We must return to the days of when the one true living God's influence on society was paramount. When the one true living God directed the Israelites to punish the evil ones with death or slavery, sex slavery for some virgins and not let the dead ones land go to waste.
When Christianity became the state religion and the one true living God ordered the murder or conversion of sectarians, infidels, schismatics, even fellow religionists, if their possessions were desired.
God ordered the holocaust brought on by Christian diaspora through out the world. A world that still suffers from trading the invaluable gift of knowledge of the one true living God, Prince of Peace Christ for their lives, liberty and property.
Remember the people that impoverished Ireland for 800 years, Asia, India, China, Australia, Africa, the Americas for centuries did it with the blessing of the one truth living God.
Slavery is blessed and endorsed by the New Testament and was only ended when secular society determined that is was immoral, just as the extermination of Australians ended when secularist morality infused society.
The current war in Iraq was inspired and blessed by George Bush's living God. Don't believe me, just ask him.

Gee what a load of, This is the standard stuff from the christian right and wrong on every level, I could go into all the logical pitfalls of this post but what would be the point. The reality is Man is only different to other herd animals in so much that we can speculate on where our inbuilt behaviour come from (Evolution), and why we have contrasting thoughts and occasional actions. The rest of the post is a really bad example of the set piece. However this did stand out..

"If there is no God, no objective morality, no ultimate purpose, no final accountability, and presumably just the one chance to live life, then the sensible person will throw off all that would hinder them from maximising their own interests, whatever they may be, while prudently maintaining a respectable public façade."

That I would say is how just about every christian lives their life... pretending to follow the rules.

No, Graham, we don't need a god to provide us with an ethical compass. There are so many different gods and so many different interpretations of what can or should be done in the name of god that it is every bit as much a recipe for confusion, if not more so, than the dangers you perceive exist in having a moral code in which god is absent.

All gods are human constructs, most of them having their origin many centuries ago in a completely different world to the one we inhabit today. It is a nonsense to argue that intelligent rational human beings with a vast wealth on which to draw of scientific, technological and environmental knowledge, built up incrementally over many centuries, should defer to the words attributed to a god but written nonetheless by a small number of men, who lived in a different age and who would have no conception whatever of the ethical issues confronting us today.

Ethical decisions today are made within a framework that has been built up using the wisdom of many generations, a lot of which does happen to be based on Christian morality but which is also very much the product of secular, rational and humanist thought. The future direction of our ethical compass should maintain this balance and continue in that same tradition.

The churches don't have a monopoly on how to live well. Living by the motto of "do unto others..." is a universal human possibility and capable of informing all ethical and policy frameworks. The philosophy of caring for others and caring for the natural environment and all its inhabitants is all we need to guide us. I myself am eternally grateful that I don't have to go and listen to a preacher every Sunday to tell me how to live, or to waste precious time deciphering an opaque and dated document when there is so much of real value to be read.

The Sydney Morning herald in an article 'In God's Name' answered this OLO diatribe in a few sentences so the appropriate extract follows,
"The French philosopher Michael Onfray, in his book The Atheist Manifesto, writes: “The old idea of the immoral, amoral atheist, with neither faith nor ethical rules, dies hard. The phrase ‘if God does not exist, then everything is permitted’ - a refrain picked up from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov - continues to resonate ... this misguided notion needs to be thoroughly demolished".
Perhaps this is a good time to remember, as Richard Dawkins writes in The God De¬lusion, that it’s not OK to disrespect non-believers when your own moral code is seemingly dictated by fear of retribution from a divine being - especially codes that have, as Onfray points out, allowed their various adherents to 'plot terrorist attacks in Manhattan, launch punitive raids into the Gaza Strip, or cover up the deeds of paedophile priests'”. I would add, 'and continue in the fundamentally evil business of indoctrinating innocent children'.
Children have an innate sense of justice which is essentialy the basic ingredient of ethics only because for hundreds of thousands of generations out forebears, back at least as far as australopithecus africanus used weapons in co-operative defence and hunting to feed their dependants. Religion is only a relatively recent political power intrusion into homo sapiens society. Co-operation and sharing responsibilities requires a sense of justice, the real basis of all ethics and all morals that are not just aimed at contol of thinking or worrying about what goes on behind closed doors.

Very nicely put Bronwyn.

There is a natural tendency within many of us to strive for what we can get, regardless of the morality or legality of the situation. Many of us take calculated risks, only respecting what we think we can get away with, while being devoid of morality or the principle of law in the particular area of our actions……while at the same time giving every impression that we are moral and lawful people….which some of us indeed may well be in areas where there is no prospect of us making ill-gotten personal gains! Oh, the duplicity!

But that’s life. It’s the human condition.

What do we do about it? As a civilised prosperous democratic society, we surely must strive to make the boundaries of what is acceptable and what isn’t as clear as possible and make the policing and deterrence regime as effective and uniform as possible.

Cut out the ambiguity and get rid of unfair policing procedures. That shouldn’t be hard. I can’t for the life of me understand why there is such a reluctance, or apathy, in the general community to call for tight definitions and effective policing, penalties and overall deterrence.

I was in the minority when I called for tightly defined parameters for art versus child pornography in the Bill Henson debacle.

I was again in the minority, although with a few people expressing agreement, when calling for tightly defined laws and a good policing regime in response to the extraordinarily fuzzy special ‘annoyance’ laws for the pope’s visit for World Youth Day.

Ages ago I tried to discuss road safety with respect to these things. I started a general thread which received precisely zero responses!

continued

Amorality begets amorality! If we let some people get away with amoral, unprincipled or illegal activities, another very large part of the populace will feel pressure to follow suit, in order to not be left behind.

For example, the careful law-abiding driver that drives 5kmh under the speed limit and never gets right up the rear of the car in front of them, gets tailgated, cut in on and horn-blasted. They are more of a hazard on the road than they would be if they drove like the majority of us. A large portion of the driving public don’t wish to drive at all illegally, but they feel the very strong need to do so in order to not incur the wrath of other road-users and indeed to be safer than they would otherwise be.

I reckon one of the most amoral things of all is the incredible acceptance of laws and other things that guide our behaviour, such as the codes of conduct, that don’t apply evenly, don’t apply at face value or don’t even apply at all…but which remain in place in officialdom!

Here’s a prime example; Queensland has no nude beaches, by law. But in reality, it has many, which the police, local councils, state government and relevant communities know of and accept or tolerate. This gross mixed message from our leaders and from the community by way of accepting it, is to me the pits of duplicity and amorality. It is far far worse than any amorality that anyone might argue in relation to public nudity.

So where does God and Christianity fit into this? Stuuuffed if I know!

^^^^

“Children have an innate sense of justice…”

Do they really Foyle?

It seems to me that they have to be carefully guided and disciplined, and that the innate behaviour is for them to do what they can to get what they want, without caring too much about anyone else.

In my youth I bagan a journey which ended up in my complete rejection of religion as a moral guide. The starting point was when I discovered the existence of 'evil' through studies of the concentration camps and the truly in human actions committed within them. At the same time the religion of my parents was telling me that I would be doomed to everlasting hellfire for eating meat on a friday or for touching a girl's breast (the height of my sexual ambition at that point in time). Since then I have studied the bible (two years training to be a Christian Brother) and can identifymany of "Gods Laws" such as dietary requirments, slavery, the charging of interest, the treatment of mensturating women to name a few all fo which have been discarded. The biggest hurdle and the one which broke me was the realisation that the major commandment 'Thou shalt not Kill' the basis for religious opposition to abortion was never applied to war or to capital punishment. The hipocrasy involved in this was too much for me to take and I left behind the irrationality to achieve an moral balance based upon a simple proposition. As it happens it also appears in the bible but isnt bound into the irrationality of religion
It is do unto others...

anybody know why preston keeps writing this same nonsense again and again and again?

