No problem, I would think that anything UNI should precede discussing ethics with an old nihilist like me.
To me religious people are simply people with a imaginative take on existence. What I don't like is puritans of any kind; religious or not. If you believe that the earth should be pure for one or the other reason, you will often start cleaning it... which more often than not is cleaning it in blood. I will in general call myself an agnostic, and as peaceful and as tolerant as I can find it in me to be.
I agree that there is much to be said against the monotheistic religions based on Judaism. But mostly out of common sense. I think that our common knowledge of the size of the universe, the fact that humans only lived in a fraction of the time Earth existed and all the other things we assume these days makes it very hard to believe in a single personal yet almighty God...
On the other hand - if you want to stick with utilitarianism you often end up with a load of other problems.
Utilitarianism might for example be used as an excuse to kill babies (without pain of course) whose life we expect to be unhappy (handicapped for example) a thing that revolts against many peoples idea about what is good. ( I remember reading one of those highly entertaining, but also conservative and slightly Christian horror novels by Dean R. Koontz, which he wrote after being confronted with the ideas of the boringly convinced and rather puritan Peter Singer.) I think utilitarianism always gets caught up in a mess as soon as it proclaims to be ethics. It works much better when presented as practical common sense solutions. There is also the thing about happiness mentioned above. As Nietzsche puts it in one of his cocky maxims in Götzen-Dämmerung:
Mankind does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does
Yes, that is relativism. Lets leave that immediately!
To me the existence of a universal good is not at all obvious. My personal feeling on the subject is that I reproduce what I have learned from others, and also that I have a tendency to mix up aesthetics and ethics. I find it very hard to find a foundation that is outside of human conventions.
I will mention two philosophers that has interested me when it comes to ethics (or rather meta-ethics).
On the negative nihilistic note: J. L. Mackie, who's work on meta-ethics is fascinating. I am only interested in his ideas as an attempt to refute any idea of the existence of good. Argument from Queerness is enticing... and a damn fine catchphrase.
On the positive note: Moore's moral intuition. Vague! but hey, good might just be out there in all the complexities, right.
The problem is I do enjoy discussions like this, so that's why I force myself into a leave of absence for a little while when assignment time comes up! Though that being said, these were my last assignments, so it's not too bad. All that's left now is revision for an exam on the 7th of June, so there may be the odd day or two of disappearing, but no week long sabbaticals!
I think for some religious people it is an imaginative way of looking at existence, but humans are complicated creatures so it's hard to make that generalisation for all of them. For some it's simply conformity, for some it's simply ego, for some it's what they're taught, and so on. But I find the same for many atheists since it's become a commercially viable stance. Atheism has become something that people identify with, rather than are simply identified by. Though few would ever admit that of course! Totally agree with you about puritanical thought in any form. It usually turns out tyrannical, and like you say, is often enforced using spilled blood.
I consider myself atheist, rather than agnostic. But I can understand the agnostic position and think it's an honest one. Like you, I try to be as peaceful and tolerant as possible. I'm not so much a utilitarian as I am a combination of various view points, though part of my ethical overview involves preference-satisfaction utilitarianism, which I feel is a slightly more refined and usable version of utilitarianism. I think ethics is far more complicated than simply 'this view' or 'that view'. Plus, I don't like associating with simply 'a label'. Identifying as a 'label' rather than with assimilating certain viewpoints can lead to some pretty bad ideological like thinking, and can cause people to become dogmatic without even realising it. And I try to avoid dogmatic thought as much as possible, like puritanical thought, it usually leads down a dark and dangerous path.
I kind of enjoy Singer's work to be honest, though often find myself disagreeing with many of his stances. But that's always been one of the beauties of philosophy, you can accept that some thought is good and some thought is bad. It all boils down to how compelling the arguments are, and idol worship of personalities is usually frowned upon, and quite rightly so!
I think you raise an excellent point about the monotheistic god, but I find that to be the case for pretty much all definition of gods. I'm left pretty unconvinced by most definitions, though have to admit that I do find certain forms of pantheism to be interesting. Not entirely convincing, but interesting none the less. I suppose you could call it one of the more imaginative ones that you mentioned!
The criticism of utilitarianism that you raise is a good one, and one I've often heard. Don't get me wrong, I actually think there are times when it may be acceptable to allow a child to die, but the ones you raise aren't amongst them. Have you also heard the 'punishment of a criminal' criticism? If utilitarianism is to be accepted, then it also follows that punishing an innocent person to appease a blood thirsty crowd also becomes acceptable. That it is unjust takes a back seat to appeasing the crowd, because the net worth of pleasure that would come from the appeasement of the crowd. This is one of the reasons why I think one ethical system can never cover the complexities of ethics, and can only lead to dogmatic thought.
