Atheist preparing to own the label

[KarlEen]

As far as if human life is inherently valuable/more valuable than a roach-I need to be careful how I say this. Yes. I view human life as valuable and more valuable than a roach.

But it is Just your view.

Logically to be honest with yourself you’d must admit that they are presumably “equal” ( Nothing in value) in the grand scheme of things.

Can you live out that truth?

Yes. I admit that. It is just my view that humans are more valuable than cockroaches. And I do not think there is a universal constant ensuring that everyone everywhere will agree with me that humans are more valuable than cockroaches. But that makes me living out my subjective values even more important. I want to live in a world where people are treated as more valuable than cockroaches. So I will have to do my best to ensure that my subjective values get propagated. I would do this by example, by living in a way consistent with my values that people are more valuable than cockroaches and by arguing and voting should legislation relevant to this subjective value pop up and with appeals to empathy that people ought to have more value than cockroaches.Admitting that morality is subjective means I can’t count on the moral ecosystem being self-sustaining. That just makes it more important for me and for everyone to take every one of their moral stands seriously and have a strong justification for all of them that is convincing to as many people as possible. I have to assess every stance I take and make sure I can justify each and every one to myself and be willing and able to reassess if a stance I previously thought correct appears to be causing harm.
If I operate on the assumption that the value of “humans are inherently more valuable than cockroaches” is a universal value, I might be tempted to sit back and not do anything if I see someone going around trying to convince people that humans and cockroaches have the same value, because I might trust that the basic decency of humanity would ensure that this bad idea would not gain traction. Does all this have scary implications? Yes. Does this mean that if the wrong people propagate the wrong subjective values we could go some very scary places? Yes. But if it’s the case that there is not a higher power ultimately controlling our values, then we have always been operating under subjective values. If there is no God, then even when I was Catholic, I was following subjective values that were created by humans, even if I was under the impression at the time that they were objective values.

 

[KarlEen]

We started out extremely tribal and as only seeing our immediate family/group as inherently valuable and only over ages of interaction have we started to see people as worthwhile because they are people

Why should I care about people?

Why not more so the bees?

I suspect empathy would and does carry you most of the way, but beyond that there’s a selfish reason to care about others. If you care for and about others, others are more likely to care for/about you. As to why not bees more than people, I think/hope I covered that with my discussion about the cockroaches above.

 

[KarlEen]

What if I am like mr. Smith from The Matrix?

Just pulling out all the stops aren’t you? If we were in the matrix, we’d have no way of knowing since it’s by its nature designed so that we can’t know. Since I can only deal with the world as it presents itself, I’m going to pragmatically live as if we are not in the Matrix until such time as I am unplugged or witness an undeniable glitch in the Matrix.

don’t believe in moral absolutes in the sense that there is some definitive standard by which we could say that Action A is right or wrong.

Can you live that out?

Next time you see someone committing a crime on the news for example will you hold your tongue from speaking condemnation?

I hope my cockroach explanation works for this too but just in case it doesn’t: I think admitting to myself that my values are in fact subjective and that I can’t count on moral values being absolutely written on everyone’s heart, that makes me feel even more like I have a responsibility to take stock of my values, make sure I can actually justify them to myself, and then do my best to make sure my values are propagated in the world. Admitting morals are subjective makes me more prone to push my values, not less.

From The Atheist point of view slavery is ultimately not morally wrong. It’s down to individual opinion.

To say slavery is wrong or not wrong is a moral judgment.

To say it’s good that America did away with african slavery is a mere human opinion and worth nothing.

I don’t know about from all atheist’s points of view universally. I have heard that there are atheists that try to argue that there are universal values that we can know. I just am not one of them. I don’t think admitting morality is subjective precludes me from making moral judgments. It just means that I can’t assume that everyone else is going to inherently agree with my moral judgment, so if I want to make a change or right an injustice, I am going to have to convince other people to shift their subjective morals to match my own, and I am going to have to do that by explaining why I think a moral standard needs to shift, by living according to my subjective values and demonstrating that my way of living is better, by appealing to empathy and talking about consequences and any other information that I can bring to the table to convince other people that my moral judgment makes more sense.

