What is the logic for not believing in God, but believing in inherent human rights?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I fear my statement is being misinterpreted as believing that an atheist would have to adopt a purely materialist worldview, or otherwise would be driven only by base animal desires. Far from it; humans, for better or worse display a wide range of irrational behaviors.

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. Is it that atheists, if they’re being consistent, ought to adopt ‘materialism’, but many in fact don’t because they’re irrational?

Yes.

If so, the philosophers Statilius listed show that many atheist thinkers have in fact made cogent arguments against various elements of a purely naturalistic worldview. If you’re saying they’re all being irrational, you’re going to have to offer quite a bit of further support for that assertion.

Is this a book recommendations thread?

[Antonio the Sixth]

I fear my statement is being misinterpreted as believing that an atheist would have to adopt a purely materialist worldview, or otherwise would be driven only by base animal desires. Far from it; humans, for better or worse display a wide range of irrational behaviors.

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. Is it that atheists, if they’re being consistent, ought to adopt ‘materialism’, but many in fact don’t because they’re irrational?

Yes.

If so, the philosophers Statilius listed show that many atheist thinkers have in fact made cogent arguments against various elements of a purely naturalistic worldview. If you’re saying they’re all being irrational, you’re going to have to offer quite a bit of further support for that assertion.

Is this a book recommendations thread?

Why are you being so defensive?? You came into this thread making a very strong claim, so you should have been prepared to have to defend it against pushback.

[Skill and Chance]

There really isn't any.  TBH this is what kept me in the faith at my point of greatest doubt/skepticism.  No God = no natural law = no convincing argument for human rights beyond some temporary utility to the ruling class like fostering economic growth.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I fear my statement is being misinterpreted as believing that an atheist would have to adopt a purely materialist worldview, or otherwise would be driven only by base animal desires. Far from it; humans, for better or worse display a wide range of irrational behaviors.

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. Is it that atheists, if they’re being consistent, ought to adopt ‘materialism’, but many in fact don’t because they’re irrational?

Yes.

If so, the philosophers Statilius listed show that many atheist thinkers have in fact made cogent arguments against various elements of a purely naturalistic worldview. If you’re saying they’re all being irrational, you’re going to have to offer quite a bit of further support for that assertion.

Is this a book recommendations thread?

Why are you being so defensive?? You came into this thread making a very strong claim, so you should have been prepared to have to defend it against pushback.

Respectfully and with all sincerity, I don't know that saying "Many people disagree with you, read them" is a way to foster discussion.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I fear my statement is being misinterpreted as believing that an atheist would have to adopt a purely materialist worldview, or otherwise would be driven only by base animal desires. Far from it; humans, for better or worse display a wide range of irrational behaviors.

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. Is it that atheists, if they’re being consistent, ought to adopt ‘materialism’, but many in fact don’t because they’re irrational?

Yes.

If so, the philosophers Statilius listed show that many atheist thinkers have in fact made cogent arguments against various elements of a purely naturalistic worldview. If you’re saying they’re all being irrational, you’re going to have to offer quite a bit of further support for that assertion.

Is this a book recommendations thread?

Why are you being so defensive?? You came into this thread making a very strong claim, so you should have been prepared to have to defend it against pushback.

Respectfully and with all sincerity, I don't know that saying "Many people disagree with you, read them" is a way to foster discussion.

"If you’re saying they’re all being irrational, you’re going to have to offer quite a bit of further support for that assertion." is not an invitation to read every philosopher who disagrees with you. It's just an invitation to argue for your position in such a way that doesn't presuppose it as self-evident. The fact that many philosohers disagree with you doesn't mean you need to have read them all to refute them (I didn't need to read Mackie in my argument with Statilius last year, for example), it's just a prompt for you to stake out your own claims.

[Alcibiades]

Respectfully and with all sincerity, I don't know that saying "Many people disagree with you, read them" is a way to foster discussion.

This is not at all what I or anyone else in this thread has done. You have taken for granted a number of conflations and implications, and it has merely been pointed out to you that, in light of the fact that many thoughtful and intelligent people who have spent a great deal of time thinking about such issues have not accepted these conflations and implications, you must do more than blithely assert them. Let’s get back to the original topic here — how exactly is the existence of God supposed to be a necessary condition for the existence of objective morality? I have already sketched my argument for why it cannot be; what’s yours for why it must be?

[RINO Tom]

It falls apart very quickly, IMO.  Objective morality cannot exist in materialism.

Again, I’m not sure why atheism and ‘materialism’ (a very imprecise term that philosophers tend to avoid with good reason) are being treated as synonymous here.

