Smallz3141

Murder is wrong because it is stripping another of their right to "be". People ask "if you don't believe in God, who do you answer to with your actions?"

My answer? Myself. Society. Family. I don't need there to be a God to know that hurting another isn't right. i don't need God to know that it is the right thing to help out others, donate to charity, and clean lakes and rivers. Are you telling me that the only reason you don't commit murder is because God deemed it's wrong? I mean, that doesn't speak highly of your own mental acuity.

Lack of random-killings is evolutionarily advantageous. Humans are pack animals, like dogs. Even canines "know" not to just kill off each other because that would destroy the hierarchy, and leave them alone, which is definitely a disadvantage.

treesuss

smallz...thats not to say that destroying or at least shuffling up the heirarchy wouldn't do this species a lot of good...but yeah, i agree and you said it better than i myself did.

imrightuarewrong

Bingo. That's all you really need to say to someone who believes that atheists don't have morals and are bound to go out and kill everyone because they don't believe in a god.

theslowclap

Not necessarily. There’s a huge difference between morals that are socially accepted and morals that are absolute. My original question was along the lines of asking you why murder is wrong fundamentally on your evolutionary, reductionist, idealism. You say you get it from family, yourself, and society, but I’m not asking where you get it from. Like you said previously, just because a bunch of people agree on it doesn’t make it true. Now I want to hold you up to the same standard of scrutiny.

“Are you telling me that the only reason you don't commit murder is because God deemed it's wrong? I mean, that doesn't speak highly of your own mental acuity.”

Are you telling me that the only reason you don’t commit murder is because society deemed it’s wrong? I mean, that doesn’t speak highly of your own mental acuity. See how ridiculous that sounds? I don’t think this has anything to do with mental acuity. It has a much deeper implication on what morality is and how people define “good” and “evil.”

Furthermore, I already stated that I believe morality can arise independently from religion. Independent means you don’t need religion to have morality. Read that one more time just so we’re on the same page. Please. Thanks. I said your morality would be very different from the morality we hold sacred today if there was a significant atheistic social influence in the Western culture.

I’ve noticed something during debates with atheists. They always seem to have a didactic arrogance to them. Look man, I’m trying to have a productive conversation with you and you’re insulting my intellect?

I’m asking why you consider it wrong. I think the only way you can answer this in a way that makes sense is if you say that right and wrong are relative to what benefits the species from passing on its genes. Your god is a nihilistic, minimalist. You guys were the ones claiming to “rise above” and “move on” from religion with the scientific knowledge we’ve accumulated. Why don’t you liberate yourselves from these bonds of society and do what’s best for yourselves? So now we come back to the question: why not do what’s best for yourself now that you’re enlightened about what’s “holding us back.”

imrightuarewrong

You were going pretty good until the last two paragraphs, then you just basically tried to label atheists as murderers and went over the deep end. And what god are you referring to exactly when you say "your god"?

And of course right and wrong are relative. You're telling me that if your family is starving and the only way you can get food to eat so that you don't die is by stealing it, you would still deem that "wrong" and not do it?

Muder is "wrong fundamentally" because it's not beneficial. The advantages of being in a social group outweigh the advantages obtained by murdering someone else in that social group. If you murder someone, you're gone from the group and lose all of those benefits and you have to fend for yourself.

I like how your original question is "why is murder fundamentally wrong" but in your last sentence you restate it to be "why not do what's best for yourself" implying that murder is somehow the best thing for an individual. That is clearly not the case.

Smallz3141

Um, did you not even read my answer? The reason I don't commit murder isn't because society says it's wrong, but because I say it's wrong, without blind declarations from God, society, or family. I said that I answer to society (et al) for my actions (after the question of "who do you answer to morally"). Don't put words in my mouth to try and justify some petty argument you may have developed for me. If you say that you know murder is wrong because of your belief in god, and not because you intrinsically realize yourself how "wrong" it is, then yes, your mental acuity must be lacking. Maybe me saying that I just know murder is wrong is unacceptable to you, but it is no different than the statement that one just "knows" god exists.

And again, it is evolutionarily advantageous to deem murder unacceptable. Was my previous post unclear how, we being social animals, struggle with resources when we're isolated?

theslowclap

That’s really all I wanted to hear as a response. I simply wanted to hear you say that your idea of right and wrong and relative. Now that we agree on this point, follow me on this one.

For the atheist:
1. Murder is not wrong in all cases.
2. Corollary: murder is sometimes acceptable.
3. Therefore, the individual decides the value of another individual’s life upon whim.

