Is Atheism Compatible with Natural Rights?

[Pythagorean]

Some people have abnormalities in the brain that cause high iq, and unusual creativity.

Being a sociopath is not always a disadvantage.
Normal and average, do not equal natural.

I don't disagree. A sociopath raised in a stable environment would make an excellent policeman, stuntman, or fireman.

Regardless, the consensus of most societies is that atrocities are bad and compassion is good. We can generally find abnormal development in the brains of people who commit atrocities regularly. These can be both genetic and environmentally caused (abuse, neglect).

 

[wofsy]

I guess my point is that atheists are good because they want to do good, not because they fear supernatural punishment. I am tired of the "atheists can't have morals because they don't believe in a particular religion". If I have mistaken what you were saying, I apologize.

I was not all offended or even piqued. No apology needed.
I should have elaborated.

Here are some examples.

-The movie Roots portrays Africans living in a state of harmony and love until their natural society is uprooted by slave traders who for profit violate man's nature by preventing him from persuing his natural inclination to live peacefully and in harmony with his fellow men. Slavery violates man's Nature and therefore his natural rights.

- I the Renaissance, philosophers thought that all creatures other than man had an intrinsic Nature that dictated their behavior. The swallowtail drinks nectar from a flower. The eagle snares the prairie dog in its talons and returns to its aerie with food for its chicks. The praying mantis eats is mate after copulation. All of these behaviors are Natural/intrinsic. The natural right of these creatures would be to live as there nature guides them. So the swallowtail would have its flower. The eagle would be able to live free in a world of high ledges and rolling prairies. This concept of natural rights, in my mind, is the ethical foundation of environmentalism.

Man on the other hand was viewed as having no fixed Nature but rather could be anything that he chose to be. He could be a carrion eater or slave trader or a philosopher. Man's intrinsic Nature was only the ability of free choice to become whatever he chose to be. For the Renaissance philosopher this was what it was meant when it was said that man was created in the image of God. From this point of view man's natural right would be the right to pursue his natural inclination for free choice. Interestingly, this mean that rather than living unattended in a fixed ecological niche like the butterfly, man through society would be encouraged to enhance his ability to to make free choices and to become (pardon the expression) more like God. This leads to a complicated question of when man's behavior becomes repetitive and unfree, thereby unnatural - e.g. drug addiction or adherence to a religious dogma - and what society needs to do to guide him away from these animal like behavioral traps without removing his ability to make his own choices.

- My father was a professional Communist and therefore an Atheist. His view of man's Nature was that man was completely shaped by the "material conditions of life" as he would put it so that even though man was pliable and had no fixed Nature, he also did not have a true ability of free choice. He was more a piece of clay molded by social conditions. Marxist morality derives from this view of man. Society as an evolving series of stages shapes man completely and therefore it is society that is fundamental and has natural rights. For instance since Capitalism was internally contradictory and carried the seeds of inevitable self-destruction it was the right of society to pass out of capitalism and into communism. Man's only moral choice was to abet this process. It was immoral to cling to capitalist social forms and societies that protected capitalism from natural transition were evil. This was why Communists were the first people to oppose Fascism.

- My good friend Carey believes that man is intrinsically vicious, by Nature evil, because by some awful quirk of biological evolution he became the self- contradictory creature that destroys everything in his path - including himself - in order to survive. He eradicates the natural rights of all other living creatures by wiping out their environments, and persecutes himself by wars, by mean and horrible behavior towards his fellows.Her view and moral idea was that violation of all other creature's nature by this malignant prodigy known as man had to be stopped. She believes that mankind's only moral choice is to wipe himself out and leave the stage of life forever and let all of the other non-pathological forms of life pursue their Nature in peace.`

Interestingly, she thinks that there is evidence of this viciousness in our evolutionary brothers, the Chimpanzees, who behave ,in her mind, much like humans. She points to the example of the alpha male that bites off the face of a baby male chimp that might some day compete with him for dominance.

