Atheism and morality (Introduction)

by dhw, Thursday, October 21, 2010, 18:57 (5124 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Tony has defined society as "merely a collection of individual relationships", and complains that "we make the morality of the individual subservient to the will of the society."-Matt has set you a few problems, but I'd like to approach your post from a slightly different angle. You have, in my view, neatly summed up the basis of morality yourself: "I prize my life, and the liberty to live that life as I see fit, and the liberty of others to do the same, above all things." Morality only comes into play when your liberty to live life as you see fit impinges upon other people's liberty to do the same. Every time you break the moral code prevalent in your society and mine, you violate someone else's right to their own form of happiness: if you murder me, steal from me, rape my wife, abuse my children, cheat me, slander me, cuckold me, break your promise to me, you are removing my liberty to live life as I see fit. I shall never forgive that nasty Fred Nosher for eating those two pieces of chocolate fudge cake, when he knew one of them was supposed to be for me. The fact that he is only two and a half years old may be regarded as a mitigating circumstance, but I rely upon Mr and Mrs N. to deliver a stern lecture informing him that in our society at least, we must consider other people's taste buds. That, in my view, is how we learn morality.-You have made statements suggesting that society has a selfish agenda of its own: it "is not compelled by morality, right/wrong, good or bad, but by its own survival and power'; "it allows groups of people to enforce their will on other groups"; it allows "one person's aversion to something to control the actions of another." This is not an attack on society's role in creating morality, but on what you call "societal governance" and the whole system that puts the many under the authority of the few. Of course that is subject to abuse, and a regime like Hitler's may well pervert what you and I consider to be morally good and right. However, virtually every moral example I've listed above (some of them not illegal but only personal) has evolved over long periods of time as part of a code that strikes a balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of everybody else. That is the essence of morality, and ... to link up with the starting point of this thread ... it does not require the subjective interpretation of ancient religious texts, but it does require a consensus among the collection of individuals that constitute a society.