heatseeker wrote:
Astaroth wrote:
no no... and NO!
without repeating Brahm too much....
1st of all... morality isn't some kind devine intervention
2nd of all... morality differs from cultural to culture
3rd of all... whenever a person enters a relationship with other people in a society they also sign a social contract: They need to follow a set of rules in order to surstain society's existence and their own right to be a part of it. Negative actions such as murder, raping and stealing within a society has never benefitted anyone in a society and nobody ever liked to get exposed to any of them, thus isn't not okay. In old days you would either have been killed yourself, paid a dept to the family, and/or kicked out of the given society.
Morality derrives from feelings and a sense of justice. Without feelings we wouldn't be able to feel sorrow, and thus wouldn't care if one of your family was murdered. But without feelings and morality societies and mankind wouldn't exist in the first place; we simply wouldn't be able to survive, even animals living in groups have social contracts, despite being primitive.
Sure, as we advance in technology, and as society grow it may be too abstract to think of social contracts, cuz your neighbour have his own life and so does people living 50 km from you. But I think it is everyone's interest to be able to walk on the streets without getting killing and raped (in that order). And even though you might not care all that much for safety of other people in other countries, you still want to have some sort of contract with them to avoid war.
4th of all... people are able to feel some sort of empathy and sympathy towards other people, even though they are a traits that belongs to the female brain - a trait that derrives from the need to take care of babies and children.
Point 2: Does it? Name a culture that believed in cowardice, theft, or innocent murder as virtuous. Even the Aztecs with their human sacrifice or Hitler didn't believe in murdering innocent people...they believed that they were guilty of something. As such, there are very few differences in morality itself throughout history--just in how that morality is carried out. Thus, evidence of universal law...
Point 3: Again, you guys are not understanding my original point. My point is that atheists who believe in relativism and thus no real "right" and "wrong" are still compelled to do what is considered "right" for the most part. My question is
why do atheists still feel that they should do what is right if there is no universal law established by some type of higher being? Answer me that. You say it is because we have a sense of justice and feel guilty...where does that come from? Guilt is from the sense that we have done something wrong--but how can this be if there is no universal right and wrong?
Point 4: again, so what? Why should we empathize with our fellow man if there's no law that tells us to?
If you'll notice, I'm arguing more for the existence of a universal moral law than the existence of God. And for me, if universal law exists, then some type of higher being has to exist because the law had to come from somewhere. Brahm makes a bit more sense because I think he's arguing that universal law could come from a non-divine source, but to me this doesn't make sense because a law that applies to
everybody could not have come from a human.
2: well, social tabues such as murder and theft has never been accepted, but it doesn't necessarily apply to societies outside your own - cuz if it did we wouldn't have war, genocide and fight over oil. Many states in america believe in death penalty, many countries don't. Thus, no evidence of universal law!.. and re-read my 3rd point
3: I do understand, but you seem to have a hard time understanding what I wrote:
Quote:
why do atheists still feel that they should do what is right if there is no universal law established by some type of higher being?
Because we are human beings who can think for themselves, because the opposite would have a negative effect on ourselves and other people - I guess that's pretty hard to grasp.
Human beings are social creatures, if we want to survive we need to coorperate with the people in our social sphere - and thus you need a set of rules and laws in order to make the wheels spin around. Again social contract.. bla bla bla, yes?!
Besides the social norms we also inherit alot of our parents moral standards, what's right and what's wrong, cuz children are rather egoistic till the age of 7... and they can't think abstract or reflect untill they are 11 or so.
... and I wasn't talking about guilt. And guilt isn't devine either - many christians feel guilt all the time and many people don't feel guilt at all. Depends on your moral standards
4: I have already pointed that out - of course, you don't need to, if you don't want. I don't - but I still have sense of responsibility towards other human beings.