- Nazi philosophers e.g. Otto Rahn believed that the Arians had been deprived of their Natural state of supernatural Godliness by Christianity which they considered to be a fundamentally Hebraic dogma. To them the Judeo-Christian culture was propagated militarily by the Roman Empire in its latter centuries and later after the fall of Rome, by descendants of patrician Roman families and in doing so, committed genocide against the Arian people and their culture - their sacred places, and their spirit, and disconnected them of their Nature as semi-gods - or supermen if you like. For them this justified destroying the the Judeo-Christian world entirely. It is fascinating to read Otto Rahn's book where he searches Europe in a long SS funded odyssey to rediscover the lost sources of Arian power. He even travels to Iceland in search of Thule.

Hermann Goering wanted to kill everybody in Poland so that the ancient forests sacred to the Teutonic race could be replanted.

- In the 19'th century apologists of imperialism argued that each race has a different Nature. They had many primitive pseudo-scientific rationales for this. The British argued that African races by Nature were "incapable of Civilization" on their own but that they could be "raised up" by the benign intervention of the British race - as they called themselves - to the high plane of civilized men. Africans were considered to be a middle race - by Nature not animals but by Nature not truly human either. For them the only moral outcome was to be colonized so that they could experience civilized life and be at their best. Slavery was better for them than living in Africa because as slaves they could - admittedly only in an inferior and simplistic form - partake in civilization.(BTW: the Island of Dr. Moreau is really talking about this view point and I think argues rather cynically that it is immoral to raise up inferior races to a higher plane). I will always remember in a documentary about Rhodesia when the reporter asked a Rhodesian - white woman - of British descent - whether she "really thought that Blacks are inferior." Her answer was "Oh no. Oh no. They are perfectly capable of service."

During the 1850's when the debate over slavery in the United States was raging, the British pleaded with The United States not to free the slaves as they,the British, had mistakenly done in the 1830's. They said that the freed slaves ,rather than cultivating the plantations on their own and participating in agriculture and commerce and other civilized persuits, returned to their natural state of uncivilized life. They left the plantations untended allowing the jungle to return to overgrow the once cultivated fields and roads and instead, lived idly in shacks on primitive subsistence. By allowing them freedom they had been cruelly allowed to pursue their lower Nature and inevitably returned to uncivilized life. Some Americans countered this by saying that this view of African human Nature was wrong and that the American slaves proved this by their ability to run plantations completely on their own.

I think that these racist ideas persist and in the end, boil down to a view of human Nature.

- To me the different views of Human Nature have been the foundation of moral systems whether they are justified theologically, biologically,philosophically, or mystically. A question for me in this era of terrorism is question of how far a state can go to "protect its people." For instance, is it OK for President Bush and President Obama to use the state of national emergency to override Congress through the use of signing statements? Are we not depriving Americans of their Natural rights? Was it OK for the KBG to install a police state to "protect the state from enemies." ? Is it OK to put entire populations behind barbed wire to protect the people of another state? Is it OK to blow up the world in a nuclear holocaust in order to protect the people? Or how about just blow up everyone in a terrorist state? At what point do we deprive other people and ourselves of our Human Nature?

 

[Hurkyl]

Regardless, the consensus of most societies is that atrocities are bad and compassion is good.

Kidding aside... why not stop here?

Why do you feel the need to continue on and make an ad homenim attack that disagreement implies brain damage? What does the healthiness of a brain have to do with anything anyways?

 

[russ_watters]

In my post I proposed the idea that natural rights are the right to pursue one's nature.

That's not what natural rights are. I don't know if that has a name, but in a discussion it is not a good idea to re-define words arbitrarily. It makes it hard for people to understand what you are talking about. [edit] That's what Hobbes said was the most basic form, but it is an obsolete view because of what Hurkyl describes below. Hobbes was arguing against that being a practical foundation for government.

