Morality is often equated with an absolute standard – religion and/or God – so atheists, agnostics, and other non-theists are sometimes viewed as people who lack moral standards. And why not? In a nation where a lot of people actually believe that our laws are based on the Ten Commandments – “Thou shall not kill…steal” – how indeed can someone who doesn’t believe in God be expected to tell right from wrong – or choose right over wrong? Someone who doesn’t believe in an absolute justice that metes out eternal punishment might be able to do evil things because they believe they can get away without any consequences.
But there are consequences, although they are not very obvious and immediate and one has to look far enough to understand. Even if a person thinks only of himself and what could be ultimately good for his own welfare, as long as he is rational enough he will apply the Golden Rule – which happens to be a very selfish rule by the way – and choose to do what is desirable rather than detestable according to one’s own standards.
For example, if a nonbeliever decides not to steal even when there is very little possibility of getting caught, it’s because he had somehow figured out a long time ago that stealing is such a lousy thing to do, and it’s not because of what he was taught in Sunday school or religion class. Stealing is wrong because it causes loss of property to others, and even if such loss doesn’t happen back to the thief or his loved ones, the highly evolved person will see that it will still bring more harm than good. He may not get caught now, but a lifelong habit of stealing will surely put him at risk of being distrusted by the people around.
But more importantly, he cannot bear to insult himself and his own self-esteem with the idea that he has to resort to stealing for his survival and prosperity. Freethinkers are often proud people; when one chooses for himself what he considers right and wrong instead of having some authority dictate it to him, he takes responsibility for his actions even in the absence of laws.
I believe that morality should be based on how certain actions benefit or harm individuals and society and not on the ‘revealed’ commandments of a deity whose existence still remains to be proved and whose ‘revelations’ are all hearsay. This comment on another article says it best:
The atheist’s morality of “do no harm” is actually much more complex than the theist’s “10 commandments” when actually put into practice. By no means, however, does this make the atheist’s morality inferior. Our morality is more nuanced, which many theists interpret as lacking principles, because they are unable to understand what isn’t spelled out exactly for them in a simple list.
The rational person knows that it is advantageous to himself to do things that benefit instead of harm others because while the temptation of undue personal gain at the expense of others may at first look attractive, in the long run he will have to pay the price. And if such inequity happens in a community often enough it will trigger even more injustice as people become desensitized to supposedly repugnant behavior.
Life is not a zero-sum game where each person’s gain necessitates an equal amount of loss to another; in nature and in society teamwork and cooperation have proven that it is actually possible for everyone to win, and that every now and then small civilized gestures go a long way and eventually trickle down to the pool of moral standards, gradually raising its level. And it only takes rationality – not religion – to realize that.
Hmmm…how about we discuss this in the FF online forum? 🙂
https://filipinofreethinkers.org/forum
Long discussions especially those digressing from the article are better suited there because the forum was designed to make it easy to keep track of responses to individual threads as well as quoting from other posters or sources. 🙂
errata:
1020 is 2010
ethic is ethics
stinger is singer
and many more…. : D
bye
By the way, off topic.
What are the differences between these terms as used and understood ib this forum of FF:
atheists
agnostics
brights
rationalists
free-thinkers
Salamat….
Hi, Innerminds,
Thanks for inviting me to comment in your reflection on the morality of freethinkers.
Reading your article, I think we need to define what morality means. By defining “morality” we might be clear about our discussion of what it means to be a moral freethinker.
