The problem with 'No God, no problem'

""Proves to me that Humanists are believers after all! They believe in "Good", in "Love", just like me! And so it is. (Amen...to those who wish to use that form of completion.)

Posted by: schaeffz |""

Don't let anyone tell you different.

Those that do, well, I can't vouch for their motives, let's say.

Mr. Wolpe's argument is ridiculously weak. It represents a childish, stereotyped and incredibly poor understanding of atheist philosophy. The tone is akin to old-style justifications for segregation or homophobic behavior. Even a cursory browsing on the internet will turn up numerous atheist justifications for being moral and ethical that do not fall into the 3 points Mr. Wolpe lists above. If anything there is better factual/rational justification for why a belief in a god leads to immoral, unethical or "bad" behavior. I'm stunned the Post would run such a ridiculous commentary and would strongly suggest they query an atheist philosopher on the same subject. My other suggestion would be Mr. Wolpe return to school and take some basic philosophy classes.

To believers...God is Love. Says that somewhere in the Bible. Can the whole of the Bible, the whole of all god-believing religions, be boiled down to that? I think so. Why not! This is the only "holy" writing necessary. All of you reading this right now can likely search your own innards and agree. Let's safely equate Love with Good. Reword it, "Be Love for Love's sake!" Now, history has shown that those promoting anti-love may at times hold sway (Nero, Hitler, Saddam), but eventually crash and burn. It is an evolution-produced core element of being human, to love. Otherwise, there can be no survival for the species. And evolution works! So, Love ends up trumping anti-love every time in recorded history. So it has been, and so it will continue. Anti-love will come and go, but Love remains constant. Nothing wrong with what the humanists are trying to communicate. Same thing God said in the beginning, "and it was good". Proves to me that Humanists are believers after all! They believe in "Good", in "Love", just like me! And so it is. (Amen...to those who wish to use that form of completion.)

Ok, this is silly, coming from certain types:

"3. Because it is philosophically compelling to be good. But that is only if you can appeal to a standard everyone agrees to, which you cannot - see # 1 and 2 above."

But, claiming that whatever you want everyone to agree to 'comes from God' ...Doesn't work.

You can't even agree among yourselves, and more often than not use that religion to justify doing what, say, *humanism* would call unequivocally *wrong.*

We do have secular laws, which we're all bound by. We have a rational process to negotiate them in any given case.

Claiming that for people to be 'good,' requires an additional authority to take into account, and an unverifiable one at that, does *not* increase goodness, ...in fact it only increases the number of *excuses.*

You missed one reason, by the way.

4) We have instincts as social animals, ones which at their best help us to know what is good for ourselves, each other, and how to balance them. When we hurt others, with abstract justifications or not, we also hurt ourselves, in ways that cannot be rationalized away.

Certainly, I believe the Gods can help us, inform us, strengthen us to these ends, (Frankly, whether we believe in Them or some book, or not.) I often refer to certain of the Gods I swear by as 'Those Who Help Me Keep My Oaths,' ...but they're still *my* oaths.

(Actually, in my own heritage, there are notoriously-few escape clauses from oaths it seems others take likely or feel can always be overriden at convenience if a book-passage can be construed to support it. There's not much worse you could be in my religion than an 'Oathbreaker,' precisely because this is such an important bond between ourselves and those around us. We do not swear them lightly, and in spite of all the book-authority and attending legalism out there, 'keeping one's word' remains an essential, if under-rated virtue in the wider societies. )

In a word, Honor.

It doesn't come secondhand.

I've been laying off the statement just because it has crossed solidly over into cliche, but "the stupid, it burns!"
And this guy teaches at UCLA? Tell me that's a misprint.
Please.

As I said, the author ignores the fact that other species such as bats practice reciprocity. He also ignores the fact that other nations in which a larger fraction of the population is atheist generally have more respect for the law, more assured reciprocity, and better morality overall. So, to answer this question:

"You can be good for goodness' sake. But how many will, and for how long?"

More people will be good, and they will continue being good longer than they will with religion as the motivation. The author should examine the facts about society and biology. He will learn that the facts prove he is wrong. He should put aside myths, ignorance and speculation and learn the truth instead, however uncomfortable it makes him.

The law itself is the greater good that I recognize. It benefits society. Things can be wrong because they violate the law. This doesn't mean the law needs to come from above, it can come from the consensus of our duly elected representatives.

There are also things which the law can enshrine, like slavery, which are wrong, and I can choose to change my representative to get the laws changed or break the law (by helping a slave to runaway for instance) without thinking the law as a whole is not a greater social good.

There is something beyond me that makes demands: other people.

So, David, were it not for your belief in your god, would you be running amok, raping, murdering, and stealing candy from babies?

The ads are mere propaganda that answers to an argument that no one has made. The claim is not that atheistic lack of morals but a lack of moral premise, lack of ethos.
It is also a reprinting of their ads from last year: http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2008/11/another-atheist-charity-huge-success.html

Yet again, during a time of the year when people are generally more inclined towards charity—peace on earth and good will towards non-gender specific personages—atheists are busily collecting hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars during a time of recession not in order to help anyone in real material need but in order to purchase bill boards and bus ads whereby they seek to demonstrate, to themselves, just how clever they are—need any more be said?

Wow, so I'm going to "eventually" understand that there is no grounding for my own morality?

I guess I'm just a ticking time bomb, huh?

You wrote:

"1. Reciprocation. Because others will be good to you. Except when they do not know, or do not care, or simply will not."

This is nonsense. Businessmen honor agreements and reciprocity not because they believe in God, but because if they fail to honor them, no one will do business with them. Vampire bats also honor reciprocity (exchanging food), for the same reason. It is highly unlikely that vampire bats believe in God.

"2. Because it makes you feel good. Except when it does not. Or being bad makes you feel still better."

Being bad makes you feel better still? Well, speak for yourself! That is not true of any moral person, and atheists can be as moral as anyone. Belief in God has nothing to do with it.

Not that DW would say this, but if god absolves all of your sins, you can still do whatever you want and not worry about it, in fact that ideology promotes sin.

hariaum

Consider chess. There are certain fundamental 'rules of the game' that define it. An 8x8 board, 8 pawns per side that move in certain ways, two rooks per side that move in other ways, castling, the initial configuration of the pieces, etc. Now, there is no rule that you can't sacrifice your queen in the first few moves of the game. It's illegal to move your king to a threatened square, but it's perfectly acceptable by the rules to stick your queen in front of a pawn at the start of the game.

However, if you want to win the game, you shouldn't do that. There are almost no situations (at least, assuming evenly-matched opponents) where giving up your queen at the start will lead to your victory. Similarly, it's rarely a good idea to move your king out to the center of the board. It's usually a bad move.

Note words like "shouldn't" and "bad". They are value judgements. They prescribe 'oughts'. They are not part of the 'rules' of chess. From where do they come? From the combinations of two things - first, the rules and structure of chess, and second, from the player's desire to win the game. They are strategic rules.

We have physical laws, and we have human desires. "Oughts" - strategic rules - morals - arise from those two things. Some basic game theory, and voila - cooperation, etc. I contend that I am ethical and moral, that people in general are ethical and moral, because the alternative is running naked in the woods fighting over scraps of food.

"No God, no problem is exactly right. No problem doing what you wish so long as you can stomach the consequences, or avoid them. No problem disregarding the notion that something beyond you makes demands."

I do good because there are 5,999,999,999 others beyond me who (correctly) demand it.