Any books about people who claim to be atheists but still adhere to Christian morality

[Anonymous No.18888795]

I'm talking about the large amount of people like picrel who identify as atheists and reject religion but don't reckon with the fact that almost all of what they deem to be good and bad is derived from the same Christian beliefs that they reject

[Anonymous No.18888909]

>>18888795
What part of his morality derives from Christian beliefs? As far as I can tell this is a tired apologetic bluff.

[Anonymous No.18888919]

>>18888795
>christians invented the idea that harming other people is bad

[Anonymous No.18888969]

>>18888795
The question for these people is not really "was it good for us" but "was it real". Certainly, you could argue that religion can be good in many cases but that was never the question here.

[Anonymous No.18889054]

>>18888909
>>18888919
>>18888969
The entire moral system that he advocates for is predicted on Christian values. He simply asserts that things are good because it's obvious (totally not because a certain religion has shaped western moral norms and has inculcated him into thinking this/s).

For example he would be against having a population of slaves or second class citizens that do all the work so a wider part of society can have more enjoyable lives. His objection would almost certainly be on the grounds that it would be wrong to make some people suffer for the benefit of wider society but then he can offer no reasoning for this beyond appealing to a sacredness of all human life type argument.

If you're not familiar with Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality then perhaps watch this video as it explains what I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/wxalrwPNkNI

[Anonymous No.18889129]

>>18889054
Sam Harris's view of ethics is extremely dumb, but still nowhere have you demonstrated that it's predicated on Christian values.

[Anonymous No.18889202]

>>18889054
Christianity wasn't opposed to slavery for most of its existence.

[Anonymous No.18889271]

>>18889054
>The entire moral system that he advocates for is predicted on Christian values. He simply asserts that things are good because it's obvious (totally not because a certain religion has shaped western moral norms and has inculcated him into thinking this/s).
The position you put forth in the op is that the moral beliefs of certain secularist thinkers (like Harris) are derived from Christian doctrines. In my response to the op, I said that I don't think this is holds, and asked you if you could provide an argument for the position. As far as I can see you are simply repeating your position here instead of arguing for it.
>For example he would be against having a population of slaves or second class citizens that do all the work so a wider part of society can have more enjoyable lives. His objection would almost certainly be on the grounds that it would be wrong to make some people suffer for the benefit of wider society but then he can offer no reasoning for this beyond appealing to a sacredness of all human life type argument.
If Harris appealed to sacredness he would certainly presuppose some version of supernaturalism (if not necessarily Christian) but he doesn't have to do do, so your proof fails.

[Anonymous No.18889331]

>>18888795
If you claim ethics is derivative of Christianity then why isn't Christianity itself derivative of other things like Hammurabi's law? How do we even begin to demonstrate a way in which ethics are "derived" from one source but not the other?

[Anonymous No.18889347]

Stirner shatters contemporary atheism and humanism.

[Anonymous No.18889376]

>>18889129
>>18889271
The concepts of good and bad that Harris uses are based off Western values which are themselves largely predicated on Christian values (also some others like democracy is Greek in origin). If Harris along with many people reject the notion of God and/or the value of tradition then they need to provide an argument for why something is good or bad otherwise they are just saying X is bad because it's bad.

>>18889202
Slavery is not a Christian institution and it took time for Christianity's influence to develop so that the practice was overturned (The early slavery abolishment movement was led by Christians). Slavery of Africans could only be justified on religious grounds by saying that they were a lesser species to that of Europeans and closer to animals than humans.

It's beyond the scope of this format to go through the genealogy of western morality to show how they are predicated on Christianity. If you still disagree then it would probably be easier if you show how western morals are not predicated on Christianity by offering an alternative origin.

[Anonymous No.18889388]

>>18889347
Thanks this looks like what I was asking for

[Anonymous No.18889411]

>>18889376
>It's beyond the scope of this format to go through the genealogy of western morality to show how they are predicated on Christianity. If you still disagree then it would probably be easier if you show how western morals are not predicated on Christianity by offering an alternative origin.
It would certainly be easier for you, since you won't have to actually argue for the position you expressed in the op. If you don't want to argue for it that's fine, you can choose what to do with your time. But nobody in this thread who didn't already agree with you has been given the slightest reason to think secular morality depends in any way on Christian doctrines.
>If Harris along with many people reject the notion of God and/or the value of tradition then they need to provide an argument for why something is good or bad otherwise they are just saying X is bad because it's bad.
Actually it's not clear what what exactly do you want proof for. On moral realism, ethical truths are taken to be directly perceived by rational intuition. Much like you can't prove that a chair is red to9 someone who lacks vision, you can't prove that murder is wrong to someone who can't see that murder is wrong. So it's not clear what exactly you are demanding here.

