Playing the devil’s advocate, I propose intrinsic human value is not apparent,
nor is equality–if you make those assumptions things make sense. There
is a lot of ambiguity regarding definitions of terms. For instance, many
equivocate between moral and rational wrongs. What value do other
people have other than what I assign them?
Rational rights and wrongs are relative to a person’s internal hierarchy of
wants and needs. How is it wrong rationally for someone to steal if they
hold no value in the other person’s life and great value in money? This
is assuming they know they can get away with it with a reasonable
amount of certainty.
The terms are equivocated between the moral sense and rational sense.
Anyone can label or categorize any type of action as “right” or “wrong”
like they could with color coded markers in a file cabinet (a human
construct), but what we base decisions on is rationalism, what is
rational in the sense Descartes used it, which is relative to a person’s
internal hierarchy of wants and needs. This means without certain
axioms or conditions murder and theft are not absolutely wrong.
What we rationalize as for religion, morals, war, so on and so forth, often
lacks actual meaning when analyzed or properly investigated, but in
action is exactly what you’d expect in the predatory acts and
hierarchical battles of any other species. Many hide their offensive
nature and disguise their predatory acts under a false pretense. Perhaps
people’s thoughts and rationalizations for action are like a little
ridge on a pebble that makes it fall slightly to the left when falling
down a hill, and we function merely as physical objects rubbing up
against each other.
Some would say the situation I’ve outlined above regarding theft is wrong
because if everyone did it there’d be no society. If every person had a
slave that wouldn’t work either, nor would it make the world a better
place, but that doesn’t really deal with the issue of whether there is a
right or wrong about it in an amoral construct, or on a singular level.
What is good for the many is not necessarily good for the few,
nonetheless for the individual and vice versa. That is the fundamental
error in this view.
The jungle that is life has checks and balances surely, but if there were
no logical basis for riding off the expense of another we wouldn’t be
carnivores, from a purely analytic or scientific perspective. We are all
faced with special situations in our daily lives where an injustice can
benefit us with no expense to our quality of life. Therefore, I now
argue the right or wrong aspect of it could transcend our current
understanding of nature and reality.
Everything might seem relative to us finite beings, but perhaps to the whole, to
the ultimate reality from which we are contingent on, there is greater
truth: true universal or absolute truth. Essentially only when looking
at the whole (the bigger picture) can we judge this accurately, but
since our nature is finite and contingent our perceptions tend to be
relative and subjective, and we cannot perceive the greater truths of
values and of right and wrong in absolute terms, which is in accordance
with transcendental idealism.
You need certain values in your internal hierarchy for conventional laws to
cohere with your decision making, and these moral values are known
throughout history to come from religion. The individual can murder and
prosper from it in special circumstances without society going into
chaos. Why shouldn’t a person in that circumstance not murder if they
can get away with it and benefit some how from it?
Because they believe humans are exalted beyond the animals fighting for
survival; that man is something more than we comprehend and is bounded
by laws outside nature as we know it. Religion helps moral constructs
cohere with the individual’s decision making because they acquire values
like equality and intrinsic value of human life (comes from the hidden
divinity of man, rooted in having the virtuous, primordial nature of
God, etc.), which are generally known to come from it (religion).
Many atheists believe morality is subjective and relative to culture. If
that were true under such an ideology the League of Nations wouldn’t
have been able to hold the Nazis on trial for crimes against humanity,
since in their specific time and culture extreme measures of eugenics
and racial hygiene were acceptable. We wouldn’t be able to hold anyone
to a higher standard to judge.
It is difficult for the atheist to derive specific values in their
internal hierarchy necessitated for conventional laws to cohere with
their decision making. Nature is fundamentally aristocratic. Why
wouldn’t man be just as cruel as nature? The processes behind evolution
and what we find in nature are mindless and to some degree trivial. What
would stop an atheist from rejecting their conscience–a seemingly mere
instinct partly formed through operant conditioning–and screwing over
another person if they benefited from it and could get away with it? It
leads to anomie.
I think without certain value judgements in your internal hierarchy
societal norms and values break apart, which leads to a state of anomie;
then essentially any vulgar act becomes permissible. Just because
people disagree on a certain issue, in this case morality, does not
necessarily make the subject entirely subjective. There
are common atheistic beliefs involving the nature of morality, like it
is subjective and relative to culture, and there are philosophical
implications to that. The transcendental values religion provides give a
stronger philosophical basis for morality than the atheistic belief
that morality is subjective and relative to culture. God brings a
beautiful simplicity to morality, and when I say God brings a beautiful
simplicity to morality I don’t mean just because God says it is wrong
that it is wrong. It is more than that. The difference between the
mental plane of ordinary values and transcendental values is
transcendental values are absolute (or objective) and ordinary values
are instrumental.
Note: I’d like to say straight up that I don’t think morality is incompatible
with atheism. It is just certain beliefs some atheists have involving
its nature have implications that I think are loose ended and it makes
for interesting discussion. I’m an agnostic myself, so don’t get me
wrong. Because man is intelligent he is capable of empathy, and since he
has mastered his environment he is capable of transcending the mere
fight for survival in his mental plane and find moral truth.
Without absolute values, values that are universal or intrinsic, can there be
real morality? Because if values are merely instrumental and relative to
one’s own internal hierarchy various crimes can be committed and cohere
with the truest sense of right and wrong for the individual. For
instance, let’s say a man of wealth has no instrumental value to you,
except his money, and you value money. How is it not rational then to
steal from him, unless of course he has value that is beyond the
material gain you’d receive, relative instrumentally to your internal
hierarchy of wants and needs, value and meaning that is outside of you
and your individual perspective. Is man nothing more than an
electrochemical computer, programmed to do whatever its drives tell it
with no right or wrong about it, or is more going on than can be seen?
Furthermore, can a human being truly be accurately quantified by another
person?
Either way religion is a good social engineering tool. There can still be
morality without God, but religion helps provide a stronger
philosophical basis, because it helps substantiate the fundamental
values necessitated for moral reason to universally cohere with
individual reasoning in interpersonal affairs. Conventional morality
rests on certain axioms I’ve outlined previously, but are they true, and
which form of ideologies substantiates them the best, science or
religion? If it is religion and there is no God, how and why did we get
religions?
Perhaps religion serves a bigger purpose than many realize in modern society
and teaches us such a deep moral lesson that we reject it now partially
because it no longer deems fit ethically or at times seem politically
correct, but it just might have gotten the ball rolling in the line of
thought even atheists are affected by in how things should be with
equality and fairness. It was a monk after all who was responsible for
stopping the gladiator games in Rome. What else might it have done?