The "Problem Of Evil" does not exist

[Sair]

These facts are evidence of the objective reality of good and evil - which disproves the idea that if there were no sentient physical entities in the world there would be no moral truths. It is a mistake to equate persons with bodies. Reason, creativity, purpose and decision-making are related to intangible facts, philosophical principles, mathematical proportions, logical relations and physical constants - all of which exist independently of human beings.

We’ve been through this. The reason, creativity, purpose and decision-making that we experience - the labels we give to processes that our brains and bodies perform - are ultimately all products of physical laws which describe the behaviour of matter and energy in the universe. They are the result of interactions of physical matter, as far as we can tell. You speak of reason, creativity, purpose and decision making as things separate from sentient physical entities, on par with physical constants like the speed of light in a vacuum, or the conservation of matter. They are not. If there are no agents to reason, create, define purpose or make decisions, these things do not exist as separate concepts.

I have personal experience of the power of auto-hypnosis to anaesthetise the body. I have witnessed feats by yogis in India which cannot be explained scientifically. There is abundant evidence that they can control physical functions like their pulse rate and induce states of suspended animation.

There is nothing you have described here that is not a physical process. Auto-hypnosis producing anaesthesia simply means disengaging the parts of the brain responsible for processing pain responses. There’s nothing supernatural about a physical entity controlling physical processes.

If men and women had confined themselves to what they **thought **is physically possible they would not have achieved many heroic feats of courage and endurance nor used their intuition and imagination to make the most outstanding scientific discoveries…

What we think is physically possible does not define what is physically possible. We can spend as much time as we like thinking we can fly, but without the physical means to accomplish it, we’re kinda stuck on the ground. Or, perhaps, to cite a more contemporary example, since we’ve already come up with physical means to enable ourselves to fly, we can think about teleporting all we like, but until we find the physical means to accomplish it, we’re confined to rather more mundane means of transportation.

 

[Sair]

Christiainity is not seeking happiness, that is why its so hard to be a Christian.
The natural life of the human heart is to seek happiness, but Christianity says deny yourself, give up pleasures, carry your cross, be beaten, stripped, martyrd. (obv not so much in the land of the free) but for many centuries, that was life for a christian.

Well, you’ve encapsulated a large part of the reason I left the church. Happiness is the only truly rational end of human life - all other purposes are subordinated to its achievement. If Christianity denies us the opportunity to pursue happiness, then what is it for?!

 

[Sair]

So you are the kind of person that refuses to believe that anything has value outside of your will and desire. Kind of like the value of the world revolves around your likes and dislikes.

You are like a God. A can certainly see the appeal that your belief lends to you.

Somehow I’d managed to overlook this particular snipe until now.

In the context that I was speaking of my values, I had been asked specifically about what I valued - you extrapolated from that, erroneously, that I fail to recognise the values of others, or accord them importance comparable to my own.

This petty accusation of arrogance merely reflects a belief about atheistic morality held by people who really ought to know better, if they are as intelligent and thoughtful as they claim to be.

 

[tonyrey]

The reason, creativity, purpose and decision-making that we experience - the labels we give to processes that our brains and bodies perform - are ultimately all products of physical laws which describe the behaviour of matter and energy in the universe. .

We’ve obviously reached an impasse. What I regard as realities you regard as labels. Do you regard physical laws as brute facts which require no explanation? Are they necessary or contingent? In other words could they have been different?

They are the result of interactions of physical matter, as far as we can tell. You speak of reason, creativity, purpose and decision making as things separate from sentient physical entities, on par with physical constants like the speed of light in a vacuum, or the conservation of matter. They are not. If there are no agents to reason, create, define purpose or make decisions, these things do not exist as separate concepts.

Do you deny that mathematical proportions and physical constants existed before human beings existed? That non-human rational agents would discover the same intangible facts, philosophical principles and logical relations? For example, the fact that things and thoughts exist? The explanatory principles of economy and verifiability? The laws of identity, contradiction and excluded middle? Are they restricted solely to us?

