TamiO wrote:
How are you able to determine between God's will and your own will?
That is not hard to determine. There are irresistible forces that will against me, and I understand those to be the will of God.
I don't agree. I find engaging in some useless and/or irrational activities pleasurable.
If those activities are pleasurable then, they are not useless.
I have been thinking and I have decided that if it were possible to remove remorse from my being I would do that. The past is past and feeling bad about the past is a waste of time for me. When remorse comes up I do not dwell on it, I get on with life.
I do not need remorse to be a good person. Being a good person comes naturally for me. I think before I act. If I mess up I make ammends and try better next time.
edited to add: I came to this conclusion because i went and looked the darn word up in the dictionary. I am using this meaning:
1. Moral anguish arising from repentance for past misdeeds; bitter regret.
You can remove it.
Stimpson wrote:
1a) I think that the emotion of remorse is actually a beneficial thing, from the point of view of society, and that since society is beneficial to individuals, this makes remorse, as well as several other aspects of human nature, useful and beneficial.
Why is it beneficial? I have explained why it is useless. You have only asserted that is something you can’t stop from feeling. If you go the route of saying the pain it causes directs to a future better choice, you are back to the reward/punishment area you so much hate. Again an inconsistency. Which is it? It’s beneficial or I can’t help the emotion?
1b) I disagree with your premise that a person can simply choose to not feel remorse. He could be conditioned not to, but there is a term for such people. They are called psychopaths.
So you are saying it is necessary to feel pain for you in order for you to act subsequently in a good way?
2) I disagree with your conclusion that morality is unnecessary, and furthermore, I fail to see how anybody who values anything more than his own immediate benefit, could reach that conclusion.
Anyone that values more than his own immediate benefit can clearly see the uselessness of morality. The uselessness of having rules he can only enforce on himself and for which he has no accountability to others if he does not enforce them.
Note also that none of the above has anything to do with me being an atheist, either. In fact, most people I know would agree with those points, and most of the people I know are not atheists.
No so, morality is not upheld “just because”. It is because there is a reward/punishment/compliance system that exists.
How? When I feel angry, I can certainly do exercises (such as deep breathing, meditation, etc...) in order to suppress, or even eliminate the feeling. But when the event that made me angry occurred, there was no decision on my part to be angry or not angry.
I can believe we are actually arguing about this. [sarcasm on] So I suppose you get angry for the same reasons you did when you were 5 or 10 [sarcasm off] Of course not, part of maturity is taking care of our emotions. I used to get angry in traffic jams. I don’t anymore. Not one bit. I decided it was no use to get angry in a situation I could do nothing about. So, maybe the first couple of times, I had to do some breathing exercises, but then I got used to not getting angry at traffic jams (it became a thing not to get angry at).
Do you understand that remorse requires time and time and time. It’s just not feeling bad for a couple of seconds, it’s a deep sense of pain that leads to guilt. It is a persistent emotion. It is useless in an atheist context.
If by that you mean the ability to not act based on your emotions, or even the ability to consciously alter your emotional state through mental exercises, then I agree. But your claims imply that you mean more than this. Do you claim to have the ability to actually decide, before you have the emotional response, but after the stimulus, what your emotional response will be?
If so, I am sorry, but I simply don't believe you.
I sorry you don’t but that just tells me you have no recollection of your childhood and definitely you have no children of your own.
Man, the thing kids get angry about. When you grow up, you learn what type of stimulus do not warrant getting angry about so in effect, I know what emotional response I will have before or after the stimulus.
My daughter gets angry because she has to wait her turn. I don’t need scientific books to tell me that when she grow up she will not get angry at that at all. (well, hopefully)
That is not the foundation of it at all. For one thing, this approach to dealing with crimes makes a clear distinction between emotional states and thought processes.
Did you read the link. You have absolutely disregarded it. You absolutely disregard that “I was angry” is not a defense for a crime. And “I was angry” is the first step to the crime.
[Changing subject] People go to anger management classes not to learn how to not act on their anger but to learn how not to get angry for every little thing.
