The New York Times had an interesting article a few days ago, claiming that atheist activism has increased in recent years:
More than ever, America’s atheists are linking up and speaking out . . .
They are connecting on the Internet, holding meet-ups in bars, advertising on billboards and buses, volunteering at food pantries and picking up roadside trash, earning atheist groups recognition on adopt-a-highway signs.
They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.
Much of the evidence of increased atheist activism the article gives is anecdotal. The one systematic data point is evidence indicating that there are now many more atheist student groups than there were earlier in the decade. Unfortunately, the article also relies on the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, which shows a major increase in the percentage of Americans who say that they that are not affiliated with any religion (up to 18% of the US population, compared to 10% in 1990). However, as I explained in this post, not affiliating with any religion is not the same thing as being an atheist. In the same ARIS survey, only 2.3% of respondents say that "there is no such thing as" God and 5.7% that they are "not sure." Thus, it is far from clear that the NY Times article is correct in suggesting that the 18% of Americans who are unaffiliated with any religion constitute a large potential reservoir of support for atheist activism.
Despite these caveats, I would not be surprised if atheist activism really has increased in recent years. Throughout modern history, increases in education and wealth have tended to promote secularization, which in turn increases the proportion of atheists in society (even though not all secularists necessarily deny the existence of God). As the Times suggests, atheist activism has likely increased as a reaction to the activities of the religious right. The rise of radical Islamism has also stimulated atheist activism by lending credence to claims that religious belief leads to violence and oppression. I don't think any of the above actually constitutes evidence for the truth of atheism. The fact that the religious right and radical Islamists are wrong about various issues does not in and of itself prove the nonexistence of God; and obviously, adherents of a variety of secular ideologies also have committed numerous wrongs. However, the rise of the religious right domestically and radical Islamism abroad has probably led atheists to engage in more activism than they would have otherwise.
Finally, as I emphasized in this article, atheist activism is needed to counteract the false but widespread impression that (shared by about 50% of the public), that being an atheist means that you reject all morality and have no values.
On this latter point, the Times is correct to draw an analogy to the gay rights movement. Just as the more effective gay activists have sought (with some success) to persuade the public that being gay is not an immoral perversion that undermines "family values," so atheists must dispel the deeply rooted belief that if you don't believe in God, you necessarily reject all moral values. Increases in education, secularism, and societal tolerance make this a more realistic goal than ever before.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Is Atheist Activism Increasing?
- Americans Becoming Less Religious - But Not Necessarily Atheistic:
Indeed, as an increasingly irritated and outspoken atheist, one of the main reasons that I oppose revealed religion is because I believe that tends to lead to immorality.
Although not the norm, this does happen too often for my liking.
As a Christian, I have no problem with atheism. People are free to believe or not believe. The forms that atheist activism take tend to be somewhat tiring however. Having a civil discussion is great, and I have several atheist friends that I frequently discuss issues of religion (or lack thereof) with. All too often though, atheist activism consists of mocking those "stupid evangelicals", and making references to the Flying Spaghetti Monster in an effort to offend us. I sometimes wonder if these people realize that their attacks on religion are hardly different than the attitudes they say the religious right has about them.
I agree. I can't count the number of times I've heard the reasoning that, because of Islamic terrorism, religion in general is an exisitential threat to our culture and world peace. Never mind that the Christian religion was the major part of the European cultures that formed the bulk of the US and British populations for hundreds of years (arguably over a thousand in the latter case).
It's simply not profound. People don't change that quickly, and polls lag the real underlying demographics by a fair amount. That is, a quick change is simply the visible effect of fomenting a narrative that fits the way some group desires to see the world: void of the danger of traditional religion, so the beliefs might be turned toward their desires instead.
Ronald Reagan, the most popular president in recent years, often said that atheists could not be moral, and so far as I know, no member of any organized sect ever challenged him about that. So Case2L's objections to the style of atheist activism does not impress me very much.
I thought that source such as this one, Positive Atheism's Big List of Scary Quotations, would provide evidence of Mr. Eager's claim--but it doesn't, either.
Personally, my parents were very apethetic towards religion. I don't think either of them would be willing to reject the existance of god, or some spirirtual power, or something. I, having been raised in a family that never emphasized religion, had no problem taking the step to being an atheist. I think it will be interesting to see what the children of the 10% who are not part of a religion, but haven't rejected the existance of a diety, end up thinking.
You sound like Bill Maher. Understand we've seen these changes before and we will see them again. I prefer to note the history of the French revolution. They forced a secular system on the people inorder to break the Catholic church. They then played with atheisum only to discover that the people were beginning to worship the politicians and or the symbols of the revolution. It eventually degenerated into the event were Robespierre stood before a multitude in a roman toga, flanked by young people singing revolutionary songs. By this time the supreme being had become a radical democrat (his words).
I bring this up as I have note the nearly Messianic way supposedly educated people have accepted Barrack Obama. Or how Al Gore has been treated like an Avatar for the healing and salvation of the world. Or how Bob Beckel stated that the only way to save America is through the government (AKA the democratic party). People, in the name of science and common sense reject old style religion only to become a religious zealot in the way they follow a group, person or political party. In the beginning they are sensible and even moral in their actions. They even emphasis their morality by siting the immorality of their opponents. But as time progressives they become immoral in the name of protecting these people or groups that have become all important in their lives. They begin slandering people, accusing their opponents of all sorts of crimes, and demanding investigations to prove the accusations they have made. Its happened before and it will happen again.
Of course, once you've forced secularization on the public schools that all children are legally compelled to attend, the legal strategy will pay off in the long term. But the outspoken asshole strategy will not.
I think the point of the Flying Spaghetti Monster stuff is to illustrate the irrational and arbitrary nature of religious faith and religious doctrines rather than to offend religious believers. That someone is offended by an attack on their beliefs does not mean the attack is unjustified.
I also think your statement "As a Christian, I have no problem with atheism" is very odd. The idea that it doesn't really matter whether we believe in God or not is certainly not a part of any traditional variety of Christianity. Jesus himself is quoted as saying that the most important commandment of all is the commandment to love God. A religion that teaches that it doesn't really matter whether you believe its central doctrines or not isn't likely to attract and retain many adherents.
What I mean to say is that while I disagree with Atheism, I don't feel personally threatened by it in any way. Would I prefer that Atheists all shared my belief system and try to show them the way? Sure. Do I lose sleep over it? No.
I believe you missed Case2L's point (or chose to ignore it). As a Christian, he doesn't care what other people believe. I suspect he deeply cares about what he personally believes. I can't speak for him but I would guess he would respond that the choice to believe in God or not is individual; God has given everyone free will to believe or not; and it is no skin off his own nose if you or anyone chooses not to believe.
I was busy responding on your behalf, not realizing that while I was composing, you were speaking for yourself. My apologies.
I do understtand the time thing though--and it being past midnight, I wish you a good night.
With friends like these, who needs enemies, right? Well, I shall simply go on with my life, neither a denier nor an advocate, confident that my freedom of religion will be upheld as a side effect of upholding yours.
Do you have evidence that secularists or atheists are behind this supposedly Messianic treatment? Considering that a majority of the country voted for him and so far do not have idols of him in their living rooms, it appears to be a very small number of people behind the phenomenon you describe.
And of course it is silly. Just as it was silly when a handful of nut-cases suggested that George Bush's election in 2000 was the will of God. It doesn't have any real relation to the topic of atheism though unless you can answer my first question.
Funny thing, when I Google "Reagan atheist moral"...
I'm not sure about the alleged Reagan quote either. But John Neuhaus, a Catholic intellectual fairly influential in high-brow religious conservative circles, wrote a piece arguing that atheists could not be good citizens. This idea is backed by the wider public in opinion polls suggesting most Americans would not elect an atheist to public office, as pointed out by Ilya in prior posts.
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=245243
On the other hand, I've known atheists, and they can be quite ethical and scrupulous. Is that morality? That depends on what you mean by morality. As many people think of it, it is adhering to an ethical belief system. By those terms, no, atheists cannot be moral - they lack belief.
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=245243
On the other hand, I've known atheists, and they can be quite ethical and scrupulous. Is that morality? That depends on what you mean by morality. As many people think of it, it is adhering to an ethical belief system. By those terms, no, atheists cannot be moral - they lack belief.
1) I am an atheist, but do not admire the Dawkins/Hitchens crowd for their stance against religion - I just don't share their outrage/anger. I do not support atheist activism generally because there is an undertone of self-/human-worship that activists seem to support (explicitly of implicitly).
2) Christianity, though something I reject as matter of belief, does provide some hope and does give its adherents some comfort as they face the mysteries of life. This has positive value in my opinion (although the abuses may outweigh the benefits - impossible to really know).
3) There is some evidence of a genetic link to religious belief (sorry, don't have a citation). Many secular ideas seem to take on a religious quality (particularly among avowed atheists): the rise of "The One", climate change/environmentalism, social democracy, free-market capitalism, secular human progress, the (moral) superiority of humans over all other creatures (i.e., humans are fundamentally different and actually matter - see the Renaissance), etc.
4) Nassim Taleb has often defended religion and I find his views persuasive - give a listen to his most recent EconTalk discussion with Russ Roberts (comes up toward the end, but whole discussion is fantastic). Taleb goes to church because he likes the way the candles smell.
5) I'm reading John Gray's Straw Dogs (just finished Black Mass)...incredibly provocative (and pessimistic)...skewers the humanist movement (and Christianity, upon which Humanism is built)...highly recommended reading.
I have no grand, unifying conclusion...just find this all fascinating.
What does happen is that when atheists have children, a certain percentage of those children will turn to paganism and the occult. Atheism works when a person with a religious upbringing apostasizes -- he or she keeps the morality he or she likes. (Lapsed Catholics, for example, are often extremely moral.) But atheism doesn't transmit morality well from one generation to another.
As another writer said, man is made to worship. So if you won't worship God of Abraham, you or your children will end up worshipping power, or feelings, or music, or art, or a demagogue, or yourself, or another person, or the body ... something or someone. And it's never a good substitute for believing in a God who cannot be deceived and who is infinitely loving.
Basically, an atheist gives up belief and is often fine, but his kids become tattooed, pierced primitives who are easy marks for addictions, superstitions, fashions, sexual immorality, and political demagoguery -- and non-Abrahamic religions that lead to wonderful things like worship of authority or the caste system. Plus, people who don't believe in the one true God end up killing their babies -- leaving to the horror of abortion, not to mention the consequences that flow from that.
Why?
I was however left with a strong belief in and respect for the philosophies that the church at least paid lip service to: love your neighbor, turn the other cheek, do unto others, etc. Jesus may or may not even have existed, but the story of his life is quite inspirational, fiction or not.
Whoever wrote the ten commandments did a pretty good job with the last 6 of them, the ones that don't have anything to do with a god, but define the morality of how to treat each other for the good of everyone. Don't kill, be honest, don't cheat on your wife, don't lust after or steal your neighbor's stuff, respect your parents. I actually still try to live by those not because god made them but because they're pretty fine rules wherever they came from.
I always thought that if you got the leaders of all the major religions together, threw in an atheist, rewrote those last 6 commandments so they wouldn't look like they came from Xtianity, that pretty much everyone would agree with them (until Islam reared its ugly head, but that's another story.)
I can never understand the absolutely pathological hatred that many atheists have for the religious. Sure, they don't always adhere to their own standards, but I doubt if you can find an atheist who doesn't "sin" against the morals of his philosophy just as often. We're all human animals and subject to the same failings no matter what we believe in.
Some of the rules revolve around curbing what are seen as harmful sexual excesses. I would maintain that, while we are wealthy enough now in many ways to relax those prohibitions, these rules didn't come about because early societies hated gays or because people didn't like promiscuous sex, but instead because they evolved out of necessity and worked for the good of those primitive societies, for the reasons of health and social cohesion. I suspect that this is the source of much of the antipathy towards religion. After all, does anyone get all bent out of shape because religion says you shouldn't kill, lie, cheat or steal?
One of the things that makes a nation strong though is shared values. We've become so fractious as a society through this bizarre worship of multiculturalism that it has weakened us considerably, despite the contentions of its proponents.
Happens all the time, for things that happened before Gore invented the internet. You really can't take the fact that something doesn't come up in a google search as evidence that it doesn't exist, if it's more than a decade old.
As an atheist parent, I can tell you that is so-o-o right on the money, especially the addiction and fashion part. Right now, I am dealing with a daughter (my youngest) who is addicted to Chanel and Kate Spade and idolizes Obama. It's only a matter of time before the tattoos, piercings, orgies and satanic rituals start. If we had gone to church when she was young, we could have avoided this handbag heartache.
The oldest did manage to hide her tongue piercing all the way through her four years at that bastion of immorality, the Virginia Military Institute, which definitely had a caste system and required near reverence, if not worship, of authority, not to mention any number of bizarre rituals.
My middle daughter just became a vegetarian -- the result, in my view, of a superstitious fear of meat, although she maintains that it is out of concern for the ethical treatment of animals.
Yep, I can see now that my wife and I really screwed up.
My parents were atheists. I spent several years in a strict caste-based society (the US Army), got a tattoo, and ended up with a great reverence toward a secular document, the Constitution, which I now devote a large portion of my life to defending in my job as a public defender.
Somehow I missed out on the orgies, though.
Many people who have devoted their academic lives to the study of religion and advanced industrial society (e.g., Peter Berger, Rodney Stark) would strenuously disagree with that statement. Indeed, as one commentator here notes, America has arguably gotten more religious over the course of the 20th century, not less. I think the academic consensus is that there is one isolated case where economic advance and secularization have proceeded together, i.e., postwar Western Europe, and that there is no general correlation. Certainly we are not observing a decline in religious belief in China, India or Korea.
Don't forget that children of atheists often end up eating babies, sometimes before they are fully cooked. As a good christian, I often encounter these types and they have a difficult time explaining why they don't fully cook the children first to avoid disease.
It would help if we could convince them that what you and I know is the sole truth, for the children. Not just the eating children, but the eaten as well.
Let's face it, any halfwit who observes religious fundamentalism (especially) and practices for more than 20 minutes is left with the rock-solid denouement of saying WTF. It's like watching a group-therapy session after the drugs took effect. Wild-eyed elation or psychic sedation unfolds. Also, relying on scriptures from the dark ages and on the dupes who claim to decipher them remains a convincing life-guide much less easily when parabales and gospels and miracles are weighed with balance and reason and science.
It's not so easy anymore to blindly accept that Jonah swallowed the whale-or even vice versa.
I'd go a little farther and say they have a very difficult time explaining why they need a decent moral philosophy at all. The notion that 'it's good to be good' is a starting position for which we can efficiently substitute 'it's good to be rich' or 'it's good to be feared'.
Moral behavior, even for atheists, involves an a priori belief in the importance of moral behavior which has no greater basis in materialism than a theist's belief in God does. That's not to say that an atheist can't be moral, only that a moral atheist can't use 'no visible evidence' as proof of the non-existence of God.
This is the problem with modern atheists / secular humanists. Since you're building your own moral code and pseudo-religion, why don't you make it awesome? Why settle for something totally lame like vegetarianism, when you could have harvest orgies and animal sacrifices? I, for one, would have a lot more faith in Nancy Pelosi if she slaughtered a lamb and drank its blood to appease the gods of Balanced Budgets.
What's amusing is that this was caused by the previous bout of atheist activism. Not even a century ago, atheist Nietzsche loudly proclaimed that the death of God meant the death of morality (he was pleased by this), and the rest of the atheists excitedly repeated it.
They since seem to have rejected that view, but the problem is they've never explained the grounds on which they rejected it. Nietzsche made a pretty compelling case, which I suspect is why most find it more convenient to just ignore him these days.