One would have to presume that the Hindu gods are true and that the Trinity didn’t later reveal to humanity Catholicism and Judaism.

That is true.

 

[KarlEen]

As you can see, I don’t think there is anything particularly interesting about your story. Gay people usually feel maligned by Catholicism. That’s a shame, and it’s usually the result of poor teaching. I can’t say for sure if you were poorly taught, but your mention of CA leads me to believe that.

Just to clarify, I didn’t admit to myself that I was gay until a good year after I had determined I was an atheist. Because of this, I am pretty lucky in that I never experienced negative treatment for being gay while I was still Catholic. I just brought up being gay earlier in the thread as an example since we were talking about how moral standards are determined and it seemed a useful example.

I fully admit there were some aspects of my religious education that were lacking. I never looked at Aquinas’ proofs of God until after I’d already walked away, or look at Augustine’s Confessions, or read the Catechism in full (not just in segments when I had specific questions). Ironically, I’ve done more reading on the Church after I got out than when I was in, because while I was in, I operated on the assumption that I already knew what I needed to know about my faith and I shouldn’t need to know anything more. Reading these things did not change my view of whether or not the Church was true, but they tempered my anger a bit, since the most damaging parts of my experience of Catholicism had to do with my unique version of Catholicism I was brought up in.

 

[adamhovey1988]

That moral indifference is so frustrating to me. When you have professors that can’t say the Holocaust is wrong, there is a problem.

 

[meltzerboy2]

Apart from a Catholic background, did you ever personally commit to being Catholic in the first place? In other words, how religious or spiritual were you in line with Catholicism before you became atheist, or were you always veering toward atheism?

 

[Frankie65]

And when I was dealing with my issues with confession as a kid and trying to pray to God to see if I really had to be as worried as I was, I couldn’t tell if what I was hearing was God or if I was just trying to tell myself what I wanted to hear. It seemed like trying to pray specifically for guidance was a good way to trick myself into just doing whatever I wanted anyway so instead of going to God for advice in prayer I would instead turn to parents or the Bible, or the Catechism, because I thought my own judgement of whether I was actually hearing God’s instruction or just talking to myself couldn’t be trusted.

A lot of what you say resonates with me and thank you for your two thoughtful and considered answers. My usual prayer KarlEen is ‘God help me’. I usually wake up saying that. I say it throughout the day especially since I feel a failure most of the time. I kneel in church thinking ‘God help me’. Since I feel far away from God because of my own sinfulness I turn to my guardian angel, and ask him to pray for me. Sometimes I think it would be easier not to be a Catholic but then I think, what else is there? However wretched I am, that remains. I know I am not addressing your original post but just what came into my head after reading your responses.

 

[KarlEen]

I thought it was unthinkable to be anything other than Catholic. I thought it was the ultimate truth. When I was homeschool by my folks, I acccepted that the Church’s teachings as presented to me by my folks were true 100%. When I got to my Catholic high school and I saw other students demonstrating that they wanted to pick and choose, I used to be baffled. I thought if it was true it all had to be true and I couldn’t question. That’s why once I started questioning in college, it took so long because any time I even started to raise even small questions in my mind, I’d lock up thinking that even to entertain a doubtful thought was wrong.

 

[meltzerboy2]

So you felt you could not adopt any mindset other than all-or-none? No cafeteria Catholic for you. Could you ever think about returning to Catholicism by increments if atheism doesn’t satisfy you?

 

[1Lord1Faith]

Aquinas’ proofs of God…Augustine’s Confessions…read the Catechism…Reading these things did not change my view of whether or not the Church was true,

Poor St. Thomas Aquinas. Yes, apologetics or an academic approach to Catholicism has its limits. I’m not a big fan either. But it’s been useful to me as a curiosity.

 

[Babaganoush]

belief in God they would go around murdering people and cheating on their spouses and not providing for their children. Until they experience a loss of belief they don’t realise that non-believer have morals too. So they may be genuinely frightened of you and suspect you of having evil intent.