There is nothing you have described here that is not a physical process. Auto-hypnosis producing anaesthesia simply means disengaging the parts of the brain responsible for processing pain responses. There’s nothing supernatural about a physical entity controlling physical processes.

What is the mechanism by which a part of the brain is disengaged? Where is the control-centre located? And, most important of all, what exactly do you mean by a physical entity? The body?

What we think is physically possible does not define what is physically possible. We can spend as much time as we like thinking we can fly, but without the physical means to accomplish it, we’re kinda stuck on the ground. Or, perhaps, to cite a more contemporary example, since we’ve already come up with physical means to enable ourselves to fly, we can think about teleporting all we like, but until we find the physical means to accomplish it, we’re confined to rather more mundane means of transportation.

The point is that we do not **know what we are capable of. If we believe we are entirely physical we are less likely to discover undiscovered powers of which we are capable. We would have ruled out the feats I mentioned because they are still **scientifically inexplicable. If our minds are closed to the very possibility of non-physical activity we are obviously trapped in a closed system…

 

[Sair]

We’ve obviously reached an impasse. What I regard as realities you regard as labels. Do you regard physical laws as brute facts which require no explanation? Are they necessary or contingent? In other words could they have been different?

Your opening line is a somewhat sweeping statement. I’ve already indicated that things like reason and creativity are dependent upon sentient entities; the speed of light in a vacuum and the conservation of matter are not dependent upon sentient entities - therefore, they are not the same kind of concepts.

Good luck explaining why the laws of physics - the descriptions of how physical matter and forces behave - are the way they are. For all I know, they could have been different (any physicists out there, once again feel free to correct me here) but they’re not. If they were, our universe would behave very differently to the way it apparently does. The fact is, the laws of physics in our universe are not different to the way they are, so whether or not they could have been is a matter for pure speculation.

Do you deny that mathematical proportions and physical constants existed before human beings existed? That non-human rational agents would discover the same intangible facts, philosophical principles and logical relations? For example, the fact that things and thoughts exist? The explanatory principles of economy and verifiability? The laws of identity, contradiction and excluded middle? Are they restricted solely to us?
What is the mechanism by which a part of the brain is disengaged? Where is the control-centre located? And, most important of all, what exactly do you mean by a physical entity? The body?

Once again, you’re missing the distinction between concepts that are related specifically to the way our brains work and concepts that are also related to the way things outside of our brains work. Sure, if there were rational, non-human agents in the universe, they would probably be able to perceive the way physical matter and forces behave. Their ability to do so would still be based on physical occurrences.

I don’t claim to know the precise mechanism by which one part of the brain overrides the function of another part of the brain. However, neurological research indicates that the parts of the brain responsible for cognition, reason and self-awareness are not the same parts responsible for pain reception, and so the parts responsible for awareness could presumably be made unaware of pain impulses - so there’s no requirement for the explanation to be supernatural, or nonphysical. You seem to be suggesting that the explanation can’t possibly be physical. How do you know? Or are you just going to deflect this question with another one?

The point is that we do not **know what we are capable of. If we believe we are entirely physical we are less likely to discover undiscovered powers of which we are capable. We would have ruled out the feats I mentioned because they are still **scientifically inexplicable. If our minds are closed to the very possibility of non-physical activity we are obviously trapped in a closed system…

Our ability to imagine is rooted in what we see happening in the world around us. We don’t have to understand the exact mechanisms by which things happen in order to realise them - they just have to be physically possible. For example, medieval engineers built precision machines, such as trebuchets, through a process of trial and error, by observation of what worked and didn’t work, even though they lacked the technology and much of the understanding of physics available to modern engineers.

And what exactly do you think you might be capable of doing, that is not able to be accomplished within the physical constraints of our universe?

 

[MindOverMatter]

Somehow I’d managed to overlook this particular snipe until now.

In the context that I was speaking of my values, I had been asked specifically about what I valued - you extrapolated from that, erroneously, that I fail to recognize the values of others, or accord them importance comparable to my own.

This petty accusation of arrogance merely reflects a belief about atheistic morality held by people who really ought to know better, if they are as intelligent and thoughtful as they claim to be.

