To ask if you are not a Christian, what non Christian values you live by?

[BlossomBlanket]

Just that really!

But ...

Again, I think you've got it plumb backwards. (As lots of people do -- not really a surprise. Or anything to be ashamed of.) No transcendental signified? OK, but it does seem we have meanings, albeit our signifiers lack signifieds. No?

(You know what a bus is and what a bed is. That is, you know the meaning of "bus" and "bed", even though there is no Platonic Form of a bed or a bus (or, no 'object' to be their meaning, as Ludwig Wittegenstein had it. Etc. (I'll not insult you with an explanation of why that no.43 bus isn't the right sort of object here)). And so on.)

So what? So, as it turned out, signifieds are not transcendental after all. Our meanings do fine without. Condition of the possibility of meaning? Interesting question. But the answer isn't that infamous Derridean signified, for certain sure.

You told me what 'belief' means and then go on in another post to deny meaning tout court - "postmodern chaos ... simply is ...". See?

Interesting connection to Nietszche (I'm not sure you've understood him quite correctly, but let that pass). Just as we don't need a signified in order to have meaning, so we don't need a God in order to have ethical or moral values.

Who knew? Well, Plato/Socrates for one. Read the Euthyphro recently?

[Incidentally, taking you up on the claim "mathematical facts are easy to establish" ... I've been wondering: supposing we don't accept the axiom of choice, are there any (strongly) inaccessible cardinals? Easy for you, perhaps; maybe you could let the rest of us know?]

"Interesting connection to Nietszche (I'm not sure you've understood him quite correctly, but let that pass)."

Lets not, what did I get wrong?

It wasn’t considered rape. That’s the issue.

As far as I recall, Nietzsche didn’t link the death of god to postmodern chaos but wrote that he saw the death of God as an opportunity to create values that were not based on religious dogma. I seem to remember that his writings encouraged individuals to take responsibility for their own lives and to believe in their own meaning and morality…much as they had before religion hijacked society for its own means in the first place!

Was the death of God not the death of grand narratives which was later picked up by Lyotard? He did disdain Christian 'slave morality', and yes wanted people to take responsibility for their own lives, but to dominate and oppress others and rise above the masses whom he held in contempt. Declaring the death of God really was a lament though, a loss of meaning and objectively grounded moral standards. And his predictions were correct of course, now we are all alone in a nihilistic universe chained to our hedonic treadmills. Yes we are "free" and the ideal atomised liberal subjects. Freedoms that amount to nothing more than freedom to choose what to consume or who to shag next. The original sense of freedom, freedom from ourselves, from our base insticts, now completely alien to the modern mind. Without God, all actions are ultimately meaningless. I think he was challenging us to build something new, in its place. But we can't, because we're not God. And have to live and die alone with our stupid ideas.

But most of us have built something new. We don’t need religion :)

And his predictions were correct of course, now we are all alone in a nihilistic universe chained to our hedonic treadmills. Yes we are "free" and the ideal atomised liberal subjects. Freedoms that amount to nothing more than freedom to choose what to consume or who to shag next.

Speak for yourself. This atheist lives happily in a community of warm, supportive people who have good morals not based in faith. This atheist has the freedom to do what her conscience dictates - which means doing useful work in the NHS, running a real life support group for the families of people in addiction, volunteering for an animal rescue and engaging in activism to stem the renewed tide of the oppression of women by men.

And all without religion.

I am not alone in living my life like this. As I have said before, you have a very jaded view of humanity.

But what are the good morals based on? Are they just a matter of personal taste? Or are they actually grounded in something objective? Can a moral be good in the way that 4+2=6 or is it really just personal preference down to the individual

Something objective like the bible do you mean, with its ulterior motives? ;)

Or decent human morality, established over millennia as society evolved and human nature developed. You know, doing the right thing, caring for others, leave the world in a better place. The sort that can trace itself back to the very development of human social structures 400,000 or so years ago…?

I don’t need an organised religion to tell me the difference between right and wrong. I don’t believe sins exist - it’s just a word to threaten people to behave in a certain way otherwise they go to hell - I struggle to understand why intelligent adults would believe that.

