Do you see the logical end to atheism being nihilism? If not, why not?

[Freddy]

I’m sorry but where does altruism come from? If you are agreeing that a definite sense of good is defined by God then I guess you believe in God. Which proves Atheism wrong.

Or

You have to tell me where a definite sense of good comes from that isn’t relative, if your assumption that God doesn’t exist is true. How do you explain it?

Goodness is relative. What’s good for me will not necessarily be good for you. As long as what you do to enhance the good in your life doesn’t impinge negatively on others then you’re good to go. And vica versa. The golden rule is generally a good way to determine what’s acceptable or not.

And as for altruism…well, you start with reciprocal altruism. Crudely put, scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. Or put in a more practical sense - working together is more beneficial than working separately.

Now this is a pretty basic idea and it’s common throughout nature. That’s why you get animals hunting in packs for example. You could say that it’s inate in a lot of creatures. It certainly is in us. And it arrived through the process of natural evolution.

Some people are lazy, some are hard working. Some are selfish and some are generous. They are simply everyday characteristics that you’ll find in everyone to some extent. But we can work to overcome the negative ones that the genetic roll of the dice has determined we have.

That said, back before societies or even groups had formed, life was pretty tough. You had to hunt or forage to keep yourself and your immediate family alive. And let’s say you were lucky and caught more fish than you actually needed. Now if you were a selfish type that could quite often work to your advantage. You might keep all the fish, eat some now and save some for later. And tough luck on anyone else who was hungry.

However, if you happened to be generous, then you might share your food. Now although that might be detrimental in the short term - no food for tomorrow, it could be beneficial in the long run if the other guy reciprocates and shares what he catches the following day with you. Again, this is quite common in nature. You don’t need to sit and calculate the cost benefit. It’s inate. And there’s a huge amount of research that shows this. For example: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/11/151117-vampire-bats-blood-food-science-animals/

(cont’d…)

 

[Freddy]

(cont’d…)

So if you start sharing because of this inbuilt characteristic you have for sharing then you find yourself doing so in groups of like minded individuals. The selfish ones are excluded. And if you have a large enough group with the same characteristics then eventually these characteristics are going to be genetically shared through future generations. And then we have societies forming. Which tends to flatten out the highs and lows of food availablity and shelter making and tool production.

Now personally, I believe that these characteristics that helped us work together and eventually rule the planet are nothing more than a genetic roll of the dice. If selfishness worked better then we’d consider that to be ‘good’. But what happens to work better is sharing. And we have grown as a species because of it. You, on the other hand, might consider this generosity to be God given. And I’m fine with that. We can just agree to disagree whether it’s divinely ordained or a natural characteristic.

Either way, that evolved tendancy toward reciprical altruism coupled with empathy and an understanding of the golden rule is pretty much all we need to live morally acceptable lives. Acceptable to each other that is.

 

[Freddy]

PatienceAndHumility:

A utilitarian, thus relativist, society would simply be swept by the tides of the times. For example ecology. Thus at an individual basis, nihilism seems logical. In other words; “there is no God so nothing really matters. The “zeitgeist” of the times is what matters. Of course, we’ll all hopefully try our best, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter.” To me this seems a logical deduction.

I would add that there have been societies in history close to this. Take the Huns. They would go in, loot and kill, go back to their camp, eat, drink and be merry. Some atheists would say, yeah we are all dust anyway at least the Huns had an enjoyable life for a while. It worked for them.

I’ll bet it did. But apply the golden rule and throw in a touch of empathy and they would then understand that what they were doing was wrong. As would everyone else. Which of course doesn’t prevent them from doing it. But then again, even psychopaths know they are doing wrong. They just don’t care about it.

The neigbour is away for a few days. I could hop the garden fence and steal his ladder. What’s to stop me? ‘We’ll all be dust eventually’. Well, there is nothing to stop me. Except that I apply the golden rule and engage my empathy and realise that if someone stole my ladder I’d be angry. And if we all stole whenever we wanted something then society would be in tatters. I wouldn’t want to live like that. So his ladder is safe.

Well, from me anyway. But there are a certain percentage of people who won’t play by the rules. They’ll take advantage of the fact that most of us do. So what can we do about that? Well we can set up a system of punishments for those who don’t play fair. And that becomes an additional incentive not to break the rules.

Result? A reasonably stable society.

