http://civic.bev.net/atheistsnrv/articles/definition.html


ATHEIST FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS John B. Hodges, March 12, 2006.
INTRODUCTION In the United States, evangelists often claim that
atheists have no basis for morality, no "foundations" for ethics. This
claim goes back at least as far as the Apostle Paul.

Many examples could be given of this claim, by historical and
contemporary writers. Most famous is the character in the novel by
Dostoyevsky, who says in essence that "If God does not exist, then
everything is permitted." The claim is that for those without a
supernatural basis for morality, all morality must be relative. All is
permissible.

These evangelists also imply, and sometimes say outright, that those
who believe in a god are more ethical than nonbelievers. "For theists,
morality isn't relative. There is a standard by which to judge such
things."

So, in their view, believers are morally superior to atheists, because
THEY have a foundation for morality and WE do not. Not to mention the
obvious, that they MUST be morally superior, because THEY are going to
Heaven while WE are not.

So, are they right? Do theists have better foundations for their
ethics than atheists do?

WHAT IS "ETHICS"?

Ethics, generally, are rules, principles, policies for behavior, with
the goal of ______ (fill in the blank).

Religious ethics fills in the blank with something supernatural.
"Pleasing God", "Getting admission to Heaven", "Achieving Nirvana",
whatever.

Atheist ethics fills in the blank with something in this world. What
is the purpose of human life? We have our choice on that. "Promoting
the health and happiness of my family, friends, adopted circle, and
our descendants." "Contributing to the long-run survival of human
civilization". "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure." There are a
million possibilities.

"FOUNDATIONS" OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS

Religious morality is based on faith. Faith is, ultimately, believing
what you are told, by someone whom you have chosen to regard as an
authority. Your chosen authority tells you about invisible things,
Heaven and Hell and God, and about what this God wants you to do and
not do.

Faith is required, to believe that this invisible god actually exists,

that he/she/it wants your obedience,

cannot or will not speak to you directly, but WILL speak to this
self-proclaimed authority.

authority is actually hearing from this god and not from some other
invisible spirit, some mischievous or malevolent ghost or demon.

You must have faith that your prophet is not making it all up out of
whole cloth, and is reporting accurately what this invisible spirit is
saying.

If your chosen prohet lived centuries ago, you have to hope that the
words of this prophet were recorded, copied, and translated accurately
for, as Jeremiah said, "actually the lying pen of the scribes has
handled it falsely". (Jer. 8:8)

If someone calls you on the telephone and says they are working for a
good cause, what reason do you have to believe them? Last year
Americans were taken for $40 Billion dollars by fraudulent telephone
callers. If you know someone face to face in some OTHER way, and you
then recognize their voice over the phone, then you have reason to
trust what they say; but a stranger calling could be anyone.

So, let us assume that the Biblical prophets are honorable men; all,
all honorable men. A prophet hears a voice coming out of the air, out
of a burning bush, or whatever, and the voice says: "I am Yahveh, King
of the Universe. I am the Creator of all things." How do they know,
how CAN they know, whether this Yahveh character is telling the truth?
We don't even know if this is the real Yahveh, much less the real
Creator of the Universe. We don't know if it was the same voice
speaking to different prophets. The voice could be some imp or sprite
about three inches tall, playing a practical joke. It could be a demon
with darker plans. Is this Yahveh really the Creator of the Universe,
as he claims, or is he perhaps some local ghost? Perhaps Yahveh is
lying, as he has sometimes done. (1 Kings 22, 2 Chronicles 18, Ezekiel
14:9, 2 Thessolonians 2:11-12.) Perhaps Yahveh is giving bad laws
deliberately, as he boasted in Ezekiel 20:25. All this has to be
decided subjectively.

Religious ethics comes down to obedience to (allegedly divine)
authority.

Just as "faith" consists of believing what you are told,

religious ethics consists of doing what you are told.

But a minute of thought will show that morality is not the same as
obedience. We all know of examples where people who were obeying
orders have done evil things, and other examples where people who were
rebelling against authority have done good things.

We all start out as children,

and we first learn morality by
instruction from our parents.

