Is there one example of a documented, atheist system for morality with at least some followers? — alcontali

Well yes, but we're clearly not talking about the same thing because it's absolutely obvious that there are - several brands of deontology, utilitarianism (negative utilitarianism, motive utilitarianism... ), virtue ethics (in dozensof different forms). I mean the vast majority of ethical systems don't involve God. So what is it you're getting at?

:up:

Thanks for asking. You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The traditional theist is typically going to default to fundamentalism. Just like the atheist wiil default to positive Atheism in justifying their belief system. — 3017amen

Maybe, but the poll also has options besides those. It seems clear that you do believe there is a god of some sort, but that you arrive at that after some more general philosophizing, so I don't see why you think the second option doesn't fit you.

(And the atheists, so far, seem to be saying that they generally don't start with positive atheism and build from there, but the other way around).

I find it really curious that no theists have answered the poll so far. Do theist generally think "theism" means something more than it does? Maybe I should have phrased it as just "Do you believe there is a god" (with yes/no answers) instead of "are you theist or atheist", even though those mean the exact same thing.

It may not be ‘theism’ per se, but in my experience, if it’s *not* materialism, then it’s going to sound awfully like it. — Wayfarer

Your problem, and mine as well, is that our experience is so dualistic. Idealism doesn’t necessarily sound a lot like theism to me though. The materialism vs idealism dichotomy also doesn’t seem necessary.

I've added a note for clarification to the end of the OP.

Does it clarify?

The "atheist" answer just means "no", you don't think anything that counts as a god exists, without any implications about anything else — Pfhorrest

Doesn’t this disqualify option 3.

I don’t follow, that clarification wasn’t meant to disqualify anything, so I don’t know what you mean. Option 3 is for if you don’t think there’s at least one god, and that is a core principle of your philosophy. Maybe you derive naturalism or materialism or something from that principle, but just being an atheist doesn’t mean you have to do that.

I dislike both atheism and theism because of their relationship to one another. Are any atheists not former theists?

Yes of course. Anyone who is not a theist is an atheist, so anyone who was never a theist is still an atheist.

I still think you’re forcing us all into a false paradigm. I do not accept Atheist and theist as the only two paradigms, I am Agnostic and why would that term exist at all if people are just going to overlook that and claim against my will that I am atheist or theist? I know myself well enough and am able to claim without shame that I cannot know one way or the other if god/gods (again leaving out pantheists) exist.

So to claim that I’m either one or the other and that the term agnostic no longer means what it is supposed to mean just seems like you’re trying to force everyone to debate and poll with terms they don’t agree with.

I don’t believe in things if I cannot know them. Since I cannot know if gods exist I should not claim they do or don’t. Agnostic, not atheist, not theist, agnostic.

The term “atheist” was, at least historically, a term of abuse used against those that didn’t follow the religious orthodoxy. In other words, a term invented by theists, in relation to theists. The very term assumes there is a god that one can be without.

I dislike both atheism and theism because of their relationship to one another. Are any atheists not former theists? — NOS4A2

Yes. I was never a theist. I had basically zero idea about religious ideas until I was in my mid teens, and then when I learned something about religious beliefs I thought that people must have been playing a practical joke on me.

This is turning into a debate more about terminology than the topic it’s meant to convey. I’ve clarified what I meant by the terms in the question, and I can’t edit the question to rephrase it more clearly, so that’s the best I can do now. You either do positively think there is at least one god, or not. For every X, either X or not. What you’re calling “agnosticism” clearly falls on the “not” side of this X.

But on the terminology, strictly speaking agnosticism is orthogonal to atheism. You can believe in god or not, and you can hold that belief to be knowledge or not, in any combination. Furthermore those who simply don’t believe in god (weak atheists) can positively believe there is no god (strong atheism), and those who don’t claim to know (weak agnosticism) can claim that knowledgeable is impossible (strong agnosticism).

You sound like someone who doesn’t believe that god exists, but doesn’t positively believe that god doesn’t exist either (a weak atheist), and someone who not only claims not to know, but claims knowledge is impossible (a strong agnostic).

That is historically true, but not relevant to the point at hand. We are asking if you buy into the theist message or not. There’s a special term for “not” because theism was historically so dominant, and as someone who winds up not agreeing with theists as an incidental consequence of the rest of my philosophy (in my 20-chapter book on my philosophy I don’t even raise the question until halfway through the last chapter), I agree that it’s a little weird to have a special word for not holding a particular belief. But that is kind of the topic of this thread: how many of those who don’t hold that belief start out from that as a first principle and how many just happen into it as an aside, and vice versa, and also both questions for the believers too?

