Good and Evil Question - For the Atheists

MoraleHazard · Post by **MoraleHazard** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:19 am

I'm trying to find some info on how atheists, secular humanists, rationlists, etc. view good and evil; specifically personal actions with respect to good and evil. Can someone point me to some info on that.

I tried a quick google search, but the stuff coming up was rather simplistic and probably not representative of what humanists, etc. really believe.

Rabbit_Fighter · Post by **Rabbit_Fighter** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 7:59 am

As an atheist, this is something I often think about. Good vs Evil is a pretty weird subject, and frankly I've never read anything that captures it in any kind of affirmative way. Often atheists (myself included) point out that religious people frequently formulate their own sense of morality, then bend their religion to validate it (Phelps didn't learn his bigotry from the Bible). Still that doesn't really say anything positive about how good and evil get defined.

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzche shoots down morality, but not so much the notion that there isn't any distinction between actions that are good vs evil, so much as moving past dogmatic codes of conduct and acting on our own volition.

John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" was a big influence for me, and probably the closest thing to a positive definition for morality. Mill draws the line around "Self Concerning Action." Basically, if you aren't hurting anybody else, than nobody has a right to make you stop. It sounds pretty simple, because it is. Furthermore, Mill thought it was important for people to have freedom of expression, so that good ideas and bad ideas will constantly be discussed. Bad ideas accepted as good will eventually get shot down if they are always open to challenge. Likewise, established "good" ideas will not become shallow dogma if they are continually challenged as well.

If you are interested in what makes atheists tick, Christopher Hitchens compiled a book called "(url= Portable Atheist(/url)." I'd say check out "(url= is not Great(/url)", but that book would probably annoy you more than enlighten (very intelligent writing, but Hitchens' "wit" is kind of inflammatory).

Sorry for the rambling. . . . this is something I'd really love to spend some time investigating too.

motorpsycho67 · Post by **motorpsycho67** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 8:19 am

You might try here....

http://www.skeptic.com/

Toonce(s) · Post by **Toonce(s)** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 8:29 am

As much as the idea of 'good and evil' has appeal as a mechanism for rationalization, I don't think either exist in the sense that you are talking about.

Choose you favorite high level mammal. I would use cats, I'm a cat guy.

What is the meaning of life for cats?
Do cats have gods?
Do cats have heaven or hell?
Is there good and evil in cats?

There are good cats and bad cats. Good cats use the litter box and aren't so aggressive as to cause you permanent harm for no good reason. Good cats are friendly and well adjusted. They usually come from good homes with happy lives and are not abused, but not always.

Bad cats pee everywhere and are antisocial. They usually have some experiential basis for their behavior, but not always. Some are just shitheads.

Bottom line ___________________________
Our behavior, and that of any other animal, is a product of our genes and our environment. The more advanced the animal, the more potential for complex mental defects. I have seen antisocial and sociopathic traits passed hereditarily, and they can also be brought on by experience. Dahmeresque evil is insanity, not satan.

Bonus Level: Our behavior includes our thoughts. Thoughts and ego are processes of rationalization and reporting of what is going on in our brains. Haha!

Cool people rock.

as spoken by a hard agnostic

motorpsycho67 · Post by **motorpsycho67** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 8:35 am

At the risk of stating the obvious.....

Morality is relative, 100% reliant on perception.

Post by **DerGolgo** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 8:39 am

MoraleHazard wrote:... probably not representative of what humanists, etc. really believe.

First question that pops into my head is: is there really a representative definition of good and evil for us godless folk?
There are probably as many different flavors of philosophy there as there are religions. From yippie-dippie hippies to hardcore social-darwinists, you got the lot to choose from. Lack of faith in god thankfully doesn't entail acceptance of a standardized definition of morality.
I guess that is why so many atheists etc., complain about religion being the easy option, while we (well, many of us) constantly practice self-criticism and considering the consquences our actions will have on others, following the dictums of a religion looks just so awfully, sometimes even enviable simple to us. No doubt, no endless overthinking, just follow the instructions.
Watching you god-lot running around with what seems like everything figured out for you can be really damn infuriating, you're like the trustafarians of philosophy.

So while any literature on the subject matter will probably be helpful in understanding how some, or even many, atheists, secular humanists etc. think, it won't be representative. I'm sure you'll find different authors contradicting one another on many points.
I used to read quite a bit on morality and these kinds of questions, but I haven't really paid attention in the last decade or so, so I'm afraid I can't recommend a lot of literature apart from pointing out the obvious, Nietzsche, as rabbit already did.

