The central contradiction running through the arguments of many of those new atheists authors

[hatsoff]

That doesn’t stop atheists from speculating about them.

Speculating of course is the key word, here. I have no problem with speculating as to the existence of God, either.

Antony Flew, the most famous atheist philosopher of the last fifty years, escaped the methodological box and now believes there is something out there that designed and created the universe.

You may wish to dispense with the present-tense. Mr. Flew has passed.

 

[Quid_estVeritas]

Speculating You may wish to dispense with the present-tense. Mr. Flew has passed.

I read his last book, after his conversion, it was a complete waste of time and the 15 bucks I paid for it. Antony Flew may have been an old man who simply had a change of heart as death approached, who knows, no one can read his mind, especially now. But I have to say, from what I’ve seen on other religion forums, the level of anger and contempt atheists have had for Flew and the conspiracy theories they weave about him being tricked and duped and what not, I’d be a little embarrassed if I was an atheists. Thankfully Christians stopped persecuting their apostates centuries ago. Maybe atheists will reach that point in the future

 

[AntiTheist]

AntiTheist,

All this makes me wonder, why are you here???

First and foremost, I enjoy the intellectual practice of taking apart poor arguments, and I find the subject matter interesting – so naturally, I like taking apart poor arguments made on this particular subject.

Incidental to my enjoyment is the fact that many people on here seem to have a very poor idea of what atheists actually are and what atheists actually believe (or don’t believe, as it were). So if my posts prove useful to anyone, great.

I’m not really writing for your benefit. If I’m writing for anyone’s benefit, it’s the benefit of the lurkers who might be doubting or making up their minds. Trust me – I know that true believers will never be swayed, but someone has to represent a rational point of view. It might as well be me.

 

[AntiTheist]

So, feel free to fail to believe in God.

You got it.

However, the onus is on you if you are wrong (Pascal’s Wager). Taking that risk doesn’t seem rational to me.

And feel free to fail to believe in Lord Krishna, but the onus is on you if you’re wrong. Repeat, inserting the names of every other god of every other faith.

Eyewitness testimony is only the beginning.

So then you agree that it doesn’t count as evidence of extraordinary claims?

Again, there are many logical reasons for concluding that belief is rational (ontological, first cause, etc.)

No one knows what happened before the Big Bang. No one knows if there even was a “before” before the Big Bang, or whether the stuff that preceded the Big Bang always existed, or what. Try again.

The lives of the Saints and miracles are others.

The existence of nice people and magical claims doesn’t demonstrate the truth of a belief. I suppose you don’t accept the Hindu living saints and their miracles, right?

Tell you what: demonstrate a miracle in laboratory conditions, and repeat it, and then we’ll talk.

The self-evident beauty and consistency of Catholic philsophy is another.

That you find something beautiful and internally consistent has nothing to do with whether it’s true or not.

While no line of proof actually touches God, there’s a whole bunch of arrows that point to Him

I dispute this. I don’t think that any of these things is even remotely an arrow pointing to the claim that you think they do.

But you are still in the same boat as deciding between liar, lunatic, or God. Those legends around great men are all either going to be lies (falsehoods), lunacy, or truth.

Ok, then I think they’re lies in the same sense that the legends of King Arthur are “lies.” That is to say, they’re not lies at all – they’re stories that got embellished as time went on. If you’ve ever played the “telephone game,” were you lying when you got to the end of that game?

We have plenty of positivistic historical evidence that Jesus existed, as did several of the apostles.

Really. Contemporary, extra-Biblical accounts? I would be interested in reading them.

The odds the apostles were lunatics are quite small, given their wisdom, discipline, and objective goodness.

You’re judging them based on the characteristics attributed to them in the stories? Ok. In that case, I think Arjuna’s account of Krishna is truthful because he was such a brave warrior.

Your entire argument is based on shifting the burden of proof to believers

Not shifting – accurately placing it there.

if God is real, the onus or benefit of non-belief will be on you.

If your god is the real one, I’ll buy you a t-shirt in hell’s gift shop. But if Zeus is the real one, I’ll buy you a beer in the Tarterus bar, since we’ll both be in Tarterus.

