Since they've thoroughly lost the logic debate decades ago, theists can only claim a need for their useless beliefs on the grounds that humans need morals/ethics to keep society from descending into chaos.

I agree. However, religious belief is further flawed in the realm of morals/ethics, and their only claim for the foundation of it all is the belief in an imaginary gaseous vertebrae in the sky you can telepathically communicate with, and that flawful humans are built on his perfect image.

Once you go the logical route and ditch all irrational theistic myths, a tough question presents itself. This leads many atheists to be douchebag nihilists, who justify morally bad/evil behavior in the pointlessness/subjectivity of it all.
A rising school of thought is the rational, objective outlining of a secular justification for human morality and ethics. You will not go to heaven or hell for being good or bad, you will not necessarily have good things happen to you nor will bad people be punished, but then again god doesn't take care of that either so you're not missing anything. You will however, lead a much more fulfilling life if you can open your mind to Universally Preferable Behavior without the fear and coercion that religion brings, and without the emptiness of nihilism.

Learn how to use the scientific method to have better relationships with people, your family, your partners, stress, etc.

Intrigued? Enjoy!
Free book online: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2870039/150675048

Free download(pdf) can be found on this page:
http://freedomainradio.com/free/


Seeing as I don't have all the time in the world to debate with the irrational, this thread is mainly for the benefit of atheists and maybe seesaw-dweller agnostics to discuss this system.

thanks for the link. ever since it occured to me, I haven't believed in objective ethics, and the book seems well written, so it's bound to be interesting for awhile.

“Truth” has been exposed as manipulation; “virtue” as control; “loyalty” as slavery, and what is called “morality” has been revealed as a ridiculous puppet show designed to trick weak and fearful people into enslaving themselves.

The truth is that we need morality; the lie is that gods or governments can rationally define or justly enforce it.

My goal in this book is to define a methodology for validating moral theories that is objective, consistent, clear, rational, empirical – and
true
.

I like the book so far.

I will post back when I have read more.

Thanks for the link.

Oh the humanities.

Nice find, Zay!

Oh the humanities.

Oh the backseat moderators. Psshh.

I thought the rational proof of secular ethics is the fact that people who were secular created religions. The truth about all religion is that they are all fabricated by humans. It started out with watching the stars and the sun, turned into metaphorical stories, and has been simply revised many times over. Even the ethics we pull from the bible, are simply modern interpretation of older systems to meet modern dynamics of our society. Basically without God, we're still making the rules from basic scriptures that were created by ancient cultures.

I find this rather interesting. When you ask most people who take part in some religion, what is the point to being in a religion, besides saying "to be saved" they say "to live a moral life" as their second response. As a theist, I can understand their viewpoint which is good for them. However, as a theist I still am faced with the fact that even an atheist cares about morality, even if they are not subscribers to eastern spirituality but just existentialists and materialists.

So, what is the point to an organized religion? Throughout my search I discovered there really is no point. Now does this mean I am an atheists by this conclusion? No, like Jesus Christ and Christianity there is a difference - a big one - Jesus Christ Preached a message of love and compassion whereas the religion of Christ is filled with dogma and doctrines that the followers often hypocritically follow anyway. Ultimately, things are spiritual and things are loose. God is inclusive and love, not the exclusive "only me and people like me are saved" those who say that are arrogant and arrogance is not love.

So than what would be the point to a spirituality if the focus is not upon morality, which all care about with or without a religion to back them up? Ultimately, the purpose is self-knowledge and development. How do I reach that conclusion? It is an observation, if one were to look at the basis of all religion it starts with a spiritual experience which is often reached through introspection and practice. After all, what reason does an atheist have to pray, what reason does a materialist have to meditate if their not spiritual? One should also look into the Initiatory Religions of three Abrahamic Religions: Christian Mysticism and Gnosticism. Sufism for the Muslim and Merkabah Mysticism as well as Cabala for The Jew. Each of these Initiatory Religions although containing some doctrines are looser and stress, introspection and practice over rigid adherence to some moral code.