Let me remind you that there are so many logical reasons to murder people. You can do it for resources, survival, or disease control. The reason we don’t do it is because we see it as morally offensive (I think we agree on this point, that’s why I picked this vice). But the question is why we find it morally wrong. Again, you fall back on evolution. But like I said previously, if you now have the evolutionary knowledge to understand why we feel murder is wrong, isn’t there reason to murder the weak to benefit the species? Sure, your emotions say it’s wrong because of your upbringing, but it’s the same type of rationalization you hold religious people to adopt by putting objective reason over subjective experiences. And no, I never said atheists are murderers. You seem to be misunderstanding the difference between what people do and what people should do.

Are you asking me to show you how evolution favors opportunistic actions like raiding another tribe or murdering "other" tribes? You dodge the question by calling all humans a unit of cooperative beings, but really, in evolution, it's every man for himself. In a limited environment, the dynamics change enough for murder to be highly advantageous.

About saying atheists have a god: I was pointing out that they use nihilistic, minimalistic, rationalization to answer all questions. I didn’t mean this literally; it was a rhetorical device. Obviously, I know atheists don’t believe in a god. I meant it to mean that they say with enough time and small enough probability, anything can happen without any greater motives. Given that, you (should) view the human as nothing more than a group of subatomic particles. You (should) view humans just as valuable as a pile of rocks. To you there shouldn’t be anything greater than the material world and the value of the human “spirit” is an illusory manifestation of evolution.

What I’m still wondering is where the source of your ethics comes from. Please bear with me. You probably already answered this but I still haven’t read a satisfactory answer. Are you going to adopt your own ethics from reading history to pass onto your children? In an atheist’s perfect world, what would be the source, the drive, the vision, that has people decide what’s right and wrong. Sure, you say it’s “yourself,” but that avoids the question, in my opinion. If I can make my own ethics, any absurdity would be acceptable.

I think we can agree than you adopt morals from somewhere and that morals benefit society. Where we disagree is where this comes from.

Look guys, I respect your views and I understand this can get frustrating. I just ask you respect my views in return. I actually think discussions like these are beneficial.

imrightuarewrong

How exactly do you believe murder to be advantageous? Humans live in social groups. If you murder someone in that social group, you're out of the group and have to fend for yourself.

This is clearly not beneficial to the person performing the action because they lose the resources of the group. Natural selection will have favored those individuals who weren't murderers and therefore kept the benefits of the social group and did not have to fend for themselves. The individuals who get cut off from the group had their reproductive success greatly reduced and most likely they were not as successful at producing offspring.

I think it's pretty clear to see how this follows to the present day where there is a very minute amount of individuals who commit murder and when the do they are excised from the group and again why murder is considered morally wrong.

And I don't particularly see how murdering the weak would be advantageous to me as an individual, since I'm doing quite fine. Murdering a weak person would give me exactly what benefits in your mind?

Also, what is your definition of "murder"? People deem it perfectly fine to kill someone in self defense or in protection of their own family, which fits quite well with evolutionary theory and is shown in today's laws for self defense.

I'm trying to understand the point you're exactly trying to get across here. You seem to think that it's pretty easy for an atheist to just flip a switch and start murdering people whenever they feel like it, or "on a whim". Is this what you're trying to get across? What is your main point or question exactly? Ethics and morals can be explained through evolutionary advantages and also partially through human culture, so I don't know what exactly you're asking about.

Smallz3141

And which of us said that? I was pretty clear that murder is always wrong, so where do you get this ridiculous claim that somehow atheists believe that murder. Let's look at some statistics:

1) Countries with the highest percentage of atheists or non-religious have the lowest percentage of murders, violent acts, wars, etc.

Epiphenom: Atheist nations are more peaceful

2) ~78% percent of high-security prison inmates in the U.S. consider themselves christian

Prison Incarceration and Religious Preference

3) Percent of christians who support death penalty (i.e. "sometimes acceptable"): between 62% and 74%.

Percent of atheists who support death penalty: 27%

RELIGIOUS VIEWS: Christians Concerned about Execution of Innocent People | Death Penalty Information Center

So this idea that atheists view murder as somehow "quasi-acceptable" is neither backed up by anyone on this board, or statistically represented as a majority one pitted against those who believe in god (Christianity, to be specific).

theslowclap

You seem to have difficulty staying on topic. The discussion about morality came about because one of you wanted to move away from the topic of perception and reality. Now you want to change the topic again to the application of morality? You seem to be confused on what the difference between what is and what should be. Think about this for a second please or else we are getting nowhere and we are all wasting time here. In the discussion of morality, we were discussing what should be.

