A question for atheists

Ladna said:

I disagree with Fraggle that we can find rational reasons for morality. I believe everyone at their core functions as a hedonist; this makes me feel good or less bad, so I do it, this makes me feel bad or less good so I avoid it. We like to believe in objectivity or morality because it helps us figure out how to live our lives (or really how to make any decisions at all), but the truth is that everything is meaningless, and there is no "should" or "should not".

This. It's simple. If you do "bad" things, you are ostracised by society. So you do "good" things. Yes, it certainly comes from your innate human nature, but that's why society enforces those rules, because it stems from their human nature, just like yours. So really, it's about what you can get away with in your society. Which usually lines up with your own way of thinking, but sometimes not, which is when we start to see social change.

DuckReconMajor said:

This. It's simple. If you do "bad" things, you are ostracised by society. So you do "good" things. Yes, it certainly comes from your innate human nature, but that's why society enforces those rules, because it stems from their human nature, just like yours. So really, it's about what you can get away with in your society. Which usually lines up with your own way of thinking, but sometimes not, which is when we start to see social change.

You two missed fraggle's point. You certainly can find a rational basis to decide what's moral as a society, and it's based on what causes greater harm. Many of these things are easy to figure out already. Things that cause harm: restricting education based on demographics, dehumanizing people, killing other people, etc. Many of the things societies outlaw on the basis of morality indicate those societies don't understand morality at all as it relates to policy. What they understand is they prefer to enforce their authority and deprive people of independent thought.

My problem is I can't effectively define "harm". Is killing people harmful? We do it all the time, and the majority of us feel it's for the greater good. Is the practice of eugenics (basically gaming evolution) harmful? What about abortion (hooray, lower crime rates and higher literacy rates)?

I don't really mean to make any social arguments here. I'm trying to figure out why killing people is objectively bad. What if the Earth disappears into a black hole, why would that be bad on any scale? What defines "good" or "bad"?

My point is that I have no idea, and thus am inclined to believe that there's no such thing as "good" or "bad", just what makes me feel pleasure and displeasure. Not that that's meaningful at all, it's just (as far as I can tell so far) how I make my decisions, and I'm pretty sure it's the same for everyone else.

Ladna said:

My problem is I can't effectively define "harm". Is killing people harmful? We do it all the time, and the majority of us feel it's for the greater good. Is the practice of eugenics (basically gaming evolution) harmful? What about abortion (hooray, lower crime rates and higher literacy rates)?

It depends on who a society decides is useful. Less useful people (or people society has a hard time empathizing with) who are murdered become statistics while their killers get out on probation in months to a few years. Or, in many cases, often in war, the killer is praised. Just how it is.

Ladna said:

I don't really mean to make any social arguments here. I'm trying to figure out why killing people is objectively bad. What if the Earth disappears into a black hole, why would that be bad on any scale? What defines "good" or "bad"?

Saying murder is objectively bad is a defense mechanism. Convincing someone to spare you because you're like him is easier than trying to prove your worth.

As for abortion, I believe it is murder. I don't believe it is wrong. The only people who could benefit from an unborn child are the mother and meddling "life is precious" people who are out to make other people's choices for them. The former can keep her baby if she wants and the latter can burn in a trash fire.

Ladna said:

good/evil

'what makes me feel pleasure and displeasure' hit the nail on the head as far as my worldview goes.

Good/evil only have meaning to conscious being capable of feeling pain or pleasure (physical or emotional.. the latter really is physical too just at the neuron level). A rock is indifferent to good/evil, and probably an amoeba too but we don't know for SURE if a rock or amoeba can experience pain/pleasure, just that its very unlikely (more likely for the rock) that they can't given known facts like their lack of a brain.

The most noble ethical goal on earth would be to minimize net emotional/physical pain for all beings/species capable of feeling it on the planet. More sophisticated creatures can probably feel pain to a greater degree than less consciously sophisticated ones, so the equation is complicated. Minimizing pain is more important IMO, but the next most noble ethical goal would be to maximize pleasure for all beings capable of feeling it. Could we 'engineer' the planet to do these things? Hypothetically maybe; it would involve getting rid of all carnivores in the least painful way and keeping nature in check so they don't re-evolve and maybe artifically selecting pain out and pleasure in for all species somehow. Realistically, it might be tricky because earth life is based on gene replicators; if i want to produce more offspring (and my genes come from a long line of ancestors who evolved the desire to do so because that was fit) then you might have to produce less offspring due to limited resources. There's only so much sunlight, so plants outshade eachother; Competition just happens. Eventually competition results in hyenas chewing on the intestines of some poor living pain feeling being.