The eagle snares the prairie dog in its talons and returns to its aerie with food for its chicks. The praying mantis eats is mate after copulation. All of these behaviors are Natural/intrinsic. The natural right of these creatures would be to live as there nature guides them. So the swallowtail would have its flower. The eagle would be able to live free in a world of high ledges and rolling prairies. This concept of natural rights, in my mind, is the ethical foundation of environmentalism.

Ok, but again, that's not what "natural rights" means, not to mention it is not internally consistent since it denies humans the rights it would grant other animals!

Religion played a role because God as the creator endowed man with his nature. People who denied that man's nature was fundamentally good were tilting towards atheism in my opinion.

That doesn't follow. Whether man's nature is fundamentally good doesn't have any logical connection to where that nature comes from. If killing your neighbor is bad, it doesn't matter if God tells you to do it or if you decide it on your own, it is wrong either way. You are asserting the opposite: what God tells you to do is good because God tells you to do it.

I was just explaining what the historical view was.

No, it sounds to me like you are making this stuff up as you go along. It doesn't resemble what the real history and development of rights has been.

 

[Hurkyl]

In my post I proposed the idea that natural rights are the right to pursue one's nature. This is an old view and generally assumes that man is naturally good.

A counterexample to the "assumption of good": Thomas Hobbes believed, to grab a quote from Wikipedia:

In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This inevitably leads to conflict, a "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes), and thus lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".​

The problem for us perhaps is to think about what our nature is without theological assumptions.

To quote Jonathan Wallace:

The natural rights debate leads us down a false road. The energy spent in arguing which rules exist should better be spent deciding which rules we should make. The "perfect freedom" Locke described "to order their actions and dispose of their possessions and persons as they see fit... without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man", does not dictate the existence of rights; instead it leaves us perfectly free to legislate them.

I prefer this freedom, which seems to me simple and clear: we are all at a table together, deciding which rules to adopt, free from any vague constraints, half-remembered myths, anonymous patriarchal texts and murky concepts of nature. If I propose something you do not like, tell me why it is not practical, or harms somebody, or is counter to some other useful rule; but don't tell me it offends the universe.​

 

[wofsy]

That's not what natural rights are. I don't know if that has a name, but in a discussion it is not a good idea to re-define words arbitrarily. It makes it hard for people to understand what you are talking about. Ok, but again, that's not what "natural rights" means, not to mention it is not internally consistent since it denies humans the rights it would grant other animals! That doesn't follow. Whether man's nature is fundamentally good doesn't have any logical connection to where that nature comes from. If killing your neighbor is bad, it doesn't matter if God tells you to do it or if you decide it on your own, it is wrong either way. You are asserting the opposite: what God tells you to do is good because God tells you to do it.

Thanks for chastizing me. I realize that I am off base and should not have participated. I leave the thread to you.

 

[russ_watters]

Um...ok.

 

[JoeDawg]

Regardless, the consensus of most societies is that atrocities are bad and compassion is good.

I don't know I would go that far, most societies do quite well in justifying their own atrocities: manifest destiny, racial superiority, the greater good, the will of the gods...

I think you are giving human history a rosy color. Although I do agree that empathy is common and quite natural to humans.

We can generally find abnormal development in the brains of people who commit atrocities regularly. These can be both genetic and environmentally caused (abuse, neglect).

Abuse and neglect can also weed out the weak and... what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger... as they say.

One man's atrocity is another man's necessity.

 

[Pythagorean]

Kidding aside... why not stop here?

Why do you feel the need to continue on and make an ad homenim attack that disagreement implies brain damage? What does the healthiness of a brain have to do with anything anyways?

Please explain to me where I made an ad hominem attack that "disagreement implies brain damage".

Of course, it's not the general healthiness of the brain. It's specific parts of the brain that pertain to how we treat each other (the frontal lobe is the best known). For instance, somebody with Parkinson's doesn't fit. I have an impaired brain, myself; I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate or playing dumb.

