Is Morality possible without God

[Damian]

As to regimes that have mass graves, its very interesting how similar these non-religious regimes mirror the same setup as the infallibility of religious organizations. Where the dear leader of a deity is replaced with the dear leader of the state. This idea that the people are unable to care for themselves and stand up on their own, but need an unchallengable leader to save them from themselves. So the people follow the state with a blind devotion to the leader since the state is the source of your identity, self worth, morality, etc. Same thing as religions with their dear leader. Also, anyone against the codefied doctrine of the religion, oops I mean the state, is treated as a heretic and outcasted. Herisey hunts are performed. The purity of the unity of the people to the religion, uhh did it again, I mean the state is more important than people’s rights. See #1 of my list. Children are indoctrinated from infancy to be taught what to think about their state and it’s, to use a religious term, divine right to rule, instead of teaching children how to think, aka the enlightenment era. Any system setup where the governmental leaders believe they are immune from their people, results in fascism, oligarchy, and dictatorship rule. The power needs to remain in the people, not the heads of state, church, or a deity to the people they rule over. The leaders are in the service of the people they work for. The people have to keep the power. Name me one abrahamic religion that does that. We’ve never had a properly run government that took on the teachings of Spinoza, Einstein, Lucretius, Democritus, and Thomas Paine and see if it falls into ruin.

 

[Damian]

I seriously doubt no one in your parish wouldn’t kick out their child for being an open atheist or homosexual or isn’t against evolution or didn’t circumcise their their child.
And the vadican is officially protecting child molesters through their actions and letters threatening excommunication for assisting in the prosecution of these priests and is sheltering priests from Africa that promote anti-condom use and to kill non-catholic tribes in the area of conflict.

 

[TheOldColonel]

So far, I’ve seen nothing in our Sunday Bulletin about these things. But they’re starting new programs all the time.

vadican

 

[TheOldColonel]

Actually, nihilism is the better term to describe what atheists hold in common: a rejection of all religious and moral principles, a belief that life is short, cruel and meaningless, a belief that death and nonexistence is the ultimate end for all humanity.

With a message like that, I just can’t understand why more people aren’t signing up!

 

[QwertyGirl]

Suppose for example I find a wallet full of money. If I don’t believe anyone will ever know I am the one who found it, why shouldn’t I keep the money? Or keep the money, return the wallet, and lie about the money ever being there? What is the “moral” argument that I should return the money?

Because if you believe keeping the wallet is moral, then you believe it is moral for someone else to keep YOUR wallet if they find it. How does that sit with you?

 

[TheOldColonel]

One might ask How would you address the matter? Indeed. I am asking.

 

[TheOldColonel]

That’s a pretty broad and dark brush there, don’t you think?

Does that jog your memory?

 

[Ender]

Because if you believe keeping the wallet is moral, then you believe it is moral for someone else to keep YOUR wallet if they find it. How does that sit with you?

People aren’t going to behave like I do; they’ll form their own ethical system. They do that today. I can understand why the smallest person would object to a system of might makes right, but I can’t understand why the largest person would oppose it. That would seem to describe the system in prisons.

Look, all of you are providing practical objections to my suggestion of doing whatever is best for me, but I’m looking for a moral objection, and frankly I don’t think there are any.

 

[Damian]

I know you want atheists to be nihilist and everything else your religious leaders want you to paint us to be, but as a group that’s just not the case. Individuals can be nihilist who happen to be atheist, but they can be spiritual and religious as well. World views that people hold to is up to each individual to accept and explain why they accept that world view. Again, though, being an atheist is a position on a single question about a single topic. Not yet being convinced that the supernatural exists. That’s all it is to be an atheist. There are no world views, political stances, dogma, leadership, or anything else that applies to it. Sorry but this information is coming from an actual atheist and if you can’t accept that, then that’s just being willfully ignorant so you can keep your cultural biasness.

 

[Vonsalza]

There’s no such thing as Atheism.

That’s absurdity born of self-serving religious ideology.

There is the pluralization of Atheist though, Atheists.

You really think that should be taken seriously, don’t you?

But there is no -ism to being an atheist since it’s not a world view, belief system, political system, or any other filter…

Let me help.

A-Theos-Ist
No-God-Adherent, or someone who believes there is no god or gods, or that we are without god or gods.

No charge.

Just like jury members on a trial. They start off at the default position of not believing the positive claim of the prosecution,

Sure. And when they say “not guilty”, that’s not the same as “innocent”. There is no positive claim. They’re just defaulting to the null.