Figuring out the equation to minimize world pain (for all species) and maximize world pleasure is tricky. If you let 'red in tooth and claw' nature take its course, are all beings involved happier due to a healthier and more sophisticated (due to the predator caused evolution) gene pool? Some people have a rare condition where they don't even feel physical pain.

fraggle said:

nothing you say is a reason to believe that a god or an afterlife exists. It's just wishful thinking on your part - you find an idea scary so you don't want to believe it.

I never said "I find the idea of the death of my consciousness scary, so there's obviously a God". I tried to avoid wording my OP in such a way that it could be interpreted like that. Perhaps I failed :p

But I think you're right concerning most committed theists. People "turning to God" is something of a social trope wherein people's lives are falling to pieces so they find themselves left with little choice but to turn to a fantastic and supernatural explanation for everything and a grand "reason" for them to struggle on. You'd probably attribute it to a lack of education. During the very depths of my own depression I've found myself searching for such a meaning to all of existence. But then I start to feel a little better and the rational part of my brain kicks in and I start to think of life in more pragmatic terms, or I stop thinking about the meaning of life and the universe altogether. On my normal days I sit on the fence, indecisively, and calling myself an agnostic (which to me is a elaborate way of saying "I don't know").

fraggle said:

I'm sure that all sounds comforting to you, but what you're saying doesn't really make sense. You're ignore what is really meant by the word "consciousness" and are instead turning it into a meaningless mystical property that you're ascribing to all matter, a property for which there is no evidence of it actually existing anyway. Furthermore I don't understand why you would consider the irrational beliefs of another group of people to be justification for holding irrational beliefs yourself.

I was joking about the irrational beliefs bit :D

I realize this is all speculation, it's not something I have faith in, I just wonder about it. It seems plausible however. I think it's important to distinguish between self-awareness and the simpler consciousness.

Humans and apparently only some other animals display self awareness ... the classic test being that they can recognize in the mirror. It still would be really hard to find out for sure whether some ant is aware that they are alive. And, even if they are not, they surely are experiencing something. Maybe it is painfully obvious that singular cells don't have the complex ability to perceive the world that we do, but are they conscious at all? I would say yes, since they are able to react to stimuli in their environment.

Now, this is far fetched from a western scientific viewpoint, but I don't think it's impossible that some larger bodies like the earth, solar system, galaxy, and so on (or for that matter, rocks and twigs :P) could have some sort of much simpler consciousness. Think about it this way: It's really hard to imagine what it's like to be a mindless bug that just walks around and eats, or a single cell. But, it's easy to imagine what it's like to lose one of your senses, such as sight. If you blindfold yourself, you basically lose your vision. Perhaps that emulates what it's like to be an animal without eyes. You would never know what "color" is...but you're conscious. Now, imagine you lost all of your senses except for feeling (scary, I know). This could almost emulate being a rock - of course, you are still a human with a nervous system that sends signals to your brain so you know where you are feeling stuff, and you could move around. But there's really no true way to tell if the rock can't "feel" its surroundings, unless you were indeed a rock.

Similar to the untestable God problem, it's something that is likely impossible to prove one way or the other.

Also, complete nothingness sounds just as comforting :P

magicsofa said:

Now, this is far fetched from a western scientific viewpoint, but I don't think it's impossible that some larger bodies like the earth, solar system, galaxy, and so on (or for that matter, rocks and twigs :P) could have some sort of much simpler consciousness. Think about it this way: It's really hard to imagine what it's like to be a mindless bug that just walks around and eats, or a single cell. But, it's easy to imagine what it's like to lose one of your senses, such as sight. If you blindfold yourself, you basically lose your vision. Perhaps that emulates what it's like to be an animal without eyes. You would never know what "color" is...but you're conscious. Now, imagine you lost all of your senses except for feeling (scary, I know). This could almost emulate being a rock - of course, you are still a human with a nervous system that sends signals to your brain so you know where you are feeling stuff, and you could move around. But there's really no true way to tell if the rock can't "feel" its surroundings, unless you were indeed a rock.