It often seems like "this is probably what it was like to be gay in the 1950s- it's like being the old confirmed bachelor of a certain age with nice taste in china."
Harrt Eager made a specific claim that Ronald Reagan not only said, but "often said" that atheists could not be moral.
I even found (and linked) a website from a purportedly atheist group that quoted some things Reagan did say. Eager's purported quote is not among them.
I challenged Eager to provide some actual proof for his assertion. He has yet to respond.
While I agree that many "pre-Internet" happenings are lost to the ages, I highly doubt that the kind of provocative quote that Eager alleges would be among them.
solid gold. swift would be proud.
God provides the basis for a morality system. The ultimate origin of the physical laws is "God said so," so it makes sense that the same would be true for moral laws.
Plus, God can provide enforcement of the moral law, which is kind of significant.
Now, one could argue that a creator God might exist who doesn't care about how we act, and I suppose that a Deist of that stripe would have the same morality issues Nietszche outlines. But that's not the kind of God the vast majority of religious people are talking about.
Your claim is that there is no moral philosophy, before or after Nietzche, that makes a good argument for a moral system independent of a belief in a god?
And you, personally, would be more likely to believe a person is moral if they said, "I've given up atheism and now believe in a system of morality given to me on meatballs by my new god, the Flying Spaghetti Monster"?
Finally, the claim that there can be no morality without belief in god is not only untrue, it is entirely independent of the question of whether god exists. So, even if you think that true morality can only come from a belief in god, what if god doesn't exist? Should we pretend to believe anyway?
I find this is an often used idea of those on the spiritual side. Even the courts have a tendency to view Atheism as a religion for the purposes of discussing it in a legal venue.
Atheists are not forcing anything on anyone. When the FFRF or the AA go to court to uphold the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, they are not projecting secularism on anyone. They are ensuring that the government does not promote someone else's concept of religion on everyone else.
The law stops the state from starting every school day with the Eucharist, does that mean the state is Protestant or anti-Catholic? Of course not. We are not a Catholic nation, we are a Baptist nation, we are not a Muslim nation. We are nation of people made up of Jews, Catholics, Baptists, etc. And we all have to learn to somehow get along with each other.
The Atheists are not trying to take away your religious rights under the Constitution, they are just trying to maintain their own rights under the Constitution.
Try to be a little understanding and if at possible Mr. Christian, a little loving of your neighbor.
-Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
"The easy confidence with which I know another man´s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one´s religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one´s religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life- hence it is a valuable possession to him."
I'm agnostic and not a particular fan of 'social conservatism' to say the least, but the impact of the 'Religious Right' seems way, way less than it did in the early eighties. Most of the hardcore Atheists I know (who belong to overtly Atheists clubs/groups) are every bit as egotistical and overt in their beliefs as evangelicals.
To steal a phrase from the kids these days, there's a lot of 'Concern trolling' masquerading as sage advice these days. A lot of folks want to cover their ideological tendencies by paying false concern to a non-existent threat. I'm, pretty sympathetic to skepticism to organized religion, but honestly, 'Where's the Beef?' in this story.
My claim is simpler than that, actually. Rather recently, atheists were yelling "we have no morality! We have no morality!" Now, they have shifted to "how dare you say we have no morality!" But they never explain the intellectual reasons behind the shift, or even acknowledge that the shift occurred.
So where do you think Nietzsche went wrong?
1) The saying of Joseph is not quite apt. If you are not just merely not collecting stamps, but actively arguing that people should not collect stamps, I think that would qualify for a hobby as much as arguing why people should collect stamps.
2) It's not generally said that Atheists cannot be moral, just that their morality is just based on arbitrary whim. A believer sees the morals as passed down as an incontrovertible truth as a reflection of perfection (God). An atheists believes there is no such truth, so their own guidelines have to be set by themselves, or at least society at large. But even so, there is no rational argument that could presented in that case that if I could murder my best friend, steal all his fabulous wealth, and get away with it without ever being caught, that I should not do so. The best you could present in that situation is that my conscience might bother me. Because if this existence is all there is, and by murdering my friend, I can make this existence that much better, how is that not the rational thing to do. And in that case, how can the moral thing to do be other than rational?
Just a thought
You confuse religion and creed. There are a couple smaller Western religions that swing that way (Quakers and Unitarian-Universalists) and a bit larger one you might look into, something about a heavyset guy and, like, riddles without punchlines...
You paint with a rather broad brush. "Rather recently atheists were yelling 'We have no morality.'" And the basis for that is Nietzche and some of his followers in the 19th century?
If you haven't followed the developments in moral philosophy since then (or what atheists thing), I don't think it's possible to update you in a comment on a blog post. So I'll just ask again the questions you dodged from above:
Would you, personally, be more likely to believe a person is moral if they said, "I've given up atheism and now believe in a system of morality given to me on meatballs by my new god, the Flying Spaghetti Monster"?
Also, the claim that there can be no morality without belief in god is not only untrue, it is entirely independent of the question of whether god exists. So, even if you think that true morality can only come from a belief in god, what if god doesn't exist? Should we pretend to believe anyway?
I find this line of criticism very tiring. Every Sunday, in many, many churches throughout the United States, and in Mosques and in Synagogues, you will find condemnations of atheism and disbelief, bolstered by supreme confidence in the fact that atheists are going to hell (and are in fact, at the front of the line of a very long list of people going to hell.) You will find any number of Christians (and Jews and Muslims) who will express this opinion to you in casual conversation, probably without any hostility or insult intended. If they don't say that in particular, they will tell you that atheists cannot possibly be moral people because only a belief in God can be a basis for morality. But because a minority of atheists react to this sort of sweeping condemnation of their lives and souls with irritation and or outright hostility, it is atheists who are now incapable of having a "civil discussion" about religion.
In fact, there is a HUGE difference between the attitudes of the religious right and atheists in that, for the most part, atheists are content to live and let live, and the religious right is not. I strongly suspect that if all people of a religious persuasion decided today that atheists were in fact not immoral people, and the fate of their souls was their own business, the vast majority of atheist mockery of religion and religious zealots would come to an end.
There are obnoxious atheists; there are obnoxious folks in all religions. There are obnoxious stamp collectors and obnoxious folks who don't collect stamps. I'm certainly not arguing that atheists as a class are per se better human beings than non-atheists. I've met too many in both categories to believe that.
But I do see a number of posts on this thread suggesting that atheists, as a class, are worse people per se because they can't have a real sense of morality. Were that to be switched around to an equally untrue statement -- religious people can't have a real morality -- religious folks would rightly be offended.
Plus, God can provide enforcement of the moral law, which is kind of significant.
Now, one could argue that a creator God might exist who doesn't care about how we act, and I suppose that a Deist of that stripe would have the same morality issues Nietszche outlines. But that's not the kind of God the vast majority of religious people are talking about.
Well whatever religious people are "talking about," I would appreciate an answer to my earlier question: why would the existence of a god prove the existence of an "objective" morality? How would a god's existence prove that we didn't just make morality up?
Your saying that "God provides the basis for a morality system" just restates your assumption.
It would be interesting if you could provide evidence of your conclusion that athiesm "always descends into some version of 'do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law'" since we have as yet witnessed no societies founded primarily on the basis of atheism. Also, Alistair Crowley was an occultist and a nut, not an atheist.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
Atheists are not citizens. Thanks a lot George. Apparently, believing in an invisible magic sky-fairy is a requirement to vote.
I agree that there are obnoxious folks who are atheists, who are religious, and everywhere in between.
Rightly or wrongly (and I agree that it is wrong, but I am talking about perception), Newdow and people like Christopher Hitchens (with his offensive use of the term "Christianist") are the public face of atheism.
Just as most Christians would recoil at the thought of Jerrry Fawell or Pat Robertson as the public face of Christianity and many Christians have denounced both men, atheists would do their cause more good to denounce Newdow and Hitchens instead of tolerating their intolerance and bigotry.
Bottomline - what is an atheist willing to die for besides himself and his family? Universal health care? A nebulous sense of "brotherhood"? Sorry, when push comes to shove religion will out over secular atheism every time.
Um, state socialism, Eastern Europe/Russia, Twentieth Century. Perhaps you've heard of it?
The wackiest religious people out there really do invaluable PR work for atheists.
Oh? And why is that?
So it's offensive to have a term for people who believe that their religion is correct, and that others should be coerced into sharing it? Of course the term can be overused, but I imagine that it does some good to distinguish between those Christians who have a "live and let live" attitude and those who do not. Better than smearing an entire faith as intolerant.
As for your recommendation that atheists should denounce their own activists, I will say that attempting to ingratiate oneself with those who utterly condemn one's beliefs, is a silly way to go about advancing one's cause.
Everyone has this problem. Religious people who have thought seriously about their own beliefs are no closer to crossing the is-ought chasm than atheists are.
If God says X is wrong, so what? Why should people refrain from doing it? You need a first principle that says God's revealed moral code is something you should follow in your own life -- and this principle cannot be revealed by God since that would beg the question. But atheists can just as easily accept as a first principle Kant's categorical imperative, for instance. Those of us who are not psychopaths (about 98% of us are not) can look to our consciences as well. Conscience is a powerful force as Adam Smith recognized early on and it is pretty clear by now that conscience has nothing to do with religious belief.
What does happen is that when atheists have children, a certain percentage of those children will turn to paganism and the occult.
Do you have any actual data on this? If you want to argue by anecdote, I can provide the case of prominent atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair's son William who is a Christian convert.
Oh, if you only want to lift the first sentence which was part of the whole paragraph and point at it, whats the point of dealing with you. Go back and read the rest, and come back with something more to say.
Since Pelosi is a Catholic, you might say that the lamb was already slaughtered for her and she drinks its blood regularly.
Naturally, you understand that there is a difference between a state which espouses atheism as a matter of policy, and a state in which most or all people are atheists.
Maybe you can google "Pat Tillman" sometime. Of course, some have used his lack of religion to insult his memory.
If there is a God and you oppose His will you are either a childish protestor or psycopathic.
I don't see how that follows at all. What if the god in question is a relativist?
Well, I don't think it's that widespread, and if anyone is to blame, it is the Atheists. Because they know they're bound by some moral standard and sense of right and wrong, and yet they turn around and act as if people are primitive because they acknowledge they do and claim they get it from an Almighty creator.
It seems to me if many Atheists logic and rational thought above all else, they would conclude that it's really not why someone has morality that's important, it's that they have it. Obviously belief in God isn't enough to make people bridle their tongues, be non-violent, be charitable, be well-wishing, etc etc. But it's not therefore obvious that lack of belief in God is all we need to live in a better, more free, more tolerant society.
I've often thought that Christians and Atheists aren't that far apart, and that a lot of Atheists don't really lack belief in the existence of God, but they more like despise God for things they don't understand. This is both the silliness and futility of "atheist activism". Activism for what? So that people who might have or might will have a reason to blame God for their problems will see Atheism as a viable position for them to hold? How will that make their lives better? So that atheists can feel more culturally accepted by mocking people's religious beliefs...all while claiming the Church is the primary source of much bigotry and intolerance?
I've seen the term Christianist used much more by believing Catholic Andrew Sullivan than by Hitchens. In fact, a search for the term Christianist on slate.com where Hitchens publishes weekly turned up only two hits, neither authored by Hitchens.
Do you find the term "Islamist" offensive also? Why or why not?
As long as the average person thinks that atheists as a group are as obnoxious as Newdow, Hitchens, and the late Madelyn Murray O'Hair, instead of being people who disagree and are willing to engage in civil discussion, such as Ilya Somin does here--then atheism just expect "pushback" from not only people of faith but also people of manners.
Let's not patronize, or make unwarranted assumptions. I sincerely doubt that the atheism of most activists if founded on a hatred of God. This is certainly not true of the atheists I've known.
Well of course they do; universal moral codes are necessary for humans to live together. The problem is that atheists want to deny their fountainhead and back into some cobbled together explanation for universality in the absence of a Creator.
Ricardo,
If Hitchens is not the source of "Christianist," then my apologies to him for linking him with the ever-obnoxious Newdow and O'Hair.
I'd sincerely doubt that, too, considering that isn't what I said. I said a lot of them. And it doesn't matter about the Atheists you've known feeling that way or not (I doubt you'd know for sure). There is a component of Atheism -- in its functional, literal application -- that is more spiteful at God and people who believe in him than just people who don't believe there is a God. We find ways of wrapping this up into being a statement of individualism and rationale and logic, and that's supposed to explain it away, but it is there.
See my first comment here. I must say, I do not at all understand why Christians are permitted to make sweeping generalizations about atheists based on people like Hitchens or Dawkins, but atheists are not permitted to make sweeping generalizations about Christians based on people like Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson.
Amen. To illuminate the point, when's the last time a group of importuning atheists came knocking on your door or left some crusty self-promoting tract in your hotel room? Better yet, when's the last time you saw atheist upon atheist get on tv or radio, with the regularity of hiccups, and ask you to not just suspend your reason, but to spend your kid's inheritance?
Religion without the group validation and support reduces to looking at oneself in the dark.
Since all Christians sin -- that is oppose in action the supposed will of God -- are you calling all Christians psychopaths or childish protesters?
But this is invective, not argument. Yes, people who exploit and take pleasure in the misery of others are psychopaths. You don't need religious scripture to tell you that, though. As I said, it is intuitively obvious to the 98% of us who aren't psychopaths that this behavior is wrong. Indeed, you don't sound like you need a religious scripture to tell you, either.
First, that's not any sort of proof that god actually exists. It's just a belief that at least some types of morality are impossible if god doesn't exist. Which raises the question, what if god doesn't -- or what if certain people can't be convinced that he does? Should we just throw up our hands? Should we pretend?
Second, it's highly debatable that morality, or the better, superior type folks are alluding to on this thread, can only exist if a supernatural all-good-all-the-time being ordains it to us. The claim that morality that comes from a god is superior because gods know best about what is morally superior is pretty obviously tautological.
Also, based on my lived experience and my reading of history, it doesn't appear to me that believing or not believing in a god strongly correlates with moral or immoral behavior.
Dave N.:
The problem with being an atheist is that, like being somebody who doesn't collect stamps, there is no way to appoint "leaders."
Hitchens is known for having a sharp tongue and being blunt to uncivil to folks who disagree with him, on everything from religion to the Iraq war. I generally believe in civility. I will confess that there is some small part of me that, after hearing decades of "you atheists will go to hell, how could you possibly not believe in god, you can't possibly have any real sense of morality," etc., gets some small satisfaction in hearing atheists aggressively stand up for themselves. But in the end, civility is better.
If you're not intending to link a hatred of God to atheist activism, and you're not saying that many or most Atheists are atheists because they despise God, then I'm not sure of the utility of your point. Some atheists are atheists because of personal issues. Some Christians are Christians because of personal issues. What are you saying we should conclude from this?
This would be where that whole Atheism =/= morality equation comes from.
I am not a fan of the word "Islamist" either. Frankly, I find labeling to be a way of marginalizing the opposing view. If you stick a label on it, particularly one of your own construct, then you can dismiss the viewpoint as unworthy of consideration or discussion.
I have no problem with "Islamic extremist" or "Christian extremist" or "radical Islam" or "radical Christianity"--though outside of the Troubles, I am unaware of much killing in the name of the Christian religion in recent decades.
Jews don't believe that well-behaved atheists are going to hell.
Take the cases involving the 10 Commandments. If you hang them, it's challenged as an endorsement of religion. If you ban hanging them, then, by extension, it's an endorsement of non-religion.
