Richard Dawkins' Brand of Atheism

Great Debates
201

[QUOTE=Algher]
Again, speaking outside of personal faith…

I BELIEVE that religion offers a structure around a philosphy that helps guide people towards good actions.

I BELIEVE that without structure, man reverts to acting like a selfish animal (cue Lord of the Flies comments).
[/QUOTE]

There is an old Star Trek episode about a computer that took over a planet and made all the people cooperative and helpful. You sound just like the priests of this computer. (The computer masqueraded as a God, of course.)

That some people who believe in God are motivated to do good is no more an argument for God existing than that some people who believe in God are motivated to do evil is an argument that God does not exist. Isn’t it better to act based on the truth, as best as we can determine it? For all I know the Stalin Scouts helped little old ladies across the street - this is hardly an argument for Communism.

How much of a lie would you be willing to propagate to encourage good behavior?

202

[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I]
The religious moderates are a more serious problem then the fundies. The moderates give cover and legitimacy to the wacko fundies. Most people don’t care what fundies say and do because most of them are utter nutjobs. The moderates, OTOH, are accepted by society because they display intelligence and critical thinking. As long as there are so many religious moderates, organized religion will be the status quo. Once the moderates get it out of their systems (IMO that’s happening at a consistent rate, albeit very slowly) the fundies will be so marginalized that the whole game will be up.

The fundamentalists will never work this whole thing out for themselves because they don’t have the tools to do so. So be it. The moderates do have the tools, yet they choose to continue believing in sky pixies and the like. That’s quite vexing, and it prolongs the pain and misery that the entire civilization must endure.
[/QUOTE]

But how is this not like someone with a conservative political stance saying liberals are worse than communists (or, conversely, a liberal saying conservatives are worse than fascists) because their moderation gives cover and legitimacy to the violent ideological extremism practiced by those on the end of the political spectrum?

203

[QUOTE=Algher]
I do not think that man is inherently moral. I think that morality has to come from somewhere. This is what I mean by needing a core philosophy that outlines what is proper behaviour, and then justifies it. It seems to me that organized (and disorganized) religion provides a moral philosophy along with a structure and set of rules to make it easier to follow. The concept of a God helps man organize his thoughts and remember that he is being watched and will be judged, even if nobody human sees him.
[/QUOTE]
I tend to agree with you. Morality has to come from somewhere. However, I believe that one’s morality may come from within; from a philosophical look at one’s situation in the world and interactions with others, someone can come to their own decision as to what is moral - without needing an outside agent to give them one.

Some of us don’t need an outside agent to watch us; we are perfectly happy to watch ourselves, judge ourselves. Note that I am not saying religious people need an outside agent (or belief in an outside agent); I think they’re just as capable of providing their own morality as anyone else. Certainly there are some people who, absent of any structure or moral imperatives, will run amok, free of care or worry. I think they’re the minority.

Just as an aside, your argument tends to suggest that atheists, who have no structure or concept of God or objective morality, would be more likely to not act moral, or at least fail in their attempts to be moral. Is this your view?

204

Getting back to the OP, I’m not sure there is any such thing as Richard Dawkins’s own brand of atheism. He puts an atheist point of view, but I’m not aware of anything particularly unique about either his views or his formulation of them.

Nor am I sure there is really much of a debate. George Bernard Shaw, I believe, once said ‘You can’t rationally argue out what wasn’t rationally argued in’. Those who have faith-based beliefs believe they have a relationship with a god or gods that does not proceed from empirical evidence or logical argument of a kind that will ever convince a non-believer. Those who do not, do not. Evidently, the two sides do not share common ground in terms of ‘how shall I arrive at my model of the world I live in?’, and so dialogue is at best severely limited, and at worst degenerates into poor arguments and abuse.

I don’t like poor arguments on either side. I don’t like it when atheists (I am one) write as if to believe in a deity is stupid, when it is evedently the case that some very intelligent people (by any criterion) are theists. I don’t like it when theists can’t appreciate (or seem not to want to appreciate) that there is nothing necessarily arrogant, patronising, intolerant or condescending abut pointing out what seem to be errors or inconsistencies within a belief system.