Actually what the post reflects is the natural outgrowth of your attitude to moral truth. Its not so much an accusation as it is a realization; rather an interpretation of your approach to morality. You say that you are willing to give people value so long as they recognize your value. But when faced with a world in which we are all going to die in a relatively short time and the object of life is the material good, it is conceivable that treating you with value is not always beneficial; and in some cases, if living for as long as you can is the only object of moral cohesion, it is foolish and irrational to view you as a being of any value, since your value is being determined by your overall usefulness in gaining the material good which man has made the object of life. Better to let you burn in a burning building if life merely amounts to an opportunity to exploit the senses, especially when faced with the prospect of dying in relatively short period of time. Why should the individual sacrifice or risk their lives, just so that another individual can stay alive a little while longer then you? Unless you are willing to admit that there is an objective purpose meaning and value to our lives, the very act itself is irrational, since staying alive for as long as possible and achieving the material good is the reason for why we act. Its impossible for the best aspects of human nature to survive under such a belief system. We see that the material good can give as some kind of natural order, foundation enough for an ethics to be freely considered, but it does not fulfill humanity.

Moral uprisings, such as the end of slavery, were not just due to putting ones self in another persons shoes. It was a product of a belief in the moral good, the greater good; a good that we ought serve. Moral uprisings are based on a belief that humanity has an objective value and is thus worth fighting for. This belief is compelled in us due to our experience of being a person as apposed to an object. Some, to varying degrees, choose to ignore this compulsion for the sake of the material good. Environmental coercions doesn’t lead to human fulfillment, but instead leads to cooperation. Cooperation doesn’t determine that people will love each other or do any of the things that truly makes life “worth living”. It only means that people are willing to tolerate each-other in order to gain a material end. The material end provides a basis for considering ethics, but the material good alone does not fulfill ethics or encourage virtue.

The fact is, as far as your concerned, the world and its value revolves around your attitude towards it and not because it has any true value beyond your opinion of it. This is what your posts are telling me. And as far as knowledge and experience is concerned, this is not because science or logic has proven to you that objective moral truth does not exist, despite your assertions to the contrary. No. You oppose the idea of objective moral truth because when you face the reality of what that means, you find that it doesn’t serve your own self appointed agenda; and becuase the truth of morality cannot be proven with absolute certainty beyond our experience of guilt you have exploited that fact to excuse yourself from any responsibility that you have toward God. Adopting an extreme skepticism, backed up by mostly circular arguments and unwarranted assumptions, you have chosen to view the world in a manner that doesn’t burden you beyond what you are willing to sacrifice. And as i said before, i can see the appeal that this would have for somebody who did not want to be subordinate to or believe in a higher moral truth other than ones own personal invention. There is no rational reason for you to recognize the value of something that has no objective value other then for the mere fact that it can be used just as much as any object that serves our immediate desire, imagined glory, and self invented ends.

Of course, I am not saying that i am a moral creature or a better one then you. Perhaps i am not. But i see the reality of your attitude for what it is. Just another form of self glorification.

 

[Sair]

Actually what the post reflects is the natural outgrowth of your attitude to moral truth. Its not so much an accusation as it is a realization; rather an interpretation of your approach to morality. You say that you are willing to give people value so long as they recognize your value. But when faced with a world in which we are all going to die in a relatively short time and the object of life is the material good, it is conceivable that treating you with value is not always beneficial. Unless you are willing to admit that there is an objective purpose meaning and value to our lives, the very act itself is irrational, since staying alive for as long as possible and achieving the material good is the reason for why we act. Its impossible for the best aspects of human nature to survive under such a belief system. We see that the material good can give as some kind of natural order, foundation enough for an ethics to be freely considered, but it does not fulfill humanity

You are of course aware of the old saw, “Money doesn’t buy happiness”? Material gain is not the ultimate end of human life. Happiness is. Happiness is increased through being shared. And if I really thought material goods were an ultimate end in themselves, I’d be one of those people who kill for the sake of diamonds.

