I'm not a student of philosophy or anything. I'm just a layperson, who has been interested in secular morality, moral theories etc. lately. What book would you recommend on this topic that are appropriate for a layperson?

Try Kant's Categorical Imperative.
Though I'd mainly recommend reading John Stuart Mill, specifically his works which revolve around Utilitarianism and the harm principle. He certainly made a big impression upon me when I stumbled upon it.

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 think the most obvious modern book on secular morality is Singers Practical Ethics, but a Google search of the term 'secular morality' tossed out dozens of books I've never heard of or read.

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.

I'd recommend Ethics: A Very Short Introduction by Simon Blackburn.

Ultimately, atheistic morality is more about how to think rather than what though, so don't be expecting any hard and fast answers from anyone.

Spearthrower wrote:I think the most obvious modern book on secular morality is Singers Practical Ethics

Thanks, I'll check it out. But right now I'm more interested in normative ethics than applied ethics. Any recommendations for that?
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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. Basing modern philosophical notions of morality upon a repulsion of archaic notions of God, won't suffice.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

Your theism is just reflexive and lacks any foundation or form, so there's little point in discussing your theism.

Of course I assume you find such stories repulsive: you're within that class of 'modern human being' I mentioned. However, I am drawing a distinction about theists here because an awfully large percentage of theists from all denominations are not modern humans in those explicit terms, which is why we do still see babies heads being smashed in and girls kidnapped for sexual slavery by the actors of some religious organization - typically Islamic, and typically in the poorer parts of the world.

jamest wrote:Basing modern philosophical notions of morality upon a repulsion of archaic notions of God, won't suffice.

Won't suffice for what? For establishing that a god isn't the moral centre of the universe? Seems pretty compelling to me.

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.

Of course not, but it does potentially rid ourselves of some instances of wrong because we're not obligated to believe the universe is decreed to be this way by a higher power we're obligated to defer to.

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.

You could basically be quoting me here, and I think you know it.

However, it should be noted that Mill's stated basis for human motives is pleasure-seeking, pain-avoidance. That feels very dated and I think there's more to morality than that.

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.

Bit like saying that it's possible for water to be wet. Any and all humans can engage in moral behavior, regardless of their beliefs in gods. I think it's a lot hard for a strong believer from an organized religion to have a reasonable notion of morality given that they're instructed to believe that their god / holy tract is the source of all morality, despite those holy tracts both a) being written hundreds or even thousands of years ago and being unable to address moral conundrums that simply did not exist in Ye Olden Days and b) being full of outrageously immoral behaviors on the part of both the god and the believers. When the How To is wrong, it follows that those leaning on it can't be gaining their modern conception of morality from dogma.

Similar to what Mill wrote, actually:

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.

And societies throughout history and across many different belief systems have all alighted on these same principles, ergo a given god cannot be the source of morality, but rather this sense stems from humans.

For me, it's simply the demands of pro-sociality in a social species: all social species have 'morality', they just lack the language and conceptual thinking to systematize it.

I think you should read back through some of your old threads to see how far you've come over the years: http://www.rationalskepticism.org/nonth ... hilit=veil

Regardless of all this, I feel like Murshid was asking for recent works on secular morality.