"Leading Atheist Publishes Secular Bible" - WTF?!

[billvon 2,435]

>And once again, islam is a death-cult, not a religion.

Ah yes. "Only my religion is valid." My apologies for attempting an intelligent conversation with you; won't happen again.

[mnealtx 0]

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>And once again, islam is a death-cult, not a religion.

Ah yes. "Only my religion is valid." My apologies for attempting an intelligent conversation with you; won't happen again.

Given that mh hasn't said that, maybe it's for the best - fewer strawmen littering up the place.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[jakee 1,259]

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>Sounds like the Middle East today, almost.

And here you are, arguing that religion provides a more superior base for morality than atheism! Ironic, ain't it.

And once again, islam is a death-cult, not a religion.

Same difference. It's honestly pretty fucking hilarious how you don't think your shooting yourself in the foot here. Marvellous display of double-think.

And if at any point at all you'd like to justify your statement that our laws are based on judeo-christian tradition then please feel free. I'm sure that'll be fun as well!

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Guest]

What I am trying to understand is--

Where does this atheist think that ethics come from? Did somebody just hit a Piňata and they fell out?

In the absence of spiritual / higher-power guidance (the "invisible friend" philosophy), what is the basis for cooperation/"do no harm"? Enlightened self-interest? If that were true, there would only be extended families/tribes instead of nation-states, right?

I also do not understand when billvon attributes righteous behavior to animal instincts--

"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance, and barbarism must always ultimately triumph." - Robert E. Howard

mh
.

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[billvon 2,435]

(taking a chance here)

>Where does this atheist think that ethics come from?

From our basic animal drives, refined by our intelligence.

>"Barbarism is the natural state of mankind. Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of
>circumstance, and barbarism must always ultimately triumph."

And yet all over the world civilization triumphed over barbarism, no matter what their societies believed. That pretty much disproves the statement "barbarism must always ultimately triumph." Even higher animals have societies, show compassion, protect their weaker members, cooperate to obtain goals and resent unfairness. Which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective; an animal society that degenerates into barbarism results in fewer young and is thus eliminated.

>In the absence of spiritual / higher-power guidance (the "invisible friend" philosophy),
> what is the basis for cooperation/"do no harm"?

The desire to live a good (pleasant, peaceful, gainful) life in harmony with others. It was one of Epicurus' central philosophies, and he had no invisible friends.

[kelpdiver 2]

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Where does this atheist think that ethics come from? Did somebody just hit a Piňata and they fell out?

the golden rule - do onto others ... - stems from a desire to have some peace in your life. A society where every man will cheat and steal at every opportunity is not a happy one, and one that will not persist. By social evolution, groups of people shift naturally to this stance.

You of course find examples where rules use power and the threat of force to elevate them above the rest, but even kings have to be careful, or they end up hanging from a rope. Even 2200 years ago, Chinese lords were having terracotta soldiers buried with them, rather than actual people.

[skinnay 0]

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Where does this atheist think that ethics come from? Did somebody just hit a Piňata and they fell out?

Its pretty sad that this is probably a serious question

[jakee 1,259]

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In the absence of spiritual / higher-power guidance (the "invisible friend" philosophy), what is the basis for cooperation/"do no harm"? Enlightened self-interest? If that were true, there would only be extended families/tribes instead of nation-states, right?

Extend that thought.

In the scope of human existence, how long were we almost entirely tribal for? Pretty damn long. where was your divine morality then?

And what causes the change? Not priests, but engineers. When technology and agricultural developments allow humans to come together in larger communities, then you see the natural tendencies for co-operation extended to larger and larger groups. As you say, families and tribes first - but then towns. Then cities. Then ethnic/linguistic groups. Then countries. Etc.

Without pretending it's that simplistic, you can look at a very large part of the development of modern ethical societies as the result of a gradual extension of the concept of 'us' to cover larger and larger groups of people (while retaining a strong tendancy to act like utter bastards to people we judge to be 'not us').

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I also do not understand when billvon attributes righteous behavior to animal instincts--

Because you can see core aspects of righteous behaviour ingrained in the behaviour of social animals. That was our starting point, then we started thinking about it.



Now, I've answered your question, how about you address one of mine, eh?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Guest]

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the golden rule - do onto others ... - stems from a desire to have some peace in your life. A society where every man will cheat and steal at every opportunity is not a happy one, and one that will not persist. By social evolution, groups of people shift naturally to this stance.