Secondly, it in no way assumes that emotions are voluntary. On the contrary, one aspect of the way this approach works, is that it is understood that emotional responses are not voluntary. The entire framework is based on psychology, and the simple fact is that what you are claiming runs completely counter to current psychological knowledge.
No, your notion is counter to all common fundamental psychological knowledge. [sarcasm on] For you falling in love is an involuntary thing, maybe like magic[sarcasm off]
Man, the ability of philosophers to go on and on about nothing truly amazes me. That entire essay seems to amount to nothing more than drawing a distinction between "feelings" (the involuntary response), and "emotions" (the cognitive interpretation of the feeling). In any event, it is completely irrelevant to what we are discussing, since we are talking about the feeling of remorse.
Remorse is not like pain. Do you understand the definition of remorse, it is not the equivalent of feeling bad for a couple of seconds. It is exactly a cognitive interpretation of deep feelings. To feel guilty requires cognition. How else can you arrive at guilt.
Consider the example I gave from my own past. I no longer possess the "emotion" of remorse over that event, in the context presented in Dr. Solomon's essay. Only the feeling. And the fact remains that even if I were to adopt a completely utilitarian philosophy, whereby I attach absolutely no value to the happiness or pain of others, I am still going to "feel" a certain way when I see other people suffer.
What you are talking about is not remorse and by the way, it absolutely ridiculous that you still feel bad about a banana, get over it. [bad humor on] you are a grown scientists for goodness sake[bad humor off]
If my own values were drastically different than those of society, and I had no means to try to make society better (from my point of view), then I would definitely have a problem. Fortunately, I do not live in such a society.
We will never know? [skepticism on] It is very convenient that you hold mostly the same values that the society you live in has[skepticism off]
For example, if I found myself in Afghanistan 5 years ago under Taliban rule, I would have a real problem. Actions which I would feel morally compelled to take would get me killed. I would have only 3 choices:
1) Die for my beliefs.
2) Leave.
3) Abandon my morals, and try to adopt those of the society I am living in.
I suspect that I would try for number 2, and failing that, choose number 1.
Forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.
This does not follow. Making it into a legal code is not sufficient. For one thing, in a free society, people will not tolerate laws that they find morally unacceptable. And freedom is one of my values. For another thing, even if I could live with a totalitarian society where everybody is forced by law to live the way I think they should, whether they like it or not, that isn't going to stop people from doing bad things when they think they can get away with it.
Why totalitarian? Most countries are ruled by legal norms. And all must obey them, whether they like it or not. What a society holds as valuable is independent of individual’s values. It is mostly dependent on the values of the majority (and even that is not certain). And if even with legal norms people break them, imagine the moral ones.
In the US abortion is legal, in my country it is not. Maybe in a couple of year it wont be legal in the US again. Individual morality is irrelevant.
Furthermore, there historical evidence to prove you wrong. Social conditioning, meaning the instilling of values and morals through social interaction, rather than through laws and enforcement, works. It has worked in the US and Western Europe for several centuries now.
No, sir it does not work. If I’m an atheist, there is no way to explain that it works. There has been no other time in the history of the world where more laws are passed and enforced.
Man, you live in Europe, it is one of the areas more legislated in the world. They even have laws of to what size your dog house has to be. Why is that?
Are you seriously suggesting that because some members of society are immoral, this somehow proves that morals are useless? That because there are some people who will behave in a selfish and antisocial manner if they are not forced to behave, that the only way to get people to behave is through threats of punishment?
I going to say this clear to you. There is no other system that works but the reward/punishment/compliance one.
Apparently you do not have a very high opinion of your fellow human beings. And I thought I was cynical.
What world do you live in? Stimpson, every single action you take that involves other people requires external control, a norm system. Every single one. Hey, some guys wanted to get out of the matrimony contract, they decided not to get married, so the law created the “common law marriage” rule.
I disagree, for the reasons I have given above. Modern society itself demonstrates that you are wrong. Look at the world around you. Most people have morals.
