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"When she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was very, very popular."
Also, what the blue blazes is with the concept that Atheism has no moral centre or, at least, leads to moral relativism (not convinced that that’s necessarily a bad thing, either and is, in fact, surely an inarguable state of affairs on a global cultural scope, because who is to say whose moral absolutes are correct)?
For a start, how is being atheist supposed to rob you of, for the want of a better expression, a moral compass? Is it what you’re taught as part of your religion, that gives you a moral compass? Because I would say I have been taught my morals in the same way as many other Christians in this country. Does the simple fact of my non-belief in God negate what I have learnt? Because this implies to me that what matters is not what one knows to be right or wrong, but that God will see that you do not follow the rules. It’s not a case of not doing something because you know it’s wrong, but not stealing a Mars bar because your mother will find out and there’ll be hell to pay. If God has to be in the equation for a moral foundation to be worth anything, then it implies that humans are not capable of making their own moral decisions, *even when* they are given the rulebook.
Of course, that’s a bit fallacious, because if I don’t believe in God, I can’t really claim to believe in the ‘rulebook’ that is Christian teaching (even though I (a) do believe in the existence of Jesus, just not that he was God’s son etc etc etc and (b) do actually think that much of Christian morality is generally a Good Thing (how can compassion, understanding and love be bad, for a start), though of course that could be explained as simple cultural submergence). And in some ways I don’t. I don’t believe God handed Moses the Ten Commandments; I don’t, as I said, believe that Jesus was the son of God, come to teach us the error of our ways. But I do think that we are capable of creating our own morality, and while I think that the nature of the world means that one has to accept a degree of moral relativism, I do believe in the concept of a universal morality.
It’s actually fairly basic, but I think that we have certain moral rules that are self-evident and based, admittedly, on rather selfish impulses, viz, do as you would be done by, basically. No-one wants to be murdered, so murder is bad. No-one wants someone to beat them with a stick, so beating people with sticks is bad (should add without consent, no matter what R v Brown said!!!). I think this sort of ‘universal morality’ is strictly limited (I would say, for example, that no-one likes having their belongings pinched, so pinching people’s belongings is bad, except I read a book recently about Cook’s travels in Tahiti, and how he had real problems because he couldn’t get his head round the Tahitians not having the concept of private property – a concept that is, and pretty much always has been – fundamental to English culture). In some ways, I would liken it to Hart’s concept of having a basic moral centre to law. Hart was a positivist (arguing that laws are laws when they flow from an acceptable precedent ie, a law in this country is a valid law when it has been passed by the Commons, the Lords, and given royal assent, as opposed to the natural law contingent, who argue that a law is a law when it is moral and necessary etc etc, which I could never understand because that is patently not how legal systems work, in developed countries at least), and though in positivism the substance of the law is not actually relevant, Hart posited that you did at least need to have a moral centre to the legal system or else it would be fundamentally unstable. (At least, I *think* that’s what he said – this was a while ago, after all, and I was slightly distracted at the time by my own mentalheadedness.) Things change between cultures, but we are all still humans, and I think there are probably some fundamental similarities in different cultures’ moral systems, similarities that may well exist in the face of completely disparate religious beliefs. Which to me would imply that there is a level of universal morality that has nothing to do with believing in a one true god.
For a start, how is being atheist supposed to rob you of, for the want of a better expression, a moral compass? Is it what you’re taught as part of your religion, that gives you a moral compass? Because I would say I have been taught my morals in the same way as many other Christians in this country. Does the simple fact of my non-belief in God negate what I have learnt? Because this implies to me that what matters is not what one knows to be right or wrong, but that God will see that you do not follow the rules. It’s not a case of not doing something because you know it’s wrong, but not stealing a Mars bar because your mother will find out and there’ll be hell to pay. If God has to be in the equation for a moral foundation to be worth anything, then it implies that humans are not capable of making their own moral decisions, *even when* they are given the rulebook.
Of course, that’s a bit fallacious, because if I don’t believe in God, I can’t really claim to believe in the ‘rulebook’ that is Christian teaching (even though I (a) do believe in the existence of Jesus, just not that he was God’s son etc etc etc and (b) do actually think that much of Christian morality is generally a Good Thing (how can compassion, understanding and love be bad, for a start), though of course that could be explained as simple cultural submergence). And in some ways I don’t. I don’t believe God handed Moses the Ten Commandments; I don’t, as I said, believe that Jesus was the son of God, come to teach us the error of our ways. But I do think that we are capable of creating our own morality, and while I think that the nature of the world means that one has to accept a degree of moral relativism, I do believe in the concept of a universal morality.
It’s actually fairly basic, but I think that we have certain moral rules that are self-evident and based, admittedly, on rather selfish impulses, viz, do as you would be done by, basically. No-one wants to be murdered, so murder is bad. No-one wants someone to beat them with a stick, so beating people with sticks is bad (should add without consent, no matter what R v Brown said!!!). I think this sort of ‘universal morality’ is strictly limited (I would say, for example, that no-one likes having their belongings pinched, so pinching people’s belongings is bad, except I read a book recently about Cook’s travels in Tahiti, and how he had real problems because he couldn’t get his head round the Tahitians not having the concept of private property – a concept that is, and pretty much always has been – fundamental to English culture). In some ways, I would liken it to Hart’s concept of having a basic moral centre to law. Hart was a positivist (arguing that laws are laws when they flow from an acceptable precedent ie, a law in this country is a valid law when it has been passed by the Commons, the Lords, and given royal assent, as opposed to the natural law contingent, who argue that a law is a law when it is moral and necessary etc etc, which I could never understand because that is patently not how legal systems work, in developed countries at least), and though in positivism the substance of the law is not actually relevant, Hart posited that you did at least need to have a moral centre to the legal system or else it would be fundamentally unstable. (At least, I *think* that’s what he said – this was a while ago, after all, and I was slightly distracted at the time by my own mentalheadedness.) Things change between cultures, but we are all still humans, and I think there are probably some fundamental similarities in different cultures’ moral systems, similarities that may well exist in the face of completely disparate religious beliefs. Which to me would imply that there is a level of universal morality that has nothing to do with believing in a one true god.