Ah bushbasher, I believe it is because Mr Preston is a optimist. He probably believes that someone might actually engage with his argument as opposed to the red herrings and circular reasoning that seems to be so prevalent in responses to date.

grey, don't be silly. plenty of people are engaging with preston's arguments, just like they did the last time, and the time before that. there's just not much to engage with. preston is troubled by morality, as is any thoughtful person. preston wants to ask Daddy what's right and wrong. that's ok, though. but preston wants Daddy to have a monopoly on morality, and this is nasty and really, really dumb.

to keep claiming that morality is meaningless without asking Daddy is very silly and very tiresome. to keep ignoring the arbitrariness in preston's (or anyone's) Daddy, that we only know Daddy through the same minds preston refuses the liberty to contemplate morality, this is very silly and very tiresome.

religious history proves that there is no absoluteness to religious notions of morality. secular history proves that there is no absoluteness to secular notions of morality. such is life. preston adds nothing to a difficult debate except smugness and an incredible persistence.

The article skips a key point in the whole issue which has been covered plenty of times before.

When we get back to the start of whatever belief system we hold we make a decision about it. If this was an either or debate the author might have a point. If there was only one possible idea about god, proven beyond doubt and self evident to all with an interest in the views of "god" then there might be an indisputable basis for morality/ethics based on the views of that god. Thiests make a choice about which version of god they will follow, which of that gods commands they will take literally and which they will assume were for the time or meant allegorically.

Most refuse to confront or acknowledge that choice, ignoring the reality that the biggest determinator about which version of a god a thiest will follow is the society they were born into and the beliefs of their family - hardly proof positive that one idea about god is pre-eminant above all others.

Take for example the evangelical "bible believing" christain. Years ago many were convinced that their god required women to cover their heads during worship, now only fringe groups consider those sections of their scripture literally.

On a recent discussion about womens clothing (or lack thereof) I drew the attention of those who follow Jesus and who considered that women not being thoroughly dressed might be causing them to sin to what Jesus had to say on the matter. Matthew 18:9 "And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell fire." (also Mark 9:47, Matthew 5:29) As far as I can tell none rushed out and removed their eyes, either they choose to disobey that particular command or they don't think Jesus was being literal.

Some might find the following list interesting http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/donald_morgan/precepts.html

R0bert

A bit more of the usual canting rubbish from the god-squad. The very notion of the 'god of Abraham'- a loving creator of everything with a place prepared in 'Heaven' (wherever that may be) for all of us - is totally dead in the water from a logical perspective; a scientific perspective; and to anyone other than a completely deluded moron by a simple observation of every-day events. The claim that without this god there can be no morality immediately fails by the most basic test - does it work? The answer is clearly 'NO' - just open a newspaper or watch (if you can stomach the on-going atrocities) the TV news and see how 'Abrahamic god' based morality, via a pantheon of 'believers' in high places has handled things. The present day bloody morass that is the middle east, the Iraq obscenity, etc etc are not new. A casual glance at, for example, European history shows a virtually seamless series of similar atrocities stretching back through the centuries.
Wake up - there is only us, and whilst there is still a great deal of work to be done a naturalistic ethic is our only hope of future happiness.

One of the interesting units I studied at University was Religions of Oceania. To break it down to a few words is extremely difficult. People who do not understand create a plausible explanation within peers and from this they establish rules. In the next village, they have another explanation and another set of rules. What is right on one side of the hill is wrong on the other.Very simply if it fits your integrity and does not put a physical or mental spear in another person you should do it.If you can get away with it indicates that there is an existing set of rules and in that case humans should abide by a majority decision on those rules. Just do it indicates the capacity to act without contravening laid down and accepted laws by all.Angryant47.

"It would seem to be a rather extraordinary occurrence if lifeless, unconscious matter should have somehow generated in particular units of matter, known as human beings, the sense that certain behaviours are “right” and others “wrong”. (And it does seem that moral notions are largely confined to homo sapiens.)"

Since we have good reason to believe that this has happened, and we don't have any reason to believe that a sense of right and wrong has ever originated in any other way, I don't see what's so 'extraordinary' about it. For all we know it was completely inevitable that it should happen under those circumstances.

Perhaps arguments about what is 'extraordinary' or 'inconceivable' or 'unimaginable' should simply be banned from debates about morality or metaphysics. They have been used to defend a great deal of nonsense, and they really demonstrate nothing but paucity of imagination. One person's 'inconceivable' event is usually another person's everyday occurrence.

The author has clearly never read much about primatology, or he would
understand that morality is grounded in biology. Authors like
Frans de Waal and similar, are a good place to start.

As to claims about somebody being in touch with the Almighty, we
have had many snakeoil salesmen make many claims, earn lots of
money, gain lots of power, but so far no substantiated evidence
that any one of them is correct.

The alleged Almighty is free to write his rules on the face of
the moon, for all of us to see. He/she has never bothered.

So at this point the evidence shows that morality is little more
then our subjective opinion, grounded in biology. Much like other
social primates, we agree on rules which are to the benefit of
the group as a whole

Graham,

I enjoyed your post though I note the usual scrofulous suspects did not.

The problem for the God haters is just what do you base your system of morality on – personal desires, the greater good?

I found it fascinating in reading Dawkins Hitchens Harris Onfray and Dennett to compare them with the likes of Nietzsche, Camus and Sartre who at least were willing to explore existential nihilism even if they fell back. Dawkins and his mob are the soft core kind of atheist, blast religion out of existence but limp in the backdoor clutching the last remnants of Christian morality pretending their genes or memes or whatever told them so.

What a joke, what self deception, what parasitic nonsense! The fact is two or three generations back their forebears belonged to the Church – Christopher Hitchens’ brother Peter is a Christian – and whatever decent morality they retain is their inheritance – not for nothing early Melbourne was dotted with churches on every street corner and in the 1870’s, 60% to 70% of Melbournians regularly attended church.

However I do them an injustice, because despite all their rage, despite all their anaemic unconvincing, groping like blind men protestations, God made them and put his law within them – there are simply things they can’t not know and conscience will always have its revenge.

But as a system of thought secular humanism, or whatever they want to call it, is built on shifting sand, as there is no moral demand (witness the discussion on other threads over euthanasia, abortion and the current latest cause célèbre - naked female children posing as art, so daring, yet so diminishing), no objective remedy for human weakness, no objective hope for the finding of virtue and happiness whether in this life or the world to come. In fact, welcome to the culture of death.

So thank you Graham, and keep on writing and don’t be put off by people who haven’t a clue about mounting a decent argument, for whom an ad hominem attack is about the best they can muster.

David that whole post seemed to be an ad hominem attack on those who disagree with the content or the article.

There has been quite a bit of material in the responses which deals with the subject matter rather than the character of the author. Would you care to debate some of those points rather than launch general character attacks on those who didsagree?

R0bert

"But as a system of thought secular humanism, or whatever they want to call it, is built on shifting sand, as there is no moral demand (witness the discussion on other threads over euthanasia, abortion and the current latest cause célèbre - naked female children posing as art, so daring, yet so diminishing), no objective remedy for human weakness, no objective hope for the finding of virtue and happiness whether in this life or the world to come. In fact, welcome to the culture of death."