Also the statement is not that all people with brain damage will become cold-blooded murderers, it's that all cold-blooded murderers have brain damage (or a brain malfunction).

I don't know I would go that far, most societies do quite well in justifying their own atrocities: manifest destiny, racial superiority, the greater good, the will of the gods...

I think you are giving human history a rosy color. Although I do agree that empathy is common and quite natural to humans.

Just to clarify, I'm talking about modern society that I directly experience. I'm not talking about grandose wars and scandals. I'm talking about any day, on my street. Also, by the "tone" of your post... those societies didn't make very good justifications, did they?

It appears to me that we've gotten more civil. Not that we're completely civil and there's no room for improvement, but that we're moving towards civility with time; even if we take a couple steps back now and then, I believe the general progression is towards civility.

Abuse and neglect can also weed out the weak and... what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger... as they say.

One man's atrocity is another man's necessity.

Yes, that seems to make sense intuitively doesn't it?

This is the kind of thinking that led to the "cry it out" method for raising babies. We've come a long way since then. Attachment theory is gaining popularity as it has been found to be more effective at raising a stable child. Actually, to come full circle, the "cry it out" method can lead to minor brain damage:

Margot Sunderland, who runs a conference and lecture organisation called the Centre for Child Mental Health in London, said that stress levels in babies who aren't comforted when they cry can get high enough, and remain high for so long, that it causes brain cells to die. That in turn can lead to neurosis and emotional disorders later in life, she says.

"About 20 minutes would be enough to cause damage," says Sunderland, who drew her conclusions after studying hundreds of research papers on stress and brain development.

Of course, this is only for the first six months of the babies life. At some point, you need to allow them to learn, and then there's a more delicate balance between coddling them too much and not enough.

But abusing your kid doesn't strengthen them, it makes them unstable (of course, you may confuse wearing a leather jacket and beating up other kids on the playground with "tough", but often there's emotional and developmental problems associated with these kind of adolescents that leads to problems through their adult life).

In the workplace, we find leading by empowerment to be more effective than leading with fear. Abuse and neglect don't make people stronger, but it does weed out the weak. It weeds out the week because it's unhealthy and can be lethal to the week. The strong make it through because they were inherently strong, not because the abuse/neglect made them strong.

It's most impressive when people come out of abuse with the strength to still be compassionate to their fellow man. Please don't abuse and neglect your children to make them stronger.

 

[Hurkyl]

Please explain to me where I made an ad hominem attack that "disagreement implies brain damage".

It's implicit in this exchange:

BTW: What is wrong with atrocities? Why is compassion good? You seem to be assuming that your morality is correct - without justification or question.

It's pretty much every healthy brain's opinion that atrocities are bad and compassion is good. This shouldn't need to be justified.

 

[JoeDawg]

Just to clarify, I'm talking about modern society that I directly experience. I'm not talking about grandose wars and scandals. I'm talking about any day, on my street.

Depends on your neighborhood, I guess.
Mass societies are problematic for human beings, our instincts are small scale and tribal.

Also, by the "tone" of your post... those societies didn't make very good justifications, did they?

Both the Greek/Roman and European intellectual renaissances relied heavily on a slave culture. We rely on an environment destroying technology culture. The latter is certainly easier for me to stomach, but I grew up in it.

It appears to me that we've gotten more civil. Not that we're completely civil and there's no room for improvement, but that we're moving towards civility with time; even if we take a couple steps back now and then, I believe the general progression is towards civility.

Standard game theory: The only way to win the internet is via Tit-for-tat.

Of course, this is only for the first six months of the babies life. At some point, you need to allow them to learn, and then there's a more delicate balance between coddling them too much and not enough.

We learn to optimize. Not everyone is educated in the latest parenting techniques, and in many cases, an understanding of developmental psychology is closer to nil, so people tend towards broader strategies... which might in fact be detrimental in the short term... but work out better longer term...or... as with corporal punishment(which has short term benefits) its reversed.