I fear my statement is being misinterpreted as believing that an atheist would have to adopt a purely materialist worldview, or otherwise would be driven only by base animal desires. Far from it; humans, for better or worse display a wide range of irrational behaviors.

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to say here. Is it that atheists, if they’re being consistent, ought to adopt ‘materialism’, but many in fact don’t because they’re irrational? If so, the philosophers Statilius listed show that many atheist thinkers have in fact made cogent arguments against various elements of a purely naturalistic worldview. If you’re saying they’re all being irrational, you’re going to have to offer quite a bit of further support for that assertion.

Because eventually atheism and materialism ARE synonymous, IMO.  Atheists who reject materialism are effectively creating a hybrid between morality that only makes sense if there is a God and their belief that there is no God.  Atheism fundamentally requires that nothing but the natural world exists and that it came into existence without a cause and/or has existed forever.  The second you start postulating some type of higher truths or whatever, I think you’re starting to abandon the logical necessities of atheism - that everything we do and think today is the result of natural “materials.”

Respectfully and with all sincerity, I don't know that saying "Many people disagree with you, read them" is a way to foster discussion.

This is not at all what I or anyone else in this thread has done. You have taken for granted a number of conflations and implications, and it has merely been pointed out to you that, in light of the fact that many thoughtful and intelligent people who have spent a great deal of time thinking about such issues have not accepted these conflations and implications, you must do more than blithely assert them. Let’s get back to the original topic here — how exactly is the existence of God supposed to be a necessary condition for the existence of objective morality? I have already sketched my argument for why it cannot be; what’s yours for why it must be?

[PSOL]

"Human rights" is fundamentally based on the Golden Rule.   

"Treat Others As You Yourself Would Like To Be Treated".

A fundamental principle which I suspect was formulated 200,000 years ago when our homo ancestors became sentient and began to formulate languages and philosophies.

"Gawd", cults, religions--and all other human constructs--will come-and-go just like any other short-lived fad or fashion...

...but the Golden Rule shall always remain intact. 

There are a huge number of examples of the golden rule being violated on a large scale though. For example, the level of control adults have over children would never be accepted if most adults were in the child's situation, but they are aware that that situation could never happen. Likewise, many people throughout history such as in Roman times have considered the killing of infants to be moral, and that is still the case today in the case of unborn infants, but the fact you will never be in the infant in question's position makes this irrelevant.

Even institutions such as slavery have been very widespread throughout history. And so on. So I'd hardly say it's a rule which the following of is inevitable.

Most slave and feudal societies, of which the Roman Empire arguable straddles both, were much more religious societies than those found in current societies by a longshot–the governments and societies of Europe, the Americas, and East Asia are ran by irreligious foundations deriving from liberalism and marxism. It took the abolishment of the old empires of the Qing and Tsar for an expansion of human rights in these areas.

The killing of born infants and mistreatment afterwards have been virtually stopped through abortion, screenings done to ensure proper child health and ease complications of pregnancy, and the foster care system most advanced in irreligious societies. It's only in the Indian subcontinent, Africa, and backwaters of China where this happens out of stresses to the human condition but is defended out of religious or customary reasons.

Scientific understandings of human nature determine we are eusocial beings which create societies more strong than most other mammals, it is in our human nature not to be mean to one another. Where this goes wrong is the fact that our current society is both not beneficial to humanity, especially in the long term, and certain biological and genetic truths like the effect of trauma on the brain and differences between the sexes that need to be acknowledged and solved. This and the backwardness present from the last state of general society needs to be rectified.

Higher truths do not exist, we can easily see these ones and the people blocking any and all attempts at change.

[Alcibiades]

Because eventually atheism and materialism ARE synonymous, IMO. 

What do you mean by ‘materialism’? And why do you think that it is synonymous with atheism?

Atheists who reject materialism are effectively creating a hybrid between morality that only makes sense if there is a God and their belief that there is no God. 

How does it only make sense if there is a God? Seeing as no one who has advanced the claim in this thread that morality depends on God has really offered any argument for it, let me give a sketch of the reasons they might offer. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that God created everything, so he must have also created moral value (this supposes that we have already ruled out the existence of objective morality without God — a step I do not accept, but we may grant it for now). But then, of course, the question arises whether he could have arbitrarily declared anything to be right or wrong; for instance, whether he could have declared murder to be right. This surely seems wrong. Murder’s wrongness seems to be related somehow to the nature of the act itself. It couldn’t just have been right in another universe in which God declared it to be so; moral value doesn’t randomly attach itself to things like that. Having conceded this, it seems that God is no longer omnipotent; he couldn’t have done just whatever he wanted — moral evaluation is restricted by facts about the world that hold whether God exists or not. (Incidentally, these are some of the key thoughts underlying moral naturalism — one of the major contemporary strands of moral realism, which holds that moral facts supervene on natural facts.)

