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mbohu

Inconsistencies with Atheism

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11 hours ago, billvon said:

His premise is that the Bible doesn't really mention Hell.  But that's not correct.

Matthew 5: But whoever says "you fool!" [to his brother] shall be in danger of hell fire.

Matthew 10: And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  But rather fear Him [Beelzebub] who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 18: If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the everlasting fire

Mark 9 (similar):  It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched, where: Their worm does not die / And the fire is not quenched.

Matthew 23: Therefore you [naughty Pharisees] are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.  Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. Serpents, brood of vipers!   How can you escape the condemnation of hell?

Luke 16: The rich man [who was bad] also died and was buried.  And being in torments in Hades, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

That seems pretty clear.  You can argue with the concept of heaven and hell, of course, but there's no question that both are there in the Bible.

So did Hell not exist until the new testament?

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(edited)
1 hour ago, turtlespeed said:

So did Hell not exist until the new testament?

Well, read the OT. After the expulsion from Eden, it was Hell on Earth.

The the Big G had a change of heart and got all lovey-dovey some 2,000 years ago.  (I suspect it had something to do with chemicals.)  Hell was then moved offstage to its current location.

Edited by kallend

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5 hours ago, billvon said:

Heck, Christianity itself did not exist until the New Testament.

Mind Blowing!

And then - Islam didn't exist until after that, even.

So now we are back to trusting in the Jews to have it right!

That's a good thing.  I really like Jews.  Nice bunch of people.  Likable for the most part.

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8 hours ago, turtlespeed said:

Mind Blowing!

And then - Islam didn't exist until after that, even.

So now we are back to trusting in the Jews to have it right!

That's a good thing.  I really like Jews.  Nice bunch of people.  Likable for the most part.

Some of my best friends. . . . . . . . . . . 

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23 hours ago, turtlespeed said:

Mind Blowing!

And then - Islam didn't exist until after that, even.

So now we are back to trusting in the Jews to have it right!

That's a good thing.  I really like Jews.  Nice bunch of people.  Likable for the most part.

Yep.  And the bad parts, well . . . we'll just ignore those for now.  I bet there's no one else you want handling your money.

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On 1/11/2020 at 11:02 PM, turtlespeed said:

Mind Blowing!

And then - Islam didn't exist until after that, even.

So now we are back to trusting in the Jews to have it right!

That's a good thing.  I really like Jews.  Nice bunch of people.  Likable for the most part.

Wendy.......?

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What? You "calling me out" for not joining the Turtlespeed-bashing parties? 

He can be brain-dead. And it's entirely possible his tongue is pressed firmly inside his cheek as he stirs the pot (he's much less of a troll than he used to be). But he can also question his own views, and change them. Maybe not all of them, and he still says stupid shit sometimes, but I wasn't born right all the time either.

Wendy P.

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22 minutes ago, wmw999 said:

What? You "calling me out" for not joining the Turtlespeed-bashing parties? 

He can be brain-dead. And it's entirely possible his tongue is pressed firmly inside his cheek as he stirs the pot (he's much less of a troll than he used to be). But he can also question his own views, and change them. Maybe not all of them, and he still says stupid shit sometimes, but I wasn't born right all the time either.

Wendy P.

Is he also less of a racist than he used to be? 

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When you die, the electrical energy in your body slows down, passing through gaseous, liquid and eventually solid states.

When a new organism (worm) consumes your mortal remains, it converts some of those solids and liquids into electrical energy and the cycle repeats.

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5 hours ago, riggerrob said:

When you die, the electrical energy in your body slows down, passing through gaseous, liquid and eventually solid states.

When a new organism (worm) consumes your mortal remains, it converts some of those solids and liquids into electrical energy and the cycle repeats.

Entropy wins in the end.

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On 1/7/2020 at 7:27 PM, mbohu said:


But, there is one logical problem, I think Atheists*) have, and I haven't seen this addressed very well:
If you look at it in terms of the source of one's moral values, there really is nothing in atheism that one could base one's moral values on.

Going back to one  of the original question:

It is still better to have the opportunity to try to be moral, that be in the situation that some Christians seem to be in: They may crow about the morality built into their belief system (confusing as it may be). But sometimes it seems that their being moral is only because of fear of punishment -- "Don't do this or you'll be condemned to hell for eternity!"  Which is kind of like a kid saying, "The only reason I don't beat up my little sister is that my big brother would beat me up!"  Which is saying you would be a nasty bully except there's someone else there to bully you, God. As opposed to actually choosing to be moral and not a nasty bully.

So if you can be a good person who is Christian.... you can also be a good person outside of those confines.

And since Atheism isn't an organization with meetings or membership cards, I don't have to apologize if some Christian nutter says, "But whattabout that serial killer or that dictator... he was an atheist!" 

And there's the issue that some religions' morals are pretty messy and disputed, with reference to ancient and contradictory texts from which people have argued just about anything. But the same discussions over what is "right" could be made without references to some ancient book that refers to bizarre tales from thousands of years ago. I'm obviously thinking of Christianity here, what with the issues over the centuries of things like whether homosexuality or owning slaves is evil or not. Organized religions did serve some purpose in having shared goals for societies, but it didn't make their decisions on what is good or evil necessarily any better than the choices made by people within other religions or who were skeptical of the local religion.

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14 hours ago, pchapman said:

Going back to one  of the original question:

pchapman: I mostly agree with everything you write in this post.

