I fall into the third category, I suppose, of liberals who think their liberal ideas are serious business. There are not many of us, it would seem, but I do believe we are growing. There are a number of good Christian blogs right here on Patheos which would indicate a growing acceptance of more liberal belief. Dr. Peter Enns, Slacktivist, and Exploring Our Matrix all come to mind. Personally, I think discussing ideas with atheists is one of the best things a believer can do, because an atheist has no particular affiliation with any given belief and will generally tell you like he/she sees it. This leads to critiques which you won’t get from fellow theists, unless they are particularly insightful.

The more important issue to me is as I have been arguing: whose pleasure and whose suffering do we value? Utilitarianism suffers the problem of being totally unable to distinguish between persons on any criteria except number. It is not difficult to imagine the death of one bringing about the immense pleasure of five or even five thousand (public executions, for example). In utilitarian terms, that’s good, but we recognize something wrong.

That’s why I say that goodness is probably something more fundamental about being in general. I still think some kind of consequentialism is the answer, but it’s not utilitarianism.

there really is no NEED to. Many people find it much more comforting to live in ignorant bliss and not understand that their support of a damaging faith harms others both directly and indirectly.

Some people are perfectly happy never knowing that and die happy. So NEED is not actually accurate.

Great post though.

This is an honest question because. these points are what turned me away.

It’s popular for atheists and theists to argue against Sam Harris’s philosophical and political ideas. I don’t get it; I think he usually sounds reasonable and the people who disagree with him usually seem to be missing some important point. I haven’t read his book on morality, but I’ve read some of the online discussion related to it. His ideas sounded good to me so I’m not surprised you see similarities to my ideas.

Negative experiences fit on a range from being in severe physical pain to having a vaguely bored-dissatisfied feeling (it must be a logarithmic scale). To me, “suffering” denotes the upper end of that scale. Sam Harris said something similar to this, so you may not like it, but: some moral calculations are difficult and possibly unanswerable but some are really easy. It doesn’t take a fully developed moral philosophy that can answer what action is morally correct in any circumstance to be able to say that it is evil for Muslims to kill apostates or throw acid on girls for going to school or for Christian or Muslim religious fanatics to kill gay people.

As I understand it, one problem with utilitarianism is that it takes into account every effect of an action on everyone. I support a moral philosophy that takes into account what a person could reasonably predict would happen and how much effort they put into researching what could go wrong.

You’re making the same mistakes as the early utilitarians. I do believe consequentialism of a sort is the answer, but this particular approach doesn’t really cut it. I’ve seen Sam Harris promote this sort of idea, but really, people shouldn’t listen to Sam Harris. He’s probably a brilliant neuroscientist, but he’s not a very good philosopher.

I should mention that I am a Christian; I just like this guy’s blog. I believe that I have my own blog linked in my Disqus profile. You might enjoy some of it. I approach Christianity with elements of existentialism and other philosophies. I think dialog with atheists and other critics is tremendously important, hence why I am here.

(Also, I am so very tired of the “herp derp you’re just posting this to get hits” meme. It’s about the most blatant example of a non-sequitur that I can think of.)

You seem to be focused on the specific issue of the morality of promoting or arguing for atheism around people who find such a conversation uncomfortable. In a suffering-based moral framework, this involves comparing your potential discomfort with being silent to others discomfort with hearing you, and also the discomfort of future atheists in a future society that is more tolerant of atheism. I think most people would agree that if the context is a funeral, you should probably keep quiet, and if some preacher came up and started bothering you, you’re okay to argue whatever you’d like. But generally, this calculation is difficult and it’s more of a judgment call.