People seem to need some moral foundation for their behavior; some way to justify and explain their behavior.

It is convenient if this comes in a prepackaged supermarket mix. That's religion. Most people don't want to be philosophers, they just want to say "that's right, because ".

With a decent school system, it would be possible to at put religion into context. However, we do not have a decent school system. Mostly because we do not have decent teachers.

I've appreciated Penn Jillette's take on it: http://www.npr.org/2005/11/21/5015557/there-is-no-god

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate.

Ethics has no necessary connection with any particular religion, nor with religion in general."

-- Peter Singer (ed), Ethics, 1994

To the first question, apparently not. To the second question, I don't know. In theory, sure. In practice...

I'm really afraid that once the population gets to a certain size, it ends up being priests or politicians in charge. I don't know which is worse.

The movie 'Paint Your Wagon' is a pretty good example of what I mean.

ethics:

1.(Philosophy) (functioning as singular) the philosophical study of the moral value of human conduct and of the rules and principles that ought to govern it; moral philosophy See also meta-ethics
2. (functioning as plural) a social, religious, or civil code of behavior considered correct, esp that of a particular group, profession, or individual
3. (functioning as plural) the moral fitness of a decision, course of action, etc. he doubted the ethics of their verdict

Well what is ethical in one religion may not really match the ethics of another.

And there really isn't a way to create a society that is free of religion, even by agreement. If you had a 1000 non-religious couples move to an island with all the things they needed to form a new "society" at some point there would be some disaster that some formerly religious type would try to bring it back.

Then you would get into the issue of suppressing speech. How is that ethical?

It so happens I've written a brief essay on that very subject:

http://coldservings.livejournal.com/48388.html

Upshot is that if one takes as the goal the happiness and well being of people both individually and collectively then one can, over time not only derive a set of morals/ethics based on that goal but that eventually, as one learns more and more about what actually does and does not work for that goal, those morals/ethics must "converge" on the _same_ ethics/morals that a deity or deities that is powerful enough to set the rules as he/she/it/they wish, knowledgeable enough to know the results of any given set of rules, and at least well-disposed toward the happiness and well-being of people (all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving being the ultimate expression of those traits) would establish. That's would actually establish; not to be confused with what folk have written down and attributed to the Deity-of-their-choice.

Of course it's possible to have ethics without religion. I submit we all have ethics without religion.

Can even a theist say, with any certainty, that every ethical decision they ever made was based solely upon their religious conviction? And that they never made a single ethical decision without consulting their religion first?

"As Russian-born Roman Genn has pointed out, communism is a religion."

Since you have defined any and every political philosophical system as a religion, can you show me "any" cultrue or civilization since the dawn of time that meets your definition as a non religious one?

If you can't, can you seriously believe that a society build on no common values at all, is even possible?

I judge religious ideologies including atheism by their survival value. Long lived atheistic civilizations are notably absent in the historical record.

Really bad religion is kind of self-limiting. Jim Jones' religion, we no longer get to observe. But what about religions that outlive their prophets?

Stipulate they're all "scams": the question remains, how, exactly, do they perpetuate themselves? At least in part they aid the survival of their host tribe.

Judaeo-Christianity and Islam fit this mold but their ethical systems conflict. Praying and preying are just too different, jizya know?

Evidence is thin that absence of deity leads to a benign convergence. Communism, the leading atheist religion, has killed hundreds of millions of its own subjects.

If I had to doom and enslave 99.9999% of humanity so that .0001% could survive an asteroid impact I'd do it in a heartbeat. So it seems we operate from different goals. For me species survival trumps the warm glow of general benevolence. How are we to converge?

"2. There are endless instantiations of moral, compassionate, and kind acts that are committed by atheists. How are such non-believers able to engage in such acts without a belief in any supernatural deity? Is it that God in His infinite benevolence"

So is Atheism/communism a religion or not?

In one post you claim that is is, in order to try and refute my claim, that political philosophies have killed far more people than religion, And then when you want to claim, that Atheism is somehow just as humanitarian as a religion, you want define religion as simply a belief in a God?

Is darkness light? No, it's the absence of light. Atheism is not a religion. It's the lack thereof.

I think religion is likely an evolutionary psychology response to our sentience and the dangers of nihilism. (As a very moral agnostic nihilist, I have zoloft to rely on!). Some of us are well equipped to be irreligious and still moral (Penn Jilette, for example, and many if not most Libertarians I know, and I would guess many who read this blog).

Absent a specific religious ethic, we'll need some agreed upon set of societal ethics, preferably one that is intuitive and in-line with the human condition. If we don't consciously select one, one will be imposed on us anyway - it cannot be escaped. That's why communism supplants religion in many, many ways and has all the hall marks of Eric Hoffer's "true believers".