 

[Quid_estVeritas]

First and foremost, I enjoy the intellectual practice of taking apart poor arguments . . . but someone has to represent a rational point of view. It might as well be me.

maybe you should change your name to Wile E. Coyote . . . Super Genius

hahahah, supercilious atheists, what would we do without them

 

[Leela]

In other words, the draw of Truth is stronger than the draw of self interest.

Here you are agreeing with a point I tried to make which is that even for religious people, the carrots and sticks are irrelevent to a truly moral act. It is done becaise it is the right thing to do, not because it will lead to reward or punishment.

Your central premise appears to be that morality, or a reason to love, does not need a basis - that it can be “free floating” as it were and learnable through our stories and compassion.

Before the question of whether or not we have a proper foundation for morality comes up for us, most of us have already have come to love others, so I contend that having an answer to the question, “why should we love anyone at all?” is not foundational. It arises only once we can not only love but also think and not only think but also think about thinking. It is a philosophical question with little if any practical bearing since we have already done it before we can ask whether or not it can be done. We already value it before we can even ask why it ought to be valued, and once we do value it, that we ought to love is self-evidently true.

Also, when we are doing philosophy, before we go searching for a foundation for morality, we must answer the question, “are moral truths found or made?” Are they created or discovered? You’ve presupposed that moral truths are found or discovered rather than made or invented. How do you know that? Further, before even asking the question “is it found or made?” we need to decide whether or not this distinctin is one worth using. Certainly the question, “is it found or made?” is not just handed to us by the universe. Someone decided that this is a good question to ask. So first we should answer, why is it a good question? Is it simply the starting point of all good philosophy to distinguish between what is outside of us and what is inside of us? Are we somehow forced to presuppose that there is a metaphysical “self” that is distinct from everything else? What could this self be outside of its relations to other things? How could you ever say what this self is without describing it as relating to some things that are not the self? Since I am unwilling to postulate that there is at least something which simply is outside of its relations to other things. I don’t know that there is such a thing, so I don’t except the premises from which it makes sense to ask for a foundation for morality. I haven’t been convinced that the found/made game is one I need to play in talking about morality.

However, there are four problems with this approach. First, it is essentially impossible to agree on what is good and what constitutes right compassion without some kind of underlying philosophy that has a grounding in what it claims is Truth. Just look at the current debates regarding abortion and “gay marriage.” Unless you have this basis you will have no way of guaging what is right and wrong and society - even among otherwise good people - will polarize into bitterly opposed camps, resulting in exactly the kind of mess we have today.

Those who still find it important to ask “is morality found or made?” and agree that God is the foundation for morality still disagree about what is moral, so your “first problem” is no more a problem for foundationist ethics as it is for antifoundationalism.

Our currently opposed camps are moral absolutists, which include Christians (such as myself), which hold that society should institute laws that reflect objective moral realtiy, and moral relativists, which hold that personal freedom and choice is the highest good. While moral absolutism does not deny that personal freedom is good in the right circumstances, it is not the highest good; thus, when there is a conflict, morality must take precedence. Otherwise, we find ourselves tolerating all kinds of objective evils, such as abortion.

“Relativist” just sounds like an epithet you use for people who disagree with your moral assertions.

Second, compassion does not answer the problem of moral evil. Some people choose to do evil, even if they are not “psychopaths.” Your answer is the “carrot and stick” for such people, but that provides no answer for why people choose evil in the first place. If morality is “self evident” from our stories, then why would anyone choose evil? Your answer seems to be to provide no answer at all, to deny the question, but the reality of moral evil vitiates such a claim.

Again, this is no more a problem for me as it is for you. People who believe that God is the foundation for morality still sin. In fact, Catholics hold it as a dogma that we are all sinners.

Third, “free floating” compassion and goodness still leaves you with a nihilistic sense that nothing you do or say matters; it will all come to an end faster than the blink of an eye in geological time, much less astronomical time. As a result, the Godless philosophy leaves one with a nagging emptiness that even the little love they experience is meaningless and irrelevant. What results is not actual adherence to love and goodness, but depression and emptiness.