David, I've argued alongside you on the euthanasia and Henson debates and many others I'm sure and so have other atheists and other non-believers. It is insufferably arrogant of you to maintain so unquestioningly that the only ethical code for all humanity in all its diversity is the one supposedly handed to us by your god. Like Yabby, I'll accept that as gospel when I see the rules written on the moon and not before.

The other problem when you set yourself up as the arbiter of all things ethical is that to be at all credible the tone of your posts needs to reflect this at all times. There's only one Christian poster I've encountered regularly on OLO who consistently achieves this and going by the few posts already of yours I've happened to read it certainly isn't you David.

a few of the christians who post at OLO, i enjoy engaging with. many frustrate me, most bemuse me. but i think david palmer is the only one who provokes in me unmitigated disgust.

the aggression and the dishonesty in this man is beyond belief. it may be difficult for the religious and the secular to find common ground, but palmer's undermining is hellbent on making it impossible. and this, not from some anonymous poster, but from a named and prominent member of his church. the poison palmer emits is the antithesis of what i regard as christian goodness, and what i see in many good christians.

No matter how liberal the laws are mankind has shown a complete failure at being able to keep them. The Secularist must continue to water down laws as each of their progressive generation turns the previous generations indulgences into rights. Now the kids of those who slept with multiple partners have to try and go a bit further, those who indulged in weekend drunkenness now have kids popping pills and shooting up. Those unable to keep marriage vows have kids who are unlikely to hold any relationship together and those who wanted free love see nothing wrong with stripping their six year olds for perverts to stare at. The denial of the fallen sinful nature is a pathetic attempt to cover how corrupt our natures are (oh! except for artist) Thank God for the only incorruptible One. Without Christ all along morality is a joke and people fooling themselves. Our only hope of goodness is in Him despite the multitude trying to convince us of their self righteousness.

Bronwyn: "No, Graham, we don't need a god to provide us with an ethical compass. ..."

I've tried to express that sentiment here a few times in the past, but have never come close to putting it as clearly or concisely as this.

David Palmer: "I note the usual scrofulous suspects did not."

That and what follows is right up there with "uncovered meat". Its odd how my reaction is different when Palmer says it though. When the Mufti criticized Australian while in Lebanon, I felt outrage at how he betrayed the values of the country that adopted him. Now, when I see an Australian Presbyterian Minister betray the values I was taught in the church and at school, I feel shame.

Bronwyn, you say, “we don't need a god to provide us with an ethical compass.” The use of the phrase “ethical compass” implies that you think there is a certain direction we should be heading in ethically. I’m sure you think there is, but why, without wanting to be rude, should anyone care what direction you think we should be heading in?

What if another atheist disagrees with you on a particular ethical point, and after calm discussion you still strongly disagree, who is to say who is reading the compass correctly? One atheist’s ethical stance is surely as valid as another’s. If not, by what objective standard are they to be measured?

And could you please point out anywhere in the article where religious belief is endorsed, as your comment, and the comments of many others, suggests it does. It doesn’t. The point is simply made that human generated “morality” is completely lacking in any authority. And you and the other critics fail to establish what is the basis for the authority for a human-based “morality”. At best it seems to devolve to “might (in the form of numbers) makes right”. Surely you can see the problems with that.

GP, are you kidding? of course the article is promoting religion. read the last paragraph!

the article is either using the existence of a common morality as evidence for a god, or it is arguing that morality only makes sense by the authority of a god. either way, it's arrogant and dumb, and self-parody.

the problem with the article is that it pretends that an arbitrary authority is somehow superior to no authority. you ask bronwyn how she knows she's reading the compass correctly. The point is, it's her compass. it is exactly as you say: there is no authority for a human-based morality. the compasses largely align, and certain shared moral codes promote certain types of society. and, logic still applies to questions of an individual's moral consistency. but there is no "right" morality. sorry, but that's life.

further, the question you ask bronwyn applies to God as well, and is much harder: who is to say who is reading God's compass correctly? religious compasses vary at least as much as secular compasses. and, if you cannot tell me which reading of God's compass is correct, why should i possibly care? as a practical guide to morality, looking to God's compass is not the magic wand that preston imagines. it's just mr. stick.

bushbasher "you cannot tell me which reading of God's compass is correct, why should i possibly care"

Havn't you noticed that many thiests are quite happy to tell you which reading of God's compass is correct (make that insist and you'd better listen and obey). Never mind that the directions all seem to be different.

When it comes to thiests telling non-thiests about absolutes there is an absolute in the room which most thiests seem to be unwilling to acknowledge.

R0bert

Bushbasher
"the article is either using the existence of a common morality as evidence for a god, or it is arguing that morality only makes sense by the authority of a god. either way, it's arrogant and dumb, and self-parody."

Gotta disagree with you there big guy. Current secular ethics philosophers would too. For instance, Simon Blackburn, who has held an ethics professorship at both Cambridge and Oxford said
"Nature has no concern for good or bad, right or wrong"

So without something outside of nature, he is saying those concepts don't exist.

Even Richard Dawkins said in the God Delusion
"Not all absolutism is derived from religion. Nevertheless, it is pretty hard to defend absolutist morals on grounds other than religious ones. The only competitor I can think of is patriotism, especially in times of war"

Will you now call their claims arrogant, dumb or a self parody?

grey, "nature" has no concern for good or bad, but conscious humans obviously do.

i have said many times that i don't understand consciousness. but i don't use my lack of understanding as an argument for god. that would be very silly. i doubt if the people you quote are doing that, but if so they are being silly.

Grey: "Gotta disagree with you there big guy. Current secular ethics philosophers would too."

I can't argue with that one way or the other, because I know nothing of what secular ethics philosophers said and would not know where to go looking for the relevant bits. A bit of background information would of been helpful.

Since I don't understand it, I'll put this up for discussion and hope you can illustrate your point with it. We can say that our current society is very good because of what it deliverers to us in food, shelter and so on. We can also say the if everyone stole our current society would not exist very long. Ergo stealing is bad.

To me "stealing is bad" sounds like a moral, or at least ethical statement. I imagine it is the sort of statement bushbasher is referring to when he says morals don't need a reference to, or depend on the blessing of, god. You say he is talking about what "Nature" thinks is good or bad - but I don't see that. You also say its absolutist. Is it?

Anyway, a bit more explanation would be helpful. Or perhaps you were referring to another post of bushbasher's that did refer to absolute statements.

rstuart, you say, “if everyone stole our current society would not exist very long. Ergo stealing is bad.”

You are saying here that stealing is not bad in itself but that it is bad only in that if everyone stole society would not exist very long. That is approaching the point the original article was making. You may have a preference that people not steal and you may prefer that society stay as it is, and others may have the same preferences, but why should anyone who disagrees with you care what your preferences are?

What do you say to the person who steals: “Don’t do that because I would prefer you didn’t and therefore I declare stealing to be ‘wrong’”?

The intelligent, rational atheistic thief would reply: “Well I have a preference to steal and so I declare there is nothing wrong with me stealing.”

Presumably you would in turn say: “But if everybody steals our current society will not exist very long so therefore I say you shouldn’t steal.”

The thief: “Why should I care about society staying like this? Other people can not steal if that is their preference, and I would encourage them not to steal as that makes life easier for me, but I am good at stealing and it has made me very wealthy and I will continue to steal so long as I can get away with it.”

What do you say to the thief now?

*What do you say to the thief now?*

You say to your thief exactly what we say to our thieves. We as
a society think its immoral to steal, those who don't accept our
morals are austracised from our community. He goes to jail.

Actually GP, I would say "Fair enough, how do you like your coffee Mr. Chairman?"

But seriously, Grey's paraphrased idea "So without something outside of nature, he is saying those concepts don't exist" is absurd.

