The notion that you have to replace religion with something else applies mainly to those who used to believe. I have never believed and never found the need to look for “something” to believe in.
Excellent discussion from about 14:00 on, about how religion is obedience, and obedience has nothing to do with morality. "A god-based morality is destructive of human ethics..." (15:10)
Yes, that hits a core flaw in theistic ethical thinking that theists seem to be unable to get: Morality is not the following of orders! This should be obvious, but the fact that many theists seem to think so is what makes theism such a dangerous thing, especially when the deity itself is such a dispicable murderous monster like in the abrahamic religions.
All religions and religious books are man-made. Live and let live, do no harm, and beware of con artists, secular or religious. Religion and politics must never be mixed.🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂
His way of expressing the problem with saying morality "comes from god" is excellent. Best explanation of the problem I have heard or seen. I will get the book based on that alone so I can review the arguments more deeply.
Canada may spend less on social spending for the poor than the USA, but a huge portion of the USA's social spending is on Medicare and Medicaid. which is not required in Canada due to its social medicine policy. If you remove medical expenditures from the USA's social spending, it is far less per capita than any industrialised nation.
If you don't know right from wrong without a certain book, how do you know, when you first read the book, that what the book claims is right or wrong is actually right or wrong? #checkmate
Mitch Kahle - I beg to differ. I know many people who's lives were saved by religion whether in personal practice or result of practice by someone else.
If the only thing stopping a person from criminal antisocial behavior is a false belief in religion, does he need it? Perhaps not, but I think it's better for society for that antisocial person to hold on to that false belief so the rest of us can be spared his antisocial behavior.
You decide for you, and I decide for me, and where we agree, we have a framework for moral interaction. Where we disagree, we may find a compromise governing our interaction or avoid interacting. One of us may also forcibly impose his standard on any interaction, but I'd rather avoid the conflict.
@@restonthewind that is lame...in other words there is no right or wrong, except by mutual consent, and without consent I may choose to enforce my morality....presumably by whatever means necessary.
@@opgentj Right and wrong are social norms or subjective preferences. You can enforce your preferences or die trying. That's just a fact. I prefer not to use force and that you not use force. If you insist on One, True Morality for everyone everywhere and try to enforce this standard on me, I'll try to avoid you, but if you doggedly hunt me down to enforce your standard, I'll defend my liberty with my own force. If you call that "lame", then I'm content to be lame in your eyes.
@@restonthewind I understand your perspective and in many ways agree. At least I have to say it would be easier to choose your position than identify with a True Morality that I' held accountable to everyday. That said if allow for an individual's interpretation to be there own, and to promote it above alternative views - even reject those alternative views - then you open the door to tyranny of the majority. At least with a "True Morality" there will always be a self-correcting that brings everyone back to rightness of that morality. So the Jim Jones of the world either self-destruct or loose their self-proclaimed moral high ground in favor of the True Morality, and the Hitlers of the world (a secularist who borrowed aspects of religious morality for his purposes - similar convenient selection of truths by slave owners to justify their position - T Jefferson an interesting example). The empirically proven ability of man over the eons to shape a reality, and convenient moral framework, is undeniable, and there is no evidence that man has evolved a higher communal morality that has made life better for all. (Case in point the 100s of millions who have been killed and tormented by tyrannical leaders in the past 100yrs compared all of human history.) Enough said - I don't intend to hunt you down. At least in the US, outside of many universities we have freedom to express opinions without harmful consequence.
Thank you both for this lucid discussion of the secular basis of moral judgments. I just read Ralph Lewis's book, "Finding Purpose in a Godless World," which details a kind of natural (evolutionary) history of morality, and it looks like professor Zuckerman's new book dovetails nicely with this way of thinking about the basis of ethics. The ethical domain, I think, should be the focus of debate with theists, rather than the academic arguments for and against the existence of God, which, though interesting, never seem to change anyone's mind.
