Help, With Article Quote - Valid or Not, Please?

[BrettA]

Hi, Guys... In the salon.com link below re Chris Hedge's book "I don't Believe In Atheists", a passage states that so-called New Atheists: "believe that the human species is marching forward, that there is an advancement toward some kind of collective moral progress -- that we are moving towards, if not a Utopian, certainly a better, more perfected human society. That's fundamental to the Christian right, and it's also fundamental to the New Atheists."

I'm talking about this with someone and I don't recall anyone saying this. The closest I remember is that statistically, mankind has become less violent over almost any period one chooses (I think both Harris and Dawkins have stated that). And on the other hand, we all understand that evolution is effectively directionless, so that can't be a factor in the blue text. Can anyone shed light on this - do you or others like The Horsemen consider the blue text as valid regarding the current atheistic 'movement', if you will? And if it is accurate but there's a context that may be important to any discussion, I'd appreciate that too, thx. TIA.

I don't believe in atheists

[Geoff]

Hi, Guys... In the salon.com link below re Chris Hedge's book "I don't Believe In Atheists", a passage states that so-called New Atheists: "believe that the human species is marching forward, that there is an advancement toward some kind of collective moral progress -- that we are moving towards, if not a Utopian, certainly a better, more perfected human society. That's fundamental to the Christian right, and it's also fundamental to the New Atheists."

I'm talking about this with someone and I don't recall anyone saying this. The closest I remember is that statistically, mankind has become less violent over almost any period one chooses (I think both Harris and Dawkins have stated that). And on the other hand, we all understand that evolution is effectively directionless, so that can't be a factor in the blue text. Can anyone shed light on this - do you or others like The Horsemen consider the blue text as valid regarding the current atheistic 'movement', if you will? And if it is accurate but there's a context that may be important to any discussion, I'd appreciate that too, thx. TIA.

I don't believe in atheists

Dawkins kind of supports that idea when he talks about the "shifting moral zeitgeist" in TGD. Not just becoming less violent, but as we get away from biblically based "morals", previously accepted injustices like slavery, homophobia, racism, sexism & sexual freedom are considered more immoral. I don't think he sees it as a natural direction of human social evolution, though, more a case of increasingly jettisoning outdated, usually religion-based principles.

EDIT:
The Christian Right, of course, would view those examples as moving in the opposite direction.

[BrettA]

Dawkins kind of supports that idea when he talks about the "shifting moral zeitgeist" in TGD. Not just becoming less violent, but as we get away from biblically based "morals", previously accepted injustices like slavery, homophobia, racism, sexism & sexual freedom are considered more immoral. I don't think he sees it as a natural direction of human social evolution, though, more a case of increasingly jettisoning outdated, usually religion-based principles.

EDIT:
The Christian Right, of course, would view those examples as moving in the opposite direction.

Thanks muchly, Geoff! I just reread those parts - that was just the type of thing I was hoping someone might mention if I needed 'correction' (and apparently so! :-). I'll guess you mean "kind of" in that he notes the consistent direction of improvement in multiple places and states that "over the longer timescale, the progressive trend is unmistakable and it will continue", but that hardly indicates "Utopian". After all, there's a very long way towards that, it would seem! Also, your last observation's great - thx again!

[Geoff]

Dawkins kind of supports that idea when he talks about the "shifting moral zeitgeist" in TGD. Not just becoming less violent, but as we get away from biblically based "morals", previously accepted injustices like slavery, homophobia, racism, sexism & sexual freedom are considered more immoral. I don't think he sees it as a natural direction of human social evolution, though, more a case of increasingly jettisoning outdated, usually religion-based principles.

EDIT:
The Christian Right, of course, would view those examples as moving in the opposite direction.

Thanks muchly, Geoff! I just reread those parts - that was just the type of thing I was hoping someone might mention if I needed 'correction' (and apparently so! :-). I'll guess you mean "kind of" in that he notes the consistent direction of improvement in multiple places and states that "over the longer timescale, the progressive trend is unmistakable and it will continue", but that hardly indicates "Utopian". After all, there's a very long way towards that, it would seem! Also, your last observation's great - thx again!