Moral uprisings, such as the end of slavery, were not just due to putting ones self in another persons shoes. It was a product of a belief in the moral good, the greater good; a good that we ought serve. Moral uprisings are based on a belief that humanity has an objective value and is thus worth fighting for. This belief is compelled in us due to our experience of being a person as apposed to an object. Some, to varying degrees, choose to ignore this compulsion for the sake of the material good. Environmental coercions doesn’t lead to human fulfillment, but instead leads to cooperation. Cooperation doesn’t determine that people will love each other or do any of the things that truly makes life “worth living”. It only means that people are willing to tolerate each-other in order to gain a material end. The material end provides a basis for considering ethics, but the material good alone does not fulfill ethics or encourage virtue.

Happiness, or at least the ability to pursue happiness, makes life worth living. Empathy empowers us to recognise the need for happiness in others, and to realise that our own happiness is intricately bound up in the happiness of our fellows. This is, in fact, a singular moral failing of many religions, who place the demands of their imaginary gods ahead of human emotional welfare. It was not biblical Christianity that gave birth to the humanitarian impulse that resulted in the abolition of slavery; the Gospels are curiously ambivalent on the subject. Historically, abolition happened after the dawn of the Enlightenment, when the value of individual people in the here and now began to matter more than the concept of accepting your supposedly god-given lot in life in the hope of a better one in the afterlife.

The fact is, as far as your concerned, the world and its value revolves around your attitude towards it and not because it has any true value beyond your opinion of it.

Are you saying I don’t recognise that other people have values? That I’m one of those crackpots who thinks reality only exists in my mind? That seems to be what you’re implying here, whether you intended it so or not. Values are very often a collective concept, especially when it comes to moral values. I can assure you I am perfectly capable of consulting more than my own preferences.

You oppose the idea of objective moral truth because when you face the reality of what that means, you find that it doesn’t serve your own self appointed agenda; and becuase the truth of morality cannot be proven with absolute certainty beyond our experience of guilt you have exploited that fact to excuse yourself from any responsibility that you have toward God. Adopting an extreme skepticism, backed up by mostly circular arguments and unwarranted assumptions, you have chosen to view the world in a manner that doesn’t burden you beyond what you are willing to sacrifice. And as i said before, i can see the appeal that this would have for somebody who did not want to be subordinate to or believe in a higher moral truth other than ones own personal invention. There is no rational reason for you to recognize the value of something that has no objective value other then for the mere fact that it can be used just as much as any object that serves our immediate desire, imagined glory, and self invented ends.

If you’d care to point out some of these circular arguments and unwarranted assumptions…? I certainly dispute the notion that I could possibly have any responsibility towards a god who may or may not exist, and has precisely zero impact upon my life or the lives of those I hold dear.

But i see the reality of your attitude for what it is. Just another form of self glorification.

The only reality here, and one that you are not seeing, is your dogged insistence that there has to be some entity beyond the observable universe to inspire you to be a good person, and perhaps an afterlife to make it worth your while to be so. You go to great lengths in your attempts to belittle an atheist’s approach to morality, but it only reveals your belief that human beings, and the natural world of which we are a part, are insufficient to inspire you to care.

 

[MindOverMatter]

but it only reveals your belief that human beings, and the natural world of which we are a part, are insufficient to inspire you to care.

Irrationality does not inspire anything in me. Its meaningless. That you choose to give it meaning has absolutely no moral truth value whatsoever; and your actions serve only your ego. I quite simply refuse to exist in any reality that doesn’t ultimately fulfill the personal nature that we experience. I can’t take life or humanity seriously outside of God. Not because i don’t want to, but because as a rational person i cannot tolerate a Godless existence. God saved me from suicide. The worldview that you promote is an offense against human nature, and anybody who takes the time to see life for what it really is, can see that. That you choose to exist and place value on people, does not tell me that you are a good person. It only tells me that death and God is not an option that you desire and that therefore you are willing to indulge in social groups in order to make your meaningless life a little less tragic; you want to close your eyes to the empty tragedy that exists without God; and using various means to numb your senses to the inherent nihilism in your worldview, you pretend to be a rational person, lording yourself over those that have a hope that you dislike.