Banning displays of religious items is just as offensive to a secularist as allowing them to go up is to the atheist. "Atheist activism" is just an attempt to move the baseline. It has no fundamental difference from people attempting to bring prayer back into school (with options to sit out). Both attempt to make the default religious choice their own, while allowing individuals on the other side to opt out of that default within defined parameters.
Imagine a class split 50-50 atheist/Christians. What is the difference between forcing an atheist teacher to hang the 10 Commandments and prohibiting a Christian teacher from hanging the 10 Commandments. Both decisions establish a religious choice that puts pressure on 50% of the class to change their mind.
Do Jews even believe in hell? I've heard a lot of conflicting reports on their afterlife views.
Do you have a problem with reading my posts, or reading in general? I'm not trying to be glib, but this is the second time you've missed something I've said. And I didn't bury it in a long prose or anything. I said A LOT OF ATHEISTS ARE THIS WAY. I didn't say most of them are, I said a lot of them. I get that there are people who are simply unconvinced of the existence of God, but I also think there are people who are more spiteful of the existence of God rather than unconvinced that he exists.
Which fountainhead is that? Socrates? Plato? Aristotle?
We seem to have abandoned Zeus, Apollo, et al while retaining the good bits of their fine example. I don't see where Christ or Yahwe (or whatever you want to call him) is any more indispensible than, say, Thor.
I disagree with this notion. Hanging a copy of the 10 commandments on the walls is an affirmative act. More to the point, it forces the awareness of a religious symbol upon those in the classroom, whatever their background or beliefs. NOT hanging the 10 commandments forces no such awareness, except in the minds of those who believe that the 10 commandments SHOULD be hanging from the walls. Which not coincidentally, explains why it is almost always conservative Christians who get most up in arms about attempts to remove religious symbols from public property.
As more than one atheist philosopher has noted, without God, you can still have a morality, but it's completely arbitrary; you have no reason to follow it, let alone expect others to.
“The concept of moral obligation is unintelligible apart from the idea of God. The words remain, but their meaning is gone.” (non-Christian philosopher Richard Taylor)
As one Nazi bigwig noted, "What, after all, compels us to keep those promises?"
In addition, the legacy of Darwinism - the religion of atheism - is the 120 million killed by atheistic, anti-Christian governments, the Holocaust (Hitler persecuted and planned to destroy the church), and racism in "modern" times, such as the hunting and killing of Aborigines in Australia. This pales in comparison with the 3-4000 killed by the Inquisition, or the 200k (or 2 million?) by the Crusades. (latest figures)
The problem is not that atheists are immoral. We are all moral and immoral to some degree. The problem is that atheists have no logical basis to call anything moral or immoral.
If everything boils down to atoms bouncing around with no ultimate meaning, you have no basis for an objective, meaningful morality.
Now, the fact atheists display morality shows two things. 1) You cannot live as a logically consistent atheist. There are other examples besides morality that can be brought to bear on this point. 2) Atheists are latent theists.
I'm not ignoring it, I'm just still trying to figure out how you consider it "proven" that the existence of a god proves the existence of an "objective morality."
If you can't cross that hurdle, the issue of "punishment" is moot.
"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds... reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail, in exclusion of religious principle." -George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
And yes, homosexuality is an immoral perversion that undermines family values, and thus civilized society itself.
Yes, I understand that. I don't think you realize that I'm asking for clarification, specifically on this point:
I've often thought that Christians and Atheists aren't that far apart, and that a lot of Atheists don't really lack belief in the existence of God, but they more like despise God for things they don't understand. This is both the silliness and futility of "atheist activism".
I would note that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are self-appointed as well and I have no problem whatsoever denouncing their excessive behavior.
But perhaps that is the problem. The most obnoxious are also the most provocative among both atheists and religious folks and thus are the ones most sought out for comment on religious/atheist issues.
To those who do not know (but perhaps should know better), these obnoxious folks become the "default" when they hear the word (either "atheist" or "Christian") and, unfortunately, then ascribe to others who may share the obnoxious spokesman's belief the obnoxious spokesman's manners.
You seem to be saying that atheist activism can be linked in general to a hatred of God. I'm asking you for clarification on this, not on how many atheists you believe hate God.
What about that do you need clarified?
But try organizing a club of people whose only common denominator is that they don't collect stamps. About the only common thing atheists as atheists can organize around is being left alone, or not treated as some kind of moral lepers, or not having someone else's religion crammed down their throats -- and often using their tax money for the purpose.
For these reasons, I expect that "atheist activism" will never amount to much, and will restrict itself largely to defensive measures. Not to say that "defensive measures" won't strike many of the religious as "offensive." I once had a very nasty dog. When kicked, he bit.
"The problem is that atheists have no logical basis to call anything moral or immoral."
I was just going to post virtually the same idea. Without some kind of transcendent entity, how do we create a morality that people will feel obligated to follow?
Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose only two people existed in the universe, and they both atheists. How could one ever convince the other he is right on some moral question? Athesists are stuck with some kind of utilitarianism, which can only get you so far.
The original Constitution was a radical document. The Constitution invoked the "blessings of Liberty" not the "blessings of God," and formed a country based on the authority of "We the People."
The transcripts of the state ratification debates and the public debate in the media of that time reveal that the men who founded our country, who framed the Constitution and voted to ratify its adoption, firmly believed that the U.S. was founded as a secular country.
The evidence for this conclusion is found in the debate over the "no religious test clause" set forth in Art. 6., Cl. 3. This clause, in a radical departure from the past, provided that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." By this Clause, the Founders proclaimed that men of all religious beliefs, or none, would be treated equally and would be equally eligible for office in the United States. This clause evidences that the Founders did not believe that athiests were without morality or ethics.
The radical nature of this clause was not lost on the men who debated and voted on the Constitution. The forces opposed to the Constitution argued that the "no religious test clause" would lead to unethical and unfit papists, jews and pagans obtaining office. They argued a bigoted position aimed at appealing to the worst sectarian sentiments. For example, in the ratification debates in North Carolina it was argued:
And in Massachusetts it was argued:
But the proponents of the Constitution forcefully countered these arguments. Not by arguing that the fear that non-Christians would obtain office were wholly unfounded, but by arguing the desirability of tolerance and a secular government. For example, in Massachusetts, the Rev. Daniel Shute a leading proponent of the Constitution, argued:
And in North Carolina, James Iredell, who subsequently was appointed as a Justice of the Supreme Court by Washington, eloquently argued:
John Kennedy proved the fears of the opponents to the Constitution right. A "papist" became President. And a "Mohametan" has achieved Congress. And even during the lifetime of the Founders, men viewed as pagans by some because of their Deist philosophy, achieved the Presidency. But those opponents of the Constitution were on the losing side of the debate, and their fears were simply prejudices. Our country's enlightened Founders considered that the Constitution they enacted was secular, and that it would give equal rights to non-Christians and establish a separation of Church and State, and concluded that it was good.
I'm saying that atheist activism to me sounds like another way of saying intolerant atheists are impressing their irreligious beliefs on people, especially the ones who also don't believe in God. I'm not aware of the net benefit individual people -- be they religious, atheist, agnostic -- or society as a whole will have by atheists driving the point home that they believe, though they can't objectively prove, there is no God. I'm not sure what that's supposed to do for people besides maybe piss some of them off. People being more thoughtful and open-minded is one thing, but then, that's not only possible through atheism, and it's a standard few people can actually meet, religious or not.
Now, the fact atheists display morality shows . . . You cannot live as a logically consistent atheist.
I question the assumption that existence of an objective, meaningful morality is necessary for someone to "display morality."
Did you take philosophy? It is hard for me to believe that anyone is this bereft of knowledge regarding basic philosophical principles. Or even common sense. You seem to be assuming that people will not "feel obligated" to be moral unless they act out of fear of divine punishment or heavenly reward. But, setting aside the fact that people could "feel obligated" because of earthly punishments and rewards (we have criminal laws that probably are more powerful deterrents of murder than fear of God), people also decide to act for reasons that are not tied their personal selfish reasons.
If one rejects all theological arguments and attacks atheist logic with reason, the inconsistencies in their beliefs are as stark as anything they claim about the Gospels or other holy books. In fact, there's a whole book devoted to that line of attack, The Irrational Atheist.
The actual numbers from the ARIS are 8.2% in 1990 and 15.0% in 2008. It looks like the above numbers include the Don't Know/Decline to State percentages.
Also missing from all discussion of the latest ARIS is the fact that it actually shows stability in Religious ID vs Nones in the last decade. The survey was done in 1990, 2001, and 2008. The 2001 number for Nones is 14.8%. Which means that the significant decline in religious ID actually occurred during the Clinton Admin while W brought stability.
The Nones haven't made statistically significant progress since 2001. We'll see what effect the next decade with a godless atheistic communist president has. Could go either way.
Believers don't think that non-believers are immoral, we just think that since you don't have a morality one can easily point too, it is kind of hard to judge and may be arbitrary.
As for the larger group of the religiously unaffiliated, their cliche statement of belief is: I'm a very spiritual person but I don't believe in/need organized religion. Void for vagueness.
I see a kernel of truth here even though I object to the framing and conclusion. I think religious/nonreligious/atheist people agree on many baseline moral/ethical issues. And as a former Catholic, I admit that there is sometimes an element of anger in my agnosticism/atheism. But the anger is not at "God" for "things I don't understand", but rather at religious people who cannot let God be mysterious and beautiful and somewhat undefined, who must define God as enforcing gender codes and shaming gays and speaking on every issue of the day. So, in my personal experience, I am comfortable that there are things I just don't know and won't be able to understand, and I cringe at hyperreligious people breathlessly answering all the questions for their God and sullying the beauty that could be.
Let's do a thought experiment. Suppose only two people existed in the universe, and they both atheists. How could one ever convince the other he is right on some moral question? Athesists are stuck with some kind of utilitarianism, which can only get you so far.
Suppose these two people are deeply religious-- they can still never convince each other of the correctness of a moral question, if they don't share the same assumptions.
The religious people in my example are stuck with arguing from differing assumptions- which can only take you so far.
In other words, being religious, or not, has nothing to do with whether two individuals can agree on a particular moral question.
Quite so. I've always thought it curious that atheists could reject the concept of "God," yet still believe in the concepts of "justice" and "right and wrong."
Another experiment would be to put a Christian and a Muslim alone together and ask them to convince each other of the rightness/wrongness of eating pork. Though they both share a belief in one almighty God, they would still face some difficulty.
Also, utilitarianism is not the only basis of moral belief outside of religion.
This is completely wrongheaded. Why can't there be an objective right/wrong without God? This assumption is wholly unfounded. There are plenty of philosophical systems which lead to the same degree of certainty regarding moral choices as is provided by the Bible. To pretend otherwise is foolish. And it is not as if the Bible reduces everything to black and white. There are plenty of grey areas.
First you fling a personal insult, then you set up a strawman. My "feel obligated" has nothing to do with punishment or reward. It simply means one get convinced of something. And you avoid the question posed by saying that somehow "philosophy" provides the answer without telling us the answer.
Logic and persuasion.
It is sad that you feel opinions can only be formed by appeals to external authority.
I've always thought it curious that atheists could reject the concept of "God," yet still believe in the concepts of "justice" and "right and wrong."
</blockquote>
But those are not religious concepts, and they predate Christianity and Judaism.
Religion can either sharpen or dull one's ability to understand and appreciate ethics and morality.
I agree that there are obnoxious folks who are atheists
PROOF:
Uh_Clem (mail):
Apparently, believing in an invisible magic sky-fairy is a requirement to vote.
Why is it that so many atheists find it necessary to mock those who are not atheists?
It seems that common decency, courtesy, respect for others, etc., are not things they value.
at our "meeting hou..." — umm, OK, sorry, you're right, down at our secret lair where we're plotting to brainwash and enslave the lot of you to the Gawdless gawd of atheism and kitten-killing....
Cheers,
Because many people are incapable of recognizing the difference between theism and religiosity, and many professed atheists have not worked through all their own issues. Something happens that pisses them off to religion, and when they go to reject that, say a catholic rejecting the catholic church because of the abuse scandal, they turn their rabid anger into rejecting theism. They think they are atheists, but are likely not. Or they always were atheists (failed to really believe in a god while going about their religious ways) but didn't realize it at the time.
Cheers,
atheists have no logical basis to call anything moral or immoral.
Is this meant as parody? Aside from ignoring heaps of modern moral philosophy, the implication that religion is, in contrast, a "logical" system of belief is odd. What's "logical" about religion? What about the leap of faith?
As to those stressing the "punishment" side of religion as the reason that only the religious are truly moral, that assumes a couple of things. First, as noted above, some religions (e.g. Judaism) put little or no stress on the heaven/hell ideas. Second, even for those religions that do stress heavan/hell reward/punishment, to be really moral, we would have to assume that the god involved is a just one, and how do we know that is true?
Read through the comments here directed toward atheists, and you may begin to understand. There is a heck of a lot more mockery and sneering at atheists than the other way around. It just that now atheists have begun standing up for themselves and reacting to the juvenile and dismissive way many religious people treat them.
Sure, they predate the Abrahamaic religions, but I don't know that they predate all religions, superstitions, and beliefs in the supernatural.
The issue for atheists is that any moral systems, even if highly developed, suffer from an unresolvable crisis of foundations. Logic doesn't stand alone; it rests on assumptions. Peel away the layers of atheist morality and ask the question "what makes anything 'right' or 'wrong'" and you'll find that there's no answer that makes sense in a materialistic, deterministic universe.
"Logic and persuasion."
This answer avoids the question. Logic has to do with reasoning from assumptions to conclusions. A particular assumption, by definition can not be proven without being redundant. How does one of our two people in the universe get the other to accept his assumption with reference to some entity outside them?
Why do queers get all the traction?
I dunno, why is it that so many theists find it necessary to tell atheists that they are going to hell, or, as on this very thread, that atheists can't possibly have a valid basis for their own personal morality?
Cheers,
God, by definition, is the source of objective morality. Therefore if god exists, objective morality exists.
This is what seperates God from your run-of-the-mill supernatural being.
The issue for atheists is that any moral systems, even if highly developed, suffer from an unresolvable crisis of foundations. Logic doesn't stand alone; it rests on assumptions.
But isn't that obviously equally true of religion? Leap of faith?
And again, to all those arguing that morality is impossible without god, I again note that this is not a proof of god's existence or even any evidence that god exists. So what if god doesn't?
That's not a definition, that's a tautology.
Cheers,
Crossing the ought-is chasm is a nice turn of phrase. Thank you. I agree it's something a believer has to deal with (though impossible for an atheist -- atheists can't even establish fixed definitions of abstract concepts, so a universal morality is way out of reach).
You bring up an important question -- how can we say God is good? I think that atheists, lapsed believers, non-believers, and people who pursue (not were born into) non-Abrahamic religions answer negatively, largely because of theodicy. How can a good God allow evil to happen? Why do good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people?
Individuals look at the world, and conclude either there is no god, or that he's blind to human suffering. To many, there can be no reason to justify their suffering, and some of them can be extremely offended by those who do. Many individuals view believers something like a teacher's pet sucking up to a particularly vicious teacher -- minions of someone terrifying and authoritative.
Non-believers are not alone in this. Any believer who hasn't answered the theodicy question (either consciously or not) is much like that class suck-up. And since the theodicy question can only be answered by faith, it's difficult to cross that particular chasm. That sounds like a tautology, and it is, if you try to answer it intellectually. Only by going and finding out who God is can you answer it by faith, and then the reasons become clear and obvious.