We know what is right and wrong "because our parents say so."

For a small child, morality is nothing other than
obedience to parents.

This is necessary and proper, because the child does not have the
understanding or perspective needed to live by a rational morality.
Humans are a social species, we have been living in groups for longer
than we have been human. Children are predisposed to learn morality
and social customs in the same way,

and for the same reason, that they are predisposed to learn language.
Both language and ethics are vitally important tools for living, for a
species that survives by cooperating in groups. Religion hijacks this
childhood instinct, substituting an invisible cosmic parent for the
earthly ones.

Religious morality consists of obedience to the instructions of this
cosmic parent, as reported and interpreted by whoever is bold enough
(crazy enough, dishonest enough) to do so.

Religion teaches a child's view of ethics, that "being good" means
"obeying your parent". It gives a moral blank check to those bold
enough, dishonest enough, to claim to speak for God.

If there WERE any Cosmic Parent, it would not need human messengers;
it could speak directly to whomever it wished. If a divine being wants
me to do something, they should tell me, not you.

If they have a message for all humankind, they could write it on the
face of the Moon, in letters five miles wide. Any alleged "revelation"
DELIVERED BY HUMAN BEINGS is presumptively fraudulent.

There is nothing more "relative" than supernatural belief. What you
choose to have faith in is entirely subjective.

What writings you count as scripture is both subjective and culturally
relative. What interpretation you put on those scriptures is likewise.
Sincere believers in the "same" religion have been pacifists and
imperialists, millionaires and ascetics, Capitalists and Socialists,
polygamists and celibates. Not to mention murderers. If a believer
wants to take any particular moral position, or commit any particular
atrocity, all they have to do is convince themselves that God
approves.

This seems not to be hard, and God never shows up to tell the believer
that they are mistaken.

Religious morality is inherently subjective and relative, because it
depends crucially on faith in invisible, untestable things.

When a believer says that his morality is "absolute", it means he is
resolutely determined not to apply any of his own intelligence to
moral questions.

When he says it is universal and unchanging, it means his morality is
indifferent to the consequences of trying to follow it in the real
world. He may also mean that he is willing to apply whatever force may
be necessary to make everyone else bow down to his own chosen Lord.

Prophets are those who are deluded enough, or boldly dishonest enough,
to set themselves up as the local representatives of God. Being human,
they may give out bad teachings, and may exploit their position.
Understandably jealous and fearful, they suppress questioning and
independent thinking among their followers and cast competing prophets
as devils and servants of the Cosmic Enemy, the Great Satan. From this
follows all the bloody history of religion. Instead of leading people
to treat each other as kin, religion historically has led them to
treat selected others as "enemies of God". Such enemies have been held
to deserve whatever suffering you can inflict on them and more, until
and unless they submit and obey.

Contrary to its claim to be the source of all morality, religion has
sponsored and endorsed sectarian warfare, genocide, torture,
persecutions of lesser sorts, slavery, male supremacy, inquisitions
and thought control; even for the obedient, it has sponsored
self-censorship, self-abnegation, self-mutilation, rejection of
medical care, suppression of rational inquiry and scientific
education. Priests have been allied with kings and dictators
throughout history, using religion as a tool to keep exploited people
quiet. Religion has perpetrated a wholesale swindle on the human race,
diverting large amounts of time, thought, and wealth to appeasing a
ghost, and the ghost's local representatives. It has perverted the
field of ethics, severing it from any connection to the consequences
for real people in this world, denouncing as sinful any attempt to
apply human thought to moral questions.

FOUNDATIONS OF ATHEIST ETHICS

Ethics, generally, are rules, principles, policies for behavior, with
the goal of ______ (fill in the blank).

Atheist ethics fills in the blank with something in this world. What
is the purpose of human life? We have our choice on that. The fact
that we have our choice of what to value makes atheist ethics
relative. The fact that our ultimate value is something in this world
has the advantage that we can choose to value objective things, making
our personal ethics objective. Doing X will, or will not, objectively
contribute toward our chosen goal. For foundations, theists have their
faith in invisible things.

Atheists have the objective experience of living in this world that we
see in front of us.

