Atheism and moral nihilism

[PorcelinaV]

Would you agree that atheism / naturalism has a less solid basis on which to ground morality?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/mar/09/life-without-god-bleak-atheism

Even more disturbing, perhaps, is the threat of moral nihilism. Atheists are quite rightly keen to counter the accusation that life without God cannot be moral. The British Humanist Association, for instance, claims that "Right and wrong can be explained by human nature alone and do not require religious teaching". But, just as with happiness, there is a need to distinguish the possibility of atheist morality from its inevitable actuality. Anyone who thinks it's easy to ground ethics either hasn't done much moral philosophy or wasn't concentrating when they did. Although morality is arguably just as murky for the religious, at least there is some bedrock belief that gives a reason to believe that morality is real and will prevail. In an atheist universe, morality can be rejected without external sanction at any point, and without a clear, compelling reason to believe in its reality, that's exactly what will sometimes happen.So I think it's time we atheists 'fessed up and admitted that life without God can sometimes be pretty grim.

Oops… my post was for @pointythings

I’d ask whether/how far the scientific method provides answers to moral questions, or gives meaning to our lives?

The scientific method has nothing (directly) to do with morality. As to meaning - well heck yes finding out a bit more about how things work and hopefully solving a few problems gives meaning!
The indirect benefit to questions of morality is that basing our ethics on objective truth where possible is better than the alternative.

One thing that faith does is place us in a community with a history

The massive downside of that is how it reinforces tribalism.

As to meaning - well heck yes finding out a bit more about how things work and hopefully solving a few problems gives meaning!

I largely agree with you, but doesn’t tying meaning to science in this way diminish the possibility of finding meaning elsewhere or in other ways? Isn’t meaning subjective to a degree?

I’m not surprised that different people within the same religions find different meaning from things. I think that’s inevitable when beliefs are based on ancient scriptures that have been translated many times and are not fully in keeping with modern day society.

I make decisions based on my own instinct and life experience. Clearly i’ve been able to do that perfectly well without faith my entire life. I just personally don’t have a need for it. My parents actually tried to raise me in the Jewish religion and I was made to go to synagogue every weekend. I didn’t enjoy it, didn’t believe the stories, didn’t see the point and didn’t see how it benefited me. My feelings also escalated when for example, we swapped to an orthodox synagogue where I was made to sit separately from men during my brother’s bar mitzvah (he is also now an atheist) because men are ‘better’ and therefore should sit nearer the torah. I

The massive downside of that is how it reinforces tribalism.

is that always inevitable? Don’t faiths with a universal claim actively preach against that?
Are they not also more often recognising the need for and value of community, rather than reinforcing tribalism - the other side of the coin?

There's no 'tying' or implication that there aren't other sources of meaning in what I said. Just that the pursuit of science certainly can be one source of meaning in a persons life.

Not sure what you mean by 'Don’t faiths with a universal claim actively preach against that?'

Don’t faiths with a universal claim actively preach against that?

I mean the belief that all of us are equal. For example, that we have a moral duty not only to our families and local communities, but to humanity as a whole. or that someone who lives in a different part of the world, in a different way that might be very alien to me, ha equal moral value. Not all religions believe this, but some do - or perhaps the best interpretations allow this possibility.

"I make decisions based on my own instinct and life experience. Clearly i’ve been able to do that perfectly well without faith my entire life. I just personally don’t have a need for it."

@MariaVT65, interesting. Instinct is usually considered innate...so inherited? Or do you consider instinct to be the subconscious culmination of everything learnt? Either way, what if that instinct is flawed? Do you think there is a way to reprogram instinct? Or are you stuck with what you get? Do you think flawed instincts can be healed?

@heyhohello interesting how you ignore the 'life experience' part of @MariaVT65 's post. It isn't all about instinct, that would make me no more sentient and rational than my cats. It's life experience that influences instinct - and that can be for better or for worse. For example: the traumatic experiences I have lived through have, in my case, made me more compassionate and kinder than I was before. They could equally have sent me the other way. Instinct can be flawed, so can the influence of our experiences. This is because we're human - complex, unpredictable and flawed. When we recognise our flaws and seek to improve who we are, we grow. And that can be done with or without the belief in a deity.

