Crosspost from [email protected].
An overview of studies which investigate correlations between morality and religious vs. secular / atheist ideologies presented by Phil Zuckerman who is a professor of sociology and secular studies at the Claremont colleges in California, USA.
Summary: Atheists / secular people not only have morals but are even more moral than religious people.
Note: Of course moral is a matter of perspective. In this context we agree that compassion and empathy are our foundations of moral.
It’s well established that Religious people are immoral and quite typically horrible people.
With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.
― Steven Weinberg
@FlyingSquid @YoBuckStopsHere
Or patriotism.
Tribalism is basically the problem.“Quotemining is a rigorous proof” -W.V.O. Quine probably
When did I say anything about proof?
If this is all just a game about writing a string of characters, then why are you complaining about my comment?
If it’s not then why are you endorsing a false statement?
Do you really not understand that people can say things which other people can agree with without being able to prove them? What do you want, a morality survey?
I understand it. It’s not a logical action. You’re not some misunderstood super genius, you’re a standard internet poster who blindly accepts and endorses false statements simply because it agrees with your preconceived notions.
I like how this entire time you’re arguing for why you posted it (which nobody actually cares about), and not actually defending the statement made.
What are you even talking about now?
I have a friend who recently got caught cheating in school. At about 40, I’m headed back as well. The other day I mentioned that I needed to take a math placement test (I haven’t taken any math classes in about 2 decades). She said that I should have my husband take them for me.
- No, I want to learn, and not struggle which I would if I was placed in a higher level math than I am currently capable of understanding
- It’s obviously the wrong thing to do
Guess what she originally majored in…
Christian Theology
Hey I do know a few truly compassionate and empathic religious people. In my own experience they are definitely more of an exception than the norm though.
Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot beg to differ. Even Hitler was irreligious.
Hitler was not really irreligious. Some historians claim he remained a Christian, despite disliking the church. Others claim he was not a Christian in the traditional sense of the word, but did keep some level of reverence for Jesus.
The most commonly held belief it seems is that Hitler was a deist, believing in some god that would protect the German people, though not necessarily the Judeo-Christian god. He did however remain a member of the Catholic church until his suicide.
Regardless of his own beliefs, he did use religion as a tool to further his genocidal plans.
They also had black hair
Between that and this, atheist cyclists be feeling real smug by now.
Nope.
Yes.
“We agree that compassion and empathy are our foundations of moral”
So something that is widely rejected as irrelevant in moral philosophy.
By changing the definitions you can falsely equivocate anything, what an intelligent person…
Since when is this rejected as irrelevant? Many moral frameworks have their roots in such emotions instead of dogmatic ideologies.
I established that to avoid discussions like “ye, but which moral?”, to make the setting clear.
In which one do compassion and empathy make someone more moral?
Morality is a judgement on someone’s actions. You can be empathetic and immoral, like a sadist. Sadists can score very high on empathy scales, because they want to create feelings in their targets, just bad ones.
Not very moral.Now, compassion and empathy can be tools to help someone act in a more moral way, but they are not in and of themselves moral or good.
In which one do compassion and empathy make someone more moral?
For example in the following:
- Utilitarianism
- Ethics of Care
- Virtue Ethics
- Altruism
- Humanitarian Ethics
Morality is a judgement on someone’s actions.
Are you sure?
I think morality can also encompass the inner states and views of a person and not just their actions. Or do you think, for example, that someone who kills someone else by accident is equally bad as someone who does this intentionally?Sadists can score very high on empathy scales, because they want to create feelings in their targets, just bad ones.
Not very moral.Wouldn’t you agree that sadists are more extreme and more rare individuals than the general population?
You don’t need to answer that, since what I said above would apply to such extreme cases as well.Now, compassion and empathy can be tools to help someone act in a more moral way, but they are not in and of themselves moral or good.
Depends on your ethical framework. Often these emotions are the origins of a larger ethical constructs. And as I pointed out they can indeed be significant for the moral judgement about someone.
However, I didn’t claim in my post and parent comment that those emotions alone are an isolated moral framework. I just wanted to point out that the studies in the video use moral frameworks as a tool of measure, which have their origins in such emotions. Thereby excluding other ethical frameworks which root, e.g., in dogmatism.
Why are you citing a bunch of consequentialist ethics? At the very least you could try to pick ethical theories that don’t focus on outcomes, but instead you are so incompetent that you can’t even find a superficial defence.
What you actually need to show is not that compassion and empathy can be a motivating factor, but that they are a necessary factor for morally good behaviour even within these frameworks.
“I didn’t claim in my post … that these emotions alone are an isolated moral framework”
Nobody here is accusing you of that. They are accusing you (and presumably the video by extension) of choosing an insufficient basis for the conclusion.
