Atheism and morality (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, October 18, 2010, 04:05 (5128 days ago) @ George Jelliss

It doesn't seem to me that there is anything new in Marks's argument. A. J. Ayer said much the same years ago, that words like "good" and "beautiful" do not have objective meanings, and David Hume argued that you cannot derive "ought" from "is". But this doesn't mean that an atheist cannot have morality. A-theism is just a non-belief in supernatural beings like gods, so is not in itself a worldview.
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> As a Humanist my moral beliefs are based on the assumption that, as Sam Harris expresses it in his new book, what is good is what promotes the flourishment of human life, which is really just a modern more sophisticated version of utilitarianism. This is what is called "normative" ethics. This is the only sort of ethics that makes rational sense.
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> The way I see it the ethical prerogatives begin with yourself and your family and friends and species, and extend out to other species and life in general, and beyond that to the physical environment and the universe in general. What is good is what works in promoting the widest possible flourishment. Of course this doesn't eliminate ethical dilemmas, where there is a conflict of interests, but it does provide a rational basis for solving such issues.-Rational basis yes, but Marks is arguing that there is no objective basis for any morality. Humanism makes a set of normative claims and values, but about things that do not have any 'real' quality outside of the literature and human thought that derives them. -Bringing Nietzsche to bear I can take your claim:
"what is good is what promotes the flourishment of human life" can be widely and wildly interpreted, reinterpreted, and revalued to justify any such treatment of the world or other people in order to propagate "the flourishment of human life." Humanism is no more real than Judeo-Christian ethics.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"