Question on Atheism

[atheistgirl]

Gee whiz, then where are all those atheist funded hospitals and charity organizations throughout the world? Where are all those atheist Mother Teresas? Where are all those atheist organizations opposing nuclear weapons, the slaughter of the unborn, and the unspeakable lunacy of same-sex marriage?

Never heard of one!

Have you heard of The Red Cross, or Medicine sans Frontier - Doctors without Borders?

Have you heard of the Centre for Inquiry International? - they provide councilling and support and organize hospital visits.

Have you heard of Foundation beyond belief? - they fund animal protection, child welfare, education, environment, health, and human rights projects.

Then there are individual, very wealthy atheists who’s philantrophy is second to none, if not well known, simply because they dont shout about either their activities or the fact they are atheists.

There’s a lot of good being done in this world by atheists.

Sarah x

 

[warpspeedpetey]

…There’s a lot of good being done in this world by atheists.

Its going to take an awful lot of philanthropy to forget about the 100 million or so that atheistic regimes killed in the last century. There are a whole lot of Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Cambodian, and Cuban peasants. Who are not alive because they were less important than the desires of the state, they weren’t special creations of G-e. They were animals that evolved from nature and had no more value than their utility. Its funny how the exact same genocides occurred regardless of culture, region or people. yeah, atheists have done a lot of good in the world alright.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

The Red Cross is an atheist organization?

 

[inocente]

The Red Cross is an atheist organization?

Secular – essential if it’s to be seen as neutral and impartial in times of conflict and war. - ifrc.org/en/who-we-are/vision-and-mission/the-seven-fundamental-principles/

To add a few more secular organizations: UNICEF, Save The Children, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc.

 

[inocente]

Nicely surreal thread: Science doesn’t work, because we all know it was philosophers who put a man on the moon and theologians who rid the world of smallpox, right? All scientists must be atheists because of that there Dawkins, right? All atheists must be morally corrupt lowlifes because they’re not Christians, goes without saying, right?

Indeed.

 

[tonyrey]

Secular – essential if it’s to be seen as neutral and impartial in times of conflict and war. -

The Red Cross was founded by a Christian: Jean Henri Dunant…

 

[inocente]

The Red Cross was founded by a Christian: Jean Henri Dunant…

Then we’ll ignore the crescent logo, it’s founding humanitarian principles and that Dunant seems eventually to have fallen out with religion, as obviously every last one of its 100 million members, volunteers and supporters must be Christian because Dunant once went to church.



Incidentally, I think tomorrow is World Red Cross Red Crescent Day.

 

[Al_Moritz]

Nicely surreal thread: Science doesn’t work, because we all know it was philosophers who put a man on the moon and theologians who rid the world of smallpox, right? All scientists must be atheists because of that there Dawkins, right? All atheists must be morally corrupt lowlifes because they’re not Christians, goes without saying, right?

Indeed.

Well said

 

[Sair]

When it comes to arguing about the relative ethics of believers and nonbelievers, there are a few important things to bear in mind.

Firstly, the actions of any person have relatively little bearing on the overall truth of their beliefs, except in demonstrable empirical terms - for example, believing that bandaging a wound will staunch the bleeding is a useful belief, whilst believing that periodic bloodletting balances the humours might not be such a useful belief. On the other hand, believing that it’s right to give to the poor because Jesus advocated this, and believing that it’s right to give to the poor because it alleviates suffering will tend to have the same outcome.

Which brings me to the second point - in evaluating the worth of any belief system on ethical grounds, one needs to know the extent to which it actually motivates a person’s actions. If we think about Christian charities, for example, one is led to wonder to what extent the motivation was Christ’s teaching and to what extent it came from purely humanitarian fellow-feeling. It’s worth remembering in light of this that a more or less ulterior motive behind many Christian charities was the opportunity for proselytising. Not that this would have made much difference, initially, to the recipients of the charitable aid. Alternatively, if we consider someone like Mother Theresa, her motivations might have been even more questionable. It seems she believed that suffering was a means to more effectively know God, and this belief had a direct bearing upon the manner in which her patients were treated - whether they appreciated it or not.