Perhaps for some, but not for me. Note also that there is a theistic version of nihilism that shows up for example in teh case of the suicide bomber. If all morality is about an other world, then this world for some is seen as meaningless.

cont.

 

[Leela]

Fourth, related to the second, without an absolute sense of morality, nothing prevents those in power from defining over time what is good and then performing objective evil in the name of that “good.” For example, China forces abortions and sterilizations of tens of thousands of people under penalty of detaining relatives and other extremely severe penalties in the name of the “good” of population control. They force late term abortions against the mother’s will in the name of “good.” (This is documented fact, by the way.) Who are you to say it is not loving to rip a 33 week old fetus limb from limb against the mother’s will in the name of the asserted loving good of feeding everyone? Shudder.

As we know from history, those with a foundationalist view of ethics have often claimed divine right to rule. Consider the power of one wielding Romans 13:

1Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and he will commend you. 4For he is God’s servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. 6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

Best,
Leela

 

[Slowlearner]

You don’t seem to understand that atheism is merely the non-belief in gods. It’s not itself a belief, and it’s separate from moral systems. An atheist can adopt any moral system: the Kantian system, the utilitarian system, moral skepticism, or any of many other positions. It’s not directly connected to atheism and is a side issue at best.

When talking about atheism, the only relevant point is whether or not gods exist. What an individual atheist actually believes – and what each atheist believes will likely be different from what other atheists believe – is not relevant to the point that all atheists don’t believe in gods.

Strictly speaking you are correct. I should clarified that I was speaking of “quiet” or “true” atheists. My point is that the loud, or evangelical atheists, like Dawkins and Hitchens do not set forth a consistent atheist narrative. Similarly, atheists who adopt an Kantian or utilitarian system are not consistent. Atheists who believe in moral systems, or good and bad, all have their own gods – though their conception of god may be different. They worship their god(s) by applying their energy and effort to serve that god. One of the moral atheist’s gods is his moral system. Science cannot prove that there is anything called “good.” Yet Dawkins, Hitchens, and other loud, evangelical atheists all advocate that there is good and that if people would be convinced by their ideas, good would be increased.

Conversely, a moral skeptic is consistent in his beliefs. He believes there is no god, no good, and no moral system. So a moral skeptic would not be expected to write a book arguing that religion is bad and postulating a better good because nothing matters at all. Of course, a moral skeptic could write things that they did not personally believe. Thus, someone like Dawkins or Hitchens could be logically consistent if in their mind what they believed was something like: “I don’t really believe that religion is bad or good because there is no bad or good that can be empirically proved. The only thing I can know with any certainty is my own feelings, and arguing with these Christians is just fun for me and makes me feel good. Thus I will make the case for my moral system, not because I believe it, but because it makes me feel good to do it.”

So either we believers are arguing with people who do not apply their own arguments to their own belief systems or we are arguing with people who are just messing with us.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

But, anyway, I concede, as Dawkins and Hitchens and others do, that it is impossible to prove there is no god…just like it is impossible to prove that there is no Bigfoot, no leprechauns, no UFO abductions, and no intangible alligator living under my bed.

This is a childish oversimplification of the issue. The whole human race does not wrestle with themselves about whether Bigfoot, leprechauns and alligators-under-the bed exist. What they do wrestle with is whether there is a God and whether they have an immortal soul. Please stop playing silly-putty games of logic.

When in doubt, belief is far more rational than disbelief. Most of the human race agrees. When you make fun of such sentiments of the vast majority of mankind, you only show your lack of respect for others … a trait I have noticed to be increasingly evident among atheists. The atheist swagger has become very tiresome to me, and all the more so with respect to the in-your-face attitude of atheists who visit Catholic Answers.

How’s that for in-your-face swagger?

 

[ContegoFides]

First and foremost, I enjoy the intellectual practice of taking apart poor arguments, and I find the subject matter interesting – so naturally, I like taking apart poor arguments made on this particular subject.