But abusing your kid doesn't strengthen them, it makes them unstable

Outwards appearances are often more important to success. Inner stability is, under most conditions in the world, a luxury. Which is not to say, you shouldn't strive for it when it doesn't incur too much of a loss.

It weeds out the week because it's unhealthy and can be lethal to the week. The strong make it through because they were inherently strong, not because the abuse/neglect made them strong.

Its a blunt tool, but it often does the job, when you don't have anything sharper.

Please don't abuse and neglect your children to make them stronger.

Most parents, I think, are not so knowledgeable and perfect they could live up to that, every day of their childrens lives. Perfect parents don't exist.

 

[Pythagorean]

It's implicit in this exchange:

I suppose my curiosity is how 'unhealthy' is an ad hominem attack? Do you feel shame when you're sick?

'Unhealthy' is a clinical description based, not only on the "mere average" but on the operating state of a system. For example, if a sodium channel in your brain has all the apparatus to shut but it doesn't, and all your other sodium channels shut as they're supposed to, there is likely a malfunction in the sodium channel.

In the same way, you can't look at a ruptured cell and say "Oh, that cells just 'different', show some sensitivity, jeez'". The cell is unhealthy! It can be offended all it wants, that doesn't invalidate the claim. Cancer cells are another example of an obvious malfunction in cells.

 

[Hurkyl]

I suppose my curiosity is how 'unhealthy' is an ad hominem attack?

"Argumentum ad hominem" quite literally means "argument against the person". Questioning one's mental health qualifies.

Ad hominem becomes a fallacy when the attack against the person is used to discredit the ideas a person may have.

In this case, you are trying to discredit an idea -- that "atrocities are bad and compassion is good" is even allowed to be questioned -- not based upon its own merits/demerits, but by attacking the mental health of anyone who might consider it it.

See your post #67, where you said: "It shouldn't need to be justified" because anyone who thinks differently must not have a "healthy brain".

 

[Pythagorean]

But what if it's true that we can find a correlation between unhealthy brains and atrocities?

Would a valid statement still be considered ad hominem?

I'll have a more in-depth reply when I'm not on my mobile.

 

[Hurkyl]

But what if it's true that we can find a correlation between unhealthy brains and atrocities?

Then you would be trying to discredit an idea not based upon its own merits/demerits, but by attacking the mental health of anyone who might consider it.

 

[Pythagorean]

Discredit an idea by attacking the mental health of anyone who questions it? Wouldn't that be supporting the idea?

 

[Hurkyl]

Fixed my posts. (Mixed up which idea I was referring to with 'idea')

 

[JoeDawg]

Discredit an idea by attacking the mental health of anyone who questions it? Wouldn't that be supporting the idea?

Example:
Its quite obvious that the sun rotates around the earth, you can tell this by looking up.
Only people with some mental incapacity (or maybe blindness) deny this fact.
Some people with a mental incapacity would not deny this fact.

Until someone provides evidence that shows the heliocentric model of the solar system better describes what we see.
Then only people with some mental incapacity (or ignorance) deny this fact.
Some people with a mental incapacity would not deny this fact.

Discrediting a person, doesn't discredit a theory.
Being unhealthy by your standard, doesn't mean they are wrong.

 

[Pythagorean]

JoeDawg, it was a typo in Hurkly's response that I didn't understand.

Hurkyl/JoeDawg:

My intent was not to separate those who are right from those who are wrong, and there is no ad hominem attack here. That you detect an ad hominem attack is more beause of your preconceptions of mental health itself as a negative attribute.

What I meant was this: People who know atrocities are bad and compassion are good are accountable for their actions and should understand the most basic idea of right and wrong in their social context.

