Ask The Atheist Guy

In My Humble Opinion
102

Hey, atheist guy,

I’m an atheist guy too, and I’d like to ask you what you do when you receive offensive religious glurge. I got this one recently (only posting a small exerpt).

quote----------------------------------------------------------
How many of us have heard that question “Where was
your GOD when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon
was attacked?” Well I know where my GOD was the
morning of September 11, 2001, and He was very busy!

He was trying to discourage anyone from taking these
flights. Those four flights together held over 1000
passengers and there were only 266 aboard.

He was on 4 commercial flights giving terrified
passengers the ability to stay calm. Not one of the
family members who were called by a loved one
on one of the high-jacked planes said that passengers
were screaming in the background. On one of the
flights he was giving strength to passengers
to try to overtake the highjackers.

(text deleted for brevity)

>> praying for those who don’t believe in GOD, every
chance I have. I can’t imagine going through such a
difficult time and not believing in GOD.

Life would be hopeless

Unquote-------------------------------------------

I don’t want to upset the person who sent this to me, but I find it extremely offensive. I’m sure the sender would never dream of saying to a Jewish or Muslim person “Hey, you’ve got to try this home cured bacon!”, but it seems us atheists don’t deserve any consideration.

103

nerv,

Sorry, but join the rest of us with minority religious beliefs. Yes, Christianity DOES get shoved down our throats by well intentioned folk all the time. Often school or state sanctioned even. The offensive proselytizer is just annoying in comparison.

104

Xanakis, I am NOT saying that we shouldn’t kill old ladies because our reason tells us not to.

I am saying that we have an inhibition against killing friends and family that was given to us through evolution. Reason has nothing to do with that.

It could be perfectly reasonable for you to kill old ladies and take their money. In fact, many people do conclude that it would be reasonable to do so, and there is nothing wrong with their reasoning.

But what our reason CAN do is let us design a legal system that will create the sort of society that we want to live in. It might be reasonable for me to lie, cheat, steal, and murder. But it is also reasonable for me to want to live in a society where I am not lied to, cheated, stolen from, or murdered. It is perfectly consistent for me to want to steal but not want to be stolen from.

Societies have been constructed on this principle, called aristocracy. The aristocrats are able to lie, cheat, steal, and kill, while everyone else is forbidden to. But how can one ensure that he is a member of the aristocracy? You can’t. So, we might reasonably enforce laws that apply to everyone. And when we do that, many amazing things happen. Because people are protected from their neighbors reasonable desire to steal from them and kill them, then they can cooperate, build, save, invest, invent.

And we can create a society like the one we live in right now. There is no absolute morality imposed from some supernatural source that tells me that killing my neighbor is wrong. But I know that if I want to live in an orderly society that society must have rules against killing. I am in favor of those rules, even though they prohibit me from killing my neighbor, because I like what happens when those rules exist.

I’d 100 times rather be an ordinary citizen in one of our western liberal democracies than an Egyptian Pharaoh. Even though the Pharoah had absolute power of life and death over his subjects, and had everything their society could produce, he still couldn’t get a pennicillin tablet. He still couldn’t get a computer. He still couldn’t feel safe from one of his generals coming back from a war and cutting off his head.

I am in favor of these rules because they produce good results. Even when I might rationally break these rules for my own self interest, I am still in favor of the rules existing, since the existance of the rules is also in my self interest.

105

aramis,

The very fact of the existence of the Universe is a fact.

You can’t just ignore the fact that the Universe exists.

Yes, I agree that the Universe is a “thing”. But it is a “thing” that either must have come from somewhere OR it has always been here.

There is no inbetween.

Then where did the quantum come from to fluctuate?

For the Universe to begin there must have been either matter or something which is capable of creating matter. Or at least capable of creating the circumstances which will allow matter to then be created.

Otherwise how could we be here?

Whatever the reason was, quantum fluctuation or whatever, there had to be a cause and an effect.

Either something started the momentum in the first place or the momentum has been an eternal thing…

I’ve also read about Superstring Theory.

Superstring Theory is amazing. It is the latest bleeding edge physics theory and most respectable modern physicists seem to believe it is correct.

Superstring Theory posits the idea that there are either 10 or 24 dimensions and an inter-dimensional traveller would be able to do all kinds of things like travel between two distant points in space in an instant and also make themselves invisible - picture you as a two-dimensional drawing, if you suddenly “stood up” into 3 dimensions, you would become invisible to your two-dimensional friends (except for a very thin slice through the middle of your body).

But Superstring Theory has no real repurcussions on the God Theory.

Its just a law of physics (possibly).

Something had to start the laws of physics off in the first place or, otherwise, they’ve always been here - these are the only two options on the table.

lemur866,

I think what stops us from killing our neighbour or an old lady is more than just the obligations placed on us by the laws of the land or societal conventions.

