Atheists More Irrational than Religious in U.S.A.

[josie_L]

Josie:

Well, no. No one can prove the existence of Bigfoot, but that doesn’t put Bigfoot believers and the rest of us on “equal footing” – if there’s no evidence of X at all, then the advantage is clearly for those who reject the claim that X exists.

Yes, let’s compare Bigfoot to God who I’m sure has been credited for creating the Universe the world over throughout time (and I’m sure many intellectuals have spent much of their time refuting the existence or non-existence of Big Foot).

Also, I personally don’t deny the “possibility” of a god or gods existing (nor do I deny the possibility of Bigfoot existing) – I just don’t see any evidence for any of these claims.

I have to wonder how honest you’re being with me or yourself when you say you don’t see any evidence, if you’ve plummeted the truth with an open mind in an in depth manner you would hardly be saying this.

Speaking of evidence: Well, ok. Let’s review the “evidence” you’ve presented in your post:

1. “there must be a first cause, the Universe in and of itself cannot be eternal as it is mired in space and time” The universe, in its current form, is “mired in space and time.” The singularity that preceded the universe – that began to expand about 14 billion years ago – we can’t say anything about it, what its properties were like, or what happened to it (if anything) before the Big Bang. We can’t even be sure that “causality” as we understand it functioned before the Big Bang. It might make no sense to talk about time or causality before the Big Bang.There is no logical way to go from “we don’t know anything about this event” to “a supernatural being must have made it happen.”

Never said it had to be God, I said that the God hypothesis makes the most sense, do you see the difference now? Furthermore, being that the Universe is mired in space and time how can it be eternal? Time has a beginning, eternity doesn’t. This suggests that the Universe or Universes must have a beginning, a first cause which is eternal.

1. “But there is evidence for God otherwise how could famous atheists like Anthony Flew (and there are many like him) become deists and/or theists?” That a senile atheist suddenly decided to become a Deist does not indicate that his decision was a good one or based on evidence.

Anthony Flew is a senile athiest. hahaha, that’s funny, ok, I must be talking to Richard Dawkins. Well, here’s a synopsis of your senile atheist:

“Antony Flew is not just any atheist. For decades, he has been a dominant figure in the philosophy of religion, among the most influential of atheist philosophers. He lectured on philosophy at the University of Oxford and the University of Aberdeen, and subsequently held professorships at the University of Keele and the University of Reading. He is the author of the celebrated essays “Theology and Falsification” and “The Presumption of Atheism”, and many monographs including Atheistic Humanism and Merely Mortal?: Can You Survive Your Own Death?. He has also represented atheism in published oral debates with William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas, and Thomas Warren.”

Well, are you Richard Dawkins or do you fancy yourself some esteemed intellectual?

And that’s it. If the best you can do is seriously, “A supernatural being must be the cause of something we hardly understand at all” and “this one guy has got to be right because I say so,” then that’s enough evidence to count on zero hands.

Well, it’s the best I can do considering your constant reiteration that the evidence is not there without further ado or explanation. So can you be a little forthcoming with your arguments against the existence of a God?

You specifically referred to liberal newspapers as “your” * newspapers and secular movies as “your” * movies.**

I said “our” (by the way “our” would include me as well) in reference to culture, and I never stated "your’ newspapers or movies, hence, the strawman. What I did say is that most atheists tend to be liberals and as such find much (not all) in common with the liberal and moral relativistic society we live in.

 

[yankee_doodle]

If atheism is a religion then not collecting stamps is a hobby.

nice one

 

[yankee_doodle]

EA, so you think all evidence of miracles are either frauds, lies, fabrications or otherwise figments of some folks imagination.

It can’t be judged like that. Notice the rarity of supernatural claims in modern western society (besides the occasional haunted house or UFO siting – we don’t hear about many things that can’t be explained by science; and few people take things like UFO sitings or ghost hunters seriously anyway).

However, in ancient society things were much different. People had far less knowledge than they do today. Even the average middle school child today has at least heard of gravity, knows the moon rotates around the earth and the earth around the sun, etc. In other words our primitive ancestors were completely oblivious of facts we take for granted today.

We know when lightening hits earth it wasn’t Thor or Zeus tossing a lightening bolt our way, because we know the meteorological explanation for thunder and lightening. We know when it rains it’s not because we did a rain dance or sacrificed a goat to a god. However, the ancients didn’t know these things, so while their superstition may have been perfectly reasonable (during the period they lived), modern man can’t reasonably take their testimony seriously (particularly when they claim things that we know violate the laws of nature).

