Secular Ethics

>>2848236
It is in your own self interest to act well towards others, because it is in the best interest of others to punish those who act against said others' interests.

>>2848240
In this case, it is in your own best interest to cheat (acting bad towards others) every time you know you won't be discovered and you will get away with it. You can also expect others to do the same, thus living a life of paranoia, as everyone would.
Further, groups that can't defend themselves, such as minorities, would be pray for others. They don't pose a threat, since it is in the best interest of my group to stick together, finding security in our numbers, and we can exploit and butcher that other, smaller group. This would be ethical in your ruleset.

>>2848257
>You can also expect others to do the same, thus living a life of paranoia, as everyone would.

You just refuted your own first argument. Is that sort of life in my best interest? No. Is it in anyone else's best interest? No. Hence the social contract to be decent, even when you could get away with cheating. Sure it's tenuous, and relies on a certain level of indoctrination (which religion certainly does a decent job of providing) due to many people not grasping the long view, but it still is demonstrably, materially, objectively better to construct such a system.

As to the destruction of minorities, that's a bit of a stupid thing to bring up as a weak point of secular ethics to be honest, because the rule in religious ethics is generally to persecute minorities. But regardless, most of the influence in any given aspect of a country resides in a minority, eg most of the wealth resides in the hands of less than 5% of the population in any given country, university degrees are held by a tiny portion of the population, clergy makes up a similarly tiny percent, and so on. Essentially, all the people that do the most essential things to keep the country running (or at least keep the country stable) belong to some form of minority, which has probably experienced persecution in the past. We've seen what happens when educated minorities are persecuted, driven out, or destroyed, and it is not pleasant for the majority that did the destroying. Thus it is better for everyone to work to destroy the tendency of majorities to destroy minorities.

>>2848323
>You just refuted your own first argument.
Not really. Your system makes it so the biggest winner is the one guy who doesn't follow it, the odd psychopath. This over time means that other people figure it out and join, and the system goes to shit.

>minorities
It happens over and over again for a reason. It will also happen in your proposed system, however it would not happen in some objective morality system - for example if every person believed that God will torture them for eternity if they act bad. People who believe that don't act bad. If someone acts bad, they must not believe it, because who the fuck thinks stealing bread is worth an eternity of torture?

>>2848932
In the short term, assuming everyone else continues to follow the system, yes, the odd psychopath would win. If a person stops assuming everyone else is a robot though, that person realises that the experience of having been screwed over will make others more likely to screw said person over, and that the maintenance of a society in which no one screw anyone over is in his own best interests. Furthermore, one realises that there are risks, both to oneself and to one's reproductive future, involved in screwing over others - Because naturally there are police (and other forms of mob justice), to force the social contract on those too stupid to accept it.

RE: minorities, your refutation is literally the equivalent of "nuh uh." You didn't explain at all why you think that my rational, secular reason for not genociding minorities is flawed.

Keep in mind, I don't disagree with religious ethics, I think they're a very useful tool in keeping large populations civil. I just don't believe they were handed down by heaven; rather that they arose out of material necessity, and survived due to the fact that they are rather materially practical, as outlined by my secular reasons for ethical behaviour, above. There is an objective way in which one can best act in one's best interests, and, if you really think about it, that is through maintenance of one's own herd, which is objectively best done by acting in a way described as "ethical."

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>>2848323
>social contract to be decent,
too spooky

>>2849100
>I just don't believe they were handed down by heaven

Of course not, thats stupid.
I am just saying that you need a rock to tie the "ethics" rope to, and it best be an immovable rock.
Your anchor is law, and law changes all the time. If its culture, that changes too. People see these as relative. They changed within their lifetime, who is to say they are correct now?

God was created so that the reason for ethics can be out of the reach of men, so they don't fuck with it.
Without God, where do you put your ethics? Secular ethics are relative, they are easy to walk around and justify breaking them.

>>2849107
You're misusing Stirner here. The social contract is a spook for sure, but if one has a real, self-serving interest in upholding it, then it is a spook worth upholding, and literally everyone has an objective, selfish reason to uphold it. It's all about recognising spooks and assessing whether or not they are useful to you. Remember, if the social contract were a harmful spook that didn't work, it would be semi-anarchic pre-agriculture hunter-gatherers that ruled the world, not various societies that developed their interpretation of the social contract over generations of its application.

>>2849114
I do have a rock, and that is the objective, observable, material fact that the maintenance of society is in the best interest of man in the same way (albeit more complexly) that the maintenance of the herd is in the best interest of the buffalo.

Further, I would argue that having the threat of eternal punishment as the rock to which ethics are anchored deals far, far worse with psychopaths than secular ethics does. My way outlines perfectly rational, material, observable, and very importantly, selfish reasons for being a decent human being. Yours provides a selfish reason for sure, but that selfish reason is not materially observable, and thus can be ignored by anyone not indoctrinated hard enough. Thus, in your system, an atheist psychopath has literally no reason to behave himself.

>>2848236
you want people to treat you ethically

>>2848932
that's also debunking your argument I mean the "biggest winner" if smart enough know that being the biggest winner will create a broken and paraniod system so he ends up the "biggest dumbass"

If every person knew that fucking their morality system will torture them for the rest of their lives (either physically by creating a society of murderhobos or mentally by living in paranoia) then you don't really need to believe that you will be tortured after your death (might help though).

>>2849906
Also even if your generation got away with it then the ones where the system breaks down will feel it and curse this generation.

In that case instinctual need to take care of offspring and legacy will steer you into not trying to fuck over both of them (which is kinda why we need history).