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.

  • jasory@programming.devEnglish
    16·
    11 months ago

    “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.

    • Zacryon@feddit.deOPEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      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:

      1. 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.
      2. 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.)

      • jasory@programming.devEnglish
        12·
        11 months ago

        Agreed"

        So you recognise that it is therefore irrelevant, and the conclusion does not follow from the premises (it is invalid). So why are you so slavishly defending it?

        “I don’t see myself as a moral relativist… I don’t see how my ethical framework is relevant”

        Ok, you are literally too stupid to have this conversation.

        The idea that moral judgements come from synthetic frameworks,is moral relativism. You deny that you are a moral relativist (good for you) but the reason I call you one is because the assumptions you make require that moral systems be synthetic. (Since you read a philosophy article you must know what this means).

        So either you are a moral relativist or you are lying. I’m a rational person and cannot prove that you are lying so I defer to believing you to be a moral relativist who simply doesn’t understand what it entails.