There’s no real evidence of any miracle. Every phenomena attributed to a god or gods throughout time can be explained by science, as long as we have enough information (and real access to any alleged evidence). However, it’s also unfair for folks to reach back in time and accuse our ancient predecessors of religious trickery or absurdity (although religious trickery was occasionally used, and I’m sure ancient man was prone to occasional absurdity – nevertheless, no matter how religious myths were started, or the reason they gained momentum, we can’t call people who didn’t even understand gravity unreasonable because they believed them).

Modern man … a different story (although I suppose it depends on a variety of factors).

While it may be true that some so called miracles can be easily faked, others are impossible to replicate. The cloak of St. Juan Diego in particular can not be replicated even in this day and age.

The cloak has never been subjected to the type of scientific testing the Shroud of Turin has (although there is some doubt pertaining to the sections of the shroud used for carbon dating, the sections that were tested date from the 13th to 14th centuries, meaning it could not be the authentic shroud used to entomb Christ).

However, the cloak myth is extremely important to Mexicans (and I suspect that’s why the church won’t allow it to be debunked by scientists).

His body also is incorrupt more than 40 years later. St. Bernadette, and many others are still incorrupt even after hundreds of years after death. You can not fake these miracles. No amount of preservation will duplicate these miracles.

don’t get me going on this subject (have you ever seen some of the available photographs of these so called incorruptible bodies).

Is it more irrational to believe that these miracles exists and God exists or is it more irrational to deny that these miracles are from God and assume that all these things are frauds and just made up ?

a god or creator of some sort not completely irrational, your religion, fairly irrational (but again depending on the individual circumstances, religious faith can be perfectly understandable).

Could it be possible that maybe you are wrong ???

No, it’s not.

 

[KEVIN_WILCOX]

My faith is not based on the incidentals (or accidentals) - miracles, visions, etc. Even the Resurrection! They can all be found in other religions: A Hindu will see visions of Shiva, a Buddhist, Buddhist icons. A schizophrenic will hear voices. There are resurrections of other holy men. There are stories of crucifixions of other ‘saviours.’
My faith is built on the Sacrificial Redeeming Blood of the Lamb of God. Free gift of the Holy Spirit, the Grace of God.

Whoever posted to say a negation is not a religion I disagree.

 

[Joan_of_Bark]

Eternal essentially means outside of space and time, so how can you say the Universe or Universes are eternal when they are mired in space and time? So your question of whether there are other universes preceding ours only begs the question what created those universes, there has to be a first cause (which is eternal) to bring about space and time. This is why I state that the God hypothesis actually makes more sense and is more simplistic than the idea of an eternal universe or chain of universes.

We’re getting nowhere here. Again I say, the universe(s) have always existed in physical form; they merely go through endless cycles. There was no ‘first cause’ because there was no beginning (except to the current cycle in which we live).

I believe the universe(s) has always existed.

You believe that God has always existed, and created the universe. Now which is simpler?

 

[Joan_of_Bark]

My faith is not based on the incidentals (or accidentals) - miracles, visions, etc. Even the Resurrection! They can all be found in other religions: A Hindu will see visions of Shiva, a Buddhist, Buddhist icons. A schizophrenic will hear voices. There are resurrections of other holy men. There are stories of crucifixions of other ‘saviours.’
My faith is built on the Sacrificial Redeeming Blood of the Lamb of God. Free gift of the Holy Spirit, the Grace of God.

Whoever posted to say a negation is not a religion I disagree.

Why?

And why are you always yelling?

 

[KyivAndrew]

Again I say, the universe(s) have always existed in physical form; they merely go through endless cycles. There was no ‘first cause’ because there was no beginning (except to the current cycle in which we live).

I believe the universe(s) has always existed.

You believe that God has always existed, and created the universe. Now which is simpler?

Though the post is for Josie, I’ll take a hit. The latter is simpler. What exactly did this prior universe or universes consist of Joan of Bark? Were the physical laws there the same as in our universe? Was there human life in this prior universe? You argue of “physical form” so what physical form did this prior universe have?

