Irish Times on the New Face of Atheism

equivariant

If I did not believe in God, I would still want my doctor, my lawyer and my banker to do so

I defintely would be happier if I knew that my doctor was an atheist (I don't know whether he is or not)

coffee_cake

Whose turn is it to write in this time?

pauldla

bluewolf wrote: »

Whose turn is it to write in this time?

I wonder if they'll print any more. The topic doesn't seem to be going anywhere; certainly not if they're printing letters like the one by the above-quoted Ms Koehane. It's only a matter of time now before someone flashes the 'Mystery of Faith' card.

Obliq

bluewolf wrote: »

Whose turn is it to write in this time?

Yours! Mine keep being rejected (admittedly in favour of much better ones!)

sephir0th

Galvasean wrote: »

"One thing is certain, we did not create ourselves"

We did not create ourselves, therefore yahweh is the one true god and the bible is his word.

yeppydeppy

I think it's up to Michael Nugent to reply to this wan!

Michael Nugent

There are two more letters on atheism and Atheist Ireland in today's Irish Times, one suggesting that religion and atheism are both boys clubs that women avoid.

http://bit.ly/SPB5wK

That's eight successive days now that the letters page has covered this topic. You can write to lettersed@irishtimes.com. Keep it short, and focus on your most important point.

Michael Nugent

As an update to this, I have an article in today's Irish Times responding to some of the points made in the letters.

Myths about atheism obscure its secular values

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Michael Nugent wrote: »

As an update to this, I have an article in today's Irish Times responding to some of the points made in the letters.

Myths about atheism obscure its secular values

Good article, but I still think this is a fudge

Morality is a natural process of our brains, based on empathy, compassion, reciprocity and reason.

Natural process of our brains? There's a compassion lobe, sitting next to empathy? And it takes precedence over the fear and blind panic circuits?

Can I have my sceptism surgically removed, because it makes it really hard to come to a conclusion.

Zillah

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Good article, but I still think this is a fudgeNatural process of our brains? There's a compassion lobe, sitting next to empathy? And it takes precedence over the fear and blind panic circuits?

Can I have my sceptism surgically removed, because it makes it really hard to come to a conclusion.

Erm, I don't think you're looking at it the right way. You seem to be assuming that for every manifestation of the brain's processing there has to be an analogous section of the brain. I would challenge you to try to remove the colour blue from your computer by taking a drill to your hard drive and it should elucidate the flaw in your thinking. That said, I would not be surprised in the slightest if neuroscientists were able to identify key circuits that mediate the majority of distinct processes within the brain, they have already done it for a great many, from visual processing to ethical conundrums. Studies have shown, for example, that the basic facial expressions are recognised by all humans from all cultures - if recognising that certain patterns of a face convey certain emotions felt by the owner of the face can be hardwired into the brain, I see no reason to be fundamentally sceptical about any other forms of hardwiring.

Dades

Michael Nugent wrote: »

As an update to this, I have an article in today's Irish Times responding to some of the points made in the letters.

Myths about atheism obscure its secular values

I really liked that little piece, kudos.

Restrained, conversational, and most importantly (for me) not confrontational, which tends to immediately put religious folk on the defensive. Very interested to see what responses you get from some usual suspects.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Zillah wrote: »

Erm, I don't think you're looking at it the right way. <...> I see no reason to be fundamentally sceptical about any other forms of hardwiring.

You’ll appreciate, my query to the effect of whether there’s a morality bone is not a comment on neurology. I’m simply expressing skepticism at the contention that morality is a naturally occurring phenomenon, like fur, or metamorphic rocks.

So, indeed, I'm fundamentally sceptical about moral hardwiring.

(Aside: The only thing I can remember from school geography is the word "metamorphic".)

Obliq

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

You’ll appreciate, my query to the effect of whether there’s a morality bone is not a comment on neurology. I’m simply expressing skepticism at the contention that morality is a naturally occurring phenomenon, like fur, or metamorphic rocks.

So, indeed, I'm fundamentally sceptical about moral hardwiring.

(Aside: The only thing I can remember from school geography is the word "metamorphic".)

Actually.....

http://www.ibcsr.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=379:animals-and-empathy&catid=25:research-news&Itemid=59

http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals.html

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_evolution_of_empathy

kuro_man

While I agree with the general thrust of this article, there is a small problem: you will never win a faith vs reason argument. Religious people like their faith, so won't want to give it up. And why should they?
I know this article doesn't do that head-on, but it does fly fairly close with the "patterns in nature" line.
This will set the debate on personal faith & reason (look at the comments!) rather than on societal reason & secularism. Its tricky, but we need to promote (societal) reason without mentioning faith.