To my mind better a judeo-christian based set of ethics than others that are (currently) prone to extremism, not that Christianity hasn't had, and still has, fundamentalists, whoi tend to be a plague on all religious houses.

[Personal aside - I sent my kids to Catholic schools to have some ethics as part of the school work. They turned out highly ethical but very anti-religious. I sometimes think "free-thinking" and libertarianism is a genetic trait.]

We need religion for the beauty and poetry of the wondering about the grand scheme of things.

We need our intellect for morality.

Er just to clarify I'm not saying that atheists don't see beauty and poetry in the grand scheme of things.

I'm just saying that religion adds richness and depth to the collective human experience. Not to individual people.

As Sam Harris pointed out, IIRC, dogma is the real enemy. You don't have to be religious to be dogmatic - see Stalin, Mao, etc.

Also, as he said, it doesn't make sense to use "atheist" at all - we don't have names for people who don't believe in astrology or a living Elvis, after all. "Non-religious" will do just fine.

I think religion is nothing more than a business; a business that controls people through fear. I think of myself as spiritual being believing in a force greater than my 'ego self'. I don't need religion to be ethical. I think many religions have ruined the concept of God. Actually, A Course in Miracles makes more sense to me than anything I have ever encountered. The metaphysical aspect of ACIM will certainly cause some to think of me as a new age wingnut. So be it.

I judge religious ideologies including atheism by their survival value. Long lived atheistic civilizations are notably absent in the historical record.

First define long lived.
Second detail how survival at any cost is "better" than non survival via adhering to princaple

The Moral Argument for the existence of God asserts that objective morality cannot exist without God.

I do not think 'religion' has a proper place in the conversation.

re atheists and ethics:
Christian belief is that God is guiding us, at minimum, via our conscience. It does not matter whether or not we believe in God: God guides us, regardless; stirs our consciences, regardless.

Therefore, Christians believe that atheists can be ethical/moral. Many atheists are more ethical/moral than am I.

@luljp

(1) First define long lived.
Longer lived than the late CCCP.

(2) Second detail how survival at any cost is "better" than non survival via adhering to princaple

Interesting straw man, since I never said that. I also like the way that you act on principle. Those Others, everybody knows they have no principles.

Some societies abhor the concept that there are things worth fighting killing and dying for. They are replaced by those that disagree with them.

Ethical systems are imposed by force. The final answer is always "because I say so".

For example, if we had lost to the Germans in WW2 murdering millions of innocent though inconvenient Americans would be ethical today.

Hey! Wait a minute...

First question: If by religion you mean some deity serving as an organizing principle to your beliefs, well, of course you can have ethics without a religion. I have no problem seeing ethical questions and behaving ethically, while believing there is no god. I don't recall the catholic catechism being much concerned with ethics, one way or the other. Ethics and religion are not necessarily related in any way.

Second question: Too many variables to come up with an answer to a purely speculative question. Is there a relationship of any kind between religions and the world being a "better" place? Define you terms however you want and then state your conclusion with pig-headed certainty. And you may be right.

For the majority of human history there have not been "free" religious or atheistic societies because human nature tends to have a mob mentality. There are sects of Hinduism which are atheistic, and Buddhism got part of its inspiration from them, but people still turned it into some type of dogmatic belief.

Japan is non-religious and it is the safest country I've been to to date. A lot of people point to communism and atheism but that is like me joining democracy and Islam. If you do not have freedom to believe and practice whatever you want then shit ain't gonna work ya know?

Nowadays what group of people tend to be atheist? Scientists.
They are not known for robbing, raping, or keeping shitty neighborhoods. Imagine living with a bunch of scientists.....

Real scientists or the frauds who promote the religion known as climate change? ;{D

"Japan is non-religious and it is the safest country I've been to to date. A lot of people point to communism and atheism but that is like me joining democracy and Islam. If you do not have freedom to believe and practice whatever you want then shit ain't gonna work ya know?"

Pardon me, while I roll around on the floor and laugh. Japan is extremely religious, and has an honor/shame culture that leads to one of the highest suicide rates in the world..

During a fifteen year period, Japan was one of the most murderous racist thug countries in the entire world. They killed millions of their fellow Asians and quite a few Europeans.
The motivator? Radical Shinto (ancestor worship) and Bushido .
The fact that they got the shit kicked out of them, during world war II made them pull their horns in a bit, but the underpinnings culturally are still there.

Japan IS NOT "extremely religious" now in modern times, I'm not sure where you are getting that from.

You are confusing their sense of racial superiority and honor culture coupled with their racial homogeny and hundreds of years of traceable ancestry.

I've never seen people give two shits about their religion there, what the obsess about is their racial superiority & lack of offspring. If you are of Japanese ancestry but born in say Brazil expect to be treated like garbage. They have Nazi vans with speakers calling for the deportation of all foreigners.

