Question for Non-Believers

[Cyrus]

[ QUOTE ]
Question to all those non-believers....

Without a "Supreme Being" how do you decide what is right and wrong? Do you merely just follow what others (who believe in absolute morals) believe in? Doesn't that seem somewhat strange?

Basically I'm asking... how do you know killing, stealing, etc. is wrong?

[/ QUOTE ]

To borrow from Moby's, Everything is wrong. ...In your post, I mean.

ONE
Another poster wrote in this thread "The human brain is designed by evolution to make moral judgments just like it's designed to make judgments about sexual attractiveness." But this is not exact!

There is no evidence of any kind of "design", intelligent or otherwise (our understanding of intel might be ridiculous in cosmic terms, for all we know) behind the grand scheme of things. We mistake complexity for intelligence, something that would render Fritz 9.0 intelligent. Our brains are complex (we cannot fathom yet their workings) but the fact that we make moral judgements does NOT mean that we would definitely, necessarily, at some point in time make moral judgements.

To simplify: If, a hundred thousand years ago, an outside observer possessing more knowledge of math and anthropology than humans ever had, was watching the process of evolution on Earth, and he was watching [censored] Sapiens starting to take his first tentative steps, he could NOT predict, not in any kind of deterministic manner, that the creature [censored] Sapiens would one day make "moral judgements". He could predict that Man would probably evolve into one smart mo-fo, but not one that would make "moral choices". Nothing as such was in the cards. Nothing is in the cards even now.

TWO
We have created morality. By intelligent/intellectual endeavours and (loud drum roll) choice.

Humanity evolves like a half-blind flock, in mass movements across timelines and geography, and across the landscape of ideas. We are making individual choices, more freely or less freely than we imagine. (We cannot even know yet the extent to which the chemicals dictate choice.) But, the fact remains that, in general, it is us that have made the choices that took us out of the caves, our of the sacrifice temples, and now out of the churches. The very fact of us making the choice means that "the beautiful room is empty", which is a premise scary enough to render religion necessary, practically inevitable.

When you are belittling the example of others in our making a moral choice, you are mocking the very way human evolve and progress.

THREE
When all is said and done, it is better to be making one's own choice, just as our Athenian ancestors practiced, of our own will, rather than to have a "choice" imposed by some higher authority! What much joy can a slave take from obeying his master?

God instructs Abraham to kill his son Isaac, because this would prove Abraham's loyalty to a higher authority (an authority in everything, from cosmic engineering to morality). And Abraham obeys, the poor dumb f*ck.

The anti-Abraham stance, the true humanist stance, would be to receive such a message from the "carriers of the higher authority" and then make a choice on the basis of one's own free will and, specifically, on the basis that the very existence of that "higher authority" is not an undeniable fact. Hence, human morality. (Not the higher authority's morality, but human morality.)

I know some folks compare the two sets of moralities, god's and humans'. One morality is seemingly weak, arbitrary, with shaky foundations (us), while the other is seemingly strong, clear and with lots of guarantees -- hell, it's carved in stone! People compare the two moralities (which do not necessarily contain mutually exclusive arguments) just like they compare the power held by a lonely sheriff and the whole FBI.

But the line to the Bureau has been dead for a hundred and fifty years, folks.

FOUR
Prometheus challenged the gods and stole the fire. Ever since, we are alone, with the fire inside us, travelling at an ever accelerating, dizzying speed towards an unknown destination, if there is one, and seeing only a couple of meters ahead of us at any time. At any time, we can take many wrong turns (which some will blame on the giher authority's wrath or plans), every which one can plunge us into catastrophe or regression to childhood or worse.

A fascinating, glorious, scary, totally strange trip.