The advantages and disadvantages of atheism

[Russell_SA]

I often think genuine agnostics are the most intellectually honest people in the “room”.

Best part of being an atheist is easily the moral liberty. It’s also the worst part.

Advantage - You can do anything that you subjectively rationalize as “good”!

Disadvantage - People can do anything to you that they subjectively rationalize as “good”.

How is this any different from divine command theory where no one but the person committing the act can hear the command? “I’m putting the knife to my child’s throat because my god told me to.” even though no one can verify that was what her deity actually told her to do. If no one can hear the divine command but the individual to verify the command then it is no different to outsiders observing the act than “I really just want to do this for myself but use the excuse of divine commandment as an out.” We have to be able to tell the difference don’t we. If we can’t, well there’s really no difference between the two scenarios is there?

The only difference I can see so far is this… where is the responsibility of the blame? On divine command theory, the person appears to shelf their moral code for what ever their deity tells them to do. They are a trained pet commanded to sit on the couch without understanding why they should be sitting on the couch. They are no longer a moral thinking agent, only a trained zealot.

The atheist owns their responsibility through out their actions. They may have a bad reason for their moral decision, but the moral culpability is still on them. Not on a deity that told them to. The atheist never looses that responsibility to be held accountable for their actions, the deist is just following orders though.

Side note: People claim that their deity can not perform an immoral action because it is not in its nature to do so. Well I know a lot of atheists that are raping, murdering, taking advantage of the world in all the ways they can imagine, which is zero. It is in their nature as just a human being to not want to do that as well. Just that humans have imperfect knowledge and limited resources so they do the best they can when they make mistakes. What’s your deity’s excuse for its bad actions recorded in the bible?

 

[Russell_SA]

To the point of the topic here: Advantages and disadvantages of Atheism.

Here’s how I currently understand the labels:
Knowledge is a subset of Belief
Gnostic and Agnostics are claims about knowledge - You know something to be true when you have direct experience with the event or discover the causal link between event A leading to result B. That’s how I understand it anyways. Example: I know I experienced hearing someone talking because of that direct experience. I know someone walked through this muddy path since I observed the foot prints in the mud.

Theist and Atheist are claims about belief, what we have been convinced of. I am convinced that, tentatively B results from A based on logical understanding of how reality works even if I have not actually experienced the event and have no evidence of it. Example: My neighbor asks me to walk his dog while he is away, even though I have never seen his dog. I have seen dogs and I have seen people care for them. So I believe her. Now if my neighbor told me to walk her pet dragon, based on what I know about reality, I would not believe her, even though I don’t have knowledge of what she considers a dragon. Extraordinary claims about reality require extraordinary amounts of evidence to change that paradigm.

Disbelief is not a positive claim about reality, it is the null hypothesis, the default answer till sufficient evidence is presented otherwise. If you told me you met bob yesterday, it is on you to present your evidence since you are making the positive claim that event happened. If I don’t believe you, I don’t have to present evidence as to why I don’t believe you. I can tell you why I think your claim is wrong and give you feed back as to why your logic doesn’t work in the current understanding of reality. Example: I present A + B = C. But you don’t believe that to be the case to justify belief in C. You are not stating if C actually happened or not, only that you don’t believe my reasoning and evidence works to justify that conclusion about C. You haven’t made a positive claim about C at all, only about the reasoning I use to justify C as a conclusion.

Atheism is the conclusion on a single question about a single issue. It is not a life style, has no tenants, leaders, lists of Do’s and Dont’s, political view, world view, etc. Example: Jury members do not find the defendant guilty. It is a unanimous decision. Now because of that, can you lump in every member underneath the same world view, political view, etc? No no it does not. Each person got to that conclusion on their own through their own processes of understanding reality and how they think about the world. Some may have good reasons for not guilty, others may have bad reasons for not guilty. You can’t know this until you ask them individually because they don’t have leaders telling them that this is what it means to be a jury member that decides the defendant is not guilty.