Mackie and Moore are both excellent philosophers! Though admittedly I haven't read quite as much of them as I'd have liked to. Though now that I have much more free time I plan on catching up on a lot of stuff!
A friend of mine has joined Steemit recently, and it's someone else I really enjoy discussing philosophy with. He writes for another blog I also contribute to, and was my first choice as co-contributor for a podcast I recently started. I think you'd enjoy discussion with him as well if you feel like checking him out. He goes by @blauweranger on Steemit if you do feel like having a look!
I would say that I am mostly an agnostic because I do not find theological discussions that interesting. As an atheist you jump right into the sea of scholastic fun, which I also did when I was younger. Now I am mostly interested in analytic philosophy (reading Wittgenstein over and over understanding nothing). I think that if you try to isolate what is special religious from conformism, social submission, power struggles from available power platforms etc. (things you find in connection with all institutionalised world views), you will find something rather harmless, and strange. The human mind running free in the endless questions we are (obviously) bound to ask. I have seen in my two daughters that they both needed a God at kindergarten age, which I accepted. Not without discussing it with them though. Later at about school time they both started to doubt, the eldest, a stone hard rationalist, went the way of her father, agnostic to honour the principle of scepticism, but (as I have understood) for all other reasons practically an atheist. The younger is a relativist of the Protagoras Class, not sure what she actually think about the subject, but I suspect she is a spontaneous animist like her mother :)
Whenever I find people who really believes I find it interesting that they often has some psychological childishness connected to the faith and I think that I can find something similar in my own creative process. Another interesting thing is that such people are mistrusted even by people of the same faith. I think that most people to all times has had very little need for religion and gladly has outsourced it to professionals, making it possible for them to shop around in available rituals whenever the ontological questions come too close.
Discussions about religion is most often with professionals or semi-professionals and I only do that if I really have to :)
I took a look at @blauweranger and added him - I also took the liberty to link to this discussion in my latest post - The morgenseiten of Katharsisdrill 14 - Discussions
Thanks for the link to the discussion, and for the very kind words you said! I have to admit, I'm really enjoying the discussion myself. These days on the internet it seems to be rare for a conversation to go so calmly, and to be simply a couple of people exchanging thoughts and ideas. It all too often descends into yelling and aggression. I'm far more interested in discussion than I am debate. Am very glad you took the time to stop and have a discussion, especially after reading in your post that you don't really do it very often! So thank you for actually stopping and chatting, it's been really stimulating and hopefully we'll have many more.
I don't really blame you for not getting involved in theological discussions. My interest mostly lies in the philosophy of religion side of it all, but theology and philosophy of religion are intertwined enough where there is crossover. I do enjoy a good discussion about the possibility of God with someone who can do more than proselytise or aggressively promote their own opinions. In many ways I think it would be interesting if a god did exist, less interesting if it was the monotheistic God, but still interesting. It would mean that there was 'more' to the universe. It's why I generally seek out discussion about the topic, it's a means of challenging my own thinking and looking at things through a different lens. I find too much 'echo chamber' thought going on in the modern atheist community to be honest, which is a shame.
Analytic philosophy is very interesting! I can understand having to read Wittgenstein a lot, I've had to do the same. Sometimes it's better to read the material about his material, as it helps break into Wittgenstein's thoughts a little more. His work on language is second to none though. I think his 'beetle in a box' analogy is incredibly apt when it comes to describing the idea of God, and is just generally very useful for understanding where communication breakdowns can occur. A.J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic had a similar effect on me. I don't agree with all he says about metaphysical truths, but there is a lot of good material in there.
Yeah, the underlying beliefs in a higher power can be quite harmless. There are some elements in various religions that I think are harmful, but religious is a bit of a double edged sword in many cases. People tend to transfer their own beliefs about what God is, or what religion should be, onto the religion or their idea of God. For those that are good people, the apologetics soften the harsher elements of their religion. Like you mention, politcs, conformity, social submission all play a part, along with the transferrance of personal and social biases onto the religon, cause problems. There is huge psychological element to religion, that isn't as easily generalised as many atheists these days seem to think.
Good point about it being a way to ask questions and search for answers, and quite old questions as well. It's one of the reasons why religion will more than likely be with us for a very long time, at least in one form or another. It might possibly be replaced with a form of spirituality, idealism, pantheism or deism, but the desire for a higher being isn't something that's likely to disappear in a hurry. And that's an excellent point about it being outsourced, that's given me some food for thought, thank you!