It is believed that through self-knowledge one is compelled to act on that knowledge, which is ironically the most moral path one could take. Not because your forced to by fear of punishment but because your compelled to by the intuitive self-knowledge, which is natural. An example would be, if you were to go fishing for 20 years straight, day after day, through all circumstances what would happen is you gain experience, confidence and the knowledge to maximize your catch. Than one day you do something so counter-experience fully knowing and anticipating that you will catch nothing. Which is foolish... Because, you were right you caught nothing.

Now the only bad side to this example is that the story I painted basically told you not to explore and be wrong. The entire idea to self-knowledge and development is to know yourself not just accept yourself. To know yourself would mean to be curious and to test your boundaries, to overcome weaknesses and turn them into strengths. The point I want to illustrate though is that: I find the intuitive certainty of self-knowledge to be more important than some externally handed down morality. Largely because, people act on their own compulsions. Since many people do not know this and many of those people are adherents to some exoteric religion than at least they have some more morality incorporated into their lives.

As nice and squeaky clean it may seem, and as much as I may agree with it and respect my fellow human beings, it's still all made up. A creation. There are no real barriers preventing you from harming another, preventing others from harming you. All that stuff, as great as it may be, is created as we go along.

Does that mean anything? Not at all. But maybe we shouldn't simply cast away religion as silly myths which serve no purpose and are to be forgotten about. Religion has a lot more to offer us then just flawed ethics/morals and wild claims. And I don't mean by following religion, I mean by studying it. Religions have played a huge role in our development up to this point and I personally find them to be extremely interesting.

Through this interest, I think I've learned a lot more about myself, humans, reality and the relationships of all these things then I would not have if I lived in a society which discouraged such interest. I've discovered God, discovered myself, and discovered life. I believe I understand reality.

I do not think it would be wise to throw so much away.

As nice and squeaky clean it may seem, and as much as I may agree with it and respect my fellow human beings, it's still all made up. A creation. There are no real barriers preventing you from harming another, preventing others from harming you. All that stuff, as great as it may be, is created as we go along.

Religion is based on myth yes. However, in this society we look at myths as mere stories and that is it. The idea behind a myth is to convey lessons and to help people grow and develop with lessons in mind. If you look at the New Testament Story of Christ there are stages of development in Jesus as he gets closer to Christ. All religious stories never happened but always happen. Everyday we are crucified by the world because the world is always out to take away our life with all its various social formalities and conventions. I think if one were really introspective we would be able to find Christ in all of us.

Does that mean anything? Not at all. But maybe we shouldn't simply cast away religion as silly myths which serve no purpose and are to be forgotten about. Religion has a lot more to offer us then just flawed ethics/morals and wild claims. And I don't mean by following religion, I mean by studying it. Religions have played a huge role in our development up to this point and I personally find them to be extremely interesting.

I agree with your claims, religion has shaped the world both positively and negatively. So has science and philosophy. Its how things are applied that makes the difference not necessarily the idea itself. I mean its debatable but we can agree that in some ways America was founded by religious and spiritual ideal. Many say Christianity and in someways it has but I think more along the lines of an ancient spiritual philosophy as well.

Through this interest, I think I've learned a lot more about myself, humans, reality and the relationships of all these things then I would not have if I lived in a society which discouraged such interest. I've discovered God, discovered myself, and discovered life. I believe I understand reality.

In this post-modern world we live in, there's this belief that the world is truly subjective and that their is no certainty to anything. In someways I can see this being true. But, I mean perhaps its like that Buddhist story with the 3 blind men feeling the same elephant each making its claims to a larger whole. I mean being here on this forum and in life experience in general I can see it all as one big debate between my thesis and the antithesis of others in my own worldview but in the end we arrive to a synthesis of everyone's worldview.

I do not think it would be wise to throw so much away.

Likewise, yeah you'll get misinterpretations in religious and scientific realms but that's only a cause (in my mind at least) between Too much (little) skepticism or Too much (little) open-mindedness. The point of a skeptic in my opinion is not to believe everything but not disbelieve everything either. Likewise the point to being open-minded is not to go out and believe eveything but a willingness to incorporate "X" into your worldview. I am not in front of any of you, so I cant express this in a way that might further help you understand my position.

Since they've thoroughly lost the logic debate decades ago, theists can only claim a need for their useless beliefs on the grounds that humans need morals/ethics to keep society from descending into chaos.
.