An interesting thought experiment perhaps but that's all it is, really. We have a scientific understanding of how animal brains work including down to those of ants, and we also understand some of the processes that take place within a single celled organism; we can understand (to some extent at least) how those creatures are alive and how they interpret and interact with the world in an intelligent sense. If a rock or a planet was similarly alive, what would be the comparable mechanism? You say that "It seems plausible" but I don't see how that is the case.

Similar to the untestable God problem, it's something that is likely impossible to prove one way or the other.

Yes, exactly - it's an unfalsifiable idea, which by itself is reason enough to reject it until such time that evidence is found to support it.

Ladna said:

I disagree with Fraggle that we can find rational reasons for morality. I believe everyone at their core functions as a hedonist; this makes me feel good or less bad, so I do it, this makes me feel bad or less good so I avoid it. We like to believe in objectivity or morality because it helps us figure out how to live our lives (or really how to make any decisions at all), but the truth is that everything is meaningless, and there is no "should" or "should not".

I think you're confusing the "roots" of morality - ie. the sense of empathy for other human beings, with the moral code itself. The former, I'll admit, isn't entirely rational - it comes from an emotional source (although philosophers have devised ways of rationalising it). It is entirely possible to devise a moral code that has a rational basis, however. Starting from the basic assumption that morality means reducing the amount of harm that we cause to other people, we can then examine the way that we treat others in order to achieve this goal.

The problem is that although we feel empathy for other humans, it's often selective in nature - we sometimes do not feel this empathy for certain groups of people. For example, a person accused of a crime may be innocent, so we have a court system that allows them to present a defence against their charges. The idea that certain people should be imprisoned without the ability to present a defence seems morally ambiguous - imprisonment is a form of harm, and it's possible that they might be innocent.

Yet some people are happy to suspend this right - if, for example, the person is a suspected terrorist. Those people can act immorally because they don't feel empathy for the prisoner. This is why we need a rationally argued system of morality - the irrational emotional roots of morality are not enough to guarantee moral behaviour in all situations.

Ladna said:

Is killing people harmful? We do it all the time, and the majority of us feel it's for the greater good.

No, killing people isn't harmful - it's fatal. The State as executioner is one of the murkier areas of domestic and foreign policy where the decision making process doesn't appear to have changed since the days when gladiators slugged it out in the Colosseum - "What is the will of the mob, thumb up or thumb down?". While most executions may be justifiable and sanctioned by a court of law I can't help but wonder how many are ordered to satisfy an Old Testament "eye for an eye" desire for vengeance.

Is the practice of eugenics (basically gaming evolution) harmful?

While eugenics has set itself the lofty goal of improving the human gene pool, it's only large-scale application was the attempted extermination of ethnic and social minorities during World War Two. I'd consider it harmful and conceptually flawed.

I'm trying to figure out why killing people is objectively bad. What if the Earth disappears into a black hole, why would that be bad on any scale? What defines "good" or "bad"?

It's bad because humans are social animals and maintaining a cohesive society (which involves an element of trust) is difficult if individuals are permitted to kill each other with impunity. So society decides what's good or bad based on what's best for the majority. As for the black hole, that's bad - as in "bad luck" or "shit happens".

My point is that I have no idea, and thus am inclined to believe that there's no such thing as "good" or "bad", just what makes me feel pleasure and displeasure.

In other words - you're an amoral hedonist. I can live with that, so long as you're not my neighbor. :P

I'm Christian, but I tend to not let religion ever come up in any conversation. It never does any good. Its not an important topic to constantly think about, or worry about. There are plenty of other things to concentrate on, to fix, to worry for rather or not there is a God. Though I find it quite impossible for there not to be one, I'm not going to try to convince others there is. I don't care. No one should care what another person believes or thinks as far as religion goes.