To give up hope in God is an unnatural act. God represents the greatest desire of our human nature; the desire to be eternally fulfilled as people. Those who oppose this fulfillment and seek to avoid God in their lives, have decided that being there own lord and master, defining their own good as defined by their own godless needs, is a better deal then putting their hope in God. Not because they are more rational, but rather because they are irrational.

It is evident to me whether you want to admit it or not that physical reality alone is not enough to fulfill us as human beings, and the material good is not the basis for why people do virtuous goods. They do good because they are compelled by there experiences to believe that its good. It is as simple as that. It is immoral to rape children. It is immoral to oppress people. If you want to close you eyes because it suits you to be your own God, that’s your game, but please don’t post pseudo histories about humanism being the moral basis for the end of slavery as if Christianity and the concepts that lay therein did not play a vital part. Whether they were atheists or not, they were moved by the conviction that slavery was truly wrong. Not just in your opinion; but in “objective truth”.

Outside of the concept of God, the only reason human beings give a dame is because they are compelled by their environment and their genes and there fear of death and their desire not to be alone. So please don’t give me your sanctimonious self righteousness please. You are not interested in the truth or the fulfillment of the human race. You are interested only in supporting a world view that robs humanity of any true moral value and purpose; and your happy to spread those views around, because it allows you to be free of God. That tells me something about you and what your agenda is as a person. You certainly don’t have the agenda of somebody who truly values people.

 

[MindOverMatter]

You are of course aware of the old saw, “Money doesn’t buy happiness”? Material gain is not the ultimate end of human life. Happiness is. Happiness is increased through being shared. And if I really thought material goods were an ultimate end in themselves, I’d be one of those people who kill for the sake of diamonds.

The only reason that you don’t is because you don’t feel that it benefits you to do so. doesn’t . Since you are determined to ignore the basic fundamental facts of posts, this is my last one.

Happiness, or at least the ability to pursue happiness, makes life worth living.

That’s what you tell you self in the face of death. I say ultimate spiritual fulfillment is what makes life worth living, and it is that which gives moral dignity to the fact that we choose to bring more children into this world, even though the atheist wishes protest that it is full of evil and unhappiness; an unholy place for children. So why give birth? But the Atheist does not care; as long as it makes them happy to have children! I guess we are the victims of everyone Else’s so called happiness.

I think i will leave it on this note as it coincides with the OP.

 

[Sair]

Irrationality does not inspire anything in me. Its meaningless. That you choose to give it meaning has absolutely no moral truth value whatsoever; and your actions serve only your ego. I quite simply refuse to exist in any reality that doesn’t ultimately fulfill the personal nature that we experience. I can’t take life or humanity seriously outside of God. Not because i don’t want to, but because as a rational person i cannot tolerate a Godless existence. God saved me from suicide. The worldview that you promote is an offense against human nature, and anybody who takes the time to see life for what it really is, can see that. That you choose to exist and place value on people, does not tell me that you are a good person. It only tells me that death and God is not an option that you desire and that therefore you are willing to indulge in social groups in order to make your meaningless life a little less tragic; you want to close your eyes to the empty tragedy that exists without God; and using various means to numb your senses to the inherent nihilism in your worldview, you pretend to be a rational person, lording yourself over those that have a hope that you dislike.

To give up hope in God is an unnatural act. God represents the greatest desire of our human nature; the desire to be eternally fulfilled as people. Those who oppose this fulfillment and seek to avoid God in their lives, have decided that being there own lord and master, defining their own good as defined by their own godless needs, is a better deal then putting their hope in God. Not because they are more rational, but rather because they are irrational.

It is evident to me whether you want to admit it or not that physical reality alone is not enough to fulfill us as human beings, and the material good is not the basis for why people do virtuous goods. They do good because they are compelled by there experiences to believe that its good. It is as simple as that. It is immoral to rape children. It is immoral to oppress people. If you want to close you eyes because it suits you to be your own God, that’s your game, but please don’t post pseudo histories about humanism being the moral basis for the end of slavery as if Christianity and the concepts that lay therein did not play a vital part. Whether they were atheists or not, they were moved by the conviction that slavery was truly wrong. Not just in your opinion; but in “objective truth”.