This means that people who do have damage/hormonal imbalance to their social centers are not able to infer from social context what right and wrong are. This doesn't make them wrong in the logical sense. In fact, it's more likely people who are socially inhibited would arrive at conclusions about right and wrong through logical conclusions, rather than the emotional avenue that the healthy brain uses.

I don't believe that any of the three of you are hormonally imbalanced or brain damaged. I think you actually agree with my conclusion, but are playing devil's advocate. I've actually never met anyone that thinks atrocities aren't bad and compassion isn't good.

Of course, this is independent of whether good and bad are subjective are objective. I've been assuming good and bad are subjective ideas laid down mostly by your society.

I would also note that in our modern day, we can call this a physical health issue. That is, mental health issues are a subset of physical health issues. They're not as subjective, spiritual, or dualist as they've been made to be in the past. They originate from abnormal function in the brain. This shouldn't imply that somebody is logically wrong because they disagree, just that they're socially insensitive. Right and wrong are rather self-evident in the extreme cases (such as atrocity and compassion).

 

[JoeDawg]

That you detect an ad hominem attack is more beause of your preconceptions of mental health itself as a negative attribute.

Ad hominem is about shifting focus from the argument to the person making the argument. It doesn't matter whether it is negative or positive. Its about using rhetoric to get around answering an argument.

People who know atrocities are bad and compassion are good

And actually this statement suffers from 'preconceptions'. From the standpoint of ethics you haven't said much of anything here. 'Atrocities are bad' really doesn't say anything, because 'badness' is implicit in the definition of atrocity.

Similarly: Murder is bad
This statement can be reduced to 'unlawful killing is bad'.
The badness of murder, which most people would agree is bad, comes from the illegal part.

Killing human beings in times of war, killing human beings in self-defense are legal.
More controversial is 'legally killing unborn humans is bad'
There is nothing essentially 'bad' about the act of killing.

So your argument from 'common sense' fails, and it does so similarly for 'compassion'.

This means that people who do have damage/hormonal imbalance to their social centers are not able to infer from social context what right and wrong are.

Which just means they could be equally right or wrong.

but are playing devil's advocate.

Again, you avoid the argument in favor of attacks on the people you are arguing with.

Right and wrong are rather self-evident in the extreme cases (such as atrocity and compassion).

Actually, defining what is an atrocity often runs into much disagreement.
Abortion, slavery, rape, murder...etc... all have varying definitions which are often conflicting, depending on where and when you live. And 'context' can have differing scope, so that doesn't really solve anything.

 

[sidestreet]

Hypothesis: The concept of morals (any morality) is due to the fact that it became useful at some point in our evolution. Same goes for religion (any faith). Both are natural, to that extent, but both must be flexible and so neither is absolute. Religion helps define the tribe and the moral code protects its individuals. Both concepts contribute to survival otherwise we wouldn’t be here to have this debate.

If you think of it like that then atheism is just another way to gather a tribe, with Dawkins and company as its would-be high priests. It’s simple, it’s exciting, it must be the one true (non-)religion with God/Science/insert your own motivator here on its side.

Supporting hypothesis: No scientific proof can exist that anyone moral code is superior to all others across all societies and over all time, nor can we prove the existence/non-existence of a suitably well abstracted god. Hence there’s an elephant in the corner, which is that is that we are products of evolution.

Is atheism incompatible with the concept of natural rights?

Absolutely not, as long as you add the rider “within the human species”.

Or is all that too rich for the blood?

 

[calculusrocks]

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." - Ayn Rand

Seriously, nobody here has read Ayn Rand or has thought to mention Objectivism? Atlas Shrugged is a classic and hits on all of this and more. Here is an interview of Ayn Rand by Mike Wallace.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukJiBZ8_4k

 

[magpies]

Joedawg says "There is nothing essentially 'bad' about the act of killing."

To me that is about as wrong as you can get... So do you care to explain a little more about what you mean joedawg? Or should I just wright you off as one of thouse people not to be alone in a dark room with.

