Hello everyone. First-time lurker, first-time poster. I'm an atheist and, as far as I'm concerned, this has always been more-or-less true. When I was younger, this was a fiery, defiance-fueled attack on the beliefs of people that chose to torment me for being different. As I've gotten older, I've backed away from the well of unending hate (I use it for other things now) and studied theologies of all kinds, without much discrimination as to where they've come from. I'd like to weigh in with some of my thoughts and hope I end up making some kind of coherent sense. A lot of the following is going to sound cold, distant, and pragmatic. If it does, good - I've done my job. If not...well, we'll see how it goes.
Let's start by breaking up one of CW10's posts:
Quote:
If morality is a fact, there's a benchmark to judge against. If morality is an opinion there is no benchmark. If morality is still an opinion but has a set of guidelines, you have something to test against, rather than the morality of the week that secular humanism aspires too.
What if morality is a
decision? Let's try this:
The goal of humanity as a species, much like the goal of
any species, is to survive and prosper, in that order. Different humans define that second goal in differing ways, but that first one is pretty much cut-and-dried - if you live, you've survived, and if you die, well, you didn't. Therefore, things that increase the chances of individuals and the species surviving are defined as 'good' and things that harm those chances are 'bad'. It's normally at this stage of the explanation that someone (sometimes a theist, sometimes not) asks about things devolving into a selfish survival-fest in which everyone hoards resources and then everyone eventually dies, but I propose a different theory: that society is a survival tactic. Three guys making and gathering their own food with no reference to each other might all survive individually, but three guys cooperating together to make and gather their own food and materials can support more than three guys with the end result, assuming supportive circumstances (obviously this exact example is slightly different in, say, the wastes of the Arctic Circle).
Blow this example up to a larger scale: a participating member in an urbanized society does not need to hunt or gather their own food. They do not need to create their own tools, learn their own medicine, or fight their own armed conflicts, because the system society represents provides these things (obviously,
someone provides these things, but that's the beauty of it, isn't it? Any given individual only provides one of these services and can often turn it into a living making the others non-relevant to their own skill set). Should they so choose, they don't even need to create their own innovations (movie producers), manage their own estates, or even leave the comforts of their own homes - a state of being that would be utterly impossible in other circumstances. Even those on the down-and-outs, who literally scavenge and scrounge in the trash to get their food, can find
some food, can survive on their own simply by picking up the cast-off scraps discarded by those who are more prosperous.
(A brief aside: this is not to say that I believe the homeless and destitute are provided for. Far from it - I feel the way many societies choose to treat their poor and destitute ranges from the willfully negligent to the purposefully cruel. The statement is only meant to illustrate that one can technically eat, drink, and sleep without having to provide those services for oneself, even if one has been cast out or dropped from the supportive system that society represents.)
Taken in this context, one could argue that gathering together in ordered societies that provide for their individual members is the greatest survival adaptation we could have ever made. Certainly it seems to have worked out for other animals that have tried it - rats, ants, termites, bees, lions, wolves, and others. So the question then becomes not, 'How does this individual behavior help the species survive?' because we've found that behavior. The question then becomes, instead, 'How does this behavior support or undermine an ordered society?' Certain behaviors are, of course, almost universally problem-causing. Theft invites anger and reprisals; murder constitutes willingly ignoring another's right to survive and taking the power of life and death away from the governing body as represented by those who have 'signed' the social contract. Extended traumas such as torture and rape permanently damage a participant and leave them of impaired use to the whole (and, going further, are usually indicative of impairment on the part of the offender, making them of impaired use to the society as well). These actions are almost universally held to be reprehensible because they almost universally create disruptions in society and/or violate the social contract society is based on.
So, what is this social contract? A social contract is a set of behaviors or values recognized and, to an extent, agreed-upon by a body of people (participants). Essentially, the individual gains all the benefits of society (survival, convenience, et cetera) provided they follow its strictures (laws and 'morals'). This agreement is at the heart of
any society, and is the reason that societies that are from most perspectives completely horrific continue to function (Nazi Germany was one example; yes, the crimes committed by the regime were horrific, but their social contract still functioned and their society continued to provide for its participants until it was replaced by a new contract). Essentially, it's the agreed-upon rewards and punishments for aiding, or harming, the greater whole that ensures the prosperity of the individual.
