Theists hold ‘innumerable’ moral systems as well. Even within individual religions, there’s broad disagreement on what is right and what is wrong, and why.
In addition, saying “because God says so” does not give a moral system any sounder footing than saying “because the voice in my head says so”. All moral systems have this in common – they are interpreted and executed by human brains.
Or: it’s proven that a god exists – and plenty of people disregard his proclamations of what’s right and wrong, since his moral claims strike us as laughable.
(After all, it’s been freely granted that “people can make rational moral choices too. For example, I may be afraid of what a WWIII may look like, but that doesn’t mean I can’t rationally opt to militate for peace.” So if you’ve made a Rational Moral Choice, and then some god says “Do The Opposite,” then . . . ?)
Well, you started by poisoning the well, so it’s not too surprising, is it?
Infertility?
No, you haven’t. You have the pretense of civility, but starting with unfavorable assumptions that poison the well, and refusing to back down from them when others point out your errors of assumption in an attempt to get a real argument going, is only superficially civil, and it isn’t rational either.
Please, oh please, please, please, tell me that atheists should probably form a club or church or something.
I mean I’ll regret it, but it’s Wednesday and the week can’t get much worse.
How about a coherent axiological system?
OK…so, when you argue with your imaginary Muslim buddies, you can think of lots of rational arguments for why an atheist’s life should be spared. So why don’t you tell your imaginary Muslim buddies what you actually think about why atheists should be spared?
Obviously atheists shouldn’t be spared because they are atheists, but because they are human beings. You don’t think it is OK to kill atheists do you? Or Christians, or Muslims, or pagans? And it wouldn’t be OK to kill someone, even if the person you are considering killing was an idiot, right?
Like, you walk up to a random person on the street, put a gun to their head, and give them 10 seconds to come up with a reason for you to not pull the trigger. And if they can’t come up with a reason, BLAM. Could Muslims come up with such a reason? If a Muslim or Christian says, “God has told us that murder is, like, wrong and stuff?” How’s that a rational argument? It’s an irrational appeal to authority.
Logic can only prove that conclusions are validly or invalidly derived from premises. It cannot determine the validity or invalidity of the premises themselves.
All men are mortal
Socrates is a man
Socrates is mortal
Logically valid. Except if we’re talking about my dog Socrates, the second premise is not true, Socrates is a dog not a man.
You’re trying to advance the argument:
If someone does not have a belief that their life has an intrinsic value, it is OK to kill them.
Atheists do not have a belief that their lives have intrinsic value.
It is OK to kill atheists
Except plenty of atheists would deny the minor premise, that their lives have intrinsic value. So the syllogism fails there. And plenty of people of all sorts would deny the major premise, that if someone for whatever reason can’t see that their lives have intrinsic value, that makes it OK to kill them.
Like, you know, Muslims. Real-life Muslims believe all lives have intrinsic value. That includes people who (mistakenly in their view) don’t agree with them.
In comparison, what is the moral system of your particular group?
While we’re at it, what might that group be?
Should blondes and left-handed people do the same thing?
I don’t know if you remember this gem, but the Simpsons already did it.
Surprise, surprise: that same OP also had the same misconceptions that atheists have (or should have) a coherent philosophy.
As a whole, atheists aren’t interested in creating an alternative to religion or a distinctly atheistic philosophy. There are ideas a great many atheists share, but this isn’t something that calls to a lot of atheists. Saying that they need to do it or religious fanatics will think it’s OK to murder them is not exactly persuasive.
:dubious: You don’t think secular axiological systems exist?
There’s even terrible ones:
I will start by thanking you for the post. It serves my purpose and I’m grateful. I would be even more grateful if I were offered a better argument than simply destroying the interlocutor’s argument. I’m good at that myself, I think. But I would be really appreciate a rational argument that stands by itself and would be hard to question by the interlocutor.
And I also think a debater shouldn’t imply another debater is lying just because he feels like it.
I know. Wacky *and *weird all at once.
I have a magical mouse in my pocket. It’s telling me that it will give me a spectacular reward if I kill you. I don’t like killing, but the mouse says it’s OK to kill people who don’t believe it is real. Explain why I shouldn’t kill you.
Atheists as a group don’t have a coherent axiological system because the only thing atheists as a group share is that they don’t believe in gods.
Asking atheists to have a coherent axiological system that is assented to by all atheists is like asking Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Buddhists, Taoists, Satanists, Zoroastrians, Mithraists, and Isis worshippers to all share a coherent axiological system.
Why should we expect all those people agree on the same moral axioms?
Especially since no human being wakes up one morning, decides upon a set of moral axioms, and then goes about working out the consequences of these axioms and acting upon them. In real life people work the reverse way–they decide on the sort of things they want to have happen, and then try to work out moral axioms that will logically lead to those consequences.
Like, if we can just pull moral axioms out of our ass, like “Murder is wrong”, how do we judge whether that moral axiom is worth assenting to or not? In real life we decide that murder is wrong because we look at all the bad things that result from murder–revenge, breakdown of social order, our buddies dying, us dying, and so on–and decide that we better have a rule against murder.
And this simply derives from our nature as social animals. We don’t want to die because we’re animals who evolved to not want to die. We also need to protect our friends and family because we’re social creatures, and we evolved to love our friends and family. Or rather, “love” is the name we give the our evolved instinct to protect and care for our friends and family. And so if someone tries to kill us, or tries to kill our buddies, we don’t like it and we fight back.
But it turns out that the guy trying to kill us also doesn’t want to be killed, and also doesn’t want to have his buddies killed. So if we kill him, his buddies will get mad and try to kill us. And if he or his buddies kill one of us, we’ll get mad and try to kill him and his buddies.
And this leads to all sorts of undesirable consequences, blood feuds of this type are a common feature of human history and go on today in places where government authority is weak. And so the first rules of organized states and tribes is to put a stop to this sort of nonsense by forbidding people from killing each other, and work together. Of course often the way these people work together is to band together and go off and kill a third group of people who isn’t part of the circle of authority.
And since we have a rule against murder, we have to invent a reason for the rule. “Because it fucks things up” apparently isn’t clear enough for some people, so we have to invent reasons like “it makes invisible spirits angry and if the spirits are angry they punish you”. Or “the people in authority will get angry and will try to punish you, so don’t let them catch you murdering people”. Those are a lot easier for people to understand.
A debater shouldn’t hide their motives for asking questions, either. Allow us to best answer the questions you relay to your Muslims by letting us know what your religious beliefs are so that we can tailor said answers to best go through your personal filters.
The OP does not express this. I simply observed that if atheists held a more coherent set of beliefs it would made it harder to target. I never meant they should do anything and I always refrain myself from telling people what to do.
I’m a sort of Shrek, in this respect, and I don’t think I deserve too much attention, that is all.
Why? The only collective thing atheist have is a disbelief in a god. Unless your argument is that without a specific god there is no ultimate arbitrator of value. Believers in a differing god of course would argue otherwise. Disbelievers in god simply pull the question forward and wrestle with how they would assign value.
Human Action has already given you examples, but you seem to be under the impression that atheists are all objective materialists. Obviously you’re wrong.
In the main, atheists don’t want that. And irrational people are irrational. It’s not a good idea to let them dictate what you’re going to do.