The philosophical and hypothetical null is always “uncertainty” unless something else has been established. The religious equivalent of that is classic Agnosticism. “I’m unconvinced either way”.

Again, no charge.

As to regimes that have mass graves, its very interesting how similar these non-religious regimes mirror the same setup as the infallibility of religious organizations.

Of course. People have to believe in something in order to submit to societal order and not act consistently as pure egoists. If there is no god, the State is what’s next.

You went from “This is wrong thus saith the Lord” to -
“This is wrong thus saith Big Brother.”

In the first case, heaven and hell are the carrot and stick. In the latter, civilized society and mass graves are the carrot and stick.

But be sure, you must always have a carrot and stick, otherwise what are you going to do when you form your wonderful, thought-out humanist government and someone walks up to you, spits in your face and says “f*** the government! Live free!” and advocates the chaos of egoism?

Name me one abrahamic religion that does that.

Why do you limit your comparison to just western religions, just out of curiosity? The Buddhists and Hindus and whatever you want to call the state religion of Russia 1917-1991 and China 1949-present have piled the bodies as well.

War appears an innate human problem and religion, frankly, seems to be the best way to limit it…

 

[Damian]

That’s absurdity born of self-serving religious ideology.

Non-sequitur - My explanation for why there is no -ism to being an atheist was not addressed here and completely dismissed anything I stated about being an atheist has no process built into it at all that identifies with a religious process of having a world view, tenants, leaders, etc.

A-Theos-Ist
No-God-Adherent, or someone who believes there is no god or gods, or that we are without god or gods.

So we’re talking past each other since you think I accept your use of the word atheist. Apparently there is a distinction between strong and weak atheist. A strong atheist is someone who makes the positive claim of, “They are not convinced there is no supernatural realm and also claim to know there is no supernatural realm.” Weak atheists just state they are not convinced yet that there could be a supernatural realm but don’t actually know if that is the case or not.
I’m an atheist about the supernatural as I would for fairies, big foot, loch ness monsters. I know there are no fairies for the same reason I know there is no supernatural. I don’t know for 100% about anything in the natural world, but the consistency of zero evidence on the topic is why I claim there is no supernatural as it seems there are no fairies.
So what word would you use to describe that type of person? I’ll use that term or what ever term you want just so we are communicating the same idea when we discuss.

The philosophical and hypothetical null is always “uncertainty” unless something else has been established. The religious equivalent of that is classic Agnosticism. “I’m unconvinced either way”.

Agnosticism is a statement of knowledge. Theism is a statement about belief or been convinced of.
The Jury members are agnostic for the entire event that the trial is about since they don’t have first hand experience with the event in question. Since they have to be convinced of what happened, they will either remain unconvinced (the default position) or become convinced. AKA remain atheist or become theist.

 

[Damian]

Of course. People have to believe in something in order to submit to societal order and not act consistently as pure egoists. If there is no god, the State is what’s next.

Belief in something is different than a political system that teaches you how to use that information you believe about reality. Religious organizations and Governmental regimes that follow the model of religious organizations teach people to not question the power of the state/church. Indoctrinate people on how to think instead of what to think. Make the power of the church/state unchallengable from the masses they reside over. Practice isolation of their members from decenting ideas. Heresy hunts. Public labels of party unity. Constant praise and worship of the leader / deity. Instructing people that they are broken and worthless and need a leader / deity to save them from themselves. So basically no government so far has actually practiced secular humanism espoused by Spinoza, Einstein, Lucretius, Democritus, and Thomas Paine and see if it falls into ruin. The ones that do fall into ruin model themselves exactly how religious organizations are put together and operate.

War appears an innate human problem and religion, frankly, seems to be the best way to limit it…

To take a quote from you, “You really think that should be taken seriously, don’t you?”

 

[TheOldColonel]

Indeed. Only you know that to which you referred. So, you decide and address only the matter you declared to be painted with a “pretty broad and dark brush.” Otherwise, one might be left to conclude that your comment was grounded in the absence of any well formulated thought, in that abyss of unthinking which always plagues those who’s true religion is denialism.

pretty broad and dark brush

 

[TheOldColonel]

Not yet being convinced that the supernatural exists. That’s all it is to be an atheist.

By definition, an atheist claims to hold reasonable certitude that the supernatural does not exist. What you describe is an agnostic. Your apparent confusion over the distinction between these two categories explains much about your claim that there is no such thing as “atheism.” Your thoughts seem a bit murky on the topic. Defining one’s terms clearly is an essential part of engaging in any productive discourse.

 

[Vonsalza]

Non-sequitur - My explanation for why there is no -ism to being an atheist was not addressed here…

I have no obligation to address it. You claim it’s not a belief by nothing other than fiat.