Dunno how you define theist, but as a gnostic, mystic, shaman and ordained ULC minister, I probably qualify. However, I thiknk you are using the old straw man fallacy. Granted, some unevolved people are motivated by a fear of punishment (the mythical hell) or hope of reward (the equally mythical heaven), but more and more people simply follow the Golden Rule--Do unto others as you would have it done unto you--out of enlightened self-interest.

That is, since at the Highest Level, we are All One, whatever I do to my neighbor, I do to myself.

Dunno how you define theist, but as a gnostic, mystic, shaman and ordained ULC minister, I probably qualify. However, I thiknk you are using the old straw man fallacy. Granted, some unevolved people are motivated by a fear of punishment (the mythical hell) or hope of reward (the equally mythical heaven), but more and more people simply follow the Golden Rule--Do unto others as you would have it done unto you--out of enlightened self-interest.

That is, since at the Highest Level, we are All One, whatever I do to my neighbor, I do to myself.

Mystics, psychics, palm readers, etc. Do have some validity to them that can be explained logically.
High-level mathematicians are so fluent in math that they can solve some problems instantly, without having to do work on them. Talented detectives/forensics experts see some clues that others don't, and as their skills improve they see some connections instantly. As probability goes, some peoples predictions are accurate more often than others, and logically there's going to be a small group that is right most often, just as there will be some that are wrong most of the time. These people may intuitively process some clues about people in the way they stare, their body language, their smell, the condition of their skin, the color of their teeth, hygiene, their voice, the way they speak, etc. Some will be so good at it that they process it instantly, and then attribute their talent to "magic" and whatnot.
That is why I give you the benefit of the doubt and don't dismiss your claims of mysticism and shamanism. There are definitely parts of the mind that some people tap into more than others.
As for the golden rule, it is indeed preferable behaviors. The only way our ancestors survived harsh conditions was by working with and supporting each other, not killing each other, stealing from each other, etc. Some evolutionary theories paint a machiavellian world, but it is more likely that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection is what fueled the rapid growth of our cortexes.

As nice and squeaky clean it may seem, and as much as I may agree with it and respect my fellow human beings, it's still all made up. A creation. There are no real barriers preventing you from harming another, preventing others from harming you. All that stuff, as great as it may be, is created as we go along.

Does that mean anything? Not at all. But maybe we shouldn't simply cast away religion as silly myths which serve no purpose and are to be forgotten about. Religion has a lot more to offer us then just flawed ethics/morals and wild claims. And I don't mean by following religion, I mean by studying it. Religions have played a huge role in our development up to this point and I personally find them to be extremely interesting.

Through this interest, I think I've learned a lot more about myself, humans, reality and the relationships of all these things then I would not have if I lived in a society which discouraged such interest. I've discovered God, discovered myself, and discovered life. I believe I understand reality.

I do not think it would be wise to throw so much away.

UPB and religion are just road maps to similar end goals. However, the incompatibility between different religions and each other means we should ditch the nonsense and choose the best route. I'm sure more religions will be made up on the same. As far as I can tell only some like buddhism don't suck. I don't think it means the abandonment of studying religion , plenty of monotheists like to study roman and greek mythology(ignoring the irony, of course), or the way we look at cargo cults (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1skNgYdJXK8&feature=channel_page)

However, the incompatibility between different religions and each other means we should ditch the nonsense and choose the best route.

That will mean different things to different people. One persons best route is going to be nonsense to another person.

As for the golden rule, it is indeed preferable behaviors. The only way our ancestors survived harsh conditions was by working with and supporting each other, not killing each other, stealing from each other, etc.

Really? I'd love to see your crime stat's from 10,000 BC.

Some evolutionary theories paint a machiavellian world, but it is more likely that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection is what fueled the rapid growth of our cortexes.

"Geoffrey Miller, drawing on some of Darwin's largely neglected ideas about human behavior, has hypothesized that many human behaviors not clearly tied to survival benefits, such as humor, music, visual art, verbal creativity, and some forms of altruism, are courtship adaptations that have been favored through sexual selection."

And of course, Machiavellian behaviour has no place in the art of seduction.