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A Personal Note:
Since my interest is more on Sartre’s atheistic humanism, I think the study of Sartre is helpful in the discussion of a moral freethinker. Books which are available in national Bookstore are like “Being and Nothingness” by Jean-Paul Sartre; “Sartre Explained”- From Bad Faith to Authenticity” by David Detmer; “From Socrates to Sartre: A Philosophic Quest” by TZ Lavine; “Socrates to Sartre and Beyond” by Samuel Enoch Stumpf and James Fieser; “Existentialism from Dostoyevky to Sartre” by Walter Kaufman. Books which I acquired through the web are: “Critique of Dialectical Reason, vol I and II” by Jean-Paul Sartre“; “Anti-Semite and Jew” by Jean-Paul Sartre; “Search for a Method” by Jean-Paul Sartre; “Notebook for an Ethics” by Jean-Paul Sartre; “Sartre and Marxist Existentialism” by Thomas Flynn; “Cambridge Companion to Sartre”, and “Sartre’s Two Ethics – From Authenticity to Integral Humanity” by Thomas Anderson. Unfortunately, I lost interest in it and stopped collecting. Maybe I should review Sartre's case.
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Wikipedia’s Definition of Morality
Let us use the Wikipedia as our point of departure here. Before going to the three principal meanings of morality, Wikipedia distinguished morality, moral code, moral, immorality, and amorality: (I simply write [quote] for quotations) ;D
[quote} Morality (from the Latin moralities "manner, character, proper behavior") is a sense of behavioral conduct that differentiates intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong). A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. Immorality is the active opposition to morality, while amorality is a passive indiferrence toward morality. [quote]
Wikipedia identified three "senses" in defining the term “morality” as follows:
[quote] In its "descriptive" sense, morality refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores that distinguish between right and wrong in the human society. Describing morality in this way is not making a claim about what is objectively right or wrong, but only referring to what is considered right or wrong by people. For the most part right and wrong acts are classified as such because they are thought to cause benefit or harm, but it is possible that many moral beliefs are based on prejudice, ignorance or even hatred.[clarification needed] This sense of term is also addressed by descriptive ethics. [quote]
[quote] In its "normative" sense, morality refers directly to what is right and wrong, regardless of what specific individuals think. It could be defined as the conduct of the ideal "moral" person in a certain situation. This usage of the term is characterized by "definitive" statements such as "That act is immoral" rather than descriptive ones such as "Many believe that act is immoral." It is often challenged by a moral skepticism, in which the unchanging existence of a rigid, universal, objective moral "truth" is rejected, and supported by moral realism, in which the existence of this "truth" is accepted. The normative usage of the term "morality" is also addressed by normative ethics. [quote]
[quote] In its "ethics" sense, morality encompasses the above two meanings and others within a systematic philosophical study of the moral domain. Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what the fundamental nature of ethics or morality is, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology). [quote]
Wikipedia alerts us that this article needs refinements (as of march 1020). Rightly so, particularly in its definition of the term “morality”. While the writer use the distinction of “normative” and “descriptive” as discussed by Bernard Gerts’ in “The Deifinition of Morality” in Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, his “ethic” sense may be problematic. The first line in the third definition (“ethic” sense) is taken from a blog by an anonymous writer which uses three sources: (1) a brief quotation from John Deigh in Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (I have a copy of it; I’ll look at it when I arrived home) which is a brief discussion of ethic as a philosophical study of morality – it means that the term “ethics” used by Deigh means “a philosophical study of morality” as “subject matter” and “the moral principles of a particular tradition, group, or individual”; (2) a long quote from book “Ethic” edited by Peter Stinger (1994) which we have no idea whether it was a word from Stinger or other contributor; and (3) Oxford’s history of the use of the term “morality” and “ethics” interchangeably.
The use of James Fieser’s article in IEP on “Ethics” does not merit the third “ethics” sense of defining “morality”. Fieser at the outset wrote: “The field of ethics (or moral philosophy) involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior. Philosophers today usually divide ethical theories into three general subject areas: metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics.” After which he defined metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics as follows:
(1) Metaethics investigates where our ethical principles come from, and what they mean. Are they merely social inventions? Do they involve more than expressions of our individual emotions? Metaethical answers to these questions focus on the issues of universal truths, the will of God, the role of reason in ethical judgments, and the meaning of ethical terms themselves.
