Moral nihilism is not the “logical conclusion of atheism.” I haven’t seen any good reasons to think that morality cannot exist without God. I agree that many secular systems of morality are without foundation. But showing that many secular systems of morality are baseless no more shows the impossibility of morality without God than showing that many religions were merely created by man proves that there could not be a God. I actually think that morality makes much more sense under atheism than under theism.
I was not simply referring to a few secular moral systems; I was simply using those as examples of secular moralities that fail to hold water. There is no possibility of an atheistic morality. That is not simply the opinion of religious propagandists; Nietzsche, perhaps the most incisive philosopher who ever lived (in my opinion) and one of the few atheisti philosophers (or philosophers of any kind) worth reading, insisted, quite forcefully and quite persuasively, that morality and theology are bound tightly together. In an atheist, materialist world, morality is nothing more than a collection of habits, developed and inherited, and guilt nothing more than a conflict between the id and the superego. The pang you get when you see children starving to death in third-world countries is as significant as an erection, or the feeling disgust that results from the smell exuded by a sewage plant. You would argue that once a naive religious person becomes aware of the falsity of his religion, he would abandon it. Well, I’m saying that once an atheist becomes aware of the fact (in his mind at least) that his conscience is no wiser than his penis or his stomach, and its urgings carry no more authority than his desire, then he may as well cease to listen to it.
You insist that an atheist can have a reason not to kill, rape, or steal other than that it feels bad not to do such things (for some people, it feels good to kill, rape, or steal. Why should anyone have a problem with this? To most people homosexual romance is disgusting, but we tolerate this difference in preference) or because of peer pressure not to commit such actions. I don’t see how there can be such a reason. You’re morality would be a meaningless, malleable impulse, meaning your current indignation about Christians behaving improperly makes as much sense as getting indignant toward a piece of excrement for smelling bad.
If you think that the theme is summarized by that line, then say that. Don’t say “As Dostoevski put it” to make it seem like he actually said that. If you knowingly quote someone as saying something they never said, that is dishonest. It doesn’t matter whether they might have agreed with it. I can’t just make up any anti-religion quote I want and attribute it to Hitchens, just because he’d probably agree with it.
I furthermore think it’s a pretty silly thing to bring up to begin with. Why does it matter what one writer thought of atheists? It would almost be like me saying that some guy I know once said that religion is evil as if that should convince anyone that it is.
Well, it was actually someone else, not me, who used this quote earlier in the thread. But anyway, there is nothing dishonest about using the saying in order to convey the theme of the work, so long as one doesn’t put in quotes and imply that exactly that was said. And it is not simply my opinion about the theme of this work. There are several conversations that take place between Alyosha and Ivan and between Alyosha and Mitya discussing the implication of a godless universe that can be paraphrased by this adage. I’m not familiar with any literary critics who would doubt what the general theme of the book was, and it is not uncommon for them to summarize themes using quotes like this one (and I know several critics have used it).
Also, the very reason people utilize these famous aphorisms is because of the authority of those who wrote (or said) them. Dostoevsky wasn’t just one guy; he was one of the most talented writers (and some would say one of the greatest thinkers, though he probably would’ve hated to be called a philosopher) in recent history.
Is that not exactly what has always happens? British Empire, Roman Empire, Spanish Empire, French Empire, Portuguese Empire, Dutch Empire and were these not all Christian empires? Was the USA always populated by white christians, or did those caches of weapons see to that?
It amuses me when people like to imagine that had their kind ruled the world, things would’ve been different. Of course, the fact is, people were violent and imperialistic during the ages of the empires you mentioned. What happens when you remove Christianity? Remember the French Revolution? How peaceful and loving were the secularists at the head of that movement? About as much so as, or even less than the “Christian” Empires.
And their skeptic king, Napoleon? Was he less tyrannical? Did he not lead hundreds of thousands to their cold deaths just because the Tsar defied him? I’m not even going to bother to mention the Russian revolution or the Khmer Rouge. For thousands of years people of every religion and no religion have slaughtered people en masse for power, wealth and prestige. I’d be surprised if you were so naive as to not know the famous saying about how power corrupts. History affirms it. However, what you may have failed to notice is that the bastions of disbelief have always been the classes of the oppressors.
What also deserves mentioning is the fact that, before being absorbed in imperialistic feudal culture of the dark ages, Christianity was for several centuries a vehicle of social progress and virtue with an unprecedented level of genuineness and effectiveness in an age when it was customary for respectable people to go to a stadium to watch human being be tied to a pole and torn apart by lions. As much as many naive people would like think that Christianity made people evil, the fact, is greed, imperialist, and brutality were the status quo. That any force would lead people to renounce such characteristics should be considered remarkable.