Your welcome! Haven't my copy of TGD to hand at present, but I'll try and dig out some quotes later.

By "kind of", I also meant that's it's important to point out that it's a consciously directed process (by "humanity in general", if there is such a thing"). I'd be tempted to suggest that the relatively recent advances in global communications (and access to information) have a lot to do with it, if only because societies can now witness how other populations behave, and make their own choices as to which is more moral, whereas in an earlier age they "wouldn't know any better".

[charlou]

Your welcome! Haven't my copy of TGD to hand at present, but I'll try and dig out some quotes later.

An online copy (it's accurate): http://macroevolution.narod.ru/delusion/index.html

[Geoff]

Your welcome! Haven't my copy of TGD to hand at present, but I'll try and dig out some quotes later.

An online copy (it's accurate): http://macroevolution.narod.ru/delusion/index.html

Cheers, charlou, didn't know it had been put online! Will take a look tomorrow.

[Geoff]

Here we are: near the end of Chapter 7 - I've snipped some bits, mainly supporting examples, well worth reading (or re-reading) the full text at charlou's link above (thanks again charlou!)

...we have almost all moved on, and in a big way, since biblical times. Slavery, which was taken for granted in the Bible and throughout most of history, was abolished in civilized countries in the nineteenth century. All civilized nations now accept what was widely denied up to the 1920s, that a woman's vote, in an election or on a jury, is the equal of a man's. In today's enlightened societies (a category that manifestly does not include, for example, Saudi Arabia), women are no longer regarded as property, as they clearly were in biblical times. Any modern legal system would have prosecuted Abraham for child abuse. And if he had actually carried through his plan to sacrifice Isaac, we would have convicted him of first-degree murder. Yet, according to the mores of his time, his conduct was entirely admirable, obeying God's commandment. Religious or not, we have all changed massively in our attitude to what is right and what is wrong. What is the nature of this change, and what drives it?

In any society there exists a somewhat mysterious consensus, which changes over the decades, and for which it is not pretentious to use the German loan-word Zeitgeist (spirit of the times). I said that female suffrage was now universal in the world's democracies, but this reform is in fact astonishingly recent. Here are some dates at which women were granted the vote:
(snip)
This spread of dates through the twentieth century is a gauge of the shifting Zeitgeist. Another is our attitude to race. In the early part of the twentieth century, almost everybody in Britain (and many other countries too) would be judged racist by today's standards.
(snip)
Where, then, have these concerted and steady changes in social consciousness come from? The onus is not on me to answer. For my purposes it is sufficient that they certainly have not come from religion. If forced to advance a theory, I would approach it along the following lines. We need to explain why the changing moral Zeitgeist is so widely synchronized across large numbers of people; and we need to explain its relatively consistent direction.

First, how is it synchronized across so many people? It spreads itself from mind to mind through conversations in bars and at dinner parties, through books and book reviews, through newspapers and broadcasting, and nowadays through the Internet. Changes in the moral climate are signalled in editorials, on radio talk shows, in political speeches, in the patter of stand-up comedians and the scripts of soap operas, in the votes of parliaments making laws and the decisions of judges interpreting them.
(snip)

It is beyond my amateur psychology and sociology to go any further in explaining why the moral Zeitgeist moves in its broadly concerted way. For my purposes it is enough that, as a matter of observed fact, it does move, and it is not driven by religion — and certainly not by scripture. It is probably not a single force like gravity, but a complex interplay of disparate forces like the one that propels Moore's Law, describing the exponential increase in computer power. Whatever its cause, the manifest phenomenon of Zeitgeist progression is more than enough to undermine the claim that we need God in order to be good, or to decide what is good.

[MrJonno]

Well I believe human being are morally progressing but thats just me nothing to do with atheism

[Geoff]

Well I believe human being are morally progressing but thats just me nothing to do with atheism

But the "older" morals we're progressing away from are, in the main, based on religious texts...and are still considered moral by fundamentalists. Westboro's "God hates fags" stance would not have seemed so ludicrous 50 years ago, for example.