Guns, Gods and Goodness - The Use and Abuse of Ethics

Why be good? Until we have an answer, all we will have is abuse. From Freedomain Radio -- http://www.freedomainradio.com

There's this very tragic continuum in human thought wherein - in general - if somebody tends to be less religious, they tend to be more statist - like Communists are atheists, most socialists are agnostics and so on - whereas if somebody tends to be anti-state, then there is a tendency to be more religious.

I think this arises from the fundamental problem that society has which is: why should we obey those in authority? Why should we obey moral rules?

'The Lord, the Lord Jehovah, has given unto you these 15 -- oy -- 10, 10 Commandments for all to obey...'

Those who are more religious have the magic pixie dust called 'God' to sprinkle on their Commandments, to raise them from mere mortal rules to divine absolutes. Whereas those who don't believe in the magic dust of religion have to turn to the state and to physical aggression, to incarceration, to kidnapping, to imprisonment, in order to turn mere human rules into moral 'absolutes.'

So you kind of have to hold your nose; like if you're an atheist, you pretty much have to hang out with people who are very pro-state, and if you're anti-state then you have to hang out with people who are very religious - but neither of these approaches solves the basic problem of human morality.

Threatening somebody with supernatural punishment is merely verbal abuse, and it doesn't raise the truth status of any of the moral rules proposed. Whereas threatening people with kidnapping and incarceration is mere physical abuse - and also does not make any moral rules that are supported by such attacks any more valid.

It is really only philosophy that will solve this problem for us, and will give us reasonable and consistent and empirical arguments from first principles that will allow us to convince people to be virtuous rather than threatening them with random and destructive punishments if they fail to conform to fairly arbitrary rules. So the first thing we need to do is to understand that we don't have a good rational basis for social rules at the moment - that's real tragedy, something we all need to work to sort out, to figure out, to solve.

I've made my efforts in this direction with a free book called "Universally Preferable Behavior: A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics." But until we recognize that we don't have a rational and philosophical basis for morality at the moment, we're forever going to be swinging between these two awful poles of the verbal abuse of religion and the physical abuse of statism.

But we don't have to - we can find a third rational peaceful way to have social rules without abuses - and I hope that you will continue to explore this incredibly fertile area in the realm of philosophy.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• virtue
• philosophy
• religion
• Jesus
• God
• Commandments
• morality
• sam
• harris
• richard
• dawkins
• christopher
• hitchens

[jdenicholls]

Most libertarians are non-religious in my experience.

[LiberAnarchy]

I've noticed this problem and have griped about it a time or two. It seems that many atheists arent' applying the same skepticism to the state that they do to religion. It may be a sort of growth process. For me, it was natural to ask, "If there is no magic sky daddy that can make people behave, why is it that a stroke of a legislator's pen is expected to make something be?" and then to ask, "So w/o a magic sky daddy, what gives those yahoos perogitive over my life?"

[ultramerton]

@QuatFax

Right. He's asking one of the basic questions atheists receive from religious folk: "how can you be good without God?". For the religious, morality is decreed by a god; for most non-believers, the moral authority is "the people," which translates to a liberal, democratic state. The problem is that both of these are appeals to authority which push the real questions away: "what are morals, where do they originate, and what methodology distinguishes the moral from the immoral?".

[QuatFax]

@1776Matthew I think he's saying that society isn't following a good rational basis for social rules, not that such a thing doesn't exist.

[QuatFax]

Okay, AGAIN, there is nothing inherently statist about Socialism; numerous socialists, including myself, Kevin Carson, and David D'Amato, are also free-market anarchists.

[paulekko]

I've never met a religious libertarian.  I've seen them on TV, however.

[1776Matthew]

Molyneux here argues "we don't have a good rational basis for social rules", then argues elsewhere that there is "universally preferable behavior", the precepts of which he seems to be the only one to have figured out... allegedly.

Stefbot, I was very impressed with the first few clips I heard from you. Then I began to notice your absolutely compulsive tendency to self-contradict. You sir, are a blowhard. A large vocabulary does not a sound thinker make.

[Farf420]

@dimebag690 History of the World part 1

[SuperBigbadman]

yes this is true, I was raised in the Catholic faith, and was a good boy, when I was young, then after high school, I went away from faith and religion altogether and was a good man. So it all depends on the goodness of the person inside, not the stereotyped paradigm you belong to, which is a fallacy to begin with, no-one should have a "label" for label's are the cause of the fighting between people

[favabank]

Love your vids Stefan, just wondering if you have stats to back up this continuum theory? I'd have thought that relgious people are more hierachically minded, more accepting of the status quo, and therefore more Statist in general, especially in non secular parts of the world where national identity seems closely bound up with religious identity.

[natedaug1]

@cecinestpasunename Tolstoy was christian anarchist. But yeah, your right, most Christians aren't anarchists.