 

[Dan_Defender]

The neigbour is away for a few days. I could hop the garden fence and steal his ladder. What’s to stop me? ‘We’ll all be dust eventually’. Well, there is nothing to stop me. Except that I apply the golden rule

And I would say that what prevents you is the natural law put in your heart by God. Something lower animals do not have. Zebra society: Male zebras have a harem of females and once in a while one of the females strays for a few hours and gets impregnated by another male zebra. Everything seems normal, the offspring is born, but somehow (scientists do not know yet how), the male head of the harem knows it is not his, and proceeds to kill it by grabbing it and violently shaking it up and down. And simply moves on. That is the natural law in the wild.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

The neigbour is away for a few days. I could hop the garden fence and steal his ladder. What’s to stop me? ‘We’ll all be dust eventually’. Well, there is nothing to stop me. Except that I apply the golden rule

And I would say that what prevents you is the natural law put in your heart by God. Something lower animals do not have. Zebra society: Male zebras have a harem of females and once in a while one of the females strays for a few hours and gets impregnated by another male zebra. Everything seems normal, the offspring is born, but somehow (scientists do not know yet how), the male head of the harem knows it is not his…

Infanticide is very common in nature. Even primates do it.

But if you want to say God (name removed by moderator)lanted this ‘natural law’ in our hearts then go for it. I have spent quite a few years investigating these concepts (reciprocal altruism etc) and the deeper into it get, the more sense it makes to me. I guess what I’m doing is finding out how God did it.

 

[PatienceAndHumility]

They wouldn’t have done so if reciprocal altruism hadn’t been a guiding force. It’s an excellent rule by which to live

Ancient civilizations actually point to the opposite. It was quite barbaric before Judeo-Christian values were established. So altruism, whilst seemingly so, is never sufficient as the fundaments for a society’s driving force to do good. In turn, utilitarianism as I have mentioned, logically only leads to nihilism at an individual existential level- in other words, why does it really matter. There is no absolute Truth.

The first being that the church allows for a certain amount of interpretation - by necessity. It can’t offer specific solutions for all moral problems. So you have to decide. And as we can see even within this forum, people differ widely on moral matters. So who is right?

The Catholic church, supported by logic and reason, does offer moral absolutes for the key moral problems of our times.

So the case is not made that atheism automatically means an individual cannot define good and evil in specific (as opposed to general, amporphus and shifting) concepts and rules.

Absolutely- completely agree. I would propose that when an atheist shares belief in certain objectively true moral absolutes, it is due to the same natural law you mention. The difference being that an atheist fundamentally acts out said morally true beliefs for ends which are different from those of a Catholic. In other words, an atheist will live by a “good” belief, and find their ultimate recourse to do so, driven by their altruism. Whereas a Catholic will do so within the context of an afterlife, an ultimate arbiter, love for God etc.

 

[AlNg]

if there was no God and I murdered a hundred people so that a billion could live happily without problems for a 1000 years then I would probably be justified doing it.

Didn’t many Christians and even Roman Catholics say that it was OK to drop the atomic bomb on Japan because even though thousands of innocent civilians were killed, in the end it saved so many more lives of American soldiers? And Christians believe in God.

 

[ColoradoCatholic]

Haha, your obvious attempt to troll everyone on the forum does not go unnoticed. You also took my comment out of context, because I was saying that I would be justified if there was NO God.

But your not commenting to engage in a constructive argument anyway, are you? You’re just starting a fire…

 

[AlNg]

Haha, your obvious attempt to troll everyone on the forum does not go unnoticed. You also took my comment out of context, because I was saying that I would be justified if there was NO God.

But your not commenting to engage in a constructive argument anyway, are you? You’re just starting a fire…

No. It is not funny. This is the type of reasoning has been used by many Christians including Roman Catholics to justify dropping of the atomic bomb. This type of argumentation is not something that only an atheist would use, if he did use such. Actually, I don’t believe that an atheist secular humanist would use such an argument as you have presented.

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

They wouldn’t have done so if reciprocal altruism hadn’t been a guiding force. It’s an excellent rule by which to live

Ancient civilizations actually point to the opposite. It was quite barbaric before Judeo-Christian values were established.

