywhere around the world and it has been shaped into a form of art.

Originally Posted by Dreams4free

Effectively, it is all about trust and demonstrable value that bonds us together.
Objectively speaking, all of our impulses, instincts, premeditated behavior, and other manifestations of our actions will either leave us in a position of power and influence with desirable value or the inverse. Survival is no longer about just simply living and having children that may or may not succeed, it is rapidly transforming into
worth to the society, and you will see this rapidly appear before your eyes as over population escalates. In fact you are just seeing the beginning of it now. These protests and riots and conspiracy theories is just a desperate out cry to help the large majority of the world that is suffering. This is only going to exponentially get worse in the future to the point of total anarchy, in which the populace will not be able to overcome the strong military force guided by those with power and influence. Government is going to get a lot more totalitarian whether you like it or not, sorry.

If I understood this right, then I agree quite bit of it. Humans are so complicated with our social frame that you cannot see as from purely biological ( genetical ) perspective. Survival for us is not that much evading poisonous snakes, finding food and water etc. anymore. It is more about surviving the interaction with other people and society and this is why general morality/laws were invented that people could even live together. Especially, when our cities are so big now.

But I haven't seen any explanation that could sway me from my view that morals are pretty much only sideproduct of society. If you isolate a child from society and raise him up ( feral children as example, too bad we cannot.. rather it is not morally acceptable.. to conduct a experiment to see what happens in controlled observation) he will most likely not see why he couldn't smash your tv, eat your food, bite someone who touches him et cetera. He only calculates the risk and reward of an action according to what he knows and has learned, which in his case, is pretty much none.

Sorry, I was a bit rush so lots of stuff probably is missing or written down in confusing way.

**Toch** · 12-08-2011 11:20 AM

Since the current discussion seems to have lain fallow for some weeks, if I may introduce myself at this point...

I'm an atheist who believes in objective "right" and "wrong." However, the sense in which I mean those terms has nothing to do with humans or values as such. Rather, I'm arguing for what you might call a "legalistic" conception of morality, which is aimed at answering the question: "Person A has preferences about the state-of-the-world that conflict with Person B's preferences. Who is right?"

In other words, if everyone has the same values/preferences already, then questions of "morality" never even get asked in the first place. Therefore, the task of moral philosophy is to provide a way for determining who is correct when a conflict arises. In order to do that, we have to assume from the outset that it is possible to ask and answer such questions in a meaningful way. Any reply to the effect of "We cannot answer this question because it's meaningless/subjective/etc." fails to even begin the debate. In a manner of speaking, subjectivism leaves Person A and Person B unsatisfied, looking for someone else who does have an answer (or, perhaps, resorting to violence).

Anyway, I'd be happy to engage with anyone in a debate about this topic -- it's been a while since I had a good meaty philosophical discussion.

**Arra** · 12-10-2011 01:05 PM

What are you basing morality on, if not subjective values?

I think that ultimately it has to be based on values that we all happen to share. If 10 people believe that an action is wrong and 10 people believe that it's right, then I agree that it would serve no purpose to say "we can't make any moral evaluation of it because it's subjective". You have to use some other standard to decide whether it's right or not. But that other standard is going to involve our shared values too in some way. Maybe in a broader, more 'objective' sense, but it's still based on our values and is therefore subjective. If you agree, but call it objective, that's fine, and it's only an argument over definition.

**LabRat** · 12-16-2011 06:43 PM

Stop putting all Atheists' in one defined group. It grind me atheistic gears.

Hahaa. Good debate though, really is..

**Arra** · 12-17-2011 07:12 AM

Who is putting atheists all into one group? How?

**Fredfredburger** · 01-14-2012 07:34 AM

I view right and wrong as only existing in the mind of the person who believes in it. Horrible things can be considered the right thing to do by a culture, becuase of a religiouse reason or any other. My emotions dissagree with me and they want to point and scream evil, but i think it is bad to think with feelings.

If everyone on earth where to decide that tourturing animals was okay, then it would be okay becuase no one would know otherwise. How we see reality determines reality unless it contradicts a physical truth, which right and wrong isnt.

One could say that since it cuases damage that makes it not right. The truth is that even killing someone isnt truly damaging them, but altering the way in which the energy and atoms of their bodys interact with the world. Our emotions precieve the change as horrible and so does the person being murdered. People seeing that as wrong is what makes that wrong in the first place.

Right and wrong exist as our perceptions of events. Most people I have met tho dont like to talk about that and claim that dont know of which I speak.

What many people dont see is that I believe right and wrong exist, but in a much different light. Right and wrong doesnt exist anywhere in the world exept for human viewpoints. That means that right and wrong exist, but could easily become different, depending on the world wide view on a given situation.

**Nhuc** · 02-06-2012 12:55 PM

This has probably been said somewhere up there, but I really don't want to read 3 pages for an obvious reply.

People often think about this wrong. Read up on the ubermeinch, or whatever the word is, the higher/evolved man. Right and wrong, ethics and morality stem beyond religion, and simply is something we all are taught/know, (insert application nature nurture here) from birth. You don't need a religion to have morals, the only thing necessary is a sense of government, at least at the tribal level. For agreed upon things to be agreed upon, basically a set of ideas, perhaps better terms would be correct, or incorrect, or acceptable, or however you choose to word it. It's just all looking at the same thing hundreds of different ways, neither one really clarifying the issue, because people have a need to take a stance, instead of just accepting the edge of the coin theory, or rather, the yin yang, that while everything has it's opposite, because everything has it's opposite everything is the same.

**Universal Mind** · 02-14-2012 04:44 PM

I am an atheist who doesn't believe in objective right and wrong, but I am an emotional person who is very for and very against certain things. When I say that things are "right" or "wrong," I am just being a control freak about getting society to do what supports peace and happiness of the masses the most.

**Spyguy** · 03-23-2012 08:35 PM

Well, time for me to share my view on this as well

I am an atheist as well, and I do believe that there is always one objective ' right' . However, I do not justify my actions with that one way or another. Why not? Because we humans are unable to define what is right and what is wrong. That is for the simple reason that WE are NOT objective. And for the reason that humanity doesn't know everything. Here's an example of that one:
This is going to be a simplified version of a human society. The world has only one religion, which I will call religion X. 50% of the humans in that world are believers, 50% are not. Religion X states (amongst other things obviously) that humans should walk on both hands and feet. So the believers all do that, the non-believers do not. Opposed to what the humans in our world would do (both groups form a nation and try to eliminate the other group, and then name it justice), these two groups live in harmony, and the government is also 50% atheist and 50% religion X
Now, there is a debate, whether a shoe shop should be obliged to sell every type of shoe in sets of four, in order for everyone to be able to buy his/her shoes there. So what is the answer? The atheists would say no, because it costs the shoe owner more, and there is no need to have 4 shoes. The followers of religion X will say yes, because they believe that they are obliged to walk on both hands and feet (after all, they believe their god told them that).
Something can be said for both ofcourse. We would most likely think of some compromis like 'shoe owners must sell their shoes in pairs, but must also give the customers the option to buy two fitting shoes for their hands'.
But they CANNOT determine which is the objective ' right' , because they are not sure whether god X exists or not. If he does, then the followers of religion X were right, if he doesn't, then the atheists were right.
So the lack of knowing everything makes it impossible for us to determine which is the objective right. That being said, it is ofcourse worth carefully thinking about what is right in every situation. And there probably is some kind of better, simple resolution for the problem named in this example, but I think it made my view on this subject obvious.
I do believe that there is only 1 objective right in every situation, but I also think we are unable to determine it, at the very least in most situations.

03-28-2012 04:35 AM