Crosspost from !atheism@feddit.de.
An overview of studies which investigate correlations between morality and religious vs. secular / atheist ideologies presented by Phil Zuckerman who is a professor of sociology and secular studies at the Claremont colleges in California, USA.
Summary: Atheists / secular people not only have morals but are even more moral than religious people.
Note: Of course moral is a matter of perspective. In this context we agree that compassion and empathy are our foundations of moral.
“to make the setting clear”
Which was that people are considered moral because they engage in behavior that is not intrinsically moral. You realised that directly claiming that atheists are more morally good requires them to engage in morally good behavior, but for some reason (probably because you are a individualistic moral relativist who wouldn’t want to be caught arguing for following moral principles) you wanted to avoid claiming that and so searched for the closest thing that you thought would suffice.
engage in behavior that is not intrinsically moral
Depends on your definition of “intrinsic moral”. But assuming that we are speaking about the lack of a universal ethical framework, then yes of course. More on that further down.
You realised that directly claiming that atheists are more morally good requires them to engage in morally good behavior, but for some reason […] you wanted to avoid claiming that and so searched for the closest thing that you thought would suffice.
How about you ask me about things you might be wondering about instead of just assuming them?
To say it again in different words:
There is not “the” moral. There is a tremendous amount of moral concepts people live by. In order to evaluate moral behaviour in a statistical, scientifc, manner, you need to define the criteria to judge by.
From what I understood, those studies cited in the video use those moral concepts which are rooted in emotions like empathy, which is the basis of the moral a large amount of people live by and even constitutes legislation in a lot of nations worldwide. Which seems like a meaningful choice to me.
Those results become worthless if you live by an entirely different moral. For example, someone could come by and find racism, hating women and killing people cool and morally justified due to their ethical framework. To them atheists would be the most immoral people alive and the results of those studies would have an inverted meaning to them.
And to avoid these kinds of fundamental relative ethical discussions, I made clear which moral concept is used as a basis for the analysis.
probably because you are a individualistic moral relativist who wouldn’t want to be caught arguing for following moral principles
No.
“Which is the basis of a lot of morality”
Morally good behavior is not a logical consequence of empathy. Therefore measuring empathy will not tell you anything about morally good behaviour. This is true even in moral relativism, because as you correctly claim the moral system to be judged by still does not intrinsically require empathy.
“Avoid these kinds of fundamental relative discussions”
So you claim to not be a moral relativist, and yet the clear basis for your argument is intrinsic to moral relativism (and contrary to non-relativism). Now to clarify the error you are making is not that you are a moral relativist, it’s that you are asserting that moral relativism makes your argument valid. It doesn’t, it does absolutely nothing to your argument.
“No”
Yes. Firstly, it’s the basis for your flawed defence. Secondly, I can’t claim clairvoyance (you might just be lying) but I think I can build a pretty strong inductive argument that you probably believe the same things as all the hundreds of other pop philosophy anti-realists I’ve debated.
Morally good behavior is not a logical consequence of empathy.
Agreed. I didn’t say that. I try to convey that empathy and compassion can and do serve as the roots of more complex ethical frameworks by which morally good or bad behaviour is then judged by.
Therefore measuring empathy will not tell you anything about morally good behaviour.
That depends on your ethical framework, e.g. whether behaviour is even relevant for a moral judgement.
for your argument
What argument? That I tried to shortly outline the moral frameworks which are used as basis for the classifications made in the studies reviewed in the video?
Yes.
No.
It seems to me that you are interpreting too much into this.
Secondly, I can’t claim clairvoyance (you might just be lying)
If you approach this conversation under the assumption that I’m lying we can stop talking right now, since nothing I say will have any value to you. I’m telling you that I don’t see myself as an individualistic moral relativist, take it or leave it, I don’t care.
More importantly, I don’t see how the ethical framework I live by is relevant for our issue here.
That issue, as I’m seeing it, started by two things:
- you claimed that empathy and compassion are “widely rejected […] in moral philosophy” which is not true and can already easily be disproven by simply hitting some keywords into a search engine of your choice.
- You seem to have a problem with my note on which moral frameworks the scientists (whose work is reviewed in the video) used to classify their data.
I prefer to focus on that and clear this up instead of derailing the conversation towards irrelevant topics. (I invite you to explain how this matters to you with respect to our issue here, though.)