I would rather see reasoned arguments that appeal to fairness and equality, e.g. The state should have an oath of office for non-believers, pharmacies are licensed by the state and are expected to be trustworthy, therefore they shouldn't sell homeopathy pills, the state should not run faith-sponsored schools because that will inherently discriminate against someone else.

Obliq

Sounds fair enough. So long as reproductive rights are also fair for people of no belief in the "sacredness" of life.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Obliq wrote: »

Actually.....

http://www.ibcsr.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=379:animals-and-empathy&catid=25:research-news&Itemid=59

http://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals.html

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_evolution_of_empathy

Yeah, the key point is this one

Empathy is fragile, though. Among our close animal relatives, it is switched on by events within their community, such as a youngster in distress, but it is just as easily switched off with regards to outsiders or members of other species, such as prey. The way a chimpanzee bashes in the skull of a live monkey by hitting it against a tree trunk is no advertisement for ape empathy. Bonobos are less brutal, but in their case, too, empathy needs to pass through several filters before it will be expressed. Often, the filters prevent expressions of empathy because no ape can afford feeling pity for all living things all the time. This applies equally to humans. Our evolutionary background makes it hard to identify with outsiders. We’ve evolved to hate our enemies, to ignore people we barely know, and to distrust anybody who doesn’t look like us. Even if we are largely cooperative within our communities, we become almost a different animal in our treatment of strangers.

Whatever way you shake it, there's no basis for assuming that the commonsense relics of religious morality that rattle about in our skulls have any physical foundation. That's just wishful thinking, in reaction to a yearning that it be so.

Dades

kuro_man wrote: »

While I agree with the general thrust of this article, there is a small problem: you will never win a faith vs reason argument. Religious people like their faith, so won't want to give it up. And why should they?
I know this article doesn't do that head-on, but it does fly fairly close with the "patterns in nature" line.
This will set the debate on personal faith & reason (look at the comments!) rather than on societal reason & secularism. Its tricky, but we need to promote (societal) reason without mentioning faith.

I see this article as clearing up a lot of nonsense that has been written about atheism and "New Atheism"; something that was sorely needed. The fight for societal reason & secularism is for another article.

Zillah

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

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Yeah, the key point is this one

Whatever way you shake it, there's no basis for assuming that the commonsense relics of religious morality that rattle about in our skulls have any physical foundation. That's just wishful thinking, in reaction to a yearning that it be so.

The article you quote discusses the ways in which hardwired empathy manifests - how and when it applies, under what circumstances it is suppressed - it doesn't support your contention that morality is not hardwired. There is a reason every non-sociopath feels a certain feeling when watching an old woman struggle with her shopping, or a child crying on their own, or a weaker person being attacked by a stronger one. These things appear in every human from every culture, just the same way fear and love and loyalty etc appear in everyone. There is no way these things are cultural artifacts. Genetics are sophisticated enough to wire my brain to recognise that a face twisted in a certain way means happy, and another means scared, sophisticated enough to make me feel jealously when someone I'm attracted to flirts with a rival, to make me feel protective of a younger family member. These things aren't coincidences, our personalities aren't glowing white lights inside our skulls cut from some spiritual human-shaped template...all these traits are products of the brain. Why you single out empathy/moralty I haven't a clue.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Zillah wrote: »

Why you single out empathy/moralty I haven't a clue.

Because morality isn't just following where empathy leads. That's the point of the extract I highlighted. Empathy can make you help someone who needs you, or lead you to beat a common enemy to death (with a wet sock, or something that makes that seem particularly horrible. Sorry, it's just the point is so fecking obvious I don't see why it takes so much effort).

Morality, surely, is meant to kick in when your empathy lets you down. So your morality should, for the sake of argument, give that murderer a fair trial where your empathy wants to bash him with a rock.

If morality is self-gratification, then its self-gratification, and not morality.

If morality is self-interest with good PR, then its self-interest with good PR, and not morality.

If morality is something, apart from those things, then it should lead you to do things that you don't find gratifying or self-enriching.