Yes, and every single transaction I make, I depend on the system to protect me. Remember my exchanges with Victor, do you think he does not use profanity directed at me because the goodness of his heart (he suddenly had a change of heart) No, the system protect me.
Most people will behave in a reasonably civilized manner, even if they think they can get away with not doing so.
That’s not the assumption any organization takes. Show me your driver’s license, please fill out this application, let’s do inventory every month, hey, every bank with armed personnel and a thick vault.
Do you really believe that anybody who doesn't behave in a selfish manner when they can get away with it legally, is doing so only out of fear of punishment (or hope of reward) in the afterlife?
No, simply out of fear of punishment or certainty or hope of reward. No afterlife needed.
I was once a Christian. My values and morals didn't change much when I quit being a Christian. I didn't behave in a certain way out of fear of Hell or hope for Heaven then, and I don't now. my whole family is Catholic, and yet none of them have ever indicated that morality is simply about punishment and reward. on the contrary, I am sure that they would all be horrified by the way you are characterizing theistic morality.
Why horrified? If you are not a Catholic you go to hell, better be Catholic. What is the principal reason to be Catholic?
If this is truly all there is to your morals, then you are a sociopath, being held in control only through the most severe of possible threats.
Most severe of threats? Not necessary it can a little threat and it can be a little reward. I always make a cost/benefit analysis.
I’m sorry if I don’t take your word for it that absolutely nothing good motivates to do good. And that absolutely nothing bad motivates you not to do bad.
For the sake of society, I sincerely hope that you never lose your faith, and that nobody ever convinces you that God wants you to hurt people.
This simply does not follow. If God does not exist, I would still adhere to the reward/punishment/compliance system, even more so than before, specially since the only rewards I’m getting are here on earth. And if all the punishments are also here on earth, I would also want to minimize those.
Wrong. Society instills values through social and legal norms. It is from these values that individuals establish a code of morality. In that sense, yes, morals are not imposed by society. Only rules are. But from these values, which a person actually adopts as his own (as oppose to simply respecting through force of law), morality arises. And morality is most definitely not ineffective in this regard. Indeed, it is capable of filling an important gap that mere legislation cannot.
No, it is the other way around. But that is irrelevant, because, as I said, it serves no purpose. What gap? For atheists there isn’t a gap or distinction.
No, the US also uses the third one. It uses amorality. One of the reasons that the US (and also Canada, Western Europe, and secular democratic republics in general) work, is because most of the people in these societies actually value the things that the society values, and agree with most of the laws. Most people in the free world really believe in things like freedom, liberty, justice, and tolerance. These values have been instilled in them by society, but they continue as the moral codes of the individuals.
And the only reason these values are upheld is because they have been instituted as social or legal norms. This is the whole point I’m making. If they where not constitutional and downward, (secondary laws) that people held these values would be irrelevant. And don’t give me the story that these have evolved. The US constitution is the oldest (arguably) of these types of documents and the modifications to its values has been almost non-existent.
Without morals, nothing is going to change. Nobody is going to go to the effort to change the laws if they don't think anything is wrong with them. The moral norms are not irrelevant. They are a necessary and integral part of the system.
Before I can have social and legal norms, they first have to be thought up. Yes, of course, but morality is not that. Morality is a code to live by, and I repeat, it is useless to live by a code where there is no reward/punishment/compliance structure.
Absolutely. But you know what? There are fewer than there were 10 years ago. And there will be fewer still 10 years from now. With individuals with a strong sense of morality, this would not happen.
You are just proving my point. And it has nothing to do with a strong sense of morality. That they act to change the system says absolutely nothing about if they follow them. People can perfectly know how things should be without following the rules they set.
People can be immoral and still champion for a better system. I much rather trust that you will do the right thing because you are compelled to, than risk you do the right things just because you feel like it.
The same is true for you, and for everybody else. That is the nature of morality. Even if the moral code you follow was handed down by God, you still follow it because you feel like it.
No, that is not correct, I follow it because of he reward/punishment/compliance system.