[QUOTE=r4nd0mNumb3rs]
Religious beliefs are something that many people hold close to their hearts and to attack it in such a way is remarkably insensitive and in poor taste. Not to mention arrogant and condescending.
[/quote]
You are using prejudicial and emotive words, like ‘attack’. I am not necessarily ‘attacking’ something, or being ‘arrogant’ or ‘condescending’, if I point out an aspect of a belief system that seems self-contradictory or at odds with reality. Accusations of insensitivity and poor taste can be flung around by both sides forever. They don’t advance the discussion at all, they just poison it.

You can find examples of atrocities committed in the nameof all religions and in none. Atheists know this. It’s not the point. The point is, ‘Is there a god?’.

We’re not discussing a religion or religions. We’re discussing ‘Is there a god?’. Theism is not religion. Also, the ‘happier life’ argument isn’t a good one (and I doubt many theists believe it to be). Read up on John Stuart Mill and Utilitarianism. It turns out that ‘happier’ is really tough to define sensibly. What denotes ‘happier’? And ‘happier’ for whom, or which group? What if my ‘happier’ means more misery for you? And suppose someone says that drinking lots of alcohol, doing serious drugs and occasionally beating up someone he doesn’t like makes him happier… should we tolerate his beliefs and behaviour? Sorry, the ‘makes it possible to be happier’ is not a good argument. For anything.

205

[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I]
Seriously— has any god-believer ever directly answered that kind of question? I would love to hear the answer.
[/QUOTE]

In regards to Zeus, Thor, etc…

I don’t know.

I am one of the Christians who interprets the “My father’s house has many rooms” bit to mean that there are MANY ways to salvation. However, the only one specified in the Bible I read is through Christ. If you think you have another path through Zeus - best of luck to you. If the core philosophy of your religion is in sync with mine, we might do some things together with our congregations. If, however, you are not in sync with the application of beliefs in our society I probably won’t have nearly as much respect.

I judge by the actions and words.

I am reminded of CS Lewis on this subject, in the Narnia books. In his final “Revelations” type book there is a character who has always followed/worshipped “the bad God.” He does not understand how he ended up in Narnia heaven. Aslan tells him that every time he did a good deed in the name of the bad guy, he was really doing it for Aslan.

A simplistic way of putting it (they ARE children’s books, after all), but one that I took to heart - even long before I entered the church.

206

[QUOTE=Voyager]
There is an old Star Trek episode about a computer that took over a planet and made all the people cooperative and helpful. You sound just like the priests of this computer. (The computer masqueraded as a God, of course.)

That some people who believe in God are motivated to do good is no more an argument for God existing than that some people who believe in God are motivated to do evil is an argument that God does not exist. Isn’t it better to act based on the truth, as best as we can determine it? For all I know the Stalin Scouts helped little old ladies across the street - this is hardly an argument for Communism.

How much of a lie would you be willing to propagate to encourage good behavior?
[/QUOTE]

Hold it - I DO believe that God exists. I was simply trying to answer the question of the worthiness of religion in our society without just saying that Christ is wonderful.

If the Stalin Scouts helped little old ladies, I would say that we should see if we can keep the Stalin Scouts going. Or we need to find a substitute to ensure that little old ladies receive assistance.

Communism is a great idea, and probably very Christian in its economic mindset. Sadly, it failed once man got ahold of it. The church can and does provide a way to help drive human behavior in a more civilized fashion.

I am NOT trying to answer the charge of proving that God exists - I can not (nor can you prove that a God does not exist under logical rules). Others have their own debate tactics to try, but I won’t attempt to parrot them against the group of atheists assembled here. Others here are far more experienced at that debate than I am.

207

[QUOTE=Algher]
In regards to Zeus, Thor, etc…

I don’t know.

I am one of the Christians who interprets the “My father’s house has many rooms” bit to mean that there are MANY ways to salvation. However, the only one specified in the Bible I read is through Christ.
[/QUOTE]

How can that be? Doesn’t the bible also say that if you don’t believe in the christian god that you’ll burn in hell? And what about all those who don’t believe in any god? Is there automatically no salvation for them? And if there is salvation for non-believers, what need do we have for religion at all?