Like always, these discussions have been going on for ages. Plato used to ask people to consider how the perfectly just or moral man would do all the right things, but have the reputation of being immoral. "Doing the right thing" is a phrase that communicates it too - the idea that doing right will leave you poorer and sadder. "It's a far, far better thing that I do today than I have ever done, a far far better rest I go to", you mumble, as you take someone else's place on the gullitine.

Yeah, I'm rambling on. But is it really so hard to see these distinctions? From my perspective, it looks like ye are avoiding an issue in plain sight.

Zillah

I think the issue is that what you consider to be morality doesn't actually exist. At least in an objective sense. Morality is instinct filtered by intellect, and arose evolutionarily because we cannot benefit from a cooperative society without it. It absolutely tends to serve our self-interest, even if we don't realise it. If you doubt that then consider why morality tends to be a question of proximity: If you see someone beating a child in front of you you are compelled to intervene. If you know someone living nearby is beating their child you might call the police. If you hear about someone in another city beating a child you say "that's bad" but do nothing else. Another country; it barely registers on your radar. Regulating your immediate environment benefits you, regulating distant environments does not - though the children further away are no less deserving of your protection, objectively speaking.

Morality in the unverifiable objective religious sense is not a thing, we just like to pretend it is.

recedite

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Morality, surely, is meant to kick in when your empathy lets you down. So your morality should, for the sake of argument, give that murderer a fair trial where your empathy wants to bash him with a rock.

But in the back of your mind are those nagging doubts;
What if the "murderer" is really innocent?
What if I end up in the dock myself some day, can I expect to receive any compassion?
Hence;

M Nugent wrote:

Morality is a natural process of our brains, based on empathy, compassion, reciprocity and reason

Obliq

Zillah wrote: »

I think the issue is that what you consider to be morality doesn't actually exist. At least in an objective sense. Morality is instinct filtered by intellect, and arose evolutionarily because we cannot benefit from a cooperative society without it. It absolutely tends to serve our self-interest, even if we don't realise it. If you doubt that then consider why morality tends to be a question of proximity: If you see someone beating a child in front of you you are compelled to intervene. If you know someone living nearby is beating their child you might call the police. If you hear about someone in another city beating a child you say "that's bad" but do nothing else. Another country; it barely registers on your radar. Regulating your immediate environment benefits you, regulating distant environments does not - though the children further away are no less deserving of your protection, objectively speaking.

Morality in the unverifiable objective religious sense is not a thing, we just like to pretend it is.

You're clever.

Mark Hamill

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Morality, surely, is meant to kick in when your empathy lets you down. So your morality should, for the sake of argument, give that murderer a fair trial where your empathy wants to bash him with a rock.

Its empathy that calls for fair trials. Have you no empathy for a possibly innocent person facing punishment for something they didn't do? Or for a victim who receives no justice. Or future possible victims who die because of a mindless desire for revenge and punishment?

Zombrex

Zillah wrote: »

I think the issue is that what you consider to be morality doesn't actually exist. At least in an objective sense. Morality is instinct filtered by intellect, and arose evolutionarily because we cannot benefit from a cooperative society without it. It absolutely tends to serve our self-interest, even if we don't realise it. If you doubt that then consider why morality tends to be a question of proximity: If you see someone beating a child in front of you you are compelled to intervene. If you know someone living nearby is beating their child you might call the police. If you hear about someone in another city beating a child you say "that's bad" but do nothing else. Another country; it barely registers on your radar. Regulating your immediate environment benefits you, regulating distant environments does not - though the children further away are no less deserving of your protection, objectively speaking.

Morality in the unverifiable objective religious sense is not a thing, we just like to pretend it is.

I think GCU's point is more that there is an intellectual element of morality that is above ethical instincts, that we can rationalise out things like the principle of a fair trial for all beyond what our hard wired instincts would tell us in the specific situation where we have just caught a robber, that moral codes are to ethical instinct what Shakespeare's word play are to shouting at someone that there is a tiger behind them.

I don't think he is making a case for objective morality independent to human thought.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Zillah wrote: »

I think the issue is that what you consider to be morality doesn't actually exist.

Oh, I do agree. The point I'm consistently trying to make is that what religious people call morality and what we call morality are two entirely different things. For my part, I think we should stop calling it "morality", as it leads to much unnecessary circling around the point.

Zillah wrote: »

If you see someone beating a child in front of you you are compelled to intervene.

Grand, but an even more interesting and challenging point is to consider that, in that very situation, someone else is apparently compelled to beat the child. The compulsion isn't a moral compass.

recedite wrote: »

What if I end up in the dock myself some day, can I expect to receive any compassion?

