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DoomUK

A question for atheists

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888mikem888 said:

Technician, You didn't get my point AT ALL. I put way too much effort in bothering to get my point across. It's not that difficult of a question to understand, How do you REALLY know what is right and what is wrong? No body obviously gets what I'm talking about, you and every else can continue your lives with the belief that you really showed me, but I really can't get get my point across clearly. I don't want to bother talking about this, this conversation is going no where. If that means that your a genius and I'm just a dumb crazy Christian, fine.

Buddy, we all know what you are saying. You state only God know right and wrong and has told Christians through the Commandments. It's fucking obvious, dude. It's just insane bullshit to assume only Christians can truly know it.

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888mikem888 said:

How do you REALLY know what is right and what is wrong? {...} If that means that your a genius and I'm just a dumb crazy Christian, fine.

Please don't incite hatred where none exists. I for one am interested in your question and I would love to hear a response from you regarding my take on where we derive our sense of right and wrong from, which is an admittedly construed way of asking how it is we know what is right and wrong, but does cover all the necessary ground. I have asserted that it is a combination of environmental exposure, which we may for ease of discussion call society, experience, and the imparting of knowledge from individuals, and an innate sense of morality resulting from evolution. On top of this, I have posited the Golden Rule as a moral foundation on which one's actions might be based, if they so choose.

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There was a good article (and debate in comment section) in cosmic variance touching the subject months ago.

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888mikem888 said:

Who gets to ultimately decide what is Right and what is Wrong if there is no God?

The decision is made by a community's leader/s, always has been and always will be. The difference between religious and atheist communities is that religious leaders can invoke the authority of a higher power to render their pronouncements inviolate.

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Technician said:

Buddy, we all know what you are saying. You state only God know right and wrong and has told Christians through the Commandments. It's fucking obvious, dude. It's just insane bullshit to assume only Christians can truly know it.


I'm not saying only Christans know, I'm saying IF THERE IS NO GOD

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888mikem888 said:

I'm not saying only Christans know, I'm saying IF THERE IS NO GOD


Well, for most (e: this might be false, I don't know if hindis or smth teach moral values, too) of the people there isn't so you don't need that if statement and can just go and watch the societies.

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888mikem888 said:

I don't object to people believing in any thing but the thing that troubles me if there was no God, how do you tell Right from Wrong?

This was discussed at length in earlier parts of the thread.

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I just don't have the energy for these threads anymore. Thanks everybody for saying what I would.

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"..group of scientists who will test you and see how high your living standards are... how useful.. smart.. strong.. any mental/physical disabilities. They were pushing into the courts that if one's living standards aren't high enough, they should be allowed to kill them.
But now that it became a law, it would become LEGALLY right to kill a disabled person."

If goodness/morality is roughly defined as minimizing pain and maximizing happiness for all beings/species involved (and evil is defined oppositely), then such social darwinism would very likely be immoral by definition. Its a complicated calculation though, taking the happiness/pain of all individuals of all species in the virtually contained system of earth. For example, I think the net happiness of all beings on earth might increase if all humans suddenly disappeared painlessly (no more pollution/ecological destruction/factory farms/etc). Nature has evil (by the definition I'm using) built in unfortunately, due to predator/prey. Its complicated because the predators played a large role in selecting the 'feeling' of pain in the first place (he who feels pain/fear is more likely to run from a lion and reproduce copies of those fear/pain mutations in offspring/etc).

Its obvious that the social darwinism 'death lottery' you mention would spread fear throughout the population, and relatives/friends of those who were killed would be sad, mental forms of pain. Then of course the actual physical pain of the killings, especially when merely preventing them from reproducing without killing would have the same 'artificial selection' effect. Those all weigh in to make the 'net happiness' of 'killing unfit individuals' a negative number/immoral so far. The only pro is supposedly making future descendants less likely to have whatever genetic illnesses that are being weeded out (if that would even work well because natural selection works a lot deeper than clumsy human artificial selection (example: humans breeding white tigers selected for retarded tigers on accident or something)). I don't know the exact value of that in terms of net pain/happiness for all beings involved, but as mentioned the killing part is completely unnecessary to achieve the same result, relative to merely preventing reproducing, so its already more evil than what it could be, and likely not the most ethical path to take overall.

If 'killing the unfit' became a law, then its just an immoral law. It would be legal to kill them; "LEGALLY right" is semantically confusing because 'right' can misinterpreted as good/ethical when in that context it merely meant that it complies with those evil laws.

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888mikem888 said:

Most people on this forum might think it's wrong to kill a disabled person. But what? Because a small group of people made it a law it's now morally right?

