Your struggle with this point is a little shocking.
Wow, way to completely miss the point.
Conflict between somebody holding a gun and who is already irrational cannot be resolved through logical reasoning.
Conflict between people who otherwise exhibit no outward signs of irrationality (like the willingness to kill innocent people in brutal, violent ways) may be resolved through logical reasoning. But not always - see messy divorce proceedings, debates on the designated hitter rule, etc.
No, in post 96, where I show that the second part of each point is the view held by my interlocutors.
No; some make false claims that they are absolute more than others; none are actually absolute, at all.
Pretty much the same points. And still ludicrously false.
It’s called “strawmanning”. You’re using a caricature of atheists. Your arguments are suspect when they proceed from false premises.
You come up with a joke meant to stand for a parable and treat me condescendingly? That’s not even shocking.
If an atheist says that “I believe people shouldn’t murder each other,” and a theist says that “I believe people shouldn’t disobey the word of God,” how is one statement more a matter of absolutism and the other relativism? They look the same to me.
Of course. The same as there is no pure free market economy or pure command economy, no matter how much the people prophesying them would like to believe they are.
What can make them absolute or relative is the reason why they hold this view and the manner in which they would apply the principle.
However, there are economies, there are both free market and command economies. There’s no evidence at all for either gods or for “absolute morality”. Or for that matter that gods if they exist adhere to that absolute morality, or that absolute morality is even desirable.
Why don’t you show us how it is done, using your own religion as an example?
Uh, okay. That’s suitably vague, I guess.
So you’re saying that any given theist might have utterly relativist reasons for believing that It’s Good To Do God’s Will, and any given atheist might have absolutist reasons for believing that Murder Is Wrong, and et cetera?
If you’re looking to convince Muslims that they shouldn’t murder atheists, you’ll need to form an argument that the Muslim can relate to. Presenting him an argument as an atheist sees things won’t do it.
People here on this board are largely atheists, and are fairly knowledgeable about a lot of things, so many here can help you with an argument to present to the interlocutors that they (the Muslims) may find convincing, but these arguments would be us using our knowledge of the Muslim religion to come up with convincing reasons to them.
I’m curious how these interlocutors view the morality of Sunni killing Shia.
“Doctor, my, uh, friend is having this embarrassing issue that he needs help with…”
nm
UY Scuti
You could go to your pals and tell them you have spoken to several actual atheists and that their (the Muslims) ideas about atheism are wrong. You might also add that until they have a better understanding of what an atheist actually is you can’t debate them because of their lack of any real knowledge and, they should refrain from killing anyone.
Once your buddies have learned the real facts about atheism they might even change their minds.
This to me seems rational and reasonable. If they refuse them there is no reason to discuss any further.
Which is unfortunate, because the classic syllogism goes
[ul]
[li]nothing is greater than God[/li][li]atheists believe in nothing[/li][li] …[/li][/ul]
Which, obviously, would not make the interlocutors very happy.
I can speak for myself, that the crucial question is choice, which I do not have. I personally am literally unable to believe in a deity, it is not in my make-up. I could say the words and perform the rituals, but it would still not make me a believer, it would be empty gestures to appease the adherents who think that unbelief is wrong.
Ask your interlocutors if they could truly believe in Odin, or Vishnu, or the Way (Tao), or some other thing. If they say no, then maybe they could understand how an atheist may truly be unable to believe in their god. Because when you think about it, encouraging an atheist to feign belief is the same as asking him to lie to the face of God. I cannot imagine anything a believer would find more heinous, and if that concept is not detestable to them, I can only infer that their first loyalty must be to the apparatus of religion rather than to the deity is stands for.
Couldn’t be any vaguer.
I would still like to see UY Scuti address this:
No problem.
Believing that there’s an actual magical mouse in my pocket seems clearly preposterous. One holding this belief may justifiably be regarded as delusional. And if this person goes on justifying his acts based on what this superior entity has dictated him to do, I may have difficulty trusting this person’s reliability, to say the least.
Yet, there have been people believing in magical mouses and, possibly, some of them may still roam around. I refer to animist hunter gatherers for whom the (collective, family, and/or individual) totems are overwhelming realities. Reason and cultural courtesy tells me not to dismiss such beliefs as ridiculous, but try and see how come the people holding them manage to survive healthily and happily in an environment where my family and I would be very likely to fail. These people, despite their apparently ridiculous beliefs, appear to be fit and, in the long term, be better fit to survive the ever changing conditions on Earth.
And this is where it becomes clear, at least to me, that religion and the belief in the divine is a human trait that has involuntarily enabled mankind to organize its control over the environment and become better fit as whole. This makes me suspect that religion is not a relic of the primitive man; quite on the contrary, it is an important asset for human beings to survive in an increasingly challenging environment.
Last but not least, self-delusions (such as the one that there is a magic mouse in your pocket telling you things to do and that these commandments really can justify your acts) gain respectability and authority if they are part of the education that one receives in the first years of life AND if the community that this person belongs to nurture and cultivate it. There are complex mimetic mechanisms in the society that condition and validates one’s identity, which makes individuals accept and promote absurdities, both religious and non religious.
As I said, I for one find the idea of the “magical mouse” hilarious, but in the society (if there really were someone to claim the supernatural rodent is real) I would not rush to dismiss such belief before trying to really understand what lies behind it.