To change directions for a moment, God is good because He is love -- but that love can be both sublime or terrifying. Heaven and Hell is how different people, depending on who they are and what they've become, experience the same outpouring of God's love eternally, in a place where there is no more hiding of secret sins or excuses or minimizing the lack of love we've shown others, or how through lack of love we drove people away from God. This applies to everyone -- believers and nonbelieves alike.
You probably have experienced true intimacy in your life. Wasn't it both joyful and a little scary? Were you both saddened and relieved when it was over? That's a taste of the experience in the afterlife, magnified almost infinitely. Heaven is the part of that question that includes joy at loving connection and sadness when it's over, and hell is the part of us that is afraid and relieved. In the afterlife, there is no escaping, so we experience either eternal bliss or eternal fear. So the question becomes, how do I prepare myself for experiencing that eternal love?
As a Christian, I'd love (heh) to tell you that you become a Christian and that's the end of it -- but my experience is no, it's not. It's just the beginning of the journey. When I act hatefully, I'm just as responsible. When atheists act lovingly, they're doing God's will.
My two cents.
But, that being said, we'd have to take a step back then, and determine logically whether God is "right" or God is "wrong". And from there, it's turtles all the way down.
Cheers,
Believers are comfortable with their leaps of faith. They admit they're doing it.
Atheists simultaneously argue that the religious should not believe in something that cannot be proved, and believe in something that cannot be proved: objective right and wrong.
You're correct in saying that this isn't a proof of God's existence, but it is proof that atheists who say that they rely solely on logic and reason make the same leaps of faith that they criticize the religious for making.
You do realize this is the heart of the problem, don't you? That the notion of "personality morality" is an utter nonsense?
You can have a valid, logical, and objective basis. You just have no basis from which to tell another atheist that their belief system is wrong.
1) There is no such thing as an "atheist" which, as a position, is simply a negation, as in "anti-abortion," a term which says a lot about a person's position on abortion but says nothing about anything else. Similarly, an "atheist" can be a mass murderer or a saint. It has nothing to do with their position on the existence of God. Lastly, I would be impressed if there were a First Church of Kant or a First Temple of Confucianism, but the fact is that atheists do not subscribe to moral or ethical values in any collective way. There are individually ethical atheists, but they do not form an ethical body. I would argue that they never have and never can.
2) The point a contributor made about the deification of people is well-taken. C.S. Lewis said that a person who ceases to believe in God does not then believe in nothing; rather, such a person will now believe in anything, even in Al Gore.
3) Lastly, I would be happy to see the stats comparing the charitable actions of Christians, both as individuals and as churches, to the charitable actions of atheists. I suspect that there is no comparison in charitable giving, in volunteer service, in adoptions, and in the creation of philanthropic organizations. Hospitals and orphanages did not begin with rich atheists of their day. Reading was not taught to the 18th century English poor by atheists. Slavery was not abolished by the atheists in England and the United States (although I will grant the case for those in France). I tried living as an atheist until I was 33: Buddhism, Platonism, and utilitarianism. It doesn't work. A free agent serves himself until he submits to a cause greater than himself.
Morally wrong or logically wrong? I assert that any claim to universal morals by an atheist is logically wrong since there is no basis for universality.
Note that atheists may well be right. It may be that we do live in a completely deterministic universe berefit of universal morality.
The problem here is the simplistic reasoning about moral absolutes.
Zorbane, for example, argues:
Obviously, though, that's just sophistry.
First, Christians have no "model of perfection" to use to determine whether a "murder" is right or wrong. All they have is a Bible that is extremely contradictory on the subject. While there is commandment directing against murder, there are numerous examples in the Bible where God either directs or permits his followers to break that commandment. Which is why Christians have such fruitful theological debates over such things as "just war," etc.
And, of course, there is the question of what constitutes a murder. Is capital punishment "murder"? A killing in self-defense? A killing in a war of conquest? A killing directed by God? An abortion? The killing of an unbeliever? The killing of male children of unbelievers? The Bible provides less clarity than you portray.
Second, Atheism is the non-belief in God, it is not the refusal to reason from assumptions. An Atheist who subscribes to a Utilitarian morality is proceeding from the assumption or first principle that whatever advances the greatest good for the greatest number of people is moral. This philosophy allows an adherent to distinguish between the killing of innocents by a person who murders for thrills, and the state's subsequent killing of that person in order to punish, deter and preclude further murders.
Your argument is:
Assumptions:
1) If God then Objective Morality.
2) God.
Conclusion:
3) Therefore, Objective Morality.
This is true as far as it goes, although as Joseph Slater notes you seem to be begging the question. However, your other argument is:
Assumptions:
1) If God then Objective Morality.
2) Not God.
Conclusion:
3) Therefore, not Objective Morality.
This is an example of the logical fallacy of denying the antecedent.
The only way to avoid the logical error in your argument would be to change your initial assumption Objective Morality if and only if God, but then you would be begging the question entirely.
Why do you believe that a philosophy should not have universal application?
I agree that it may not have universal adherence, but it seems to me that it is illogical to argue that there could be no philosophy of morals and ethics that should be universally subscribed.
Let's make one person an atheist, and the other a theist in our two-person universe. How can the atheist convince the atheist not to kill him?
No, atheists decline to believe in something that cannot be proved. They don't subscribe to a certain set of beliefs about the origin of life, etc. they simply don't believe the story about God.
Slavery was not abolished by the atheists in England and the United States.
Slavery was not promoted and perpetuated and justified by atheists either. That was Christians showing off that famous morality that can exist only with belief in God.
Doesn't prove the existence of an objective morality. Just means you don't get to A) stamp your foot and demand that there is no God while B) asserting that your version of morality is anything other than personal predilictions.
What is the basis for the "should?" Why should my "personal morality" comport with yours?
My experience is rarely does logic and persuasion work, at least in the short run. There are too many ways to respond logically to logical statements, and there are too many counter-arguments. Logic and persuasion usually work when the person's already made up their mind to accept your position.
My experience is you convince someone largely based on relationships -- when someone loves you, you're more amenable to what they have to say. Most of us make decisions emotionally, or based on our experiences of what works, or what we've accepted from those who loved us.
The very existence of an atheist movement, or atheist activism puzzles me. I guess these exist because there are atheists who must believe that society would be better if there was no religion, and they seek to circumscribe it, make it less readily available, make it less attractive or palatable. I think there are religious movements or organizations, or religions themselves that are dangerous or harmful to others, or to societies; and, there are religions that are helpful, supportive, and a great positive contribution to society. I think it has very little to do with whether they believe in anything transcendent, it is a result of their founding philosophy and the interpretation and expression of it. There have been movements in history with all of the trappings of organized religion save the supernatural that have done both enormously bad, and enormously good things.
It strikes me that an atheist activist movement is in of itself contradictory, since they seek to influence or change the society by eliminating a belief system, while their own position constitutes a belief system; and that by imposing it on others, they commit those very things that they profess to eliminate.
One of the great difficulties I perceive in trying to understand this is that it seems to me to be defined as a negative, or absence.
Another issue is that the term atheism lumps all non-theists into one big category, where in fact there are probably hundreds of distinct philosophies represented among atheists, many of which are probably at odds. For example, there might be hedonists, secular humanists, Objectivists; virtuous moralists, immoral opportunists, and on and on.
I try to make the most positive construction, and if it comes to a discussion of philosophy or religion, and someone declares they are an atheist, I ask, "well, what do you believe in? What is your philosophy?"
I would never mock someone for their beliefs, or non-beliefs, as it were, because my moral and social compass requires that I do not. I find it offensive when people mock my, or others' beliefs.
So, is there an increase in atheist activism? I personally do not detect a change, indeed, I don't detect atheism at all, with the rare exception of when the news carries a story related to it, like the latest law suit or court case.
<*dum-dum-dum-dum*> [Jeopardy theme song playing....]
Cheers,
Because I believe morality should not be based on crass self-interest, whether that means maximizing personal happiness or avoiding hell, but should stem from a first principal of maximizing the benefits to society. That is my first principle and assumption. So, from that perspective, I think it is axiomatic society is best off if we have one basic moral system and that is what we "should" have.
Atheists simultaneously argue that the religious should not believe in something that cannot be proved, and believe in something that cannot be proved: objective right and wrong.
No, atheists decline to believe in something that cannot be proved. They don't subscribe to a certain set of beliefs about the origin of life, etc. they simply don't believe the story about God.
Slavery was not abolished by the atheists in England and the United States.
Slavery was not promoted and perpetuated and justified by atheists either. That was Christians showing off that famous morality that can exist only with belief in God.
Oh, you mean like the jews in Egypt? Oh, wait, that was before Christ.
Slavery is as old as the hills, and a belief in God is neither an enabler, nor a necessity.
What could you possibly be thinking?
It's nice you believe that. But it is, as I pointed out above, merely personal prediliction.
Again, our Founders got it right, it's too bad that ignorant folks who wouldn't have voted for the Constitution in the first place don't understand its history and what it did. Athiests deserve an equal place in our society, full rights, and the government should not prefer religion to atheism.
Your assumption isn't quite the same as either of the ones I stated, you are assuming "If Not God then Not Objective Morality". I can't argue with your logic and I don't think anyone here is. People are questioning your assumption. You don't prove your assumption is correct by repeating it loudly and complaining about foot stomping.
Why, then do so many atheists believe in so many other things that cannot or have not been proved, like:
1. Darwinian evolution;
2. Anthropogenically caused global warming;
3. Special and general relativity;
4. String theory.
And so on. Why does an atheist believe anything at all?
What does belief mean to an atheist?
In an atheist belief system, the individual or group is in the position of God. If the belief system says the murder is right, then it is right.
By their own standards. A Satanist might argue that the artocieies and failures of Christians were the highest achievements of man.
My thing was based on something St. Anselm of Canturbury wrote back in the day. It's been commented on by lots of folks throughtout history. Don't think it holds up though.
Similarly, a local morality exists when a mugger corners you in the alley, points a gun at your head, and demands your wallet. This morality isn't universal, because the mugger, unlike God, can't hurt everyone.
This is how I understand it, anyway.
You said earlier that "the existence of God doesn't 'prove' the existence of an objective morality, because it is perfectly possible that any specific God didn't create one" so I don't think you're committed to "Objective Morality if God", only to "Not Objective Morality if not God".
But, even if your assumption, whatever it is, is valid I would suggest it doesn't have any bearing on whether atheists are any more or less moral than Christians or other theists. If atheists are correct and there is no god then by your assumption there is no objective morality, so the moral philosophies of Christians, like atheists, are mere "merely personal prediliction[s]". On the other hand if there is an objective morality it is perfectly possible an atheist has accidentally stumbled upon it while the moral philosophy of a Christian, or other theist, is merely the mistaken result of that person's personal predalictions.
The only way the argument that Christians are more moral than atheists because their views are based on an objective morality while atheists' views are not has much force is if you assume Christianity is broadly correct.
For a moral stance to be sound it has to have a sound foundation. A deterministic universe does not provide this foundation. The only universal laws are those of physics, and I fail to see how can you derive a clear moral guide from them.
Feel free to show me the flaw in my argument. My personal morality tells me that it would be wrong to hurt you if you do.
1. Darwinian evolution;
2. Anthropogenically caused global warming;
3. Special and general relativity;
4. String theory.
There is considerable evidence of items 1 through 3. Enough to accept those theories as descriptive of the observable and measurable universe. We believe them because of the evidence.
As for item 4, no-one really "believes" string theory because it has yet to produce an empirically falsifiable hypothesis. It's an interesting idea that may lead somewhere some day, but for now it's neither proved nor disproved.
but what he should ask is, 'what is an atheist willing to kill for?'
History provides few examples of howling mobs of atheists murdering people because they did not, for example, grow their beards long.
(No, I cannot cite you on the Innertubes what Reagan said about atheists being immoral, but I heard him say it.)
Cheers,
Just like the choice to believe in God.
How can a Christian argue there is something wrong with a moral system that people choose to believe in when Christians believe that God gives man the free choice to (1) believe in God or not, and (2) follow his teachings or not.
An Athiest is simply someone who does not believe in God. That's it. It's not a person who believes in nothing. Or who refuses to adopt first principles. When it comes to morality, the real issue is what's the better course: (1) I believe in God and will try to do what I'm told God says, or (2) I believe in x principle, and will try to live my life in accord with that principle and the morals that flow from it.
Other than being circular, the logic is impeccable.
Please explain why you think theism provides a sounder foundation for moral stances than atheism.
Do Jews even believe in hell? I've heard a lot of conflicting reports on their afterlife views.
Yes, but not the Christian version. Souls have to go through "hell" in order to qualify for "Paradise", which they could not appreciate without being cleansed first.
Theoretically a person who never sinned, or repented of all his sins would not require hell. In any case, the maximum time in hell is 11 months, or 12 months for a truly evil person.
As Aultimer said, you don't get punished for "believing" or "not believing" whatever those words mean. If you behave a certain way, that shows belief.
Which God? YHWH? Odin? Quetzecoatl? Dread Cthulhu? Ra?
Sticking with well known gods that have had large numbers of worshippers through the years (and avoiding the FSM): Is Loki the greatest being conceivable? And if so, what does that make Odin?
Holy Texts purporting to represent His Thoughts would be much more convincing, if, for example, they had incorporated Maxwell's Equations, the theory of gravity, the germ theory of disease, etc., rather than merely setting out a few reasonable laws while pronouncing "Abomination!" upon shellfish and silk shirts for men, and (of course!) calling for the extirpation of Unbelievers.
Well sure: moral "reasoning" consists of some degree of reasoning, atop a pillar of underlying assumptions. This is so for people of any point of view, theist or not, though theists are more explicit in embracing the arbitrary basis of their assumptions.
The problem here is the way this debate has been framed.
1. I think a lot of people confuse Atheism with Materialism. ( or I've heard it described as hard and soft Atheism ).
Materialism - the idea that all there is is particles, forces and energy is the arena where objective morality can not exist. It is just a logical extension of the assumption of no purpose to the universe.
If there is an objective morality. Than there must be "should"s and "ought"s. But the existence of "should"s and "ought"s imply at least one purpose. Namely, that the "should"s and "ought"s should be obeyed.
Now I am not saying that this is definitely the purpose, and the S+O's probably serve a greater purpose; all I am stating is the the existence of S+O's imply at least one purpose.
So materialism - which states the Universe has no purpose can not have an objective morality.
When your philosophy is unable to support an objective morality - you can not be moral according to your philosophy. i.e. if everyone in the world was a materialist then no one could be moral. However, many thinkers who do believe in a purpose have built up a common morality over the years. I have met some atheists and even materialists who do a good job, despite their beliefs, in walking according to this common morality. So IMHO atheists can be moral people, its just that they are doing it in spite of their atheism, not because of it. The fact that many of them don't realize this is a mystery to me. Many of them are intelligent, but can not see the self contradictions in their arguments. Yet they remain inconsistent to their beliefs, yet moral people.
however there can be no single set of turtles if everybody is an atheist.
Point is that any atheist that tell you about universal morality is dishonest.
To clarify where I am coming from: I don't believe there is a god, and I don't believe there is a universal morality.
Your view is a mystery to me. Atheism does not cut against my being "moral."
Does your concept of eternal salvation, work to stop you from being a moral person- because, after all, you can now commit horrible acts and still end up in heaven? No? Well, your view of atheism's interplay with morality makes just as much sense.
Atheists simply think that our moral foundations are arbitrary (though a large number of them are adaptive or serve a utilitarian purpose) and grew up from thousands of years of shared society; atheists are shareholders in that system. Theists think that our moral foundations are wholly arbitrary and come from an unseen god.
I'm an atheist and I'll take a crack at that.
