Why be good?

This question seems to confuse a number of material atheists I've encountered during my online forays.  A more complete question would be, "What is the purpose of doing good?  Why not be evil?"  Most of the time I encounter one of three responses:

1. Doing good helps society
2. The atheist would feel bad doing evil
3. The atheist responds with snark, as if doing evil is for some reason not even a consideration

For the first this simply kicks the question down the road.  Why help society, which is simply a rehash of the "doing good" question?  Doing good for goodness sake may sound admirable, but really doesn't make sense when one thinks about it.

I would be remiss if I did not mention at least one continuation of this first response.  Usually the response is that benefiting society in return benefits the individual.  It amounts to a mutual benefit relationship with society at large.  There is more to say about this response.  But in fairness I put it out there.

The second actually raises more questions than provides answers.  Why would one feel bad about doing "wrong?"  How do we know our feelings correspond to right and wrong?  One can feel bad about doing something good, and conversely feed good about doing something bad.  Other questions such as "why not embrace misery?" and "what about sociopaths, who have no trouble doing wrong or feeling about doing wrong?" show that simply feeling bad is insufficient for a compelling moral ethic.

The third one is usually an indication that the other person is not (at the moment) capable of rationally examining his moral viewpoint.  This is actually the most dangerous place for a mind to be.  It illustrates not only an arbitrary stance regarding moral principles but also an inability to see beyond one's own moral precepts.  In such a state, the mind is impervious to correction.  

What all of these responses illustrate though is that there is a considerable lack of a coherent and consistent moral philosophy for the materialist atheist.  But this only makes sense, as the materialist atheist holds that there really isn't anything special about the human person.  Which is why morality becomes little more than one's personal preferences.

This is not to say that atheist materialists are not moralists as well.  Anyone can read Richard Dawkins condemnations of Christianity (he would say religion, but there really is only one he attacks) to see that atheists are just as judgmental as the average Bible-Thumper.  But the thing is that there isn't anything behind the curtain of moral outrage.  The moral condemnations are based off of principles that have no real grounding beyond what the critic holds at a given moment.

In order to have a coherent moral philosophy we must have a proper understanding of the human person.  In a future post we will look at the Catholic viewpoint and how though the view of the moral person we arrive at a consistent and coherent moral outlook.