You value doing what God tells you to, whether it is because you think that God is good, or because you fear Hell, or whatever. Like I said, the only difference is the reason we hold the values we do. That, and the fact that I don't pretend that mine are the unique absolutely "right" ones.
It is not a matter of right or wrong. It is a matter of the efficacy of the system to make you comply.
Then what does this have to do with atheists? It sounds like you are just saying that morality is nonsense, and that all that matters is that God is going to spank us if we don't do what he says.
Morality is nonsense if you are not accountable for your morality. Why is this not obvious to you? Legal norms would be a joke if there was no way to enforce them or if people would not have to face the legal system.
That is the definition of anarchy, that everyone have his or her own rules and that no one can enforce them on others. By definition, morality is anarchical.
Irrelevant. You must still acknowledge that your values, and even your moral code, come from society. At the very least, society was the mechanism by which God gave you the code. Like I said, the only real difference is that you have convinced yourself, or allowed yourself to be convinced, that your moral code is the true "absolute" one.
You are missing the point, if God is the giver of the code, he is also the enforcer of the code. He can make us comply or punish or reward us. That is the only way morality makes sense.
I must say that I find it rather disturbing that your beliefs absolve you of any responsibility for trying to make society a better place. People ask why I say religion is harmful, this is a perfect example. You are only concerned with the afterlife, and a perfectly content to leave sorting out affairs here on Earth to God. If people are tortured and murdered, that's not your problem. It's God's will, right?
As someone else said, you are reading what you want to read. Even if I wanted to find a cure for cancer, I’m not in a position to accomplish that. I’m not a scientist and never will be. God clearly did not intend for me to find the cure for HIV. And millions of people will not have chance to change laws, for multiple reasons.
All I can say is that I am very glad that most modern Christians don't share your views on these issues. Unfortunately, there are still many in the US who do, and as such are perfectly willing to ignore the way we are destroying the environment,
Not addressing the ad hom, the only way to protect the environment is by enacting laws to protect it.
and to ignore the injustices occurring throughout the World, as long as we get the word of Jesus to everybody, so that they can go to heaven after they starve to death, or get murdered by tyrants and terrorists.
This is just silly.
I am a Humanist. I don't care about God. If he does exist, he can take care of himself. I care about people. You may consider that value to be "irrational", but it is not. Society takes care of me, and I take care of it. That is not a very difficult concept to understand.
Not difficult to understand at all. You are being totally inconsistent. You think your morality is not based on the reward/punishment/compliance when it is. But the sweet deal is that you never have to enforce that system on you.
Clancy wrote
There's no reason a good idea like, "Do unto others...." requires a belief in God or Jesus to make it "stick".
The only way to make it stick is with social and legal norms.
Perhaps there is even a biological basis for certain types of behavior like this, perhaps because it increases our chances of survival.
Do you see that the implication of this statement is that there must be a social reward/punishment/compliance system for the behavior to be of any use.
In any case, if one has a concept of what should be done and then doesn't do it, an atheist should have at least as much conscience about it as any religious person would (particularly as there's no atheistic way of getting absolution for doing wrong).
Good point. The only way for it to work if it is under a bilateral system.
TamiO wrote
I am also beginning to think that Christian is using words with a certain meaning attached that may not agree with others definitions.
The thread is so long now, it pains me to think about going back to see if he ever offered a definition of remorse according to him.
From what I can tell, remorse is to regret as rage is to mad.
I did give a definition, Webster’s and it is similar to the one you presented. By the definition, it is useless for an atheist.
Darat wrote:
On a personal note I can count on one hand the number of times I have acted in such a way to cause me to feel remorse in the past 15 years.
Please don’t take this as an attack or that I’m picking on you. But, this is only natural. You are the judge and jury. There is no one accuse of your lack or misdirected morality (if you had one). It is a useless standard because the standard is subjective.
Why is this? Because I do everything in my power to avoid taking any action that I think is wrong!
You see what I mean? “That you think is wrong”. This system is so easy to beat. All you have to do to not do anything wrong is change your mind of what is wrong. It is called rationalization. I’m not saying you do that, all I’m saying is that it can easily be done. And most people do it.
