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PZ has a post about an interview from The Daily Show with Marilynne Robinson. In it, he issues a challenge:
Name one. Name one insight religion has ever given us that could not have been made by secular philosophers, that was also useful and true.
There isn’t one. Not a one.
Filed under: Philosophy, Religions | Tagged: Jon Stewart, Marilynne Robinson, pz myers, The Daily Show |
For the Sake of Science 
I have heard that challenge made before as “name one basis of morality that religion supplies which is different than that for an atheist/secularist”.
Its not the end result, but the reasoning used to get there that matters.
Why should murder be bad? Stealing? What justification is there for prohibition of these things? Surly, the point of being alive is to survive.
Animals kill each other, steal food and a host of other things we don’t condone. Having evolved from animals I don’t see how we should be considered any different.
Because we are aware and often we have choices and the intelligence to make a choice. The higher level of consciousness that a being has changes expectations. We don’t expect a cockroach to be trained to defecate only outside, yet we expect a dog to. Human consciousness comes with even higher expectations.
Expectations set by whom?
Set by the royal “We”, of course. The guys who are not “them”.
I see. What makes your sense of morality better than someone else’s? What gives you the right to punish someone for stealing under your sense of morality, they may feel different.
Way to go off the deep end there, Nate. You are part of “We”. Humanity as a whole. There is no “someone else”.
Humanity as a whole will never agree on anything. If your looking there for your morality you’ll never find it.
You still end up imposing your morality on others and it IS yours Even if its roughly shared by a much larger group.
Unsubscribing to this post. The discussion is dead ended.
It was a dead end to begin with, it began with an entirely speculative statement.
I’m always surprised when I see people fail to take socialization into the account of human morality. Does the fact that we are social species, that depends upon others to survive and flourish, mean nothing when it comes to moral decision making? Of course not!
How could a society in which people killed each other at will exist? How could an agricultural (that is, a trade-based) society exist when someone could take what is yours with impunity? Answer: It couldn’t.
And we humans, being smart and driven to survive, therefore set up a system of rules that were enforced by everyone for everyone–primitive laws. There are exceptions and cultural differences but you will find that the major rules are almost always the same (with some important ritualistic differences). That’s not a coincidence. It, to my mind, proves that society functions best when people are “moral”.
I don’t believe morality (as we see it today) is a product of biological evolution, I believe that absent God, it is at the very least a product of human creation and therefore not essential or even predetermined to exist.