I hate most athiests and nazi-Christians for the same reasons- both always try to be in your face about rather you should believe this or that. Rather it be "you'll go to hell for {place whoreshit reason here}" or "you're fucking retarded for believing in a God"

Now most athiests are not like that at all, obviously. And not all Christians are truly like that (however most are :/)

but when it comes down to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG4YLlvdLeE&feature=related

its time to draw the line.

I'm stuck somewhere in between being agnostic and being an atheist. I don't believe that Gods or a God exists, however I have no knowledge to back up my beliefs as true. I simply don't feel that anyone, including myself, can really definitively say God exists or doesn't exist. This may come off as a pretty apathetic stance on the issue, but I prefer to be absolutely certain about something before I write off what that next person has to say.

With that in mind..thoughts of the afterlife do not scare me, because I don't know what the afterlife entails. I am here, on Earth, living, now, and things here scare me. I don't see the point in not doing the best with the life I have been given. All of these things..pleasure, entertainment, relationships, eating, drinking, sex..these are all parts of this life and these things exist to make a difference to me. It is my belief that everything I do in my life DOES have an impact, good or bad. If everyone 500 years ago decided that they had no worth and what they were doing made no difference, would we be here?

I am satisfied living in the now, because that's all I know. Future generations of people will likely not know who the hell I am, but I'll never meet them, so who cares? I'll meet my children, my nieces and nephews, co-workers, friends, and the guy next door..why get stuck on the notion that the 87th President of the United States will never know my name?

yellowmadness54 said:

I'm Christian, but I tend to not let religion ever come up in any conversation. It never does any good. Its not an important topic to constantly think about, or worry about. There are plenty of other things to concentrate on, to fix, to worry for rather or not there is a God.

Hell's teeth man! You can't truly mean to say that to speak of those who detonate themselves in market places under the belief that they have divine providence is something unworthy of discussion? Unless of course you contest this point - and you have every right to, I should stress - this has to be either one of the most ignorant statements I have heard or I have utterly misread you. For the best part of the last 10 years, what with the events in the Middle East and the ensuing wave of best sellers from renowned atheists, I should say that the topic of religion has come well into the fore. If you are a Christian then this is precisely the moment to stand up and defend your religion under whatever criticism, as it is well within your rights to do so.

It should also probably be noted that, for me at least, the question of god(s)'s existence is uninteresting, and not what drives the religious discussion in this day and age. If that's the sort of conversation you've been holding with others, however, then I can certainly see why you might consider that discussion at least not worth having. It's typically rather cyclic and doesn't cover much intellectual ground.

Though I find it quite impossible for there not to be one, I'm not going to try to convince others there is. I don't care.

Fantastic! Glad to hear it. Though... do you truly find it impossible for there to be 2? 4? 119? You don't need to answer that one obviously, I get where you're coming from.

No one should care what another person believes or thinks as far as religion goes.

They most certainly should if the person's belief permits the killing of whatever ethnicity / circumstance you should at that very moment hope for the life of you you aren't in. It's not my illustration, but what would make you feel safer in the event that you are approached by a group of men in downtown Mumbai: The knowing that they had just come out of a prayer meeting, or the knowing that they hadn't?

Just because some dumbass is willing to kill himself over religion does not make it an important factor in life. To others it may seem more important, however that does not make it a topic needing to be discussed or argued.

I wasn't aware we were discussing important factors of life, simply the extent to which religion dominates the public discourse in the century so far. But if religion really is as unimportant a factor of life as you seem to posit, since you bring it up, then I'm wondering what sort of value you place in your belief system. The afterlife is serious business, you know!

yellowmadness54 said:

To others it may seem more important, however that does not make it a topic needing to be discussed or argued.

I suppose it doesn't need to be discussed no. You're free not to. But if you're not going to even touch upon what is probably the most defining feature of the first decade of the 21st century, certainly politically, then you'd best be good at telling jokes at dinner parties.

EDIT: Since nothingness seems to be a key talking point of this thread, I'm wondering whether theists, or atheists for that matter, find the concept of the Big Freeze or Big Rip as depressing or even enlightening as the idea of a discontinued existence after death.

yellowmadness54 said:

I don't care. No one should care what another person believes or thinks as far as religion goes.

Yeah, anyone who does are Islamophobes. It's not like anyone outside of Islam can find a moral superiority over a society that condones blasphemy laws, suppression of education, sexuality, gender, etc.

