Do the Atheists have it right: Just Be Good for Goodness' Sake?

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buffalo said:
Who says it is rational to create a society which no one commits murder?
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Every rational person who has ever walked the earth says that – which is why murder is outlawed in every civilization on earth, regardless of their spiritual beliefs.

I don’t want to be murdered. I realize that others do not want to be murderd. I can rationally determine that murdering others would never be even close to the best course of action in any situation (keep in mind how I’m defining “best”).

What is unclear about that?
 
MegaTherion said:
Every rational person who has ever walked the earth says that – which is why murder is outlawed in every civilization on earth, regardless of their spiritual beliefs.

I don’t want to be murdered. I realize that others do not want to be murderd. I can rationally determine that murdering others would never be even close to the best course of action in any situation (keep in mind how I’m defining “best”).

What is unclear about that?
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I want what you have and I feel I can take it by whatever means necessary. Your life is not important, you are simply a competitor. Your life has no value to me.
 
buffalo said:
I want what you have and I feel I can take it by whatever means necessary. Your life is not important, you are simply a competitor. Your life has no value to me.
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You may very well feel that way, but if you were to act on those feelings, you would not be choosing the best course of action. You would be acting illogically. And we would lock you up because that’s not how rational citizens behave in our society.

At any rate, I doubt you actually harbor feelings like that – if you did, I would be very scared of you. And very glad that you have religion to keep you under control (since clearly your natural empathy and reason are not enough).

Edit: Or do you want to make a case for killing me being the best possible course of action for everyone involved? I really don’t think it is (well, certainly I wouldn’t…)
 
Let me try another go at this because I want this to be very clear.
  1. Do you agree that a person can rationally determine that in the middle of a conversation, murdering the other party would be very far from the best course of action (and would actually cause a great deal of harm, both to the other party and the person in question)?
If yes,
  1. Do you agree that a person can rationally conclude that murder would be very far from the best course of action (and usually the most harmful course of action) in all other situations of his life?
If yes,
  1. Do you agree that from this a person can rationally determine that in just about every possible situation, for everyone, murder would be bad?
If yes,
  1. Do you agree that from all of this a person can abstract “Killing is bad” as a principle of conduct?
For me, “killing is bad” is a moral imperative. It comes out of the situation and our rational evaluation of our choices in the situation. It is as close to absolute as we can get.
 
MegaTherion said:
Let me try another go at this because I want this to be very clear.
  1. Do you agree that a person can rationally determine that in the middle of a conversation, murdering the other party would be very far from the best course of action (and would actually cause a great deal of harm, both to the other party and the person in question)?
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Although I completely feel the way you do, there is a problem with this whole argument, that the athiest can’t really address. I don’t believe the answer the religious give is a solution either, but athiests are going to have the same problem.

Your above statment reminds me of a friend. He used to be an incredibly violent person. In his mind, IF during a conversation some-one annoyed him, he’d start physically attacking them. It took me a while to realize that he meant this. I couldn’t even get close to imagining this. That was WHO he was. They could not do the same thing to him, because he was HUGE and a martial arts expert. So, rational thinking didn’t work for him. This behaviour “for him” was not wrong.

This individual converted to Christianity. He told me He STILL WANTED to beat people up, but he now knew that God did not want him to do that, so he didn’t.

There are probably more people out there in the world like this than you realize, and if they can manage it, they are the ones that hand their lives over to governance by the church. This is a GOOD THING, not a bad thing as these people simply cannot manage their own lives. They can’t do it.(Not all religious people are like this). Since my realization that this is exactly how some people are, I no longer believe the world would be better off without religion.

For those individuals, or the religous that understand these types of people, you can see WHY an “absolute” set of rules is imperative and that there must be a God behind it. There must be something “bigger” than us. It is why they alway’s say, there has to be rules. There has to be a truth. We must follow the rules.

Truth is, if those people hadn’t converted the world would fall into the chaos that a lot of religous people claim it would. I agree with them.

