Atheism and morality (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, October 22, 2010, 23:57 (5123 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

Balance,
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> > However--though we'd like to separate our will from that of the social organism, you still haven't answered the critical question; that which we call 'moral sense,' be it a 'feeling' or derived by logic: How is it that we can derive its reality beyond that which the society makes real? 
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> In short, you can't. Morality only exist in context of the interaction of living beings. As an attempt, you could say that it would be morally wrong to slaughter buffalo to extinction even if you were the only human being alive. But that does not mean that societies morality is right or wrong.
> -I will quote you directly:-"TONY: I have said many times that I think humans have the capacity to know the difference between right and wrong, but not the capacity to do the right thing. The idea that a societal consensus can define something 'right or wrong' is utter rubbish. What society can do is make something legal or illegal, which has little if anything to do with right/wrong or moral/immoral. There does exist a 'right/wrong', but it does not lie in a book, or society, or in a legal system. It lies in the 'heart' of a person."-The "capacity to know the difference between right and wrong" implies that there is an objective morality to begin with. More damningly: "There does exist a 'right/wrong'" implies more directly the claim "There is an objective morality." You march yourself right to the precipice, yet apparently won't commit to the claim? Which is it? The paragraph I reply to and this one are diametrically opposed. I think in the original--the one I quote, you were speaking more the truth as you know it, but amending it later to dhw and I when caught in the logical territory...-
Also "...but not the capacity to do the right thing." implies that man is not capable of free will. Free will is the capacity to do anything at all. I charge that man has the freedom to act as he wills--as long as he is willing to cross the social organism to do. -
> Health is not a moral concept, it is a physical reality. The rest were social standards.
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> > My point is that you appear to adhere to a rather conventional morality yourself, and the challenge of dhw and myself is such that conventional morality is exactly that which is and was delivered to you by the world in which you were raised. You praise the ancients, but also forget that the morals of ancient Greece included male rape as a consequence of war. The story of Spartan boys in the agoge as being male sexual pairs to older Citizens is partly true. The only philosophy allowed in Sparta was that of phobos. (The study of fear.)Some of the boys were subjected to the same treatment that would be expected if they were defeated in the field. 
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> Is there such a thing as conventional morality? Also, while I will defend the writings of the bible, that does not mean that its morals are my own. It simply means that I can see the logic and rationale behind them. As for the ancients, I praise their wisdom and intellect, not their morality.-I would say that "conventional" would be "morality of the day." Though I recant the suggestion that you adhere to this. We should sit down and chat more about "health" as a moral concept; rock climbing has health risks all its own for example, yet we don't hear discussions about why someone shouldn't do it. Same-sex intercourse however---As for the ancients and their intellect, good luck separating it from their morality; morality shapes decisions--decisions shape final outcomes. Caesar would have never crossed the Rubicon if he didn't hold his own good higher than that of the Republic. Leonidas would never have been able to lead three hundred Spartans and 1500 Thespians against 200,000 Persians if he wasn't steeled in the arts of phobos, forged by many years of suppressing helots. I praise the morality just as highly as the intellects, because it was the morality that shaped our history. Morals fall in and out of favor, and I fully admit that to my mind, the life of Spartans was not one I would want to endure. But infanticide and suppression of the lower class is precisely what made Spartans who and what they were when Xerxes began his march in 580BCE. How could the intellect and the morals not have coincided?

--
\"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.\"