Zuckerman's not only a Chicken Nazi. His prescription for violent people is incredible. Give them a house on an island? Never mind their victims. Who is building these houses, and who is building the builders' houses? A prison market is workable and compassionate if prisoners have their choice of prisons. The prison getting the most productivity out of a prisoner, while separating him from people he threatens, has the most to offer him in terms of attractive living conditions. Expecting everyone else to bear the cost of his confinement creates the prison system we have now, inhumane living conditions effectively forbidding restitution for victims.
Religion is not necessary for ethics, but something like religion is. We can define "religion" narrowly to make the preceding statement true, or we can define it broadly to make the "something like religion" also a "religion". I prefer the latter for various reasons, not because I subscribe to any traditional or supernatural faith system myself but because what passes for "secularism" is often no less faith based, and the "separation of church and state" doctrine has evolved only to privilege some religions (or religion-like systems) over others. Modern, "secular" states don't impose faith-based norms less than earlier states with established churches. They only refrain, to some extent, from privileging a supernatural myth system reinforcing the norms. Maybe that's progress, but the myth system and its rituals typically are superficial and inconsequential while norms imposing real costs on a state's subjects are no less compulsory. For example, licensing sexual partnerships including same-sex partnerships, while excluding other domestic partnerships like cohabiting siblings or parents and their adult children, is not more scientific or more rational or even more egalitarian than licensing opposite-sex partnerships exclusively. Licensing no sexual partnerships, per se, while privileging only partnerships between parents responsible for the same children (which may or may not involve a continuing sexual relationship) or privileging all domestic partnerships (including partnerships not eligible for marriage as currently codified) similarly, is arguably more rational and less "religious". Extending a statutory institution like marriage to gay partnerships doesn't remove religion from the statutory formulation. It only reforms the state religion. If you like the new religion better than the previous one, you win; otherwise, you lose. No victory over "superstition" has occurred.
Probably the degree to which we can defer to science to resolve our issues, questions, choices, etc of our morals or moralities. Maybe someday Sam and Phil could talk about it.
The total lack of useful definitions, of all these nominal "gods", is a problem for anyone wanting to discuss the attributes, philosophically or morally or in any way connected to our adopted culture. "Everything is connected" nothing's separate from immersion in the Wave Equations, here-now-forever. As a particular locus of wave-package integration in the Universal wave-package, the concept of what is personal or not is unclear, uncertain and indistinct.., and totally "godless" in the context of a being outside the actual continuous creation connection in Principle/mechanism. (Religionists should check up the only possible meaning of a "god creator" outside of time and the creation. It would appear that the problem of defining Infinity/Eternity hinges on the physical existence of the Singularity) Math-Phys-Chem and Geometry in Spacetime sequences of e-Pi-i resonance imaging allocates or "allows for" the Actuality Philosophy, and Theology/theory of Mind. In the New Testament, words are attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, "You are all Gods", and even if Richard Carrier is correct about the lack of a physical body fitted into the written history of the day, ..to put alongside the speaker of those words, then by default.. circular logic, those words came from a self-defining representative of existing God, the personified-personal ideal of behaviour in that setting of events. It's basically opinionated advice, but offers a standard to agree with or not, ..you choose. (That's why I accept, to the degree they uphold the biblical standards, my religious friends who live by their beliefs, faith, hopes and mutual respect for the "Golden" rules) We set our own standard, and it can't be some other way. At best we are obedient to our understanding of ideas, integrated from baby to adult. This particular unlabeled person commenting "believes" that the accusation that every baby is born with "original sin", is the outrageous symptom of totalitarianism, an evil reverse of the ideal that we're all born equally deserving of human respect, that repels anyone of reasonable conscience. (A divided house must fall)
I fully agree that morality has nothing to do with any god or religion. But, to be fair to William Lane Craig...saying there are only two choices (it's moral because God says so or morality comes from outside God) is a bit of a straw-man. Craig would say that they really are the same thing because God is perfectly good and morality emanates from God himself...so he can only be true to his nature and command moral things. I think it's just word play. After all, aren't ALL things supposed to come from God? That would include evil. So how can evil come from something perfectly good? And I could provide a Christian argument against that also. Really, you can go round and round in circles for forever arguing about God and morality and get absolutely nowhere lol.
