[QUOTE=Pochacco]
A pity you skipped it. It’s actually a very powerful statement of how atheists construct meaning in a meaningless universe and a direct answer to the nihilistic thesis you proposed in your GD thread.
If you don’t want to hear talk about God being imaginary, don’t post hypotheticals about atheism. That’s kinda the whole point of atheism, you know … .
Well written, Lemur866. I agree completely. It’s exactly how this particular atheist approaches life.
[/QUOTE]
sorry it is a pet peeve of mine when someone reiterates what I say in the form of a refutation. If he wants me to read it he can rephrase without the unecessary invalidation of the loss of a first principle. If he can show empathy for that concept I will pay attention. I will not be lectured on empathy by those who lack it.
[QUOTE=mswas]
sorry it is a pet peeve of mine when someone reiterates what I say in the form of a refutation. If he wants me to read it he can rephrase without the unecessary invalidation of the loss of a first principle. If he can show empathy for that concept I will pay attention. I will not be lectured on empathy by those who lack it.
[/QUOTE]
You expect others to overlook the potentially insulting tone of your GD OP and engage with its arguments directly. I agree with you. They should. You’re right that your rhetorical stance was no more extreme than the flying spaghetti monster.
But if you’re taking that position, you really can’t take offense when someone turns the tables. Everything that Lemur866 says is in accord with my line of argument in your original thread. Your refusal to seriously engage with it is no different than the efforts of some other posters to shout you down.
[QUOTE=mswas]
I do too incidentally. But the point wasn’t really to prove me wrong, it was to convince me that there is a valid reason to accept morality. The argument was made for morality, but not love.
[/QUOTE]
Right now you don’t see that love can exist without a God? Or you think the case hasn’t been made?
[QUOTE=mswas]
I did explicitly state it. I said that as God is the foundation for my entire cultural upbringing, I needed to question everything that was taught to me under the aegis of those cultural principles, if I were to become an atheist. Even in the OP, I didn’t say, “This is the kind of atheist everyone becomes”, or even, “this is the kind of atheist I will become.”, I said that I was reconsidering everything including morality and love, and considering throwing them out as quaint notions. Many people understood that right away and responded accordingly. Why the majority did not, I do not know. LilShieste, Revenant Threshold, Pochacco, Max Torque, MEBuckner, Shodan and others all got it right off the bat.
[/QUOTE]
You know, everybody gets exactly what you say you were trying to do. “If I become an atheist, what values do I have to throw away? Which can I keep?” It’s an interesting concept, but you completely boned the execution. Clearly, your whole belief system is grounded in Christianity. You’ve been taught that we’re nice to each other because God says we must, that we follow laws because God said we should, that we love each other because God tells us to, that we’re honest because God says we must. Now suddenly there’s no God. What do you do?
I understand that if you’ve lived your entire life never seriously considering the possibility of no God, then that’s a conceptual muscle that has gotten next to no exercise. I’m not surprised you struggle with the concept of morality in the absence of God; far greater men than you and I have duked it out over the course of centuries to understand what it means. If you’ve never seriously at a gut level thought about tossing out God then you’re expected to stumble with the concept initially.
But you couldn’t stick to the confines of your little thought exercise. You had to set up these snarky little strawman soliloquies on the side. And let me educate you on what a strawman is, since I’ve seen you misuse the term in other threads. A strawman is when you falsely characterize your opponent’s arguments in ways that are easy for you to discredit, instead of taking them on directly and honestly. It’s sort of the equivalent of crossing your eyes, sticking your finger in your nose, and saying “Look! Me Atheist! Me big dummy!”. It’s juvenile and it insults the intelligence of your audience. Here I’m going to post some choice bits where you step beyond “what if I have to discard my belief system?”
What the fuck does this have to do with atheism?
Right. Prop up that mean old blame-misplacing atheist strawman and whack him down. Congratulations, you won your argument against your imaginary opponent.
Nice. Your imaginary opponent also is also a liar. Kick that strawman around.
Honestly it just looks like you’ve had your ass kicked around these boards so many times that you now must resort to arguing with strawmen because you can’t take on anyone else honestly or directly. Obliquely call them liars, sociopaths, system-gamers, and everything else you stuffed that strawman with. You’re just making yourself look like an idiot.
As I said, this would have been an interesting exercise, undertaken by yourself, in the confines of your own reflections. If I toss out god, do I still hurt when I see other people hurting? Do I still want the best for humanity even if there’s no god? Ask yourself these questions. If the answer is no, then please, for the love of all humanity, never stop being a Christian because you’d be dangerous to yourself and others around you. Either way, please stop pretending that others are sociopaths just because you don’t follow the same book.