If you speed and you're pulled over, you know what to expect. If you don't, there are often provisions for your ignorance. A person who kills does so knowing that society condemns his action as harmful to itself; he expects penalties to be levied against him in the event of his capture and trial. These laws provide a common paradigm, a sort of baseline worldview that allows a culture's participants to easily relate to each other. Because each culture defines the second highest goal of humanity (prosperity) by different goalposts, each society is subtly different, rewarding and punishing different behaviors outside of the 'universal sins' in order to enable the greatest amount of subjective prosperity possible.
In this context, most religions are a form of social contract - in fact, most social gatherings period come with a form of social contract, great or small. The principle guiding five guys playing D&D at a table is the same as the one that guides nine million New Yorkers living in the same city, with the only significant difference being scale. Religions are social gatherings of participating human beings (participants) that agree on a common paradigm and agree on a certain code of morality drawn from that paradigm. Part of this paradigm tends to be belief in supernatural forces, which are often placed in the roles of the ultimate reward-givers and/or punishers, but other rewards and punishments await on Earth in the form of social censure, acclaim, support or ostracism from the congregation, or even more tangible rewards such as titles, status, wealth, or power. Like all societies, they celebrate people that reinforce, advance, or simply live their paradigm, and like many societies most religions condemn or at least avoid people with competing or conflicting paradigms.
Where most people run into problems is where two or more paradigms conflict. In some cases, this leads to war (such as when the Nazi paradigm met the general paradigm of Western Europe). In other cases, it can lead to anarchy or civic strife (such as during the paradigm changes during the French Revolution, or the ones visible now in the Arab Spring). Some societies seek to avoid this by separating paradigms or permitting multi-paradigm participants, such as by permitting freedom of religion or dual citizenship. But when the politics of one paradigm intersect with another, inevitably they alter each other as decisions are made according to competing moral priorities; either one or the other must fall by the wayside, or both are changed, no longer what they used to be.
Most major religions can claim an ancient pedigree, and that kind of longevity lends an air of authority to their paradigm's moral judgements, but the only way to really judge a worldview is to observe the kinds of societies it creates and decide whether or not they're effective at not only supporting but
advancing their participants. I feel that in the light of recent (within the last three centuries) technological, philosophical and moral advancements in the human race, most religious paradigms are now outdated and prone to causing suffering instead of advancing innovation. They need, I feel, to be changed before they calcify completely if they are to survive. Others feel differently, and that's the beauty of it - whatever idea survives the
next two thousand years is, objectively, the successful one.
Does this layman's theory postulate an objective morality? No, it doesn't. In point of fact, I believe in a stark, uncaring universe that cannot care because it does not think. But it
does postulate an objective standard of moral judgement that permits the individual to examine their own moral values and see where they intersect or conflict with the dominant paradigms of their life and decide for themselves what they feel is most important to them. In my opinion, it makes personal choices more significant because it places emphasis on the individual as the moral actor, with the understanding in many cases that attempts to change their social contract(s), even for the better, may result in temporary breaches of that contract. It's just as important to recognize when an unpleasant rule is the right rule, after all, as it is to recognize when it's the wrong one.
Quote:
I looked up atheist mission statements. Every one of them started with "my atheist mission statement". What if your atheist mission statement doesn't agree with someone else's? Why can't there be one unified atheist mission statement?
This is much easier to answer than the above; it's because atheism is a
negative position. It is a
lack of belief in something (the presence of disbelief is arguably different, but that's not an argument I'm going to have). Because all atheists have in common is a lack of belief in something, we're no more necessarily alike than people who happen to lack tentacles, or who lack a heart on the right side of their body, or who lack an extra finger on our left hands.
22 Feb 2012, 12:16 am
I love this!! This is amazing!! The religiously persecuted ran away to found a god fearin' theocracy??! ! Obviously the US has always been a garden of religious tolerance. I mean, ask anyone who lived through the Puritan times, or better yet... ask Joseph Smith 