But you and I of course are not like that. We are not governed by only our own will, and we would not be responsible for leading the world into chaos. You and I know that. But we cannot prove it. Some religious people do not know the difference(or believe there is one) between that type of man and us.

The point is, claiming that “rational thinking” is what is needed to determine morality will not work for a large number of people because they realize that rational thinking isn’t a good enough excuse to care.

Religions have their own set of problems however, when they start to invoke absolute truths and absolute rules, because as soon as they invoke their gods to claim this, they are contradicting each other.

So we have a problem.
  1. We cannot behave exactly how we FEEL
  2. We cannot invoke Gods and religious experiences to set precepts and conditions for human life
  3. We cannot make claims “this is morally wrong” even if it is rational as a way to determine human behaviour.(IE we can’t say, do good for goodness sake, and expect it to work for everyone)
None of this will work(even if the 3rd, is my personal option). The current pope, is working toward a system of ethics that can be based on a common foundation for all of humanity, namely nature.

I think it’s a good start. We cannot claim we all share the same feelings, we cannot claim we all share the same beliefs and we cannot all claim that rational thinking is superior. But unless you are seriously mentally ill, I doubt you could claim that nature is not something we all share.

Cheers
 
buffalo said:
Not! Who would care if society destroys itself? What is the big deal?
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It’s more than whether people care or not.

We can rationally determine that we are all better off with society than without it. It is irrational to make decisions that would destroy the entire social order.

It’s not just a question of one nutball saying “I don’t care about it.” Whether you care about it or not has nothing to do with the fact that we can determine rationally that we are better off with a social order.

That’s part of the justification for saying that it’s absolutely wrong to commit genocide.

Again, I think it’s pretty clear that I am morally superior to both Hitler and your god.

Are you ever going to acknowledge my points? Or are you just going to continue to pretend you are an irrational (and immoral) sociopath?
 
MegaTherion said:
It’s more than whether people care or not.

We can rationally determine that we are all better off with society than without it. It is irrational to make decisions that would destroy the entire social order.

It’s not just a question of one nutball saying “I don’t care about it.” Whether you care about it or not has nothing to do with the fact that we can determine rationally that we are better off with a social order.

That’s part of the justification for saying that it’s absolutely wrong to commit genocide.

Again, I think it’s pretty clear that I am morally superior to both Hitler and your god.

Are you ever going to acknowledge my points? Or are you just going to continue to pretend you are an irrational (and immoral) sociopath?
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How may people were killed in the concentration camps?
 
MegaTherion said:
It’s more than whether people care or not.

We can rationally determine that we are all better off with society than without it. It is irrational to make decisions that would destroy the entire social order.

It’s not just a question of one nutball saying “I don’t care about it.” Whether you care about it or not has nothing to do with the fact that we can determine rationally that we are better off with a social order.

That’s part of the justification for saying that it’s absolutely wrong to commit genocide.

Again, I think it’s pretty clear that I am morally superior to both Hitler and your god.

Are you ever going to acknowledge my points? Or are you just going to continue to pretend you are an irrational (and immoral) sociopath?
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Why? If there is no hereafter why subject ourselves to pain and suffering?
 
Dameedna said:

From post 99
Let me say something about this concept of absolute truth. I think there is, an absolute truth. I think at the end of the day, there is a complete picture to be made and fundamental truth upon which our existance depends.​

The problem is not with the “concept” of an absolute truth. The problem, is that we don’t know what it is.
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Dear Dameedna,

Now that I have Diogenes with his lamp settled in my mind, I can move on. But first, a small explanation. The thing that bothered me about Diogenes cartoons was that his search was portrayed as futile as if the “honest man” never existed.
The other thing which I wondered about the cartoons was if Diogenes was looking in the right places.The poetic, symbolic side of my mind sees a relationship between my interpretations of Diogenes cartoons and some of the posts on this thread.

Back to absolute truth. What you wrote above makes sense to me as do a number of other statements in various posts. And what didn’t make sense, I will continue thinking about. My point is that right now, this thread is moving too fast for me so I am going to throw out one idea that has been rolling around my brain since I started reading this thread.