Yet there seems to be no end of "failed states", and "most corrupt places on Earth" (e.g., Afghan, Iraq, Nigeria, Congo, Whackistan, etc.).

How do these square with your philosophy? It appears that most of these are quick to blame everyone else (e.g., Americans,"Crusaders", "neo-Colonialists", the Tooth Fairy, et al) for their failings.

How does the Humanist explain this?

mh
.

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[kelpdiver 2]

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the golden rule - do onto others ... - stems from a desire to have some peace in your life. A society where every man will cheat and steal at every opportunity is not a happy one, and one that will not persist. By social evolution, groups of people shift naturally to this stance.

Yet there seems to be no end of "failed states", and "most corrupt places on Earth" (e.g., Afghan, Iraq, Nigeria, Congo, Whackistan, etc.).

How do these square with your philosophy? It appears that most of these are quick to blame everyone else (e.g., Americans,"Crusaders", "neo-Colonialists", the Tooth Fairy, et al) for their failings.

How does the Humanist explain this?

mh
.

Evolution still has its outliers.

It's not so much blaming whitey, but an issue for many failed states of recent time is that they were artificial constructs in the first place. Yugoslavia was created in the aftermath of a war. It was not an organic result of a culture forming. It was in fact multiple cultures and what we have now is a reflection of it.

Africa was colonized piecemeal by Europeans and when the colonial era ended, they left behind "nations" that were really divisions of the spoils. For many of them, the lands don't seem to support a standalone nation as well as the self contained tribal units. The precious metals/stones are also very disruptive, like any single crop economy, but with so much more money that it funds and encourages violence.

As I wrote, ruthless leaders who rely on brute force tend to have a short life cycle. One coup begets another. In contrast, most Cubans seem to enjoy their life enough that Castro remained in power for over 4 decades. The angry ones were the financial losers in the revolution. As an island, Cuba does have a natural construct to make it a nation. When Castro finally dies, they'll likely be a democracy that frequently changes leadership, as more typical elsewhere. It will also benefit from the overdue end to the embargo.

[jakee 1,259]

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How do these square with your philosophy? It appears that most of these are quick to blame everyone else (e.g., Americans,"Crusaders", "neo-Colonialists", the Tooth Fairy, et al) for their failings.

How does the Humanist explain this?

How does the religionist explain it? Western Europe has been pretty much exclusively Christian controlled for 1800 years and yet was in a state of almost perpetual war until about 65 years ago. What impact were your god given morals having there, exactly?

And when are you even going to acknowledge the counter argument that you're talking out of your fucking arse if you think modern law and ethics is based on the judeo-christian tradition and that you're unable to provide any shred of evidence or reason in support of the claim?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[jaybird18c 4]

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Well, it is literally a social construct since society both creates and enforces its own version of morality. However, it is based on more than objective rational thought. It is based in our very makeup; we have inborn, instinctive drives for justice, fairness and compassion as well as the drives for competitiveness, greed and selfishness. These create tensions in people when they see others being exploited or oppressed. A system of morality in which justice and fairness can be expressed while allowing for greed, selfishness etc is therefore more acceptable to people, regardless of their religious beliefs.

With regard to the notion that the "basis" for our sense of morality is simply derived from a social construct or from an evolutionary progression scenario, I like what C.S. Lewis had to say:

"For example, some people wrote to me saying, 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?' Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct - by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Suppose you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires - one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys."
- Mere Christianity

[Butters 0]

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What would atheists substitute if these laws derived from religious tradition are therefore unacceptable, as they somehow always seem to be?

I would derive laws from logic and reasoning.

"That looks dangerous." Leopold Stotch

[jaybird18c 4]

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What would atheists substitute if these laws derived from religious tradition are therefore unacceptable, as they somehow always seem to be?

I would derive laws from logic and reasoning.

But where does that ability for logic and reasoning come from?

C.S. Lewis would describe those as "merely" keys on the piano keyboard and not the sheet of music which tells you how to play the notes in harmony.

[Meso 38]

When it comes to morality and religion and atheism, I pasted a link a few weeks ago that addressed the matter flawlessly in about 30 minutes.

http://www.atheistnexus.org/video/theoretical-bullshits-treatise

The guy doing it is actually a soap actor, but his youtube videos under the name theoreticalbullshit are actually extremely good.