Zuckerman castigates theistic morality for being essentially utilitarian ( obedience to Gods commands, ultimately only to avoid punishment) from the standpoint of moral relativist (Morality is what enough people say is right, to reap the greatest benefit for the greatest number) i.e. utilitarian. A moral utilitarian railing against moral utilitarianism. Gotcha.
The utilitarian value of the Hebrew god was political, though. It was a failed attempt to keep the Jewish people under Jewish law rather than Babylonian, Persian and Roman. Eventually the Romans wouldn't have it, with catastrophic consequences for the Jewish people, who during the diaspora dwindled to probably less than one thousand ancestors of the Ashkenazy Jews.
There’s a word we don’t hear much in these discussions. SUBMIT. This is the core doctrine to most religious belief. The deity is better, smarter, holier etc. than thee. So you must submit. I find this whole concept to be un-American at its root. We fought a war not to submit. Islam is the worst exemplar of this concept...throw yourself prostrate before me 5 times a day. This might help you earn your way in to heaven. Thinking oneself “ lesser than “ must severely affect the way you make decisions and value judgements. And determines how you treat others. I will hold my head up. I have never felt the weight of this original sin and refuse to carry it on the say so of another person. I am not less.
Ethics and morality challenged by opportunism and egoism Ethics and morality are self-evident only by observing our inner and outer experiences, that's correct, but only so when being truthful, incorrupt and really willing to pay the price for the moral guidelines, hence ethical foundations mean to say often NO to tempting offers our greedy, hedonistic and principle less ego would rather say yes. Having a good character means often to say NO to easy picks, following instead the inner truth, delaying gratifications that way not taking the opportunistic path. Truthfulness and justice feelings are worthless when not personally lived or only expected from others, so they are just ugly bigotries and pretendings which is even worse than being a crook in the first place. There are a lot of atheists guided through life by strong moralities and justice feelings, even stronger than some believers, but they are missing this strong supportive argument, god is watching you. Sure, there might be a few strong atheist characters rejecting all seductions, but since atheists don't have a god watching them, it's all up to them personally to keep their line of morality clean, which will lead in general always to more cruelty than with theists. We've seen in all atheistic communist countries with 100mio dead at least, what unlimited atheism does, hence our meet is mostly weaker than our moral principles being challenged by opportunism and egoism.
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The notion that you have to replace religion with something else applies mainly to those who used to believe. I have never believed and never found the need to look for “something” to believe in.
Excellent discussion from about 14:00 on, about how religion is obedience, and obedience has nothing to do with morality. "A god-based morality is destructive of human ethics..." (15:10)
Yes, that hits a core flaw in theistic ethical thinking that theists seem to be unable to get: Morality is not the following of orders! This should be obvious, but the fact that many theists seem to think so is what makes theism such a dangerous thing, especially when the deity itself is such a dispicable murderous monster like in the abrahamic religions.
All religions and religious books are man-made. Live and let live, do no harm, and beware of con artists, secular or religious. Religion and politics must never be mixed.🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂
His way of expressing the problem with saying morality "comes from god" is excellent. Best explanation of the problem I have heard or seen. I will get the book based on that alone so I can review the arguments more deeply.
Canada may spend less on social spending for the poor than the USA, but a huge portion of the USA's social spending is on Medicare and Medicaid. which is not required in Canada due to its social medicine policy. If you remove medical expenditures from the USA's social spending, it is far less per capita than any industrialised nation.
The best way to realize about religion and belief is, In religion man is looking for G_D, In FAITH G_D is looking for man.
After suffering from the Matt & Dyer debate - this was like a breath of fresh air.
