Can Atheists Have an Objective Morality?

If morals are objective, surely they wouldn't change over time... from one generation to the next?
The very fact that they have, and that they even differ from one geographic region to the next, is surely an indication that they are subjective.

There are undoubtedly similarities of morals for people / societies that wishes to survive (which I would think would be a goal of most people / societies). But this does not make them objective per se - only common among societies and people that wish to survive etc

There are many examples of acts that are deemed morally acceptable by some, and not by others.

Also, morals, I feel, are initially given to you by your upbringing... your society, your parents, your friends etc. And then you filter them with your intelligence / emotions to arrive at YOUR OWN set of morals. Usually you'll find they are similar to those who influenced you, but not always. (I say that both intelligence and emotions are used to filter things because I think only computers can remove emotions entirely from such complex matters.) And many morals are based on judgements of value / worth. If I place a life at a higher value than someone else does in the grand scheme of things, then I am likely to consider capital punishment as less morally acceptable, for example.

Society changes, individuals change, morals change, all based on changing values that we place on things.

In my book this equals subjective.

 

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Can tennis players have objective morality ?

 

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Yes they can. I am an atheist and I think that there is an Objective Moral Truth.

I'm not sure that we can know it perfectly, but we can approximate it with greater precision and accuracy over time, which is what I think the world is doing as it becomes more and more secular.

What I find interesting is that, at every turning point, organized religion has fought AGAINST the move towards this Objective Moral Truth. It is the churches that tells women to be silent, stand behind their men, cover themselves, do what they are told. It was the church that promoted slavery and clung to it in the American South. It was the Church that gave power to kings and the feudal system of governing. It is the church that harries homosexuals and attempts to enslave women via their reproductive rights.

Atheists are the ONLY people who can have Objective Moral codes, because they are the only group that has their ethics bound to reason and discourse, and not to the backwards sense of right and wrong that comes with a worship of the ancient.

 

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Because that would imply that you consider morality to be a timeless notion. That is usually more common with the religious

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)

 

Not unpleasant. Socially incorrect. Thats usually how it works. Its why you wear an abaya in one society, get arrested for streaking in a second and be completely nude in a third. For someone in the median, either extreme [abaya vs nudity in public] may be immoral, seen as repression, human rights violation or for the nudity, as something they would prefer people kept to the privacy of their rooms.. Or at the very least, they would not want to be walking down the street with their children and see couples copulating on the park bench, while feeling no such weirdness if it were two cats copulating instead. Similarly, the broad minded who postulate nudity as normal, would certainly change their mind if they went to the mall and found a nude Santa with children on his lap.

 

I think you are confusing customs with ethics. In each of those cases it would be immoral to violate the mores of the group, which means that they are ethically identical if culturally diverse.

The distinction can be made if we find that the differences between the cultures have nothing to do with treatment with one another. Wearing clothes or not wearing clothes is not an ethical consideration. An ethical consideration is what we do when others conform vs. violate these arbitrary norms.

 

Perhaps we have different definitions of immorality.

 

I've made a good case for mine. What problems do you see in it?

 

Its too restrictive

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/

 

What a silly thing to say.

My question didn't say: Can I, as an atheist, have an objective morality compared to a deist, theist, pantheist, and every other classification in this category?

I'm new to philosophy and I'm an atheist. So I assumed that an objective morality might be different in the atheistic world view.

If I had landscape Y and I wanted to know how to do action X to that landscape, I don't need to know how to do action X on landscape A, B, C, ...Z.

So quit giving me shit about this.

 

Nin': you don't see the contradiction here (which has already been pointed out to you..)?

Do refrain from disparaging other posters.
What you may perceive as being 'given shit', may in fact be an attempt seeking clarification.

 

"Superior moral codes"?
Whole can of worms in that phrase alone.

Who determines superior? Unsurprisingly it is the incumbent populace. And it is "superior" 'cos it fits the current underlying society.

I would argue that in a stable society, morals would find a status-quo - i.e. that suit everyone. But change the society and the morals would change.

So if the question is: "is there a universally acceptable set of morals for a given stable society" then I would think so.
But wherever society changes, so do morals.

To me, an "objective" set of morals is one that would not change regardless of the society, regardless of any changes going on to that society.

And objective does not merely mean homogenous.

I'm not sure I can believe that this objective code exists.
I have seen no compelling arguments as yet.

 

Part two of the definition that you provide states:

"normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons."

Given that only atheists are "rational persons" and that this is a call for an Objective Moral code (hence the "all"), I believe you just presented your evidence in an attempt to refute my claim and ended up buttressing it.

For someone who is claiming to have "imagination" in another thread, and shunning facts, you sure are quick to link to other people's ideas, aren't you SAM?

 

My understanding of objective might be different to yours, I fear...
I agree with the idea that morality is as described above... but to me "objective" means beyond specified conditions - i.e. applicable to all conditions.

Am I being too semantic? I don't think so (although I admit to the habit... intoxicating...

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) as it is actually critical, I suppose.

 

And I'm not an atheist, hence I do not agree with you

As compared to thinking other people have no ideas?

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I think you and I agree on our definition of "Objective". We might disagree on what we classify moral behavior and what we classify as mere custom.

What ethical anthropologists have not discovered, in all their looking, is a culture in which adherence to custom was not expected, and where severe violation of those customs was not considered taboo, or frowned upon.

So, if customs are merely ways of distinguishing the in-group from the out-group (which is what I and many others contend) then pointing out differences in custom is meaningless in an debate on ethics.

There is no moral distinction between wearing pants and tying my penis to my belly by the foreskin. The moral distinction is how members of both cultures are treated as they conform or violate these norms. What is amazing is how universal these moral treatments are.

Even my dog will sit with her back to me when she is upset with me, will tremble when nervous, will reward fair treatment, will remember who gives her treats, will be wary of those that have mistreated her. Vampire bats have amazing displays of repayment for former favor, and primate cultures resemble our own in startling ways.

The bullshit we hold up as differences are not, which is the key consideration. And as human freedoms expand, we seem to be converging, worldwide, on an Objective Moral Truth which can be best summarized by the Golden Rule variants.

A study of game theory will enlighten on this topic. In a war of various strategies to win the "Prisoner's Dilemma", it is the Golden Rule of "tit for tat" that does best.

 

Do wild dogs do the same? Its amusing how atheists use dogs, who have been selectively bred for their traits by humans for thousands of years and are trained by humans, as an example of "natural" morality.