A problem I have with Atheism

[fnord_too]

I only made it through about 5 or 6 replies, one or two of which were yours. You keep using the term "logical". Either you are misusing it or you have some base assumptions you are not stating.

I think what you mean to say is "just" or "fair" or "intuitively obvious". A lot of people who are atheists will observe that religion plays to humanity's desire (if not need) to believe life is fair and just. Since obviously things don't ballance out on earth, there must be more to this life thing than the mortal life we observe.

Logic starts with precepts that are assumed to be true, and derives implications. It sounds like you are either starting with a precept, life is fair and you get what you deserve in the end, or jumping to a conclusion without identifying any assumptions.

The notion that everything ballances out in the end is nice, and intuitive, but that makes it neither logical nor correct (nor incorrect for that matter). It was obvious to a lot of people for a long time that the sun and stars all revolved around the earth. It was obvious to ancient Greeks that the earth was basically spherical (do to being able to see the tops of the masts of ships on the horizon before being able to see the body of the ship, IIRC). Here are two examples of intuitively obvious things, one of which does not reflect our current understanding of the universe and one of which does.

[hurlyburly]

Purpose of a human:
Make more humans.

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What if one person decided that it was right to do whatever they wished considering quality of life was more important than quantity and it is better to enjoy a shorter life and risk running afoul of the law than to live a 'unguaranteed' longer life in observance with the law?

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Humans are social, it's wired deeply. At some point early on, before our brains got so big, we realized that "together" was better than "alone", just because it reduced our individual chances of being eaten by bears.

Cultivate this over several thousand generations, "together" starts meaning a lot more as humans master the environment. "Alone" still isn't really feasible, but there's enough people and room that they can form up and go be "Alone together".

Add a few more thousand generations, and all the "Alone togethers" spawned more, still lots of space to go around, and being eaten by bears isn't as big of a threat.

Current time: "alone" is just as easy to achieve as "together", you can't even find a bear if you look real hard, there is no more space.

So no, that person is neither wrong nor illogical. He can't harm society, regardless of what he does individually. A fairly significant percentage of society lives this way now. It's called "college". [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[maurile]

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If there is no afterlife, then all these people meet the same end, and to me that is illogical.

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You seem to be using "illogical" as a synonym for "a shame," or something like that. But that's not what it means.

Anyway, it might be a shame, but that has no bearing on whether it's true.

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If your actions in life are totally insignificant then nothing is 'wrong' and nothing is 'right'.

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I don't think that follows, but it doesn't really matter since our actions aren't totally insignificant.

[maurile]

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Life can be perfectly fine without intrinsic morality or meaning. (Just ask kids or dolphins).

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You don't think kids have a sense of morality or meaning? When a nine-year-old is caught lying, he feels ashamed -- possibly even remorseful. When somebody takes his toy truck from him, he feels wronged. When somebody gives him ice cream, he feels grateful.

Morality is about knowing right from wrong; trusting (or rewarding) those who do right, distrusting (or retaliating against) those who do wrong; and striving to do right oneself.

No gods are necessary for any of this. Our brains come programmed for it out of the box.

(I assume by "intrinsic morality," you just mean "morality." But if you don't, what distinction are you drawing between them?)

[David Sklansky]

"Morality is about knowing right from wrong; trusting (or rewarding) those who do right, distrusting (or retaliating against) those who do wrong; and striving to do right oneself.

No gods are necessary for any of this. Our brains come programmed for it out of the box."

Our brains evolved to not do "immoral" things that had obvious backlashes. When they did not have obvious consequences, its a different story. Else, why slavery?

