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.