You see I have to be able to live (I hope) a good number of years with the result and the feelings caused by me doing something wrong.
No, you don’t. If you do is only because you want to. It serves absolutely no purpose. It is irrational.
I have to take the entire responsibility and the total remorse on my own shoulders.
Why, what is the purpose? It is useless to do this.
Many religions however give their believers a way to at least share, if not totally avoid, the remorse that in a normal human follows a known wrong action. They can chose to do wrong, and for example, if they are a Catholic merely confess their wrong doing, do the penance and be assured that they need no longer feel remorse as the "big decider" has now cleared their slate. Many other religions have similar mechanisms.
No, the bilateralism makes all the difference in the world. If I go against a moral code:
1. I know that I have been immoral, there is just no way around it.
2. I know that I will have to pay for it whether I like it or not.
3. And I know remorse is a mechanism that shows the other part that I’m beginning to pay for the offense.
Perhaps one of the reasons we have religions is that taking responsibility for your own wrong doing and living with the subsequent remorse can be very difficult?
Absolutely, trusting that people will take responsibility for their own wrong doing does not work.
Bottleshop wrote:
There is no indication in this answer that you really meant that some laws COULD, in fact, be immoral when measured against God's law. You simply stated that, when supranational laws conflict with national laws, Christians should obey the supranational laws first.
This is a tangent but I will address it.
Here my response:
No, Nazi Germany was acting against a higher human law. It is possible that lower laws violate higher ones. When they violate the highest one of the State, it is called unconstitutional. When they violate the highest of them all, it is called violation of universally accepte human rights.
So I did clarify that today there are universal human rights laws. They were proclaimed as such by the UN in 1948 as a result of the Nazi genocide. This does not mean they did not exist.
Then I asked you my follow-up question, positing a situation in which the highest human agency had enacted a law so far outside God's law that a person chosing to act morally might commit an illegal act. Even then, you did not seek to modify your initial statement. You chose to elide the issue:
Because you presented a scenario that made my inicial statement irrelevant. In your scenario there is no other answer. It is a self-evident answer. Do you see that? You constructed a scenario that has no other answer.
What you fail to realize is that your scenario only supports my contention that morality is unnecessary (and that is the point of this thread). This is why I asked you to pay attention to the answer. Instead you have opted for proving something that is irrelevant to this discussion.
At this point your answer demonstrated that no, you did not really believe that, in all cases, God's law requires one to follow "man's law." You chose, however, not to admit that you misstated yourself in the first instance--that you really did not mean to make such a flat statement. Instead, you acted as if anyone paying attention SHOULD HAVE UNDERSTOOD that you "stated this with the knowledge that there are (right now in the world today) universal human right laws that would make the statement always true. As it stands today, It is impossible that one obeys the highest human law and not be moral."
I am sorry, but that limitation on your statement is not implicit in the words you used.
You then stated that I "created a fictitious scenario where [your] first premise would not apply ( a trap??)."
That "fictitious scenario" was a "hypothetical," and such scenarios are commonly used in legal analysis specifically to explore the reach of a given principle. I set you the extreme example to see whether you really thought your first statement would apply in all circumstances. (Did I really think that you were so ignorant as to believe that there were no exceptions to your statement? No, but posing my questions proved to be the only way to find that out.
I accused you of intellectual dishonesty because I didn't see how your initial statement could be read as anything but the broad statement, admitting of no exceptions, that I took it to be, and, therefore, took your claim to the effect that it was made "with the knowledge that there are (right now in the world today) universal human right laws that would make the statement always true" to be disingenuous. If, in fact, you were entirely unaware that your first statement could have been understood in the absolute sense in which I took it, then you are not guilty of intellectual dishonesty, and I apologize.
Ok, fine. I misstated my initial response.
C4ts wrote:
I find it much more gratifying to take responsibility for my actions and actually work things out with the person I have harmed, instead of just myself and whatever deity that is supposed to be the only thing capable absolving me.