Technician said:

Yeah, anyone who does are Islamophobes. It's not like anyone outside of Islam can find a moral superiority over a society that condones blasphemy laws, suppression of education, sexuality, gender, etc.

Ireland is muslim?

Aliotroph? said:

Ireland is muslim?

Only the Protestant side. Not the superior Catholic side, of course.

HumanBones said:

I'm stuck somewhere in between being agnostic and being an atheist. I don't believe that Gods or a God exists, however I have no knowledge to back up my beliefs as true. I simply don't feel that anyone, including myself, can really definitively say God exists or doesn't exist.

Agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive, they refer to different things. If you have a belief in a god, you are a theist, if you don't then you are an atheist. Agnosticism concerns knowledge, not belief. I don't have a belief in a god but I can't prove that no god exists, which makes me an agnostic atheist. It sounds like you are, too.

This may come off as a pretty apathetic stance on the issue, but I prefer to be absolutely certain about something before I write off what that next person has to say.

I'm sure it's obvious enough that the fact that someone (or lots of people) believe in something has no bearing on whether it is true or not. The problem is that the idea of a god is inherently unfalsifiable - it can never be proven to be untrue, so you can never be "absolutely certain". Following the same line of reasoning, there are literally an infinite number of similar unfalsifiable things you could dream up, and you can never be absolutely certain that they don't exist either.

As a simple example, consider the Ancient Greek pantheon of gods. Thousands of people once believed in them, but it's not controversial in the slightest for us to state "the Ancient Greek gods were mythical and didn't exist". Indeed, it would seem absurd to take a cautious approach like you do and say that "I want to be absolutely certain they don't exist before I write them off". The only real difference to modern religions is that there isn't anyone alive now who believes in the Ancient Greek gods.

Surely the afterlife is just like the beforelife.

Fredrik said:

Surely the afterlife is just like the beforelife.

But you were created.

HumanBones said:

If everyone 500 years ago decided that they had no worth and what they were doing made no difference, would we be here?

I'm sure early humans weren't capable of pondering such things, yet they carried on.

Fredrik said:

Surely the afterlife is just like the beforelife.

I liked life before it was popular.

I'm a deist. I see absolutely nothing wrong with it and my atheist friends don't either. It pisses off the evangelicals but at least the Christians I know can respect it.

Fredrik said:

Surely the afterlife is just like the beforelife.

I hope it has Doom.

fraggle said:
I think you're confusing the "roots" of morality - ie. the sense of empathy for other human beings, with the moral code itself. The former, I'll admit, isn't entirely rational - it comes from an emotional source (although philosophers have devised ways of rationalising it).

Morality is more like a "chemical" or "physical" result from the interaction of people. You've got multitudes interacting, in groups based on culture and descent, and they build these various moral codes dependent on their experience and particular human characteristics (modified by genetics and the environment) to try to get along, jockeying for influence but also demanding restrictions to make sure other players don't abuse them. We use rationality because we use our brains. It's the code our intellectual interactive organ utilizes, but rationality is just there to process things. People aren't driven by rationality and the result of their morality is a social clash or mesh of their vital drives and needs (perhaps perceived most clearly in "emotion", their more raw signals).

The problem is that although we feel empathy for other humans, it's often selective in nature - we sometimes do not feel this empathy for certain groups of people.

As you said in your previous post, someone imparts morality, not something. Those somebodies are mainly concerned with their own interests. The only way I can really imagine a "rational morality" is if we were all genetic clones.

This is why we need a rationally argued system of morality - the irrational emotional roots of morality are not enough to guarantee moral behaviour in all situations.

From your premise, a degree of empathy seems convenient in order to be fair to a person, and these guys lacked empathy, but what says they lacked rationality? How would extra "rationality" replace what is missing from empathy? It sounds like replacing apples with oranges. Rationality will always be based on the brains that apply it. In that sense, it's made of flesh and blood, and is a human trait, associated to erring and partiality. You are giving rationality divine traits, in my opinion. It's mainly a tool and it doesn't really come with warranties, just like electric energy or book printing don't necessarily ensure we're not going to screw ourselves over. Reason is crucial in generating morality, but so are human instincts and drives, the expressions of our direct action and physical presence. Morality is a combination of these, just like our day to day behavior. Trying to build a morality that is based on a mere aspect of our behavior would make it alien to our nature, much like imposing an economic system that highlights a certain sector or class doesn't let people innovate or develop their own particular interests. You may individually need a morality that emphasizes rationality due to how you behave and to your place in society, being personally attached to reason-oriented activities, but why would that necessarily apply to society at large in any similar degree?