That is historically true, but not relevant to the point at hand. We are asking if you buy into the theist message or not. There’s a special term for “not” because theism was historically so dominant, and as someone who winds up not agreeing with theists as an incidental consequence of the rest of my philosophy (in my 20-chapter book on my philosophy I don’t even raise the question until halfway through the last chapter), I agree that it’s a little weird to have a special word for not holding a particular belief. But that is kind of the topic of this thread: how many of those who don’t hold that belief start out from that as a first principle and how many just happen into it as an aside, and vice versa, and also both questions for the believers too?

You’re right; my apologies for the irrelevance. I was trying to explain the reasons why I reflect both labels.

Yes. I was never a theist. I had basically zero idea about religious ideas until I was in my mid teens, and then when I learned something about religious beliefs I thought that people must have been playing a practical joke on me.

I’m the same way, I was never given any religious teaching or training and remained mostly ignorant of it until a later age.

FWIW, I was raised in a religious family (evangelical even) but grew out of it along with Santa Claus etc, and it wasn’t until early adulthood that I realized that the religious stuff wasn’t treated by my adult family as the same kind of stories-for-children as Santa etc were, but as something that they sincerely believed. And that came as quite a shock and disappointment to me, much like realizing that your parents actually believed in Santa would be.

And what I think it means, is a relationship, or better, a sense of relatedness, to the animating principle of the Universe (whether conceived of as spirit, logos, dharma, or Tao.) So for example, when Christians speak of 'a new life in Christ', I find that intelligible, even if I wouldn't speak in those terms myself. — Wayfarer

An essential aspect of the problem right there: relating to some attenuated "animating principle" at the expense of relating to the actual living breathing Earth and its myriad inhabitants. This is where the "great Chain of Being", with all the biological "lowlifes" at the bottom, works its magic yet again.

The supernatural fucks over the natural...!

I'm coming more and more to see this attitude really is a huge part of the problem.

“You sound like someone who doesn’t believe that god exists, but doesn’t positively believe that god doesn’t exist either (a weak atheist), and someone who not only claims not to know, but claims knowledge is impossible (a strong agnostic).”

Not so, I believe in a creating and balancing force. Couldn’t begin to say whether or not the creating and the balancing forces are the same force. However to call this god to me seems a bit much as I think it goes beyond simple anthropormorphicpersonification.

However, in most religions we not only see god or gods being deified by us, but we see god or gods deifying us back. So to me this implies deification as some kind of contract with a supreme entity that has Will to put us at the focus of its attention, and deify us back.

However, I also choose to believe that a judging god exists or a judgement mechanism exists that we call god. To put it simply, this judging gods only unique characteristic is that it is unborn. The unborn generations of humans and other life which has the capacity to look backward with a critical eye. As we do on those from the past, we are their judges but they cannot be ours, just as we cannot judge those who are not yet born. I call this a judging mechanism because although unborn, these future generations are still mortal, therefore god is in itself an inappropriate phrase to use for this mechanism. The implications of this also suggest a final judgement day will indeed come, when the last generation has nothing to look forward to and it can only look back and have its last say on whether or not what came before had any value or meaning.

I’m sorry but for me your question really doesn’t go deep enough, but it definitely seems like myself and others have perhaps aided you in coming up with other lines of discussion.

Although, thinking about it now, I suppose my overall answer would be that my view on these things has a lot of weight in my application of philosophy.

Oh, this view of deifying the unborn generations is called Generationism and is more an application of Pragmatism in ethics than a spiritual worldview. I myself identify as an agnostic Taoist spiritually but if you called the Tao or the Dao, “God” you’d be grossly misunderstanding the concept really.

The term “atheist” was, at least historically, a term of abuse used against those that didn’t follow the religious orthodoxy. In other words, a term invented by theists, in relation to theists. The very term assumes there is a god that one can be without. — NOS4A2

This is why I've always preferred Freethought and considered myself a Freethinker - free of sectarian dogma, revelation & superstition, free of appeals to ignorance mystery magic, free of moralizing & demogoguery, free of race sex class prejudices, etc in study, reflection and judgment - rather than "atheism". Also, (sci)Materialist is even more agreeable to me as a nom de guerre ("Écrasez l'infâme!") than the worn-penny "atheist". I'm much more intrigued these day by the persisting failure of philosophical theists deists agnostics or other mysterians / anthropocentrists to coherently & soundly demonstrate their commitments than I am in regurgitating my own arguments to the contrary - there's nothing for me to learn either in repeating myself or blowing down one more house of god-cards. I've long since climbed that ladder and discarded it.