Where can we get "objective" ethics? Look at the consequences of
actions for real people in this world.

A consequentialist system has
an ultimate goal and a lot of derivative values, which are recommended
means to that goal. An objective ethic is a consequentialist ethic
that has an ultimate goal that is objectively measureable. It then
becomes an objective question whether a particular recommended means
will in fact lead to that goal, whether another means might be more
effective. The statement "If you want X then you ought to do Y"
becomes a statement about cause-and-effect relationships that is
objectively true or false, and can be investigated by scientific
procedures.

What about the choice of your ultimate goal, your ultimate value that
you are pursuing? Can we say that some goal is "better" than others,
and deserves to be adopted by everyone?

I think there is one that we can predict will be widely popular, but
there is no logical or cosmic necessity that it be adopted by
everyone.

There is a built-in "default" goal of biological life, genetic
reproductive success, also called "inclusive fitness" by biologists.
For nonhuman life, this goal could be described as "promote the health
of your family", where "health" is defined as "survival ability" and
"family" is "all who share your genes, to the degree that they share
your genes". Reproductive success is the goal that almost all living
organisms pursue, because they follow their internal urges
uncritically. Their internal urges are shaped by natural selection,
and inclusive fitness is what natural selection selects for. In short,
the default goal of biological life is to raise kids; failing that,
help your kinfolk raise kids.

If the majority of living things pursue reproduction as their ultimate
goal, by itself this implies nothing about what I ought to do. But I
think it provides useful information I may wish to consider while I am
choosing what I shall try to do.

Human beings are a special case in at least two ways. First, we have
self-awareness and the ability to choose our goals; inclusive fitness
is only the "default option", toward which our nature will incline us
unless we consciously choose to pursue something else. Second, humans
are more than carriers of genes; we have original thoughts, we create,
receive, modify, and transmit culture. Therefore, for human beings,
"inclusive fitness" would as legitimately include our cultural kin as
our genetic kin.

Because we are all the offspring of uncounted generations of
family-health-maximizers, we may find adopting this goal consciously
to be congenial. The goal I advocate adopting consciously is "promote
the health of your circle". The boundaries of your circle are your
choice, but it would be entirely natural to include yourself, your
genetic kin and descendants, your cultural kin and descendants. (There
are no sharp natural boundaries to kinship, either genetic or
cultural, but near kin commonly receive more concern than distant
kin.) If you have no personal interest in raising kids, or in helping
your kinfolk raise kids, then contribute something to the culture.

"Health", defined as "survival ability", implies other derivative
values. The more knowledge you have, the more friends you have, the
more freedom, the more wealth, the more wisdom, other things being
equal, the greater your ability to survive, and promote the survival
of your circle. The fact that we have a "default goal" written into
our genes by natural selection accounts for our intuitive feelings
that certain things are "obviously" good or bad. But we don't have to
depend on intuition; logic is a better guide.

Human beings are social animals; social animals survive by cooperating
in groups. We have been living in groups for longer than we have been
human. We are more social than any other species; the largest insect
societies have a few million individuals, humans cooperate in
societies of hundreds of millions, even billions. Because we are
social animals, "Health" immediately implies "Peace" as a basic value.
Our ethics must promote the peace of our communities.

In THE ELEMENTS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, (an introductory textbook), James
Rachels writes (p. 129): "The key idea [of the Social-contract
approach to ethics] is that morally binding rules are the ones that
are necessary for social living. It is obvious... that we could not
live together very well if we did not accept rules prohibiting murder,
assault, theft, lying, breaking promises, and the like. These rules
are justified simply by showing that they are necessary if we are to
cooperate for our mutual benefit."

In other words, if you want to maintain peaceful and cooperative
relations with your neighbors, don't kill, steal, lie, or break
agreements. As Shakespeare wrote, "It needs no ghost, Milord, come
from the grave, to tell us this."

Social-contract morality is the ethics of Peace. It can set the
minimum standards of right and wrong. But there are many different
possible ways a peaceful and cooperative society might function.
Beyond the ABC's of right and wrong described above, necessary to the
cohesion and cooperative functioning of any group, the ethics of
Health can provide an objective standard for comparing possible
societies. Societies can be judged better or worse according to
whether they are a "healthy" place for your kin "unto all generations"
to live in. The ethics of Health imply the political goal of
Sustainable Civilization.