Nobody is confused by what you are claiming, it’s extraordinarily trivial and simply false.
Why are you citing a bunch of consequentialist ethics?
I was asked for ethical frameworks in which compassion and empathy play an important role. I delivered.
At the very least you could try to pick ethical theories that don’t focus on outcomes
Didn’t I?
From the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
The only consequentialist ethical framework I listed is utilitarianism. The others don’t strictly fit the definition of a consequentialist ethic.
instead you are so incompetent
Thank you for these kind words. They really shed a light on your character.
What you actually need to show is not that compassion and empathy can be a motivating factor, but that they are a necessary factor for morally good behaviour even within these frameworks.
And why do I need to do this? My whole point was to hint to the origins of such ethical concepts.
choosing an insufficient basis for the conclusion
In case you mean the selection of ethical frameworks, which serve as a basis to judge moral behaviour in the studies reviewed in the video, it wasn’t my intention to provide an elaborate definition. You can probably inspect those within the studies themselves. I just wanted to provide a hint towards those which are used and thought it was sufficient to abbreviate it the way I did.
it’s extraordinarily trivial and simply false
You keep making claim after claim and while I am defending my words, refuting your accusations, you don’t prove yours.
“empathy and compassion play an important role”
No. You were not asked about “important”, you were asked about “necessary”. Empathy and compassion may play a role, but they are not required in the majority of the ethical theories you cite.
Remember saying that a group is more moral than another based on X property, requires that X property be necessary for morally good action (or necessary for greater moral action). These two properties claimed (compassion and empathy) are not necessary for greater moral action, you have admitted this yourself. Therefore the conclusion is false.
“While I am defending my words… you don’t prove yours”
You realise that all of my claims are linked together to a unified refutation? You have utterly failed to even address the criticisms I and others have lodged against you. You just say “well of course…” as if agreeing and then go back to asserting the very claim that these criticisms refute.
“to make the setting clear”
Which was that people are considered moral because they engage in behavior that is not intrinsically moral. You realised that directly claiming that atheists are more morally good requires them to engage in morally good behavior, but for some reason (probably because you are a individualistic moral relativist who wouldn’t want to be caught arguing for following moral principles) you wanted to avoid claiming that and so searched for the closest thing that you thought would suffice.
Name calling in a disagreement. Classic internet.
I think individualistic moral relativism is pretty stupid, and apparently you agree even more strongly. Not sure why else you would characterise it as “name-calling”, since it is the only thing I suggested the commenter was.
engage in behavior that is not intrinsically moral
Depends on your definition of “intrinsic moral”. But assuming that we are speaking about the lack of a universal ethical framework, then yes of course. More on that further down.
You realised that directly claiming that atheists are more morally good requires them to engage in morally good behavior, but for some reason […] you wanted to avoid claiming that and so searched for the closest thing that you thought would suffice.
How about you ask me about things you might be wondering about instead of just assuming them?
To say it again in different words: There is not “the” moral. There is a tremendous amount of moral concepts people live by. In order to evaluate moral behaviour in a statistical, scientifc, manner, you need to define the criteria to judge by.
From what I understood, those studies cited in the video use those moral concepts which are rooted in emotions like empathy, which is the basis of the moral a large amount of people live by and even constitutes legislation in a lot of nations worldwide. Which seems like a meaningful choice to me.Those results become worthless if you live by an entirely different moral. For example, someone could come by and find racism, hating women and killing people cool and morally justified due to their ethical framework. To them atheists would be the most immoral people alive and the results of those studies would have an inverted meaning to them.
And to avoid these kinds of fundamental relative ethical discussions, I made clear which moral concept is used as a basis for the analysis.
probably because you are a individualistic moral relativist who wouldn’t want to be caught arguing for following moral principles
No.
“Which is the basis of a lot of morality”
Morally good behavior is not a logical consequence of empathy. Therefore measuring empathy will not tell you anything about morally good behaviour. This is true even in moral relativism, because as you correctly claim the moral system to be judged by still does not intrinsically require empathy.
“Avoid these kinds of fundamental relative discussions”
So you claim to not be a moral relativist, and yet the clear basis for your argument is intrinsic to moral relativism (and contrary to non-relativism). Now to clarify the error you are making is not that you are a moral relativist, it’s that you are asserting that moral relativism makes your argument valid. It doesn’t, it does absolutely nothing to your argument.
“No”
Yes. Firstly, it’s the basis for your flawed defence. Secondly, I can’t claim clairvoyance (you might just be lying) but I think I can build a pretty strong inductive argument that you probably believe the same things as all the hundreds of other pop philosophy anti-realists I’ve debated.
Morally good behavior is not a logical consequence of empathy.
