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Comment by yters | Hacker News Reader

I would like to hear a clear articulation why a secular or atheist has good reason to believe there is a moral standard they should live by. I've never heard of such a thing. Mostly it is just handwaving that "everyone knows it's good to be tolerant and kind." History would suggest otherwise.

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Like most moral arguments then, religious or otherwise? Pretty much everyone starts with the conclusion they want and then engages the rationalization engine in their mind to work backwards. Religion doesn't offer any better a basis than anything else, otherwise we probably wouldn't have so many religious groups, often claiming to believe in the same God, fighting each other would we?

Most major religions have the same core moral beliefs, and similar justifications. They fight each other because they think the other religion is undermining the moral code.

Consider the opposite - would Christians go out and start murdering people if they stopped believing in God? If tomorrow incontrovertible proof came out that the ten commandments and the Bible were in fact not the word of God, would my Christian friends suddenly start stealing from me or stick a knife in my back? As an atheist I find that absolutely appalling and I don't know how anyone can live like that.

You fail to distinguish between people habitually being good and why they should maintain those habits. Once habits are established, living the Christian manner is preferable. But, without a justification for doing so, the habits are not established, and they can be broken at a whim. This is the case with the "moral" atheists. They have grown up in a Christian culture and adopted the Christian moral habits. But, if it is ever in their favor to discard the moral habits, the atheist will do so.

For instance, why give up your life for others? There is no justification for this in an atheist worldview, and without it, we would not have firefighters, police, or the military. Instead, we'd just have mercenaries that would just as soon massacre you instead of the enemy, if the enemy pays them more.

I've found by experience - some of it very painful and transformative - that if I live according to certain moral standards then I'm more fulfilled and happy with myself. Call it a kind of long-term hedonistic justification, if you like.

How do you know that will work for anyone else? Why believe it is an objective moral order? On the other hand, if you do believe it is a moral objective order, how is that different than what religions teach?

I don't believe in an objective moral order, or that such a thing can be meaningfully defined. Your question was whether there's a good reason why an atheist should live by a moral standard; I gave you mine. I don't expect, but do hope for, it to work for others; my experience is that other people are not so different to me.

Right, and that sort of thing does not seem capable of maintaining a society's morality.

I'd have to disagree; or at least counter that irreligion does not immorality breed. The least religious nations tend also to be the most peaceful, have the best treatment of women and children, and lowest rates of teen pregnancy, STDs etc...:

https://pitweb.pitzer.edu/academics/wp-content/uploads/sites...

The philosophy behind humanism seems like a decent place to start.

There is not much philosophy there. Just assertions for the Christian values of tolerance and valuing human agency, without any justification. But, there is no rational basis for such things in a Darwinian world red in tooth and nail.

There has been a lot of science coming out recently about how in an evolutionary context cooperation is more beneficial in some situations than any idea of individual survival of the fittest.

Based on your reaction though with "red in tooth and nail[sic (claw)]" you seem more interested in your own preconceived biases than any good faith argument from science or otherwise.

Yes, cooperation is beneficial to the group, but what is beneficial to me is for everyone else to cooperate and for me to take advantage of them. Why would an atheist ever do anything that benefits the group over themselves, if they can get away with it?

What's stopping you? In theory nothing but in practice many things.

Atheists still have to live in the real world. The real world doesn't run on people fearing god it runs on, among other things, laws and reputation. Most people wont steal from you because they don't want to go to jail not because god is watching. Most people don't screw over every person they meet because then they'll get a reputation as a person to not work with. Say you decide to play the long game and "pretend" to be good until you get your chance to betray everyone for your payday. Some might say that's just good old fashioned capitalist business, a system atheists and the god fearing alike participate in.

If I didn't believe in right and wrong, I would definitely try to get away with much more. Death and punishment are not a problem. As long as death is quick, there is nothing to fear.

There are plenty of instances in our society where godlessness turns into immoral anarchy, such as the inner cities or the upper echelons of Wall Street.

Go preach somewgere else. Your arguments make no logical sense without taking your whole odd beliefs as cannon. You literally have nothing to say buy assert your favorite religion started everything good. At least back your conclusions up with logic post-fact.

Well, let's look at an atheistic country, say the Soviet Union. They certainly had no moral qualms about mass human experimentation and genocide when it suited their purpose.

On the other hand, even Islam, the most violent of the big religions, still teaches from the Koran that every person has something divine in them that gives them value. Islam has not conducted killings at the same scale as the atheistic regimes have.

The Soviet Union may have been atheistic, but whatever problems it had don't stem from your complaint upthread about atheistic persons not having a belief in right and wrong; Leninism is no less an exclusive, total ideology of right and wrong than those associated with theistic systems.

Exactly. He had a view of right and wrong derived from his atheism, but it was certainly not the correct view. Hence gulags, human experimentation, etc. I know of no atheistic derivation of ethics that is actually moral. They all undermine morality because the human being is nothing special, merely a tool for the ubermensch.

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