To use Hitchen’s Razor (which I assume you’re familiar with):
What which is asserted without evidence can be denied without evidence.

So we’re talking past each other since you think I accept your use of the word atheist.

I merely assert that is the etymologically correct definition of the word. It isn’t my definition, as I don’t control etymology.

Given the enduring and objective basis on which the definition I use is predicated, this will be a problem that you’ll never be able to conclusively solve.

As such, if you need a word to describe what you believe, it would probably be best to find another. This seat, I’m afraid, is enduringly taken.

I claim there is no supernatural as it seems there are no fairies… …So what word would you use to describe that type of person?

If you propose a positivist claim that there is no god or gods, then you’re an atheist. If you think those things probably don’t exist but are not willing to take the position that they certainly don’t, that’s been known as classic agnosticism for quite some time.

Agnosticism is a statement of knowledge. Theism is a statement about belief or been convinced of.

The idea that knowing and believing are discrete activities has been broken by the Gettier Problem.

We “knew” gravity was a pull generated by massive bodies. Until we “knew” that it is actually a push generated by displaced space-time.

 

[Vonsalza]

Belief in something is different than a political system that teaches you how to use that information you believe about reality.

No, it isn’t. People need a reason to think that your system, whatever it might be, should be followed. It needs something that at least seems objective and transcendent like “god” or “The State”.

This is required in order to invoke compliance. Without compliance, your moral idea doesn’t really exist.
Otherwise egoists are as happy to defy you and carry on as they wish.

Religious organizations and Governmental regimes that follow the model of religious organizations teach people to not question the power of the state/church.

It’s a direct descendant of the tribalism that gave rise to civilization.

Civilization isn’t created by individuals. It’s created by tribes consisting of individuals working as a tribe.

Without something like god or The State, you don’t have any social “glue” capable of assembling a tribe larger than your immediate family (which is “glued” together by a common matriarch/patriarch).

To take a quote from you, “You really think that should be taken seriously, don’t you?”

Sure. And there’s good reason. State Atheism has created more bodies than all the religious wars in history - and it performed the feat QUICKLY. State Atheism, as a practice, is hardly 100 years old. Abrahamic religions have been chugging along for 3-4 thousand years.

When there is no heaven and hell, justice is purely temporal. When the supreme moral authority is the state, it has to hire an executioner to realize the secular analogue to hell - death/non-existence.
And the executioner has to swing the axe often enough that folks think it could likely happen to them if they run afoul of the law.
Mass graves aren’t a “bug” of hyper-secularized society. They’re a feature.

 

[Damian]

Ah I see you combine belief and knowledge under one label of Atheist.
I don’t. I see a difference between knowledge and belief. Knowledge is a subset to belief. Knowledge informs your beliefs since I use “belief” as the conclusion you hold about the reference point of reality.
So you can have knowledge of directly experiencing gravity. As to what you are convinced of / believe about how gravity works is built upon your direct experience of knowledge of gravity.
So you can become convinced of something based on your knowledge of what is possible within reality without directly experiencing that event though. Like how you can say you have a new puppy even if I have not seen you with a puppy. I’ll just take that on face value. However, if you say you have an invisible pet dragon in your backyard, I am not convinced of that since my knowledge of reality does not make that a possibility.
Same with claims of the supernatural. Reality as we have experienced so far offers zero data that we can investigate that the supernatural is there at all. So I don’t believe the supernatural is there in the same way I don’t believe your claim of having an invisible pet dragon as well. Do I actually know that to be the case? No, but everything I know about reality indicates that is not the case or even possible.

 

[Vonsalza]

Ah I see you combine belief and knowledge under one label of Atheist.

Because the idea that they are discrete is pseudo-religion.

 

[goout]

…
Same with claims of the supernatural. Reality as we have experienced so far offers zero data that we can investigate that the supernatural is there at all.

And reality came to exist exactly how, from whom? Can you even explain how/why you came to be? (as an atheist, your only explanation can be that all of existence including your own is an accident and devoid of meaning and purpose)
Here you are claiming your experience of reality is the sum total of reality, and you can’t even explain why you exist, what the meaning of your life is, where you came from, and where you will go when you die. Doesn’t that seem like a superstitious overreach to you? Placing yourself at the center of reality? Really?

I always feel a little sorry for atheists, as they deny their own hard-wired search for the truth by parsing the meaning of words like “belief”. Dodging, weaving, redefining, all in an effort to worship the “NO”.

 

[PickyPicky]

Nice of you to feel sorry.