[deltron80 0]

If your thought process has been so corrupted and taken control of by a philosophical system, you no longer are allowed to have an opinion. These people cannot be argued with because their thought system has a pre-ordained answer for every argument that can be adapted to any scenario. It eliminates the need for thought completely as you can suddenly plug any of life's questions into your handy little paradigm. This condition effects those who subscribe to a particular religious or political belief. Don't bother trying to ask a question of a Christian, a Communist, a Libertarian, etc. If you read books you should already know your answer before you ask it.

[steve1 5]

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[ The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys."
- Mere Christianity

I find it interesting that when people do the right thing and help someone, many Christians automatically pipe up, and call it the Christian thing to do.

Human descentsy doesn't revolve around Christianity. People can be good without religion.

It angers me when people think that I can not be a good person, nor can my children be good, simply because we do not believe in a magical being (who is sitting on a cloud someplace).

Do Christians think that other religions are inferior to them too. From much of this talk, I would say so.

In many ways I wish I could believe in Christianity or some other religion. It would be a great feeling knowing that someone is out there, who actually cares about you. I like going to church and being with other people who want to do good. Most seem to care about you too, in that setting.... But the bottom line is that I simply do not believe in magic. Magic is a big part of any religion.

I do work at spirituality every day, but my beliefs are not in any type of creator. I simply can't swallow magical thinking as being a rational explanation for things.

I have great faith that there is no heaven, nor a supreme being, creator or otherwise....How can anyone believe that water can be turned into wine, or how a bone can be taken from a woman and made into man, or all the other magical stuff that Christians believe in.

Sorry for my great bias on this, but this is how I see things....Maybe I need to shut up. I know these words are probably angering a lot of people.

And I do respect your beliefs, but I would like the same respect for what I believe in...

[beowulf 1]

"There are no believable gods."

[billvon 2,435]

>But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help
>whether you want to or not.

I don't think it's different at all. That's like saying that a desire to help when there are no negative consequences is different than a desire to help when there ARE negative consequences. Most people would probably want to help an injured child. If it was free and easy, probably most people would indeed help her. If it was expensive but easy, many people likely would. If you would likely die in the process, most people would not - but some undoubtedly would.

Does that mean that that desire to help is different in the above three cases? No. The desire is the same - but our understanding of the consequences makes the cases different, and makes people choose differently.

>Suppose you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two
>desires - one a desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to
>keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside
>you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to
>follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away.

And sometimes you feel a third thing that tells you to not help; indeed, it might tell you to injure him further. That third thing is our intelligence, which is able to make decisions on which impulse to follow. Those impulses, guided by our intelligence, is what forms the basis for our morality.

Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them.

>The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.

A good summary. Our instincts provide the foundation of our morality; our intelligence tells us how we use them to construct a more formalized morality of law, justice, charity etc.

[jaybird18c 4]

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When it comes to morality and religion and atheism, I pasted a link a few weeks ago that addressed the matter flawlessly in about 30 minutes.

http://www.atheistnexus.org/video/theoretical-bullshits-treatise

The guy doing it is actually a soap actor, but his youtube videos under the name theoreticalbullshit are actually extremely good.

I listened to exactly 7min 30sec of this guy's video. I’ve got to take it in piecemeal because I've got other stuff going on.

Firstly, I agree with what he said "If we don't know what makes something morally wrong, how do we know it's wrong in the first place?" Whatever conversations he's had in the past, with Christians or otherwise, should all start with defining the positions. Otherwise, there is no starting point.

He begins with the question, what makes something morally right and what makes something morally wrong? (Interesting side note: It takes him exactly 3min to utter his first insult concerning a former conversation he had with a Christian on the subject which included vulgarity. Just don't understand how adding that gives credibility to his argument.) That aside, since he apparently didn't get an acceptable definition from that particular Christian, he goes into his own personal subjective definition of right and wrong. He defines something morally right if it promotes happiness and wellbeing, minimizes undue suffering, or both. He defines something morally wrong if it diminishes happiness and wellbeing, causes undue suffering, or both. He then explains why rape would be wrong because it "objectively" causes undue suffering and diminishes happiness and wellbeing.

I would then ask, as long as he's being subjective in his definition of the terms and we're not just talking about the objective (observable) harm and suffering of the person being raped, how does his definition then apply to the rapist? I'm sure that the rapist derives much pleasure and wellbeing from the act and it doesn't necessarily cause him undue suffering (personally)...he derives pleasure from it in one way or another or else he wouldn't do it. By his subjective definition, it would be morally right for the rapist to rape (personally) and, at the same time, morally wrong for him to rape (with regard to the person being raped). How then would you judge between the two? If you only look at the person being raped, then you are depriving the rapist of his maximum pleasure which doesn’t cause him harm.

