Re:Inside Anthropic's Quest to Instill Morality into Its A.I...
by xyzzyz on Sunday October 04, 2026 @10:43AM
(#49954342)
In practice, most atheists in western world are following Christian morality, and are passing Christian morality to their children, even if the Christianity itself is abandoned.
Re:Inside Anthropic's Quest to Instill Morality into Its A.I...
by wmorgan on Sunday October 04, 2026 @07:50PM
(#49959171)
Religion is not at all axiomatic. Sometimes, it’s pure deontology. Sometimes, it’s a search through scripture to justify whatever are the prevailing ethics of the society it finds itself in. In either case, it's hundreds, or thousands, of rules/wisdom/guidance/???, often pairwise contradictory, and one does one's best to fit a desired course of action to them.
The world’s largest faith has racked up 2,000 years of discussion and they still can't muster more than a 60/40 split on the death penalty.
Religious people derive morality from axioms they believe to reflect an underlying reality. Is that worse than deriving morality from axioms that you concede don’t reflect any underlying reality? Like a secular humanist will talk about “human rights,” but they can’t show me human rights in an autopsy, right?
I struggle to understand how an atheist can be anything but a moral utilitarian. Absent the supernatural, you’re just a sophisticated version of a Claude instance.