Just because it's an abstract concept and doesn't exist in "nature" does not mean that something outside of nature has to be invented to explain it.

To illustrate with an example: money does not exist in nature, elephants do not know what money is, which probably explains why they work for peanuts.

But money exists. In fact most people would say that it's extremely important for a society/civilisation to have a concept of money. Societies that do not have a concept of money are not generally considered "advanced".

If you use Grey's logic, money must have been invented by God.

Abstract concepts like good/bad/evil/moral/immoral/amoral etc can just as easily be invented by used by humans in maintianing a society. Natural selection pretty much dictates that it must happen, because those societies without these concepts are unlikely to have made it this far for a very good reason.

GP: "but why should anyone who disagrees with you care what your preferences are"

You surprise me GP. That is a reasonable question. Yabby gave an obvious answer, but I think there are better ones. Firstly, just turn it around. Why should anybody care what GPs prefers, or indeed what GP says Gods preferences are? Particularly since most of the world doesn't believe your God exists. That is my dilemma with your position.

But that doesn't answer your question. Do you realise how much effort has gone into trying to answer it? There is an entire branch of mathematics devoted to it - game theory. Many books have been written about it - Writes "The moral animal" and Dawkins "The Selfish Gene" spring to mind. You'd rightly gather from that the answer isn't obvious, and many regard how altruistic behaviour arises from purely selfish decision making as a thing of beauty.

But to answer to your question simply, they don't care what my preferences are. They act that way because it is their best interests to do so. The mathematics tells us under the right conditions such behaviour can arise, and it does. Our societies are designed to make sure such behaviour does arise - as Yabby points out.

You might ask "how come our society is designed to encourage such behaviour", to which I would reply "because it destroyed all competitive societies which didn't". It's actually a pretty poor reply, at best 1/2 right. But it paints a simple picture which points in the right direction. A better reply would draw a much more complex picture. However you know where I am going, and I imagine our preferred paths to the truth have diverged so far apart now that it is pointless taking you any further down mine.

rstuart – precisely, why should anybody care what I, a fellow human being, says is right or wrong? But if there is a God who has made us, then it would surely be very sensible to take note of what God may have said is right or wrong. And logically that is not changed by whether or not most people acknowledge God’s existence.

You agree that people don’t need to care about your preferences and you say that is because they only act in their own self-interest. Don’t you see that you are thereby agreeing with the whole point of the original article? To do things that have an appearance of being moral, but which are actually motivated by self-interest is not to act morally. We normally call it being a hypocrite.

As Yabby points out, intentionally or otherwise, in a godless universe, “morality” boils down to raw force, might makes right. If enough of us are strong enough we will force any dissenters to our made-up “morality” to obey or we will lock them up. It is not that stealing is objectively wrong but rather that most of us may happen to have a preference against it and so we punish dissenters. If a person is confident they can get away with stealing though there is absolutely no reason not to do so – certainly they won’t be doing anything objectively wrong.

Rstuart – you say: “our society is designed to encourage such behaviour”. I would suggest you take more care with the vocabulary you use. Despite all the incredible appearances to the contrary, there is no “design” in a godless universe. Design, by definition, involves forethought and deliberate intention. But a godless universe is just an accident: everything is as it is simply because of the physics of matter and given the nature of matter, things could not have been otherwise. Nothing is designed, nothing is meant to be one way or another, and nothing that happens is ever right or wrong. Everything just is.

GP, i will try to be polite, but you're making it tough.

1) i, like anyone, obviously have a moral sense. my moral sense has nothing to do with "might makes right": as i understand and am using the words, that would be a contradiction in terms.

2) my moral sense has nothing to do with trying to read the mind of god.

3) my moral sense is not absolute, nor "nature's morality", nor any other strawman grey wishes to build. it is my moral sense.

4) though my moral sense is not absolute, it is also not arbitrary, for at least two reasons.

a) i cannot choose my moral sense: again that for me would be a contradiction in terms. i may come across moral conundrums, and my moral beliefs may develop, or even change, as i ponder difficult moral questions. but i am not choosing my morality: i am discovering and clarifying and refining it, but i'm not choosing it.

b) my moral sense is clearly similar to the moral sense of many others.

that's it. now, for christ's sake what of the above do you have difficulty with?

i have not told you the origin of my moral sense, but i don't need to. it's a worthwhile puzzle, and i'm happy to puzzle with you. but the puzzle over the origins of my moral sense does not alter the undeniable fact of my moral sense. it is the religous bigotry of trying to deny that fact which really, really gets up my nose.

GP: "it would surely be very sensible to take note of what God may have said is right or wrong. And logically that is not changed by whether or not most people acknowledge God’s existence."

The logic of that escapes me, GP. You will have to explain it to me in simple terms. To put it bluntly, if I am not just going to accept what you say at face value, why would I accept what you tell me your non-existent God is saying?

GP: "which are actually motivated by self-interest is not to act morally"

We have a different definition of morals. Yours leads to this: if I save the life of a man because one day I might find myself in a similar situation to his, that is not a moral action. But if I do exactly the same thing because it is right and just, it is a moral action. To me the world is only what I can directly perceive and deduce from that. So if what I perceive and deduce is the same for both, they are the same to me. Your distinction is artificial.

GP: "As Yabby points out ... might makes right."

Yabby said no such thing. You inferred it, but provide no justification for doing so.

GP: "If a person is confident they can get away with stealing"

So what are you saying? Only a belief in God and Hell can stop me from stealing? But GP - I don't believe in God or Hell, and yet I don't steal. Its worse than that, because as a group atheists steal far less than Christians - or at least get caught far less. So what motivates us to not steal? Maybe your right. Maybe we atheists do steal, but we are so clever we get away with it!

http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm

GP: "Rstuart – you say: our society is designed to encourage such behaviour. I would suggest you take more care with the vocabulary you use."

Touche. You are correct GP, it was a poor choice of words.

*To do things that have an appearance of being moral, but which are actually motivated by self-interest is not to act morally.*

Ah, but here you run into a little problem, which it perhaps needs
neuroscience to answer. I heard of a study yesterday, in which
mothers looking at their smiling babies have the same reward centres
of the brain light up as those of a cocaine addict taking a fix.

So do you help the little old lady across the street because it
made you feel good or because she needed help? Feeling good has
its own rewards in terms of brain chemistry, so what looks like
something moral, might be based on self interest after all, even
if we are not aware of it.

What we can show is that other primates feel empathy. So perhaps
the reason that I am against stealing is because I feel empathy for
the victims for instance. Or because I understand that it is in
my self interest to live in a community where people are honest.

Perhaps Mother Theresa helped the sick and the poor because it made
her feel great. So it was clearly in her self interest to do so.

At the risk of arousing your ire once again Bushbasher (and what is it that seems to make you so cross?), here is my response. At no point have I said that you or any other individual does not have a moral sense. You say that you cannot control your moral sense – do you believe that is true of other people too? If you do, then it seems rather odd if you get cross with others who have a different opinion to you. How can they help holding the moral beliefs they do if it is something they cannot control?

How, if you have no control over your moral beliefs, do you go about “discovering and clarifying and refining” your moral beliefs?

You say that your “moral sense is clearly similar to the moral sense of many others”. May I ask, so what? You have already said that your “ moral sense has nothing to do with "might makes right"” so what does it matter if your views are similar to others?

How do you overcome the subjectivity and relativeness of morality that seems to be inherent to your position?

rstuart – No, I have not said that all atheists have to or should start stealing. What I said is that if it seems to be in an atheist’s interests to steal or murder and they are confident they can get away with it then there is no objective “moral” or rational reason why they should not do so.