As I expressed in a previous comment, I don't think that the morals that undergird the philosophies of most of the major religions were made up out of whole cloth just to keep the priests in power or because some mythical being scratched them on a piece of stone.
If you look at history from the earliest known civilizations almost to the present, they were all deist, but that is irrelevant and can be explained better as being responses to fear of the unknown. However, they all pretty much agreed on a number of things with respect to other members of your own tribe: don't lie, don't cheat, don't kill, don't steal, respect your parents and don't lust after your neighbor's wife or stuff. Most of the morals of religion flow from these proscriptions on personal behavior.
There must be some reason that, despite being separated by tens of thousands of miles and thousands of years, they all seemed to agree on similar moral principles. I would suggest it is that they worked to the benefit of all societies, for the purpose of public health, or social cohesion, or the common good. They evolved to meet society's needs.
I believe it is a mistake to think that morals revolve around a religion or a particular god, but instead were adopted over time because of their utility. Atheism is a new philosophy not that much different than religion, the main difference being there is no god. It may be that atheism will have much to contribute to society in the future, but to think that after a few generations, we now know better than the accumulated wisdom and experience of the billions who came before us about how to relate to each other is arrogant to say the least.
It might be less of a mystery to you were you to acquaint yourself with the past 100 years of so of moral philosophy.
And just out of curiosity, would you be offended if I wrote that, "I have met some Christians who do a good job, despite their beliefs, in walking according to this common morality. So IMHO Christians can be moral people, its just that they are doing it in spite of their Christianity, not because of it. The fact that many of them don't realize this is a mystery to me. Many of them are intelligent, but can not see the self contradictions in their arguments."
John,
Atheists are piggybacking on a culture built on and largely still operating under basic Judeo-Christian ethics. They are only human, after all. Most atheists feel free to reject the sexual morality of Christian ethics, but not the other morals. They are constrained by their culture. A pure atheist society really wouldn't have any "should" or "ought" practices, because there's no reason to engage in such practices unless one wants to, and one's choice isn't really any different than anyone else's because the only difference between two people is mere molecules.
That's as objective as it gets and as objective as it needs to be. Nothing eternal or transcendent about it.
Without having to aquanint myself with 100 years of philosophy, is there any universal atheist answer to the question: "why not be cruel?"
Might not be persuasive if the one inclined to killing is a psychopath. But an ordinary human being, theist or atheist, might consider the prospect persuasive.
Seriously? "The accumulated wisdom and experience of the billions who came before us" held that slavery and the subjugation of women, among many other practices and institutions we now consider abhorrent, were just and fair. You think it's "arrogant" of us to reject this "accumulated wisdom," do you?
Also, you claim to be answering my question, but you do not answer it.
Is there a universal theist answer to it?
I agree with your definition of morality, but your last statement makes no sense at all. What atheists lack is not belief in general but faith, which means belief in the absence of evidence. To see how absurd the above statement is, you could just as well argue that no atheists believe in Newton's laws of motion, because after all they lack belief.
That someone is an atheist simply tells you that he lacks a certain specific irrational belief. It leaves open the question of what he actually does believe. So among atheists, you have everyone from communists, to Objectivists (who have a highly-developed ethical belief system), to complete skeptics (who really do lack belief in anything).
There is no "universal atheist" answer to anything, because atheists have widely divergent beliefs. Similarly -- per drunkdriver's post above -- there is no universal theist answer either.
As to my own answer, CJColluci's post above would be a start.
Still waiting for an explanation of why theism provides a more secure basis for moral claims than atheism. I think Plato provided a pretty compelling argument 3,000 years ago that it does not - the Euthyphro dilemma.
There is no "objective" morality. There are no moral "facts." The concept is just fundamentally incoherent. Moral beliefs are matters of preference, not matters of fact.
The solution is to throw out the first few commandments that deal with god and have everyone hang up the rest of them, then try to live by them and inculcate them into our children.
Does anyone disagree with those commandments that tell us to respect and honor each other?
I agree.
I'll go further and posit that after thousands of years, someone suggested the existence of "God" to solve this problem.
Of course this gave rise to another problem: different groups of people had different ideas about what "God" said, and while most groups of people agreed on the REALLY big things, they disagreed about the merely big things and disagreed vehemently about the little things.
So we have widespread agreement, over thousands of years and among billions of people that murder, incest, and theft are wrong. We have less agreement over other moral principles.
Worse, without a common belief in "God" we have no peaceful way to resolve differences about those principles, so the relatively few increasingly seek the coercive power of Federal government to enforce conformity on an entire country.
I believe this is the moral justification of libertarianism. Since large enough groups of people will never agree about everything, they should be free to organize themselves into smaller like-minded groups, with each group enforcing its own shared understanding of right and wrong.
There may very well be no way to change your mind on this subject, but I shall try once more. The Constitution establishes individual rights through limitations placed on government action. In your Decalogue example, the Atheist children and the Christian children each have the individual right to observe or not observe ,individually, their spirituality.
The STATE has no right under any circumstances to command that any child be subjected to religion through the posting of the Decalogue in a STATE established, funded and operated facility.
If the parents of children desire their offspring to know the Decalogue, that is their right in a free society to do so, and outside the classroom. The STATE is stopped from engaging in proselytizing children by the Establishment Clause. The Free Exercise Clause does not apply here because it is the STATE, not an individual, who is being stopped from proselytizing by wishing to post the Decalogue.
The problem with your viewpoint Prof. S., is that there is no infringement on the expression of religiosity when the STATE is stopped from mandating religiosity.
I didn't mean "universal" to imply that it must be a basic point agreed upon by all, just that it should be an argument that covers all humans (ie: why all humans shouldn't be cruel, irrespective of their particular materialist situation).
If CJColluci's point is IT, then that's pretty thin gruel. The only argument I see towards being an atheist are: 1) the universe seems to run fine without God, or (2) life sucks.
Sometimes I wonder if most atheists are really atheists. I think a lot of so-called atheists are just people who want to be their own boss. But when death comes knocking at the door, I bet many of you crack and pray for assistance. There are no atheists in foxholes, or, I would add, hospitals.
We're social creatures, and "morality" is a social construct that many of us agree on. We may now apply Occam's razor and call it a day without positing the existence of an invisible all-pervasive all-knowing sky-referee.
Moral beliefs are matters of preference, not matters of fact.
Really? Are you sure you want to admit that? There's a bunch of people in this thread who think that atheism can create a morality.
I would agree with you, that under atheism moral beliefs ARE a matter of preference. In a religious/metaphysical/mystical belief system, however, moral beliefs are not preferences but appeals to another, higher power.
Put another way: consider the difference between disbelief and non-belief.
It's a subtle, but I think important, point.
Heh. This is a summary of CJColucci's post:
I am a primate...I am predisposed to... I don't pretend to understand... I prefer living... I don't pretend to understand... I understand all too well [sexual pleasure]... Certain behaviors... improve the odds that my I will live rather than die... The details are negotiable... we kill him. Nothing eternal or transcendent about it.
If that's a thread winner, then it's pretty revealing. How this is supposed to convince anyone that atheists can be moral is beyond me. The only thing holding you back from murder are "negotiable details" and "certain behaviors improving your odds." Sheesh.
I'll stick with the sky-fairy that says all men are made in his image and should be loved.
Rand addresses head-on the "Is-Ought gap," which is the claim that morality cannot be derived from facts. Interestingly, this is a claim that many theists and atheists agree on, as evidenced by the comments here. The theists say, "Without religion, morality is impossible, so I choose to believe in God." The atheistic skeptics say, "I agree with the first point, but there is no God, so morality is subjective." In fact, both are wrong.
There are several works by Rand scholars that elaborate on this point. E.g., see Tara Smith's book "Viable Values" and Craig Biddle's book "Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It".
Really? Are you sure you want to admit that?
Yes, I'm sure.
In a religious/metaphysical/mystical belief system, however, moral beliefs are not preferences but appeals to another, higher power.
How is that not also a matter of preference? How do you decide which "higher power" to believe in? How do you decide what the moral teachings of that "higher power" are? How do you decide whether to accept or reject those teachings? If the answers to these questions are matters of fact rather than matters of preference, explain how you think we may discover these facts.
Well that and the little thing about not actually being able to prove His existence. It's this faith vs. reason thing that's the catch, see?
After all, the vast majority of people of all religious stripes end up following those rules, even when their religion would suggest doing otherwise. How many Christians really turn the other cheek, or give a thief twice what he asks for? Where are the sanctuary cities for those who committed involuntary manslaughter as prescribed by Leviticus?
One can take from nature that the ultimate good is the continuation of the species; after all, that's the goal of every other species on this planet. From that goal can come the same ethical precepts that religion provides -- honesty, faithfulness, self-restraint, charity. The fact that atheistic societies lapse from this ideal is simply a fact of human existence, just as religious societies lapse. Further complicating the issues is that many societies merely pay lip service to their religious affiliation. (Half the population of England did not attend church in 1850.)
Note: I'm Christian, but I don't have much of a dog in this fight. Something to do with a (thankfully unenforced) law making the killing of members of my denomination legal in my state for about 140 years.
Arguments like these really only bolster the atheists' belief that he is right.
I would agree with you, that under atheism moral beliefs ARE a matter of preference. In a religious/metaphysical/mystical belief system, however, moral beliefs are not preferences but appeals to another, higher power.
I haven't noticed someone contending that "atheism can create a morality." How could the lack of belief in a god "create" a "morality?"
As for whether your moral beliefs are not really a matter of your preferences, I simply think you are kidding yourself when you claim they're not.
Dangermouse, you don't get it. Most atheists aren't interested in making you or others like you into atheists. They are not interested in persuading you of the correctness of their beliefs. All of us believe some stupid shit or other, and most of us are happy to let other people keep their delusions if other people don't mess with ours. Maybe they think you're fools, maybe not, but most of the time there's no reason to get into it.
But they don't want to put up with being treated like moral lepers because they have a different view on the God question than you do. My vicious dog bites when kicked.
LOL. Whereas Christians marry one and only one heterosexual partner, refrain from sex before marriage, never wander from their partner during marriage, and don't use birth control. If you limit your definition of Christianity to those who accept and practice this version of morality, then Christianity turns out to be a pretty small part of the U.S. population. The typical atheists's approach to sexuality is not all that much more liberal than the typical Christian's in theory or in practice.
But the bottom line is that the claim that theism rests on better ground in terms of either ontology or morality is purely illusionary.
No theologian can adequately explain why, say, rape is wrong in any more or less arbitrary manner than any secular philosophical view. "God says it displeases him" is no better grounds for morality than "it just is wrong."
And no theological account for the creation of the universe can actually explain how it was created any better than scientific accounts (indeed, at least scientific accounts, while limited and perhaps always incomplete, have a great deal of depth and plenty of answers to parts of the question). Saying than an unknowable being did it in an unfathomable manner is pretty much EXACTLY like saying "I don't know how it happened."
Oh, for crying out loud.
I never said that all societies did everything right did I? I also said that these rules evolved in respect to how you treat members of your own tribe, and most societies didn't enslave their own. Are you accusing me of being for slavery, because I think that all the religious societies of the past actually got a lot of other things right (which I specifically named as all of the ten commandments that don't deal with god)?
Both atheists and theists are so caught up with proving the other wrong or evil instead of trying to find the very broad areas of agreement. Do you agree that it is good to respect your parents, not lie, cheat, steal or kill, and don't lust after others? Are those not sound universal values even in our more enlightened age?
Or would you, as an atheist, think that those are all bad because the religious folk don't like SSM, or some awful people used their gods as an excuse to do some horrible stuff? I'm actually saying the same things you are, that certain morals that we can probably all agree on are good for society, but you are using logic to arrive at them, whereas all I'm saying is that societal evolution arrived at most of the same conclusions a long time ago.
Geez, that's the common ground I was trying to get at, not force you to accept that slavery was good, or that gays should be beheaded. I'll leave that part up to the one religion that hates both kinds of non-believers.
When they get here, it would be better if we stopped bitch-slapping either other, no?
And as I've just implied in my last comment, we'd better be a lot more united despite our differences than we are now because they'll soon be here too, and they don't like any of us.
Does theism tell you "not to be cruel" in all circumstances? What about how we treat Gitmo detainees?
The point is, theist or not, moral beliefs at high levels of abstraction, like "don't be cruel" depend in part on the circumstances. Some atheists might be utilitarians, but even then there are debates over what the real utility and/or costs of certain acts are. And of course, not all theists come to the same conclusions about what acts are "moral" given the same facts -- and often, facts are contested.
I'm sorry you find Colluci's post unconvincing -- I think he gets at it quite well for a short blog post. Of course, there are more carefully worked out arguments -- in books and articles -- of humanist, pragmatist, utilitarian, and/or other moral philosophy.
You claimed that it is "arrogant" of us to reject "the accumulated wisdom and experience of the billions who came before us."
Slavery and the subjugation of women are examples of that alleged "wisdom." That tells me there is something very wrong with your claim.
Do you agree that it is good to respect your parents, not lie, cheat, steal or kill, and don't lust after others?
Not sure about the "lust" thing, but in general, yes, I accept those moral principles. But not because of any "accumulated wisdom of the ages" nonsense.
You guys made quick statements, you did not address any issues though.
To make it more concrete, let's consider one isue...
Most atheists I know are currently for same sex marriage.
This is a truly radical departure from the past. For "..thousands of years..", marriage has been restricted to opposite sex.
So how can you say "...Atheists simply think that our moral foundations are arbitrary (though a large number of them are adaptive or serve a utilitarian purpose) and grew up from thousands of years of shared society; atheists are shareholders in that system..."
According to your statement, you trust the current morality, because it has been built up from "...thousands of years of shared society.."
But the way same sex marriage is debated by most atheists I know, does not indicate that they are humbly taking this radical departure form the "thousands of years" of precedence based on the slim chance that they are right.
No they call the Christian who holds the position of only allowing same-sex marriage as bigoted, ignorant, etc.
Some atheists do think carefully about moral issues. I think however, that most do not have any idea where the personal proclivities come from and just march along like sheep to the drum call of post modernism.
Moderate religious people have decided our fate for centuries, and while things aren't perfect between them and atheists in terms of mutual tolerance (they still won't vote for us even when we almost always vote for them), I'd take progressive Jews, Catholics, and Protestants over virtually anyone else to protect my religious freedoms any day of the week.
I'm free to choose to believe or not, but if there is any truth to mysticism at all, then that Truth is there whether I admit it or not. That is, the reality of mysticism doesn't depend on whether a person accepts it or not.
way to misrepresent our views. As it happens, I do support same-sex marriage.
But your post just sounds like somebody feeling sorry for himself.
Marriage has changed far far more over human history than gay marriage will change it. Truly traditional marriage was all about using women as bargaining chips for family allegiances. The idea of romantic marriage is itself incredibly new, and gay marriage really doesn't alter the functional setup of partnershipping much at all.
Of COURSE it's better grounds for morality to say something displeases God than to merely assert something. At the minimum, you can ask WHY something would displease God, and maybe get a response based on the particularities of that brand of mysticism. But there's no follow-up to "it just is."
And just what is a universal theist moral? A priest, an imam, and a rabbi can sit down and perhaps agree that murder is bad, but then get all mired down in just what is murder, versus justifiable self defense, or justifiable killing in the name of the religion...
But in that case, it would also be so that things are right and wrong whether or not there is a God.
Plato got it right from the start. A big man, no matter how big, no matter how authoritative, cannot "determine" or be relevant to morality. The very idea robs morality of all its meaning.