 

[JoeDawg]

Joedawg says "There is nothing essentially 'bad' about the act of killing."

Killing is part of living.
We kill living things every day.

Germs and microbes
Plants for food
Animals for food.
Plants and animals for clothing

One of the basic acts of civilization is farming.
The first thing you do if you want to farm, is kill every living thing in the area you want to farm by ploughing. Then you plant one crop. Then you spend the rest of the growing season protecting your crop, using pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides and maybe a shotgun. Then at harvest time you kill everything you planted. And you don't even eat all of it, often you sell most of it to people who won't eat it either. Death is a commodity.

Now, that's just plants and other animals. Humans are different right? We're special.

We can legally kill in order to defend ourselves and others.
We can legally kill in times of war, whether its pure 'defense' or not.
We can legally kill human fetuses, we don't consider them fully human.
In quite a lot of places you can legally kill someone for revenge (capital punishment)
And in many places honor killings, mainly of females, are at least accepted.

The very reason we are so successful as a species, is because although we aren't the fastest or the strongest... in groups we are really good at killing. Its just natural.

Or should I just wright you off as one of thouse people not to be alone in a dark room with.

Feel free.

 

[skippy1729]

Is atheism incompatable with the concept of natural rights?

Most (or at least some) adherents to natural rights argue that human rights come from a god, or that there is an absolute morality that is the basis of natural rights. Atheists obviously do not believe in a god and most would probably not believe in an absolute morality. So how can an atheist justify the concept of natural rights?

Is there an objective moral order?

I decide that I have a right to exist. This is a subjective determination based on my instinct for survival. It is a subjective determination of a (usually) rational being. It is natural to extend this right to other (usually) rational beings provided they are not trying to kill me.

Many other (usually) rational beings come to the same subjective conclusion.

Is the right to existence now an objective moral truth for rational beings?

I think it is.

Skippy

 

[magpies]

I can't believe you would use the argument that because killing happens it isn't bad...

 

[DanP]

I can't believe you would use the argument that because killing happens it isn't bad...

Actually, from anything but an questionable ethic point of view, you can't say that homicide is a bad or a good thing. Homicide just happens. **Situations*** give the morality and ethic load.

We kill our enemy in wars (might not be moral, but my skin is 1000x more precious than his skin)

We kill convicted criminals in some legislation, we call it legal homicide, and IMO is OK to do that and pretty much moral ( I support the death penalty)

When the law wasn't omnipresent, sometimes, in rare cases, humans had to commit homicide to protect themselves. It still happens today sometimes. Is that so bad to protect your children, your women and your land ? I don't think so. It' moral.

 

[JoeDawg]

I can't believe you would use the argument that because killing happens it isn't bad...

I didn't make that argument.

I made the argument that killing is 'natural', and that there is nothing 'essentially bad' about killing.

I think killing is entirely appropriate under certain conditions, inappropriate under others, and regardless of my opinion about whether killing in general, or whether any particular killing is good or bad, killing is entirely 'natural'.

This is why the argument for 'natural rights' is problematic. Just because something is, doesn't mean it ought to be that way. It doesn't mean it ought not to be that way either.
You can't derive an ought from an is.

All 'rights' are given by groups to their members.
'Rights' are really just privileges that people consider important.

 

[TranquilFury]

Natural rights are those demands which you have the will to assert and the power to enforce (usually by proxy, as an organization of many will typically have more power than any of it's individual constituents.) If you lack either the will to assert, or the power to enforce a demand, but attain it anyway, that is a privilege. This is a reality in which might makes right, and any speculation on what 'ought' to be a natural right is wishful thinking. If you think something is your right, then you should be demanding it or gathering the power to enforce it.

 

[Leptos]

Atheism is simply the rejection of theistic beliefs. We have morals as a result of Evolution. Intelligent species generally exhibit innate morality which allows them to maintain a stable population. Religious texts were written by flawed humans, much like ourselves, except they had far less knowledge and understanding of the world around them than we do today.