Grand, but that's self interest.

And I'm not necessarily saying there's anything wrong with self interest. Adam Smith contended that self-interest would guide everyone to co-operate effectively.

I'm just saying, if by morality we mean self-interest, we'd have more coherent discussions if we just said so. A fruitful discussion between theists and atheists, if it was ever attempted, might be to explore what precisely do you get out of "morality" in the sense of an objective code provided by some supreme authority, that you cannot equally achieve by self-interest.

I think that would save us from putting great weight on studies of the situations in which chimpanzees bash monkeys.

Zombrex wrote: »

moral codes are to ethical instinct what Shakespeare's word play are to shouting at someone that there is a tiger behind them.

Nicely put.

Mark Hamill

Zombrex wrote: »

I think GCU's point is more that there is an intellectual element of morality that is above ethical instincts, that we can rationalise out things like the principle of a fair trial for all beyond what our hard wired instincts would tell us in the specific situation where we have just caught a robber, that moral codes are to ethical instinct what Shakespeare's word play are to shouting at someone that there is a tiger behind them.

I don't think he is making a case for objective morality independent to human thought.

This is GCU's first post in response to Michael Nugents article:

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote:

Michael Nugent wrote:

Morality is a natural process of our brains, based on empathy, compassion, reciprocity and reason.

Natural process of our brains? There's a compassion lobe, sitting next to empathy? And it takes precedence over the fear and blind panic circuits?

Can I have my sceptism surgically removed, because it makes it really hard to come to a conclusion.

His point is not just that morality has an intellectual element beyond ethical instinct, he specifically contradicted morality having a natural origin in the brain.

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Mark Hamill wrote: »

His point is not just that morality has an intellectual element beyond ethical instinct, he specifically contradicted morality having a natural origin in the brain.

Again, beware the dangers of equivocation. We may well have instincts formed in the brain. You can call that morality. In which case, morality might contain both the compulsion to beat a child and the compulsion to stop someone beating a child.

Which, I suspect, is not what any of us really means by morality.

The concept in play is being brought out; it's there in Zillah's post when he says "what you consider to be morality doesn't actually exist". I agree. I don't think morality exists. It's a unicorn - a concept we can appreciate, but not something that's real.

And I think that changing the subject quickly to talk about how wonderfully moral bonobos are when compared to chimps, as they're much less likely to bash monkeys, is a fudge.

Mark Hamill

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Again, beware the dangers of equivocation. We may well have instincts formed in the brain. You can call that morality. In which case, morality might contain both the compulsion to beat a child and the compulsion to stop someone beating a child.

Which, I suspect, is not what any of us really means by morality.

The concept in play is being brought out; it's there in Zillah's post when he says "what you consider to be morality doesn't actually exist". I agree. I don't think morality exists. It's a unicorn - a concept we can appreciate, but not something that's real.

And I think that changing the subject quickly to talk about how wonderfully moral bonobos are when compared to chimps, as they're much less likely to bash monkeys, is a fudge.

So I'm right, you don't agree with morality having a natural origin in the brain?

GCU Flexible Demeanour

Mark Hamill wrote: »

So I'm right, you don't agree with morality having a natural origin in the brain?

Do unicorns have a natural origin in the brain? Does Papal authority have a natural origin in the brain?

Although, even that's not quite it. My point is more that people use the term "morality" to talk about two quite different things. When Michael says "We do not need religion for morality. Morality is a natural process of our brains", it's a fudge because "morality" means two different things in those two sentences.

Mark Hamill

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

Do unicorns have a natural origin in the brain? Does Papal authority have a natural origin in the brain?

Yes, the part of the brain that produces the imagination

GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »

My point is more that people use the term "morality" to talk about two quite different things. When Michael says "We do not need religion for morality. Morality is a natural process of our brains", it's a fudge because "morality" means two different things in those two sentences.

No, morality is used with the same meaning in both sentences. You seem to having trouble with the fact that "morality" is a general term, not a specific term. It is the notion of having morals, not any specific moral (its like how the word "rules" just means a set of things we are supposed to do, not any specific rule, like "do not run"). Just like the word "marriage", religion has falsely appropriated the word as meaning something exclusive and originating in religion. Michael was contradicting that notion, that morality originates purely in religion, and puts forward that morality is based on empathy, compassion, reciprocity and reason originating the brain.