It seems that religious belief or ideological belief of any kind can interfere with the aforementioned humanitarian fellow-feeling. The ability to inflict or even ignore human suffering for the sake of what is believed to be a more important goal is insidious and dangerous. It’s in light of this that I want to briefly address a major bugbear that tends to crop up eventually in any discussion of the relative ethical merit of religious belief and atheism. The regimes of Hitler and Stalin (amongst others) are frequently trotted out as illustrative examples of the dangers of atheism. I’d like to point out that the atrocities inflicted in these cases had nothing to do with what these dictators didn’t believe, and everything to do with what they did believe - that their personal power and their political goals were paramount. It’s pretty much immaterial whether they believed in a personal God or not - and if they did, they would no doubt have claimed, as military victors and despots throughout history have done, that this God was on their side. And it’s worth remembering, whether he personally believed it or not, whether he misinterpreted it or not, that Hitler found, in Christianity, a ready-made justification for his persecution of the Jewish people.

 

[Sair]

There is subjective empirical evidence for the existence of the mind - ** without which there would be no knowledge** of the Big Bang - or anything else!

The point of scientific evidence is that it must be presented as objective - that is, not dependent upon the point of view of any one individual. Are there any reported religious experiences that meet this criterion?

What other explanation do you have in mind - apart from Design or non-Design?

Natural self-organisation. Particles behaving according to local rules, producing effects on a macroscopic scale.

By its fertility: “By their fruits you shall know them…” What is the rational basis of your values? How did you obtain them and what results have they produced?

The short answer is experience and observation, for the source; deeper appreciation of life and the world, awe, wonder and inner peace as the results.

The evidence of reason - which is the most compelling evidence of all. What rational basis do you have for your beliefs? Your pantheism implies that you find science an inadequate explanation of reality.

On the contrary, science is to pantheism what scriptural revelation is to Christianity.

Misrepresentation. The basic teaching and prophecies of the Old Testament are true even though the Jews were a primitive tribe subject to the limitations of their era.

In what sense are they true? Allegorical? Mythological? Because there are plenty of places in which they depart from other historical records and instances of demonstrable fact.

The onus is on you to prove that the facts and values of the New Testament are false.

Why? I’m not the one who believes in them implicitly. As it happens, I think there are some examples of admirable human values advocated in the New Testament, particularly the golden rule of treating others how you wish to be treated. However, there are other examples that are, if you examine them critically, flawed in relation to lived human experience. The whole idea of turning the other cheek undermines the reciprocal nature of human morality; but then, Jesus - or the person on whom the Jesus stories are based - was probably an apocalyptic preacher, who believed that the end times were imminent, and that maintaining the status quo between mater and slave, oppressor and oppressed, was better than anticipating the final battle by taking action against mere worldly injustices.

Your version of the Atonement is a distortion of the truth because it ignores the objective reality of evil and love - which you discard as a product of the sexual instinct…

I don’t think these things have an objective reality, in the sense that they exist independently of sentient subjects.

Pleas explain precisely how particles are not inanimate and how they account for the existence of rational, purposeful beings with obligations and responsibilities.

I’m not a particle physicist, but my understanding (as far as it goes) is that all matter contains energy, even at rest. All matter therefore contains potential. In any case, humans are hardly inanimate matter - we are localised converters of energy, matter in motion. The interactions between particles of matter in motion give rise to what we experience as rationality and purpose; the interaction between humans, and between humans and our environment, are what give rise to obligations and responsibilities. The problems of explicability only arise when you try to consider particles of matter, or human beings, in isolation, without realising that it is within the context of material bodies, or within the context of community and environment, that the behaviour of both particles and humans arises.

 

[tonyrey]

Then we’ll ignore the crescent logo,** its** founding humanitarian principles and that Dunant seems eventually to have fallen out with religion, as obviously every last one of its 100 million members, volunteers and supporters must be Christian because Dunant once went to church.