I would very much like to know because I haven’t yet found one scientist who can provide empirical proof of what came before the Big Bang and it seems you require physical, empirical proof of everything including God. Please provide some facts to back up your universal claim that “the universe(s) has always existed”. You would surely get the Nobel Prize in Physics if you could provide proof of such a cyclical universe recycling. Would the lifespan of a prior universe be 15 billion, 5 billion, or 25 billion years? Or would time be different there, if there is time at all before the Big Bang? Would the beginning of that prior universe be the same as the beginning of our’s Big Bang which required odds of one in a trillion trillion (or some such astronomical figure) to come about. Or would the odds of the prior universe coming into “being” be as astronomically lows as our Universe had. Let’s use your standard and seek some empirical proof which you can hopefully provide.

 

[yankee_doodle]

We’re getting nowhere here. Again I say, the universe(s) have always existed in physical form; they merely go through endless cycles. There was no ‘first cause’ because there was no beginning (except to the current cycle in which we live).

I believe the universe(s) has always existed.

You believe that God has always existed, and created the universe. Now which is simpler?

Joan, as much as I’d like to think we have grounds to assert a viable theory of the origins of the universe, we unfortunately don’t (yet). Some physicists believe in alternate universes (in fact, mathematically it’s the simplest route to solve a variety of problems in physics). As much as multi-verses sounds like pseudo-science … it’s real stuff (and a viable theory taken seriously by many leading physicists).

Just because it’s a good theory, however, doesn’t mean we can assert it as fact. Evolution is a different story, since we have fossil records evidencing our evolutionary history. Unfortunately, at this point we just don’t have that sort of smoking gun pertaining to the cosmological origins of the universe. However, right now Fermi Lab in Illinois is actually searching for evidence of alternate universes (that’s how viable scientists believe this theory is). If science is able to prove that alternative universes exist, theists will obviously be thrown for a loop (although I’m sure they’ll come up with something), and your view will be bolstered quite a bit (I’m in the camp who says wait and see what the evidence reveals).

Imagine if this isn’t the first universe (or even the only one in current existence). I was watching a History Channel show where a scientist posited another human civilization from an earlier universe, faced with extinction, could have put enough matter and DNA to form our universe in something like a nanobot – and sent it through a wormhole to our dimension (perhaps to what they knew to be empty space, where they could recreate another universe and hope to ensure the survival of the human race).

Wouldn’t it be a shame to leave these questions unexplored because of ancient religions and superstition?

 

[AntiTheist]

Yes, let’s compare Bigfoot to God who I’m sure has been credited for creating the Universe the world over throughout time (and I’m sure many intellectuals have spent much of their time refuting the existence or non-existence of Big Foot).

I’m comparing them based on how much evidence there is for each of them, not based on their supposed properties.

And I’m pointing out that when there’s no evidence for something, the advantage goes to the side that rejects the claim that it exists.

If you’re more comfortable comparing deities, we could say that there’s no evidence of the creator deity The Great Self from the Hindu Upanishads. I’m not on “equal footing” with Great Self believers because there is no evidence of such a being. The lack of evidence means that the advantage is mine.

Of course, Hindus will probably claim there’s evidence (“But the universe is mired in space and time! But smart person X believes in Hinduism!”) – but that’s not evidence, as I’m sure you would agree (since you obviously don’t accept that “evidence”).

Never said it had to be God, I said that the God hypothesis makes the most sense, do you see the difference now?

Not really. We don’t know anything about what came before the Big Bang, therefore God is the most likely explanation? There is no logical connection between A and B.

Furthermore, your original claim was not a god but a “first cause” – even if it’s true that it’s likely there was a first cause (which is far from certain), there’s nothing that makes it more likely that this “first cause” was a god or even intelligent. It might have been something totally natural that we don’t know anything about, or it might have been something that doesn’t exist anymore or it might be an alien from another universe who forgot about this universe or…or…or…

Furthermore, being that the Universe is mired in space and time how can it be eternal? Time has a beginning, eternity doesn’t. This suggests that the Universe or Universes must have a beginning, a first cause which is eternal.

You’re getting confused because some people have been using “universe” to mean both “space that started expanding after the Big Bang” and “whatever it was that came before the Big Bang.”