But: I still think no one here really understood what I meant with my original post:

I am NOT saying that religious people have a better basis for morality than atheists. I am saying that if you accept the premise of atheism (a certain definition of it, that WAS born out by some of the comments in this very post) then NO ONE has any basis for any morality. "Morality" itself is a concept that has no meaning whatsoever, if you accept that premise. So, neither religious people NOR atheists can be moral or immoral, in this case.

Let me try one more time to explain what I mean:

 

Premise 1 (again, this premise has been specifically affirmed by a number of posters): 
All "mind" and consciousness is completely a function of brain activity

Following from that:
All brain activity is completely determined by physical laws that need no "decision maker" or "person" but simply follow from previous physical states and laws of nature. So: synapses fire because of certain chemical reactions, which start because of other electrical, chemical or otherwise physical occurrences. If all mind is determined by this firing of synapses then all thought, all decision making, all "moral" goodness is nothing but an effect of these physical states and laws.

Even IF, as someone (yobnoc) suggested, consciousness is an "emergent phenomena" which arises, when a certain complexity of brain structure is achieved, this emergent phenomena cannot have any influence on physical occurrences, UNLESS you allow physical laws to be in some cases circumvented by the influence of this consciousness (and I am sure no self-respecting atheist believes THAT kind of woowoo!) 

There is therefore simply no one making any decisions of any consequence whatsoever. There can therefore be no moral or immoral action. Every action is simply an effect of the simple combination of physical laws and prior states of matter. "Morality" is meaningless and non-existent. (or the meaning of the word has to be completely redefined)

 

I am open to a logical argument against this, or someone pointing out where the space for moral decisions in such a worldview exists. I also want to point out that I am not advocating a religious worldview instead. I think that the religious worldview is too easy a target. It does have its roots in older thinking, and it's easy to attack from a newer (post 17th century..so not THAT new), rationalistic view--but the rationalistic, objectivistic, purely materialistic view has its own limitations and inconsistencies, that cannot be argued away by saying "well, the religious people have it even more wrong"...as if there were only two choices! :rofl:

...and I'm going to shut up again.

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(edited)
1 hour ago, mbohu said:

Even IF, as someone (yobnoc) suggested, consciousness is an "emergent phenomena" which arises, when a certain complexity of brain structure is achieved, this emergent phenomena cannot have any influence on physical occurrences, UNLESS you allow physical laws to be in some cases circumvented by the influence of this consciousness (and I am sure no self-respecting atheist believes THAT kind of woowoo!) 

Again, god of the gaps. Because we don't fully understand it yet you assume it's impossible. How many times in human history has that assumption been made, only to be later disproved?

 

Quote

There is therefore simply no one making any decisions of any consequence whatsoever. There can therefore be no moral or immoral action. Every action is simply an effect of the simple combination of physical laws and prior states of matter. "Morality" is meaningless and non-existent. (or the meaning of the word has to be completely redefined)

Exactly, which is why it's not helpful for you to have framed your OP around the question of morality. This is why no one understood your first post. It's because you said you were talking about morality but you're not. You're talking about free will vs predeterminism. You're misunderstood because you misrepresented the discussion.

Edited by jakee

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6 hours ago, mbohu said:

So: synapses fire because of certain chemical reactions, which start because of other electrical, chemical or otherwise physical occurrences. If all mind is determined by this firing of synapses then all thought, all decision making, all "moral" goodness is nothing but an effect of these physical states and laws.

That's all fine and good but until someone can describe in joules the difference between a motherfucker and a puppy kicking motherfucker why stop?

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8 hours ago, mbohu said:

There is therefore simply no one making any decisions of any consequence whatsoever. There can therefore be no moral or immoral action. Every action is simply an effect of the simple combination of physical laws and prior states of matter. "Morality" is meaningless and non-existent. (or the meaning of the word has to be completely redefined)

 

You kind of lost me there. While I'm not getting the subtleties, it feels like one is saying, "Everything is just atoms and sub-atomic particles... so nothing matters... everything we do is just movement of atoms or electrical signals and stuff... our existence and lives are all just irrelevant to the universe."

Um yeah, that's all true.

But that's doesn't make morality any less real as a concept. Religion or not, every society ends up trying to have some form of morality, which is a concept about fairness, justice, not causing harm, and whatnot. Pain may just be a mind's manifestation of electrical signals, but that still doesn't make it generally good for one human to torture another to death. (Whether or not a particular society suggests it as a reasonable punishment for some crime.)

I think I can bow out here and leave anything more to deeper philosophers.  

 

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In the 'Grand Scheme of Things', you are right. 

No action that I take has any real effect on the Universe. It's too big. The Total Perspective Vortex showed this.

But to think that I can take any action, and it has no effect and because of that, 'morality' doesn't exist is a pretty disingenuous position to take.

It has effect on other people. And those other people can then take action that affects me.
That's called 'society'. 

And, not surprisingly, the mores of any given society dictate it's acceptable and unacceptable actions.

As a fairly extreme example, would it be moral for me to kill someone?
Reality says 'it depends'.

In some societies, the level of 'acceptable' killings is quite strict. In others, its much more lax.

There are societies that permit 'honor killings'. The murder of one's child because they brought 'disgrace' on the family.
There are other's that frown upon killing, even in self defense. The laws in the US have relaxed a good bit in recent years, but even up until the 1990s, there were states that didn't permit 'self defense' killings unless the killer was defending himself, his family or his servants. And the killer had to show he had done everything possible to avoid the killing, including fleeing his own home at risk to himself (situations like jumping out of a second story window). 

"Morality" is an entirely human construct. As is religion.

The former is necessary for society to function. The latter is a big aid in enforcing the former. 

The 'morality enforcement' that religion brings is one reason that religion flourished in early societies.

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