I’m the same way, I was never given any religious teaching or training and remained mostly ignorant of it until a later age. — NOS4A2

Same here. I was born and raised in an Eastern-block country, where I was never taught religion, never was told there was a god. I first encountered a religious person on the way to school, an old man, who told us, a bunch of seventh-graders walking to school, that god gives us power to breathe, to move, to have children. I got vexed hearing this, I thought, is this guy insane? We breathe because our oxygen levels go down, and our muscles act with our bones to move us and to increase or decrease our lung capacity. The VERY idea that we are some puppets of a big daddy and we are not autonomous things that achieve our successes on our own made me feel angry and hateful.

But I really got a glimpse to religion and how the religious think gradually over twenty or forty years. It is a complex system, belief, or can be; and it can be as complex or as simplex as the believer wants it to be.

I also found that it's easier and more enjoyable to argue against religion and religious tenets with smart people whose beliefs are complex, and who know the scriptures, than to argue with simpleton fools. To argue with simpleton fools, you must make them understand complex issues, or simple issues, which they can't. It is very, very frustrating to debate a topic with someone who is very, very limited intellectually.

I don’t see where you’re coming from with this whole “atheists don’t have systems” thing. For myself, my philosophy is extremely systemic, probably more so than is academically popular in Anglophone countries today, and I end up being an atheist as a consequence of that system. I obliquely referenced this earlier in the thread, and in the OP. I start off asking what questions about reality and morality mean, then what we would judge answers to those against, how we would apply those criteria, what we need to do that, and who should be in charge of doing all that — along the way elaborating on topics of language, art, math, being, mind, knowledge, education, purpose, will, justice, and government — and only after all that, never even touching on the concept of god all the while, when I get to the question of what’s the point of any of it, do I even consider whether or not there’s a god, try to justify the existence closest thing to a god that could possibly exist given all the preceding, and end up concluding that what might possibly exist probably wouldn’t count as god even if it did exist (which it probably doesn’t), and wouldn’t matter much even if it did.

Atheism only rejects religious systems, without building anything else instead. — alcontali

I think that's mistaken. Modern scientific atheism, of the kind advocated by popular science commentators, is constructed from the hollowed-out shell of Christian philosophy. It was the European Enlightenment, and atheists philosophers such as Diderot, Holbach, and others, proposed building a 'whole world system' purely on mechanical principles without reference to any higher intelligence or guiding hand. This was the origin of the famous retort of LaPlace to Napoleon 'I have no need of that hypothesis' ('that hypothesis' being the 'guiding hand').

So early modern and modern science sought to replace God with science, and eventually the idea of Heaven with literal 'conquest of the stars' (hence the popular fascination with interstellar conquest.) It is promethean in the sense of 'stealing fire from the Gods', seeking to know 'the mind of God' through mathematical physics so that man, in effect, displaces or becomes God.

This is the attitude that was subject to criticism in Thomas Nagel's 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False ( the title is a spoiler!) It highlights the fundamental irony or tension behind the materialist project, which is that 'mind' is depicted as the outcome of an essentially mindless process by the fortuitous combination of material causes, and at the same time is the faculty by which the whole of science itself is discerned. Nagel himself professes atheism, but this book was pilloried because it was said to provide 'aid and comfort' to intelligent design advocates.

And that in turn betrays the sense in which materialism itself is a quasi-religious system, one in which 'the physical' (whatever that turns out to be!) has been interpolated into the role previously allocated to spirit.

So - 'scientific' atheism is nothing if not systematic, but it embodies numerous contradictions, which you yourself have noted, albeit on rather idiosyncratic grounds IMO.

Utilitarianism and Kantianism both make no reference to gods and so are entirely practicable by atheists. — Pfhorrest

Concerning Kant's philosophy, he described some meta-ethical principles but did not mean to provide a new system of morality. His work on ethics was certainly not to be understood as a replacement of Christian morality but rather as a rational elucidation.