Time only exists, as far as we know, post-Big-Bang. We don’t know if time existed before the Big Bang. We don’t know anything about what came before the Big Bang, including whether it’s possible to speak of a “before” the Big Bang or whether it makes sense to talk about “causality” before [how do you have a “before” or “causality” if there is no time? We don’t have good answers to those questions]

But just because the answer is currently “we don’t know,” it doesn’t make a supernatural explanation any more likely. It might be possible, as Joan is suggesting, that the stuff that existed before the Big Bang – in its pre-Big-Bang timeless condition – always existed. Or, it could be possible that the pre-Big-Bang stuff has gone through other Big Bangs, other universes, and that this current universe (and this time stream) is only the most recent expansion of that stuff.

We really don’t know. You can’t logically go from “we don’t know” to “it was likely The Great Self or Thor or Jehovah or Bigfoot who made it happen.”

Anthony Flew is a senile athiest.

Well, I certainly question his judgment. I don’t think he has good reasons for thinking that a god is likely to exist. If you think he has a good reason, please present it.

So can you be a little forthcoming with your arguments against the existence of a God?

Sure: there is no evidence of any god existing. Ever.

All you’ve done is try to argue that the Big Bang makes it likely that it had a cause, which 1) is not necessarily true and 2) even if true, would not demonstrate that such a cause is even remotely likely to be intelligent, much less a god.

I said “our” (by the way “our” would include me as well) in reference to culture, and I never stated "your’ newspapers or movies, hence, the strawman. What I did say is that most atheists tend to be liberals and as such find much (not all) in common with the liberal and moral relativistic society we live in.

Looking back at the posts, I realize that I was confusing something Andrew said with you. Andrew wrote in post #88:

I believe in your newspapers (the NY Times, The Washington Post), your t.v. sitcoms…

I thought it was you who said that. I was mistaken, and I’m sorry for the confusion. We can drop this point now, I think.

 

[KyivAndrew]

Looking back at the posts, I realize that I was confusing something Andrew said with you. Andrew wrote in post #88: I thought it was you who said that. I was mistaken, and I’m sorry for the confusion. We can drop this point now, I think.

AntiT, you’ve just provided an example of the danger of jumping in a thread midstream. When I said your newspapers, t.v., I meant American because I am Canadian and was responding to an American poster’s claim about the alleged control and power Christianity had in America, not atheists. Comprendez-vouz?

 

[AntiTheist]

There are no visions of Vishnu or Odin or Mohammed or whoever

Well, there was an oracle at Delphi and oracles at various other places in the ancient world.

Is it more irrational to believe that those oracles existed and that the Greek gods exist or is it more irrational to deny that these oracles got their messages from the Greek gods and assume that all these things are frauds and just made up?

 

[AntiTheist]

AntiT, you’ve just provided an example of the danger of jumping in a thread midstream. When I said your newspapers, t.v., I meant American because I am Canadian and was responding to an American poster’s claim about the alleged control and power Christianity had in America, not atheists. Comprendez-vouz?

Oops. I have egg on my face now. Apologies for my thread-jumping mistakes. Back to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress.

 

[KyivAndrew]

Every species has unique characteristics – that’s how we can classify different species in the first place. Some species run really fast; some of them are really big; others are very intelligent and have evolved higher brain functions. It is the quality of higher brain functions that differentiate humans from other animals.

Part of having higher brain functions is possessing a strong mechanism for pattern recognition.

Now, I don’t know what you mean by “argue of the highest issues of life,” but I suspect that you are just talking about pattern recognition. The tendency to want to see “purpose” behind things or see the agency of “beings” that are like humans are manifestations of pattern recognition that we would expect to find.

I will tell you what I mean by the “highest issues of life”; I mean just that questions of Life and Death and Morality not “pattern recognition”. A question to illustrate: you see someone you know standing on your front lawn crying for his ill wife. She has died of cancer and he’s thinking of killing himself. What would your gifts of 'pattern recognition" tell you to do? Why should you help him if he is a soulless material animal made up of pure material just like you. His loss would be no great thing necessarily to you as human life is nothing special or specially designed. He kills himself leaving his kids childless. What do you feel? Some Christians would take sympathy and help in the situation and with the orphaned kids as Christ has told us of Charity and Love. Why should you care if, as you have stated, the only “higher issues of life” involve pattern recognition?

 

[AntiTheist]

A question to illustrate: you see someone you know standing on your front lawn crying for his ill wife. She has died of cancer and he’s thinking of killing himself. What would your gifts of 'pattern recognition" tell you to do? Why should you help him if he is a soulless material animal made up of pure material just like you.