Agreed. I didn’t say that. I try to convey that empathy and compassion can and do serve as the roots of more complex ethical frameworks by which morally good or bad behaviour is then judged by.
Therefore measuring empathy will not tell you anything about morally good behaviour.
That depends on your ethical framework, e.g. whether behaviour is even relevant for a moral judgement.
for your argument
What argument? That I tried to shortly outline the moral frameworks which are used as basis for the classifications made in the studies reviewed in the video?
Yes.
No.
It seems to me that you are interpreting too much into this.Secondly, I can’t claim clairvoyance (you might just be lying)
If you approach this conversation under the assumption that I’m lying we can stop talking right now, since nothing I say will have any value to you. I’m telling you that I don’t see myself as an individualistic moral relativist, take it or leave it, I don’t care.
More importantly, I don’t see how the ethical framework I live by is relevant for our issue here.That issue, as I’m seeing it, started by two things:
- you claimed that empathy and compassion are “widely rejected […] in moral philosophy” which is not true and can already easily be disproven by simply hitting some keywords into a search engine of your choice.
- You seem to have a problem with my note on which moral frameworks the scientists (whose work is reviewed in the video) used to classify their data.
I prefer to focus on that and clear this up instead of derailing the conversation towards irrelevant topics. (I invite you to explain how this matters to you with respect to our issue here, though.)
Agreed"
So you recognise that it is therefore irrelevant, and the conclusion does not follow from the premises (it is invalid). So why are you so slavishly defending it?
“I don’t see myself as a moral relativist… I don’t see how my ethical framework is relevant”
Ok, you are literally too stupid to have this conversation.
The idea that moral judgements come from synthetic frameworks,is moral relativism. You deny that you are a moral relativist (good for you) but the reason I call you one is because the assumptions you make require that moral systems be synthetic. (Since you read a philosophy article you must know what this means).
So either you are a moral relativist or you are lying. I’m a rational person and cannot prove that you are lying so I defer to believing you to be a moral relativist who simply doesn’t understand what it entails.
The counter argument that I hear from other atheists that aren’t anti-religious is that religions makes stupid people more moral than they would be if they didn’t have the looming threat of angering their sky daddy.
I have never heard that argument from an atheist. Only from religious people who claim there’s no morality without their god.
The dude who made the McDonald’s documentary had a show putting opposite people together. A Christian lived with a Muslim family. He said that if you don’t get your values from god, he couldn’t imagine where you got them. He couldn’t imagine empathy.
Again empathy doesn’t entail morally good actions, any more than a sense of smell entails a popular choice of perfume.
That’s a completely different argument, and one I’ve had with many religious people, but that’s not what I’m referring to.
Empathy and logic require intelligence, yet many people are too stupid to be empathetic or logical, and religion provides them with a much simpler reason to do the right thing when no one is looking.
Can you give an example of how this reasoning is suppose to work? Trying to parse this the only behaviors coming to mind are the ‘fire & brimstone’ type. The 'I hate those people ‘cause the pastor said the book says to’.
“Can you give an example of how this reasoning is supposed to work”
Easily. Fear of punishment is a deterrent1.
- Yes fear of punishment is absolutely a deterrent, it simply isn’t a strong deterrent because most crime goes unreported and punished (this would not be a concern about an omniscient god). The fact that simple things like additional security are very effective, shows that fear of negative consequences (aka punishment) is actually effective.
Technically most non-philosopher atheists seem to ascribe to moral anti-realism, which logically leads to the moral permissibility of all actions. It’s actually them engaging in erroneous logic that they adhere to morally good behavior.
Pff no. They just find a way to use the religion to justify what they’re doing
Some will, but I’d posit that’s not the dumb people that I’m referring to that are responsible for that. It’s more the smart immoral people that are using religion to manipulate other less intelligent and less logical faithful people into doing evil in the name of religion.
No. It just gives them an excuse. They can be “forgiven”.
This.
“No matter what I do, it’s ok because sky daddy forgives me! I can be as shitty as I want to people and just feel bad and confess later, and everything is ok!”
Ever wonder why religions are incredibly popular among criminals?
This certainly doesn’t seem to be a practice among religious individuals any more than non-religious. One still has to factor in that even if “sky-daddy” forgives you, there is still social pressure to “atone” for one’s actions. So trying to pin poor behaviour on belief in a “forgiving sky-daddy”, requires proving that the social pressures disappear, and good luck with that.
Like “born again” virgins?
Using religion to protect from the social pressure is the whole point
“Only god can judge me!”
And they get away with it far too often, without even a sense of guilt to slow them down
“Moral”
Religion is the opiate of the masses, for certain
The problem is that the “moral” things they induce people to do are many times anything but