MEANING

Human beings are storytelling animals. For most people, "the meaning
of life" is what larger story they think their life fits into. They
get great satisfaction from having a larger meaning for their lives. A
philosopher named Braithwaite described religion as "morals helped out
by mythology." People want a "good" story to include heroes with
goals, ideals, aspirations; to identify obstacles and challenges
against which the heroes must struggle; to offer a real hope of
victory. To provide meaning for their lives, people must regard the
story as true, or potentially true, in its essentials. You must have
good reason to hope that, if you live by the morals taught, the goals,
ideals, aspirations will be achieved in reality.

Religious folk get meaning from their religion, and feel that if they
lost their religion, life would have no meaning.

But the stories of religion are not the only stories possible. Meaning
is the story you choose to join. There are other stories we can join,
that have the advantage of being true.

The story of life on Earth is a larger story that everybody's life
could fit into, and in fact does.

Reading the story of life on Earth has impressed me with the rarity
and value of "the way we live now". For three billion years the
highest form of life was blue-green algae. For a million years the
human species made fire and stone tools, and lived by hunting and
gathering in small tribes. For ten thousand years most of us lived by
peasant agriculture, which is no fun. It would be a great tragedy if
our civilization crashed and burned a few hundred years after
discovering the scientific method. I would like to see a civilization
based on reason and freedom last for geological ages.

If our civilization is to be long-lived, we must face the challenge of
sustainability- stabilizing our population, establishing a long-lived
peace, developing forms of industry that do not poison our water and
air, forms of agriculture that do not create deserts, energy sources
that will supply us for millennia. For our long-term health, we will
also want to develop the ability to alter the orbits of the apollo
asteroids, whose orbits cross the orbit of Earth. Colonizing the solar
system would not be a bad idea, either.

Fairy-tales about the supernatural are not necessary to give meaning
or purpose to life. Instead of seeking a ticket to Heaven by being an
obedient slave on Earth, we can gain meaning by taking a positive role
in history, seeking to make this Earth a better place.

THE BOUNDARIES OF MORAL CONCERN

Given that we have our choice, of our personal goal in life, what goal
shall we choose? As individuals, we can choose "life-goals" and
"legacy-goals". Life-goals are whatever would be a satisfying life for
you. This will vary according to talent and temperament. Legacy-goals
are the net effect you want your life to have on the world. They are
the last goals at which you have any chance to succeed. Considering
that accident, crime, disease, etc. leave all of us uncertain as to
our time of death, if you want your personal story to end in victory,
you will choose your actions at all times in your life to be
compatible with your desired legacy. In this way, your legacy-goal may
set limits on what you would be willing to do to achieve your
life-goals.

The ultimate source of fear and despair is death. Death is the
ultimate failure, the ultimate loss.

If you want your personal story to end in victory, what could be your
response to this prospect? The antithesis of death is health, defined
as the ability to survive. Though as individuals we shall inevitably
die sooner or later, we can survive through our genes (families) and
through our communicated thoughts (culture).

To the extent that you identify with your body, you will survive death
through your family of the body, i.e. those that share your genes. To
the extent that you identify with your mind, you will survive death
through your family of the mind, i.e. all those with whom you share
culture, with whom you could share your thoughts.

Joining the true story of biological evolution, we can seek to
contribute to the health of our families. Joining the true story of
cultural evolution, we can seek to contribute to the health of our
society.

Cultural evolution has led to a steady widening of the boundaries of
moral concern. The human species' development of comparatively high
intelligence, the development of language, the development of writing,
of new tools and methods, and in recent times of the scientific method
of understanding the world, has led to a great increase in the
potential value of reciprocity. "Reciprocity" here refers to the whole
network of trading relationships which are peaceful, cooperative, and
mutually beneficial. By discovering new ways of producing desired
things, other than hunting and gathering, we discovered new forms of
valuable cooperation.