I think the reason you don’t do this is because something, somewhere tells you it is wrong. There is a moral imperative.

Its not just humans - most animals also have it. Most animals, in the animal kingdom, don’t attack and kill their own kind.

OK there are some that do but they will have a very good reason for doing so.

I know animals may fight over territory or a mate or whatever but they are generally surprisingly gentle with each other, rarely administering fatal blows, even large animals like moose.

I stress I’m talking about how animals behave with their own kind, not predators and prey.

106

Well, modern physics DOES get into some weird stuff visavis time and the start of it all. As you get closer to the beginning the nature of time changes, may be circular in its dimensionality … your question re what was before the start maybe that there is no time before and maybe no start … it always was because time changes as you get close to the “start.” For all we know the start is the end as well.

Look, I believe in some kind of God, and I know that none of us will unerstand the beginning of time, but the argument that because I can’t understand how it begins so therefore the divine caused it, well, it seems weak.

107

Yes, I agree that many aniimals are disinclined to be violent to members of their own species. Although some territorial animals cannot tolerate another member of their species and are always violent to them except during mating season.

But think for a minute. Does this disinclination to harm members of your species come from natural theology? Or could it be given to us by evolution? All other things being equal it is better not to harm a species-mate. Sometimes you have to fight or struggle for resources, mates, territory, etc. But if you don’t have to fight it is better not to fight. You benefit two ways from that…you don’t risk being hurt and a close relative of yours also doesn’t get hurt. Simple kin selection, but at the level we are talking about all members of your species are kin.

So, humans are social animals and we instinctively get along with each other and we have certain behaviors that allow us to do so. But sometimes we see opportunities. Sometimes we see that if we steal the old lady’s wallet we will get resources for ourselves, even though it would harm the old lady. A rational person might decide to do it. Crime happens every day. Crime is not irrational. But it is also rational to try to minimize crime.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with the existance of God. You feel that morality MUST come from some supernatural source? Fine, but I have shown to my own satisfaction that it can have purely natural sources, and therefore any attempt to prove the existance of the supernatural by an appeal to our innate morality fails.

108

No no. I certainly believe and understand how morals and ethics can be selected for. Evolutionary psychology is fascinating. It also can be used to explain the basis of some atrocious behaviors as well.
What I was saying is that I, personally, feel the need to accept the assumption that there is some universal basis to morals; that if, for example, Hitler had won the war and killed off all of those whose minds percieved that he was evil, that even then, he’d still have been wrong and evil. Even if no one alive saw him as that.
The alternative to me is moral relativism, and I can’t accept that. Maybe this IS hard-wired into my brain by eons of evolution, I dunno, but …
I recognize that this the kind of argument that can be dismissed as evidence “from personal incredulity” (Dawkins) but nevertheless it is the basis of my belief and thus of my faith in some Higher power.

109

Where did God come from? If you say “God always existed”, then maybe the quantum which fluctuated always existed.

I see you begin backing away from this statement rather quickly, which is just as well, because there is an amazing amount of intra-species violence, cruelty, and callousness in the world. Yes, many species have evolved things which look like innate moral rules. But a lot of the time those rules are pretty much what you would expect a ruthless, amoral, and ultimately mindless process like natural selection to produce.

Just one example–Lions live in prides, basically harems. When the male lion of the pride begins to get old and decrepit, a young lion (or lions–groups of brothers will sometimes share a pride) move in to drive off or kill the old lion. If he succeeds, he will then kill all the cubs in the pride. This is perfectly logical–the cubs aren’t his cubs, they represent someone else’s genes.

The mother lions will try to defend their cubs, up to a point. After all, greater love hath no man than a mother cat defending her kittens and all that. But, if the new lion manages to kill the cubs–which he almost cetainly will–the lionesses don’t vow revenge and eternal hatred of the black-hearted bastard who murdered their babies. They don’t plot to kill him in his sleep, or flee to a better pride that’s not run by a baby-killer (of course, all prides are run by baby-killers). Instead, the lionesses go into heat. So much for that batch of cubs–time to make more cubs! Again, perfectly logical–lionesses who don’t do this don’t pass down their genes as well.

Humans, of course, are capable of much more complex and self-reflective moral behavior than this. But any reading of human history makes it pretty hard for me to accept that there must be a God on account of the “innate moral sense” of the species which has produced suttee, the Inquisition, Auschwitz, the Indian wars, the genocide of the Tasmanian aborigines, the burial alive of Confucian scholars, foot binding, drawing and quartering, Vlad the Impaler, the Khmer Rouge, the African slave trade, the Thirty Years’ War, clitorodectomies, the Taliban, chemical warfare, Saddam Hussein, the practices of Turkish harems, suicide bombers, the Children’s Crusade, castrati, and…well, you get the point.