Personally, I really believe that the world isn't black and white and very few actions can be characterized as being totally good or totally evil. But the dividing line, or dividing area in that greyscale, is empathy for other human beings.

Also, I seem to recall GG was literate on the subject matter, you should hit him up.

EDIT
MH, does your priest know you're looking into heretical reading material? I know the Index was abolished in 1966, but still...

calamari kid · Post by **calamari kid** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 8:47 am

I'd suggest searching on atheism and morality. Good and evil philosophical discussions tend to reside in a much more abstract level far removed from "personal actions."

As a humanist I like the way this guy sums it up. http://www.daylightatheism.org/2007/07/ ... ality.html

Do you have a specific situation in mind? Throw it out here so we can kick it around the block and see what falls out.

Rabbit_Fighter · Post by **Rabbit_Fighter** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 8:58 am

motorpsycho67 wrote:At the risk of stating the obvious.....

Morality is relative, 100% reliant on perception.

So from a certain perspective, the holocaust was not immoral, and to call anyone involved a "evil" and charge them with a crime against humanity is imposing your values on somebody else.

Toonce(s) · Post by **Toonce(s)** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 9:07 am

Rabbit_Fighter wrote:
motorpsycho67 wrote:At the risk of stating the obvious.....

Morality is relative, 100% reliant on perception.
So from a certain perspective, the holocaust was not immoral, and to call anyone involved a "criminal" is imposing your values on somebody else.

This particular discussion also pulls in one of my pet topics, rationalization. How many people that would have normally been considered 'good' ended up supporting it, passively or actively? People rationalize the shit out of things; and not just other people.

roadmissile · Post by **roadmissile** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 9:16 am

As you can probably guess from the variety of answers in this thread, Golgo has it right in that hard atheism is merely the denial of any higher power, and self described non-believers can potentially adhere to many different philosophies, although it's important to note that secular humanism is a specific philosophy and has associated moral beliefs.

A good starting point is to switch terminology from good versus evil to right versus wrong, I know it's mostly semantic, but it sounds less wonky in the context of ethics.

The wikipedia entries on atheism, humanism and secular ethics are remarkably robust and could provide a solid jumping off point to further study, from there you might look up the golden rule and Plato's euthyphro dilemma, and then there are always more systems of secular ethical belief: virtue ethics, Kantian ethics, the social contract, utilitarianism, and objectivism to name a few.

I made a point of avoiding moral relativism as you can probably deduce some of the problems with it from the content of this thread

Not to say moral relativism doesn't have a leg to stand on, psycho suggested a meta-ethical relativism and rabbit-fighter jumped straight to normative relativism, which is something different.

/RM

Toonce(s) · Post by **Toonce(s)** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 9:18 am

roadmissile wrote: from there you might look up the golden rule
/RM

He who has the gold makes the rules!

motorpsycho67 · Post by **motorpsycho67** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 9:25 am

Rabbit_Fighter wrote:
motorpsycho67 wrote:At the risk of stating the obvious.....

Morality is relative, 100% reliant on perception.
So from a certain perspective, the holocaust was not immoral, and to call anyone involved a "evil" and charge them with a crime against humanity is imposing your values on somebody else.

Correct

.... even though the common perception says otherwise.

MoraleHazard · Post by **MoraleHazard** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 10:01 am

Thank you for the links; skeptic.com has a "reading room" which from the titles seem to have essays which are worth reading and Daylight Atheist seems to have some good reads too.

I think Der Golgo is right in that non-belief in a deity doesn't provide some moral framework.

I also like Toone(s)' comment on rationalization. Some of the Catholic stuff I've read on the subject refer to it as "self-deception".
I don't agree with the cat analogy though because cats don't have the power of reason.

Lastly, for people like me, I find morality actually more difficult, because I have strictures that everyone else doesn't necessarily have to follow. It's often more straight-forward, but not easier.

Ok, thanks again.

Guder · Post by **Guder** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 10:10 am

Love the guys at the Reasonable Doubts podcast.

Here's a lecture by one on the roots of morality which you might find interesting to watch.

http://doubtreligion.blogspot.com/2011/ ... ality.html

Not sure if it references the exhaustive study which shows all cultures have the same core morality, even those rare societies with no religion. So the short answer is, the same place as everyone else, evolution. I just don't need stories about cosmic cows or burning bushes to know it's wrong to shove a fat man in front of a train.