I think you're confused. Laws don't define what is moral, they describe what is judged to be moral - by the people, the lawmakers, etc. Personal subjective opinions on what is and is not moral differ, and you acknowledge this in your comment ("most people would think").

"Why is it wrong to kill a disabled person?" is really no different a question to "Why is it wrong to kill a person?" in the more general sense, unless you can provide a reason why a disabled person is somehow different. It comes back to the same reasons - the majority of us don't want to kill other people because we feel empathy, and killing someone is causing harm to another human being.

In an earlier comment I talked about the need for a rationally argued moral code. This is actually a good example of that. What would be the reason why disabled people should be treated differently from everyone else? Can a rational argument be constructed to argue for that? If not, then they should be treated the same.

Now, I expect that your response to this will be a simple one - the Bible says "Thou shalt not kill" and that applies to everyone. But to say that ignores all the exceptions that we accept to that rule. If you kill someone in self defence, is that immoral? What about if they're going to kill your entire family? What if someone is being kept alive in a vegetative state from which they will never recover? What if they suffer from a disease in which they're in constant pain, wish to die, but are unable to commit suicide? Is it immoral to help them do it?

Absolutes like "Thou shalt not kill" sound like a simple solution to the problem but in practise they ignore the subtleties and complexities of the full moral sense that we feel. It's a good general rule of thumb but to cover all the corner cases you need a rationally argued set of laws.

It's worth pointing out that Hitler and the Nazis actually instituted euthanasia of disabled people. But the Nazi regime was an elite group lead by a dictator, that imposed laws based on an extreme political ideology. That's pretty much the opposite of what I'm arguing for, which is a set of laws based on rational argument and extensive debate, ideally involving the general public.

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888mikem888 said:

I'm not saying only Christans know, I'm saying IF THERE IS NO GOD


Well, there is no god, and Moses never received any commandments, yet we do have morality and right/wrong. How I dunno (actually I do, but I wont ellaborate), but obviously we do have it.

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darkreaver said:

Well, there is no god, and Moses never received any commandments, yet we do have morality and right/wrong. How I dunno (actually I do, but I wont ellaborate), but obviously we do have it.


Even though I want to agree with you, this kind of statement has no place in any philosophical discussion.

However, similar to what you're saying, there are people who have attained moral beliefs without reading the Bible. In fact, it's stupidly obvious that all societies have members with moral beliefs, and have gained those ideas through many different ways, be they religious or not. With that in mind, I'm not sure why pro-theists even use the "how would we have morals" card.

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I think therefore I am, in some element,
I do only what I: feel is right, what I need, what others need
I do what I want, and I want to folow what I feel is right
Because I feel good that way, and feling good is better than feeling bad

if you only live once, which no one of us know if its so, then I better live good and fair to the people around me , and when it all ends, it was atleast acceptable as long as it lasted

I can share this

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I'm all for letting people believe what they want to, but one thing has always bugged me about religion. It's the fact that the religious have a very dim view of humanity. They think we're all a bunch of depraved, murderous creatures that only stay good because of a fear of God. The truth, however is that the vast majority of people are decent folk who care for each other when it counts. There is an instinctual and societal need for cooperation and mutual preservation that everyone has, regardless of religion. The fact that there are people out there who think the only reason they aren't murdering, raping, and looting anyone is because of a fear of God scares me. I mean, what happens if their faith is shaken?

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Danarchy said:

The fact that there are people out there who think the only reason they aren't murdering, raping, and looting anyone is because of a fear of God scares me. I mean, what happens if their faith is shaken?

Absolutely nothing, I wager. One might think the only reason immoral conduct is kept at bay is through belief in a supernatural deity, but dig up the body of Christ and you'll probably find that nobody behaves any differently for it. Or, to put it another way, it wouldn't be as though they find their morals to simply dissipate before their very soul leaving in its wake a chasm of animalistic urges, and I doubt any former theist would embark on a killing spree simply because they feel that it's how they ought to behave in recognition of there being no alterations to their sense of moral decency.

Of course, I may simply not be accounting for how stupid some people can be, in which case yes it is fairly frightening. What might you expect? Copulating in the streets?

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magicsofa said:

With that in mind, I'm not sure why pro-theists even use the "how would we have morals" card.

Because it's the only real argument for the divine, albeit not a very good one.

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One reason I haven't embraced spirituality is the bewildering array of paths that claim to lead to salvation, eternal bliss, enlightenment and/or hot'n'cold running virgins. How am I to know which is the one true path? Am I expected to play a game of snakes and ladders with my eternal soul? Someone, anyone - give me a sign!

On a related note...