FYI: According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, 43% of Catholics and 81% of Jews support same sex marriage and 68% of Catholics and 93% of Jews support civil unions. Protestants are less supportive of gay rights. There is no information on atheists as a separate group. So, your concern that atheist supporters of gay rights don't respect tradition because of their atheism is misplaced. Catholics and Jews, by your account, are also trampling on thousands of years of history despite their faith.
Which still takes you nowhere. Nothing about the existence or non-existence of God, let alone the opinions or commands of God, can be relevant to morality without robbing morality of its whole meaning. You always end up coming back to commands which themselves have no moral meaning or relevance.
At least most atheist moralities actually involve some sort of VALUE for something directly related to the person in question. Rape being wrong because it causes trauma to a person, and we care about our fellow people, is a lot more basic than elaborate constructions that have to trace back arbitrary ramblings of God's various Biblical obsessions, few of which seem to have anything to do with actually CARING about the person potentially hurt.
Neither could ultimately be defended logically to a sociopath: both rely on some basic value there to begin with. But at least normal morality seems to actually be founded on some concern for fellow human beings as opposed to some elaborate symbolic game.
No, that's impossible for a materialist. Listen to what Colluci is saying. He said the details are negotiable. For Colluci, if circumstances depend on it, WE KILL HIM, because "Certain behaviors... improve the odds that my I will live rather than die... The details are negotiable."
So much for right meaning right and wrong meaning wrong.
Sounds more like replacing non-reason with yet more non-reason to me.
1. No, they didn't.
2. No, it doesn't.
I would say that you always end up coming back to commands which, by definition, ARE the moral meaning. Rougly speaking, you always come to a point where you reach the "I AM." God, by his very existence, is the reality of morality, because God, as the author of creation, is the author of life and hence the rules that go along with it.
At least most atheist moralities actually involve some sort of VALUE for something directly related to the person in question. Rape being wrong because it causes trauma to a person, and we care about our fellow people, is a lot more basic than elaborate constructions that have to trace back arbitrary ramblings of God's various Biblical obsessions, few of which seem to have anything to do with actually CARING about the person potentially hurt.
You have a pretty deluded view of "God's various Biblical obsessions" if you think that it doesn't involve caring about hurt people. But notwithstanding that prejudice, your argument fails because it asserts a conclusion: that "atheist moralities" are better because it values a mass of molecules called a person, when the very question we're asking is whether it's even possible to value those molecules without reference to a higher power.
Well, I don't know about any general answer, but pretty much 100% of atheists would say, don't be cruel because somebody will/will not, eg, cut his hair because the Big Spook says cut/don't cut.
That's an improvement over the theist view on cruelty, in my mind.
You address me, but none of the quotes in your post were mine. Beyond that, I agree with Bad's responses to you (and also those of drunkdriver and Hovsep Joseph).
Allow me to synthesize some of what I see here:
1) To be 'an atheist' means that one does not espouse a belief in any deity [or number thereof]; that's all it means.
2) Atheists, therefore, are not all materialsists, nor all determinists (certainly, we atheistic ethicists are not determinists), not even all non-religious (Buddhists, for example).
3) The positing of a deity in order to ground morality is about as ad hoc a move as one could make;
4) Among non-theistic grounds for objective morality are (a) the human condition/nature - CJColucci's suggestion is but one variant of this, Aristotelianism is another; (b) reason/rational principles accessible by all. Some would note social progress as a separate approach, but I'm inclined to categorize it under the (a) group.
5) Atheists in the U.S. have started to feel a bit under siege (see here: ).
6) Some aggressive atheists have been ridiculing religious faith, just as some aggressive theists have been condemning those who do not have such faith or saying absurd things such as that the children of atheists will end up as tatooed drug-addicts [or whatever].
7) We would all be better off if we really did just 'live and let live,' and I, for one, woould include not intruding on others' privacy [coming to my house, leaving pamphlets under my door, stoping me on the street to ask me about my relationship with Jesus] as a helpful move in that direction.
I still don't understand how OBJECTIVE MORALITY can be derived from CJColluci's suggestion, when his entire point was that DEPENDING ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES, WE CAN KILL YOU. It seems very non-objective to me.
Under all theisms that I am aware of, it can be moral to kill in some circumstances.
Of COURSE it's better grounds for morality to say something displeases God than to merely assert something.
No, it isn't. How do you know there's a God? How do you know what things displease God? How do you know that what displeases God is immoral? You don't know any of these things. You simply choose to believe them as a matter of your religious faith. Your claims about right and wrong are no less arbitrary and subjective than anyone else's. Which is to say they are expressions of your preferences.
So much for right meaning right and wrong meaning wrong."
First of all, Colluci is simply stating one of many possible moral views: nothing about his opinions make it THE atheist view on morality. Atheists are not a coherent group: we are simply those people who are NOT part of another group (i.e. theists), who themselves cannot agree on morality in any case. So there's no merit in trying to pretend that any non-believer is answerable to the opinion of any other non-believer (that's slightly MORE stupid than trying to hold a Christian accountable for Hindu morality). We're all arguing on our own behalf.
Second of all, if you appeal to mysticism, then you've already conceded that things can simply "be" right and wrong, which makes the existence of God irrelevant to moral questions. You've sunk your own battleship, dear.
As CJColucci already pointed out, this claim is nonsense.
But they aren't. They only have moral meaning if you arbitrarily decide that they do. This is the step that theists conveniently forget about. You first must DECIDE that God's commands are a standard for moral truth before you can then use them as a guide to it. And that decision itself is either a moral judgment of your own (which then makes God unnecessary) or is arbitrary (in which case you've conceded the whole argument).
"God, by his very existence, is the reality of morality, because God, as the author of creation, is the author of life and hence the rules that go along with it."
But that, unfortunately, doesn't actually mean anything. The master of existence can certainly set the rules and consequences for breaking those rules all it wants. But none of that makes things right or wrong. Right and wrong exist and function only if they are fundamental universals: the very meaning of which being that NO ONE, not even God, can "set" what they are. Once a being gets to determine them, they are no longer universals, and the jig is up.
In other words, rape is wrong no matter how loud God yells that it's okay. Mere power alone cannot make rape right, even if it's infinite power. That's what "wrong" MEANS, after all.
"You have a pretty deluded view of "God's various Biblical obsessions" if you think that it doesn't involve caring about hurt people."
Really? Because God doesn't seem to care, at all, ever, in the Bible if women are raped, in terms of their own trauma. What God cares about are various superstitious and magical circumstances under which rape is either "clean" or "unclean" which seem to speak more to bizarre OCD obsessions than they do to genuine concern about anyone.
"But notwithstanding that prejudice, your argument fails because it asserts a conclusion: that "atheist moralities" are better because it values a mass of molecules called a person, when the very question we're asking is whether it's even possible to value those molecules without reference to a higher power."
Of course it is. A "mass of molecules" is in not any sort of contradiction with the recognition that we're dealing with a feeling being like ourselves. We can be both a mass of molecules AND a being made of molecules who happen to be arranged such that we have subjective feelings and hurts and values and so on. And, yes, ultimately the "value" is an arbitrary function related to our natures. But at least that's far more direct and directly concerned with other people's feelings and values than some elaborate game about how God doesn't want nasty pig's blood all over his puzzle pieces because he finds it disgusting.
They "are" right because "HE IS" (exists). That's what I'm saying. They're one and the same.
It is an impossibility to say that something can "be" without reference to the Creator.
"But they aren't. They only have moral meaning if you arbitrarily decide that they do. This is the step that theists conveniently forget about. You first must DECIDE that God's commands are a standard for moral truth before you can then use them as a guide to it. And that decision itself is either a moral judgment of your own (which then makes God unnecessary) or is arbitrary (in which case you've conceded the whole argument)."
But this is an entirely wrong statement. I don't arbitrarily decide that God's commands are a standard. I decide based on logic and observation. It is logical to trust the person who can demonstrate he is worthy of my trust. This is not arbitrary.
1. The Jews followed Moses because of the miracles he showed them.
2. Christians follow Christ because he rose from the dead.
Now you may disbelieve these things. You may think that Moses never saw the burning bush, never stood before Pharaoh, and never parted the Red Sea. You may believe that Christ never existed, or never was crucified, or never rose from the dead. But you are deciding your belief on these issues and then making a decision of whether or not they have authority.
This is not an arbitrary decision. I do not think you know what "arbitrary" means.
One more comment Bad - I would like to know your age. You sound very young. If you don't mind please, How old are you?
I'm a most-Sundays-in-church theist and I'll take CJColluci's logic and trust his/her care of me and mine over yours.
I used to think that unthinking faith results from folks being bad at math (because infinity and plain large numbers seem to boggle many minds into *miracle happens" = x ) but this thread has convinced me that unthinking faith results from folks being bad at philosophy.
This is an incredibly ignorant statement and neglects all of history.
I think, therefore I am. See, I just said how something could "be" without referencing a creator.
Beyond that, what Bad said.
I see. You seem to think that we're talking about a specific set or rules, instead of something more primative and primeval. That also explains your petty reference to Biblical obsessions.
What I'm saying is that the Creator, by the very fact he created anything at all, has authored morality, because in doing so he declared that existence is better than nonexistence (life better than death).
Atheists can't even get that far. To them, the very universe is nothing more than materialistic randomness and means nothing. The fact of existence has no meaning at all. Sure, Ayn Rand and other atheists can like existence insofar as they find it pleasing, but such molecular processes providing chemical stimula to other molecules in a person's brain happen don't automatically create morals. It's just molecules to them. What's the point?
Thinking is just another chemical reaction to an atheist. To get to anything positing an "I am," you need faith. Faith in your 5 senses, and faith in something called "logic." Otherwise, you don't exist.
Sorry, that's the link.
Thinking is just another chemical reaction to an atheist. To get to anything positing an "I am," you need faith. Faith in your 5 senses, and faith in something called "logic." Otherwise, you don't exist.
Your claim was that I had to reference a creator. I didn't. You then argued that I was still relying on "faith" in my senses or "faith" in logic. While I don't agree that you are using "faith" in a meaningful way there, even assuming you are, it still doesn't reference a creator. Unless you think "my five senses" and "logic" = "a creator."
My point was that you're not really creating. "I think, therefore I am" isn't an act of pure creation, because it rests on the faith of your senses anf faith of your logic. It rests, ultimately, on you believing that molecules in your brain having a chemical interaction has any value at all.
Get your own molecules. Get your own dirt.
So what is the difference between the theistic primate and the non-theistic primate? Apparently, the difference is why they think what they think about when it is appropriate to kill other primates, even if they ultimately come to the same practical conclusions.
To be sure, the belief that some Big Guy In The Sky doesn't want you to kill other primates, except as otherwise provided in sub-part whatever, and that He will make you suffer if you don't do what He says is a good, solid practical reason not to kill other primates. As a good, solid practical reason, however, it is no different from refraining from killing other primates because the cops will put you in the slammer or the dead primate's relatives and friends will hunt you down and kill you. (Except, of course, that all of us have actually seen the latter two happen, and only some of us believe that the first does.)
Furthermore, although that's a good, solid practical reason, it is not what most of us would consider a moral reason. So posit a moral God, rather than a pumped-up Tony Soprano. He tells us to do X or refrain from Y. Does He tell us to do X or not do Y because doing X is right and doing Y is wrong, and God, being God, knows this, or are doing X right and doing Y wrong just because He says so? If the former, then God's command is morally irrelevant. X is just right and Y is just wrong. Now, God is smarter than we are and maybe we wouldn't be able to figure out for ourselves that X is right and Y is wrong, so God's command may actually add value. But most of us, limited as we are, can figure out for ourselves a fair amount of what we accept as morality. Maybe we need God to get us over some of the details, maybe not, but that's for the tricky details, not the big basics. If, on the other hand, you take the "just because He says so" view, we're really just back to a pumped-up Tony Soprano who will make us pay if we don't do what He wants.
Now, if the only thing keeping DangerMouse from robbing, raping, and killing is his belief that Some Big Guy In The Sky disapproves, then the very last thing I or anyone else would want to do is convince him that The Big Guy In The Sky doesn't exist. But that makes me worry. I go serenely about life among people who, I am convinced, are unlikely to rob, rape, or kill me because of our common human nature, with a big assist from law enforcement. The occasional sociopath is a risk, of course, but that's why we have cops. I can be pretty confident about that. But if enough people out there really think that without a God there is no reason not to rob, rape, or kill, then we're in trouble, because you never know when they'll change their minds about a tricky empirical question and then go off on a rampage.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."
Atheists are not citizens. Thanks a lot George. Apparently, believing in an invisible magic sky-fairy is a requirement to vote.
Speaking as an atheist- there is no proof for that statement by Bush other than Sherman. I find it odd that a statement on such an incendiary topic, allegedly made at a news conference with many reporters present, has never been confirmed in print or on tape by any other source. I suspect Bush either didn't say that, or said something far less inflammatory than Sherman recalled it.
"Dangermouse, you don't get it. Most atheists aren't interested in making you or others like you into atheists. They are not interested in persuading you of the correctness of their beliefs. All of us believe some stupid shit or other, and most of us are happy to let other people keep their delusions if other people don't mess with ours. Maybe they think you're fools, maybe not, but most of the time there's no reason to get into it."
This is another statement which is simply not true. It is true that atheists are not united in making me want to be an atheist - however, they do want me to drop my beliefs and publicly support their societal positions.
Atheists who want to believe its okay to kill children that are still in the womb want me to drop my commitment to pro-life. And actually trample on the constitution finding rights which do not exist so they can enforce their view on all states.
Atheists who want same sex marriage to be allowed want me to drop my objection to same sex marriage.
Atheists who want sex outside of marriage to be treated as normal behavior want me to drop my commitment to advocating abstinence education.
Atheists who want me to drop my views about the difference between the sexes what to push the equal rights amendment upon us.
In all these cases, I realize that there these liberal viewpoints are not pushed from a basis of atheism, but I find that people who are atheists are much more likely to have the viewpoints - and to advocate for them.
What the prevailing moral philosophy of the society as a whole is matters to me and I know it also matters to you. You may say you do not care what I think but that is a lie. You are not merely reacting you are advocating.
"...the time there's no reason to get into it.." are the issues that are not important and not worth fighting for. You don't come to this board to discuss these issues and neither do I. We advocate because we believe that society will be better if more people adopt our positions. I find this appeal to "we will not kick you, but we will bite back..." to be not truthful. I don't think you really live that way, and I don't think you are being honest with yourself.
After these comments I figured out he didn't know what was meant by the term "leap of faith" and how that contrasts from forming conclusions and hyposthesis from evidence (e.g. the evidence of your own senses). No credible Christian theologian would make such crazy statements.
He's a parody. It goes to 11.
Interestingly, Jews are much more likely to have liberal viewpoints too. What do you conclude from that?
Or, to use the philosophers' saw, "Is the Good good because God loves it, or does God love it because it's the Good?" If the answer takes the first line, then we have voluntarism and no rational basis for moral objectivity at all - just a wild hope that 'god' chooses in some way that won't destroy us. If the response takes the second line, then the Good and the Right are objective standards independent of any god or gods, and no such beings are required for an objective ground to morality.
As to Tough Guy gods: I have never understood why anyone believes that compliance out of fear is morally meaningful. I might well comply with the gunman who demands my purse, but neither his conduct nor mine is 'moral.'
If those are your complaints it seems you have more of a problem with a democratic republic than with atheists. Perhaps a theocratic state would be more to your liking?
You are confusing Jewish - the ethnicity - with Jewish the religion. Otrhodox Jews tend to be more conservative.
Many of the Jews who are liberal have actually replaced their Judaism by the religion of Liberalism.