For producing desired things by cooperative action, there are
advantages to having larger groups rather than smaller. There are
"economies of scale" that can be obtained only by larger groups.
Larger groups can support having a greater variety of different
products available, higher levels of specialized skill, and new types
of production that are not possible at all on smaller scales. Other
things equal, a larger group also has the advantage in intergroup
conflict.

Cultural evolution has come to wholly overshadow biological evolution.
With the continuing development of culture, the power of the human
race has multiplied and multiplied again. Peace has gotten a whole lot
better, and war has gotten a whole lot worse. It has become vastly
more advantageous to avoid conflict and maintain peaceful cooperation,
in ever-larger and more inclusive groups.

So- the fact that humans are not only social but also intelligent, not
only carriers of genes but also carriers of culture, tends to make it
advantageous to push out the boundaries of moral concern, beyond the
reach supported by instinct. I think the natural limit of this process
is to include all carriers of culture, all potential cooperators, all
persons, in one society.

Beyond persons, we may even choose to include more, for at least two
reasons.

First, I would advocate including "former persons"- those who have
died, and those who have suffered brain damage. This I call the
"insurance clause" to the social contract- we are all at risk of
becoming "former persons", so we all have reason to want certain
rights of "former persons" to be protected.

Second, I would allow an "adopted honorary person" clause. If any
person wishes to adopt an animal or a "pre-person" as a member of
their own family, being responsible for it's care, training, and
behavior, I would grant the adoptee certain rights.

A third reason for including nonpersons would be compassion. John
Rawls defined a "good person" this way: "A good person is one who has
the qualities of moral character that it would be rational for members
of a well-ordered society to want in their associates." In short, a
"good person" is a desirable neighbor. For many reasons, a
compassionate person would be a more desirable neighbor than a callous
one. We want our neighbors to have at least some degree of compassion,
but how much shall we ask for, as a matter of social mores? If we say
that a certain minimum is required to be socially acceptable, then we
must show that much compassion ourselves, which could become
expensive. A modest level would say that we should not torture animals
for fun. A higher level would require humane treatment of farm
animals, even if that interferes with maximizing profits. A still
higher level would ban hunting and promote vegetarianism. The level
required by social mores will be culturally relative, subject to
negotiation and change.

SUMMARY

Ethics are rules, principles, policies for behavior, with the goal of
______ (fill in the blank). Religious ethics fills in the blank with
something supernatural. This makes religious ethics inherently
subjective and relative, because you must choose to have faith in what
you are told, by some chosen authority, about invisible, untestable
things. Atheist ethics fills in the blank with something in this
world. We have our choice of what to value, so atheist ethics are also
relative; but if we choose to value something that is objectively
measureable, our ethics can be objective.

There is one particular choice of what we shall ultimately value, that
we can expect will be a widely popular choice across all human
societies and cultures, because it is favored by natural selection.
Because we are social animals evolved by natural selection, we would
be expected to value the health (survival-ability) of our families,
and the peace of our communities. This offers a "natural" standard of
ethics: The Good is that which leads to health, the Right is that
which leads to peace.

Our reasons for "being ethical" by this standard include kinship,
reciprocity, compassion, and the desire to have and preserve a larger
meaning for our lives.

http://civic.bev.net/atheistsnrv/articles/definition.html


ATHEIST FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
John B. Hodges, March 12, 2006.
INTRODUCTION
In the United States, evangelists often claim that atheists have no basis
for morality, no "foundations" for ethics. This claim goes back at least
as far as the Apostle Paul.

Many examples could be given of this claim, by historical and contemporary
writers. Most famous is the character in the novel by Dostoyevsky, who
says in essence that "If God does not exist, then everything is
permitted." The claim is that for those without a supernatural basis for
morality, all morality must be relative. All is permissible.

These evangelists also imply, and sometimes say outright, that those who
believe in a god are more ethical than nonbelievers. "For theists,
morality isn't relative. There is a standard by which to judge such
things."

So, in their view, believers are morally superior to atheists, because
THEY have a foundation for morality and WE do not. Not to mention the
obvious, that they MUST be morally superior, because THEY are going to
Heaven while WE are not.