Outside of the concept of God, the only reason human beings give a dame is because they are compelled by their environment and their genes and there fear of death and their desire not to be alone. So please don’t give me your sanctimonious self righteousness please. You are not interested in the truth or the fulfillment of the human race. You are interested only in supporting a world view that robs humanity of any true moral value and purpose; and your happy to spread those views around, because it allows you to be free of God. That tells me something about you and what your agenda is as a person. You certainly don’t have the agenda of somebody who truly values people.

The eyes are open, the fingers type, but the understanding appears sadly lacking.

The deeply personal nature of your attack here tells me a great deal more about you than you could possibly have divined of me from reading any of my posts.

However, it’s not for me to tell you what to think - I will defend my views and my values as long as it’s required, but if it is necessary for your happiness that you hold the beliefs you profess here, there is little to be gained from pressing the issue from my perspective.

 

[MindOverMatter]

The eyes are open, the fingers type, but the understanding appears sadly lacking.

The deeply personal nature of your attack here tells me a great deal more about you than you could possibly have divined of me from reading any of my posts.

However, it’s not for me to tell you what to think - I will defend my views and my values as long as it’s required, but if it is necessary for your happiness that you hold the beliefs you profess here, there is little to be gained from pressing the issue from my perspective.

Nice come back. A couple of sweeping statements with not much to offer in the way of a decient rebuttal. I understand you perfectly. But you don’t understand me or the value of God.

Anyway…peace be with you always.

 

[jkiernan56]

But you don’t understand me or the value of God.

MindOverMatter,
I would put it to Sair this way. You and he may not agree over the value of God, but I’m sure there is one thing you both can agree on - the value of real LOVE. If not, then there are no words that will allow you to co-mmunicate with each other on this issue of the need or value of God.

Now the question between you two become how do you and I grow in Love? What will bring me to love more? For me, the most clearest and simplist of answers is God’s Love and Im sure for you MindOverMatter as well. But for Sair, it would be interesting to get him into a discourse over Love and what that means to him and how does one move towards Love and not self-destruction.

Ultimately when we talk about God, instrinsically we are also talking about Love. Sair may not agree with you over the value of God, but he is not playing with a full deck of cards if he denies the value of Love which in reality is the value of God. Love is something both of you can definitely agree on I think. Your understanding of Love though may differ greatly and that would be an interesting discussion.

Peace, Jim

 

[Sair]

Nice come back. A couple of sweeping statements with not much to offer in the way of a decient rebuttal. I understand you perfectly. But you don’t understand me or the value of God.

Anyway…peace be with you always.

Now who’s making unwarranted assertions? :ehh:

As to my lack of rebuttal, well, your previous post to me, so heavy with fear and aggression, was very much not the approach of a person feeling secure and comfortable in their beliefs. I wasn’t going to kick you when you were down, even if staying my hand opened me to accusations of having nothing to say. If you could not discern my motives in this, I’m afraid you don’t understand the first thing about me.

 

[Sair]

Now the question between you two become how do you and I grow in Love? What will bring me to love more? For me, the most clearest and simplist of answers is God’s Love and Im sure for you MindOverMatter as well. But for Sair, it would be interesting to get him into a discourse over Love and what that means to him and how does one move towards Love and not self-destruction.

Ultimately when we talk about God, instrinsically we are also talking about Love. Sair may not agree with you over the value of God, but he is not playing with a full deck of cards if he denies the value of Love which in reality is the value of God. Love is something both of you can definitely agree on I think. Your understanding of Love though may differ greatly and that would be an interesting discussion.

Perhaps even a topic worthy of a new thread, although I believe there has already been a thread relating to love and materialism. Not quite the same question, though, I suspect!

If asked, I and probably many other atheists would agree that love is one of the most magnificent and essential of human experiences. But like anything else in life, we will deny that love equates with god, not the Christian God nor any other. If that leads you to conclude that I am not playing with a full deck, so be it. You are of course entitled to your opinion, and any belief that helps you make sense of the world - provided you allow the same to others. What I will say on that subject is that it takes a degree of strength to live as an atheist - to face up to the apparently meaningless grandeur of life, with all that it offers and all that it threatens, and to build a life full of purpose and happiness without the crutch of religious faith.

