Hitchens' moral challenge

[Syne]

“Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.”​

Believe it or not, I hadn't come across this until JDawg and Arioch recently posed it to me. Since neither has bothered to respond to my answer of this challenge, I decided I'd post it for others to comment on and critique. Here's my answer:

"A non-believer could not honestly affirm the moral basis of anyone who believes morality to be revealed by a god. All an unbeliever can do is to assert that the believer has no "real" basis for such morality, whereas the believer can affirm the morality of a non-believer, based as it is on reasoning they could honestly agree with.

It is immoral to undermine the basis of someone's existing morality, thus encouraging immorality."​

I realize that many answers have been proposed which Hitchens wouldn't have acknowledged as valid. This one is completely by definition. This challenge assumes that a non-believer subscribes to some morality or ethical conduct. By any definition of these, undermining the grounds of another person's ethics is, itself, unethical.

 

[GeoffP]

How about this one? Hard sell for a man who doesn't believe in God.

 

[Emil]

@Syne,

Please define morality.

 

[quadraphonics]

This challenge assumes that a non-believer subscribes to some morality or ethical conduct. By any definition of these, undermining the grounds of another person's ethics is, itself, unethical.

That's silly.

 

[Syne]

@Syne,

Please define morality.

"Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong)." -wiki​

"Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior." -wiki​

 

[Syne]

That's silly.

That's no argument.

 

[Syne]

Hard sell for a man who doesn't believe in God.

Irrelevant to the challenge.

 

[spidergoat]

I don't think it would be immoral to undermine the basis for a morality based on the arbitrary declarations of ancient Jews, seeing as how those also included things we now see as immoral, such as slavery.

 

[Balerion]

For the record, I did not pose this challenge to Syne. Syne is a troll who currently inhabits my Ignore List. If he answered me, I did not see it. But if his answer looks anything like the one he's presented here, then it deserved no answer anyway.

Do not waste your time with this clown. A quick search of his posts will tell you all you need to know about him. In fact, just read the OP of this thread. That is the kind of non-thinking BS you get from Syne.

Move along, there's nothing to see here.

 

[spidergoat]

Wynn I think posed another answer to the challenge which involved feeling gratitude for life and everything. I didn't think gratitude towards something non-existent was a virtue.

 

[quadraphonics]

That's no argument.

Correct. It's a statement of the obvious. Why would anyone need to formulate "arguments" to "disprove" an obviously silly assertion that was clearly ginned up as a troll exercise?

 

[Emil]

"Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and bad (or wrong)." -wiki​

"Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior." -wiki​

The Definition of Morality

 

[Emil]

I made ​​a mistake, I had to wonder what is moral? (not morality).

 

[Yazata]

“Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.”

I think that there are many kinds of ethical statements that might be expected from believers that one wouldn't expect to hear from non-believers.

Having said that, I don't believe that in their real-world behavior, religious believers are any more moral on average than non-believers.

"A non-believer could not honestly affirm the moral basis of anyone who believes morality to be revealed by a god. All an unbeliever can do is to assert that the believer has no "real" basis for such morality, whereas the believer can affirm the morality of a non-believer, based as it is on reasoning they could honestly agree with.

It is immoral to undermine the basis of someone's existing morality, thus encouraging immorality."

A non-believer might disagree with the believer's chosen account of the basis of morality (God's will or whatever) while affirming some different naturalistic account of the same kind of moral behavior (social instincts or whatever).

 

[quadraphonics]

A non-believer might disagree with the believer's chosen account of the basis of morality (God's will or whatever)

Didn't you hear? It is immoral for anyone to ever question anyone else's chosen account of the basis of morality, apparently by definition. Or so we're trolled...

 

[quadraphonics]

Of course, we can just as easily turn the tables:

By any definition of these, undermining the grounds of another person's ethics is, itself, unethical.

So you're saying that every time a believer asserts a supernatural basis for ethics (within earshot of a non-believer), they are engaged in an unethical action?

So you still, even on your own stilted terms, haven't managed to construct an ethical action that is available to believers, but not to non-believers. You've simply stated an oblivious, arrogant double-standard, and then trollishly demanded that atheists come and fight you over it. None of which recommends the morals of believers particularly highly.

 

[Syne]

I don't think it would be immoral to undermine the basis for a morality based on the arbitrary declarations of ancient Jews, seeing as how those also included things we now see as immoral, such as slavery.

ANY undermining of a person's current morality is immoral, by definition. All else is merely justification for unethical behavior. Just as Hitchens wouldn't have accepted any answer that would require a specific morality, especially one he didn't recognize, so can you not exclude this answer based solely on a specific morality.

For the record, I did not pose this challenge to Syne. Syne is a troll who currently inhabits my Ignore List. If he answered me, I did not see it. But if his answer looks anything like the one he's presented here, then it deserved no answer anyway.

Do not waste your time with this clown. A quick search of his posts will tell you all you need to know about him. In fact, just read the OP of this thread. That is the kind of non-thinking BS you get from Syne.

Move along, there's nothing to see here.

Oh, don't be so butt hurt over being incapable of refuting logic which refutes your bias. But if you're going to ignore someone, why don't you?

And as expected, absolutely no argument in critique other than ad hominems.

 

[Syne]

Correct. It's a statement of the obvious. Why would anyone need to formulate "arguments" to "disprove" an obviously silly assertion that was clearly ginned up as a troll exercise?

You really don't understand simple logic, do you?

“Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer.”​

Unless this challenge is completely trivial, just assuming all non-believers to have no morals or ethics, then its implied premise is that non-believers can ascribe to a morality of ethical conduct. Nowhere have I assume theirs would be anything other than strictly pragmatic.

By any definition of morality or ethics, undermining, inhibiting, or discouraging moral/ethical behavior is itself unethical.

If you don't understand that, then I can only assume that you hold a completely deterministic world view, which necessarily is without ethical value judgments.

 

[Balerion]

And after all that, he still hasn't answered the challenge.

 

[Syne]

I think that there are many kinds of ethical statements that might be expected from believers that one wouldn't expect to hear from non-believers.

Having said that, I don't believe that in their real-world behavior, religious believers are any more moral on average than non-believers.

Hitchens refused to accept an ethical statement specific to a certain morality, especially other than his own, and I have respected that. The challenge asks for an example, not statistics.

A non-believer might disagree with the believer's chosen account of the basis of morality (God's will or whatever) while affirming some different naturalistic account of the same kind of moral behavior (social instincts or whatever).

So might a believer disagree with the non-believer's basis of morality. That is not the challenge. The challenge is specifically what a non-believer definitively cannot do that a believer can. Not what they might do, but what they can or cannot do.