[Anonymous No.18889416]

>>18889376
>It's beyond the scope of this format to go through the genealogy of western morality to show how they are predicated on Christianity. If you still disagree then it would probably be easier if you show how western morals are not predicated on Christianity by offering an alternative origin.
It would certainly be easier on you, since you won't have to actually argue for the position you expressed in the op. If you don't want to argue for it that's fine, you can choose what to do with your time. But nobody in this thread who didn't already agree with you has been given the slightest reason to think secular morality depends in any way on Christian doctrines.
>If Harris along with many people reject the notion of God and/or the value of tradition then they need to provide an argument for why something is good or bad otherwise they are just saying X is bad because it's bad.
Actually it's not clear what what exactly do you want proof for. On moral realism, ethical truths are taken to be directly perceived by rational intuition. Much like you can't prove that a chair is red to9 someone who lacks vision, you can't prove that murder is wrong to someone who can't see that murder is wrong. So it's not clear what exactly you are demanding here.

[Anonymous No.18889470]

>>18888919
God I want to fuck her so much...

[Anonymous No.18889655]

>>18889054
>1,8 millennia of slavery under christianity
>but it's them who abolished it
k

[Anonymous No.18889664]

>>18889416
You have to provide some reasoning for it to be convincing in the slightest. Saying I'm against slavery because my rational intuition says it's bad is a totally baseless system of morals. It's also incredibly likely that someone's cultural surroundings will determine whether their 'intuition' tells them something is good or bad.

[Anonymous No.18889677]

>>18889376
>The concepts of good and bad that Harris uses are based off Western values
how?
his argument basically is that the experience of conscious beings is important, you view your own well being as important and if you use empathy you can understand why the well being of other conscious beings is also importnat
good in his mind is == well being of conscious beings
bad is == whatever harms that

[Anonymous No.18889779]

>>18889664
>You have to provide some reasoning for it to be convincing in the slightest. Saying I'm against slavery because my rational intuition says it's bad is a totally baseless system of morals. It's also incredibly likely that someone's cultural surroundings will determine whether their 'intuition' tells them something is good or bad.
Baseless or not, there is no avoiding intuitionism if you are moral realist. Good and bad, if they exist, are not properties discoverable by empirical observation - they are presumably apprehended by an exotic form of perception, perhaps what some 18th century Rationalists may call a rational intuition.
A second important point is that in order to prove something to someone, we need to start from premises he accepts, and show that they entail the proposition we are trying to convince him of.
So how exactly are we going to convince someone that murder is wrong? The only way would be via inference from some other moral proposition he already accepts. Eg. if he thinks that killing animals is wrong, we could argue 1. killing animals is wrong 2. humans are animals 3. therefore killing humans (murder) is wrong. There is really no other way to establish moral propositions. So I think what you are looking for cannot actually be done.

[Anonymous No.18889795]

>>18889202

[Anonymous No.18889796]

>>18889664
>You have to provide some reasoning for it to be convincing in the slightest. Saying I'm against slavery because my rational intuition says it's bad is a totally baseless system of morals. It's also incredibly likely that someone's cultural surroundings will determine whether their 'intuition' tells them something is good or bad.
Baseless or not, there is no avoiding intuitionism if you are moral realist. Good and bad, if they exist, are not properties discoverable by empirical observation - they are presumably apprehended by an exotic form of perception, perhaps what some 18th century Rationalists may call a rational intuition.
A second important point is that in order to prove something to someone, we need to start from premises he accepts, and show that they entail the proposition we are trying to convince him of.
So how exactly are we going to convince someone that murder is wrong? The only way would be via inference from some other moral proposition he already accepts. Eg. if he thinks that killing animals is wrong, we could argue 1. killing animals is wrong 2. humans are animals 3. therefore killing humans (murder) is wrong. There is really no other way to establish moral propositions. I don't know what other kind of proof you may have in mind.

[Anonymous No.18889803]

>>18888795
Literally all of them, dude.

[Anonymous No.18889859]

>>18888909
He believes that morality is about serving other people or that other people even should be considered in moral questions. That is a delusion brought in by Christianity. For pagans helping someone weak could be a morally bad thing. He got his values from Christianity.

>>18888919
Harming other people is never morally bad outside religion. If it was morally bad then that means people shouldn't do it even if they want to do it and even in cases where it is legal. If I bought a slave in ancient Rome and wanted to torture and kill my slave then there would be no legal problems and no social problems for doing that. If it was morally wrong outside religion then I still shouldn't do it. What reason exist for that to be the case?