Yabby if you follow the logic of your last post to its conclusion then we are nothing but machines – and if atheism is correct that is exactly what we are – machines. It is an easy thing to say that we are machines but the implications are enormous – complete absence of free will for a start.

Yabby...you are begging the question. You essentially have to assume all actions are selfish then because people choose to do them (including the man who lays down his life to save others). The problem with this is that is makes the concept of 'selfish' meaningless.

Bugsy. I think you are completely miss the point. Abstractions do not really have an ontological (objective) existence. You can define something, but there is no way to actually investigate or compare two different abstractions. Money is a good example of this. Everybody values money differently (just as they value the goods money can buy differently). Money is really only worth what each individual person thinks it is worth. But there is no point in me saying that another person is wrong when they value money differently (perhaps spending $1000 on a pair of shoes). There is no ontological (objective) standard of value, only a subjective one.

(As an interesting aside, this is why Da Vinci was unable to paint a 'universal'.)

So saying morality doesn't exist in nature, is making a clear concise statement. Blackburn confirms his view on this by admitting that he can find no basis for morality (what he calls a big R reason), and that all anyone can do is try and force their morality on others.

In essence, this is what Graham argues. That without a supernatural God, there is no real reason to obey any particular moral system (as only subjective possibilities of morality exist), so why wouldn't someone try to get whatever they can..

GP can you please explain how the choice of which god (if any) is any more absolute than the choice of values when you don't believe in such a god.

From my perspective the choice of a god to treat as an absolute source is at least as arbitrary as my choices about ethics, morals values etc. Assuming that you are able to do that you might then explain how you decide which of your gods commands are instructions and which are not meant to be taken literally. All of this without finding yourself in the same boat as us non-thiests.

R0bert

>>From where do we derive our notions of right and wrong and how do/should we decide who is correct?<<

First question: who is the "we" envisaged in this question?

The good citizens of Camden?

People who live in Sydney?

Australians in general?

The whole world?

It is clearly not possible to envisage a set of rules that is by definition "right" for all these constituencies.

Inevitably, this becomes one of those "if you don't believe in God, then your only option is to make it up as you go" discussions.

>>If God is absent the only viable source for such a code is humanity itself. But since we make the moral rules up ourselves they lack any ultimate authority.<<

How about being your own "ultimate authority"?

Everyone has within themselves the wherewithal do determine their own understanding of the line, and the point at which it is crossed. A kiddy-fiddling priest and a kiddy-fiddling atheist are both profoundly aware that what they are doing is wrong.

A cardinal who covers up for a sex offender and an atheist who does the same are equally conscious of the implications of their actions.

Somehow, the god squad has the idea that people who think it's neat to download pornographic pictures of eight year-olds from the internet, have consciously made a decision that it's "ok" to do it.

They know it isn't.

And it makes not a jot of difference if they are religious or atheist.

When they are caught, atheists don't say "but kiddyporn is not a crime, because I'm an atheist and my moral compass says it's ok"?

No, they are fully aware of their wrongdoing. Some are so unable to live with the shame, they top themselves.

Meanwhile, it's apparently ok in the church to cover up a fellow-priest's peccadillos. One can only assume that in their hearts they think they are "pure", and what they have done isn't wrong, really.

On balance, I'd say the atheists have more chance of developing a sense of right and wrong, simply because they have to think about it as individuals.

GP, what makes me so cross is

a) your relentless pushing of god as an objective source of morality. please give me ONE moral truth which you get from your god, and please tell me why it is objective. if you cannot, what the hell is the point of your sermon? what in the end, are you expecting people to do in order to discover this objective morality?

b) your offensiveness and your dishonesty. you claim that you have never denied my moral sense. so what does the title "if you can get away with it, just do it" actually mean? it is one thing to be insulting. to do so whilst pretending not to is slimy.

there is nothing difficult about the questions you posed me. but they are all secondary. none suggest to me any problems with my previous post.

I agree with the preamble, Grey, but not with the conclusion.

>>You essentially have to assume all actions are selfish then because people choose to do them (including the man who lays down his life to save others). The problem with this is that is makes the concept of 'selfish' meaningless.<<

I would come to entirely the opposite view.

The fact that all actions are motivated by a form of self-interest, whether that involves survival - "I think I will run away now" - or self-gratification - "I think I'll save the drowning child because I'll be a hero" - does not invalidate the concept of self-interest.

In fact, they are both examples of how self-interest, self-preservation or simply selfishness itself, are clearly driving the choices we make. At the point where my fear of being branded a coward (because there are people around watching) outweighs my fear of drowning myself, is the point at which I dive in.

Of course, some people would simply dive in regardless. They are described as "brave", and bravery is entirely independent of religious or atheistic leanings.

(As an interesting aside, what exactly is a "universal", and why could Da Vinci not paint one?)

>>...without a supernatural God, there is no real reason to obey any particular moral system (as only subjective possibilities of morality exist)<<

As I pointed out earlier, this is very much beside the point. There is exactly the same reason to obey your own "particular moral system" as there is to obey any other, regardless of the existence or otherwise of a supernatural God

Grey,

I very much I think that your failure to reproduce the quote from Blackburn in context does you no favours. He is not saying what you are arguing he is saying.

The full(er) quote:

‘No god wrote the laws of good and bad behaviour into the cosmos.
Nature has no concern for good or bad, right or wrong’.

The conclusion: "So without something outside of nature, he is saying those concepts don't exist" is a bit wacky mate. It's pretty obvious he is not saying this at all. He is saying that there are no moral absolutes written into nature (nor by extension humans), which is the conclusion reached when a supernatural God is posited as writing them.

In fact, when taken as a full quote, he is not "making a clear concise statement" about anything you seem to be arguing about at all. He actually makes the case AGAINST you.

*It is an easy thing to say that we are machines but the implications are enormous – complete absence of free will for a start.*

GP, I know of no evidence of any "ghosts" in your machine. But
then even you would know the difference between machines and
organisms, which are biological entities.

As to so called free will, it is up to much debate as to how free
it really is. Susan Greenfield did an interesting experiment, which
showed that the brain starts to act a long time before you conciously
decide anything.

This is exactly why neuroscience is so interesting. Its providing
more and more answers as to how the mind works and what the mind is,
the brain does.

You are only ever aware of a tiny part of what is going on in the
brain, as various neural circuits compete. At any time you are feeling
sad, happy, anxious, horny, etc and all these feelings cloud your
judgement and thought processes, even if you don't stop to think
about them.

In fact when trauma strikes, perhaps you see a snake, perhaps a lion
roars 6ft behind you, we can show that your amygdala kicks in,
your adrenelin kicks in, you act a long time before you stop to
ponder about the situation. Your fight or flight response acts
without you thinking.

So if somebody was drowning, many would act without contemplating
their navels about it for long periods of time. Both genes
and environment play a role in how our brain has evolved, so
both would play a role in the final result. How much was really
free about those instinctive reactions, is very much open to scientific debate.

GP: "No, I have not said that all atheists have to or should start stealing."

Sorry GP. I made a large logical leap there without explaining the intervening steps.

I was responding to:

GP: "If a person is confident they can get away with stealing though there is absolutely no reason not to do so"

I inferred you believe an absolute set of morals provides another reason not to steal. I agree, as every absolute basis for morality I know of includes "thou shalt not steal". But you also infer this absolute prohibition is much better at preventing people from stealing than any of the reasons I supplied. I don't agree.