[bradha]

10 people: (feel free to add details yourself, they are not added here because devising a judgement for humanity's actions is far beyond us and would likely be larger than all the Tax Legislations of the world combined)

2 person who are nice to everyone; 1 Christian, 1 not
2 person who are nice to no-one; 1 Christian, 1 not
2 person who are nice to some people; 1 Christian, 1 not
2 person who is neither nice or mean; 1 Christian, 1 not
2 person who is a child rapist and cannibal; 1 Christian, 1 not (gets religion in prison, confesses sins, all that jazz)

If all the major Christian religions are correct, then the 5 Christians go heaven and the other 5 don't. To me this is totally incompatible with all of the places in the bible that say things like "Our God is a just god!"
Imagining a divine supernatural creator with such a warped sense of justice seems much more illogical to me then the possible alternative of no afterlife at all.
I'm sure that not all religions have this particular trait that seems so illogical to me; I have heard that Islam emphasizes orthopraxy (right actions) over orthodoxy (right beliefs) but that is not enough to convince that they are worshipping a god who actually exists.

While I find it troubling that life is not just, not fair - some people suffer terrible hardships and deserve much better, and other people commit crimes so horrible that even capital punishment hardly seems harsh enough - I don't actually see it as being illogical. My philosophy on this is that even though life is not fair, people should try to be fair (although often people will disagree on what actually is fair in many situations).

[chezlaw]

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"Morality is about knowing right from wrong; trusting (or rewarding) those who do right, distrusting (or retaliating against) those who do wrong; and striving to do right oneself.

No gods are necessary for any of this. Our brains come programmed for it out of the box."

Our brains evolved to not do "immoral" things that had obvious backlashes. When they did not have obvious consequences, its a different story. Else, why slavery?

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I'm confused, now you do believe morality can exist without a god (earlier you said it couldn't)? Many are happy with the idea morality is a product of evolution rather than god given but can you clarify your view on whether it can exist without god.

chez

[maurile]

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Our brains evolved to not do "immoral" things that had obvious backlashes. When they did not have obvious consequences, its a different story. Else, why slavery?

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I agree (with some qualifications). What drove our moral programming was consequences. That in no way implies that morality requires the existence of gods.

Slavery is an interesting case. Was slavery immoral before recently? I'm of three minds. For one thing, I'm not crazy about judging people by standards of a later age. There's such a thing as progress, and maybe people in ancient Babylonia (or wherever) just didn't know any better. If they'd started enslaving foreigners instead of murdering them, maybe they were doing pretty good. You can't blame people for not being too far ahead of their time, or everyone is evil. We probably have practices that will appall future ages.

It's also possible that slavery wasn't really immoral in ancient times. What's morally acceptable depends on the level of technology -- quarantining contagious people and waiting for them to die or get better may be a necessity if there's no cure and no vaccine to protect health workers, for instance. Social organization is a form of technology. It's hardly fair to blame medieval England for being undemocratic when Athenian democracy was hopelessly impractical for a country that size and parliamentary representation hadn't been invented yet. Maybe it isn't feasible to support a large population without either slavery or the systems of contract, banking, land ownership and trading that developed in the 1400's and 1500's. Were there any ancient civilizations that didn't have slavery? Maybe until recently societies had to have slaves, because they literally didn't know how not to.

On the other hand, maybe they knew perfectly well that slavery was cruel, unjust, and unnecessary, but preferred rationalizing to freeing their slaves, because of self-interest. The theory that people always do what they know is right is obviously incorrect, and is not part of my argument. My argument is only that the immorality of slavery, whether in yesterday's civilizations or today's, does not depend on whether any gods exist.

[David Sklansky]

Axiomatic morality cannot exist without God.

[maurile]

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Axiomatic morality cannot exist without God.

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Are you saying that moral axioms can come only from God?

Why can't they come from the pronouncements of Britney Spears instead of from God? Is the moral supremecy of God's moral axioms over Britney's itself a moral axiom? If so, where did it come from? If from God, it's circular. If from somewhere else, then it's the Somewhere Else -- not God -- whose moral axioms are of ultimate supremecy.

IMO, moral axioms don't come from God or from Britney Spears. They are programmed by evolution (unless you define "axiom" in a way that precludes that possibility -- but in that case, who cares whether "axoimatic morality" exists? Morality exists, and that's enough.)