BTW Koreans on the other hand ARE weirdly religious. Their country is safe too.

By the way the majority of Japanese have never been radically religious, like Christians or Muslims. They have been radically anti-foreigner which is why they stamped out other religions.

Shinto has a history of falling out of favor, especially for Buddhism, but only coming back due to government mandate.

The Japanese (Shinto) did all those horrible things to Asians for the same reason the Nazis (Christians) did it to the Jews. They feel they are superior and use whatever excuse is culturally convenient.

The Nazis were not Christian, but were willing to use the church to achieve their political goals when they could.

The ideas i have about Japan come from living over there. My husband lives there full time, and speaks Japanese.
I live there part time.

The Japanese practice both Buddhism and Shinto with great fluidity. There is a temple of one sort or another in every square kilometer. So, again, I am not sure how you formed your impression of the Japanese being Non religious. i would suspect it was because someone told you that, as opposed to looking at the direct evidence.

But you are correct, in one respect, they are vicious racists, and xenophobes which are not exactly endearing qualities. .

There also seems to be a growing Christian population among the Japanese. I had about three Japanese nationals knock on my door, at different times, and ask if I would like to go to church with them.

Japan is a complicated place. Any generalization is going to be correct, and wrong. You have your equivalent of Jehova's Witnesses in Sokkagakkai, for example, but most of my friends and acquaintances were more observers of cultural norms rather than believers. I knew a varied mix of people, including one of my Japanese teachers who was an observant Protestant who told me of her struggle to remain faithful to her beliefs while still participating in what were both cultural obligations and Buddhist traditions. I also knew the daughter of a monk for whom religion was the family business. O-Bon, the dance for the dead, is at it's roots religious, but it's also a summer festival. I could argue both sides of this one.

MarkD, i think you are absolutely correct. There are no generalizations that really work, and attemting to paint Japan as an Atheist country that is safe, to try and make a point about how much better it is than the US, requires you to set up a strawman comparision with the US being a deeply religious country, which it is not.

All you have to do is look at the crime data by State in the US to explode the myth that somhow being religious is a marker for violence.

I think people need to get away from the idea that religion is a driving force for culture. In truth, it is always culture, history and economics, that drive religion.

"There are no generalizations that really work, and attemting to paint Japan as an Atheist country that is safe,"

Jesus fucking Christ, when did I say Japan was an Atheist country? I said it is non-religious while you tried to paint is as "extremely religious"

"to try and make a point about how much better it is than the US, requires you to set up a strawman comparision with the US being a deeply religious country, which it is not."

I love how you keep throwing the words straw man around (I think a lot of people use them to sound more authoritative when they just sound full of shit).

I never said it is "better" than the U.S. Certainly I have found it SAFER (i.e. I dont get robbed, raped, stabbed etc in the middle of the night like I would in other places).

And Isab I hope you learn to read my paragraphs better, because I also said Koreans are "weirdly religious but the country is really safe too"

"Japan, where 31 percent call themselves atheist, is a little more complicated. While superficial religious observation is common – many weddings take place in churches – formal religious practice has never really recovered from the imperial era that culminated with World War Two.

Like nationalism in Germany, a bit of a post-war taboo has developed around religion in Japan. Separately, there is an alarming trend in Japan of forced religious de-conversion, in which families may “kidnap” a loved one who as adopted a faith seen as too extreme, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, and pressure them to give it up"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/05/23/a-surprising-map-of-where-the-worlds-atheists-live/

"I never said it is "better" than the U.S. Certainly I have found it SAFER (i.e. I dont get robbed, raped, stabbed etc in the middle of the night like I would in other places)"

So getting robbed, raped, and stabbed is normal in the US. Odd... I have never been robbed, raped, or stabbed nor has anyone in my family that I am aware of and, understand, I would be aware of it. Glad you live where you feel safe.

"So getting robbed, raped, and stabbed is normal in the US"

Yes, that is exactly what I said. I said it was absolutely normal in the U.S. In fact I get robbed, raped and stabbed just about everyday.

My doctor told me I have to move to another country because last night I got stabbed 2 times and the scarring just isn't going with my California tan.

I would like to know what part of the country you live in, having never been robbed.

I have been robbed on numerous occasions, even when I lived in a teeny tiny town.

And then, never to have had any family member robbed. I simply do not believe you concerning this matter.

Cat, you really have to do some numbers, and realize that your world is not the entire USA.

On the other hand, the need to get high justifies a lot of wrongdoing on the part of users. Maybe you need to get away from druggies.

I've never been the victim of a crime, and I havent locked the door to my house in 15yrs.

You don't need religion, per se, to have ethics. You need God to have created it and to make it authoritative.

There are only two possibilities: God created ethics, or man did. If man did, then what higher standard settles an appeal to morality?