OK on being interested. However, you haven’t actually taken apart my central arguments. You’ve only done so in your own mind because you presuppose that you are correct. In fact, it is you who have set up paper tigers, as I pointed out above, and made overly-broad assertions which do not actually refute the arguments I have set forth.

Again, my arguments are not based on the assertion that I can positivistically prove that God exists, because by definition God cannot be positivistically proven. I also cannot positivistically prove that a philosophy based on a failure to believe without positivistic evidence is untrue because your philosphy, just like mine, is not positivistic in nature. You are free to choose either and either is a leap of faith.

My central argument is that, when a leap of faith must be made no matter what, belief in God is imminently rational and that failure to believe in God is less rational, for the reasons given (first cause, Pascal’s Wager, observations on the lives of Saints and other true believers, the nihilistic and hopless outcome of atheism, etc.)

Your central argument is that it is not rational to believe in anything that cannot be positivistically proven, because much can be asserted to exist (the alligator under the bed) without it actually existing.

However, this philosophy contradicts itself, because it assumes that some things such as abstract concepts, including itself, actually exist even though they cannot be measured.

In other words, I can accurately state that I fail to believe in “failure to believe without evidence” because you cannot prove that “failure to believe without evidence” is actually correct. This statement is self contradictory. A self contradictory philosophy must be false. Additionally, this philosophy, if neutrally applied, would not be antithetical to belief in God becaue you cannot prove that my reasons for belief are insufficient.

And feel free to fail to believe in Lord Krishna, but the onus is on you if you’re wrong. Repeat, inserting the names of every other god of every other faith.

Sigh. You’re still missing the point and not actually addressing my main argument here. You keep falling back to your old assertion, which is a paper tiger or straw man argument.

I agree that in a vacuum there is no way to distinguish between Hinduism, Christianity, and any other religion. However, we are not in a vacuum; thus, your argument does not work - and as shown below actually fails. You must examine the claims to authority of each religion.

Hinduism’s origins are unknown, they are lost in antiquity; so, it has no claims to authority. Buddhism began with a mortal man, Siddhartha renamed the Buddah, who claimed to receive enlightenment. Islam began with the Prophet Muhammed, a mortal man who claims to have received direct revelation from God. Christianity began when a man named Jesus, who also claimed to be God, founded His own church. Scientology started when L. Ron Hubbard made up a bunch of stories and asserted their truth. Mormonism began when John Smith claimed to receive direct revelation from God. The list goes on.

Analyzing each of these on their own merits, only one asserts that God Himself founded the religion. Some claim God sent revelations through men, some make assertions without authority.

Naturally, if you reject belief in God you will reject all of these religions. However, if you accept belief in God and you are trying to discern which religion would be the correct one from scratch, logic suggests that you investigate more deeply whether Christianity is correct. For if you believe in God and if Christianity correctly asserts that God founded that church, then you have all the authority you need and Christianity must be correct. After all, a revelation by God himself is going to be preferred over a revelation from God to a man.

A thorough investigation of Christianity will not positivistically prove either the existence of God or positivistically prove that it is correct. However, if you are not bound by the blinders of atheism, then the reasons offered by the Church for belief will become compelling as you study them.

So, the bottom line is this: IF you believe in God, then asserting that it is impossible choose the correct religion among many is clearly logically wrong.

 

[ContegoFides]

The existence of nice people and magical claims doesn’t demonstrate the truth of a belief. I suppose you don’t accept the Hindu living saints and their miracles, right?

Tell you what: demonstrate a miracle in laboratory conditions, and repeat it, and then we’ll talk.

The existence of “nice people” (Saints) and positivistic, scientifically verified events that cannot be scientifically explained (what is actually happening with miracles rather than your derogatory notion of “magical claims”) does point to the truth of a belief. These things give you reason for belief. Again, I already concede it is not positivistic proof. However, why would Mother Theresa give up her entire life to serve the poorest of the poor - and be self evidently happy? Why would thousands of women follow her into this life? You might call them lunatics, but that doesn’t make sense. Anyone who is crazy under the standards of the DSM IV is messed up and incapable of functioning rationally, but these ladies are both rational and not messed up. You could just say it’s personal preference, or delusion, but such tremendous self sacrifice for nothing doesn’t make sense either. Again, not proof, but one reason among many for belief.