That’s not even wrong. Societies were barbaric before during and after Jesus came to save us. There’s an argument that we are finally leaving those times behind (and not an argument for this thread) but in any case, you are missing the point. Reciprocal altruism combined with empathy isn’t a means in itself to prevent bad things from happening. They simply point towards the correct action that should be taken (or not taken, as the case might be).

Whether someone complies or not is entirely up to them. But at least they will know it’s wrong.

 

[jeannetherese]

Altruism is inbuilt. Everyone has a sense of altruism whether they believe in God or Shiva or have no belief in the supernatural at all.

I’m not sure Freddy. Would such a sense be genetic? Would a sociopath be denying this sense, or, perhaps, suffering from a birth defect? Would this sense be what we are discussing when we talk about that god sized hole we are looking to fill? That inclination towards God?

 

[jeannetherese]

Reciprocal altruism combined with empathy isn’t a means in itself to prevent bad things from happening. They simply point towards the correct action that should be taken (or not taken, as the case might be).

Whether someone complies or not is entirely up to them. But at least they will know it’s wrong.

I’m trying to think about reciprocal altruism, which I had not heard of before running into this thread.
If I’m following correctly, one commits and act thinking about the consequences to oneself if others were to commit this act. the self becomes the reference point for actions. One might commit an act because, if another committed it to oneself, it would be considered pleasureable. Or, one might choose not to commit an act because if another committed that act to oneself it would be considered painful.
Percieived pain or pleasure become the arbiters of good versus evil with oneself as the reference point-am I following the argument correctly?

 

[Freddy]

Freddy:

Reciprocal altruism combined with empathy isn’t a means in itself to prevent bad things from happening. They simply point towards the correct action that should be taken (or not taken, as the case might be).

Whether someone complies or not is entirely up to them. But at least they will know it’s wrong.

I’m trying to think about reciprocal altruism, which I had not heard of before running into this thread.

There is a doubt as to whether true altruism actually exists. That is, doing something for others with nothing expected in return. Some people argue that even if we get nothing concrete in return, we still get an inward satisfaction when helping others. Something of a hard-nosed skeptical approach but some will argue that point. I’m ambivalent about it.

But reciprocal altruism means that something is given in return. You may not be helping the other with an expectation of reciprocity - sometimes you do something because of nothing more than wanting to help. However…if you continue to help one person and there is no reciprocal act (even an expression of gratitude), then we have a tendancy to forgo further help. So it becomes self perpetuating. We tend to help those who will, in return, help us.

My neighbour was laying some grass in his yard last week. And I was sitting on my deck reading a book. He was working hard and I was relaxing. And eventually I put down the book and went over to help (now whether that was because I’m a great guy always willing to lend a hand or it was simply guilt about not helping…who knows). And we got the work down in half the time, I felt pleased I’d helped and he was pleased that he’d got some help.

Now if I hopped the fence next week to help him paint his deck and then maybe helped to clean his gutters and all I got was ‘thanks, Fred’ then my tendancy to help would fade. I wouldn’t be helping him expecting him to reciprocate but if he didn’t…then he eventually gets no more help. There’s a sense of fairness that comes into play. And that’s how societies formed. Many hands working together are much more efficient than those hands working individually.

And from that we get a concept that we should also treat others as we would expect to be treated. So it’s not then limited to helping my neighbour out, it expands to me not stealing his lawnmower because I don’t want him stealing mine. We end up treating each other as equals.

And hey, he insisted on me accepting a very good single malt for my effort (I’d also given him a bottle of home made gin as well - but that’s another story). So if his gutters get blocked, then he’s got a willing helper. Ain’t reciprocal altruism great!

 

[HerCrazierHalf]

Dear forum (especially dear atheist friends) I want to better understand the heart of atheism and it’s consequences idealogically. I have a dear friend who is an atheist and we often have this discussion.

My question to him is why he isn’t a nihilist- i.e. nothing
really matters. To me, that is the logical conclusion of atheism. Now I must apologise as this does come across direct! But it’s hard to convey this charitably so bear with me!

1. The problem with this question is that it assumes value is assigned by an entity outside of ones self. What if those in other denominations or faiths who claim alternate values and meanings? Doesn’t that break things down to personal opinion as they will believe their view of correct just as you do?
2. I sometimes wonder how a simple “no” to the god question turns into a life philosophy here? I do not see a lack of faith as philosophy to define one’s life around. That’s like saying disliking kale defines your diet.