Atheists believe in lots of things. They just don't believe in God.
You are confusing Orthodox Jews solely with Judaism, generally. Jews are liberals, as a group. So are Unitarians, for that matter.
But again, this is irrelevant. Various groups are not illegitimate, less worthy, or less moral because they disagree with your right-wing political positions.
No I am happy to live in a representative democracy. I accept the viewpoint of the majority - that is why I spend time trying to convince people to drop their ( IMO ) wrong viewpoints. But I do that through open debate and the ballot box.
This is typical of liberal positions. You claim that the Christian would prefer a Theocracy. No, it is liberals who push their ideas through the courts. The courts are used by the liberals to get their ideas into law without going through the messy job of winning the debate in the Legislature. Look at how same sex marriage has been approved. In all cases so far it has been court-ordered over the will of the people.
I don't want a theocracy - but most liberals want to impose their views on the society through the courts.
This statement is false.
They posit a reality - and then put a god inside of it who decides what is right and what is wrong. They see their god as subservient to reality. They then make ( in their opinion ) logical statements to render god irrelevant.
Congratulations for following a faulty premise to its faulty conclusion.
All they have demonstrated is the importance that if there is a God he must be Creator. This has been well understood for ages. God as creator not only decides what is right and wrong, He is the basis for it. Reality is subservient to Him, not the other way around.
I am not aware of any place in the U.S. that same-sex marriage has been voted in by the legislature without it being ordered by the court, my friend says Vermont was by the legislature alone. If it was, I stand corrected.
New Hampshire just passed a bill in both chambers legalizing SSM, so unless it is vetoed it will become law. The legislature passed a SSM legalization bill in California a few years ago, but the governor vetoed it because...he thought it should be decided by the courts.
This sounds like typical gobbledly-gook from a "self-esteem" minded individual. I never said any group was "less worthy" for holding a certain position. I just disagree with them and think that their morality does not lead to a better society. They have their opinion and I have mine. I am not trying to strip their dignity from them, I am trying to get them to clarify their thinking and in that exercise of achieving clarity of thought, maybe, I will convince some to come to my position. Worrying about who is "less worthy" ( whatever that means ) just confuses the issue with emotion.
First, thank you Peter for the response.
There is no logical proof for or against God and never will be. God is just too nebulously defined to be nailed down; if all I say is "God is love" or "the universe" then sure, God exists, but not in any meaningful way. The most an honest atheist can say is that there is no God that we yet know of. Whether he goes on living as it there isn't at all or he keeps the light on waiting for him is up to the individual.
The claim that objective morality depends on the existence of God assumes that God himself is (would be) objective. What reason, other than by definition, do we have to believe that? The whole argument hangs up on the horns of Euthyphro anyway...
Cosmological arguments contradict themselves immediately by stating that nothing can exist without a cause but nothing caused God. If I'm allowed one uncaused thing, why not the universe?
Most of the arguments I've seen here anyway are based on desire, namely:
1) It would be really nice if the world worked a certain way.
2) God is necessary for that to be true.
Conclusion: God exists.
Wishing hasn't made me a billionaire; neither has it conjured a deity for me. It just may be that there is no objective morality and we have to deal with it. I don't necessarily like it, but nobody promised to please me.
Depends which god we're talking about. Inti? Quetzalcoatl? Shiva? Tūmatauenga? Not sure what kind of morality you'd get out of Zeus-worship.
Of course if the God in question is YHWH, God definitely isn't providing a basis of morality. See, e.g., Numbers 31:15-18 (Moses commands the slaughter of the women and children of Midan, except the virgin women, who are to be raped instead); Joshua 6-12 (genocide of the Canaanites); Judges 11:29-40 (God grants Jephthah victory in battle in exchange for sacrificing his daughter as a burnt offering); Revelation 9:1-5 (God tortures everyone in the world for five months except for the 144,000 Jews lucky enough to receive the seal of the Lord back in book 7). There's lots more stuff along the same lines.
Hanging the 10 Commandments isn't an endorsement of "religion," it's an endorsement of the Abrahamic religions. And not even all of them, since you have to pick some way of counting them and summarizing them and the different religions and denominations do it differently. Conversely, if they posted the Four Noble Truths it would be an endorsement of Buddhism; if they posted a sign that said "Religion is false and bad" it would be an endorsement of non-religion. Not posting anything is neutral between all religions, and between religion and non-religion
John:
This has the appearance of a syntactically correct string of English sentences, but I'll be damned if I can assign a meaning to it. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, and all that. Try again.
How did God "establish" morality. He just did. It was magic! Or, it's fundamental to the whole process of universe creation, which I know because I've created several in my backyard!
No wonder theology isn't considered to be a serious philosophical discipline in most places anymore.
"John Hansen (mail): All they have demonstrated is the importance that if there is a God he must be Creator. This has been well understood for ages. God as creator not only decides what is right and wrong, He is the basis for it. Reality is subservient to Him, not the other way around."
I was never a fan of logical positivists, but they at least had a decent point when they demanded that purported explanations, you know, actually EXPLAIN something. How is something "the basis" for right and wrong? How does that work? What are the particulars, the possible variations?
But then, I think we both know that you don't have any idea what you mean by what you just claimed other than "God is super fundamental awesome and morality must be all about whatever God is because then I'd have to admit that God is secondary to some other concern and that would violate my super-awesome premise." There's no coherent claim there, and no way to establish the claim even if it were true. How many realities have you founded? Why do you think you have any basis to talk about what's required or involved in such a thing, if such a thing even makes sense in the first place?
Of course it is. First of all, the question of trust doesn't even make any sense here. It isn't a question of trust, it's a question of whether something is wrong, and why. God asking you to trust him or not isn't an answer to the question of what OR why.
And second of all, the very concept of trust is nonsense in the situation of being like God. A being that has power over anything can fool you on a universal scale: God could set up the entire universe all to be an elaborate ruse to dupe you, and it would be as utterly effortless to him as any other random motive he might have.
Demonstrations of being worth someones trust are things that are only possible with beings that have known and limited capacities fairly similar to your own. For any being even mildly more powerful than you are yourself, tricking you completely on the scale even of your entire life and every experience in it would be child's play. Imagine that Satan is nowhere near as powerful as God: he'd still be powerful enough to alter your mind such that you believe anything at all he wants you to believe, including that whatever experience he's giving you is so awesome and loving and intense that it could only possibly be God giving it to you.
In the end, you need to decide whether rape is right or not. THEN you cad decide whether a God that asks people to rape is asking a good thing or a bad thing. Heck, how can a statement like "God is good" have ANY meaning at all if "good" turns out to mean nothing more than "whatever God commands at the time."? It doesn't make any sense.
"But you are deciding your belief on these issues and then making a decision of whether or not they have authority."
None of these stories, even if true, have anything to do with morality. Whether or not Moses saw a burning bush does not make stealing wrong or right. Hell, I could set a bush on fire and make an ignorant nomad think it was a miracle. Does that mean that I get to magically make Tuesday the day of rest? Could Christ dying and coming back to life make rape a sacrament? If not, then what the heck is the point of citing these things, utterly regardless of whether they really happened or not?
Of course, if you think they could have happened, then apparently all any god needs to do is something really awesome and suddenly we can trust their moral judgment. Like Zeus turning into a swan and deflowering virgins. What a guy!
"One more comment Bad - I would like to know your age. You sound very young. If you don't mind please, How old are you?"
I'm 31. But, actually, I don't think I do sound young to you. The very fact that you think you are going to learn pertinent information about from my age alone is pretty silly.
I don't buy this premise about requiring foundations. But if it is true, a god cannot provide a solid foundation either. How do you show that this being's commands establish morality? What if it is instead an evil god whose commands are the opposite of morality? What if its commands are irrelevant to morality?
This isn't just an abstract point: assuming that the Abrahamic god really does exist and that it really did create the Bible, what is it that establishes that its commands and edicts are moral rather than immoral? Why was genocide OK when Joshua did it, but a moral atrocity when someone does the same thing today?
You cannot get around this problem. Somehow you must establish that what God is commanding is moral rather than immoral, which puts you back in the same position as the atheist.
Also, this "deterministic universe" stuff is about eighty years out of date.
Please tell if this is right. EVERY atheist I know has come from two backgrounds: 1) an undisciplined family headed by either a distressed single parent or a pair of baby boomers who were never very religious to begin with, or 2) a Catholic who had (likely) a legitimately horrible experience as a youth. Does anyone else have a similar perception or am I living in a bubble.
The problem is that once someone leaves the Church, they often leave the company of committed Christians. Once someone leaves a functional community like this, then his or her life often turns to darkness. Not always of course but often enough.
It is really hard to be cynical about Christianity when you are part of a vibrant Church focused on a service mission. My 13 year old is about to spend 10 days in Africa helping a poor village build a school and dig a well. I am not trying to puff him up to be an exception as there are many fine secular agencies that do noble work, but to do the Lord's work in a poor 3rd world village sure beats cutting a check to UNICEF.
I have only two points to add here: 1) as others have said, it is REALLY hard for a group of people to stay united and pass down their beliefs when all they have in common is absence of belief in something; and 2) I find the very common view that Christians are a bunch of morons who worship the invisible man in the sky to be - at best - extremely patronizing.
We Christians generally are exposed to the secular world alot more than the converse. My friends on the Upper West Side think we are as exotic as a tribe of Inuits.
The whole point you were making is that folks who don't believe in some god can't have what you obviously feel is a superior form of morality. You've been shown repeatedly why your reasoning doesn't stand up to any serious form of scrutiny. Thus, you are left merely tossing out insults. Which, actually, is where you began.
If there is a Creator than their view of morality IS morality within their creation. That's why theism provides a basis for universal morals.
A lot of posters are getting very hung up on specific aspects of specific religions...but that reveals ignorance of the link between general theism and objective morality.
What you don't seem to appreciate is that once you've gone down this route, you've given away any meaning to the word "morals." All you're left with are commands which have no moral content in and of themselves.
If your hypothetical Creator orders people to commit genocide, and you refuse, we can say that you disobeyed a command, or even that this being will punish you severely. But there's no sense in which you've justified the claim that you've done something immoral or that the punishment is just. To do that you'd have to first accept the premise that what that being commands is de facto moral: but that premise is just as arbitrary as any other premise in moral philosophy.
And nothing about them is "universal" in the sense relevant to morality. That's just a form of the equivocation fallacy: switching one meaning of the word universal to another mid-argument and trying to use one to justify the other when they aren't the same thing.
This sort of misses the point though. I'm not an atheist because I dislike Christians or think that they are bad people. Most Christians I know are very nice people, and I used to be a Christian and never had a bad experience within a church.
I just don't believe what they believe: the actual metaphysical claims they make. I'm happy to do all sorts of things with them, and we share all sorts of common interests. I just don't believe what they believe. I'm not sure what else to say about it. Talking about all the nice things they do seems to miss the point entirely. I do a lot of nice things too. And that's great.
"it is REALLY hard for a group of people to stay united and pass down their beliefs when all they have in common is absence of belief in something"
This too sort of misses the point. Atheists qua atheists aren't generally interested in "passing down" anything in terms of atheism. We all have our own specific cultures and values and concerns that put us in other actual groups (ones that generally have nothing to do with atheism per se) and THOSE are the things we will pass down.
The only reason atheists unite as atheists is because we tend to face the same situation in a highly religious society and thus tend to have some common interests in working together (and in many of those causes, there are plenty of religious people who happen to share them as well). But few atheists consider that advocacy to be the defining element of their personalities and lives. It's just when you group people by religion, which is far from the only way to group people, we happen to be the outgroup in that situation.
"Does anyone else have a similar perception or am I living in a bubble."
You are living in a bubble. I know many atheists, and literally none of them matches either of your stereotypes. I do know several religious people from backgrounds of the type you describe, however.
"If there is a creator than its view of morality is morality within its creation" isn't an argument, it's a statement of the thing that needs to be proved.
I presume one of the things you're referring to is my (and others') references to God-endorsed atrocities in the Bible. I think the best disproof of your claim that the good is good because a creator god decrees it is that it entails accepting that such a god could declare that rape, murder, and genocide are all acts of virtue and it would be true. The Biblical atrocities are the most powerful way of focusing on this fact, because virtually everyone in our culture who claims to know what a god's decrees are accepts the Bible as a source of such knowledge. [1] If you have a god other than YHWH in mind, the Biblical atrocities don't mean anything to you, but I assure the vast majority of people writing on the pro-god side of this argument are thinking of YHWH.
[1] People sometimes accept others, but these tend to be in addition to the Bible (Qu'ran, Book of Mormon, subjective divine experiences), not instead of it.
Also, as humans, not gods, we simply have no independent standard to judge God ... because there is no such independent standard, nor could there be, and we have to take His goodness as an act of faith. I doubt that answer will satisfy "trad and anon." But it's important for others to note that trad and anon is making an important point -- is God good? And how do we know? God says, Come and see.
To do that, we have to go with the oral tradition of the Church, and look at thousands of years of Jewish history. Do the Jews insist they have a right to aggressively slaughter anyone in Israel? The answer is no, they don't ... the Jews have a saying, goy kills goy, and they blame the Jews. It's a nasty sentiment, but it shows their point of view ... that they consider the God of Abraham a just one and that murder is wrong. They could have had peace in Israel by killing the Palestinians anytime in the past 60 years. But they don't. Because God is good and doesn't let them murder.
Again, that doesn't quite answer the question. You have to take some of this by faith.
As far as the some of the specific passages quotes above,
Judges 11:29-40 (God grants Jephthah victory in battle in exchange for sacrificing his daughter as a burnt offering);
The meaning of that passage is the exact opposite of what "trad and anon" says. The interpretation of the story of Jephthah's daughter usually ends up something like, "Be careful what you promise God." Jephthah's daughter was given to God, and may have spent her life separated from her family working for the Temple. In any case, it is Jephthah that made a foolish vow, to give God whatever came through His door next, in exchange for victory. God doesn't tell Him to give up His daughter. God doesn't accept human sacrifice and it's repugnant to Him -- until He Himself came to be that sacrifice and was resurrected from the dead. A different message.
Numbers 31:15-18 (Moses commands the slaughter of the women and children of Midan, except the virgin women, who are to be raped instead);
God doesn't say, "Rape the virgins," but "Keep them for yourselves." An important difference. Nonetheless, that's the equivalent of producing the dog. (If you accuse a Jesuit of killing two men and a dog, they'll produce the dog alive.)
Joshua 6-12 (genocide of the Canaanites);
Since the dead return to God, we must assume He has some reason. We can take heart in knowing that God hasn't required slaughter since ... and now both the Jewish and Christian faiths have just-war doctrines. Why did He require it then? I don't know.
Revelation 9:1-5 (God tortures everyone in the world for five months except for the 144,000 Jews lucky enough to receive the seal of the Lord back in book 7).
Well, technically, the bugs torture people and people have a choice to avoid the torture by not receiving the mark of the Beast. I'm not terribly disquieted by Revelations -- it's a complex prophecy, and it's a warning about the future ... how it works, we don't know. This one doesn't bother my conscience at all. We don't know how literal it is. It could be that those who reject God will be particularly tortured by their own consciences for five months for accepting the mark of the Beast, as God's love becomes apparent.
In any case, literal interpetations aside, the teaching of both the Jewish and Christian faiths is unequivocally, God doesn't order you to commit murder, attack innocents and intentionally target civilians or commit terrorism. Those are fine first principles from God Himself.
In the end, though, what trad and anon appears to be logically meaningless ... because it presupposes that standard of morality to judge God, while at the same time claiming that that such a standard is impossible for both atheists and theists. But theists have access to God -- and I said earlier, you are only convinced in relationships with those you love and respect. Learning to know and love God is a spiritual journey, not a debating point.