As for Hindu living saints and their miracles, all major religions have aspects of the Truth, and thus recieve God’s benefits. I certainly believe that it’s possible that supernatural miracles may have been attributed true believers of any serious religion. However, only the Catholic Church proclaims the fullness of Truth, as it’s authority derives from God Himself.

As for repeating miracles in a labratory, by definition you can’t because there is no scientific explanation for the observed event. As an atheist, what do you do when confronted by such an event? You’re probably just living with being stumped, or alternatively you assume without proof (on faith) that there is a positivistic cause.

Ok, then I think they’re lies in the same sense that the legends of King Arthur are “lies.” That is to say, they’re not lies at all – they’re stories that got embellished as time went on. If you’ve ever played the “telephone game,” were you lying when you got to the end of that game?

Heh, except that fundamental Catholic dogma has not changed in 2000 years.

So then you agree that it doesn’t count as evidence of extraordinary claims?

I disagree. While I agree that eyewitness testimony by itself may not be reliable, when combined with other evidence eyewitness testimony may be considered as one factor when evaluating an extraordinary claim.

No one knows what happened before the Big Bang. No one knows if there even was a “before” before the Big Bang, or whether the stuff that preceded the Big Bang always existed, or what. Try again.

Ah, but logically we can know something, just as our physics theories can allow us to know something about the inside of a collapsed mass. We know that first cause is inescapable. No matter what you do, whether or not there is a multiverse, whether or not the symmetry just before the big bang existed in perpetuity, there must be a first cause. “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” (Stephen Hawking - ironically an atheist). An infinite chain of causation is nonsensical, so there must be a first cause that itself has no cause. We call that first cause God, and the logic goes from there. Of course, you are familiar with this argument.

That you find something beautiful and internally consistent has nothing to do with whether it’s true or not.

Sure it does! Your statement would be rejected by any credible physics theorist. Don’t you know this is how physics advances? Physicists are constantly striving for beauty, simplicity, and symmetry. These are fundamentally unprovable principles, and yet our experience shows us that very complex or “ugly” theories are usually not right, or at least not fully correct.

In fact, one of the reasons we know that our physics is insufficient is because of the infinities that occur when you try to mathematically describe the center of a collapsed mass. What is more disturbing is that when you apply quantum mechanics to general relativity (both proven to be true as far as they go, by the way) to describe the center of a collapsed mass you get even MORE infinities.

Phycisists reject this paradox as “must be wrong” because it is ugly, assymetrical, and a paradox just “feel” wrong. The results are not beautiful or simple. In fact, Hawking’s description of collapsed mass physics was so revolutionary BECAUSE his equation is both simple and draws nearly all of the previous laws of physics into a single beautiful equation. S=kA/4l^2.

Philosophy is the same way. We may judge any philosophy by its beauty and internal consistency.

Your turn to try again.

I dispute this. I don’t think that any of these things is even remotely an arrow pointing to the claim that you think they do.

Sure they do. The burden of proof is on you to show that I should accept “lack of belief without positivistic evidence.”

Really. Contemporary, extra-Biblical accounts? I would be interested in reading them.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus

 

[ContegoFides]

You’re judging them based on the characteristics attributed to them in the stories? Ok. In that case, I think Arjuna’s account of Krishna is truthful because he was such a brave warrior

But I have no logical (as opposed to positivistic) reason to believe that Krisna actually exists in the first place. The fact that he was portrayed as a brave warrior is evidence of the cross-cultural truth that courage is a virtue. Besides, we know the apostles were living men. Somebody spread Christianity and suffered and died to do so. Thus, even if reject the historical evidence that the apostles lived, somebody acutally demonstrated those characteristics.

Not shifting – accurately placing it there.

However, you cannot prove that you have accurately placed the burden of proof on me. You have just done what you claim to not be doing - assuming without proof that you have accurately placed the burden on me.