@Eatapeach you're positing the same argument as OP, and you seem to believe that the majority of atheists do not reflect on the ethics and morality of their lives. I can only assume that you and I move in very different circles, since I have found the opposite to be the case. Both the atheists and those with faith in my circle of friends, colleagues and acquaintances are contemplative people who do not take themselves or anything else for granted. Perhaps that is because we have all shared some very difficult experiences in our lives. Some of us have turned to faith, some to therapy, some to both, but we have all grown as people and learned the usefulness of acceptance and reflection.

Reciprocal altruism is evolutionary. Empathy is inherited genetically. The underpinnings of 'goodness' are evolutionary and inherited. Our brains are wired for cooperation. And competition but mostly cooperation.

I am fairly unusual because there are three generations of atheists in my family. And I', not young. So I've seen atheist goodness in action my whole life.

The idea that God gives a stronger basis for morality than humanity would be countered by my gran. Her argument was that she did good (and she did a lot of good) because she loved other people, wanted to make the world better, wanted love and happiness around her. She argued that doing it for it's own sake was inherently more 'good' than doing it because you were either told to by a good god or were scared of a vengeful one.

Theism is certainly easier in some ways. But it's not efficient in ensuring that good is done. Mass child abuse, wars, torture and genocide are a feature of religion. So any amount of strong moral underpinning isn't working.

Not sure there's many religions which have consistently acted as though they believe in equality. Not even within their own communities let alone outside them.

Of course instinct can be flawed. But that’s the tool i have to work with, along with my life experience and desire to be a good person.

To me, these are better tools than to believe in something (ie god) that to me, is on par with santa and the tooth fairy, and to live my life lessons by ancient scriptures that are not applicable to current society and that were all written by men, and have been translated (or mistranslated) many times.

I am a flawed person, my decisions are not always right, but I feel to base my decisions on an idealistic fantasy would be of no use to me. People are free to believe in whatever they choose, but we will always have very different approaches to life.

@pointythings
I don’t believe that at all. As I said, I’m an atheist myself. My experience is that most people are fundamentally decent, and that history shows us that faith or lack of faith is a poor predictor of whether a person is capable of acting badly.
I know that isn’t a case for faith, and it’s not meant to be. I’m interested in hearing why people believe things and why those things are important to them. I don’t think anything is gained by calling out things that might be, to us or objectively, self evidently wrong. And I’m not saying that what you or anyone in particular is doing (though it was a feature of the New Atheism).

@pointythings

This is the bit I have never heard any atheist I know say. So I don't know any atheists who have accepted that particular form of moral nihilism.

Well for example, Sam Harris did a book denying free will.

Now to be clear, Sam Harris wouldn't claim to be a moral nihilist. Harris also did a book arguing his own moral perspective.

But Harris is saying that rapists and murderers, when it really comes down to it, are completely innocent.

Again to be clear, he isn't saying you can't lock them up as a deterrent or for public safety. You can treat them as "guilty" under normal legal standards presumably.

However without free will, they aren't ultimately to blame for their actions.

So that would be an explicit denial of moral responsibility, and I would think it would destroy the idea of moral duty also.

So yes, this well known atheist is guilty of a form of moral nihilism.

Another example would be Daniel Dennett, who defends free will but a compatibilist version of it. Dennett isn't actually claiming that people are more morally responsible than Sam Harris thinks. So same issue.

I don't know any "big name" atheists that are taking an alternative approach. I'm sure there are some lesser known writers, but not the big names in atheism.

@ErrolTheDragon
True, but maybe there’s a useful distinction to be made between individual faith and faith communities/organisations?

@PorcelinaV I really don't think you can extrapolate from two pretty extreme atheists who have written books about the topic to all the ordinary atheists in the world. Especially since as I have said before, atheists come in the same infinite variety that believers do.