I’m not arguing here for an explanation of how the social structure is set up today. I’m arguing here about the theoretical grounds for an atheist’s morals. I view atheist as basing their morality on evolution and reductionism. I’m not saying what you currently believe due to the influence of Christianity in Western culture and around the world. I’m saying, if we got rid of religions like you want, then where would the drive for morality come from? Will Herberg indicated that modern society tries to use cut-flower ethics to justify a morality without theology. I think what we have here is a classic example of cut-flower ethics. You are saying people will act morally without any theological basis besides materialistic, efficient, and evolutionary ideals. I’m saying I disagree with that. Let’s do a quick thought experiment. Let’s say tomorrow you wake up and you realize there is no such thing as religion (your perfect world). With your intelligence comes awareness of your responsibilities in cause and effect; you realize your actions have consequences (or so they appear). Really, think deeply on this question, why not murder someone if you’re not going to be thrown out of your “social group.” You know, just as well as I do, that every society has minorities. This can be minorities in health, economic status, or personal beliefs.

You want me to show you how murder is advantageous to “advancing” society in the evolutionary point of view?

The Pope of atheism himself, Richard Dawkins, from The Selfish Gene:
“I think ”nature red in tooth and claw” sums up our modern understanding of natural selection admirably.”
Charles Darwin remarked in chapter 6 of the Origin of Species:
“Natural selection will never produce in a being anything injurious to itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. No organ will be formed, as Paley has remarked, for the purpose of causing pain or for doing injury to its possessor. If a fair balance be struck between the good and the evil caused by each part, each will be found on the whole advantageous.”
As you can see, this is fair ground for advancing your own survival at the cost of others. Again, I don’t see the moral drive here for the kind we treasure today. Simply telling people to not do it because it was bad in the past seems to be an even worse alternative. Let me point out that for your claims to hold weight, you have to show me somehow that the atheistic theology would have higher moral standards than those seen in religions. And by that, I mean you can’t borrow from religious morals unless there is something intrinsically superior about the morality of Darwinism, of materialism, of nihilism.

Smallz:
Although the statistics is not what we were debating, okay, for the sake of argument I guess I must address it. Otherwise, you would falsely think I’m conceding. It is in fact, irrelevant to what we were discussing because this is what is happens and not what should be happening.

First, I’d like to point out a few things about statistics:
1. Correlation does not equal causation.
2. The individual can not be deduced from a population study.

On point 1, just because America is the fattest nation in the world doesn’t mean that fat people are more prone to crime. Also, as Richard Dawkins said, “just because Hitler had a mustache, doesn’t mean everyone who has a mustache is evil.”

On point 2, there are many scientific studies that have concluded that data about a population is almost useless when you are trying to see what it means about the individual. Do you know why? Because every person is different – an individual. You seem to be trying to say that religion was the sole reason that these people committed crimes. These are the type of statistically irresponsible representations that should never be used in a debate. Rather, it belongs on a ten second sound bite somewhere on cable television. There are so many confounding variables that comes into studies like this that it’s ridiculous to make claims like you are making. I can just as easily attribute Nazi Germany and Red Russia to atheistic utopias, but I won’t even though this would be a better argument. But do you know why I won’t? Because there is also a confounding variable of state power and shifting politics.

By the looks of it, we are not accomplishing much with this discussion. The misrepresentation of statistics and the shifting topics illustrates that we are not interested in an open dialogue but rather pleasuring ourselves intellectually. I think we have accomplished what we set out to do: we have tried to see where the other is coming from. At this point, let’s just agree to disagree.

Smallz3141

I'm changing the subject? Let's see: you make the outlandish claim that atheists believe murder is sometimes acceptable, with your diction implying that this is a trait that religious individuals don't share. So I call you out saying that none of us said that (and imrightuarewrong's statement that you quoted in no way is equivalent to him saying murder is sometimes right).

So then I show you statistics saying that a) most violent criminals are christian, and b) that most christians believe in the death penalty, which is exactly the idea that murder is sometimes ok.

You're right. Good thing that's not what I'm claiming at all. You imply that atheists have the quality that they feel murder is sometimes justified, and I show more christians have this quality than atheists.

That's funny, because that's exactly what you did in your quote:

So...what? Do you just throw these statements out when it's convenient for you? This is the second time I've called you out on these crazy claims, and it's getting old.

Gordon_Gekko

"For the atheist:
1. Murder is not wrong in all cases.
2. Corollary: murder is sometimes acceptable.
3. Therefore, the individual decides the value of another individual’s life upon whim."