208

[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold]
I tend to agree with you. Morality has to come from somewhere. However, I believe that one’s morality may come from within; from a philosophical look at one’s situation in the world and interactions with others, someone can come to their own decision as to what is moral - without needing an outside agent to give them one.

Some of us don’t need an outside agent to watch us; we are perfectly happy to watch ourselves, judge ourselves. Note that I am not saying religious people need an outside agent (or belief in an outside agent); I think they’re just as capable of providing their own morality as anyone else. Certainly there are some people who, absent of any structure or moral imperatives, will run amok, free of care or worry. I think they’re the minority.

Just as an aside, your argument tends to suggest that atheists, who have no structure or concept of God or objective morality, would be more likely to not act moral, or at least fail in their attempts to be moral. Is this your view?
[/QUOTE]

Some people can self-teach with a book. The vast majority require an instructor who gives exams that are graded.

This gets to the noble savage discussion. If we took some children, raised them from infancy in a sealed container, then set them loose - how would they behave? I posit that they would be little animals. Perhaps one or two would take control, and then slowly develop societal rules based on cooperation and survival. Those rules would evolve into a legal system designed to reduce friction among society members, that friction also threatening survival. Finally, once survival is no longer a risk, those rules would remain in place due to tradition.

Atheists in America have been raised with societal moral rules predominantly based on Christianity, so even if they reject the concept of God they have seen the value of the morals that our society claims to espouse. They are moral because our society is moral. (yes, our society has its share of warts - please work with me here!)

I do NOT believe that atheists are inherently more or less moral than other members of our society. I think that if we tried to create a new society we would need rules to keep our animalistic instincts in check. Those rules would need to be agreed to, and justified somehow.

Religion has provided that justification successfully, IMHO. Perhaps it is no longer needed, but I don’t think so. I think that there is still a good place for religion in our society.

And once again, this is all apart from the fact that I personally do believe.

209

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
Back in the beginning of this, all that I said was that, even if you suppose there is a first mover, that doesn’t have anything to do with the existance of any particular sky god.

I’m not trying to disprove the existance of all gods with one sweep.
[/QUOTE]

Then I think we’re basically in agreement.

210

[QUOTE=Kalhoun]
How can that be? Doesn’t the bible also say that if you don’t believe in the christian god that you’ll burn in hell? And what about all those who don’t believe in any god? Is there automatically no salvation for them? And if there is salvation for non-believers, what need do we have for religion at all?
[/QUOTE]

The Bible says a LOT of things, many of the contradictory if you take every translated English word in your particular copy as 100% pure unvarnished can not be altered truth.

SOME of us Christians understand that the Bible has been translated several times before arriving in our hands. We also understand that it was written by men. We realize that there is historical context that must be considered in our readings.

I am saying that I DO NOT KNOW. I KNOW ONE path to salvation. A reading of a certain passage in my Bible SEEMS to indicate that there MIGHT be other paths.

If you ask me personally, I will tell you that I have found fulfillment, and Grace, through the Christian church. If you are interested, you are welcome to join me at services. If you are not, you are still welcome into my home. I don’t tuck Bibles into your hands, I don’t knock on your door. People who know me know that I attend a church. They know that my religion is important to me. They also have never been confronted by me, nor have I ever used the excuse of “because God said so.”