The bottom line is that no one can prove where the burden of proof should lie, because the burden of proof is an abstract concept that exists outside of positivism.

In the absence of being able to positivistically establish where the burden of proof should lie you are required to fall back on faith (trust) that something does not exist. You have faith that there is no alligator under the bed because positivism and experience suggest that it is unlikely that the alligator is there - you can’t know till you check. You have faith that there is no God, but the difference here is that you cannot check positivistically.

If your god is the real one, I’ll buy you a t-shirt in hell’s gift shop. But if Zeus is the real one, I’ll buy you a beer in the Tarterus bar, since we’ll both be in Tarterus.

This harkens back to the strawman argument about not being able to distinguish among religions.

And I would certainly not want you, or anyone else, to be in Hell.

What you are really saying here is that you have no fear of Hell because you lack belief Hell exists. What I am saying is that there is a Hell whether you refuse to believe it or not; the definition of Hell being separation from God. Where I have logical reasons to belivee this, you have offered no reason why I should not.

 

[ContegoFides]

Here you are agreeing with a point I tried to make which is that even for religious people, the carrots and sticks are irrelevent to a truly moral act…

I do agree with your assertion, but not your conclusion based on the assertion. Where your philosophy goes wrong is how to determine whether an act is moral. Without any absolute reference point it is impossible to determine what is moral and what is not. You assert that morality is self evident from experience; however, experience also shows that even genuine people disagree about what is moral and loving. Thus, you cannot use a free-floating reference point.

Also, when we are doing philosophy, before we go searching for a foundation for morality, we must answer the question, “are moral truths found or made?” Are they created or discovered?.. I haven’t been convinced that the found/made game is one I need to play in talking about morality.

The found/made game is not the foundational question. The foundational question is “is there an absolute.” The found/made question is answered by this question. If the answer is no, then moral truths are made by us. If the answer is yes, then moral truths are found or revealed.

From first cause and the other arguments for God we know that belief in God is rational and that failure to believe in God is not rational. From experience we know that failure to establish a moral absolute results in objective moral evil in society. Therefore, the rational conclusion is that beliefs are found or revealed. If so, then we have a reference point for morality that will avert the disasters that result from atheism.

Those who still find it important to ask “is morality found or made?” and agree that God is the foundation for morality still disagree about what is moral, so your “first problem” is no more a problem for foundationist ethics as it is for antifoundationalism.

The difference is that the Catholic Church claims to have authority. Absolute authority. If this is true then there is foundational authority for knowing what is moral.

Additionally, the natural law reveals what is right and wrong at a fundamental level. Disagreements among the major religions as to what is right and wrong are only at the nuance level. The agreement among all peoples as to certain foundational principles points to an absolute morality.

“Relativist” just sounds like an epithet you use for people who disagree with your moral assertions.

Saying that I have used an epithet is itself an epithet against my argument.

A moral relativist says that there is no absolute right and wrong, whatever is right for you is right for you and whatever is right for me is right for me. This is the dominant philosophy of our modern culture. This is a fact, not an epithet.

Moral relatisim contradicts itself: “There absolutely are no absolutes.” Therefore it is a false philosophy and should be rejected in favor finding an absolute morality.

The question then becomes “which moral absolute?” That answer is derived from the chain of logic that leads one from the existence of God to Jesus to the Catholic Church.

Again, this is no more a problem for me as it is for you. People who believe that God is the foundation for morality still sin. In fact, Catholics hold it as a dogma that we are all sinners.

The problem of moral evil is an unresolvable dilemma for you. On the other hand, contrary to your assertion, it is not for Catholic philosophy. We all sin due to concupiscence caused by original sin - the sin of our first parents to disobey God. We have the capacity to sin through the excersie of free will, which is given to us by God so that we might have a full and real relationship with Him. Jesus redeemed our sin by His sacrifice on the Cross. Thus, while we are all still sinners, we can be redeemed by our cooperation with His grace.

