Re: non-atheism

Padraic Brown wrote:
>
>--- Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...> wrote:
>
> > > > Well, I suspect I'm not entirely alone in
> > > > thinking that Gods and ethical duties both
> > > > belong to the immaterial.
> > >
> > >I don't see religion or gods (or
> > >Gods for those that prefer) are prerequisites for
> > >ethics.
> >
> > I don't think that religion (in the usual sense) is
> > a prerequisite for
> > ethics. I do however argue that consistent
> > materialism has to deny both.
>
>Why is this? I can see that it would most likely deny
>religion (at least religion in a spiritual sense, the
>way a dictionary might define it). Not sure I'd agree
>that materialists are necessarily unethical, though.
If ethical rules have some sort of objective existence, it can harldy be a
material existence.

A materialist may think that rules etc should be enforced for pragmatic
reasons, but not very well that the rules have any existence beyond being
patterns of stored information in brains, books, computers etc.

                                             Andreas

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