The point is that the vast majority of pioneers in the organisation of spiritual and corporal works of mercy have been religious individuals and communities rather than those who reject God. Humanitarian principles are based on Christ’s precepts:

***“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

***Dunant rejected Calvinism (not surprisingly!) and organised religion but not the teaching of Christ…

 

[meltzerboy]

Just a question out of curiosity:

Supposedly, scientific theories are less likely to be true the more evidence is gained to support them, since the more a theory explains, the more likely it is to come up against something that falsifies it.

If that is true, what makes it not a problem not only for your atheism, but for your search for truth in general?

Thanks

I don’t accept your premise. It’s like saying that the more one lives, the more likely it is that one may die, so perhaps one should stop living. The doctrine of falsification in science states that a theory must be testable, and in particular falsifiable, meaning that it has to be POTENTIALLY able to be proven false. When evidence is found that the theory cannot explain, then the theory is revised. And when too much evidence contradicts the theory, it is discarded and a new theory is developed. Change in response to the discovery of new information is the nature of science, or what some call “sciencing,” to emphasize the change element.

 

[meltzerboy]

Nicely surreal thread: Science doesn’t work, because we all know it was philosophers who put a man on the moon and theologians who rid the world of smallpox, right? All scientists must be atheists because of that there Dawkins, right? All atheists must be morally corrupt lowlifes because they’re not Christians, goes without saying, right?

Indeed.

It’s the 21st century and some of us are still battling science as the enemy of religion. Perhaps some scientists are; but most are not. Religion and science are two different domains (there is, however, a “psychology of religion” APA branch) that need not be in conflict with one another. Science attempts to describe the “what” and explain the “how” of structures and processes, whereas religion focuses on the metaphysical “why” issues.

 

[tonyrey]

The point of scientific evidence is that it must be presented as objective - that is, not dependent upon the point of view of any one individual. Are there any reported religious experiences that meet this criterion?

All scientific evidence is derived from subjective experience in the first place! It has no other source. Objective evidence is no more than the consensus of subjective evidence. Science is in the same boat as any other form of knowledge - with one exception. You know what that is by now, I hope…

[quoteWhat other explanation do you have in mind - apart from Design or non-Design?

]Natural self-organisation. Particles behaving according to local rules, producing effects on a macroscopic scale.
[/quote]

That is an instance of non-Design.

What is the rational basis of your values? How did you obtain them and what results have they produced?

The short answer is experience and observation, for the source; deeper appreciation of life and the world, awe, wonder and inner peace as the results.

These are all subjective criteria which do you don’t regard as rational!

What rational basis do you have for your beliefs? Your pantheism implies that you find science an inadequate explanation of reality.

On the contrary, science is to pantheism what scriptural revelation is to Christianity.

What is your concept of pantheism? It seems identical with naturalism, i.e. physicalism.

The basic teaching and prophecies of the Old Testament are true even though the Jews were a primitive tribe subject to the limitations of their era.

In what sense are they true? Allegorical? Mythological? Because there are plenty of places in which they depart from other historical records and instances of demonstrable fact.

A medieval couplet summarizes four senses: Lettera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia. (The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith; Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.)

The onus is on you to prove that the facts and values of the New Testament are false.

Why? I’m not the one who believes in them implicitly. As it happens, I think there are some examples of admirable human values advocated in the New Testament, particularly the golden rule of treating others how you wish to be treated. However, there are other examples that are, if you examine them critically, flawed in relation to lived human experience. The whole idea of turning the other cheek undermines the reciprocal nature of human morality; but then, Jesus - or the person on whom the Jesus stories are based - was probably an apocalyptic preacher, who believed that the end times were imminent, and that maintaining the status quo between mater and slave, oppressor and oppressed, was better than anticipating the final battle by taking action against mere worldly injustices.

Gandhi’s success in achieving independence for India demonstrates that turning the other cheek is not so absurd and defeatist. Nor is it intended to be an absolute rule. We are not expected to follow Christ’s precepts blindly nor to submit to injustice on every occasion but to use our judgment as He did when He used force against the money changers and harsh words against those who exploited the poor.

Your version of the Atonement is a distortion of the truth because it ignores the objective reality of evil and love - which you discard as a product of the sexual instinct.