211

[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Der Trihs is a great example of an atheist who behaves in a similar manner to the fundamentalist Christians he criticizes. We’ve had a discussion about fundie atheists before. He holds beliefs unsupported by evidence and continues to spew them as fact.
[/QUOTE]
Name them. And when have I tried to get my beliefs codified into law, or have those who disagree with me imprisoned or killed or forcibly converted ? This is yet another example of the double standard, where I get lumped in with people like Fred Phelps because I post my opinion on a message board.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
The intellectual honest course for Atheists is to argue against that to which it is diametrically opposed: Theism, but that rarely happens. Why? Bcause there are no easy targets.
[/quote]
No, it’s because there are few generic theists, and because people who believe in some vague undefined God tend to be relatively harmless.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
That, and that they’re stuck offereing up an alternative to a Creator, a First Cause. And that puts them right into a camp of faith. That someday, somehow, science will learn about and understand a thing that—contrary to one of the most basic laws of science—existed without a cause. That or argue for a timeless universe, which they must then take on faith, with a belief that someday, somehow, a person will appear in a lab coat and explain how it all works.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, nonsense. We can always say that we don’t know. And under the rules of quantum mechanics there are an immense number of things that happen with no cause. And, most importantly, God explains nothing because it just pushes the question back a step to “What made God”.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
But for the vast amount of how the universe operates there is no divide between Atheists and Theists. Very few Theists, or Christians for that matter, have disagreement with what we call the laws of the universe.
[/quote]
Nonsense. Religious people believe in miracles, in prayer that has an effect, and in a God that ignore physical laws.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
But if I were an Atheist I would find it a better use of my time to argue against the more reasonable strains of religious belief, not the most questionable.
[/quote]
The more reasonable ones are also the less dangerous ones.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
If you disprove YEC, you then have to move on to non-Young Earth Christians, and then non-Christian religionists, etc. As I’ve stated a few times, Atheism should be arguing against Theism. Unti it can successfully do that, there will always be another religion that can make the case for Theism, and therefore, against Atheism. And after every religion, old and new, is revealed to be mere myth, Atheists are still stuck with Thesim sans religion.
[/quote]
First, while not all religion is theistic, all theism is religious by definition. There is no “Theism sans religion”, and never can be unless science proves God/gods exist. Second, it is not the job of atheists to disprove religion; it is the job of the religious to prove it. Occam’s razor.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
It seems to me that by continuing to go after religion and not have the more fundamental debate, that they show themselves to be simply against religion. I’d like to see an good argument FOR Atheism that leaves religion out of it. One that gets to the heart of the matter: is there or is there not a God? Or god, if you prefer.
[/QUOTE]
As I and others have pointed out, the default condition for God or anything else should be disbelief; I disbelieve in gods for the same reason I disbelieve in magic; there’s no evidence, and they ignore physical laws.

Someone on this board IIRC once tried to argue with me that I should be open to belief in the Babylonian gods, after I used them as an example of something that was silly to believe; magellan01 I think.

[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
What Dawkins and other activist atheists fail to understand is that religious belief goes to the very core of the believer’s identity. It isn’t just empty blather when religious believers say, “Without God, I am nothing.” They mean it.
[/quote]
Letting a religion or any other belief own you that way is sick.

[QUOTE=Sunrazor]
Are there people who use their religion in negative, even crippling ways? Of course there are! There are also people who use their conservative political beliefs to justify raping the environment, oppressing minorities and disenfranchising the poor. That doesn’t mean we should sit around talking about erasing conservativism from the face of the planet.
[/quote]
Why not ? It’s just a belief system; one which I consider stupid at best and genrally evil, just like religion. Why not talk about erasing conservatism ?

[QUOTE=Dangerosa]
Nor is religion per se holding back science - its people who are afraid of change and are using religion as their defense. Take religion away, and they find another excuse - poor use of resources, unethical, “I don’t understand it, so it can’t be important.”
[/QUOTE]
Wrong. People do and always have held back science for purely religious reasons. I see this assertion a lot, that “Religion isn’t really the problem, people would find another excuse”, and I have a word for it : denial. People don’t want to admit that religion is ever actually responsible for anything bad, they never want to admit that people do bad things just because they are religious. Not even when the religions themselves call for those bad things, not even when the people who do them say that’s why they are doing them.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
True, but I don’t think that anyone is arguing that. I’m not. I thiink a Theistic belief is the more reasoned belief.
[/quote]
No, it’s not. As it’s based on faith, it is the denial of reason.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
We know a lot of stuff about the world and how it operates. And in with each and every thing or event we understand we know that there is a cause. When we turn our attention to the beginnings of the universe and how we got to be here, it seems greatly more logical to believe that causality will still hold up. To suddenly say “well, in this one instance, since we do not understand what did happen, causality must have not played its usual role” seems to be grossly un-reasoned, IMO.
[/quote]
As I said, in quantum mechanics there are plenty of purely random events; events without causes. And as I’ve said, theism doesn’t solve the problem of a first cause anyway. You are using something that doesn’t exist to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

[QUOTE=magellan01]
First, if Atheism is more than merely anti-religionism (and I believe it is) then it should have a point of view on some of the very important issues that religions and Theism attempt to answer. Mainly, how did we get here?; Where did the stars come from?; etc.
[/quote]
Atheism has nothing to say about any of that. Atheism is a disbelief in gods; that’s all.