HumanBones said:
It is my belief that everything I do in my life DOES have an impact, good or bad. If everyone 500 years ago decided that they had no worth and what they were doing made no difference, would we be here?

Yeah, I like that. It does seem akin to what you said about not being certain and not drawing conclusions about people and how they see things. In this case, the same impression is applied to oneself. I mean, since we can't fully judge the meaning and value of our lives in this uncertain life, assuming self-worthlessness is about as presumptuous as making quick judgments about others.

fraggle said:

unfalsifiable ... reject it

I see what you did there :P

I guess I was using plausible and possible interchangeably. That is to say, logically possible. What I mean is, a sentient rock isn't as fucked up as a round square.

fraggle said:

Agnosticism and atheism are not mutually exclusive, they refer to different things. If you have a belief in a god, you are a theist, if you don't then you are an atheist. Agnosticism concerns knowledge, not belief. I don't have a belief in a god but I can't prove that no god exists, which makes me an agnostic atheist. It sounds like you are, too.

It sure sounds like it.

DuckReconMajor said:

I'm sure early humans weren't capable of pondering such things, yet they carried on.

I am sure that they were curious about the lives they were living and why they were living them that way. It's possible that people were not thinking about me or you, and were only concerned with themselves. If they decided that whatever they were doing was meaningless...well, cause and effect.

magicsofa said:

What I mean is, a sentient rock isn't as fucked up as a round square.

My pet rock refutes that assertion.

I think the main definition of life is something that replicates with inheritable information (thus excluding fire even though it replicates). Cells/people/planet/galaxy is a hierarchy. So a galaxy (partly) is living and conscious because part of the galaxy IS people/whales/maybe aliens/etc. But the relevant replication/cell division/sperm/egg stuff doesn't happen at the galaxy hierarchy/scale level. A galaxy probably doesn't have any DNA equivalent and thus isn't subject to natural selection which produces things like consciousness in humans who are.

'human' is a really high level abstract term for our own purposes.. really a human is an incomprehensibly complicated mess of cells/molecules/atoms/quarks/maybe miniature universes or 'nothing' or who knows what else. So a single cell sort of is conscious, at least when evolution sculpts it into a brain network with many other cells and 'consciousness' emerges (synergy). A human IS those cells, just a big organized group of them. I guess cells in my finger have nothing to do with consciousness though.

HumanBones said:

It's possible that people were not thinking about me or you, and were only concerned with themselves.

Every individual alive today came from a very long line of ancestors, each of who successfully reproduced (lol, I'm gonna be the combo breaker in that whole line; fail). The fitness theme there is natural selection selecting creatures who care for those who share their genes and having a desire to reproduce etc. That's why people like to have sex; its pretty much the most hard coded part of their genetic program. So the program won't really let people be concerned only with themselves since other people, like children, share their genes.

If sex is so fundamental and hard-coded, why are we choosy about our partners? Why do we have 30 and 40 year old virgins who have never got laid?

I guess I still have a problem with reducing the entire spectrum of human consciousness to biological functioning, however complex and fascinating it is on an academic level. Not so much in understanding it conceptually but in coming to terms with it and rejecting any spiritual beliefs I might well be clinging onto. Yeah I know, wishful thinking etc.

DoomUK said:

If sex is so fundamental and hard-coded, why are we choosy about our partners?

Women tend to be more choosey in general because from a biological perspective they need to spend much more time and energy carrying a child until birth and then caring for it afterward than a man does. And men are far less choosey then woman.

Why do we have 30 and 40 year old virgins who have never got laid?

Kind of pointless to really discuss because these people are what 0.5% or less of the entire population. You will always have people that 'slip through the cracks'. Beyond that? Subtle genetic defects would be my guess.