Great interview! Just added the book to my reading list
Brilliant discussion
Some people are born into tragic situations and religion fills the void.
Religion is an escapist fantasy. It doesn't fill anything but the pockets of those who sell this stuff to the masses.
If you don't know right from wrong without a certain book, how do you know, when you first read the book, that what the book claims is right or wrong is actually right or wrong? #checkmate
No person needs religion, although some seem to want it.
Satanists are another group... just silly.
Mitch Kahle - I beg to differ. I know many people who's lives were saved by religion whether in personal practice or result of practice by someone else.
If the only thing stopping a person from criminal antisocial behavior is a false belief in religion, does he need it? Perhaps not, but I think it's better for society for that antisocial person to hold on to that false belief so the rest of us can be spared his antisocial behavior.
Mitch Kahle We all need a savior, without Jesus I wouldn’t be able to overcome my addictions.
Religion is here to stay. It will never be replaced by anything that is not also a religion even if it's not initially intended to be one.
That was great!
I didn't knew Phil, he seems like a awesome person to have a conversation.
are we all then architects of morality? who will decide whose definition of morality (whose situational ethic) is correct?
You decide for you, and I decide for me, and where we agree, we have a framework for moral interaction. Where we disagree, we may find a compromise governing our interaction or avoid interacting. One of us may also forcibly impose his standard on any interaction, but I'd rather avoid the conflict.
@@restonthewind that is lame...in other words there is no right or wrong, except by mutual consent, and without consent I may choose to enforce my morality....presumably by whatever means necessary.
@@opgentj Right and wrong are social norms or subjective preferences. You can enforce your preferences or die trying. That's just a fact. I prefer not to use force and that you not use force. If you insist on One, True Morality for everyone everywhere and try to enforce this standard on me, I'll try to avoid you, but if you doggedly hunt me down to enforce your standard, I'll defend my liberty with my own force. If you call that "lame", then I'm content to be lame in your eyes.
@@restonthewind I understand your perspective and in many ways agree. At least I have to say it would be easier to choose your position than identify with a True Morality that I' held accountable to everyday. That said if allow for an individual's interpretation to be there own, and to promote it above alternative views - even reject those alternative views - then you open the door to tyranny of the majority. At least with a "True Morality" there will always be a self-correcting that brings everyone back to rightness of that morality. So the Jim Jones of the world either self-destruct or loose their self-proclaimed moral high ground in favor of the True Morality, and the Hitlers of the world (a secularist who borrowed aspects of religious morality for his purposes - similar convenient selection of truths by slave owners to justify their position - T Jefferson an interesting example). The empirically proven ability of man over the eons to shape a reality, and convenient moral framework, is undeniable, and there is no evidence that man has evolved a higher communal morality that has made life better for all. (Case in point the 100s of millions who have been killed and tormented by tyrannical leaders in the past 100yrs compared all of human history.) Enough said - I don't intend to hunt you down. At least in the US, outside of many universities we have freedom to express opinions without harmful consequence.
Great interview.
If there were a God, He would have stopped me from having that 'last' tequila shot.
I wonder if Shermer and Zuckerman are aware of Richard Wrangam's ideas put forth in his book "The Goodness Paradox"?
Thank you both for this lucid discussion of the secular basis of moral judgments. I just read Ralph Lewis's book, "Finding Purpose in a Godless World," which details a kind of natural (evolutionary) history of morality, and it looks like professor Zuckerman's new book dovetails nicely with this way of thinking about the basis of ethics. The ethical domain, I think, should be the focus of debate with theists, rather than the academic arguments for and against the existence of God, which, though interesting, never seem to change anyone's mind.
"perfect encapsulation"........agreed
was that an AGF mug Phil hahaha 👍
Thanks
Zuckerman's not only a Chicken Nazi. His prescription for violent people is incredible. Give them a house on an island? Never mind their victims. Who is building these houses, and who is building the builders' houses?