So the reward for you is the gratification you feel for taking responsibility for your actions. All this falls apart the minute you feel no such gratification or you don’t believe you are responsible. In either case, you are the sole controller of it.
Aerosolben wrote:
Unless you really do think emotions are a rational higher-cognitive process...
I am certain that by definition, remorse is a higher-cognitive process. If it is not, it is not remorse anymore.
Rikzilla wrote:
If I may say so sir, your atheist hat sits uneasily upon your head.
No argument there.
You seem to have a great many assumptions about "atheists" as if they are from another race or planet. The fact is that atheists are a very diverse group of folks. Your assumptions therefore won't get you very far if indeed you are in earnest about trying to understand "atheist morality".
Can you point out the wrong assumptions? No one seem to be disputing them personally (only in theory)
My suggestion to you would be to read Micheal Shermer's next book which will delve into the non-religious origins of early human interaction from which the concept and adoption of morals arises. I don't know when it's due out,...but at TAM he spoke at length about this material.
Thanks for the suggestion.
In other words, the atheist is as human as you or I. He does not exist in a vacuum....he shares in human morality. Perhaps you call it Christian morality, and obviously believe it came down to us as a gift from God....but if your desire is to really understand these inscrutable atheists, you're going to need to accept the possibility that our morals were not handed down to us from God. When you can accept this possibility, I think you'll be ready to really open your mind to evidence which runs contrary to your belief.
The point is not the source, that is irrelevant to our discussion. The point is that to me, morality is bilateral and to you it is unilateral.
Until you do that, you will be incapable of really understanding what you say you are trying to understand. And when/if you do get there, you will see the world as a agnostic does. Like me. I don't know if there is a God or not,..but neither do you. When you face that fact you'll be ready to open that mind to an infinite array of possibilities and their attendant philosophies.
The question to you as an agnostic is if personally believe there is someone other than you who enforces the moral norms on you. If you are the only enforcer, then morality is useless for you.
For instance, when Kant describes the law of morals, he is describing nothing less than human conscience. We cannot prove what our conscience tells us, but we know it nevertheless. Now please tell me why you think atheists have no human conscience! Good luck on that one
It is good that you mention Kant, he is one of the authors that describes the qualities of norm, moral norms are unilateral.
Chance wrote:
No I am not stating that it’s a learned behaviour at all, more instinctive for survival reasons. A learned behaviour would be like faking remorse to avoid punishment. e.g. DAD did you eat all the cookies? “I’m sorry daddy I wont do it again, …sob”. DAD “ahhhhhh, ok, just don’t do it again.”
If I tell you remorse is a learned behavior and that by definition it requires a lot of thinking and you don’t agree, I don’t see how else I can convince of it.
Not necessarily, and certainly not to the same degree, all of us are part nature part nurture and the mix produces the end result. The basic instinct of remorse is present in all of us to some degree, but how we react or draw upon that instinct is partially due to circumstance.
The problem is that you are not looking at the definition of remorse. Remorse requires a deep sense of feeling bad and guilty about a passed event. If the degree changes, then it is not remorse any more.
Two questions :
First, who define "moral norms" as having these qualities, and how did they establish this? Is it
simply a case of "this is my definition"?
Finally, you are on board. This is first year law theory. The books I have are all in Spanish, here the link.
http://dch.unne.edu.ar/libros.htm
But, if you know any lawyers, they will corroborate the information. You can also get law theory book, I’m sure you will find the inf. there.
Second, do you, as a theist, agree with the above definition of "moral norms"? If not, then what do you define as a "moral norm" using the above terms?
Good question. On my exams, I had to put moral norms are autonomous/internal/unilateral/incoercible because that is the secular perspective. It does not matter what religion I hold, to everyone else that is their quality.
But, do to my religious beliefs, to me moral norms are heteronymous/external/bilateral/coercible. Exactly the qualities of legal norms.
I don't know if there is a God or not,..but neither do you. When you face that fact you'll be ready to open that mind to an infinite array of possibilities and their attendant philosophies. 