Kant was religious:

Not only do we find powerful defenses of religious belief in all three Critiques, but a considerable share of Kant's work in the 1790s is devoted to the positive side of his philosophy of religion.

Now, given the fact that Christianity does not particularly have an elaborate system of jurisprudence, i.e. a complete system of religious law, very much unlike Judaism and especially Islam, this approach will by itself not really solve the problem.

It is most likely that followers of Jesus were originally supposed to implement "the Law and the Prophets", i.e. Jewish Law in full, including the Oral Torah. The Ebionite branch of Christianity actually did that. It is by exempting non-Jewish Pauline Christians from the Law, that the jurisprudential conundrum started snowballing. Without Jewish Law, there is no guarantee that the religion is complete and can offer moral guidance in all circumstances. Kant understood the problem of questionable thinking in morality that naturally arises in an incomplete system in which half the scripture gets abrogated, but he only offered some useful meta-ethical guidance without being able to provide a complete system. Kant could not reinstate the missing parts by virtue of meta-ethics alone.

So, no, Kant is not a basis for a complete morality, atheist, Christian, or otherwise.

Well yes, but we're clearly not talking about the same thing because it's absolutely obvious that there are - several brands of deontology, utilitarianism (negative utilitarianism, motive utilitarianism... ), virtue ethics (in dozensof different forms). I mean the vast majority of ethical systems don't involve God. So what is it you're getting at? — Isaac

Where is any of that documented? Where do these communities live, who actually implement it?

Its kinda funny to me all these terrified theists who simply cannot fathom that atheism entails nothing other than the rejection of God(s), all clamouring to import this or that positive valence to it. It's like, no, I don't have to believe any of that tripe, I'm just allowed to reject your bullshit and that's it.

I don’t see where you’re coming from with this whole “atheists don’t have systems” thing. For myself, my philosophy is extremely systemic, probably more so than is academically popular in Anglophone countries today, and I end up being an atheist as a consequence of that system. — Pfhorrest

A system is described by its basic rules, i.e. its basic beliefs.

Propositional logic itself is a system of 14 basic beliefs.

Every other system is necessarily an extension of a core logic system. You do that by importing a module of extra basic beliefs next to the logical core:

In mathematics, an axiomatic system is any set of axioms from which some or all axioms can be used in conjunction to logically derive theorems. A theory consists of an axiomatic system and all its derived theorems. An axiomatic system that is completely described is a special kind of formal system. A formal theory typically means an axiomatic system, for example formulated within model theory. A formal proof is a complete rendition of a mathematical proof within a formal system.

For example, if you load an additional module with 9 extra beliefs concerning standard arithmetic, you can use the system as a number theory.

The basic logical core cannot do arithmetic. The system will have to load an additional module for that. The basic logical core can also not do morality either. It will again need to load an additional module for that. Someone who thinks that the logical core is enough to doing anything at all, does not understand how a system works.

You could load Moses' 10 commandments as an extension module, and then you would already have some kind of moral system. It is generally considered incomplete, but it would still illustrate the principle of (axiomatic) moral system.

Furthermore, it is not possible to use logic to argue against the idea that you will need to load modules of basic beliefs into the system, because logic itself is just such module.

Where can I find a copy of your extension module of basic moral beliefs?

I wouldn't do philosophy if I believed in God.

I think that's mistaken. Modern scientific atheism, of the kind advocated by popular science commentators, is constructed from the hollowed-out shell of Christian philosophy. — Wayfarer

Well, yeah, with Pauline Christianity having crossed out half of its basic scripture and mostly abrogating the real system, i.e. "The Law and the Prophets", i.e. full Jewish Law, such hollowed-out atheist shell is a hack on something that was already a hack. It is clearly not possible to solve the problems caused by a hollowed-out system by removing even more parts. So, what's left over then?

Modern scientific atheism, of the kind advocated by popular science commentators, is constructed from the hollowed-out shell of Christian philosophy. — Wayfarer

What a fool I have been! I thought that science developed by observing natural phenomena, and explaining them. Now! NOW you tell me it's a subset of Christian dogma?

Why have I been mislead by my educators, who conducted experiments for me on gravity, on the preservation of momentum and energy, on many other stuff? On chemical equilibrium, on the Lomonosov Table of Elements, on valences, on electron paths and electron-path bonds, on ions, on many, many other stuff?

It seems, now @wayfarer tells us the truth, that all that is knowledge and scientific comes from a hollowed-out shell of Christian philosophy.

Imagine!