…
I don’t think these things have an objective reality, in the sense that they exist independently of sentient subjects.

Evil and love are objective relations between objective individuals, i.e. sentient subjects… unless you reject our objective existence!

Please explain precisely how particles are not inanimate and how they account for the existence of rational, purposeful beings with obligations and responsibilities.
I’m not a particle physicist, but my understanding (as far as it goes) is that all matter contains energy, even at rest. All matter therefore contains potential. In any case, humans are hardly inanimate matter - we are localised converters of energy, matter in motion.

I fail to see how this view is consistent with pantheism. It is unmitigated materialism!

The interactions between particles of matter in motion give rise to what we experience as rationality and purpose; the interaction between humans, and between humans and our environment, are what give rise to obligations and responsibilities.

Three simple words dispose of that hypothesis: “ought implies can”. (Kant)
Mechanism leaves no scope for freedom of choice - without which rationality, obligations and responsibilities cannot exist. Biological machines function according to the laws of science and cannot transcend them.

The problems of explicability only arise when you try to consider particles of matter, or human beings, in isolation, without realising that it is within the context of material bodies, or within the context of community and environment, that the behaviour of both particles and humans arises.

According to you humans are collections of particles, no more no less. The nature of their environment would not affect their essential subservience to physical causality. Your scheme of things is a closed system ruled by blind necessity in which freedom, purpose and values are illusions. If only matter exists nothing matters!

 

[shoe]

The point is that the vast majority of pioneers in the organisation of spiritual and corporal works of mercy have been religious individuals and communities rather than those who reject God. Humanitarian principles are based on Christ’s precepts:

***“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

***Dunant rejected Calvinism (not surprisingly!) and organised religion but not the teaching of Christ…

Agreed. And come to think of it, I can’t recall reading anything about the existence of charitable organizations in history before the time of Christ. I do think that the Lord’s parable of the good Samaritan, as well as His other parables, has left an everlasting impact on history; and I think it’s from these teachings of Christ that the Christian Church has established the pattern - a pattern which has been copied throughout the secular world - for the caring of the poor, the elderly, the homeless, the sick, etc.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

**To add a few more secular organizations: UNICEF, Save The Children, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc. **

Secular organization does not equal atheist organization. This is a bizarre argument you are making.

Are all secular priests also atheists?

 

[Charlemagne_II]

meltzerboy

**It’s the 21st century and some of us are still battling science as the enemy of religion. Perhaps some scientists are; but most are not. Religion and science are two different domains (there is, however, a “psychology of religion” APA branch) that need not be in conflict with one another. Science attempts to describe the “what” and explain the “how” of structures and processes, whereas religion focuses on the metaphysical “why” issues. **

And others of us are still battling religion as the enemy of science. Ask Richard Dawkins and friends.

What does the psychology of religion aim to prove, other than that God does not exist, as Freud insisted?

 

[Sair]

**To add a few more secular organizations: UNICEF, Save The Children, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, etc. **

Secular organization does not equal atheist organization. This is a bizarre argument you are making.

Are all secular priests also atheists?

No, a secular organisation just means that it’s unaffiliated with any church or religion - therefore, that the religion (or lack thereof) of those who contribute or those who are helped by the organisation is irrelevant to the aims of the organisation itself.

And what’s a secular priest, other than an oxymoron?

 

[Sair]

All scientific evidence is derived from subjective experience in the first place! It has no other source. Objective evidence is no more than the consensus of subjective evidence. Science is in the same boat as any other form of knowledge - with one exception. You know what that is by now, I hope…

The consensus comes from the repeatability of the observation, allowing for differences in position, perspective and time, and the general uniformity of results; there is no such general consensus of religious belief. Scientific theory predicts that certain observations will be made, consistent with the theory being an accurate description of reality. Religious belief claims revelation, but cannot point to much in the way of demonstration that this ‘revelation’ is a truth about the world as it is.

That is an instance of non-Design.

But not the kind of random, chaotic non-design to which you seemed to be referring.

These are all subjective criteria which do you don’t regard as rational!