Here is a reason why. One test is to look at the people who steal, and compare the proportion who have absolute values and to those that don't. If the proportion is lower for absolutists it tends to support your position - belief in absolute morality does effect behaviour, but if they were the same or higher it would tend to support mine. Unfortunately I couldn't find the figures for that test, so instead I used incarceration rates as a proxy for stealing, and an explicitly declared preference for religion or atheism as a proxy for absolute values.

Going by the earlier link, US atheists get jailed less than 1/10th of the number of times the religious do. Figures from the UK government link say 1% of the prision population are atheists, and it appears around 4% of UK residents say they are atheists (around the same as the US, actually), which would make them 1/4th of the rate of the religious.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hosb1501.pdf

Yes, its long thread of reasoning which I compressed into a few sentences. I didn't mean to imply that you claimed atheists steal more than others. You didn't.

Grey: "so why wouldn't someone try to get whatever they can.."

The issue here is why most people don't behave like that, and in particular whether religion effects their behaviour. You gave us lots of erudite words Grey, but none came close to answering that question.

Rstuart...Okay, now I am just confused by your comments....
Isn't someone who has 'no religion' an atheist?

The study you link has 32% of people in prison having 'no religion' (compared with the general population who 15.5% claim they have no religion)

Even if you don't think they are atheists....certainly this is the figure that should pertain to the discussion at hand, as we seem to be contrasting religion versus no religion?

Of course, claimed religious status is a poor indicator of true religious belief. This is why many more recent studies look at church attendance and involvement/regular prayer etc, rather than mere acceptance of a label.

It's not so surprising that you get so confused Grey, you can't even distinguish between those who say they have no religious affliations and those who positively identify as atheist.

In fact the prison population that identifies as atheist is even less than rstuart said, it's less than 1% of the 30% with no religion (i.e. less than 0.3% of the proson population), around 0.2% on the tabled data.

Rstuart...(Sorry Bugsy...I'll have to respond to you tomorrow)

You quote http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm as a source for saying atheists are drastically under-represented in U.S. prisons, however even looking briefly at this link gives reason to be skeptical about the figures.

To start with, there is no released study with these figures. It looks more like one of those urban legend emails that gets sent around. It uses the name of "Denise Golumbaski" who was a RA on this paper
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpus97.pdf from around the same time 1997, but a quick glance at the paper shows there are no religion stats in it, AND a much more damning problem...the paper shows quite clearly that there were 1.7 MILLION adults in prison (and the study also has 3.9 million adults on probation/parole).

The article you link to has a total of under 100,000 for people in prison. A glaring discrepancy if the source was truly an RA from this paper.

If you have something that has a solid reference, I'd be happy to read it, but from this article, I really think you would be better off not using it (which, from google searches seems not to be the norm...as almost every 'skeptic' likes to quote this somewhat dubious page as authoritative). Although I did find one site of skeptics who felt it was best not to use it
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/the_rational_response_squad_radio_show/the_rational_response_squad/5584

Grey: "Isn't someone who has 'no religion' an atheist?"

No Grey, they are not. They haven't bothered to think about it one way or the other. Usually they are younger, and have below average education. Their crime rates are typically higher than the average population. You might say that is because they haven't established a firm moral code for themselves, but then again since people who are younger and less well educated have higher crime rates regardless of stated religion, it may be something else.

Grey: "Of course, claimed religious status is a poor indicator of true religious belief."

True to an extent. The "no religion" group is an excellent case in point. In the US, where saying you don't having a religion is akin to saying you carry the plague, some of this group claims to be affiliated with a religion. Thus "no religion" group is corresponding smaller in the US than the UK - by about 10%. Obviously they wouldn't fit your definition of religious.

Be that as it may, it would only effect the results by 20% or so. If the atheist rates were equal to the religious ones, and recall my argument only requires equal or less, then you might have a point. The 400% difference blows that point away.

Now Grey, don't get too confused will you? Haven't learned the difference between US State and Federal prisons yet?

To quote from your linked paper:

"Federal inmates were surveyed for the first time
in 1991. During the period that interviews were
conducted, 1,409 State prisons held
1,059,607 inmates, and 127 Federal
prisons held 89,072 inmates. Since 1991,
when the previous survey was conducted,
the State and Federal prison population
grew by 51%."

Now, it becomes obvious that the number of Federal inmates is approximately 8.4% (in 1991)

Now at Table 1.15 "Table 1.15. Number of sentenced inmates in Federal prisons, by the most serious offense, 1990 and 1995-97"

We see the total as being 98,944 inmates held by federal prisons in 1997, but that is certainly within the limits of error, because people get incarcerated and released on an ongoing basis, as evidenced by the 3856 held in temporary custody (in first link). It is quite apparent that Denise Golumbaski worked for a Federal agency and supplied data on Federal prisons and is not an "urban myth".

To try and have this evidence discredited by a confusion on your part won't stand. What you should do now is try change tactics and claim that it is irrelevant to the discussion, even though you have already engaged with it and tried to discredit it.

Ludwig,

I would go the other way. Governments are chasing their tales because the plebs are demanding the government to fix their every woe. It's impossible to pass laws for every eventuality and all human behaviour. The Nanny state is a failure. It breeds people who take no responsibility for their own lives, and no respect for themselves. It also disempowers people who have an ounce of common sense.

Grey,

I found the US figures hard to swallow myself, which is why I quoted the UK figures. For what its worth, I thought Denise Golumbaski's signature and title lent it weight - urban legends tend to avoid such easily verifiable facts. The FBI and Ms Golumbaski have had 10 years to publish an objection, and AFAICT they haven't.

But on reflection you are right in one aspect - my choice of "declared Atheist" was fortuitous. Declared Atheists (as opposed to someone who doesn't bother to say what they believe in) are a fairly well defined mob. They have higher education levels, higher income levels, and since declaring yourself to be an atheist carries some stigma, particularly in the US, they have thought long and hard about their moral stance. Where my good luck comes in is that people who have good education, high levels of income, and have spent a long time thinking about society and what makes it work aren't likely to be criminals. If atheists tended to come from the other end of society the figures would of been reversed. Theists come from a broad cross section of society and so you would expect their crime rates would match the general population - which is in fact what you see. If there was some way of selecting well educated, higher income, pious theists I expect their figures would be similar to the atheists.

What triggered this thought was seeing posts on the link you dislike from sociologists, who said the figures were essentially meaningless because religion was a lousy way to predict crime rates. Having a job, race, gender, income levels, assets - these all show good correlation to crime rates. Religion doesn't - which is what your and my searches of the www seem to reflect, BTW, because if they did someone would be crowing about it.

Which, of course, all goes to support my point. Having a absolute basis for your morals, as opposed to an absolute moral system has no effect on behaviour.

Pericles – you say: “How about being your own "ultimate authority"?” Of course an atheist can be their own ultimate authority. That is exactly what the original article was saying. The point is though that all moral statements then by an individual have only the weight or authority of that individual.

But you immediately contradict yourself by then making pronouncements about the wrongdoing of others, as you perceive them, and you expect others to take notice of what you say. No, if we are our own ultimate authorities then by definition we don’t need to listen to anyone else. The child abuser just has to say that by his own ultimate authority he has not done wrong and no one can say that that is incorrect.

In contrast, it is quite correct to condemn hypocritical Christians who say one thing and do another. They claim that there is a standard of objective morality given by God that they aspire to and so it makes sense to measure them against that standard. But there is no standard for the atheist – he is his/her own ultimate authority and he/she can declare anything to be “moral” for themselves, including abusing children if they so desire.

