Ask an atheist

[ciphergoth]

In a discussion about religion in wildeabandon's journal, meihua writes: "this seems to have turned into me interrogating you. [...] Is there anything you'd like to challenge me on, instead?"

I think it's only fair enough to open up my own beliefs to the challenges of others, since I'm always keen to respond when theists invite me to give my perspective on some aspect of their beliefs as wildeabandon has in a series of recent posts. So, is there anything you'd like me to respond to?

Rules:

• You don't have to read this thread. This post is an invitation, not a challenge; if you don't like to read me talking about this then feel free to skip this.
• Be honest. Please don't advance arguments you don't personally buy, unless you're also an atheist and you want to discuss how best to counter it.
• If you come to change your mind about the validity of an argument, think about how you can generalise the lesson learned so as not to misassess similar arguments in future.
• Don't just match the politeness of what you reply to, but try to exceed it - see Postel's Law. Otherwise it is very easy to end up with a thread where each contributor thinks they are merely matching the snark level of the other, and yet the thread starts with the very slightest suggestion of rudeness and finishes with "please choke on a bucket of cocks".

Comments

[duranorak.livejournal.com]

It seems that it would be difficult to persuade anyone else to behave differently if you can't show them that your beliefs are ultimately justified.

Why would anyone try to persuade anyone else to behave differently using morality as part of the persuasion?

[palmer1984.livejournal.com]

If someone is convinced that it is in their interest to behave like a selfish bastard. You could try convincing them that it's not in fact in their interest. For most that is true, but suppose this person is incredibly clever, and can get away with behaving selfishly. I was suggesting that the only way to try to get them to behave differently would be to persuade them that behaving generously is somehow more morally justified than behaving selfishly.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Because it sometimes works.

Of course, that leads to the question "why does it work? Why is it that you can sometimes persuade people to change their behaviour using moral arguments?" But that is not a philosophical question any more - it's a question about a matter of fact in the world, about human psychology. Our ancestors could cooperate from very long ago, and it seems pretty likely that much of our evolution into talking, thinking beings has to do with cooperation, so in part it's a (very interesting) question in evolutionary psychology.

This isn't what the question is getting at though. The question is, what underlies morality? What is the philosophical justification through which we derive the necessity of moral behaviour? And in short terms, the answer is, there isn't one. Fortunately, in the face of this disappointment, people continue to behave in a moral way. People were never moral because they had a philosophical justification for it anyway.