Atheist Irrationality

Michael Shermer has made some moral recommendations to his atheist and skeptic colleagues.  Shermer is one of those atheists who persistently switches the question of how he grounds his morality to how he and other atheists can behave morally.  The former is a request for justification and explanation from his view of reality, a purely material, finite world.  No one disputes that even if someone's view of reality can't explain morality that they can't therefore behave morally.  Those are two very different things.  Though I know this question has been put to Shermer numerous times, I don't know of a single instance that he attempted to answer that question rather than the one he prefers to answer about his behavior.  He continues to make moral exhortations to his fellow atheists without a philosophy that can explain why they should follow these moral principles.

Comments

[Robert]

It is amazing to watch someone like Mr. Shermer contradict himself like this. I have had conversations like this with several colleagues and can only explain their intellectual dance around the obvious as stuborn. Not for all of them. Some actually don't see the contradiction of claiming that morality is subjective while chastising others for their ethical stance. Others do see this but would rather die on the hill of obstinacy than to admit they can not live up to or defend such a position.

[alan aronson]

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/08/partly-necessary-god.html

(copy to here)

[doug t]

You can't go from an is to an ought and remain a philosophical naturalist.

[Rob]

This is exactly what I have come to expect from atheists. They know they should behave morally but have no basis for that position in their own philosophy. So what they are really saying is blabity-blab.

I should note that I (like Stuart McAlister) am fed up of hearing the continual drivel from Dawkinites about the evils of religions. Firstly, not all religions are equal. Second, as McAlister points out, atheist belief systems have led to the deaths ot 130,000,000 people in the last 100 years. Research is from John Hopkins University and can also be found on Wikipedia.

www.christian-apologetics.org

[Agilius]

>He continues to make moral exhortations to his fellow atheists without a philosophy that can explain why they should follow these moral principles.

In case there are any atheists reading, Melinda's realization is the basis for the Christian's belief that atheists are being inconsistent if they are NOT doing evil all the time - not because Christians advocate evil.

Not only this, but this realization was also the basis for the court's refusal to recognize an atheists testimony as reliable: It wasn't that an atheist COULDN'T tell the truth, but that a consistent atheist usually had no reason to tell the truth.

I haven't looked into what kinds of cases this refusal was applicable, though I would imagine that an atheist's testimony on matters concerning his own life and personal possessions would be considered reliable.

[DMT]

Could one argue that moral awareness or moral duty evolved? That moral actions are actually a highly-evolved instinct developed to preserve civilization? In this case, morals could be grounded in the idea of “survival of fittest” working at a corporate or societal level. Of course, if morals are instinctual, this doesn’t explain why some people act morally, while others don’t.

I say this only for the sake of argument. I am a firm believer in Christ, and in the idea that God is the final and best grounding for all our “oughts”. I’m just speculating about how the other side might argue for coherent moral absolutes apart from God.

[Louis Kuhelj]

"Could one argue that moral awareness or moral duty evolved? That moral actions are actually a highly-evolved instinct developed to preserve civilization? In this case, morals could be grounded in the idea of “survival of fittest” working at a corporate or societal level."

I think we saw that in WWII. I don't recall it being all too moral in nature...just the opposite. It is like a lot of things that seem to work in theory, but have devastating results in practice.

[Agilius]

>Could one argue that moral awareness or moral duty evolved? That moral actions are actually a highly-evolved instinct developed to preserve civilization?

It could only have evolved if souls evolved, because awareness is a 'property', if you will, of souls.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/08/religion-and-human-rights.html