Davros · Post by **Davros** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 10:29 am

A lot of that depends on what you are talking about. If you are talking about what the individual definition of good and evil are, then the answer is indeed very simple. If you are talking about personal accountability, that answer is more complex, and if Sam Harris is right in "The Moral Landscape" we will be able to find the answers with neuroscience. Though, I'm not sure he's right. There may be questions we never know the answers to, and that's fine by me.
As much as I like Christopher Hitchens' polemics, they really are designed to be more inflammatory than informative. But he does make some very good points about morality. There doesn't seem to be, and probably shouldn't be any definition of absolute morality. There has been a shifting morality for quite some time, dramatically accelerated over the past few hundred years. It has gone in a very specific direction as well. As our knowledge has increased, it has pointed ever more to the equality of all humans. Now there are some regions of the world where that is not the case. And there have been some horrific aberrations along the way. (invoke Godwin's Law here).

The probable evolutionary history of altruism is very neatly spelled out in Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene". Don't assume by the title that it is simply a justification for selfish behavior.
Daniel Dennett has some good lectures on personal accountability and determinism. And specifically how to differentiate between determinism and fatalism. He spells it out in great detail in his book "Freedom Evolves".

Basically most human morality is still in the hands of philosophers. And it's tricky. But one thing seems certain. Moral behavior is innate in humans, and religion gets it's absolute morality from humans, not the other way around. It's demeaning to us to think that without the word of a divine law giver, civilization as we know it would collapse.

I can cite many examples of what most of us consider horrific morality it the revealed texts. I can also cite many examples of what we currently consider exemplary moral behavior as well. But I don't think that's necessary for this conversation.

Edit:

Rabbit_Fighter wrote:
motorpsycho67 wrote:At the risk of stating the obvious.....

Morality is relative, 100% reliant on perception.
So from a certain perspective, the holocaust was not immoral, and to call anyone involved a "evil" and charge them with a crime against humanity is imposing your values on somebody else.

Sisyphus · Post by **Sisyphus** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 11:03 am

Here's what I can offer. I was raised Catholic, so we share some common ground here.
"Evil" is a very subjective term, denoting a religious reference to something that is not, i.e. "Holy."
Without one you can't have the other. So, by pairing "good" as an opposite to "evil" is kind of a cop-out. You really have to consider the use of either word, where it comes from et al.
To clarify my own point of view, there is right and there is wrong. Most of what people will agree to being "good" falls into the former category. And the most of what people might consider "evil" would fall into the latter.
How you divine what is right and wrong is in turn very subjective, based entirely on the collective human experience and your role in it.

Toonce(s) · Post by **Toonce(s)** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 11:41 am

MoraleHazard wrote:
I also like Toonce(s)' comment on rationalization. Some of the Catholic stuff I've read on the subject refer to it as "self-deception".
I don't agree with the cat analogy though because cats don't have the power of reason.

Cats reason, you can tell they are doing it when their butts wiggle.

I agree that humans have an advanced capability for abstract thought, which is tied to language and the ego. That being said, it doesn't really matter in this discussion, because abstract thinking and ego do not direct our activities. Abstraction is a sandbox which lets us think about something without doing it; consciousness is a filtered, rationalized report of what just happened, and ego is those two plus memory. Furries have consciousness, just not as much abstraction. The qualities of Good and Evil are attributed to behaviors, and the behaviors of higher mammals are very similar to our own. So we can plan our murders more carefully and talk about them, so what.

Ever tried to live wordlessly? Ever notice that your thoughts don't actually direct your actions, ever? When they seem to, it is just a coincidence. Hahahahaha evil laughter. You may now return to Farmville.

roadmissile · Post by **roadmissile** » Thu Jul 21, 2011 1:42 pm

I think it's a zero sum contest in the who has the greater difficulty with moral questions. Most of us build a moral framework from which to work irregardless of religion or lack thereof (although obviously informed by those things). I don't stop to consider the morality of every single choice I make any more than someone who is extremely religious, and while I might be more introspective on the questions of morality I'm also free of the burden of trying to rationalize something my church does that I find personally abhorrent against my faith.

/RM

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Good and Evil Question - For the Atheists

Good and Evil Question - For the Atheists

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