A prison market is workable and compassionate if prisoners have their choice of prisons. The prison getting the most productivity out of a prisoner, while separating him from people he threatens, has the most to offer him in terms of attractive living conditions. Expecting everyone else to bear the cost of his confinement creates the prison system we have now, inhumane living conditions effectively forbidding restitution for victims.
Will the Epicurean interview be released in audio form?
I only need to be able to think!
Religion is not necessary for ethics, but something like religion is. We can define "religion" narrowly to make the preceding statement true, or we can define it broadly to make the "something like religion" also a "religion". I prefer the latter for various reasons, not because I subscribe to any traditional or supernatural faith system myself but because what passes for "secularism" is often no less faith based, and the "separation of church and state" doctrine has evolved only to privilege some religions (or religion-like systems) over others. Modern, "secular" states don't impose faith-based norms less than earlier states with established churches. They only refrain, to some extent, from privileging a supernatural myth system reinforcing the norms. Maybe that's progress, but the myth system and its rituals typically are superficial and inconsequential while norms imposing real costs on a state's subjects are no less compulsory.
For example, licensing sexual partnerships including same-sex partnerships, while excluding other domestic partnerships like cohabiting siblings or parents and their adult children, is not more scientific or more rational or even more egalitarian than licensing opposite-sex partnerships exclusively. Licensing no sexual partnerships, per se, while privileging only partnerships between parents responsible for the same children (which may or may not involve a continuing sexual relationship) or privileging all domestic partnerships (including partnerships not eligible for marriage as currently codified) similarly, is arguably more rational and less "religious". Extending a statutory institution like marriage to gay partnerships doesn't remove religion from the statutory formulation. It only reforms the state religion. If you like the new religion better than the previous one, you win; otherwise, you lose. No victory over "superstition" has occurred.
Question: Who is that headshot of on Dr. Zuckerman's office/man cave door immediately behind and above?
Chris Darrow. American musician, song-writer, played in Kaleidoscope, played with James Taylor, Linda Rondstat, etc.
Religious people want justice NOW, maybe they don't really believe in a cosmic courthouse. 1:13. 😂😂
Seems odd to claim that religion is a narrow formalized institution. Civil religious fundamentalism is here. Call it whatever you want.
Ethical life - intellect + trial and error
@skeptic why didn't you two talk about ethics?! @_@;
I didn't quite grok.... He disagrees with Sam Harris about what?
Probably the degree to which we can defer to science to resolve our issues, questions, choices, etc of our morals or moralities. Maybe someday Sam and Phil could talk about it.
Thank fuck you've got all those Politically Correct folk there to protect the Constitution.
The total lack of useful definitions, of all these nominal "gods", is a problem for anyone wanting to discuss the attributes, philosophically or morally or in any way connected to our adopted culture.
"Everything is connected" nothing's separate from immersion in the Wave Equations, here-now-forever.
As a particular locus of wave-package integration in the Universal wave-package, the concept of what is personal or not is unclear, uncertain and indistinct.., and totally "godless" in the context of a being outside the actual continuous creation connection in Principle/mechanism. (Religionists should check up the only possible meaning of a "god creator" outside of time and the creation. It would appear that the problem of defining Infinity/Eternity hinges on the physical existence of the Singularity)
Math-Phys-Chem and Geometry in Spacetime sequences of e-Pi-i resonance imaging allocates or "allows for" the Actuality Philosophy, and Theology/theory of Mind.
In the New Testament, words are attributed to Jesus of Nazareth, "You are all Gods", and even if Richard Carrier is correct about the lack of a physical body fitted into the written history of the day, ..to put alongside the speaker of those words, then by default.. circular logic, those words came from a self-defining representative of existing God, the personified-personal ideal of behaviour in that setting of events.
It's basically opinionated advice, but offers a standard to agree with or not, ..you choose. (That's why I accept, to the degree they uphold the biblical standards, my religious friends who live by their beliefs, faith, hopes and mutual respect for the "Golden" rules)
We set our own standard, and it can't be some other way. At best we are obedient to our understanding of ideas, integrated from baby to adult.