[QUOTE=Pochacco]
You expect others to overlook the potentially insulting tone of your GD OP and engage with its arguments directly. I agree with you. They should. You’re right that your rhetorical stance was no more extreme than the flying spaghetti monster.
But if you’re taking that position, you really can’t take offense when someone turns the tables. Everything that Lemur866 says is in accord with my line of argument in your original thread. Your refusal to seriously engage with it is no different than the efforts of some other posters to shout you down.
[/QUOTE]
He can take the insulting tone out of it and post it in GD if he cares.
[QUOTE=Anomalous Reading]
Right now you don’t see that love can exist without a God? Or you think the case hasn’t been made?
Or has that opinion changed?
[/QUOTE]
No, not htat love can exist without God, but whether love exists at all. Lust+Affection doesn’t cut it for me as a definition for love. Nor does, “Like bunches and bunches.” Reducing it to an emotion makes it so that pretty much anyone will do. I have had amazing mind-blowing sex with people where I fell in love with them. I still have an immense affection for those people, but, I am not with them. I am with a woman for whom the passionate intensity is less, but it’s more constant and enduring. If it’s merely a feeling, then why wasn’t just any girl who was able to fuck me right good enough?
Cosmic Relief The first half of the post seemed like honest interlocution, but it devolved halfway, so I’ve deleted my response to it. I can see it’s really just more of the same abuse. The straw man leveled at me, while accusing me of a straw man. Your post fits YOUR definition of a straw man.
[QUOTE=mswas]
No, not htat love can exist without God, but whether love exists at all. Lust+Affection doesn’t cut it for me as a definition for love. Nor does, “Like bunches and bunches.” Reducing it to an emotion makes it so that pretty much anyone will do. I have had amazing mind-blowing sex with people where I fell in love with them. I still have an immense affection for those people, but, I am not with them. I am with a woman for whom the passionate intensity is less, but it’s more constant and enduring. If it’s merely a feeling, then why wasn’t just any girl who was able to fuck me right good enough?
[/QUOTE]
Because life is more than fucking? Why don’t men marry high class prostitutes? There is more to mate selection than sexual skill. Why do you become best friends with anyone? Isn’t love a lot like being a best friend with someone you’re fucking?
Look, hypothetically, since you love that term. You’re just an animal. A superbly modified ape who can manipulate objects, walk upright and think. Why isn’t a long term pair bonding explainable by biology? Does your babylonian storm god give *love *to the wolves and penguins that mate for life?
Your argument is baseless. Please give it some thought before you waste our time in the future.
[QUOTE=Lobohan]
Because life is more than fucking? Why don’t men marry high class prostitutes? There is more to mate selection than sexual skill. Why do you become best friends with anyone? Isn’t love a lot like being a best friend with someone you’re fucking?
Look, hypothetically, since you love that term. You’re just an animal. A superbly modified ape who can manipulate objects, walk upright and think. Why isn’t a long term pair bonding explainable by biology? Does your babylonian storm god give *love *to the wolves and penguins that mate for life?
Your argument is baseless. Please give it some thought before you waste our time in the future.
[/QUOTE]
You’re wasting your time. You don’t have to respond. Also, I didn’t say anything about God providing love. I said that if I was going to question the existance of God, I should also question the existance of other things too, like morality and love. I’m sorry that wasn’t as clear to you as it was to multiple other people.
If you don’t want to waste your time, then why do you bother chastising me for your own problems of comprehension which many others clearly did not share?
[QUOTE=Lemur866]
If there were some objective moral compass, you could find the meaninglessness of the universe appalling, but there is no such objective moral compass. It doesn’t matter.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t believe in an objective moral compass, but I still find the notion of a meaningless universe appalling. Perhaps it’s foolishness on my part, but I could never live my life as if all of existence was meaningless. Even if it’s only meaning was that I was a fool.
And I find this downright depressing. No offense intended.
[QUOTE=mswas] Cosmic Relief The first half of the post seemed like honest interlocution, but it devolved halfway, so I’ve deleted my response to it. I can see it’s really just more of the same abuse. The straw man leveled at me, while accusing me of a straw man. Your post fits YOUR definition of a straw man.