(2) Normative ethics takes on a more practical task, which is to arrive at moral standards that regulate right and wrong conduct. This may involve articulating the good habits that we should acquire, the duties that we should follow, or the consequences of our behavior on others.
(3) Applied ethics involves examining specific controversial issues, such as abortion, infanticide, animal rights, environmental concerns, homosexuality, capital punishment, or nuclear war.
But he alerted us that the “by using the conceptual tools of metaethics and normative ethics, discussions in applied ethics try to resolve these controversial issues. The lines of distinction between metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics are often blurry.” He explained this by giving us an example:
[quote][T]he issue of abortion is an applied ethical topic since it involves a specific type of controversial behavior. But it also depends on more general normative principles, such as the right of self-rule and the right to life, which are litmus tests for determining the morality of that procedure. The issue also rests on metaethical issues such as, “where do rights come from?” and “what kind of beings have rights?” [quote]
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I suggest that it is more helpful to directly follow Bernard Gerts and/or James Fieser in defining morality.
Enough for now, I will look closely into your article after reviewing in details these two sources in understanding morality. Of course, we have a lot of sources to use later on.
Home sweet home.
great post! i strongly agree with the last paragraph. it makes a whole WORLD of difference once one sees that life isn't a zero-sum game 🙂
Thanks, sky0saje! 🙂 I guess the life-isn't-a-zero-sum-game argument effectively explains why people do good in the absence of a transcendent moral "lawgiver". 🙂
“Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” (#10)
Hmm, good call. Goat's milk has a rather strong flavor to it, and using it for a Kid's tender chops might make the taste too overpowering XD.
On the other hand, chicken-mayo sandwiches taste perfectly fine, despite that you're basically flavoring the mother hen in its chick XD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB7WpxRQdm8
As there are 3 different occasions where god Yahweh handed down the 10 commandments, the last and final one should be taken – not the most popular one. So here the Exodus 34 ten commandments last and final version (NIV) handed over to Moses:
4 So Moses chiseled out two stone tablets like the first ones and went up Mount Sinai early in the morning, as the LORD had commanded him; and he carried the two stone tablets in his hands:
14 Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God (#1).
17 "Do not make cast idols (#2).
18 "Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread. (#3)
For seven days eat bread made without yeast, as I commanded you (#4).
19 "The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. 20 Redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem all your firstborn sons. "No one is to appear before me empty-handed (#5).
21 "Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest; even during the plowing season and harvest you must rest (#6).
22 "Celebrate the Feast of Weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the turn of the year. [b] 23 Three times a year all your men are to appear before the Sovereign LORD, the God of Israel (#7).
25 "Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice to me along with anything containing yeast, and do not let any of the sacrifice from the Passover Feast remain until morning. (#8)
26 "Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the LORD your God.(#9)
"Do not cook a young goat in its mother's milk." (#10)
How can anybody be moral without strictly following these commandments ?! Maybe not using the proper material for images of the deity, or celebrating the proper feasts, or eat the wrong bread and possible not scarify the first fruit harvest, firstborn male animals and the ambiguous wording of “redeem all your firstborn sons” to Yahweh.
The planet – no the entire universe created from Yahweh – would fall into instant chaos without this ultimate divine guidelines.
In my opinion, the reason a nontheist's sense of morality tends to be more complex is because it acknowledges that the real world is full of gray areas – there is no such thing as a truly black-and-white scenario.
For example, I generally think that killing another human being is wrong, but at the same time I do understand the value of killing in self defense, or of a death penalty for hardened criminals who have committed heinous crimes repeatedly, and are beyond rehabilitation.
Ah, but the theists also have their own gray areas and exceptions to "thou shall not kill":
Numbers 15:32-36:
"32While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. 33Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, 34and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. 35Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” 36So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses."
Luke 19:27 (said by Jesus himself)
"But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them–bring them here and kill them in front of me."