Are atheist morals PLASTIC?

[Fred75]

Are atheist morals PLASTIC?

plastic adj. Capable of being shaped or formed: plastic material such as clay. See synonyms at malleable.

IE... do atheist based morals change with the social value of the day?

Let's think in terms of abortion and homosexuality.
Both of which religion does not tolerate.

Vote YES if you consider atheist morals to change with the political wind.

[The Colonel]

No, atheist morals place morality in the hands of the individual - NOT society.

An individual innately knows right from wrong. Atheists are able to look at facts and reason - something the religious are NEVER able to do.

You mention homosexuality - atheists look at the love between two people, the fact that people have a right to be happy, that they do no harm and so on.

The religious are completely irrational and disregard the above. They won't accept the love argument as they are so fixated with love being between a man and a woman. Their minds are dogmatic and fixed. Atheists' minds are free and open to new evidence and arguments.

Same with abortion.

My morality on abortion happens to be the same as yours Fred.

However, I reached my decision by THINKING. You reached yours by being PREACHED at. The superior decision is therefore, MINE.

[Fred75]

[Fred75]

[Fred75]

[Fred75]

[Fred75]

[Cambridge]

Fred wrote:

[The Colonel]

[The Colonel]

My morality is based upon the Millian concept that:

"We are free insofar as we do not cause harm to others". (Mill was non-religious, even anti-religious at times).

Therefore Frederick -

Murder - immoral
Rape - immoral
Abortion - immoral
Peadophillia - immoral
Assault - immoral
Unconsenting infant/adult circumcision - immoral

Homosexuality - moral
Atheism - moral
Drinking - moral (provided you are not drunk and cause problems, which then is immoral)
Self-defence - moral

Things that cross between the two must be judged on a case by case basis.

For example - Drugs. An individual is free to do as he/she wishes with his/her body. However, this must be judged with such things as crime to feed a habit. In which case paternalism is required.

That is my morality. Very very simple.

As a result, you should be able to work out my morality on most things from the above definition (except grey areas).

Not dogmatic. Makes a clear what is always right and always wrong. The grey areas are to be judged on the circumstances of the issue. That is rationalism.

The religious are irrational as they NEVER consider ANYTHING outside the word of scripture. Could they have their heads any further in the sand?

NO SOCIAL EXPERIMENT.
CLEAR AND FIXED, BUT OPEN TO NEW EVIDENCE AND ARGUMENT AS MAY BE REQUIRED.

GOT IT?

[Sharon den Adel]

[Fred75]

[Gibbous Moon]

Morals are rules that enable us to live socially.

We want to live socially because there are economic and social benefits to living in a group. Those benefits increase as society becomes more complex. Therefore the positive morality required to manage interactions between individuals and groups of individuals become more complex.

People value morality and the Moral and have an innate sense of morality because societies in which people stick to the rules do better than societies where everyone cheats. Societies that want to stick to the rules require internal and external policemen. So people evolve to prize their own morality and to prize the morality of their fellows.

There are fundamental rules, ways of deciding if a positive rule is well founded, ground norms such as Mill’s doing no harm to others or doing what you say you will.

A number of thinkers have tried to come up with robust bases for atheistic moral codes of which the most used today is the concept of Natural Law.

I think the difference between atheist morals and religious morals is that atheist positive morals can be explicitly linked to the ground norms with a statement like “In this set of circumstances these rules of behaviour are moral because they rest on the ground norms in such and such a way”. For example, whilst putative fathers are unable to determine if children are theirs or not and neither gender has good control over pregnancy both genders should refrain from sexual relations outside marriage because harm is done to the father if he supports a child that is not his and harm is done to the child if it is not supported by its father.” When technology moves on and allows both genders good control over pregnancy rules on extra-marital sexual relations become less important. Religious morals tend not to explicitly link positive rules to the ground norms. They gain wide spread support for the positive rules by making them a) tenants of faith b) subject to endorsement by the deity, c) subject to punishment by deity. Because they have been made articles of faith and because of the lack of explicit link from ground norm it’s difficult for religiously based morals to change without undermining the whole basis for their widespread acceptance. One change to one rule casts the basis for the rest into doubt.

You can see the difficulties that the Anglican Church has gotten itself into over homosexuality.

So whilst Atheist morals might appear more plastic on the surface in that the positive rules change as society and technology changes they are fundamentally based on universal and unchanging ground norms coupled with the right, the duty and the ability to test positive rules against ground norms and to see if they are still appropriate.

A number of influential religions are quiet on the subject of homosexuality or abortion (or post-birth exposure of unwanted infants). I also notice that the sons of Ham are no longer set to labour quite so firmly as they used to be.

GM

[Fred75]

[Fred75]