That’s why they say organizing atheists is like herding cats. We are only the same through this one tentative conclusion about understanding reality. Perhaps this is where there is an advantage. Since no one holds any idea as infallible and referencing the dear leader’s orders, every idea is open to debate and criticism. The system of secular discussion allows any idea to the table regardless of how bats**t crazy it is. The direction to take is a group consensus instead of relying only on the biggest bully in the room. this leaves the responsibility of success and failure directly on the shoulders of the people involved in the process, where it should be. We have to respect ourselves enough to stand up to our full height as people and take ownership of that responsibility. We can’t pass this off to the dear leader for the comfort of servility.

 

[Vonsalza]

How is this any different from divine command theory where no one but the person committing the act can hear the command?

Arise, thou necro-thread!

I’d recommend against false equivalency and reductionist fallacies - which is exactly what you’re doing when you attempt to equate “religion” with “divine command”.
One is like a forest. One is like one tree. Guess which is which.

To your question, the difference is the “transcendence”, or “non-arbitrary” quality that morality assumes when it is given under the guise of religion as a component of culture - independent of whether God is demonstrably real or not.

Secular attempts at morality exist either by “right of might” or they have difficulty existing at all. Here’s why:
Lets say a person commits a terrible crime and gets away with it.
For the religious, “God will get them in the end”. That’s often a good enough “band-aid” for the breakdown in temporal justice, and life goes on.
However, for the purely secular state, that is a critical breakdown in the justice system that will thus require further empowering law-enforcing authorities with extra capability in order to prevent such breakdowns which undermine the fundamental cohesiveness and purpose of the state.
hears soviet anthem playing in the background

Well I know a lot of atheists that are raping, murdering, taking advantage of the world in all the ways they can imagine, which is zero.

Huh. Just read an article a bit ago about a man killing his family and himself. Article mentioned a connection or two to atheist social groups. shrug

To the point of the topic here: Advantages and disadvantages of Atheism.

Here’s how I currently understand the labels:
Knowledge is a subset of Belief

And for anyone who doesn’t buy that subjective, arbitrary and super-loaded distinction, your next several paragraphs are literally not worth reading. They’re premised on a notion that is laughably unsound, yet critically necessary to drawing your conclusion.

Do you honestly, as a rational person, not see the issue there? You practically hide your conclusion within your premise, which is an issue.

 

[Russell_SA]

Arise, thou necro-thread!

I’d recommend against false equivalency and reductionist fallacies - which is exactly what you’re doing when you attempt to equate “religion” with “divine command”.
One is like a forest. One is like one tree. Guess which is which.

There was no explanation here for your assertions, so this came across as just Ad hominem to me. Please clarify your disagreement with the points as a meaningful discussion for back and forth clarification of understanding instead of this approach. This really landed as just a statement of, how dare you equate my favorite thing to that. Well perhaps it was just an analogy to get the idea across. If you don’t believe the analogy was correct, show me your analogy that is addressing what I was trying to communicate so that I can see that you heard what I was trying to say and genuine understanding is reached.

I don’t care about changing people’s minds, that’s on them. I do care that they understand what is being discussed on both sides.

To your question, the difference is the “transcendence”, or “non-arbitrary” quality that morality assumes when it is given under the guise of religion as a component of culture - independent of whether God is demonstrably real or not.

Secular attempts at morality exist either by “right of might” or they have difficulty existing at all. Here’s why:
Lets say a person commits a terrible crime and gets away with it.
For the religious, “God will get them in the end”. That’s often a good enough “band-aid” for the breakdown in temporal justice, and life goes on.
However, for the purely secular state, that is a critical breakdown in the justice system that will thus require further empowering law-enforcing authorities with extra capability in order to prevent such breakdowns which undermine the fundamental cohesiveness and purpose of the state.
hears soviet anthem playing in the background

Fair-minded readers - Is this response to anything that I was talking about? I don’t believe it is. I was discussing the idea of how can people tell the difference between someone is using supernatural orders to perform an action and someone performing an action without supernatural orders. As I understand it, we can not tell a difference between the two, so the two are at this point, no different. That is all. I have no idea why this person’s response went here.

