Gastogh comments on Rationality Quotes June 2012 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: OpenThreadGuy 02 June 2012 05:14PM

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Comment author: Gastogh 09 June 2012 04:15:59PM *  -1 points [-]

Whatever doubt or doctrinal Atheism you and your friends may have, don't fall into moral atheism.

-Charles Kingsley

Comment author: Ben_Welchner 09 June 2012 04:33:29PM 0 points [-]

Explain?

Comment author: Gastogh 10 June 2012 07:18:02PM 1 point [-]

It paraphrases the bottom line of the metaethics sequence - or what I took to be the bottom line of those posts, anyway. Namely, that one can have values and a naturalistic worldview at the same time.

Comment author: VKS 10 June 2012 07:34:49PM *  3 points [-]

So, having values is moral theism? The choice of words seems suspect.

Comment author: Gastogh 10 June 2012 09:29:08PM 0 points [-]

I'd say "moral atheism" is being used as an idiomatic expression; a set of more than one word with a meaning that's gestalt to its individual components. One of the synonyms for "atheism" is "godlessness", so by analogy "moral atheism" would just mean "morality-lessness".

Comment author: VKS 10 June 2012 11:17:33PM *  5 points [-]

We have a word for "morality-lessness", and it is amorality, which coincidentally works more naturally in your analogy: If morality is analogous to theism, then a-morality is analogous to a-theism.

I hope you understand my trouble with the use of an idiom that implicitly equates morality with theism. (Well, amorality with atheism, which is more the problem.)

(sorry about all the edits, this was written horribly.)