Yabby – you say: “even you would know the difference between machines and
organisms, which are biological entities”. The defining characteristic of a machine is not what it is made of – it can be made of anything. What defines something as a machine is simply that it has no control over what it does: outside forces or the nature of its physical make-up compel it to do or not do things.

If people are machines then, appearances to the contrary, we have no control over any of our actions, thoughts or beliefs. All these things are driven by the mindless physics of matter. And if that is true then all discussion and debate is just a waste of time. But of course, if it is true then we can’t stop ourselves from doing whatever we happen to do anyway!

my god. GP really believes this crap. he really believes christians are aspiring to an objective morality.

GP, organisms of various species do in fact have brains, that can
be programmed by their environment. Now if a church, sect, cult
etc gets hold of a 5 year old child and brainwashes its mind to
believe certain things, how free is that child really?

US, you would go the other way? You mean towards a State in which, 'íf you can get away with it, just do it’ becomes the main rule?

We don’t need laws for every eventuality of human behaviour, but we sure as hell do need wide-ranging laws, in order to uphold a functional economy and social structure.

With a much weaker rule of law, the average citizen would become disempowered and the aggressive and ruthless would rule the roost. That’s very straightforward.

And with pressures on our quality of life increasing at a rapid rate, strong governance is going to become all the more important.

GP, you are getting confused.

>>if we are our own ultimate authorities then by definition we don’t need to listen to anyone else. The child abuser just has to say that by his own ultimate authority he has not done wrong and no one can say that that is incorrect<<

That is nonsense. Of course we can say it is incorrect. Moreover, the abuser knows it too.

It does not follow that having made a decision to act on ones own authority, "no-one can say that is incorrect". You are master of your own actions, but you still have to answer to your fellow human beings for the consequences of that decision.

If I make a business decision on my own authority that fails the corporate governance test, and the Board takes me to task, I cannot defend myself on the basis "it was my decision, on my own authority, so by definition it must have been right".

You are confusing "being responsible for a decision" and "being right, simply by reason of taking responsibility for a decision". That's a non sequitur.

Similarly, when a child abuser breaks the law, the act doesn't suddenly somehow justify itself. Society says that it is wrong. The law says that it is wrong. The individual knows perfectly well that what they are doing is wrong, and that if caught, will be punished.

I know this doesn't make a great deal of sense to anyone who has never had to think these things through for themselves. But that's the way it is.

>>They claim that there is a standard of objective morality given by God that they aspire to and so it makes sense to measure them against that standard<<

That sounds all very well and good.

But first you have to choose your God.

Because as far as I can tell, they all have different rules. Catholics disagree with Anglicans disagree with Evangelists disagree with Opus Dei etc. etc. ad infinitum

And they're all following the same God, for goodness' sake.

Talk to me again about God's objective morality when you find one.

Pericles – how can you say that an individual, in this case a child abuser, can be his own ultimate authority (and therefore can declare that it is not wrong for he himself to abuse children), and simultaneously say that the child abuser knows that he is acting wrongly? If he is his own ultimate authority and he tells himself child abuse is not wrong then he will not believe he is acting wrongly.

You then go on to say that he has to answer to his fellow human beings, most of whom you believe would say he is wrong. So what is the ultimate authority here? You are the one who said that the individual should be able to be the ultimate authority of what is moral but now you are indicating it is the majority opinion of society that is the ultimate authority. Which is it? You can’t have two ultimate authorities.

You seem to be saying now that because a society has the power to enforce its will over the individual such exertion of raw power makes something “right”. Really?

The question here is what is the source of actual right and wrong, not who has the power to enforce acquiescence to what is declared to be right and wrong. I agree with you that in a godless world every person is free to define for themselves what is right and wrong – the individual is the ultimate authority. And this does not cease to be the case just because the heavy hand of society may come down on them.

Yabby – I’m not sure where you are going with this. Have you abandoned the view that people are machines? If we are machines then we are not free at all in any sense, no matter what happens to a child. It is only if we are not machines does it make any sense to even begin to talk about the possible abuses that can be made against a child’s freedom.

*Have you abandoned the view that people are machines? *

GP, my view has always been that machines are built by people,
wheras organisms evolve. Machines can be programmed but
clearly so can people.

Take a look at the children of indocrination. Most simply
repeat the mantras that they were taught by their society,
cult or religion. Had Osama bin Laden been born in Melbourne,
there is a high chance that he would be a Christian. Had
GP been born in Iraq, he would most likely be a muslim.

So where is all this "free" will ? Clearly its not so free.

Ludwig,

'íf you can get away with it, just do it’ becomes the main rule?'

Not exactly. But if the law is getting too complicated, step back and think what you're going to realistically achieve.

'With a much weaker rule of law, the average citizen would become disempowered and the aggressive and ruthless would rule the roost. That’s very straightforward.'

Not really so straight forward. As it happens, the rich have good Lawyers to exploit the vast complexity of law, while the poor don't.

'And with pressures on our quality of life increasing at a rapid rate, strong governance is going to become all the more important.'

Strong governance can actually erode our quality of life too. The tighter you make all laws to protect every single citizen's enjoyment and safety in every case the more restricted and less spontaneous life can be.

They're all little things, but they add up to a lot. I look at footage from the 80s at the cricket, with people lying on the grass, bringing their own esky with food and beer, tapping beach balls around and running on the field to see the pitch and players after the game. Hell we cant even have a drink on a Friday afternoon after work as the company can get sued if one of us drink drives. We are losing part of life with this terrible attitude to risk that's all encompassing these days.

Give people more chance to regulate their own behaviour, and use existing laws rather than a draconian no fun attitude because you don't want to infringe on the rights of the 80yo grandmother's enjoyment of the mosh pit at a rock concert.

I think the world worked a lot better when people were given some opportunity to regulate their own behaviour, and the police were given some chance to use their own initiative and common sense. Now everyone expects all laws to be all-encompassing and if there isn't a sign that explicitly says not to do something it's open slather. The law treats everyone like children and then expects to produce adults.

GP, it would appear that you are still confusing two issues here.

Possibly deliberately, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

>>how can you say that an individual, in this case a child abuser, can be his own ultimate authority (and therefore can declare that it is not wrong for he himself to abuse children), and simultaneously say that the child abuser knows that he is acting wrongly?<<

The piece that I disagree with is the part in brackets - "and therefore can declare that it is not wrong".

Child abusers come in many shapes and sizes, but I doubt that many, if any, would be unaware that sexually molesting children is bad.

Let me give an example.

A gentleman of the cloth has lived a celibate life, and finally gives in to the temptation and has his wicked way with a ten year-old. Does he at that point declare "this is not wrong, what I am doing, but perfectly natural and healthy".

I think not.

He knows perfectly well that it is wrong.

Why then do you imagine that someone who is not a practising Christian, making the same decision, is not similarly aware?

Ah, but exactly what is he aware of, I hear you ask, since it is not God who is instructing him?

He will have self-assessed that what he is doing is evil, because he is in tune with the concept of right and wrong. That is the reason why the acts are performed in secret.

If the perpetrator can indeed "declare that it is not wrong for he himself to abuse children", there would be no need for secrecy, would there? It would be full speed ahead, and damn the torpedoes.

There is a difference, you see, between doing something and knowing something.

Except when it comes to punishment. As a priest, when you offend, you move to a new diocese. As a layperson, you go to jail.

Prima facie, it would apear to be less wicked to abuse God's law, than to contravene secular moral standards.

Eh, GP?

Bugsy, Sorry mate, but you haven't done your research...

Firstly, the data is purportedly from the 'Federal Bureau' of prisons and is timed to line up with the survey from said organisation which contains details on all prison populations....not just federal. But even if you accept that only federal statistics were released in email, the difference is still outside the standard error given in the real report.