The same is true of love, if you strip the religious trappings from it and delve into what it really is to be human and to love. Love is a physical, passionate, hands-on, gut-wrenching, mind-altering experience, nothing less than the complete acceptance of others for who and what they are, the desire for their happiness as your own. That in itself takes courage and humility, but the rewards are profound. This is nothing like the fanciful, intangible, sterile notions of love I took away from my experience growing up as a Catholic. I feel more love now, for the world, for others, for myself, than I ever did. Never again would I belittle myself and the rest of the world by supposing we are unworthy of love, unable to love, without God.

Does that help?

 

[Sair]

That’s what you tell you self in the face of death. I say ultimate spiritual fulfillment is what makes life worth living, and it is that which gives moral dignity to the fact that we choose to bring more children into this world, even though the atheist wishes protest that it is full of evil and unhappiness; an unholy place for children. So why give birth? But the Atheist does not care; as long as it makes them happy to have children! I guess we are the victims of everyone Else’s so called happiness.

I think i will leave it on this note as it coincides with the OP.

Ultimate spiritual fulfilment, happiness…um, a rose by any other name…

Whence the diatribe about children? It’s true that there are people who don’t want to bring children into a world full of suffering, and that’s their choice to make. But don’t you think it’s better to have children for the sake of pursuing happiness for them and for yourself than just because it’s been mandated by your religion?

 

[jkiernan56]

If asked, I and probably many other atheists would agree that love is one of the most magnificent and essential of human experiences. But like anything else in life, we will deny that love equates with god, not the Christian God nor any other. If that leads you to conclude that I am not playing with a full deck, so be it.

It is only if you do not understand the importance of love that I would conclude you are not playing with a full deck of cards. I also do not agree you have to equate Love with God. I do believe if you follow the path of love that it will lead you to a Person - Love Incarnate. I also respect you and I do not agree on what Love is and where it originates and culminates. I have always said I would rather have a beer with an honest athiest than with a self righteous or bible thumping Christian. I do not think any less of you as a human being if you do not believe what I believe. I do understand (personally) what it is like to live in a world that seems utterly meaningless and what that feels like. I’m not sure if you ever heard a saying by a famous Christian writer that you would probably like very much. It is by St. Augustine and it goes - “there are many in the Church that God does not have, and there are many NOT in the Church that God does have.” Just because a person is in the Church (or believes in God) does not make them closer to God than those who do not profess this same belief.

 

[jkiernan56]

What I will say on that subject is that it takes a degree of strength to live as an atheist - to face up to the apparently meaningless grandeur of life, with all that it offers and all that it threatens, and to build a life full of purpose and happiness without the crutch of religious faith.

While you ask others to respect you and your understanding of the universe, I would hope you would extend the same courtesy to those with religious faith. I’m sure you would agree that belief does not necessarily make the object of belief true. It is not faith or belief that makes something true.

For me, it is because my understanding has led me to acknowledge what is true, that I believe. Faith is not a mindless blind leap into the darkness or a “crutch” as you suppose.

 

[Sair]

While you ask others to respect you and your understanding of the universe, I would hope you would extend the same courtesy to those with religious faith. I’m sure you would agree that belief does not necessarily make the object of belief true. It is not faith or belief that makes something true.

For me, it is because my understanding has led me to acknowledge what is true, that I believe. Faith is not a mindless blind leap into the darkness or a “crutch” as you suppose.

My feeling is that those who do use religion as a crutch are the same people who continually insist that an atheistic worldview offers no scope for meaning, morality, or any of the finer things in life that we like to think make us uniquely human. To an extent, I understand where they are coming from, because I used to think that way - or, at least, as a teenager, my concept of the meaning of life would have been intimately connected with belief in God. However, many of the posts I’ve made to this thread in particular have been an attempt to show that atheism is not the cold, heartless, meaningless place many theists apparently imagine it to be - that there is good to be found in people and in the world itself, despite what seems the prevalence of suffering and evil.