So, are they right? Do theists have better foundations for their ethics
than atheists do?

WHAT IS "ETHICS"?

Ethics, generally, are rules, principles, policies for behavior, with the
goal of ______ (fill in the blank).

Religious ethics fills in the blank with something supernatural. "Pleasing
God", "Getting admission to Heaven", "Achieving Nirvana", whatever.

Atheist ethics fills in the blank with something in this world. What is
the purpose of human life? We have our choice on that. "Promoting the
health and happiness of my family, friends, adopted circle, and our
descendants." "Contributing to the long-run survival of human
civilization". "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure." There are a
million possibilities.

"FOUNDATIONS" OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS

Religious morality is based on faith. Faith is, ultimately, believing what
you are told, by someone whom you have chosen to regard as an authority.
Your chosen authority tells you about invisible things, Heaven and Hell
and God, and about what this God wants you to do and not do.

Faith is required, to believe that this invisible god actually exists,
that he/she/it wants your obedience, and that for some reason this god
cannot or will not speak to you directly, but WILL speak to this
self-proclaimed authority. You must have faith that your chosen authority
is actually hearing from this god and not from some other invisible
spirit, some mischievous or malevolent ghost or demon. You must have faith
that your prophet is not making it all up out of whole cloth, and is
reporting accurately what this invisible spirit is saying. If your chosen
prohet lived centuries ago, you have to hope that the words of this
prophet were recorded, copied, and translated accurately for, as Jeremiah
said, "actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely".
(Jer. 8:8)

If someone calls you on the telephone and says they are working for a good
cause, what reason do you have to believe them? Last year Americans were
taken for $40 Billion dollars by fraudulent telephone callers. If you know
someone face to face in some OTHER way, and you then recognize their voice
over the phone, then you have reason to trust what they say; but a
stranger calling could be anyone. So, let us assume that the Biblical
prophets are honorable men; all, all honorable men. A prophet hears a
voice coming out of the air, out of a burning bush, or whatever, and the
voice says: "I am Yahveh, King of the Universe. I am the Creator of all
things." How do they know, how CAN they know, whether this Yahveh
character is telling the truth? We don't even know if this is the real
Yahveh, much less the real Creator of the Universe. We don't know if it
was the same voice speaking to different prophets. The voice could be some
imp or sprite about three inches tall, playing a practical joke. It could
be a demon with darker plans. Is this Yahveh really the Creator of the
Universe, as he claims, or is he perhaps some local ghost? Perhaps Yahveh
is lying, as he has sometimes done. (1 Kings 22, 2 Chronicles 18, Ezekiel
14:9, 2 Thessolonians 2:11-12.) Perhaps Yahveh is giving bad laws
deliberately, as he boasted in Ezekiel 20:25. All this has to be decided
subjectively.

Religious ethics comes down to obedience to (allegedly divine) authority.
Just as "faith" consists of believing what you are told, religious ethics
consists of doing what you are told. But a minute of thought will show
that morality is not the same as obedience. We all know of examples where
people who were obeying orders have done evil things, and other examples
where people who were rebelling against authority have done good things.

We all start out as children, and we first learn morality by instruction
from our parents. We know what is right and wrong "because our parents say
so." For a small child, morality is nothing other than obedience to
parents. This is necessary and proper, because the child does not have the
understanding or perspective needed to live by a rational morality. Humans
are a social species, we have been living in groups for longer than we
have been human. Children are predisposed to learn morality and social
customs in the same way, and for the same reason, that they are
predisposed to learn language. Both language and ethics are vitally
important tools for living, for a species that survives by cooperating in
groups. Religion hijacks this childhood instinct, substituting an
invisible cosmic parent for the earthly ones. Religious morality consists
of obedience to the instructions of this cosmic parent, as reported and
interpreted by whoever is bold enough (crazy enough, dishonest enough) to
do so.

Religion teaches a child's view of ethics, that "being good" means
"obeying your parent". It gives a moral blank check to those bold enough,
dishonest enough, to claim to speak for God.

