Behold, the model Christian.
No wonder you guys can’t manage to understand Christianity. ;p
The biological reactions to love and situations involving morality (i.e. you’ve done something good and you feel good; you’ve done something bad and you feel bad) are apparent and measurable. This would be true if you’ve never heard of God.
I don’t see how you’re supposed to argue with mswas if he/she won’t listen to arguments that can’t start with “supposing God is imaginary.” Essentially, he’s asked the question of what should he do if he decided God wasn’t real, but then explicitly said he won’t pay attention to any arguments (like lemur’s) that follow the hypothetical.
If mswas really can’t imagine a situation without God as a first principle, then what exactly is the point in debating him?
I take it as a good intellectual exercise. I’ll incorporate Lemur’s excellent post with some of the points I’ve made and now I have a response to future theists who, when told that atheists want to see proof of God, think they can score points by asking for proof of love. I’ve seen variations on this (i.e. “Can you prove you love your wife?”) quite a few times lately.
My TV aerial was out?
Actually, the core of the debate (“Is an atheist morality possible?” would be my phrasing) would be interesting, even if it wasn’t a new topic in GD. Pity mswas had to be such an ass in the actual debate - what with the refusing to actually, you know, debate anyone who “didn’t get it”.
And that would be an interesting debate - but it isn’t phrased as a provocative statement on the illusionary morality of half your respondents. Plus, you know, you not actually debating people’s refutations of your initial premise i.e. the religious basis for morality vs natural morality.
So according to you, Der Trihs is a “fucking moron” and “dirt stupid” and so on, but this is the kind of shining intellectual example you expect us to admire? Fascinating.
I did address that. I am able to not act morally, then it is not a genetic compulsion. If you really need proof, let’s go have a beer. I’ll punch you in the nuts, and we’ll prove that I am not compelled to treat you with compassion by my genes, or by God even.
The basic premise wasn’t even about God, it was about the culture resulting around the belief in God.
The real mistake I made was even discussing things with the people arguing the straw man that this was an insult to atheists. I should’ve ignored it out of the gate, and everything would have gone more smoothly.
No-one has said anything about a compulsion. Just because it has a natural (also, didn’t say “genetic”) origin doesn’t make it compulsive.
I get that - I’m just disagreeing that the belief in God is as fundamental as the state of being human - which is what I’m arguing morality arises from. Being a human being, with all that that implies, is more central to morality than being a theist, therefore losing your theism will not turn you into a sociopath if you are not already one.
You could have stuck to GD - more of that has gone on in this thread than there (although there is not immune). I hope I’ve kept that side of things in here, at any rate.
I think you’re naive if you truly think that. The only way to avoid it would have been to craft a better OP.
That wouldn’t have helped. Atheists are bad on defense, and act all huffy if someone doesn’t roll over at their brilliance.
Regards,
Shodan
Demmycrats, too!
I’m pretty sure there have been threads discussing atheist morality that didn’t degenerate quite as fast as that one. The idea itself is of interest to atheists (especially newish ones, I think)
But you didn’t. You didn’t read “God doesn’t really exist” in my post.
Read the first few paragraphs again.
I never said there was no such thing as God. I said, God didn’t give you your objective standards of morality, because God didn’t talk to you directly. Whether God exists or not wasn’t the point, the point is that while God may or may not have spoken directly to Moses from a burning bush, he didn’t do the same for you.
The trouble with the argument that there exists an objective standard of morality is, if such a standard exists how can we finite, fallible human beings discover what that objective morality is? And even if it were handed to us by God himself, how would we know whether that set of rules was a set of objectively moral rules, or merely a list of God’s personal preferences? And if you, mswas, believe you have access to an objective standard of morality (and let’s stipulate for a moment that you do), the trouble is that you’ve got to convince the rest of us. How do you do that?
We could follow your objective standard simply because you assert that God said it, you believe it, that settles it. But how do we know God said it? Because you say God said it? What if you’re lying? Stipulate that you’re not lying, what I’m asking is how do the rest of us fallible human beings know that you’re not lying?
Even if your objective moral standards come directly from God himself, the rest of us have to use our subjective, arbitrary, and sometimes irrational minds to decide whether to follow that moral standard or reject it. And so that objective standard ultimately has to be accepted by the same subjective means that every other proposed subjective moral standard is accepted or rejected.
There may exist an objective morality, but if we found it, how would we know we had found it?
So read or don’t read my post, but refusing to read it because you think I insulted you is pretty sad.
Probably because Schrodinger’s name doesn’t appear in the wiki entry of Kant. Your super, uber inside “joke” was bound to be taken seriously when you’re the only one who realizes the reference.
Stop being a fucking jerk. That and trolling got you suspended last time.