In a nutshell, Catholic philosophy not only explains the existence of moral evil, but deals with it effectively. On the other hand, by refusing to find an absolute moral standard, you have no effective way to explain or deal with moral evil.

Perhaps for some, but not for me. Note also that there is a theistic version of nihilism that shows up for example in teh case of the suicide bomber. If all morality is about an other world, then this world for some is seen as meaningless.

The atheist, including you, cannot escape from the conclusion that everything will end in nothiness - for you in particular when you die. Without God, everything comes to naught. Your sense of love, morality, your life, the entire planet Earth, and indeed everything in the entire universe comes to an end, rendering everything that came before utterly meaningless.

If you assert that life was not meaningless at the end of the universe, you would be contradicting your own philosophy because there would indeed exist an absolute, unprovable, non-positivistic thing that exists outside of time.

If life is meaningless and everything comes to naught, then by definition there is no hope. Therefore, the atheist is without hope.

Whether you acknowledge it now or not is irrelevant, the logic is inescapable that atheism leads to nihilism and hoplessness. The most logial atheists I know agree, and actually live in this state of depression because they believe it is the truth.

Additionally, refuting the suicide bomber as a nihlist is simplistic. You only arrive at that conclusion if you presuppose the bomber had no belief in God. The vast majority of suicide bombers are either deceived (they don’t think they’re actually going to commit suicide) or they believe, wrongly, that they are doing something in the name of an absolute good - and they also believe (rightly or wrongly) that they will go to heaven for their self-sacrifice. That is not nihilism, but rather misguided morality.

 

[DanteAlighieri]

This is false. Don’t make me quote the professional philosophers who argue otherwise.

Atheism (literally “without gods”) is the absence of belief in gods. It includes those who simply don’t have a belief as well as those who actively believe there are no gods (sometimes called “weak atheists” and “strong atheists” respectively).

An analogy I’ve often used is this: imagine I’ve flipped a coin and concealed it in my palm. A Headsist is a person who believes the coin is heads up. An aheadsist is a person who lacks the belief that the coin is heads up – and this position includes those who simply don’t hold a belief on the subject and those who think the coin is tails up.

A similar analogy is in courts: we vote “not guilty,” and the non-guilty-ists include those who simply aren’t convinced of guilt and those who actively believe in the innocence of the defendent.

I’m sorry, but this is intellectual gymnastics designed to hide the fact that you have a belief that there is no God. Quote all the philosophers you like; provide as many half-baked analogies as you can. The bottom line is that, if you were asked “Do you believe there is a God”, your answer would be some variation of “No” – if you were being intellectually honest – just as if a member of your hypothetical jury were asked about his/her belief in the defendant’s guilt there would likely be a majority who felt one way or another and the rest who weren’t sure. This is not analogous to a “lack of belief”, however; it is an indication of uncertainty between two given alternatives.

Assuming your intellectual honesty and the resulting “No” to the above question, it is plain that you DO have a belief – that there is no God. Your claims of having no beliefs on the issue fly in the face of common sense.

Peace,
Dante

 

[Slowlearner]

Before the question of whether or not we have a proper foundation for morality comes up for us, most of us have already have come to love others, so I contend that having an answer to the question, “why should we love anyone at all?” is not foundational. It arises only once we can not only love but also think and not only think but also think about thinking. It is a philosophical question with little if any practical bearing since we have already done it before we can ask whether or not it can be done. We already value it before we can even ask why it ought to be valued, and once we do value it, that we ought to love is self-evidently true.

cont.

Reading this and your blog, I’d argue that you have a God, and that your God is the same as mine.

You accept as foundational that we must serve love. There is no scientific proof of this. You just accept it.

So do I. John tells us “God is Love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

Jesus explained the two greatest commandments were to love God (and God is Love), and to love others. I’ve come to learn that this order is very important. This allows for selfless love. Selfless love is love that doesn’t benefit yourself, and probably even hurts, but helps someone else.

