Atheism and morality (Introduction)

by dhw, Saturday, October 16, 2010, 22:07 (5129 days ago) @ David Turell

JOEL MARKS (conclusion): A helpful analogy, at least for the atheist, is sin. Even though words like 'sinful' and 'evil' come naturally to the tongue as a description of, say, child-molesting, they do not describe any actual properties of anything. There are no literal sins in the world because there is no literal God and hence the whole religious superstructure that would include such categories as sin and evil. Just so, I now maintain, nothing is literally right or wrong because there is no Morality. Yet, as with the non-existence of God, we human beings can still discover plenty of completely-naturally-explainable internal resources for motivating certain preferences. Thus, enough of us are sufficiently averse to the molesting of children, and would likely continue to be so if fully informed, to put it on the books as prohibited and punishable by our society.-Do we really need a professor of philosophy to tell us something so obvious at such enormous length? And what is the relevance of his atheism? Hadn't he realized before that morals not only vary from one society to another, but they also vary from one religion to another, sometimes from one sect to another, from one interpretation of "God's word" to another, and from one period to another? Each society has its own set of rules, and so of course there is no objective right or wrong ... with or without God, there is only human consensus. Atheism and religion are therefore as irrelevant as Marks's gratuitous and arrogant assertion that God doesn't exist.-Like David, I can only endorse George's list of "ethical prerogatives". I would add that I think it a positive advantage that the humanist code is not diverted from its moral and social purposes by the need to interpret ancient texts of dubious origin and value.