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st.alfonzo said:
Of course, what you're really chatting about it moral objectivism. While I don't think one actually needs a set of moral principles to refer to once evolution and societal constructs have been cited

But I'd say you used a form of "moral objectivism" yourself in having faith in sciences and philosophy as the moral guides of humanity, even assuming some form of unity among people. In either case, people seek references by which to interact socially and morally. The more unstable and harsh an environment, the less faith in the more commonplace political and social institutions, and the need to search for something that isn't there immediately. It's easier to have faith in progress and science if progress and science are benefiting you immediately. If they aren't or they seem to be abusing you, you may be forced to search elsewhere.

The abolition of slavery was one such development. An inate sense of morality coupled with environental exposure will shape an individual's sense of what is right and what is wrong, and those who do not adhere to the standards outlined by society can in most cases be deemed socio or physchopathic.

The development of machines, urban centers and economic power in the north seem to have had more direct influence than theoretical disciplines. Observed globally, it still doesn't help much in terms of individually fitting into a society where one has to personally judge moral precepts, in whatever limited degree one can judge complex social situations. If anything it "just happened" and still "means nothing". It's not like we can still judge things from a 19th century perspective.

fraggle said:
I think you're confused. Laws don't define what is moral, they describe what is judged to be moral - by the people, the lawmakers, etc. Personal subjective opinions on what is and is not moral differ, and you acknowledge this in your comment ("most people would think").

I'm guessing you're trying to say they don't cause or explain what is moral, but the word define actually fits laws more clearly than describe. They don't passively describe moral behavior. They actively provide definitions (assertions) of how to deal with moral issues. All he appears to be saying is that laws aren't sufficient to say what's good or bad, to which he seems to find some recourse in religious teachings. And it's true that laws can only work on top of a slew of cultural habits of practical importance. Science gains relevance there, and so does religion, but they don't play the same roles.

What would be the reason why disabled people should be treated differently from everyone else? Can a rational argument be constructed to argue for that? If not, then they should be treated the same.

And who exactly decides what is rational or rational enough? Is this rationality someone not attached to the different interests of various parties?

Now, I expect that your response to this will be a simple one - the Bible says "Thou shalt not kill" and that applies to everyone.

Pretending to predict someone's response and building a reply around the assumption has a name. In any case, when "thou shalt not" doesn't apply, it's usually because the party not benefiting from the mandate to not be killed can do little or nothing against it, not some fair rational consensus. Rationality, like many things that grant power, is most comfortable among the well off, whom it serves best but not always honestly or without hypocrisy.

But the Nazi regime was an elite group lead by a dictator, that imposed laws based on an extreme political ideology. That's pretty much the opposite of what I'm arguing for, which is a set of laws based on rational argument and extensive debate, ideally involving the general public.

The idea that there's some supreme rationality, above the interested minds of people who each have their selfish motives, doesn't seem so opposed to it. I mean, you attempt to discredit the principle of authority, easily related to the figure of a deity, by referring to the example of an authoritarian dictator, but to do so, you apply the principle to rationality, our savior and hero.

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Danarchy said:

I'm all for letting people believe what they want to, but one thing has always bugged me about religion. It's the fact that the religious have a very dim view of humanity. They think we're all a bunch of depraved, murderous creatures that only stay good because of a fear of God.


Again I think this was just a reflection of the times in which religion needed to spread. In the dark ages people were murderous, opportunistic and fighting just to survive. Lawlessness was rampant and the only thing they could come up with was an all seeing God who would smite your ass if you weren't careful. And what better way to bring God's message of 'believe or burn' then to go on a crusade and smash everything in your way until it agrees.

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888mikem888 said:

Who gets to ultimately decide what is Right and what is Wrong if there is no God?


Any person who judges you gets to decide. If they let themselves be influenced by what other people have already decided, well, whether that's good or bad depends on the context. If the person who judges you has power over you, well, that makes their judgement all the more important. If they don't, then it doesn't matter so much what they think, but they still ultimately get to decide.

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Csonicgo said:

Why can't people just "be"? Is that really a problem?

No master plan, invisible guiding force or ultimate goal? Of course that's a problem, since it means we're serving no useful purpose.

<resumes playing with C64 emulator>

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GreyGhost said:

No master plan, invisible guiding force or ultimate goal? Of course that's a problem, since it means we're serving no useful purpose.


So we're like children, then?

Time to go to children's books to see how to live.

I recommend everyone read The Tao of Pooh. I read this book in my freshman philosophy class and do not regret a second of it. If everyone knew the way of Pooh we'd know what life is all about.

Children already know, anyway.

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Csonicgo said:

Why can't people just "be"? Is that really a problem?

Short-term, no. Long-term, yes.

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