At this point, theists often say something like this: God couldn’t have made murder right, not because he lacks omnipotence, but because he is inherently good. But good by what standard? Surely not his own. We are now appealing to moral standards independent of God. He is not omnipotent, and moral value can exist without him. You may have noticed by now that this is basically just a restatement of the Euthyphro dilemma, which, I note again, none of the defenders of morality’s depending upon God in this thread have so much as attempted to offer a solution to.

Atheism fundamentally requires that nothing but the natural world exists and that it came into existence without a cause and/or has existed forever. 

If you are defining ‘the natural world’ as ‘everything but the divine’, then of course this is true by definition; this is of course though transparently question-begging insofar as you are using it to support your claim about morality. If you mean it in a non-tautological sense though, then obviously it is not true. To give just one example, many atheists, including myself, believe that mental facts — consciousness — cannot be reduced to physical facts. I fail to see how this belief is incompatible with atheism. Similarly, as far as morality is concerned, I do not see how atheism rules out the existence of moral value. You are making unargued assertions to the effect that some extreme naturalistic conception of atheism that you have conjured up is the only form of atheism that can exist. Seeing as these assertions are widely rejected, you must do more than take them as given without further reason.

The second you start postulating some type of higher truths or whatever, I think you’re starting to abandon the logical necessities of atheism - that everything we do and think today is the result of natural “materials.”

Again — who says that these are ‘the logical necessities of atheism’! Why are they so? You seem here to be suggesting that atheists, if they are to be consistent, must accept hard determinism (which then would rule out the existence of moral responsibility). But the great majority of atheist philosophers believe in some kind of free will, whether a compatabilist or a libertarian conception thereof, and have offered cogent arguments for their views. It doesn’t seem to me that they are violating the ‘logical necessities of atheism’. Why do you think they are?

Indeed, as I said earlier in this thread, it is extremely difficult to reconcile free will with the existence of the Abrahamic God. If you accept libertarianism about free will, then for humans to truly possess free will, God could not know in advance how they will act; so he is not, as the Abrahamic religions suppose, omniscient. On the contrary, if you are a compatibilist, this particular difficult does indeed resolve itself; but now you are left questioning God’s omnibenevolence, as he could intervene to prevent humans from causing evil without violating their free will. Once again, this is very similar to the Euthyphro dilemma — it truly is an inescapable problem for all those who claim that objective morality can only exist if God does.

[Antonio the Sixth]

I am genuinely disappointed in the tenor of argumentation on the side of theistic morality here. I know this is a TheReckoning threaf, so the bar was set several miles below ground from the start, but it's not like the question itself isn't worthy of serious discussion. This is fascinating philosophical topic! It's one I've been on the other side of and still have complex feelings on, so it feels weird to me that Cath and RINO Tom can't seem to do more than beg the question. I, as an agnostic with anticlerical tendencies, was able to make what I feel was a stronger case for theistic (or at least robustly metaphysically grounded) morality than they seem to be willing to do, and I know it's not because I'm smarter or more learned than them. Just try harder, people.

[TheReckoning]

I am genuinely disappointed in the tenor of argumentation on the side of theistic morality here. I know this is a TheReckoning threaf, so the bar was set several miles below ground from the start, but it's not like the question itself isn't worthy of serious discussion. This is fascinating philosophical topic! It's one I've been on the other side of and still have complex feelings on, so it feels weird to me that Cath and RINO Tom can't seem to do more than beg the question. I, as an agnostic with anticlerical tendencies, was able to make what I feel was a stronger case for theistic (or at least robustly metaphysically grounded) morality than they seem to be willing to do, and I know it's not because I'm smarter or more learned than them. Just try harder, people.

It’s not just you, but essentially everyone has missed the point of this thread.

The point wasn’t “If there is no God, there must be no objective morality.” I disagree with such a statement. The point was “If we decide to believe things only with sufficient evidence, and we decide God has no such sufficient evidence, then there is no way one can think objective morality has sufficient evidence either. Therefore, the logical thing to do is reject the existence of objective morality.”

[Blue3]

No one has really responded to my post:

That there is some axiomatic feature of humanity, or of the universe, or in our reason, or some practical utility etc. that grounds human rights.

Where is the proof for any of these “axiomatic features”?

There’s no proof that anybody outside yourself exists, there’s no proof that outside reality is real, there’s no proof that even your past wasn’t an illusion.

Some things you just take on faith.

