Atheism & Philosophy: Group 1: Morality

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Group 1: Morality

What system of morality denies that there is any such thing as intrinsic moral value? A: nihilism

What moral grounding dilemma did Plato’s Socrates make famous where he asked, “Is it correct because it is chosen by God, or is it chosen by God because it is correct?” A: Euthyphro

Here's the link to Plato's Euthyphro if you would like to read it.

I'm always fascinated by theists' interpretations of the Bible--millions claiming private knowledge about what it says, what God wants them to do, and more interestingly, what God told them that other people should be doing. What's more amazing is that what God wants and and what they want are usually the same thing.

Every theist has, to some degree, a different interpretation of the Bible and a different idea about the nature of God. Need support for slavery? It's in the Bible. Need to condemn slavery? It's in the Bible. Hate gays? It's in the Bible. Want to condemn homophobia and bigotry? It's in the Bible--and so on.

A 2011 Gallop poll indicates that 30% of Americans read the Bible literally.

So, just as there's no consensus on the creation myth in Genesis, one can only imagine what happens when theists interpret the Book of Revelation, where Jesus and some horsemen come riding into town and start killing off humanity--in thirds, for some unknown reason.

But how much damage can four or five people do riding through town on horseback a whoopin-and-a-whompin with a divinely sharp sword. Sure, they may have pestilence, fire, and boiling water on your side, but still...

But that's a silly interpretation, right? Surely no one in their right mind--at least no one you would hand a sharp object or someone in charge of anything important--would interpret the Bible like that.

Well, think again. Retired Lieutenant General and Family Research Council's Executive Vice President William (Jerry) Boykin begs to differ. Boykin has predicted the Son of God will be packing an AR-15 assault rifle during the Second Coming. He announced this to a crowd during a Pro-Family Legislators Conference in Dallas. "The sword today is an AR-15. If you don't have one, go get one. You're supposed to have one. It's biblical," he said.

Here's the link to the article in New York Daily News.

So does Jesus pack an AR-15 because it's good, or is the AR-15 good because Jesus packs it?

5 comments:

Br. JamesFebruary 25, 2014 at 11:32 AM
So by your understanding, to be logically consistent, all understandings of atheism are valid, including Pol Pot and Josef Stalin?

Cool beans. ;)
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PhilFebruary 25, 2014 at 12:16 PM
That reads like a non sequitur, Adam, unless I'm missing something. You can fill me in on that in class.
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PhilFebruary 25, 2014 at 12:20 PM
In the spirit of Dean's post, maybe this would be a good place to raise the issue of Arizona's proposed discrimination bill that would allow a religious exemption for bigotry. I just heard a legislator insisting that "religious freedom" requires us to allow it. My question: why as a culture do we continue to tolerate intolerance in the name of religious freedom?
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Sean LePardFebruary 25, 2014 at 1:06 PM
A couple factual questions from todays reading:

1. Name one of the two premises that establish the truth of nihilism when substantiated (according to Rosenberg).

A: All cultures endorse most of the same core moral principles as binding on everyone, and those core moral principles have significant consequences for humans' survival and reproduction.

2. According to Rosenberg, we must give up _________ and accept that our core morality is selected for its role in enhancing our fitness.

A: Correctness

Also, here's results from another poll that not only backs up the results of the one Dean posted, but also shows a decreasing trend in the percentage of believers who take the Bible literally over the past couple years:

http://imgur.com/Bg8G16K

I'm not sure of the source for this image, though.

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Humanism

“We Humanists behave as well as we can, without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an Afterlife. We serve as best we can the only abstraction with which we have any real familiarity, which is our community.” Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who also said...

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile."

For more on humanism see Stephen Law's Very Short Introduction-

"humanists believe science, and reason more generally, are invaluable tools we can and should apply to all areas of life. No beliefs should be considered off-limits and protected from rational scrutiny..."

	Five Books (@five_books)
"Humanists believe that morality is something that’s in us, with a basis in biology and built on by culture." fivebooks.com/best-books/hum… pic.twitter.com/tzXAVSCbbx

Death is nothing

"There is nothing beyond the universe (for it has no outer boundary). The human soul, too, is made of atoms, fine atoms that resemble wind and heat. When we die, our souls immediately dissolve, as the body will in time. There is, therefore, no afterlife. This theory of matter is also allied to the larger aim of generating tranquility, since misunderstandings about the nature of death are the biggest cause of anxiety. Death is nothing to us, Epicurus wrote, for that which is dissolved has no feelings, and that which has no feelings is nothing to us. Death is not painful, for the dead cannot feel anything; it is simply the dissolution of one particular cluster of atoms." Tim Whitmarsh, Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

Weird

According to a 2009 Harris poll the following percentages of Americans believe in some form of the afterlife and the soul:

Soul survival 71%
Heaven 75%
Hell 61%
Reincarnation 20%

Woody Allen said “I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” I am often asked about the afterlife. My response: I’m for it! But the fact that I wish it were so does not make it so. And there is no scientific evidence that anything like a soul transcends the death of our physical bodies, or that there is life after life... Michael Shermer, "The Top Ten Weirdest Things People Believe"("Afterlife" is #2, just ahead of You-Know-Who)

Winterton C. Curtis

My first landlord was an old zoologist at the University of Missouri named Winterton Curtis (1875-1965). He was one of the scientific experts not allowed to testify at the Scopes Trial in Dayton TN in 1925. My parents (and I) rented rooms from him in his home on Westmount in Columbia Missouri while Dad attended Veterinary school at Mizzou in the early '60s, and later maintained a cordial friendship with him. He used to visit when I was a kid and pull dollar bills from my ears. Dad thought that must be why I was always so fascinated by the concept of evolution.