I'd love to hear others weigh in on this, because trad and anon raises an important point.
Speaking of laws of physics, the atheist has no reason to assume that laws without a law giver will stay the same.
The atheist who assumes we are the product of blind chance has no reason to trust his own rationality. If we aren't designed to ascertain truth, we can't trust that our thoughts are true.
The atheist materialist has to employ immaterial concepts like the laws of logic and abstractions all the time.
Atheism is bankrupt. And the only way atheists can function is to live and think inconsistently with their atheism.
You say we have no way to judge God. If that is true, then we have no way to judge him as good, either, and coming and seeing will do nothing for us because of it.
"God doesn't say, "Rape the virgins," but "Keep them for yourselves." An important difference."
In a vacuum, maybe. In context, would you want to marry one of the men who slaughtered your father, mother, and brothers? Forced marriage is marginally different from rape in that sometimes the law excludes marital conduct from the statute, but it is morally equivalent.
"In any case, it is Jephthah that made a foolish vow, to give God whatever came through His door next, in exchange for victory. God doesn't tell Him to give up His daughter."
And yet God apparently fulfilled his end of the bargain. Regardless, I'd like to take the opportunity to dump on the entire institution of blood sacrifice. What sort of god would accept the blood of the innocent (lambs, birds, himself) as atonement for the sins of the guilty?
"Why did He require [genocide] then? I don't know."
Here we run up against the terrible implications of divine command theory. You wind up even more of a relativist than the atheist. In DCT the only absolute value is obedience, and you transfer all the relative values to God. If God orders you to marry a woman today and divorce her tomorrow, it's all good. That may be how the universe works, but it's not an objective morality.
Taken literally, of course, what you're asking us is whether every atheist you know comes from either of two backgrounds. No way we would know that. If what you're asking, though, is whether what you perceive to have been your experience corresponds to wider reality, the answer is "No." I can tell you, for example, that literally none of the atheists I know come from either of those two backgrounds. Others may have different experiences, and since you were polite about it, unlike so many others for whom this topic leads to sputtering derangement, maybe they'll share.
Gen 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.
I don't believe this passage is true, of course, but it does suggest that (in the J-C tradition at least) we do have the ability to judge.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. My non-reply: Say you, like I have, had an experience of God as tremendously loving, who forgives sins, teaches you to love, and heals your soul. After that, it's easy to trust God for Who He is. "Come and see" is indeed the answer. And nowhere along the line in my journey has God told me to kill, rape or steal. He has told me to love God with my whole heart and love my neighbor as myself and be ruthlessly honest.
I recognize that's not an answer to you. But a certain amount of the experience of God involves letting Him teach you -- not you teaching Him. But if you focus only the harder passages of the Old Testament, you'll have a very difficult "hump" to get over. I know I did -- it was extremely difficult. I figured I had nothing to lose if God didn't exist, so I trusted Him one day, and sure enough, He answered prayers. Then I started to experience Him and His love daily.
It's hard to explain mysticism to a non-believer. It sounds like so much nonsense. And then it happens to you, and you get it, and you realize your objections are a small drop in a vast vast sea. Communicating that to others, however, is nearly impossible. You sort of have to go see it for yourself.
As I said in some of my earlier comments, knowing God is not about obedience of a tyrannical God ...
Plus, you are applying reason (where did you get that), faith in your brain (sure about that?), and limited experience and knowledge to an infinite being. The Bible contains difficult passages, but that's not all that's there.
There's nothing you're saying that's unusual or not understandable. I hope you find the truth about God, and in the meantime, that you continue to grow in love. Cheers.
Most atheists have the courage to pursue truth -- that is, the question of God matters to them enough to make a decision. And while I prefer they'd believe, for their own peace of mind, they're better off arguing with God than being indifferent. Indifference is the sin of the cold-blooded. Better a hot-blooded (but civil in these comments) argument.
Xenocles: The first 11 books of Genesis were written during the Babylonian exile and were influenced by Persian thought. I don't remotely believe any of those chapters are to be taken literally. But as analogy, it explains the human condition very well.
Essentially, the worldview is that God made the world, the world is good, man sinned by taking a shortcut (he ate the fruit of the tree before he was ready to handle it), corruption entered the world and bollixed everything up, and God set about trying to get people back, one person at a time, from that corrupt world.
You probably don't mean it, this sounds a little, uh, presumptuous on your part. Your beliefs are so important that people can be divided into "courageous" or not depending on whether they take them seriously and spend lots of time thinking about them? I can understand how from your perspective that might all add up, but if you don't believe what you believe, it presumes a little much. :)
The reality is that just like some religious people are interested in religion/philosophy academically some of us non-believers are as well. But not all of us, and it's more a particular preference/subject of interest, not a matter of bravery.
The main problem I have with mysticism is that it relies a heck of a lot on trusting your intuitions or inner guide (which you'd naturally disagree and say is God acting through or for you, and of course I understand that), but in my experience, people trusting their intuitions in that sense, including myself, often do go wrong or mispercieve things and so on at some point anyway. It's great that you feel you haven't, and from all accounts really haven't. But it doesn't sell me on the general idea. You see it as God, but I see it as man, and man is a crooked, error-prone plank. A community of skepticism, including self-skepticism is, I think, always an important counter. And what you call God could just as easily be your best inner nature, which is still great, but still should never be trusted as infallible in any future instance.
And philosophically, there's still the problem that for an all powerful being, spending your entire life convincing you that it's good when it's ultimately not, and has some final evil motive, is as effortless as anything else.
I mean, HUMAN scientists can already reproduce, in the lab, with a simple machine, the experience of what many call a divine presence and peace. If humans can already basically do it, how hard would it be for, say, Loki to throw the same switch in you to trick you into then accepting OTHER things which aren't as good? I think it's safer to evaluate each claim and element of belief individually rather than taking anything as a package deal (i.e. this thing "god" one feels only asks good and positive things, and that's great, but it shouldn't make that person more inclined to agree with the attached moral view that gay marriage is bad, etc.)
Pew released a recent survey showing a positive correlation between church attendance and support for torture, i.e. the more you attend church services the more likely you are to support torture. Just passing that on.
I apologize on behalf of believers for this poor reasoning. There seems to be an increasing problem among evangelical-type Christians with the words like "belief" and things like the scientific method.
Aultimer,
Explain how an atheist, consistent with his atheistic presuppositions and specifically of the materialist variety, can assume
a) objective morality exists
b) immaterial things (laws of logic, abstractions, numbers) exist
c) the laws of physics without a law-giver who sustains them can remain constant
d) he can trust his own rationality when he was not designed to apprehend truth. If you assume Darwinism, the best you can say is "pick up chicks."
The scientific method makes sense with theistic assumptions and a theistic framework. An atheist cannot assume induction.
And if you can't give an answer for the above four points, how was I wrong to assume that an atheist can't live consistently with his own atheism?
A more reasonable question for you to ask, along those lines, is why any moral person would remain a member of the Roman Catholic Church, assuming he has read a newspaper in the past few years.
Your problem is that you don't seem to understand that the whole POINT of empiricism is that it's provisional. It begins with basic axioms about reality that no one disputes (or can dispute without basically denying all observation and reality) From there we can actually, unlike theists, explain things. Not everything. Not perfectly or without error. but definitely better than what theologians can do, which is basically to hand wave.
"a) objective morality exists"
Morality is a concept, a value. It is not an object that exists or doesn't exist. God or no god, most people can't even decide on what "objective morality" even means. I think we're going to need to tackle that problem before we get to talking about whether or not it "exists" and what framework.
But just to keep the issue clear: no theist can explain how or why objective morality exists. Period. All they can say is that God dun' it, but this explains nothing at all about what it is, how it comes to be what it is, and so forth.
"b) immaterial things (laws of logic, abstractions, numbers) exist"
Again, they don't "exist" in the bizarre sense you seem to mean. They are conceptualizations. You really think that these things "exist" off in some wacky plane of existence?
"c) the laws of physics without a law-giver who sustains them can remain constant"
This makes no sense. We have no reason to assume that anything needs "sustaining" to remain constant. What would a reality with non-constant physical laws even look like? It would be indescribably incoherent. We have no reason to assume that such a thing is even possible or meaningful.
All we have is this one here universe, in which we do observe that, in fact, they do indeed appear to be constant as far as we can tell. If we find a counterexample, we'll have to re-evaluate things. So we'll keep testing and checking that, always.
"d) he can trust his own rationality when he was not designed to apprehend truth."
Again, the question makes no sense. You can trust your rationality to the degree to which it regularly seems to come to correct conclusions, when checked against reality.
How can we be sure that reality is real, that we're not all brains in jars in a VR sim? We can't. But the entire question is unfalsifiable and irrelevant to the common world we all seem to live in and want to operate in, at the moment. That's where we get down into the basic axioms of empiricism, of course. But you'll fast find that you can't really dispute them without serious self-contradiction.
"The scientific method makes sense with theistic assumptions and a theistic framework. An atheist cannot assume induction."
You seem to have a different idea of what "makes sense" means that I do. Randomly asserting things that are themselves unprovable is not any sort of sense I'm aware of. One might as well claim that you are the ultimate checkers player because you can simply declare yourself the winner the instant the game starts without even playing.
Implausible. Why would they selectively keep the virgins if they weren't going to rape them? And what would they keep them as? Slaves? That's not any better. Wives? That's not an improvement either: rape doesn't stop being rape because you force the woman to go through a "marriage" ceremony beforehand.
I suppose it's possible that "keep them for yourselves" means "welcome them into the community with open arms" but there is zero support in the text for that interpretation.
So that's a "yes, genocide is A-OK?" That's not morality, it's the inversion of morality.
The people who are tortured in Revelation 9 are the ones other than the Jews who get the seal of the Lord back in Revelation 7. The mark of the beast stuff doesn't come in until Revelation 13. And yes, it's the scorpions who torture people, but they're "told" to do it and "given the power" to do so. It doesn't quite specify who's doing the telling and power-giving but one presumes it's YHWH or one of its servants. And I don't see how "the people will be tortured by their own consciences" is consistent with the explicit textual references to how the insects or whatever are being given power to torture people and ordered to do it.
In any case, your tortured textual interpretations are basically demonstrations of my point. You're twisting the text in implausible ways in order to avoid the implication that rape and torture are A-OK, because you know those things are wrong and you cannot accept the conclusion that a good god would order them.
I don't know "how" objective morality exists any more than I know "how" the universe does. All I know that it does.
I don't really know or care whether these things "exist" or not, but I don't have any problems with immaterial things existing. Gravitational fields exist whether or not gravitons do. An LLC that has a sole corporate member, has no offices, holds no meetings, and does nothing but buy and hold securities still exists: you can enter into contracts with it, for example. No god is required for either.
Why would a god be required for immaterial things to exist?
I'm not actually sure if the laws of physics remain constant on a long enough timescale. Maybe they were different during the Big Bang, or will be different in a billion years. Maybe the values of certain "constants" are actually changing. So far it seems they do remain constant, at least on timeframes we can measure. But what's the problem with them remaining constant (if they do) without the involvement of a deity?
Unfortunately, we can't trust our own rationality. We're subject to all kinds of subtle and systematic biases: confirmation bias, the illusion of control, the availability heuristic, the self-serving bias, and so forth and so on. The best we can do is try to be aware of our own biases, do our best to correct for them, and exhibit some humility about the degree of certainty we can achieve.
Golly, trad and anon, you mean you can't think of anything to do with virgins but rape them? Remind me not to let you babysit my nieces :)
The people who are tortured in Revelation 9 are the ones other than the Jews who get the seal of the Lord back in Revelation 7. The mark of the beast stuff doesn't come in until Revelation 13.
You do understand that Revelation isn't literal, right? And that any interpretation of Revelation is going to be quite "tortured." The language is highly symbolic, and we seem to have lost the key.
you know those things are wrong and you cannot accept the conclusion that a good god would order them.
Well, there's nothing in the New Testament that bothers me. There's nothing written from Ezra to the end of the OT that bothers me (as far as I've read). All that makes sense. There's nothing from the Gen. 12 to the end of that book that bothers me. And within those books is a tremendous amount of knowledge of God.
That said, no, I don't know what to do with the conquest of Palestine and the endless wars. Remember, the Bible is a collection of books -- it's not the literal, inerrant word of God. The Holy Spirit interprets it for us. Often, there are strong lessons in all passages -- but I've never heard a single devout Christian or Jew say, "God wants us to go out and commit genocide and rape today." That ought to tell you something.
I'd suggest you get out of your rejecting-fundamentalist mindset and learn what God really teaches.
Some denominations believe, for example, that the Jews were simply mistaken about what God wanted in these conquests. Others believe all this will become clear later. Others excuse it at the time, but as you said, I find that problematic.
Well, wait, just this: Geoff, you need to learn more about contemporary science and the history of metaphysics before you ask anyone on a blog to deal with a very equivocating reference to 'exist[ence].' Indeed, it seems to me that your single conception of existence suggests that you conceive your god as a kind of 'thing' - immaterial, but still quite thing-like. This is typical of all theisms, of course, but not of all conceptions of reality nor, indeed, of all religious thought.
As to JackJack’s question about the upbringing of ‘atheists’:
I was raised by a Congregationalist parent and a Unitarian-Universalist parent, both quite concerned with my welfare, I assure you, and far too old to have been among the ‘baby-boomers.’ I attended Quaker schools for most of my early life and either Congregationalist or U-U Sunday school every week up about age 13. Because I have always been interested in ‘big questions,’ I was at one time considering becoming a U-U minister. Alas, I had also started to study philosophy, biology, and physics, and I could not find any metaphysical basis for any number of creator deities.
None of my atheist colleagues is the product of a broken home – even the ones young enough to have had baby-boomer parents – nor of a failed Catholic upbringing. Mostly, they just cannot find any good reason to believe in a ‘god-like’ entity and, being committed to the Rule of Reason, do not commit themselves to belief in what does not seem to exist. They indulge my occasional wishful ruminations on ‘elf-time’ and the minor gods/goddesses of the home and seasons as oddities of my personality.
Which, lastly, brings me to the unprovoked and offensive slurs on Zeus:
1) Blue: Like Zeus turning into a swan and deflowering virgins. What a guy!
2) trad and anon: Not sure what kind of morality you'd get out of Zeus-worship.
First, it was only one virgin through the swan disguise. Second, if not Zeus, how about Athena?
As I'm here: Someone, I think ShelbyC, employed a version of the ontological argument for god's existence (a being than which no greater can be thought must exist). It should be noted that of the purportedly respectable arguments for god, this is the most problematic and most derided for its question-begging nature. Heck, even the teleological argument gets off the ground.
But if you start with the axiom that you weren't designed to pick up truth in the first place, this doesn't work.
What people need to understand is that we start with certain axioms. And those axioms can't co-exist with atheistic assumptions.
As I said, atheists are latent theists.
There's no reason to assume this this. If you do assume it, then you're left with nothing much at all. Brain in a jar. But that's ultimately pointless. We all seem to live in a common and fairly consistent reality, and when we talk about knowledge, it's that reality we all seem to want to explore. So, not really a problem.
"What people need to understand is that we start with certain axioms. And those axioms can't co-exist with atheistic assumptions."
Of course they can. In fact, basic axioms of reality are far more universal and basic than theistic claims, which essentially rely on them but then toss on a bunch of other unnecessary claptrap.
Additonally: We seem to be built to pick up on truth, but there is no reason to assume a 'designer' behind this fact. Evolutionary success explains it rather nicely.
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