Maaaaaaaarten said:
Okay sure, but I guess ethics usually talks about choices.
This premise is wrong, which makes the rest of the paragraph invalid.
So I don't see how you can talk about ethics if there are no choices to make, because choices don't exist, but everything's determined. I mean, what's the point of exhorting people not to cause unnecessary suffering, when they're not free to choose whether they cause it or not, because it's been determined already.
The moral theory Sam Harris defends is some sort of utilitarianism, which is a consequentialist theory of morality. Consequentialism, as the name says, posits that the morality of our actions is determined by the consequences of said actions. Actions have consequences, and whatever those consequences might be, they are the same whether the agent causing those actions is doing so of their own free will or not.
Even you're exhorting is determined already then.
I don't understand this.
Again, if I don't really have a choice in what I do, it wouldn't motivate me to put a lot of effort and reflection in to the choices I make. I'd feel worse than a chess piece, because at least a chess piece is moved for some purpose, whereas in such a deterministic mechanical worldview humans and what they do just happen without any purpose or freedom to choice what they do.
Determinism is difficult to understand, and the reaction people have to it is almost invariably the one you had: they equate determinism with fatalism. Whether you are the conscious agent of your actions or not, actions matter, choices matter, and purpose matters. Just like the chess piece is moved for some purpose, so are you, and me, and birds, and dogs, and every other living creature. Those purposes might be ultimately determined by a combination of genes, culture, upbringing, neuronal connections, etc., but they are still purposes.
I guess I come up short here indeed, because indeed I can't understand it at all. But I'm glad it's the case for you, compassion towards your fellow sentient beings is a good thing.
It's late, and it's a very complex topic, but I'll try to give you a small explanation. Realising there is no free will made me realise that even the most cold-blooded murderer does not deserve punishment. Nobody chooses to become a cold-blooded murderer. Rather than the epitome of evil, I view the inmates of high security prisons as the epitome of bad luck. Bad genes, bad parents, bad neighbourhoods, bad brains, bad circumstances... in a way, they are the first victim of their predicament.
Pedophiles are another good example. No one was ever given a choice between being attracted to adults and being attracted to small children and chose the latter. Not only are pedophiles not free to like what they want, I argue they aren't ultimately free to act upon their urges either. We cannot account for why some people are able to resist their urges while others aren't. Again, there was never this "choosing room", where, free of all influencing forces, people decided they'd rather have an attraction that is shunned by society and punished by law, and decided to be unable to resist it, thereby risking spending a living hell on earth in jail.
Oh sure, this was a random generalization. You're right there I guess. I think it was bigmac who suggested - not as a very serious suggestion I suppose, just supplying a random example - that a naturalistic purpose of life might be reproduction. Now to my knowledge in evolution the behaviour that spreads genes the best is the one that survives. So therefore you can explain human behaviour in terms of this evolutionistic drive to spread your genes or something along those lines. So then you might try to argue that spreading your genes, in other words reproducing, is the purpose of life from an evolutionistic point of view. Cause that's what we evolved for.
All biologists and anthropologists will tell you humans escaped biological evolution long ago. We evolve culturally now.
Now I agree with you; I never met an atheist who thinks like that either. So this type of reasoning clearly doesn't work and atheists don't think this way and I'm glad they don't. Now then my question is, how do you describe a purpose in naturalistic terms? What kind of purpose can you derive from a naturalistic worldview?
That is very personal. I personally strive to create a world in which well-being is maximised for all conscious creatures.
Although I have actually heard atheists say something like people being their own god, of course most of them don't use that type of language or if they do it's obviously a kind of metaphor and they're not claiming some sort of religious self worship. But saying, okay there is no purpose to life, I'll add value myself. Now either I'm misunderstanding this phrase, or it worries me a lot. Because any sort of moral objectivity is gone with the wind imo, if people make up their own purpose and value and whatever. But again, I'm not bashing atheists in general here, I'm referring to a specific line of thinking.
What is the difference between that and the worldview of theists? Theism has been the predominant worldview for most of human history. Yet we never got even close to reaching a consensus on moral objectivity. The ideas of what constitutes moral behaviour have varied and vary as much among theists as they do among atheists.
Now I'll take back the line 'this is probably how most atheists get along'. But let me explain what I was thinking there. In my experience not every secular person has this type of elaborate ethics that some thinking atheists might ascribe to. In the secular postmodern society where I grew up in - I don't have 16 years of catholic upbringing and in the Netherlands I grew up in a secular society - most people just try to get along with the people around them and do what they like. You know, there is no grand purpose, no big ethical system, just their own will. Now fortunately, when my secular friends - and I have many of them - do what they feel is right, they're usually very nice friendly people. What they feel is right usually isn't that bad. And when people do have a disturbing feeling of what is right, there's always laws to keep them from doing harm. But what worries me, is that in this secular postmodern society peoples feeling is their highest moral authority. I find that very disturbing. I know I'm probably being too harsh if I accuse the majority of atheists of this, but I certainly see this trend in postmodernism and in society at large. It pops up in cliches like 'just be yourself', 'do what you want', 'follow your heart', 'if it feels right for you it's okay'. Now that's the type of thing that I'm worried about. Because in those types of phrases what people want, what they are and what they feel is their law and moral authority. Then people are truly autonomous. In Greek autos is 'self' and nomos is 'law' so if you're autonomous, it means that you are your own law from an etymological point of view; that's why I hate the term autonomy. Nobody really wants autonomy, because they want the state to enforce some laws as well don't they? But I know the word is used in a different sense in modern English.
Okay, so I got annoyed about something random again and starting ranting; but maybe you can see where I'm coming from a bit. Again, I have many atheist friends and I don't think they're immoral people at all with regard to how they treat me and the people around them. I just don't understand how they do ethics, but I'm glad they and you do.
Atheists like me worry about theistic morality ourselves. I personally find it much more disturbing that people draw their moral principles from books writen during the Bronze Age, instead of based on rational inquiry and critical thinking.
The secular society you live in is one in which, unlike in the vast majority of other countries which are more religious, there is a higher degree of freedom, social justice, equality, safety, etc.
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