If there WERE any Cosmic Parent, it would not need human messengers; it
could speak directly to whomever it wished. If a divine being wants me to
do something, they should tell me, not you. If they have a message for all
humankind, they could write it on the face of the Moon, in letters five
miles wide. Any alleged "revelation" DELIVERED BY HUMAN BEINGS is
presumptively fraudulent.

There is nothing more "relative" than supernatural belief. What you choose
to have faith in is entirely subjective. What writings you count as
scripture is both subjective and culturally relative. What interpretation
you put on those scriptures is likewise. Sincere believers in the "same"
religion have been pacifists and imperialists, millionaires and ascetics,
Capitalists and Socialists, polygamists and celibates. Not to mention
murderers. If a believer wants to take any particular moral position, or
commit any particular atrocity, all they have to do is convince themselves
that God approves. This seems not to be hard, and God never shows up to
tell the believer that they are mistaken. Religious morality is inherently
subjective and relative, because it depends crucially on faith in
invisible, untestable things.

When a believer says that his morality is "absolute", it means he is
resolutely determined not to apply any of his own intelligence to moral
questions. When he says it is universal and unchanging, it means his
morality is indifferent to the consequences of trying to follow it in the
real world. He may also mean that he is willing to apply whatever force
may be necessary to make everyone else bow down to his own chosen Lord.

Prophets are those who are deluded enough, or boldly dishonest enough, to
set themselves up as the local representatives of God. Being human, they
may give out bad teachings, and may exploit their position. Understandably
jealous and fearful, they suppress questioning and independent thinking
among their followers and cast competing prophets as devils and servants
of the Cosmic Enemy, the Great Satan. From this follows all the bloody
history of religion. Instead of leading people to treat each other as kin,
religion historically has led them to treat selected others as "enemies of
God". Such enemies have been held to deserve whatever suffering you can
inflict on them and more, until and unless they submit and obey.

Contrary to its claim to be the source of all morality, religion has
sponsored and endorsed sectarian warfare, genocide, torture, persecutions
of lesser sorts, slavery, male supremacy, inquisitions and thought
control; even for the obedient, it has sponsored self-censorship,
self-abnegation, self-mutilation, rejection of medical care, suppression
of rational inquiry and scientific education. Priests have been allied
with kings and dictators throughout history, using religion as a tool to
keep exploited people quiet. Religion has perpetrated a wholesale swindle
on the human race, diverting large amounts of time, thought, and wealth to
appeasing a ghost, and the ghost's local representatives. It has perverted
the field of ethics, severing it from any connection to the consequences
for real people in this world, denouncing as sinful any attempt to apply
human thought to moral questions.

FOUNDATIONS OF ATHEIST ETHICS

Ethics, generally, are rules, principles, policies for behavior, with the
goal of ______ (fill in the blank).

Atheist ethics fills in the blank with something in this world. What is
the purpose of human life? We have our choice on that. The fact that we
have our choice of what to value makes atheist ethics relative. The fact
that our ultimate value is something in this world has the advantage that
we can choose to value objective things, making our personal ethics
objective. Doing X will, or will not, objectively contribute toward our
chosen goal. For foundations, theists have their faith in invisible
things. Atheists have the objective experience of living in this world
that we see in front of us.

Where can we get "objective" ethics? Look at the consequences of actions
for real people in this world. A consequentialist system has an ultimate
goal and a lot of derivative values, which are recommended means to that
goal. An objective ethic is a consequentialist ethic that has an ultimate
goal that is objectively measureable. It then becomes an objective
question whether a particular recommended means will in fact lead to that
goal, whether another means might be more effective. The statement "If you
want X then you ought to do Y" becomes a statement about cause-and-effect
relationships that is objectively true or false, and can be investigated
by scientific procedures.

What about the choice of your ultimate goal, your ultimate value that you
are pursuing? Can we say that some goal is "better" than others, and
deserves to be adopted by everyone? I think there is one that we can
predict will be widely popular, but there is no logical or cosmic
necessity that it be adopted by everyone.

There is a built-in "default" goal of biological life, genetic
reproductive success, also called "inclusive fitness" by biologists. For
nonhuman life, this goal could be described as "promote the health of your
family", where "health" is defined as "survival ability" and