Really? I'd love to see your crime stat's from 10,000 BC.

Maybe we don't have crime statistics, but we can take an example from our primate ancestors.

An experiment was conducted in which two bushels of leaves were dropped into a chimp enclosure in a zoo. An adult found the first bushel, and promptly alerted the others that food was found. The second bushel was found by an adolescent. Instead of sharing the leaves like the adult chimp, the adolescent selfishly ate all of the leaves and refused to share any with the rest of her group.

Now, what scientists have found is that chimps remember which members of their group have shared leaves in the past and return the favor, either in sharing leaves when they find them or in grooming and other tasks. The chimps also remember which ones have NOT shared with the group and exclude those selfish chimps from eating leaves.

You can see how this becomes a matter of survival. Either the adolescent chimps learn to share or the risk starvation.

An example of what I'm talking about can be found here. It is the last video on the page, called "Chimps Getting Along":
http://pbs-saf.onstreammedia.com/cgi-bin/visearch?user=pbs-saf&template=template.html&query=Chimps+Getting+Along&category=0&viKeyword=Chimps+Getting+Along&page=2

Maybe we don't have crime statistics, but we can take an example from our primate ancestors.

An experiment was conducted in which two bushels of leaves were dropped into a chimp enclosure in a zoo. An adult found the first bushel, and promptly alerted the others that food was found. The second bushel was found by an adolescent. Instead of sharing the leaves like the adult chimp, the adolescent selfishly ate all of the leaves and refused to share any with the rest of her group.

Now, what scientists have found is that chimps remember which members of their group have shared leaves in the past and return the favor, either in sharing leaves when they find them or in grooming and other tasks. The chimps also remember which ones have NOT shared with the group and exclude those selfish chimps from eating leaves.

You can see how this becomes a matter of survival. Either the adolescent chimps learn to share or the risk starvation.

An example of what I'm talking about can be found here. It is the last video on the page, called "Chimps Getting Along":
http://pbs-saf.onstreammedia.com/cgi-bin/visearch?user=pbs-saf&template=template.html&query=Chimps+Getting+Along&category=0&viKeyword=Chimps+Getting+Along&page=2

1) Chimpanzees aren't our primate ancestors.

2) Your model of primate behaviour in an artificial environment bears no resemblance to primitive Homo sapien society, shit, you're not even studying the same organism.

3) Deceit, theft, murder, etc... have been a part of global human culture since recorded history. Given that homo sapiens hasn't changed much in the last 100,000+ years, I see little, if any, evolutionary argument that early human behaviour was greatly different from that of today.

1) Chimpanzees aren't our primate ancestors.

2) Your model of primate behaviour in an artificial environment bears no resemblance to primitive Homo sapien society, shit, you're not even studying the same organism.

3) Deceit, theft, murder, etc... have been a part of global human culture since recorded history. Given that homo sapiens hasn't changed much in the last 100,000+ years, I see little, if any, evolutionary argument that early human behaviour was greatly different from that of today.

It would seem impossible for anybody to provide evidence of our behaviour at the time that you consider sufficient

that would render your claims entirely as unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable as the claims of kurdt318 and the OP

It would seem impossible for anybody to provide evidence of our behaviour at the time that you consider sufficient

that would render your claims entirely as unsubstantiated and unsubstantiable as the claims of kurdt318 and the OP

You may have had a point if I'd made any "unsubstantiable claims" regarding prehistoric human behaviour... but I haven't.

Try again?

You may have had a point if I'd made any "unsubstantiable claims" regarding prehistoric human behaviour... but I haven't.

Try again?

You claimed that you saw no evolutionary argument that proved early human behaviour was any different to that of today

the implication being that early human behaviour was similar to that of today, though there is no reason posted here to believe that it was

You claimed that you saw no evolutionary argument that proved early human behaviour was any different to that of today

the implication being that early human behaviour was similar to that of today, though there is no reason posted here to believe that it was

If 'socially negative' behaviour was such an undesirable trait it would've been selected against, but given the prevalence of it in modern society it clearly wasn't.

At least that's what my understanding of the theory of evolution leads me to believe.