I would say that, instead of submitting to the rapist's instinct to rape, what he "aught" to do is not to rape even if he desires to. But that "aught", as with C.S. Lewis's logic, comes from an objective source and cannot come from my own (or his) personal subjective ideas. But, nevertheless, the rapist rapes because he is governed by his own selfish (subjective) desires and version of right and wrong and not the Moral Law of God (objective).

He then goes on to say that it doesn’t make sense to follow the objective commands from God because that, again, is what you personally and subjectively are defining as to what God says is right or wrong based on your individual understanding. He then says that he doesn’t believe in God (really?) and, because of that, he isn’t interested in doing what God says. What he is interested in is maximizing his happiness and wellbeing and minimizing suffering. (If he were so inclined, he could make a good (by his definition) rapist.)

To that I would say that it doesn’t matter what he or I believes with regard to what we understand God’s moral precepts to be in order for them to be true. That’s what makes the Moral Law of God objective (and absolute). It stands on its own. If I stand in the middle of the street and there’s an oncoming logging truck about to run me over, it doesn’t matter at all if I believe the logging truck doesn’t really exist or that it’s really just a bicycle. The truck is going to squash me like a bug. The reality of the truck has nothing to do with my or someone else’s differing beliefs in it. The result will be the same.

Or if you jump out of a plane with no parachute because you really just don't believe in gravity. Splat!

[beowulf 1]

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That’s what makes the Moral Law of God objective (and absolute).

There is no such thing. Morality varys from person to person, culture to culture and over time it has changed. Slavery was once considered to be morally correct in the US and in many other cultures.

The Bible is not consistent with regard to morality. In the old testament it's morally right to stone someone to death for various infractions. Some of which very few today would agree with.

[jaybird18c 4]

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Human descentsy doesn't revolve around Christianity. People can be good without religion.

In a way, you're right. An atheist (or someone of another religion) can and many times do (from a self-righteous standpoint) live very moral lives. My Brother-in-law and Sister-in-law are both humanist/atheists. They appear, in their actions, to live moral lives much better than many friends I have who claim to be Christian. Personally (I know you don't buy this) I believe this is possible due to what is known as the "common grace" of God (e.g. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. - Matthew 5:45)

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It angers me when people think that I can not be a good person, nor can my children be good, simply because we do not believe in a magical being (who is sitting on a cloud someplace).

This depends entirely on your definition of good. Good in your own eyes or good in the eyes of God?

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Do Christians think that other religions are inferior to them too. From much of this talk, I would say so.

Again, that depends. If all the so-called Christian has is their religion (man's attempt to make himself right with his god), their Christianity is no better than any other religion (work righteous) on the planet. However, if that person has a relationship with Jesus Christ and his religious activity is in response to that relationship, he is most definitely in a superior position. Don't misundersand me. Not in a self-righteous way but in a positional way. That person who has repented and placed their faith in Jesus Christ and his work on the cross, from a legal standpoint (and THAT is the issue), is in a right standing before God. No other religion on the planet can deal with the issue of sin. They have no answer.

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And I do respect your beliefs, but I would like the same respect for what I believe in...

I completely respect your beliefs! Really.

[jaybird18c 4]

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The Bible is not consistent with regard to morality. In the old testament it's morally right to stone someone to death for various infractions. Some of which very few today would agree with.

The Bible is a progressive revelation of God's plan of salvation for His people. It tells the story of the successes and failures of His people throughout history. It's not "just" a book of rules. It contains history, parables, poetry, prayers, and yes, laws. But there has to be an understanding of the laws we're talking about. There were laws which pertained only to the Nation of Israel, there were ceremonial laws (which were replaced with the attonement of Jesus Christ, and there is the Moral Law of God (e.g. The Ten Commandments) which apply to us all.)

[beowulf 1]

And those ten commandments are subject to interpretation. Just like many christians don't share your interpretation of the bible.

There is no one single moral code. What one person considers to be morally right can often be viewed differently by others.

[billvon 2,435]

>and there is the Moral Law of God (e.g. The Ten Commandments) which apply to us all.)

I find it hard to believe that even devout Christians think that avoiding any kind of work on Sunday (including work done by animals) is part of basic morality.