Well, as I’ve been indicating in other posts, I have values that I derive from a wide variety of sources (biological empathy, reason, tradition, socialization, training, etc.) – it’s those values that motivate me.

I’m not quite sure what I’d do if someone was standing on my lawn threatening to kill himself. I would probably call the police and then go out to talk to him and tell him to stay calm and keep him talking until professionals could arrive and handle the situation. I’m sure that some other people would react differently.

What does any of this have to do with the existence of a god? Whether gods exist or not, it wouldn’t change how I’d react to that situation.

He kills himself leaving his kids childless. What do you feel?

I feel that he’s being extremely selfish by leaving his kids on their own. What a jerk.

Why should you care if, as you have stated, the only “higher issues of life” involve pattern recognition?

Because I have values. I value not having random strangers kill themselves on my lawn.

I don’t see any “higher issues” here – avoiding having people die on your property is about as down to earth as it gets.

Your argument isn’t making much sense. Could you explain why you think this is a good reason to believe in a god?

 

[KyivAndrew]

Well, as I’ve been indicating in other posts, I have values that I derive from a wide variety of sources (biological empathy, reason, tradition, socialization, training, etc.) – it’s those values that motivate me.

I don’t see any “higher issues” here – avoiding having people die on your property is about as down to earth as it gets.

Your argument isn’t making much sense. Could you explain why you think this is a good reason to believe in a god?

One of the standard reasons among the many to point God’s existence – is called the Argument From Conscience. One prominent atheist from last century, J.L. Mackie, stated that “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of properties and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the course of events WITHOUT an all-powerful god to create them”. (Does God Exist (Moreland, Knielsen) pg.111
Mackie’s solution is just to deny the existence of these properties and that all we can do is to create values subjectively; you have to choose"

I was using an example to approach the subject of the Argument for God from Conscience and was just interested in hearing your thoughts as to justifications if any for Charity since you mentioned pattern recognition explaining our actions.

I simply believe atheist systems in History such as in the Soviet Union have done more damage to Man’s morality because for generations they enforced, as you always stress, there is no God. The funny thing is, when the Soviet Union collapsed, on the higher Ideal level, tons of peoples’ consciousness of good and evil became skewed from rigorous atheistic teaching leaving a demoralized benighted society. I personally met many disadvantaged people after Communism collapsed. There is a movement in North America to help orphaned children in orphanages in Ukraine which I assisted. The orphanages in the Soviet Union put the Western World’s to shame for brutality. The sick are undernourished. Even after communism, the orphans in the thousands live wretched lives and are for sale to highest bidders because the orphan managers couldn’t care less because like you they see no special spiritual uniqueness to any person, or a Moral Obligation to help, which Christians are taught. The Soviet Union’s Atheistic Education system ingrained in many administrators of orphanages that, with God dead, and we being simply evolved animals, why should one care for the sickly child.

It is rather remarkable that of all countries enslaved under Communism, it was only Poland with its strong Church that helped much to bring down that atheist Empire. The national Churches of Ukraine were banned.

And it is Christian groups among many here in the West helping to implement a proper and caring setting for disabled and abandoned orphans in Ukraine. In distress, the Christian seeks to help. I can’t in all honesty say I’ve seen major Atheist Organizations doing Fantastic Charitable work for humans, though I may be wrong. Do atheists even have moral obligations? Is there an atheist Mother Teresa?

The Argument from Conscience argues that morality is also evidence of God, to phrase it shortly. It’s getting late so I’ll probably rephrase it better tomorrow.

 

[AntiTheist]

I simply believe atheist systems in History such as in the Soviet Union have done more damage to Man’s morality because for generations they enforced, as you always stress, there is no God.

There are atheists who have done bad things, and there are atheists who have done good things. There are theists who have done bad things, and there are theists who have done good things.

All of that is irrelevant to the question of whether or not their claims are true or false.

Do atheists even have moral obligations?

“Atheism” isn’t a set of teachings – it’s just a position on one specific question (“Do any gods exist?”). Other than the fact that atheists don’t have a belief in gods, they don’t necessarily need to share anything else in common.

So some atheists subscribe to moral philosophies and believe that they have a moral obligation. Others don’t. It’s unrelated to the question of whether gods exist or not.

