Reply To: Burn Baby Burn

[Simon Paynton]

@David – “Does it need to be shared then?”

– I don’t know what you mean.  I think that strictly speaking, morality refers to our relationship with others, or our relationship with the larger group.

“the ‘foundations’ do not measure freedom or equality”

– these foundations are catch-all terms for large groups of related values.  I think that “freedom” falls under the “authority” foundation, and “equality” is part of “fairness”.

“atheist morality”

– one problem with this is that, like Davis says, atheism is not a monolithic block: different people are always going to believe different things.  The other problem is that saying “atheist morality” is like saying “atheist chemistry” or “atheist biology” – it’s just the study of “morality”, which includes the study of religious morality as part of the overall picture.

“Humanism is a great attempt at developing a code but it is bulky and nebulous and impractical.”

– I agree, the principles are good, but when it comes to real life, they suck, because they’re too vague.  Real life is detailed and not vague.  The humanist code does not give me much of a clue about how to treat individuals on an everyday basis.

@Davis –

“You cannot use evidence to fully spell out the foundation of a moral code.”

“Personally I’ve never read a moral system that was spelled out in less than 100 pages.”

100 pages = doing it wrong.  Here is a moral framework spelled out using evidence in 2 pages:

part 1

http://yellowgrain.co.uk/healing_principle.html

part 2

http://yellowgrain.co.uk/personal_ethics.html#definition_of_goodness

http://yellowgrain.co.uk/personal_ethics.html#evolution

http://yellowgrain.co.uk/personal_ethics.html#advantages