We've had this discussion. Good morals are about doing those things which are conducive to the survival of the species. That is why they tend to be broadly the same across all the faiths and among people who have none.

No deities are required. The post that I responded to from you just reeks of the trope I have heard in all but one of my sparse church attendances: 'Oh, pity the poor atheists who don't know God, they must be so miserable wallowing in their immoral mire.'

Are you prepared to accept that no, we are not? That we are as capable of goodness as those who have faith? That there is not one way which is superior to the other?

I'm asking you if morals are relative? What is good and decent in one place and time might be bad and indecent in another place and time. I get the feeling from your latest reply that you believe there are morals that exist as objective facts, transcendental truths. But how do you know these are indeed the right morals, and that those who believe differently, like Neitszche, are objectively wrong? Or do you accept that people who believe entirely different things are just as entitled to believe they are also 'good'?

"I have no idea what X is, but I don't believe in it"

As an adult are you really saying that you don’t know what the difference is between right and wrong?

Odd, isn't it? I mean, the whole concept of not raping someone should be pretty obvious to everyone.

Other examples are available.

And of course some issues are not absolute, i.e. abortion. And we can differ on how we approach that and still be good people.

You say survival - but you you don't mean bare life otherwise you wouldn't be in favour of abortion or assisted dying, you believe in some sense of a societal thriving, which complicates things a bit.

I've never once said people are not capable of goodness if they aren't Christian.

For me, my moral judgements are derived from my own reflections and introspection, and they are no doubt informed by the values that my parents passed on to me and my experiences in the world to date. Ultimately, in each situation, it boils down to what my conscience dictates.

Other people may reach different conclusions based on their own judgements and frames of reference. For example, I think that homophobia is deeply immoral, but some people looking at things through a religious lens may be incredibly homophobic and consider that the "right" way to be.

Obviously, I think they're "wrong" in so far as I consider their bigotry and intolerance to be fundamentally immoral and I view their thinking as fundamentally flawed, but I also recognise that their bigotry makes sense to them in the context of their own world view.

What I don't believe is that there is some sort of ultimate rule book with the objective truths about right and wrong, with God marking all of our homework according to the ultimate answer key.

What matters to me is whether i know something is right or wrong according to my own conscience. I don't feel the need to look for any kind of external morality that sits above the human conscience.

It's you who can't justify your reasoning

You might not. But we live in a society. When you witness the votes for Reform flood in, do you not wish there was more of a shared sense of the common good?

Yes. But I don't believe that religion could ever give us that. Look at the right wing Christians in the US, supporting Trump.

I would have thought gently coercing people of superior intelligence to procreate would be entirely in the interest of the species survival and flourishing!!

I have explained that I know the difference between right and wrong - do you ?
I’m a good person. You seem to have trouble understanding that this is possible.

Well I’m not sure why you think it’s your position to ask anything, as you fail to engage in any debate on most things other than those that you perceive as ‘safe’ ground for you. And usually fail at them too. So how you managed to deduce from what I wrote that morals are absolute is baffling, and says rather more about you than me!

Moral behaviour is innate in almost all of us. The idea that there is a right or wrong answer, be it determined by a handbook called the bible or not, is to either misunderstand, or deliberately ignore human evolution and behaviour and indeed motivations. Human survival, as individuals and as a collective, is predicated on a set of behaviours, including moral, that continue the evolution of humankind. And for 398,000 years of that evolution Christianity as a control mechanism hadn’t been invented, yet humankind thrived.

edited for clarity

I said survival of the species, not of the individual.

So abortion has a place in that, because:

1. Pregnancy and birth are far higher risk than early term abortion,
2. Allowing a woman to control her fertility means she will be more able to provide for and support any children she already has,

And in brutally pragmatic terms, assisted dying means people need less time away from their lives to care for an ailing loved one. Not that I see assisted dying in that way - I see it as a kindness and an easement of unnecessary suffering - but then we're into complex shades of grey again.

Of course life is more complex than that.

You can't tell me what good is