Like you, I have followed where my experience and understanding have led me, and now, looking back, I sincerely feel that my life is more full and meaningful than it ever was when I was a Christian. I don’t doubt that others have different experiences of Christianity, and ultimately it’s up to each person to make sense of life in whatever way seems right to them. It’s abundantly clear to me that it is possible to lead a good, purposeful and fulfilling life in the absence of religious faith, but there are evidently several others on this forum who insist that this is not possible, and furthermore, that I am the one living under a delusion, that despite the evidence of observation, despite reason, despite experience, anything good that I do or perceive is the result of God acting directly upon my life - because, goodness knows, I couldn’t be doing that based on any merely human characteristics…

To draw this back to the original topic of the thread, the argument went along the lines that we can’t know the motives of God, so we can’t say there’s a problem of evil because this God, in his infinite wisdom and infinite goodness and infinite power, is actually acting in our best interests, somehow, in ways we have no hope of ever comprehending. I expect I would have bought this back in the days when I was a young, impressionable Catholic-raised girl, but some 15 years on from that time, in the light of experience, observation and reason that progressively broke down and rebuilt my worldview, this now seems like special pleading - an (I would say) unnecessary effort to graft a Christian-style God onto the world we see and experience.

 

[jkiernan56]

My feeling is that those who do use religion as a crutch are the same people who continually insist that an atheistic worldview offers no scope for meaning, morality, or any of the finer things in life that we like to think make us uniquely human. To an extent, I understand where they are coming from, because I used to think that way - or, at least, as a teenager, my concept of the meaning of life would have been intimately connected with belief in God. However, many of the posts I’ve made to this thread in particular have been an attempt to show that atheism is not the cold, heartless, meaningless place many theists apparently imagine it to be - that there is good to be found in people and in the world itself, despite what seems the prevalence of suffering and evil.

Like you, I have followed where my experience and understanding have led me, and now, looking back, I sincerely feel that my life is more full and meaningful than it ever was when I was a Christian. I don’t doubt that others have different experiences of Christianity, and ultimately it’s up to each person to make sense of life in whatever way seems right to them. It’s abundantly clear to me that it is possible to lead a good, purposeful and fulfilling life in the absence of religious faith, but there are evidently several others on this forum who insist that this is not possible, and furthermore, that I am the one living under a delusion, that despite the evidence of observation, despite reason, despite experience, anything good that I do or perceive is the result of God acting directly upon my life - because, goodness knows, I couldn’t be doing that based on any merely human characteristics…

To draw this back to the original topic of the thread, the argument went along the lines that we can’t know the motives of God, so we can’t say there’s a problem of evil because this God, in his infinite wisdom and infinite goodness and infinite power, is actually acting in our best interests, somehow, in ways we have no hope of ever comprehending. I expect I would have bought this back in the days when I was a young, impressionable Catholic-raised girl, but some 15 years on from that time, in the light of experience, observation and reason that progressively broke down and rebuilt my worldview, this now seems like special pleading - an (I would say) unnecessary effort to graft a Christian-style God onto the world we see and experience.

I apologize if I ask you something that you may have already answered in previous posts. I have not gone back and read everything in this thread.

Sair, lets try to keep our discourse on the ground with two feet and leave out anything that pertains to God.

What is your position on the existence of Good in the world? Do acknowledge there is such a thing as an objective reality called Good? Or is Good a subjective relative term in your world view? If you do acknowledge the existence of an objective reality called Good, then we can enter into another discussion over the topic of this thread. Contrarily, if what is Good is not an objective reality according to your understanding, then there are no words for us to communicate with. I do believe in the existence of an objective reality called Love. When I talk about Good, it is always in the context of Love.

 

[jkiernan56]

Sair,

One other thought in addition to the previous post is do you recognize such a thing as a LIE (not telling the truth)? A lie has no meaning except in context with the truth. Evil has no meaning except in context with the Good. If you and I cannot agree on whether there is such a thing as objective Good, then there is no context for the discussion of this thread.