looking for recommendations for books on secular/atheistic morality
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Spearthrower wrote:I think the most obvious modern book on secular morality is Singers Practical Ethics
Spearthrower wrote:The Bible - cos when you read it, you are inevitably faced with examples that provoke you to consider whether it is morally acceptable for a god to intentionally kill most individuals of all species on the planet just because one of the species was being naughty. Or have its followers kidnap girls for sexual slavery, and bash babies' heads in on walls. Does mere power give the god the right? I don't think modern humans believe that anymore.
Any book that claims to be about atheistic morality is a book I am dubious about before I've turned the cover. The book's going to have to convince me that the phrase even means anything before I want to read thousands of words on it. Atheism is a negation of the god claim, not a competing world view and moral system.
jamest wrote:Spearthrower wrote:The Bible - cos when you read it, you are inevitably faced with examples that provoke you to consider whether it is morally acceptable for a god to intentionally kill most individuals of all species on the planet just because one of the species was being naughty. Or have its followers kidnap girls for sexual slavery, and bash babies' heads in on walls. Does mere power give the god the right? I don't think modern humans believe that anymore.
I don't believe it either, yet I'm a theist.
jamest wrote:Basing modern philosophical notions of morality upon a repulsion of archaic notions of God, won't suffice.
jamest wrote:
Any book that claims to be about atheistic morality is a book I am dubious about before I've turned the cover. The book's going to have to convince me that the phrase even means anything before I want to read thousands of words on it. Atheism is a negation of the god claim, not a competing world view and moral system.
Ridding ourselves of God does not necessarily rid ourselves of notions of right & wrong.
jamest wrote:For example, JS Mill's concept of Utilitarianism (actually, Jeremy Bentham was the originator of the concept) proposes that humans should behave in a way that maximises happiness for society as a whole. Mill's idea of the 'harm principle' sums up his feelings entirely, since he states that people should be free to act as they wish unless it causes harm to someone else. The bottom-line is that moral thought/behaviour reflects that which is beneficial to the majority, if not all of society.
jamest wrote:A lot could be said about his philosophy, but what's important to state here is that it is possible for an atheist to have a reasonable notion of morality.
J. S. Mill wrote:I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.
jamest wrote:And if you also want to rid that philosophy of one's 'love' for mankind, you can still propose that philosophy for purely pragmatic reasons. So, it's not wrong to kill, rape and pillage, just because God said so; rather, it's wrong because most people within a society do not wish to be killed, raped or pillaged.
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