[/QUOTE]
Once again you’re demonstrating that you don’t know what the term means. But since your response is “you too”, you concede my point that your post was essentially one giant stuffed strawman. Sure, my discourse devolved. We’re in the Pit. On the other hand you have no excuse for posting that junior-high-level stoner pop philosophy in GD. And now I see that after taking that initial provocative position you’re on about “oh, nobody’s showing me empathy”. I have seen few posters as dishonest, evasive, and deceptive as you have been on both threads.
[QUOTE=Cosmic Relief]
Once again you’re demonstrating that you don’t know what the term means. But since your response is “you too”, you concede my point that your post was essentially one giant stuffed strawman. Sure, my discourse devolved. We’re in the Pit. On the other hand you have no excuse for posting that junior-high-level stoner pop philosophy in GD. And now I see that after taking that initial provocative position you’re on about “oh, nobody’s showing me empathy”. I have seen few posters as dishonest, evasive, and deceptive as you have been on both threads.
[/QUOTE]
:rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
As long as you get to live in the echochamber in your mind, I suppose that’s all well and good. If you want to merely reiterate what at least a dozen other people have said, and I have responded to, and then get snippy when I don’t reiterate my position, that’s certainly your prerogative.
[QUOTE=mswas]
You’re wasting your time. You don’t have to respond. Also, I didn’t say anything about God providing love. I said that if I was going to question the existance of God, I should also question the existance of other things too, like morality and love. I’m sorry that wasn’t as clear to you as it was to multiple other people.
If you don’t want to waste your time, then why do you bother chastising me for your own problems of comprehension which many others clearly did not share?
[/QUOTE]
Actually silly person the point is, there is no reason to believe in god. Love, however has demonstrable effects we can see all around us. There is no reason to question love if you disbelieve in god, any more than there is a reason to question toast if you don’t believe in homeopathic medicine. They are unrelated and you are stupid.
[QUOTE=Lobohan]
Actually silly person the point is, there is no reason to believe in god. Love, however has demonstrable effects we can see all around us. There is no reason to question love if you disbelieve in god, any more than there is a reason to question toast if you don’t believe in homeopathic medicine. They are unrelated and you are stupid.
[/QUOTE]
It’s amazing how many times your ilk confuses their own inability to understand arguments with the stupidity of the person they are arguing with. There are plenty of people in the world who do not believe in love. The point isn’t htat love is contingent upon God, but that if I am questioning things I cannot rationally prove, I might as well question all the biggies.
I’m sorry it’s too much for your feeble mind. If there’s any argument in favor of religion it is the lack of atheist high culture. Atheist poetry sucks unless it’s about heroin addiction and animal torture. ;p (that one is for you MrDibble)
[QUOTE=mswas]
It’s amazing how many times your ilk confuses their own inability to understand arguments with the stupidity of the person they are arguing with.
[/quote]
Oh damn, natural 20! I’m done for!
Yes. You’ve said as much, and I was illustrating that your point is meaningless. Wow, question everything. Amazing that.
And I’m sorry that you waste your life talking to an empty sky.
What is the connection between God and love, then? Is belief in one contingent on belief in the other? If there “are plenty of people in the world who do not believe in love” and plenty of people who don’t believe in God, is there a correlation?
What was the point of bringing it up in the first place, I mean.
[QUOTE=Lobohan]
Dude, reread the OP in that thread. He was constructing a strawman that would scare all the crows out of North America. Those aren’t his opinions, he was by asking the question looking to piss people off.
[/QUOTE]
’
Nah, he was just saying what he thought the moral consequences of being an atheist should logically be, not the morality atheists actually display. Perfectly legit. I’m amazed at how worked up everyone is over it.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
What is the connection between God and love, then? Is belief in one contingent on belief in the other? If there “are plenty of people in the world who do not believe in love” and plenty of people who don’t believe in God, is there a correlation?
What was the point of bringing it up in the first place, I mean.
[/QUOTE]
The only correlation is in questioning other implicitly accepted assumptions. IE, I believe in God because I was taught i was supposed to, but that is also true of love and morality. IE, God is the foundation for my entire belief system, so if I am tossing that out, then everything else becomes suspect. If you would like a more obtuse example that illustrates the extremity of the argument, I could question whether or not my opinions about the color red are my own or were programmed into me by the pedagogy of my ancestors.
But the point wasn’t really to prove me wrong, it was to convince me that there is a valid reason to accept morality. The argument was made for morality, but not love.
There are plenty of people in the world who do not believe in love. The point isn’t htat love is contingent upon God, but that if I am questioning things I cannot rationally prove, I might as well question all the biggies.