This particular unlabeled person commenting "believes" that the accusation that every baby is born with "original sin", is the outrageous symptom of totalitarianism, an evil reverse of the ideal that we're all born equally deserving of human respect, that repels anyone of reasonable conscience. (A divided house must fall)
I fully agree that morality has nothing to do with any god or religion. But, to be fair to William Lane Craig...saying there are only two choices (it's moral because God says so or morality comes from outside God) is a bit of a straw-man. Craig would say that they really are the same thing because God is perfectly good and morality emanates from God himself...so he can only be true to his nature and command moral things. I think it's just word play. After all, aren't ALL things supposed to come from God? That would include evil. So how can evil come from something perfectly good? And I could provide a Christian argument against that also. Really, you can go round and round in circles for forever arguing about God and morality and get absolutely nowhere lol.
But Jordan Peterson said..........
What is an ethical life??
Not hurting people might be a good start.
Zuckerman castigates theistic morality for being essentially utilitarian ( obedience to Gods commands, ultimately only to avoid punishment) from the standpoint of moral relativist (Morality is what enough people say is right, to reap the greatest benefit for the greatest number) i.e. utilitarian. A moral utilitarian railing against moral utilitarianism. Gotcha.
The utilitarian value of the Hebrew god was political, though. It was a failed attempt to keep the Jewish people under Jewish law rather than Babylonian, Persian and Roman. Eventually the Romans wouldn't have it, with catastrophic consequences for the Jewish people, who during the diaspora dwindled to probably less than one thousand ancestors of the Ashkenazy Jews.
There’s a word we don’t hear much in these discussions. SUBMIT. This is the core doctrine to most religious belief. The deity is better, smarter, holier etc. than thee. So you must submit. I find this whole concept to be un-American at its root. We fought a war not to submit.
Islam is the worst exemplar of this concept...throw yourself prostrate before me 5 times a day. This might help you earn your way in to heaven.
Thinking oneself “ lesser than “ must severely affect the way you make decisions and value judgements. And determines how you treat others.
I will hold my head up. I have never felt the weight of this original sin and refuse to carry it on the say so of another person. I am not less.
If the woman crossing the freeway had been a man?
Really pains me that you have a childish view of religion and refuse to read Joseph Campbell or educate yourself about comparative mythology.
19:10 this is why proving the earth is flat is so important, and yes the Globe Earth is questionable.
We shall obey the spiritual laws just as we are forced to obey the laws of physics.
How do we know what spiritual laws to obey, should I obey the one about taking slaves from the other nations around me
Define ‘spiritual law’...🙄
Ethics and morality challenged by opportunism and egoism
Ethics and morality are self-evident only by observing our inner and outer experiences, that's correct, but only so when being truthful, incorrupt and really willing to pay the price for the moral guidelines, hence ethical foundations mean to say often NO to tempting offers our greedy, hedonistic and principle less ego would rather say yes. Having a good character means often to say NO to easy picks, following instead the inner truth, delaying gratifications that way not taking the opportunistic path.
Truthfulness and justice feelings are worthless when not personally lived or only expected from others, so they are just ugly bigotries and pretendings which is even worse than being a crook in the first place. There are a lot of atheists guided through life by strong moralities and justice feelings, even stronger than some believers, but they are missing this strong supportive argument, god is watching you. Sure, there might be a few strong atheist characters rejecting all seductions, but since atheists don't have a god watching them, it's all up to them personally to keep their line of morality clean, which will lead in general always to more cruelty than with theists.
We've seen in all atheistic communist countries with 100mio dead at least, what unlimited atheism does, hence our meet is mostly weaker than our moral principles being challenged by opportunism and egoism.
God commands it because it’s moral.
So those things are moral without God's saying so?
Morality is not always obvious that’s why we need God’s guidance.