[QUOTE=Algher]
There are plenty of us Christians running around supporting that very research, btw. Bush may have used his powers as President to curtail (while still funding existing lines), but I think that there are plenty of those in religious groups who are angry about that curtailment.
[/quote]
Lines which were pretty much useless. It was an attempt to kill the research while pretending to compromise; standard Bush behavior.

[QUOTE=Algher]
I personally know pro-life atheists. I know anti-gay atheists (or at least agnostics). One can believe that life begins at conception without needing the Bible to justify. One can believe that homosexuality is deviance from the norm with needing the Bible to justify. (again - I disagree with both of those positions, as do many Christians).
[/QUOTE]
But religion gives people a motive for such beliefs that atheists lack. This pro religion argument seems to amount to a claim that relgion doesn’t affect people’s beliefs or behavior, which is just silly.

[QUOTE=Algher]
I do not think that man is inherently moral. I think that morality has to come from somewhere. This is what I mean by needing a core philosophy that outlines what is proper behaviour, and then justifies it. It seems to me that organized (and disorganized) religion provides a moral philosophy along with a structure and set of rules to make it easier to follow. The concept of a God helps man organize his thoughts and remember that he is being watched and will be judged, even if nobody human sees him.

This system has been rather effective. People seem to respond well to it. Why does AA need 12 steps? It works.

Why do many of us need religion? It works.
[/QUOTE]
Does it ? Everywhere I look across the world, more religion mean more injustice, more bigotry, more violence, more cruelty. Every study I’ve heard of has connected religiousity with social dysfunction and unethical behavior; no doubt that’s why such studies are extremely rare.

[QUOTE=Algher]
Atheists in America have been raised with societal moral rules predominantly based on Christianity, so even if they reject the concept of God they have seen the value of the morals that our society claims to espouse. They are moral because our society is moral. (yes, our society has its share of warts - please work with me here!)
[/quote]
Really, like “Thou shalt have no other God before me” ? The moral codes we follow, where good, are not specifically Christian; where they are specifically Christian, they are not good. To the extent America ( or humnanity in general ) is good, I believe it is good in spite of the influence of Christianity, not because of it.

212

[QUOTE=Algher]
I do not think that man is inherently moral.
[/quote]

Why? It seems pretty clear at this point that all moral systems and social values are a product of people. Nothing else in the universe seems to have any concern for morality, but man does. There is no particular evidence that this concern requires any belief in the existence of this or that, or that it came from anything other than the passions of human beings. And that includes religious belief.

It also seems clear that while religion can provide a roundabout means of justifying this or that good thing, it isn’t necessary to do so, and as a METHODOLOGY in general, it doesn’t seem particularly well tuned towards anything in particular.

That’s debatable, but a debate that has been done in other threads. :slight_smile:

Except that it seems clear that things work just fine without it too. No one seems to be able to explain exactly how religion works anyway. If your religion told you to do something you considered morally abhorrent, would you really do it? Or would you let your moral judgment trump it? That’s not an idle question. The very fact that you might find your religion morally laudable virtually presupposes the idea that you have some overarching moral judgment outside and above religion itself.

213

[QUOTE=Algher]
Hold it - I DO believe that God exists. I was simply trying to answer the question of the worthiness of religion in our society without just saying that Christ is wonderful.

If the Stalin Scouts helped little old ladies, I would say that we should see if we can keep the Stalin Scouts going. Or we need to find a substitute to ensure that little old ladies receive assistance.

[/quote]

That’s fine, but you haven’t been saying that we shouldn’t say nasty things about religion because it’s true, but because religious people do good deeds. I’d still say Colmmunism doesn’t work because of its flaws, and I won’t hold my tongue because of the good deeds of the Stalin Scouts. If Dawkins were suggesting that we disband all the churches, that would be a different story.

One problem with Communism is that it assumes things about human nature that don’t seem to be true. When this causes problems, Communist societies attempt to change human nature with a gun instead of admitting the problem. Have you ever read Animal Farm?

