Posted by:
Henry Bemis
(
)
Date: June 02, 2019 10:21AM
My answer to him is, "We had morality before we had religion. Look at any animal species, they have rules they follow that help them survive and they all follow the same set of rules. That's morality!"
COMMENT: Morality encompasses more than just rules. (Is there morality in a game of chess?) At minimum, it requires a "moral sense" (within a conscious human agent) such that some actions are right and some wrong, irrespective of any rules. And there is no evidence that animals engage in rule governing behavior, moral or otherwise. Who made these rules that they are supposed to follow? If, for example, I forget to feed my dog, he is not thinking; Damnit, you broke the rules. He is thinking (without language) "I'm hungry, where is my food!
______________________________________
He says, ok, since nonconsensual sex is common in the animal world, what's to stop me fro raping somebody if I don't have religion telling me that's wrong?"
COMMENT: You asked for this response by your first statement, and he rightly called you on it!
______________________________________
"Uh, common human decency, empathy, your conscience wouldn't allow it. People don't go around raping other people when they become atheists. In fact, our prisons are not full of atheists, they're full of religious people!"
COMMENT: O.K. Now it is not rules you are appealing to, but rather a "conscious," or an intuitive moral sense. At least now you are on the right track. But, where does this moral sense come from, and--most importantly--how does YOUR conscious, or YOUR moral sense, or that of anyone else provide any moral authority to make judgments about what is objectively morally right or wrong? In other words, appealing to moral intuitions, collectively or individually, might explain why people are deemed moral or immoral, but it does not explain why they should be!
_________________________________________________
His comeback is always, "Wellwhatabout Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Kim Jung Un? They were all atheists and murdered more than anybody else!"
COMMENT: His point, better stated, is that
at least some people act out of a moral sense that dictates conduct that is just different from the moral status quo. Mao, in particular, and most revolutionaries, would not claim to be amoral. Quite the contrary, such people insist that morality requires extreme actions in the face of their perceived social injustices. So, again, you are left with trying to explain why YOUR morality provides objective moral authority over that of Mao, or anyone else who might disagree with you.
(So far, your Christian buddy is kicking your butt.)
__________________________________________
I tell him "Hitler was a Christian. The problem is dogma, which is common in religion and Communism."
COMMENT: Your wrong again. Dogma is not per se moral or immoral. The question is what is it about any particular dogma that renders it moral or immoral, right or wrong?
__________________________________________
He denies that and insists I must be an immoral person if I don't subscribe to any moral code.
COMMENT: Now, your friend is getting in trouble. There is no reason why morality should be "codified," particularly in a way that is understood by human beings. Whether you are moral person depends upon what you think and do in the context of your own moral sense, and as evaluated by the moral sense of others, or society generally. An atheist is not immoral simply because her moral sense is not codified; and a Christian is not moral because his code is! Consider the Crusades, where "moral" actions were "codified" by some interpretation of Christianity.
______________________________________
I tell him I do subscribe to a moral code, contained in my pre-frontal cortex, responsible for giving me executive functioning, like empathy, conscience and morality. It's on my DNA.
COMMENT: Newsflash! There are no moral codes in your prefrontal cortex, or in your DNA! Your inclinations to certain behavior on moral grounds may be correlated with your a host of brain states (not your DNA), but there are no moral codes there. When faced with a moral dilemma you do not think, "if only I could access that moral code in may prefrontal cortex I would know what to do!" In fact, there are no ideas, thoughts, reasons, or justifications, in your brain; there are only firing neurons; i.e. physical events, responding to an environment. For those firings to "represent" thoughts, you need a conscious human agent. And your brain is NOT itself a conscious human agent. That is why when YOU are unconscious your brain does not continue to have thoughts, ideas, or reasons.
______________________________________
Why do I need to pay somebody to tell me they codified the genius nature imbued us with? Why do I need somebody to tell me I'm evil and the only way I can be happy is to start paying cash to the guy in between me and god?
COMMENT: Say what?