Dr. Curtis wrote, in 1921,

The humanistic philosophy of life, which flowered in Greece and which has blossomed again, is not the crude materialistic desire to eat, drink, and be merry. It is a spiritual joy in living and a confidence in the future, which makes this life a thing worthwhile. The otherworldliness of the Middle Ages does not satisfy the spiritual demands of modern times. Science and Human Affairs From the Viewpoint of Biology

Of the Scopes Trial itself, he wrote of the 1925 Dayton Tennessee spectacle:

The courtroom audience impressed me as honest country folk in jeans and calico. “Boobs" perhaps, as judged by Mencken, and holding all the prejudices of backwoods Christian orthodoxy, but nevertheless a significant section of the backbone of democracy in the U.S.A. They came to see their idol “the Great Commoner” and champion of the people meet the challenge to their faith. They left bewildered but with their beliefs unchanged despite the manhandling of their idol by the “Infidel” from Chicago.... A Defense Expert's Impressions of the Scopes Trial

Image result for evolutionary progress caricature

Requiescat in pace, Dr. C.

A selective evolutionary bibliography:

Michael Boulter, Darwin's Garden: Down House & the Origin of Species

Eugene Byrne and Simon Gurr, Darwin: A Graphic Biography

Matthew Chapman, Trials of the Monkey (Darwin's great-great...grandson comes to Dayton TN)

Winteron C. Curtis, "A Defense Expert's Impressions of the Scopes Trial" from D-Days at Dayton: Fundamentalism vs Evolution at Dayton, Tennessee (1956)

----"A damned-yankee professor in Little Dixie" (1957)

----Science and Human Affairs From the Viewpoint of Biology(1921)

Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution

Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life

Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist

----Darwin's Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution

John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy

Randall Fuller, The Book That Changed America: How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation

Adam Gopnik, Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life

Jay Hosler, Sandwalk Adventures(a graphic novel)

Philip Kitcher, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith

Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion

Loyal Rue, Everybody's Story: Wising Up to the Epic of Evolution

Rebecca Stott, Darwin's Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists

Hanne Strager, A Modest Genius: The story of Darwin's life and how his ideas changed everything

Emma Townshend, Darwin's Dogs: How Darwin's Pets Helped Form a World-Changing Theory of Evolution

And don't overlook the compendious website Darwin online.

Darwin discussion questions, quotes etc. here.

Russell reads Mill

I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day at the age of eighteen I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. Why I Am Not a Christian

Atheist or Agnostic?

I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist"... I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one can prove that there is not a God.

On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods... all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line.

-Bertrand Russell

Reasonable Atheism

We aim to show that religious believers who believe that atheists must be dishonest, irrational, amoral, untrustworthy, mean, deceitful, delusional, and unintelligent have false beliefs about atheists... Our argument is not that being an atheist makes one a splendid person, but that being an atheist does not make one a bad person. The difference between bad and good people does not turn on their religious beliefs or lack thereof.

-Scott Aikin & Robert Talisse, Reasonable Atheism: A Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief

The continuous human community

Atheist Spirit

Not believing in God does not prevent me from having a spirit.

The human spirit is far too important to be left to priests, mullahs or spiritualists. It is our noblest part, our highest function… Renouncing religion by no means implies renouncing spiritual life.

We are ephemeral beings who open onto eternity… This “openness” is the spirit itself. Metaphysics means thinking about these things; spirituality means experiencing them, exercising them, living them.

The universe is our home; the celestial vault is our horizon; eternity is here and now. This moves me far more than the Bible or the Koran. It astonishes me far more than miracles (if I believed in them). Compared to the universe, walking on water is a cinch!

Why would you need a God? The universe suffices. Why would you need a church? The world suffices. Why would you need faith? Experience suffices.

-Andre Comte-Sponville

Nature's God

“America’s mainstream religion is at bottom one form or another of popular deism, and popular deism is just atheism adapted to the limitations of the common understanding of things. To say that the United States is “one nation under God” is to conceal behind a euphemism the fact that it is and always has been one nation under nature. Whatever else we pretend to believe, we are in practice mostly atheists now--and for that we should be grateful.” p 426
― Matthew Stewart, Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic

Atheism & Philosophy

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Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Group 1: Morality

5 comments:

“My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don’t need any other god.” Bruce Chatwin

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11/3/15, 8:00 PM "Most people who profess a deep love of the Bible have never actually read the book." Rabbi Rami Shapiro