That’s fine, but when you defend religion on the good it does, you’re not counting its validity at all. Given you think it’s true, would you refrain from pointing out that another belief system, doing an equal amount of good and harm, is logically inconsistent and untruthful?

214

[QUOTE=Voyager]
The case for atheism involves the refutation of the claims of individual religions. Theoretically, each is equal, but practically in the West we only deal with the claims of Western religions. Most atheists don’t even care about the claims for religions that make no claims on us - so there is more pushback on Christianity than Judaism. If I lived in India and had to deal with Hindu nationalists I’d be worrying about different things.
[/QUOTE]

That’s a practical standpoint, especially if one is more anti-religionist than truly atheistic. If I were an Atheist, the existence of a god ANYWHERE would give me equal pause. You either beleive in a world/universe that has NO god or you don’t.

[QUOTE=Voyager]
Deism believes in a creator also, but it is not falsifiable by definition. At the best science can show that there is no need for a creator, it can never prove that a creator does not exist.
[/QUOTE]

Agreed. Though the beginning of your second sentence can be interpreted two ways. If you mean that “can” in the “may be able to” sense, we agree. If you mean it in the “already offered up sense”, I haven’t heard it yet.

[QUOTE=Voyager]
Notice that you correctly said belief, not a claim to knowledge.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, I was using the Weak stance. There have been other threads in which I think you were a participant, where the Strong and Weak stance was parsed. From what I recall the Strong stance does posit “There is no God”. That is the difference between the two. As far as I remember being offered up, anyway.

[QUOTE=Voyager]
The argument for belief in no god is kind of an induction argument - if claims for religions 1 .. m don’t pan out, there is no reason to believe in religion m+1.
[/QUOTE]

But logically that is not correct. Just because I can prove 100 out of the first 100 animals at the zoo are not dogs does not mean that there are no dogs at the zoo.

[QUOTE=Voyager]
Arguments against this (the prove there is no god) seem to assume that this is a claim that we know there is no god, which is not the case.
[/QUOTE]

In reading the last couple passages over, I think we’re in agreement on this point.

[QUOTE=Voyager]
And you just proved my point. Strong atheism is just the belief there is no god - it posits nothing.
[/QUOTE]

Well that is not how it has been defined before. But how would you differentiate Weak from Strong?

[QUOTE=Voyager]
The real purpose of the IPU argument, by the way, is not to disprove god, but to illustrate that your 2) is of little importance. God (capital G) is of great importance to many in the west culturally, but it is just a tag for something which may not exist, and God as a tag bears no more weight than IPU as a tag. Imprisioning someone for blasphemy against the IPU is absurd, but people have been imprisoned for blasphemy against God for millennia.
[/QUOTE]

I think, and remember that this isn’t personal for me as I follow no religion, that this is both ham-handedly rude and disengenuous. To equate this oh-so-enlightened IPU nonsense with a god that has so much historical mention is absurd. Even the myth aspect of God places it in a different realm than pink unicorns. At least in that regard God is held as the creator of the world and the source of morality. Now if what you’re really getting at is that God might not have a beard and flowing robes, of course you have a point. But to what end? Just to be contentious and insult people who believe differently? Seriously. It seems like you (impersonal) just want to cause them pain and discomfort because you feel their belief has caused that for you. Maybe there should be a strain of Atheism called Paybackism.

I think one thiing that would help everyone in these debates is to end every post with BIMBW: But I May Be Wrong.

215

[QUOTE=Apos]
In my experience…
[/QUOTE]

There is a piece of unfinished business you need to get to if we are to continue this back and forth. If not, that’s your choice. But you made statements about me that I claim are incorrect. The honorable thing to do is to show evidence, as I requested, for those particular claims or admit you misspoke and apologize.

Too bad this has to be explained to you again.

216

[QUOTE=mr. jp]
cite?
[/QUOTE]

I guess that means you haven’t read his posts in this thread. Try that.

Nope. I can’t think of anything I’ve said in this or any other thread make people seriously consider that to be my belief. You must be assuming some things to even ask.