Secondly, the survey where all the information is gathered is also available and contains no questions regarding religious affiliation. This makes it highly improbable that the information was easily available for response to an email request.

Finally, urban legends like this often invoke the name of someone who sounds 'authoratative' (which the poster/emailer has personally confirmed!).

Rstuart....David Nicholls, the president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia Inc., tells us that atheism is the default ethical position of humanity...shouldn't this mean that people of 'no religion' would be considered atheists?

Rstuart
"What triggered this thought was seeing posts on the link you dislike from sociologists, who said the figures were essentially meaningless because religion was a lousy way to predict crime rates."

Actually, they said that not using a multivariate analysis with the many other possible factors make statistical results meaningless, not that religion as a factor in and of itself was meaningless.

of course, all this is beside the point, as the question is not 'does a particular belief system cause people to obey the law more than others?' (Note: the important phrase is 'obey the law', not 'behave morally', which would be nigh impossible to determine considering the different belief systems have different moral rules). This isn't to say your question is bad or meaningless, just that the question being discussed is whether there is an objective foundation for morality without reference to God.

Bugsy
"In fact, when taken as a full quote, he is not "making a clear concise statement" about anything you seem to be arguing about at all. He actually makes the case AGAINST you."

I really think you need to read a bit more carefully. The quote is from the conclusion of his book 'A very short introduction to ethics"
and he does indeed say that he cannot find a foundation for ethics because nature doesn't have a concern for 'right' or 'wrong', or from earlier in the book where he discusses how nature has 'is', but no 'ought'. Blackburn's solution is naive optimism that we should accept there must be some sort of foundation we don't know about and behave as if our moral views match it (i.e. attempt to enforce our views on others).

Grey,

While the data quoted may be a myth, as it is difficult to corroborate without contacting the US Federal BOP the figures actually do line up somewhat. Your 'debunking' of the figures leaves a lot to be desired however. Lets go over it again:

The figure as at Sept 30 of all inmates in Federal Prison (NOTE: NOT "State and Federal, just Federal) stands at 98,944 inmates.
Refer TABLE 1.15
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpus97.pdf

The data presented in the Swift article link states that at 5 March 1997 the total number of inmates was 96968.

The data does not not appear to be "timed to line up" (they were nearly 6 months apart), there was no "standard of error" presented, even though the difference in the numbers was 1976 inmates (or less than 2% and less than the numbers held in custody and not surveyed). If I am in error, could you please point me to where the where the "standard error" was stated for the Federal inmate total?

Whatever, it sure as hell wasn't the order of magnitude you're making it out to be.

After cruising around the Federal Bureaus website, it does appear that they do actually take religious data, although it appears that they don't release it in their publications. They register most offenders through the entry surveys, for chaplaincy services etc.

As for the Blackburn quote, whatever he was saying (and I'm sure your later interpretation was closer to what he was trying to say), it sure wasn't "So without something outside of nature, he is saying those concepts [ie morality etc] don't exist." That's your interpretation, not his. It's a "god of the gaps" argument as far as I can tell.

I read plenty carefully, I suggest you write more carefully. Mate.

Oh, and just as a disambiguation on your definitions there Grey old fella:

Many people state they are non-religious and yet retain a belief in God or Gods. A lot of people even here state they are not religious and yet don't class themselves as atheistic in that they do believe in a higher power or multi-dimensional beings that deliver eggs once a year or whatever. The point is, that to state that you are an atheist means that you do not believe that any gods exist (by definition), one can still believe 'religion' is bunk and not be an atheist (I actually like these people, they are far less certain about things).

There you go, I hope you are less confused, because you repeated it so many times it was getting annoying.

Grey: "Actually, they said that not using a multivariate analysis ..."

I don't recall seeing those words on any web page I looked at. To see if I missed some I googled the terms below, which is just the original search I did with the word "multivariate" included.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Golumbaski+multivariate+FBI+prison

That search returns no hits, so I am pretty sure no page I looked at said anything about multivariate analysis.

Grey: "question being discussed is whether there is an objective foundation for morality"

Is it? I provided the prison in my answer to this post from Graham:

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7544#118236

Read it. Its a hypothetical conversation between myself and a thief, where I try to convince the thief stealing is wrong. I loose the argument. If the thief's behaviour does indeed depend on whether he has an "objective foundation for his morality" then I would loose in real life, and we would be overrun with secular thieves. But what I try and show is when you measure what happens in real life, to real people who stole, it appears whether they have an "objective foundation to their morality" doesn't effect their behaviour.

The point I am making is whether there is, or is not, an "objective foundation for morality" is irrelevant. The question is about as meaningful as asking how many angels fit on the head of a pin. I don't want to get in the way of you seeking an answer it of course, but don't for a second think I am debating about it one way of the other. I don't care what the answer is. Frankly I think this sort of logic is about a relevant to human behaviour as Freud's theories on penis envy.

Rstuart...I may have been getting my wires crossed with thinking about other recent posts. Essentially correlating claimed religion with any other variable may or may not be useful (based on the research results). I would suggest it isn't (as I think actions and involvement in religious activities would be a better indicator of true belief), but the other point is that any such study MUST do a multivariate analysis as there are many other contributing factors. Without such analysis any suggested results are completely worthless. For example, you can find a correlation between women taking Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and reduction in risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), whilst in fact HRT increases the risk of CHD, but other variables involved in those taking HRT were the real reason behind the reduction in risk of CHD.

Regarding your hypothetical dialog. Unfortunately, it only shows that objective morality is not sufficient, as opposed to showing that it is not necessary.

Bugsy...
As I said before, the urban legend version contains no particular indication of where the population of inmates is from.

I would also advice taking your data from a table that represents all the inmates, not just the serious crime inmates...keep reading and you will see it is around 112,000

More investigation shows this difference to be well outside the standard error for the statistics....

Grey,

If you think that sample size has a "standard error" on surveys, then I think you need to finish your remedial stats classes.

The 'urban legend' version also does state where the data comes from, but there's no independent or verifiable publications that back it up, that's what makes it unreliable.

The reasons that you fabricated for dismissing the data are insufficient and erroneous.

So, I accept your apology on your error.

Grey: "such study MUST do a multivariate analysis"

OK, OK. I am not disagreeing. I was just pointing out it seems to be generally accepted by sociologists the correlation between crime rates and religion is lower than for other variables.

Its not a particularly relevant point. Its hard to say anything about the religious as they are a pretty broad bunch. In particular in most societies saying you belong to a church the default position of anybody who hasn't thought about it too much. That is why I choose people who specifically declared themselves to be atheists. Atheists seem to be a tightly self selected mob in comparision. They are people who have almost certainly thought about their moral position, and it isn't derived from any absolute source. Try as you might, I think you will have trouble finding any figures showing them to be over represented in prisons. This is in direct contradiction to what the article says.

Grey: "Regarding your hypothetical dialog."

The dialogue wasn't written by me, if that is what you mean. It was posted by the Graham - the author of the article. It is his favourite line of argument. He says a mind that doesn't believe in absolute morals is not compelled by logic to follow any morals, and ergo they don't. The problem with the argument is the mind is not a logic machine. People do things that aren't logical all the time. That in turn means it's irrelevant whether objective derivation of morals is possible.

This is a different like of reasoning to my last post, but arrives at the same conclusion. And it is of course it is again the reverse of what Graham argues in his article.

I am surprised nobody has bothered to quote another set of figures. Unlike the ones I gave, they are pretty clear. There is a strong negative correlation between how secular a society is and its crime rates.