For many years, I was a very selfish person. While I believed I was “good” and cared about and loved others, I loved myself first. I gave to others as it was (a) convenient for me and made me feel good, or (b) benefitted me in some way. (And I will always be battling the temptation to be selfish). On you blog you describe people who reject love as being psychopaths. I’d argue that much of our society rejects true selfless love, which is the heart of Christianity. Multitudes in our society are selfish, desire to be loved, but rarely unselfishly give love. They all, like me, would say they desire to be “good” but at the heart they are selfish as they have not made their own personal desires secondary to something greater.

Now you might say the Christian God is not love as you know love, and thus is not foundational, but that is a topic for another thread in a different sub-forum.

 

[Slowlearner]

First and foremost, I enjoy the intellectual practice of taking apart poor arguments, and I find the subject matter interesting – so naturally, I like taking apart poor arguments made on this particular subject.

Incidental to my enjoyment is the fact that many people on here seem to have a very poor idea of what atheists actually are and what atheists actually believe (or don’t believe, as it were). So if my posts prove useful to anyone, great.

I’m not really writing for your benefit. If I’m writing for anyone’s benefit, it’s the benefit of the lurkers who might be doubting or making up their minds. Trust me – I know that true believers will never be swayed, but someone has to represent a rational point of view. It might as well be me.

I note that I wrote my post no. 48 before reading this.

 

[Leela]

Reading this and your blog, I’d argue that you have a God, and that your God is the same as mine.

…

Now you might say the Christian God is not love as you know love, and thus is not foundational, but that is a topic for another thread in a different sub-forum.

Oh, no. I have no problem at all with you saying so, and I appreciate it. It’s just not something that I would say about myself.

I never find cause to argue with the Christian belief that God is love. If saying that I believe in God simply meant that I equate God and love and that I find love to be powerful and transformative and literally makes the world go around, then I too would have no problem saying that I believe in God. But unfortunately the term for me has come to have so much additional baggage about believing claims that I find to be dubious.

Best,
Leela

 

[Quid_estVeritas]

But, anyway, I concede, as Dawkins and Hitchens and others do, that it is impossible to prove there is no god…just like it is impossible to prove that there is no Bigfoot, no leprechauns, no UFO abductions, and no intangible alligator living under my bed.

This is a childish oversimplification of the issue. The whole human race does not wrestle with themselves about whether Bigfoot, leprechauns and alligators-under-the bed exist. What they do wrestle with is whether there is a God and whether they have an immortal soul. Please stop playing silly-putty games of logic.

When in doubt, belief is far more rational than disbelief. Most of the human race agrees. When you make fun of such sentiments of the vast majority of mankind, you only show your lack of respect for others … a trait I have noticed to be increasingly evident among atheists. The atheist swagger has become very tiresome to me, and all the more so with respect to the in-your-face attitude of atheists who visit Catholic Answers.

How’s that for in-your-face swagger?

You think it’s bad here, wait to you visit a religion forum overrun by militant “new atheists”, like the Amazon.com Religion Forum. That place is nuts, once they’re in the majority, the forum becomes a cess pool of insults, mocking, flaming, and hate.

I kind of like this place so far, it’s nice not to be outnumbered 5 to 1 by Dawkins lemmings

 

[ContegoFides]

You think it’s bad here, wait to you visit a religion forum overrun by militant “new atheists”, like the Amazon.com Religion Forum. That place is nuts, once they’re in the majority, the forum becomes a cess pool of insults, mocking, flaming, and hate.

Heh. “And you shall know them by their fruits.” I’m not at all surprised.

In my experience, atheists like Leela are the exception rather than the norm. Most I know have serious anger issues, which I suspect is caused by the hopelessness brought about by the resulting nihilism.

 

[Slowlearner]

Oh, no. I have no problem at all with you saying so, and I appreciate it. It’s just not something that I would say about myself.

I never find cause to argue with the Christian belief that God is love. If saying that I believe in God simply meant that I equate God and love and that I find love to be powerful and transformative and literally makes the world go around, then I too would have no problem saying that I believe in God. But unfortunately the term for me has come to have so much additional baggage about believing claims that I find to be dubious.

Best,
Leela

You’ve made me smile and blush a bit.

Keep spreading love, and always know that you are loved.