217

[QUOTE=Marley23]
It’s almost like you’re insisting atheism be a religion or counter-religion of its own. Why? And why, as a non-atheist, does it matter to you? Atheists don’t share a religion precisely because they don’t have uniting views on those issues.
[/QUOTE]

Not quite. I insist that it is a counter philosophy to Theism. The* philosophy *of Theism can be interpreted and turned into a religion, but it needn’t be. As a philosophy it begins to answer certain pertinent questions about the world, e.g., where did we come from, where will we go after we die, the source of morality. If you want to discount the philosophy of Theism, whatever you offer should offer answers at least as good. This seems very logical and has nothing whatsoever to do with any religion.

218

For those who care…

I would LIKE to spend some more time, but I am going to be cut off from this pleasure for the next 10 days or so.

See everyone in the next religion debate (or back to this one if still running).

219

[QUOTE=I Love Me, Vol. I]
I don’t believe this is so. Why should atheism have an opinion on any of that stuff? An atheist is simply someone who does not believe in God. That doesn’t leave him/her with some responsibility to answer all these issues. How should an atheist know where the stars came from? Why should an atheist know this?

The stars are there–this much we know. Do we need to postulate some reason for them being there? That is what God-believers do. That is exactly what athiests (IMO) feel is unnecessary.
[/QUOTE]

I have to admit that I’ve never seen this tack taken before. Your Weak Atheist is the least curious person to ever exist. How do you think most religions are born? They are an attempt to explain what is beyond man’s grasp. That is a practical benefit of Christianity and other religions (not necessarily correct, of course). At the very least, God is the creator god. If you want someone to see things your way you’re going to have to have an explanation. As far as postulating why the stars are there, it is also what cosmologists do.

220

[QUOTE=Algher]
Some people can self-teach with a book. The vast majority require an instructor who gives exams that are graded.

This gets to the noble savage discussion. If we took some children, raised them from infancy in a sealed container, then set them loose - how would they behave? I posit that they would be little animals. Perhaps one or two would take control, and then slowly develop societal rules based on cooperation and survival. Those rules would evolve into a legal system designed to reduce friction among society members, that friction also threatening survival. Finally, once survival is no longer a risk, those rules would remain in place due to tradition.
[/quote]
Yes, I agree with all of that, for the most part.

So where does changing rules come into it? What prompts someone to say “No, we shouldn’t follow these rules just because it’s tradition” other than an inner disagreement? If people worked solely as you say, no one would ever stand up and say “I disagree” because in order to do so they’d need an outside source giving them new rules. Yet we do.

But atheists in America do not agree with Christian societal norms. I’m from Britain, but it’s a pretty similar culture. I’m certainly against killing and stealing; but that isn’t because I see the value in them being good from all the Christians around me practicing them. I’m against them because my personal moral code says they’re bad. My moral code and the general Christian moral code share those precepts, but one is not cause by the other. In fact, sometimes i’d say stealing and killing is a* good* thing to do.

Another mistake you’re making is in your definition of value. A Christian doesn’t kill because they think it’s a bad thing, it hurts people and so on, but also because their God tells them not to. With an atheist, that value - gaining God’s happiness - isn’t a value that exists. It isn’t something I take into account when I think through my moral code. What am I left with? Happiness of people, whether anyone is injured and so on - views certainly expressed also by believers, but that does not mean that they are inherently the result of a religious culture.

I agree also. But I don’t see how you can reconcile these two beliefs. Correct me if i’m wrong, but you’ve said people find it easier to be moral if they have some outside source telling them to do it, and watching to make sure they do. Believers have themselves, their society, and their god to do that. Atheists have just themselves and their society. Logically, from your point of view, wouldn’t atheists find it harder to stay moral?

Successful at keeping people to a certain moral code? I’d agree. Problem is; is that moral code the right one? Flip the argument over; just as tradition and religion can keep believers together, so can it keep them together in a bad system.

But you haven’t argued for religion. You’ve argued for a set of social norms, enforced by an outside source. And you haven’t addressed the problem of “Well, what if that set of social norms is bad?” I personally believe that religion can, indeed, have good effects. I think though that the moral codes they set out are, though sometimes right, often wrong, and that the very nature of a religion means that people are less likely to abandon the bad ideas.

My argument is not apart from the fact I don’t believe. I admit that there may indeed be bias in what i’ve said; I try to remove it, but it is often hard to understand a mindset different from one’s own. I hope I haven’t inadvertently mischaracterised you or your statements.