[Anonymous No.18889870]

>>18889796
Intuitions is just anything you have been culturally indoctrinated to. A moral intuition can be that stealing is morally good (like gypsies who believe it is a inherent right they have) or that it is morally wrong. It is arbitrary what you were indoctrinated with.

[Anonymous No.18889898]

>>18889677
He is as hoc trying to shoe in the Christian values he has seen all around him. There is nothing in the experience of conciouss beings that implies that one should or should not do something. And if someone wants to harm a conscious being for fun or pleasure or whatever reason then they obviously consider the experience of concious beings as lesser than their own desires or whatever. So his argument would never apply to anyone who wants to harm someone else. So he cannot claim harming people is morally wrong for anyone who wants to harm or have harmed someone for any reason.

Also it is a Christian idea to mix empathy with morality. The ancient Greeks viewed empathy as a moral flaw than anything. Haven't you read Thucydes? If Spartans found empathy on any of their sons then they would throw them off a cliff.

[Anonymous No.18889926]

>>18889870
IMO there’s some kind of ethical Darwinism throughout the history of human civilization. A lot of the Old Testament espouses a sociological agenda that would have promoted social cohesion, capital, order, and trust in that context. All things that are importan to the bronze age town you’re building in the middle of the desert prospering.

I think it’s harder to sell without invoking God. If moral principles are arbitrary rules with the ultimate goal being social control and making sure society doesn’t fall apart, they’re sort of arbitrary vis a vis the individual.

[Anonymous No.18889938]

>>18889926
>the bible is actually darwinist
lol

[Anonymous No.18889967]

>>18889870
I think you need to explain your position a bit more because right now I am trying to guess what exactly is your general philosophical position. Are you a realist or an anti-realist in metaethics? Moral realism is incompatible with empiricism, so if you take this view you are committed to rationalism, to rational intuition. .

[Anonymous No.18889981]

>>18889938
i’m saying that the societies that adhered to these rules survived and the ones where people had no qualms about stealing, fucking each others’ spouses, lying, and killing each other probably had some problems, so the latter would be more likely to survive and inculcate the successive generation with their moral principles

[Anonymous No.18890058]

>>18889981
pathetic mental gymnastics

[Anonymous No.18890536]

>>18889981
All that could be true and the moral principles are still Christian.

[Anonymous No.18890975]

>>18888795
On the contrary, find me an atheist who isn't dragging around the corpse of god while denouncing him at the same time.

[Anonymous No.18891007]

>>18889967
None of my arguments depend on my position, intention, will or emotion about anything. If you agree or disagree with my argument should not be based on any such quality. The issue is not about me personally.

[Anonymous No.18891017]

>>18889981
Those socieites who allowed killing and so on did not go extinct because of their morality. They just adopted another religion where those things were considered wrong. Historically completely arbitrary. Some of the strongest societies allowed killing and raping

[Anonymous No.18891908]

>>18888919
I mean, I don't see many Manicheans around nowdays. Do you?

[Anonymous No.18892048]

>>18890975
Yeah it was the Nietzschean critique that led to me making the thread.

[Anonymous No.18892098]

>>18892048
His great man wasted away on an island prison. Nietzsche fails because he ignores the extent to which man's action is enabled by his surroundings.
>>18891017
Traits that confer fitness in one circumstance can be neutral or a handicap in another. There is no one true way but for now facilitating cooperation at larger scales has allowed co-operators to demolish the in-fighters.

[Anonymous No.18892253]

>>18888795
Because religion evolved from the evolutionary shaped behavior of a mammal that tends to live in groups.

[Anonymous No.18893404]

>>18892098
In any case there is no non-religious reason why any moral claims are true. As you point out. Raping and killing children might be considered morally good in some situations and morally bad in others. However if evolution is the deciding factor then rape is always morally good, no humans have been more evolutionarily effective than rapists. The people in history with the most children has always been mass rapists like ghengis khan for example.

[Anonymous No.18893899]

>>18889859
>He believes that morality is about serving other people or that other people even should be considered in moral questions. That is a delusion brought in by Christianity.
This is so obviously false I can only wonder if you're being willfully deceptive. Literally every other major religion has compassion as a virtue and believes in the moral worth of other people. Aristotle even has compassion as a virtue.
>Harming other people is never morally bad outside religion
Even if this is true, you haven't shown that the wrongness of harming people is a uniquely Christian belief. And it's just not obviously true at all. In order to prove that, you would have to refute every single non-religious ethical system that has ever developed. You desperately need to do some reading on metaethics and stop parroting baby apologetic arguments.