@Eatapeach I agree with your point about communities/organisations vs individuals up to a point, and my issue with faith is almost completely with the organisational level. But not entirely - believers who subscribe to a particular brand of faith still make the choice to do so and are responsible for that choice. So if I were to meet someone who was part of a religious organisation that subscribed to the doctrine of complementarianism and the absolute non acceptance of female clergy and people who are gay, I would find it difficult not to ask them what the hell they were doing in that organisation if that person did not practice the abhorrent things their organisation preached. Especially since there is such a huge range of religious communities available.

@pointythings

I do not understand your scenario concerning inevitable murder. Murdering someone is a choice. Murder is by (legal) definition premeditated and therefore something a person chooses to do. Your scenario is contrived and implausible.

Yeah, I don't think you understood it.

You can meet the legal definition of murder, (which is mostly about psychological states with some additional criteria), regardless of whether the act of murder was inevitable because of the laws of physics and previous starting conditions.

You can meet the legal definition of murder, (which is mostly about psychological states with some additional criteria), regardless of whether the act of murder was inevitable because of the laws of physics and previous starting conditions.

Are you into the realm of theoretical physics here? Because what I know about physics (and it isn't much, it's not my field) doesn't suggest it creates predestination.

@pointythings

I really don't think you can extrapolate from two pretty extreme atheists who have written books about the topic to all the ordinary atheists in the world. Especially since as I have said before, atheists come in the same infinite variety that believers do.

I did say that this wasn't the position of all atheists.

But just because your own experience of atheists isn't like that, doesn't mean it isn't a common atheist position.

As I said:

I'm sure there are some lesser known atheists that will defend a strong form of free will, but that would seem to require arguing something like (1) a physical system can have an emergent property that somehow becomes outside of the ordinary physical processes and acts independently, or (2) you need a more complex metaphysics, so maybe the physical world sometimes generates something (consciousness) that is of a fundamentally different nature. So the argument would be that not only can the physical world generate a different type of thing, but that this thing then becomes "alive" to control the other type of thing that is producing it.

Given the difficulty here, it's not a surprise that many atheists will deny free will and moral responsibility.

@pointythings,

"@heyhohello interesting how you ignore the 'life experience' part of @MariaVT65 's post. It isn't all about instinct, that would make me no more sentient and rational than my cats."

Life experience wasn't intentionally (or entirely) ignored in my last post. I was talking about decision making in the absence of knowledge so was thinking primarily in terms of instinctive choices. Not analytical choices. However, I did reference life experiences as possibly making up the phenomenon we describe as instinct. Regarding cats and other animals I think the jury is out - they are capable of learning and passing on that learning to others in their social groupings.

"Instinct can be flawed, so can the influence of our experiences. This is because we're human - complex, unpredictable and flawed. When we recognise our flaws and seek to improve who we are, we grow. And that can be done with or without the belief in a deity."

As, no doubt you know, recognising flaws, seeking to improve them, growing as a result is implicit within Christianity. I would add to that forgiveness for oneself and others as a full redemption from said flaws can be very difficult without it. Recognising those flaws is an interesting one. Where does the recognition come from? Culture? Society? People around us? Something innate? And if that is equally flawed?

I know this line of thought getting cyclical but the crux of the matter is, I believe, the action of seeking to join the dots of all that is good into a belief in deity gives a certain type of hope in that all that is right is there as a real and powerful entity.

@PorcelinaV I don't think there are quite as many atheists who think in terms of really quite esoteric concepts of physics and ethics as you think there are. The ones who do have a reason to make themselves highly visible by writing books and so on, but the rest of us are just man/woman in the street human beings getting on with our lives. I also don't think that the rather tortuous explanation of the genesis of free will without a deity is the only option available, though it's a hypothesis. Me, I prefer to go with 'I don't know.' And I am content to live my life accepting there are things I do not and cannot know.

@heyhohello ultimately you believe what you believe and I believe what I believe. We're both decent and functioning human beings (I hope) which suggests that as with everything else, there is no one single way, no one single truth, no one single route to living a worthwhile life.

The recognition of flaws is going to be similarly multifactorial. Almost everything is.