Modern society and human society 100,000 years ago are immeasurably different and thus behaviour considered socially positive or negative today may not have carried the same connotations in such societies

not to mention the fact that social behaviour is very far from being under the exclusive control of genetics and thus impossible to breed out by evolution in such a short timescale

Modern society and human society 100,000 years ago are immeasurably different and thus behaviour considered socially positive or negative today may not have carried the same connotations in such societies

Lying, cheating and stealing are often more efficient ways of achieving the same objective, especially if detection can be avoided. I can't think of any social structure in which this would not be the case.

not to mention the fact that social behaviour is very far from being under the exclusive control of genetics and thus impossible to breed out by evolution in such a short timescale

The theory of evolution extends beyond genetics; in this case deceptive social behaviour appears overall to be a beneficial trait, sufficiently so that it is not selected against to anywhere near the point of eradication.

Quite the opposite, it seems.

Like most appealers to nature, you're not looking at the big picture. We have the capacity to decide what is beneficial.

Nearly every human society makes laws against forms of murder, forms of stealing, and other less desirable behavior. Exceptions(meaning the point when the behavior is acceptable without guilt) are made when exclusions are thought up, like enemy combatants, criminals, etc. Exclusions occur in layers, you may for example be completely against committing negative behavior against your direct family, then slightly less reluctant to lie to/steal from/murder your friends, less reluctant to do so to strangers, and more than willing to lynch someone your society/country/culture has deemed deserving.

The fact that every society has tried to eradicate it, and that some societies have had more success than others, and that as human philosophy continues to advance and technology and justice systems make it more difficult to elude capture may make it so that a few groups of criminals learn to be super-evasive, but for the majority of the people doing what's right is the way to go. The less a society can trust each other, the faster is breaks down.

Universally Preferable Behavior lumps everyone under the same blanket, even going against the social contracts of family and country and demanding that everyone EARN your respect, regardless of how much of your DNA correlates with them.

Now look at cancer. By the time various cancers can kill you, you're already old enough to have reproduced. Does the fact that cancer hasn't been eradicated make it beneficial.

I have a couple of questions regarding this system of ethics:

1. How does this system deal with individuals who have no capacity for conscience?

2. What is the need of this system when the conscience already dictates acceptable and moral behavior without the confines of any system, religious or otherwise?

3. If individuals with a capacity for conscience intuitively know what is acceptable and what is not through their social instincts; and those with no capacity for conscience have demonstrated, in all fields of therapeutic sciences, an absolute resistance to all forms of moral structuring; what is the need, merit, or even benefit of secular ethics?

4. Do you personally believe that ethics, morals, and behavioral philosophies need to be organized and standardized under strictly human authority? If so, what do you believe makes the formulated secular ethics superior to the semi-secular ethics that exist in the current forms of human authority?

Lying, cheating and stealing are often more efficient ways of achieving the
same objective, especially if detection can be avoided. I can't think of any social structure in which this would
not be the case.

1. Just because you personally cannot think of any social structure it doesn't mean it's true.
2. As a matter of fact, I can think of something. In an environment where there are few people, everybody knows
everybody else, everybody's behaviours are under the scrutiny of everybody else, but more imporantly, when all this
is coupled with an environment sufficiently harsh that one's anti-social behaviour has immediate deleterious
effect on the surrounding people (with whom one most likely shares his genes), then yes, under this condition, it
IS possible for anti-social behavioral traits to be bred not, or at the very least, heavily selected against.


The theory of evolution extends beyond genetics; in this case deceptive social behaviour appears overall to be a
beneficial trait, sufficiently so that it is not selected against to anywhere near the point of eradication.


If 'socially negative' behaviour was such an undesirable trait it would've been selected against,
but given the prevalence of it in modern society it clearly wasn't.

You are probably right in that deceptive/anti-social behaviors are not selected against enough as to be
eradicated. However I just want to point out a possibility: it could be that these were actually once bred out,
however in the last 10,000 years or so, when humans enjoyed a much less harsh environment (reads: this means
anti-social behaviours no longer carry any serious consequences), they got a chance to flourish/spread, due to
their apparent adaptive advantage. Of course it's just a theory.

Also just to add: just because something is once bred out it doesn't mean it can't make a "comeback". The
mechanism is for this is random mutation.