From what I can gather, I think that I’m in the minority of atheists because I don’t believe in morality. My not believing in morality doesn’t mean that I go around doing things that other people would consider “bad.” To the contrary – I might point to the fact that I gave some money to a beggar earlier today, an action that most people would consider “good.” The thing is that I didn’t do it out of a sense of obligation; it was simply that in that particular situation, my values – deriving partially from biology, partially from reason, partially from training, and probably from other sources – inclined me to act in that way. I don’t think of it in terms of “good” and “bad” – I think about it in terms of who I am and what I’m inclined to do.

That’s all there is to it.

What you call “conscience” is mainly an internal sensation of one’s values. For example, I feel bad when I hurt someone else – because I am naturally inclined to have empathy with other living creatures (empathy is an evolved trait that’s useful in encouraging cooperation in social animals). There’s no mystery here, and there’s certainly nothing that suggests a supernatural being.

 

[KyivAndrew]

Anti T, please just ignore “like you” in above answer in paragraph 3. That phrase was supposed to go in another place. Goofed it up.

 

[AntiTheist]

Anti T, please just ignore “like you” in above answer in paragraph 3. That phrase was supposed to go in another place. Goofed it up.

Righto.

While I’m at it, let me address this:

justifications if any for Charity since you mentioned pattern recognition explaining our actions.

There are as many justifications for charity as there are atheists who engage in charity (which is apparently quite a few…did you know that atheist Bill Gates, for example, is a major philanthropist?).

An atheist whom I’m close with volunteers to tutor a child every week at the local library – her reasons for doing so are varied: she values the idea of giving back to the community, she values the fun she has working with the child, she values the satisfaction she gets from bringing another person happiness, etc., etc.

As you can see, there are a lot of good reasons for doing something like that, reasons rooted entirely in values and not in any supernatural beliefs.

 

[KyivAndrew]

There are as many justifications for charity as there are atheists who engage in charity (which is apparently quite a few…did you know that atheist Bill Gates, for example, is a major philanthropist?).

An atheist whom I’m close with volunteers to tutor a child every week at the local library – her reasons for doing so are varied: she values the idea of giving back to the community, she values the fun she has working with the child, she values the satisfaction she gets from bringing another person happiness, etc., etc.

As you can see, there are a lot of good reasons for doing something like that, reasons rooted entirely in values and not in any supernatural beliefs.

Or reasons rooted entirely in “morals” not subjective “values” IMHO. The fact that Gates and others give suggest a Natural Law, or a Tao as C.S. Lewis called it, which is common to all beings, and which Lewis argues has its basis in God. But on this I know you won’t agree. Have you ever read up on Natural Law or its provenance, not that it matters now as I’m about to pass out, but thought I’d ask.

 

[AntiTheist]

Or reasons rooted entirely in “morals” not subjective “values” IMHO.

You asked me what justification atheists have for charity, implying that atheists don’t have any such justification. I gave you specific examples and several good, natural, non-supernatural reasons and non-objective-morality reasons (i.e. reasons other than, “because a god says so” and “because charity is good in and of itself”).

Can you at least acknowledge that point?

Have you ever read up on Natural Law or its provenance

I’m familiar with the idea. I don’t think there’s a case for it.

Obviously, human values are going to be very similar when it comes to big issues. Possessing empathy, most people don’t like seeing others hurt, so things like murder and rape will violate the values of the vast majority of people. Those things are also very disruptive to society, so it’s not very surprising that just about every single civilization that has ever existed has prohibited rape and murder.

But codes of behavior can vary from society to society – because, as we might expect, different cultures value different things. As an example, a lot of countries have very different ages of sexual consent, different drinking ages, and different behaviors that are considered evil (just try to get a good hamburger in India…).

There’s no consistent code of behavior that all people and all cultures follow, other than maybe the basic rules that are logically necessary for having an orderly society (prohibitions on murder and theft, primarily).

You say, “The fact that Gates and others give suggest a Natural Law,” but it doesn’t. All it suggests is that some humans act in altruistic ways. The question now is why. A good answer is empathy, a completely natural trait that confers a survival advantage, a trait we’ve observed in other animals.

In other words, there is good evidence that points to the fact that altruistic behavior in humans is something natural, something similar to kinds of behavior we see in other animals and explainable in terms of the survival advantage it confers to the group (not always the individual, obviously).

Simultaneously, there is no evidence that this behavior has its root in a supernatural source.

You can’t sensibly argue that since a lot of people like treating other people nicely, a supernatural intelligence therefore made them that way. It’s an absolutely absurd leap of logic with no justification whatsoever.