 

[readaynrand]

Most (or at least some) adherents to natural rights argue that human rights come from a god, or that there is an absolute morality that is the basis of natural rights. Atheists obviously do not believe in a god and most would probably not believe in an absolute morality. So how can an atheist justify the concept of natural rights?

"We have rights because God says so" is a ridiculously bad argument.

I'm an atheist, and I do believe in absolute morality. Morality is a product of evolution, its purpose is to motivate us to act in accordance with our long term interests. Therefore, egoism is the foundation of morality.

 

[DaveC426913]

"We have rights because God says so" is a ridiculously bad argument.

Well, maybe things have changed in the year since that was written...

I'm an atheist, and I do believe in absolute morality. Morality is a product of evolution, its purpose is to motivate us to act in accordance with our long term interests. Therefore, egoism is the foundation of morality.

If that were its purpose, it would not manifest in the way it does. Evolutionarily, anyone who does not carry your genes is an enemy, competing with you for resources.

As civilized people, we choose to behave compassionately toward people that we know cannot possibly carry our genes. (And not just people but animals too might be part of one's moral code). We make a leap from "our gene pool" as our family to "the human race" as our family, (or even "all higher life"). But there's no evolutionary basis for being moral to the entire human race or higher life.

 

[apeiron]

Evolutionarily, anyone who does not carry your genes is an enemy, competing with you for resources.

This is not a biologically accurate statement. Darwinian fitness does involve a balance of competition and co-operation. And so it is no surprise to find that even at the level of the evolved human brain, there are broad instincts towards both paths, and the machinery to negotiate between them. So humans biologically are just as much about oxytocin as testosterone, for instance.

Human civilised behaviour - as a new level of language-based sociocultural evolution - still reflects this same basic competition~co-operation dynamic. So yes, there is a new level of the fitness game being played, but the basic logic remains the same. Success is defined holistically and is a fruitful balance of the two contrasting drives of competing and working together.

Science (the sciences of neurobiology and cultural anthropology) allow us to say morality does indeed have a natural basis. It is neither god-given, nor just a meaningless choice. There are strong systems principles by which morality can be modeled, explained and measured.

It was a nice surprise that a thinker like Elinor Ostrom - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom - won the 2009 Nobel for economics for taking a systems view of these kinds of things.

 

[DanP]

Well, maybe things have changed in the year since that was written...

As civilized people, we choose to behave compassionately toward people that we know cannot possibly carry our genes.

This type of altruism (non-reciprocal) towards nonkin may be just a form of Zahavian Handicap. Nothing more than showing off, engaging in resource costly behaviors to display your status and power.

But there's no evolutionary basis for being moral to the entire human race or higher life.

No, probably no. Some say that there is a basis for morality in evolution, but so far none has been able to produce any proof.

And our moral sense are too different from place to place. Morale is also clouded very easily by self-righteousness , gaps between convictions and justifications, and perception biases. Some actions also shifts in and out of the morally accepted behaviors in time.

Check this:

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/1909-39-muhammad-39-teddy-teacher-arrested

Surely, today, us westerners, won't give 40 lashes to a teacher who allow her class to name a bear Jesus. The ppl in the story certainly feel very comfortable to doit.

Does that makes us any better than them? I doubt so. Several hundred years ago, we , westerners, would have take a teacher and burn him at stake and feel very moral with the deed.

For all I know, in 100 years we may doit again, while the morals of the ppl who today lash ppl in name of gods may change.

 

[DaveC426913]

This type of altruism (non-reciprocal) towards nonkin may be just a form of Zahavian Handicap. Nothing more than showing off, engaging in resource costly behaviors to display your status and power.

Which might be true if it were the high-status and most powerful who were behaving compassionately. But it seems that this 'live and let live' and 'all creatures great and small' attitude transcends status levels. Often it is the poorest who are compassionate.