 

[BlueKumul]

There are secular philosophies like Extropianism, which defines good as increasing complexity and vitality. Sounds quite right, but without God who is to say this is really good? If someone else says, I don’t care about complexity and vitality, I just want to get drunk and this is my meaning. Without God there are simply two guys, the Extropian and the drunkard, with their conflicting claims.

And this is way too nice to atheists, most of them are hedonists and egoists. Philosophy will never be a replacement for faith.

 

[FiveLinden]

I’m sorry but where does altruism come from?

This atheist is late to the discussion but here’s my answer to this point: altruism evolved. As humans evolved from earlier forms of ape we were able, using our consciousness, language and other aspects of what is sometimes called ‘intelligence’ to identify those instincts that make communities strong and promote and propagate them across the generations.

The same functioning, in my view, also promoted the development of religion.

In my view religion, like altruism, is an evolved response. We are stronger when we have hope in apparently hopeless conditions. Religion brings optimism and optimism brings greater success.

With the incremental growth of retained knowledge over the years we are able to dispense with religion. But we are not able to dispense with altruism. In fact, since the enlightenment and the beginnings of the decline of religion we have become more and more altruistic and have made massive gains in the reduction of suffering, disease, famine and war.

(I don’t want to divert the thread into discussing these particular things - please start another thread if you’s like to debate the specifics of the reduction in suffering etc).

 

[PatienceAndHumility]

In my view religion, like altruism, is an evolved response. We are stronger when we have hope in apparently hopeless conditions. Religion brings optimism and optimism brings greater success.

Does religion have the capacity to be “true” to your reckoning also? I.e. not an “evolved response”?

 

[PatienceAndHumility]

Doesn’t that break things down to personal opinion as they will believe their view of correct just as you do?

This would be the illogical position of relativism. I.e. the denial of the possibility of Truth in reality.

. That’s like saying disliking kale defines your diet.

A dislike of kale wouldn’t define your diet, fundamentally anyway. To use your analogy, if a diet is akin to a life philosophy. Then we need to understand what would be akin to belief in God (a binary option). Does belief (or lack of) in God underpin one’s life philosophy? Should it, if not? You could argue that in your analogy, belief in God would be akin to eating or not…

 

[FiveLinden]

FiveLinden:

In my view religion, like altruism, is an evolved response. We are stronger when we have hope in apparently hopeless conditions. Religion brings optimism and optimism brings greater success.

Does religion have the capacity to be “true” to your reckoning also? I.e. not an “evolved response”?

Religion is ‘true’ (IMHO) in some senses of the word. It is true that human society is stronger and more successful if we treat others as we would wish to be treated, and (in general) do not lie, commit calumny, steal, abuse, rape, oppress or exploit others in our communities. These aspects of religious belief are ‘true’ in that sense.

I’m also open to the idea that religious belief could be ‘true’ in other ways, for example that there are thousands of gods, or that the Trinity as believed by Catholics actually exists. It is just that I see no evidence to suggest that this is so, and have concluded that the evidence I can see points in the other direction.

But in general terms if a Catholic accepted human evolution (which most do) a Catholic could ‘read God into the process’. From a scientific viewpoint there is nothing about God that can be demonstrated, so there is nothing to argue against a Catholic believing this, or that God in some way ‘guided’ evolution.

Does that answer the question?

 

[PatienceAndHumility]

Religion is ‘true’ (IMHO) in some senses of the word. It is true that human society is stronger and more successful if we treat others as we would wish to be treated, and (in general) do not lie, commit calumny, steal, abuse, rape, oppress or exploit others in our communities. These aspects of religious belief are ‘true’ in that sense.

Apologies I could have phrased my question better here I suppose but I think your reply is still relevant in any case.

It is just that I see no evidence to suggest that this is so, and have concluded that the evidence I can see points in the other direction.

But in general terms if a Catholic accepted human evolution (which most do) a Catholic could ‘read God into the process’.

Re evidence- are you seeking empirical evidence for the classically defined western God? If so, what evidence do you think might suffice for you personally?

Re “read God into the process” , I understand this position. Bringing us full circle back to the topic, I would ask you in turn (acknowledging the “God of the gaps” rebuttal) do you place Chance as the arbiter of Creation? If so, is Chance enough to explain the composition of your soul ( or whatever you might call the deepest components of your person)? And is Chance a more logical explanation than belief in a Creator?