The majority? I doubt anyone believes that the majority is always morally authoritative. Certainly, the Founding Fathers didn't or else there would be no need for a Bill of Rights.

The "Brotherhood of Man" ethos? All we're doing there is substituting one spiritual notion that we can't empirically prove for another.

Reason? Reason is utterly amoral. E.g., cheating on a test is morally wrong, but might be a perfectly rational thing for someone to do, after having weighed the risks and rewards. The Nazis, being reasonable people, collected data from torturing Jews and actually produced a body of knowledge that today is used for helping people survive hypothermia. "Being reasonable" did not prevent them from being moral monsters.

Animal instinct? When lions kill each other, we don't call it immoral, we just shrug and say, that's what lions do. When chimps kill and eat each other, we say, wow, look at that? That's what chimps do. Yes, there are times lions and chimps seem to love each other, but other times they seem to hate. These are the things animals do and nobody calls it immoral. Humans too seem programmed to show love for one another, and also to hate and kill one another. By what standard is one better? Nature doesn't care, except as a chronicler of who survives and who doesn't. Some of us may feel instinctively that love is better than hate, but plenty of tyrants have felt otherwise. By what standard were they wrong? Nature doesn't provide one. We might not like the way murderous tyrants behave, but not liking something is not a moral argument.

Without God, there seems to be no higher standard. And without a higher standard, moral issues are simply a matter of opinion, and that's all, folks. Morality is rendered completely subjective, existing only in the minds of human beings. To be authoritative, morality needs an objective existence and needs to be on a plane higher than mere human opinion.

None of this proves God's existence, by the way. I'm simply trying to show what the moral landscape would have to be, assuming for the sake of argument that God does not exist. Of course a sense of moral obligation could exist without religion. If a higher morality exists, then it is objective and we can see it; much like, if God created cows, then atheists can still see them even if they don't think God created them. And if a higher morality doesn't exist, morality may be a subjective set of attitudes and behaviors brought about by some combination of instinct and thought -- but, being attitudes and behaviors, nothing makes them authoritative. In such a world, being a sociopath would be rational, and all we could say in response is, we don't like it.

> sociopaths would have been thrown out of the group

Only the ones not smart enough to hide it.

> There's no evidence there's a god.

The argument I made was not an argument for God's existence.

> Ethics evolved so humans could live and cooperate in groups which promoted survival.

Why ought an individual human moral decision-maker to care about the survival of the species?

> people who were freeloaders would have been booted from the group and would most likely would have died...

Then after a million years of human evolution, give or take, why are there still sociopaths?

> Please spend more time reading science and less time reading the fairy tales in the Bible.

Is that a moral question? Explain why I should.

BTW... you didn't answer my earlier questions. Or even address them.

Hypothetical: what if a sociopath were to be offered a position as unquestioned ruler of the entire world, all the money and power he could ever hope to have, unlimited access to beautiful members of whatever sex floats the boat, and the adulation of billions of people. Plus anything else he can think of.

The cost? The very minute after he dies, the entire planet vanishes into oblivion.

Can you give our hypothetical sociopath a reason why he should take door number two instead?

> Silly question.

What? Atheists don't believe in God, and they never ask hypothetical questions either?

> The god-believing mind is a childish mind.

Well, you've already said that, but it's just an epithet, not an argument.

> And, unfortunately, I can't be the 7-Eleven for your science question demands. I'm on deadline today and too busy to answer further.

Your blog, your choice. But you opened up the floor on the subject, and nothing in the invitation specified we should only post opinions you agree with.

So let's review...

I did not make an argument for God's existence, but rather described the nature of what I think would be the ethics of a godless world: i.e., ethics is, more or less, a matter of opinion, and not much else.

Then you responded to me. That was optional on your part, though very much appreciated.

The response itself, though, was more dismissive than enlightening -- that that ethics evolved because of the survival instinct and that it's childish to believe in God.

But none of this addressed what I wrote. If I could rephrase what I wrote in your terms, what I was asking is, how do people who aren't "childish" explain to someone why he ought to behave in an ethical or moral manner, particularly on those occasions when he judges that doing so would be against his own self-interest?

I get, and for the sake of argument will grant, that it's better for the species that he does behave ethically.

So why should that matter to our speculative sinner?

You say it's childish to believe in God; well, I think it's childish to believe that people will always put the species' survival ahead of what they want to do.

> also, sociopaths tend to be clever at hiding their true nature.

That's not what you were saying earlier. But I quite agree: sociopaths are often smart enough to fool us. That makes my questions more relevant, not less.

This is a serious question. It points out what's missing from the "ethics from evolution" scenario is missing: it's missing the "ought", what we call 'moral authority'. It explains why we tend to behave in a certain way, but not why we *ought* to. It would seem, "ought" is an illusion in the non-"childish" world, something we cynically tell the gullible to get them to do the things we want.