Bättre moral utan Gud (även i virtuella världar)

När husse var ung fanns det en professor Boalt i sociologi på Stockholms Universitet som skrev många av kursböckerna och som hävdade att sociologi egentligen inte kunde användas till någonting.

Att det inte går att använda sociologiska kunskaper till social ingenjörskonst är måhända rätt, men däremot till att avfärda diverse myter med fakta. Här ett litet bevis på det:

Last year, Californian sociologist Phil Zuckerman responded with facts rather than witless abuse to claims from Christian psychologists and theologians that atheists were "selfish and pusillanimous curmudgeons", "unnatural" or "just damn angry". He pulled together the available evidence and found that the more atheists or agnostics a free society has the more moral it becomes.

Predictably, atheists were far more likely to be tolerant supporters of women's rights and gay rights than believers. The pope, like militant Islamists, orthodox Jews and the ultras in every faith cannot see that struggles for female and homosexual emancipation are among the most moral causes of our age. But as believers in a sternly misogynist and homophobic god, they must want to be tough on crime.

Läs hela artikeln: Nick Cohen The Observer, Sunday 12 September 2010.

Det finns också de som hävdar att många timmar i virtuella världar är dåligt för moralen. Men det är som att tro att det är vagnen som drar hästen visar det sig när man ser på fakta.

...moral attitudes and behavior in the real world predicted the acceptability of morally questionable online behaviors, whereas the importance of good moral character and the extent of Internet and other technology use did not.

Cultural differences in morality in the real and virtual worlds: a comparison of Chinese and U.S. youth.

PS. Sedan jag skrev ovanstående har jag fått reda på att det den 5 oktober släpps en ny bok av Sam Harris med titeln: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values med denna mycket lovande produktbeskrivning från förlaget: Harris demonstrates that we already know enough about the human brain and its relationship to events in the world to say that there are right and wrong answers to the most pressing questions of human life. Because such answers exist, moral relativism is simply false—and comes at increasing cost to humanity. And the intrusions of religion into the sphere of human values can be finally repelled: for just as there is no such thing as Christian physics or Muslim algebra, there can be no Christian or Muslim morality.

Om den skriver dessutom en av mina husgudar följande: I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me. It should change it for philosophers too. Philosophers of mind have already discovered that they can't duck the study of neuroscience, and the best of them have raised their game as a result. Sam Harris shows that the same should be true of moral philosophers, and it will turn their world exhilaratingly upside down. As for religion, and the preposterous idea that we need God to be good, nobody wields a sharper bayonet than Sam Harris.

--Richard Dawkins

Medan ni väntar på boken kan ni ta del av föredraget Sam Harris höll på TED i början av året Science can answer moral questions och som gjorde mej lycklig då som jag skrev HÄR.