For some, God is part of that faith. For others, God isn’t part of it, it’s just faith in your senses and memory, but they also take some things on faith. It doesn’t need to be rational to get the axioms - you build the rational framework out of the axioms.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The point wasn’t “If there is no God, there must be no objective morality.” I disagree with such a statement. The point was “If we decide to believe things only with sufficient evidence, and we decide God has no such sufficient evidence, then there is no way one can think objective morality has sufficient evidence either. Therefore, the logical thing to do is reject the existence of objective morality.”

lmao fair. I have you on ignore so I didn't see the op

The answer to this argument is simply that normative claims have a different evidentiary standard from empirical claims. Christianity in its dominant form makes empirical, normative as well as metaphysical claims, but the empirical ones are the ones militant atheists tend to contend with. Some might take it further and argue that the lack of empirical evidence for Christianity refutes its metaphysical and normative claims as well, and in this case it makes sense to turn around and ask if we'd hold the same scrutiny to other widely accepted empirical claims. And frankly some of them are hardcore materialists who would happily bite that bullet. But if you're not a materialist, you can easily reject evidence for Christianity's empirical claims without it affecting your normative commitments one way or the other.

[Cokeland Saxton]

Because human rights are common sense and religion is a bunch on nonsensical junk made up to control people.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Because human rights are common sense

 

[All Along The Watchtower]

Here’s a more serious answer: human beings are naturally empathetic from birth until they learn which people/groups they should feel threatened by and adjust their levels of empathy accordingly.

From this perspective, why wouldn’t you believe in inherent human rights unless you were taught otherwise? And note I’m not saying being taught otherwise isn’t itself logical/rational within the context of any particular Actually Existing human society. But said societies aren’t necessarily operating on strictly logical grounds to begin with, so….

Or, if you just want to be crudely individualist and self-interested about it: as a human being, it’s in my interest to believe in inherent human rights.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

The point wasn’t “If there is no God, there must be no objective morality.” I disagree with such a statement. The point was “If we decide to believe things only with sufficient evidence, and we decide God has no such sufficient evidence, then there is no way one can think objective morality has sufficient evidence either. Therefore, the logical thing to do is reject the existence of objective morality.”

If you don't think we have sufficient evidence for the existence of objective morality, then yes that would be reasonable. But most people disagree with you and think we have sufficient evidence for the existence of (objective) morality.

Like I said, this thread question is equivalent to "we lack sufficient evidence that intelligent aliens live under the surface of Mars, so we can't believe in morality." That sounds silly and is, because whether we have sufficient evidence to believe that intelligent aliens live under the surface of Mars or not is irrelevant to the existence of morality.

Also, if you think we should decide to believe facts without sufficient evidence, then you have given yourself no reason to disbelieve in an infinite number of other likely untrue beliefs without evidence (like the belief that intelligent aliens are living under the surface of Mars.)

[Statilius the Epicurean]

I fear my statement is being misinterpreted as believing that an atheist would have to adopt a purely materialist worldview, or otherwise would be driven only by base animal desires. Far from it; humans, for better or worse display a wide range of irrational behaviors.

So the point I was hinting at is this.

To be clear I am an atheist naturalist. I think that it is irrational to believe in a providential theistic God. Even strongly desiring moral realism, there is no reason for me to prefer grounding a belief in moral realism in an irrational faith in theism over an irrational axiomatic faith in any other number of facts in steps on the way to a justification for moral realism. They would all be irrational. If I think theism is irrational, positing (for example) the existence of moral properties as a brute fact is no more irrational than believing in theism would be. So as an argument for belief in God this gives no reason for me to believe in the existence of God.

[Skill and Chance]

The existence of a right implies an enforcement mechanism.  We are inevitably acting as agents on behalf of something or someone when we recognize human rights.  Human rights essentially prove the existence of natural law and imply a higher authority calling on/inspiring us to enforce them.

[Ferguson97]

But… where is the evidence for these inherent human rights? How can they prove that human beings have such rights?

This isn't a question that makes sense. You can't prove (or disprove) an abstract concept.

More importantly, why do we need to "prove" that human beings have rights? To what end?

[Alcibiades]

But… where is the evidence for these inherent human rights? How can they prove that human beings have such rights?

This isn't a question that makes sense. You can't prove (or disprove) an abstract concept.

More importantly, why do we need to "prove" that human beings have rights? To what end?

You can’t prove mathematical or logical truths? Surely if anything is ‘abstract’, these are?

[Blue3]

I’m not sure what you are arguing over.

Rights being inherent are a statement of belief.

Many of these exist, in order for logic or any grasp of reality to happen.