No one believes that. They might assert that you have no logical argument against someone who does though. Your morality is no more logical than the morality of Stalin or hitler or mao.

 

[KarlEen]

I don’t think I could ever justify taking on anything as large as a religion purely on faith again, even in increments, because of how easily I tied myself in mental knots trying to preserve my faith when I had it.

 

[meltzerboy2]

On the one hand, it’s good that you know yourself: Socrates would be proud. On the other hand, you are very young (in your late 20’s?) from where I sit, and therefore, what you can never imagine happening now may happen some time in the future. Life is full of such changes, as you will no doubt find out.

 

[KarlEen]

Just turned 30 this year. I fully admit that anything could happen between now and when I die. Right now, atheism makes the most sense so that is where I am sitting until it ceases to make sense. I’m always trying to learn about other worldviews, other religions, and even re-reading about Catholicism now. Now it’s more just to gain understanding of about how other people think, but if I ever come across something that just shakes my world upside and just seems airtight, I would definitely change because that would be the honest thing to do.

 

[Babaganoush]

How do you explain your own existence? I am not referring to life in general or to the existence of humans. How is it that you personally exist, and what is it that constitutes your existence? The universe is 15 billion years old. You didn’t exist until 26 years ago, and in another 50 or 60 you will no longer exist. How do you explain it? What is it that exists now that didn’t exist before and won’t exist in the future?

Further, how do you explain the existence of other people who are like but aren’t you? What is it in them that exists that makes them distinct from you but similar?

There has to be a rule that unites all individuals but at the same time explains the distinctness of each individual.

 

[meltzerboy2]

That’s a good first step, I think. You’re in the seeking phase. Be open to other views and keep reading and studying. You may even one day abandon the requirement, which you now hold, of a worldview being “airtight,” and you will eventually be a finder. This whole process of change is part of your lifespan development. I wish you the best in your search!

 

[KarlEen]

I’m not 100% sure I understand exactly what you are asking with your first question so if I’m answering the wrong question let me know, but I admit that I don’t ultimately know why I am here or anyone is here or if there really is a why. I’m just glad to be here.

Further, how do you explain the existence of other people who are like but aren’t you? What is it in them that exists that makes them distinct from you but similar?

People are alike and different because as humans we have certain inbuilt abilities. We have emotions, we have drives, we have thinking brains. But we are different because we are born in different places at different times with access to different levels of information. All those critical differences lead to us becoming wildly different people.

There has to be a rule that unites all individuals but at the same time explains the distinctness of each individual.

I’m not sure there has to be other than just that we are all people with the ability to think for ourselves and as a consequence of that ability, we unavoidably end up different from each other.

 

[KarlEen]

I wouldn’t say for me it was as much about coming to believe that Atheism is correct as coming to realize that I didn’t have a way to come to know Catholicism was true without starting from the assumption that it was true. I remember being taught that in order to know Catholicism was true I needed to start by assenting to believe that it was true and that once I did that the truth of the faith would become obvious. That saying “for those who see with eyes of faith, the Lord is ever near.” Nowadays, I would say the opposite. If something is true, you should be able to start by asking the question, is this true?, and if you investigate, it will hold up. If you have to assume something is true in order for its truth to become evident, I don’t feel comfortable putting my trust in it.

 

[Guest1]

I wouldn’t say for me it was as much about coming to believe that Atheism is correct as coming to realize that I didn’t have a way to come to know Catholicism was true without starting from the assumption that it was true. I remember being taught that in order to know Catholicism was true I needed to start by assenting to believe that it was true and that once I did that the truth of the faith would become obvious. That saying “for those who see with eyes of faith, the Lord is ever near.” Nowadays, I would say the opposite. If something is true, you should be able to start by asking the question, is this true?, and if you investigate, it will hold up. If you have to assume something is true in order for its truth to become evident, I don’t feel comfortable putting my trust in it.

Just a movie to consider watching.

 

[KarlEen]

I can add that to my list. Thanks for the recommendation.