Murder could be wrong in all cases for an atheist...

I'll entertain any cogent religious argument but as I see it the major religions are a joke. Theravadan Buddhism is kind of interesting but it isn't really a religion... I'm a secular humanist.

theslowclap

Yes, I believe you are. I asked you to tell me where your morality would come from and how an atheist’s morals would be superior intrinsically (without borrowing from religions). Again, this will be the third time I’m saying this. Morality is different from actions. We were discussing the standards people set up for proper, ethical, behavior. I wanted to see what your views were on this and you brought up a statistically irresponsible point. In fact, if you remember correctly, the point about murder was simply a starting point to discuss morality and where it comes from FOR ATHEISTS. We know where religious morality comes from – texts, verbal tradition, etc. Do you understand the difference between “in theory” and “in practice”?

Okay then, what DO you believe then? This is what I’ve been asking you the wholllllllle timeeeee. You said it’s from “yourself.” Then I said I don’t think that’s an actual source or morals that can sustain a society. Are you going to teach your children out of history books? Are you going to let people learn through trial and error? The way I see it, an atheist can commit any crime such as murder (NOTE how this is an example that I’m using to discuss a GREATER POINT) as long as they don’t get excluded from the “social circle” that protects their livelihood. Are you saying you should borrow from the moralities you think are best then implement them? If so, how would that be possible without invoking a standard system that people agree on?

Some religious individuals may in fact share the belief that murder is okay, but most religions have a strict moral guideline on what is right and what is wrong. Murder is explicitly put in stone (literally, as in the Ten Commandments) that murder is wrong, period. However, that isn’t to say that people who are religious don’t murder. Following what your logic is implying, we’d have to get rid of laws because people break laws.

You’re right. Good thing we’re not discussing the same issue here. Read the previous paragraph above. I don’t care how many Christians believe in murder. The fact is we were discussing morality and its source. Again, source of morality. Again, morality and its source was the topic. How many times do I need to say that? And now all of your claims are invalidated if you can not demonstrate that an atheistic moral value system would be significantly better for the world than religious ones.

I don’t know if you’ve taken statistics or not, but you still seem to think that your evidence is valid. Do you really show more Christians have this quality than atheist? Let’s see. Do any of your sources do any of the following:
1. Show that all the crimes committed were in the name of religion and religion alone?
2. Have a percentile breakdown comparing atheists who committed crime to religious people who committed crime?
3. Know for certain that the person who committed the crime was actually a follower of the religion and not a hypocrite?
4. Controlled for all the variables including the individual, the historical time frame, the location, the political climate, the socioeconomic status?

I must say, I’m very disappointed in what you’re doing to these statistical claims. I expected more from someone who was all about truth and rational thinking. If this were a formal debate, this alone would be enough reason for me to get up and leave.

The funny thing is you’re hiding behind ambiguities here. I told you to define your source of morals. The response I got from “imrighturwrong” was in fact an indication that morality is relative. Using this line of reasoning, it is a valid claim to say that murder is sometimes acceptable. Look:
1. Right and wrong are relative
2. Murder is a type of wrong.
3. Therefore, murder can be relative.

With that as the only indication I got about your beliefs on murder, it was a sound line of reasoning. Now if you are going to say that murder is always wrong, then I’ll have to ask you why. In your nihilistic, minimalist, Darwinian body of knowledge, where does it anywhere indicate that it is always wrong?

theslowclap

Also, where in my quote was there a population study on statistics? I believe I was deducing an individual based on an individual's statement. Maybe I should have wrote "for AN atheist" rather than "for THE atheist" but that's semantics now. I used THE because it was a way to present my argument following that particular line of reasoning.

Gordon_Gekko

Just since we are on the topic of murder, consider this:

If I killed Hitler in 1937 I would have (in theory) prevented the deaths of over 60,000,000 people. Is killing Hitler wrong then? Maybe so...

My reasoning is very unorthodox. If I didn't kill Hitler, those 60,000,000 people still would have died eventually. Not only that, they would have had children. If we assume 40,000,000 of them would have had 2 children if they lived then we are looking at about 80M people by 1970 and 160,000,000 people by about 2000, and now perhaps 200,000,000 people would have been born that weren't because of World War 2. Everyone who is born must die, so Hitler actually prevented 200M (and this number will grow as long as humans exist) deaths by directly or indirectly murdering 60M people from 1938 to 1945.

You consider a murderer a villain, but sound logic could also consider the same murderer a hero. I actually don't believe that because I don't believe there is a "right" or "wrong", but I still think it is an interesting concept to reflect on.