Huh. Just read an article a bit ago about a man killing his family and himself. Article mentioned a connection or two to atheist social groups. shrug

Fair-minded readers… we really have to stop this nonsense. I did not say all atheists, just the one’s I know. Therefore illustrating that atheism is not a causal link between the two. The respondent knows this and is insulting the intelligence of the readers to not be able to understand what I said and to this person’s absurd response. This is another data point example of someone that just wants to fight instead of actually communicate and understand the different points of view on the topic being discussed. To have a discussion, in and of itself, without caring if either side changed each other’s view point.

And for anyone who doesn’t buy that subjective, arbitrary and super-loaded distinction, your next several paragraphs are literally not worth reading. They’re premised on a notion that is laughably unsound, yet critically necessary to drawing your conclusion.

Do you honestly, as a rational person, not see the issue there? You practically hide your conclusion within your premise, which is an issue.

Straight up Ad Hominem. Responses from you will not be replied to and just ignored. You want to just hear yourself and be a fighter on the front lines waving the flag for the charge to battle. Well go for it. I really don’t have patience for the warrior. I just care about people understanding either side’s points of view. There not battle here to be fought, no warmongering, go spit in someone else’s face.

 

[inocente]

Huh. Just read an article a bit ago about a man killing his family and himself. Article mentioned a connection or two to atheist social groups. shrug

Let’s see the article please, else how do we know you didn’t make it up?

Btw in these cases the man is often suffering clinical depression and/or extreme anxiety. I’m sure you agree that glibly over-simplifying such tragedies and casually using them to earn debating points would be, to put it politely, despicable.

 

[Vonsalza]

Btw in these cases the man is often suffering clinical depression and/or extreme anxiety. I’m sure you agree that glibly over-simplifying such tragedies and casually using them to earn debating points would be, to put it politely, despicable.

So you don’t think such recorded events are real, but then you offer a preemptive justification for them?



Poster suggested that no atheist he has ever heard of has committed horrendous acts.

The belief in that particular example of a “No True Scotsman” fallacy requires quite a willful blindness in order for that belief to be genuine. A few atheists, just like a few of any group, do awful things too.

If you’d like to actually be the paragon of fairness that you imagine yourself to be, you also need to be willing to call out the poster as well.

However, fairness is obviously not your goal here. Pots and kettles…

 

[Vonsalza]

There was no explanation here for your assertions, so this came across as just Ad hominem to me.

That’s not what an ad hominem is, foremost.

Next, you equate “religion” with “divine command theory”. So per Oxford:

Religion - The belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.
-or-
A particular system of faith and worship.
-or-
A pursuit or interest followed with great devotion.

Now “Divine Command Theory” (as Theological Voluntarism) per Stanford:

There is a class of metaethical and normative views that commonly goes by the name ‘divine command theory.’ What all members of this class have in common is that they hold that what God wills is relevant to determining the moral status of some set of entities (acts, states of affairs, character traits, etc., or some combination of these).

By reading we do see that they’re related, don’t we? They both feature that troublesome g-o-d word. However, also by reading, we see they’re not the same thing.

Straight up Ad Hominem.

If you can’t handle someone pointing out that your personal feelings on the relationship between “belief” and “knowledge” are highly subjective and thus any conclusion drawn therefrom would be problematic, then perhaps a philosophy sub-forum of an apologetics forum isn’t the best place for you to post.

For your reference, here’s Stanford’s philo page where you can find a good definition and explanation for the ad hominem fallacy.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/

 

[inocente]

inocente;14611570:

Let’s see the article please, else how do we know you didn’t make it up?

So you don’t think such recorded events are real, but then you offer a preemptive justification for them?



Poster suggested that no atheist he has ever heard of has committed horrendous acts.

The belief in that particular example of a “No True Scotsman” fallacy requires quite a willful blindness in order for that belief to be genuine. A few atheists, just like a few of any group, do awful things too.

If you’d like to actually be the paragon of fairness that you imagine yourself to be, you also need to be willing to call out the poster as well.

However, fairness is obviously not your goal here. Pots and kettles…

I see lots of bluster but no evidence for your story. It’s a simple request, so that we can decide for ourselves why the tragedy occurred. Let’s see the article please.