CosmicJoghurt wrote:Greetings.
I'll try to be as succinct as possible.
I'm an agnostic atheist. Therefore my morals don't come from God (never mind how this wouldn't work). I'm also not convinced by any atheistic (meaning lacking the premise of the existence of God) moral system I've encountered, and I'll explain why.
Every atheistic moral system I've read about attempts to relate good deeds (however they might be concluded), to deeds we ought do, and bad deeds to deeds we ought not do. In other words, each system describes a line of reasoning to arrive at the definition of good and bad deeds, and then uses those conclusions to say that we ought and ought not do those deeds.
My question is, how does one go from saying a deed is good (I'd shortly describe it as: something that brings or contributes to overall happiness, well being and/or peace) to saying it is the right thing to do (and vice versa for bad deeds)?
How does one claim that we ought do good deeds? I haven't read anything about this. It is my impression that it is assumed that we ought be good and ought not be bad.
This is the reason why I'm a moral nihilist - I recognize that some things are overall bad to do and other things are overall good to do. I don't, however, see any reason to associate these with "right" and "wrong". I rarely see other people who share this point of view.
With this said, I'm nowhere near educated in any branch of philosophy. I'm limited to my own thoughts, LoR, and the amazing... Google.
Speak. Please.
Cheers.
I don't understand how the question relates to the topic.
Are you asking whether we are amoral, is it wrong/good to be amoral, should we be amoral?
I'm not satisfied with all comments given here.
Firstly there is the issue of what we think we are and who we really are. Deontologists are those who believe in the golden rule and what jesus said (if you get slapped in the face, turn the other cheek), which is, regardless of the circumstances, whether your life or the life of loved ones is at stack, you can't hurt the people that is hurting you. Do those unaware that they are following deontology, are they like this in the real world? Sadly some are but most aren't. Deontology is immoral.
Then we have guys like the ozymandias in Alan Moore's Watchmen, who killed thousands to save millions. These people are utilitarianists. They do what contributes to the best outcome to most people. Think bomb of Hiroshima
Utiliarianisms is a sub category of consequentialism. Pure consequentialism are those who do things based on the outcome alone, think sociopaths (sociopathworld.com).
Rulling out deontology as being unrealistic and immoral, in the real world would it be most moral as a utiliarianist or consequentialist? To answer this we need to determine if in general we are empaths or altruists.
This question I often ask, lets say you're in a situation which you have to decised to the person you hold most dear, whether it's your son, mum, etc., if you should let this person live or dye to save 30 strangers. Every sincere person says they rather let the 30 strangers die (I up the number, have reached 300). This show's two things, our perception of morality is objectively altruistic (according to evolutionary game theory) and subjectively emphatic. Therefore the majority of people are firstly consequentialists.
Now is consequentialism more moral than utiliaranism. Killing 30 people to save 1 isn't by any means moral regardless how one justifies the action, therefore people are immoral in that regard but many consider it wrong or strange to take someone's life who you hold dear to save strangers. Sociobiology explains this better (although their methods are deductive).
Now where does amorality come into this? I guess it's a matter of perception. A serial killer could consider cannibalism amoral. Then there are situations that are genuinely amoral which many consider immoral, like having sex with your sister using protection, sex with a dead turkey, eating the meat of an ass cheek from a dead corpse (this really occurred occasionally during the Russian war).