The fundamental absolute truth is that human life is sacred.

Blessings,
grannymh
 
buffalo said:
Why? If there is no hereafter why subject ourselves to pain and suffering?
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What? I mean, first of all, this has nothing to do with what we were discussing.

Second of all, the question makes no sense. Who is proposing to subject anyone to pain and suffering? (unless you think it’s painful for me to figure out your twisted logic…which it kind of is) And what possible relevance could a “hereafter” have to any of this?

If you’re asking “why bother living?” then the answer is because this is the one and only shot we get at life, so we owe it to ourselves to build the best possible world we can in the here and now. And doing so involves acting in an ethically responsible way, in accord with our natural empathy guided by reason.

If you don’t actually have any arguments to make, I suppose there’s nothing left to discuss.
 
buffalo said:
I am right. And if I can get enough influence I will eliminate all my opposition.
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No you’re not. I’ve already demonstrated that we can rationally determine that murder (and genocide) are harmful and among the worst options available to us in any situation.

Genocide is absolutely wrong – no matter how many people you get on your side, you will never be right. No matter what a dictator says, it is wrong. No matter what any god says, it is wrong.

I don’t think you have an argument left, buffalo.
 
MegaTherion said:
What? I mean, first of all, this has nothing to do with what we were discussing.

Second of all, the question makes no sense. Who is proposing to subject anyone to pain and suffering? (unless you think it’s painful for me to figure out your twisted logic…which it kind of is) And what possible relevance could a “hereafter” have to any of this?

If you’re asking “why bother living?” then the answer is because this is the one and only shot we get at life, so we owe it to ourselves to build the best possible world we can in the here and now. And doing so involves acting in an ethically responsible way, in accord with our natural empathy guided by reason.

If you don’t actually have any arguments to make, I suppose there’s nothing left to discuss.
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It’s all related.
This life is full of pain and suffering. The atheist argument is evil eliminates God. I think you yourself have stated this in an earlier post.

Why don’t we just avoid it?
 
buffalo said:
I am right. And if I can get enough influence I will eliminate all my opposition.
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What are you right about buffalo?

You have said that I cannot prove that hitler was wrong, without invoking God and by using human reason alone.

I agreed with you, that I cannot prove that hitler was absolutely wrong. This was on a previous post.

I also indicated to you, that a religious person cannot claim hitler was absolutely wrong by invoking God.(I gave an example)

I would suggest you go read the post, then get back to me.
 
grannymh said:
Dear Dameedna,

Now that I have Diogenes with his lamp settled in my mind, I can move on. But first, a small explanation. The thing that bothered me about Diogenes cartoons was that his search was portrayed as futile as if the “honest man” never existed.
The other thing which I wondered about the cartoons was if Diogenes was looking in the right places.The poetic, symbolic side of my mind sees a relationship between my interpretations of Diogenes cartoons and some of the posts on this thread.

Back to absolute truth. What you wrote above makes sense to me as do a number of other statements in various posts. And what didn’t make sense, I will continue thinking about. My point is that right now, this thread is moving too fast for me so I am going to throw out one idea that has been rolling around my brain since I started reading this thread.

The fundamental absolute truth is that human life is sacred.

Blessings,
grannymh
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Well, I would like to think that human life is sacred and it’s not a bad way of viewing the world. But…If the athiests are right, and the universe is all that there is, then this may not be an absolute fundamental truth.

That doesn’t mean we can’t(and don’t) care. For me, it is simply enough to know how much we really suffer and empathize with it. I don’t like to suffer…why on earth would I want to do that to another?

Life as sacred? Not sure…it IS rather extrodinary 😃
 
MegaTherion said:
No you’re not. I’ve already demonstrated that we can rationally determine that murder (and genocide) are harmful and among the worst options available to us in any situation.

Genocide is absolutely wrong – no matter how many people you get on your side, you will never be right. No matter what a dictator says, it is wrong. No matter what any god says, it is wrong.

I don’t think you have an argument left, buffalo.
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According to German law they committed no murders since the Jew were not fully human.
 
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