Good point. I’m curious to see what the dissenters may have to say.
So am I!
The demonstrable reason is that consciousness, intelligence, self-control, goodness, beauty and love are the highest and most fundamental aspects of existence…
Demonstrably the highest and most fundamental from whose point of view? That of conscious, intelligent beings? That seems kind of like anthropocentric self-absorption. But suppose there is no purpose or reason to our existence - beyond the explanatory reason that we exist because we happen to have evolved, that our ancestors happened to survive and reproduce. Do consciousness and intelligence and the other features you listed lose their value to us because they were unplanned? Would believing that your existence is merely fortuitous destroy your appreciation of beauty and goodness or diminish your experience of love?
It depends on who you ask. The issue of whether or not x or y being true or not true destroying human joy is subjective. For me it would, for some it wouldn’t. However, we can still deduce that without God, anything goes and morality is meaningless. That is an objective belief which follows from naturalism.
I’ll bite toneyrey!
I guess it depends upon what one takes things like beauty and goodness and love to mean, and what reason one has for valuing them. If, for example, beauty is valued as a representation of divine order and creativity on the part of a supernatural God, then considering that it might not be such may undermine one’s appreciation for it. If, however, beauty is understood as a natural phenomenon, related to symmetry of form, fluidity of lines, vibrancy of colours or whatever else one subjectively appreciates as beautiful, then the interaction between the observer and the observed still produces a sense of beauty - even if the beauty is transitory and not representative of anything other than natural phenomena. For me, I suspect it would be the opposite of your response. If anything, discovering that the vast and wondrous cosmos was divinely designed and intended would be akin to discovering that a magnificent rock formation was carved by a human sculptor - rather a disappointment.
Actually, it isn’t and doesn’t. It might follow that morality has no universal or transcendent meaning absent God, but not that it is meaningless to us, for whom it still matters, both objectively and subjectively, how we relate with others. Again, it kind of depends upon what one understands morality to be. If you believe it is a set of divinely ordained rules or ideals for humans to live by, of course you’re going to assume that it has no meaning or even existence without God. If, however, you understand it as arising organically from social interaction as a set of expectations about how people ought to relate to one another and to their environment, then these things are still meaningful even if there is no God.
Why would you be disappointed? Now the whole thing isn’t meaningless. If the rock formation was made by human hands, it will be kept as it is. The sculptor will repair it when it degrades, and it will always be there. If it’s just a rock, then eventually it will erode and crack, water will get in said cracks and shatter the rock, and it will be gone forever.
What you’re describing isn’t a question of what morality IS. We would both agree morality IS what we should and shouldn’t do, what is right and wrong, good and evil. What you’re describing it the question of the origin or morality. In the latter, morality is just subjective, and meaningless.
Yes! Persons, consciousness and intelligence and thoughts would be illusions. Nothing would exist but configurations of atomic particles with **no one **to experience beauty, goodness or love… It is impossible for inanimate matter to produce conscious minds.
Does God need to exist?
He’s emulating an atheist argument. The atheist argues that there is no reason for anything to exist (there is no special cause beyond freak coincidence). The theist states that there is an objective need and reason for something (either God, the universe, or both) to exist. The premise does not fail because it is emulating a different viewpoint.
In addition, God is not a thing!
Where does that idea come from? Unless you mean something else than I do for “thing”. The reason I ask is that Rossum’s bound to jump on this.In addition, God is not a thing!
Then God is no-thing?In addition, God is not a thing!
)It would be disappointing because there is a sense of wonder in the existence of things that are not deliberately, intentionally made. The sense of appreciation for a rock formation and for a sculpture are quite different - the idea that the interplay of natural phenomena can produce beauty by ‘accident’ (although that is kind of a misnomer when speaking of processes of cause and effect) produces a different subjective response than the appreciation of the skill of a sculptor or painter or builder or practitioner of any other art. Not meaningless, therefore, but possessed of a different meaning altogether. I don’t know why this should be so, particularly when I understand humans to be natural beings and our actions to be natural phenomena. I think perhaps it is because the idea that the universe was designed and planned by a being fundamentally like us - and no matter how much apologists spin it out to claim that God is far beyond our comprehension, the way most believers understand God and the way he is generally represented is as a being with a range of peculiarly human characteristics - removes much of the wonder and mystery and the excitement of discovery involved in interacting with the world.
If you’re agreeing to what morality is, even if it has subjective origins (which is debatable, since there are certain features of human biology which mean that our fundamental needs are more-or-less universal amongst all humans) then I fail to see how you consider it meaningless absent a divine overseer. You seem to be confusing transcendent, cosmic, eternal meaning with actual, functional, perceptible meaning to those who are most concerned with the outcome of moral decisions. If someone cheats me of money or steals something valuable to me, to use simple examples, should these mean less to me - should I be less outraged - by assuming he has only offended me, and not likewise offended any God? Similarly, if someone acts with kindness towards me, should I appreciate it less by thinking it was motivated by human feeling than by a sense of religious obligation? Wherefore meaningless?
Do you believe persons are things?Then God is no-thing?
(You were right Pieman333272
rossum