You asked what the rational basis of my belief was - my answer was observation and experience. This is rational because it’s the only means we have of accessing any functional knowledge about extramental reality. That the fruit of my beliefs is an emotive response to nature does not invalidate the rationality of the means of acquiring said beliefs.

What is your concept of pantheism? It seems identical with naturalism, i.e. physicalism.

Google ‘naturalistic pantheism’ and you’ll probably find a link to the Universal Pantheist Society, which has some useful resources that explain in some detail the concept of a non-supernatural religion.

Gandhi’s success in achieving independence for India demonstrates that turning the other cheek is not so absurd and defeatist. Nor is it intended to be an absolute rule. We are not expected to follow Christ’s precepts blindly nor to submit to injustice on every occasion but to use our judgment as He did when He used force against the money changers and harsh words against those who exploited the poor.

Gandhi had numbers on his side. What’s more, the concept of nonviolent, passive resistance is not the same as turning the other cheek and simply accepting unjust treatment. For centuries, Christianity was a useful tool for maintaining the inequality of feudal social stratification, precisely because a significant portion of its teaching is about accepting your lot in life as God-given. Taken in its entirety, Christianity is a faith deeply infused with the human notions of kingship, subservience, obedience, restriction and punishment.

Evil and love are objective relations between objective individuals, i.e. sentient subjects… unless you reject our objective existence!

On the contrary, they are descriptors of the internal states of sentient subjects, and therefore are subjective. The actions resulting from these internal states could be called objective, but the feeling of love and the concept of evil are not identical with the actions they produce. If a dog attacks a child, we don’t consider it evil, because the dog has no concept of malice aforethought (or so we suppose). When another human attacks a child, we do consider it evil, precisely because of the subjective state of the perpetrator.

I fail to see how this view is consistent with pantheism. It is unmitigated materialism!

Pantheism is the belief that all of nature is divine. The fact that I am a metaphysical naturalist in no way undermines this belief - it simply places the origin of nature within nature itself, not outside of it.

Three simple words dispose of that hypothesis: “ought implies can”. (Kant)
Mechanism leaves no scope for freedom of choice - without which rationality, obligations and responsibilities cannot exist. Biological machines function according to the laws of science and cannot transcend them.

According to you humans are collections of particles, no more no less. The nature of their environment would not affect their essential subservience to physical causality. Your scheme of things is a closed system ruled by blind necessity in which freedom, purpose and values are illusions. If only matter exists nothing matters!

Your response implies that you think physical causality entails only one possible state of affairs. This misses the fact that humans (and many other animals) are sufficiently complex collections of matter and energy that the processes of cause and effect are not limited to one possible outcome. They provide a continuous feedback loop between the internal states of an organism (such as a human) and the external conditions in which that organism exists. As I think I mentioned before, it seems extremely odd to claim that you are an entity independent of the physical substance of your brain - one can’t reasonably excuse an action by claiming, “my brain made me do it.” Your claim also denigrates the value of human emotional responses (which are physical in nature), by claiming that nothing matters if we don’t contain some weird kind of spiritual non-matter that controls our thoughts and actions from someplace within yet strangely beyond our bodies.

 

[meltzerboy]

meltzerboy

It’s the 21st century and some of us are still battling science as the enemy of religion. Perhaps some scientists are; but most are not. Religion and science are two different domains (there is, however, a “psychology of religion” APA branch) that need not be in conflict with one another. Science attempts to describe the “what” and explain the “how” of structures and processes, whereas religion focuses on the metaphysical “why” issues.

And others of us are still battling religion as the enemy of science. Ask Richard Dawkins and friends.

What does the psychology of religion aim to prove, other than that God does not exist, as Freud insisted?

Richard Dawkins seems to be the “poster scientist” of some religious people who criticize scientists for being atheist and anti-religious. Dawkins is not representative of most scientists’ attitudes toward religion. The psychology of religion is hardly an anti-religious branch of psychology. In fact, it is just the opposite. Psychologists in this subfield study, among other things, the effects that prayer may have on helping people recover from illness.