Why are you an Atheist? - Catholic Answers Live - 12Nov2018

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The theistic view of moral grounding is not reducible to “hell if you don’t comply,” by the way, so I wouldn’t make that case
The biblical deity presents two places you go to when you die, heaven or hell. There was no third option. Since after you die, you are immediately judged for either path. Or is this not the case? If not, then again, seems the secularists and everyone else that has pushed back on this religion is forcing it to actually change its doctrine, terms, texts, scriptural education, etc. Progress of a sort.
If there is no grounding purpose in existence itself
Yes there is. I apply purpose to my car, regardless of its limited existence. It offers me a fuller, richer life, temporarily while it is here. Guess I’m equating purpose to value, but don’t really see a significant difference here to argue over. I assigned this value to it after experiencing what my life was like before having a car and while having a car. I can document and demonstrate that. You seem to be arguing that experience is not justified? Okay, guess that’s the philosophical difference between us. I go with what reality actually presents to me for what is good or bad for my life. You’ve concocted something completely separate of what reality demonstrates it seems and seem to dismiss actual experienced evidence of what reality presents. Yes if you don’t have bob telling you what to do, you are forced to be responsible for yourself and others for your success and failures. You are responsible for being remembered as a human rights violator or a leader of the people. You can’t pass this responsibility off to a “bob” and just hide behind, “just following the dear leader’s orders”, not my fault we have AIDS in Africa.
 
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What exactly has God done that you find so morally objectionable?
 
So you completely dodge the request for what it would take for me to accept your conclusions, dodge the criticism I point out about why your approach fails for me, and come up with this. Not much for conversions are you. Guess I’m going to hell due to your deity playing the best Hide and Go Seek game in the world and you presenting bad reasons to follow this path anyways. I pointed out exactly where I see a problem with this process and why it is broken. All I get back is, well, good point sir.
You can do all the mental gymnastics you want, you still cannot apply your own standards to things like “love, joy, peace”.
You didn’t point out that these were issues before or that these issues applied to what we were talking about. That’s why I didn’t address these points since you didn’t actually communicate that these examples were a problem for you.
So as to “love”, “Joy”, “Peace”, etc. These are all mental states we are in and when we are in these mental states, we display ways to communicate that we are in this mental state. When we are in love, we express outward displays of love to communicate that we are in a loving state of mind to people. Such as holding the hand of the person we are in love with, excluding everyone else but the target of our affectionate state of mind, smiling, etc. That is what this means to me. Do you think there is some thing of “love” just floating around the ether then? That it is an external thing from a mental state? This is where a philosophy like this breaks down for me, because it’s like thinking that Digestion is a thing separate from the stomach; floating around the ether.
And so there are things that you cannot test materially, that exist. And your philosophy fails there.
Such as…?
Love all these complaints without any substance to address.
 
Assuming the biblical deity is what we are talking about, because I would be fine with the Greek Gods or clockwork god. Neither of those ideas are claiming to be all good and demanding to be a moral compass of us. The clockwork deity is indifferent, and the Greek Gods are not claiming to not be slaves to their passions and appetites.
The deity in the bible has the following faults, to name a few:
  1. Created us sick and then demands we be well.
  2. Eternal punishment for actions based off ignorance.
  3. absent parent of the people it has a responsibility to cultivate if we are to assume it is to take on the roll and responsibilities of a successful parent.
  4. it has to assign value to us instead of us having value of ourselves, this allows it to treat us as play things, selectively choosing when and who to value
  5. thought crime - the essence of totalitarianism
  6. Jealous, fearful, and all the other qualities of a child left in the corner, abandoned from society, and now has found his father’s gun. No concept of how to weld the power of its father’s gun and no regard for the impact of using that gun on society.
 
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Created us sick and then demands we be well.
He didn’t make us sick, we made us sick. He doesn’t demand perfection either, but to be with Him we must not destroy our relationship with Him and fail to repair it.
Eternal punishment for actions based off ignorance.
If you’re ignorant of the gravity of a sin, it cannot be mortal.
absent parent of the people it has a responsibility to cultivate if we are to assume it is to take on the roll and responsibilities of a successful parent.
God the Holy Spirit is here on Earth to guide us, and God established His Church as well.
it has to assign value to us instead of us having value of ourselves, this allows it to treat us as play things, selectively choosing when and who to value
God values all people equally: We are all worth His only Son. He doesn’t play favorites.
thought crime - the essence of totalitarianism
When the thoughts are willed and strengthened by you even though you know they’re wrong, yeah. That’s a rejection of Him.
Jealous, fearful, and all the other qualities of a child left in the corner, abandoned from society, and now has found his father’s gun. No concept of how to weld the power of its father’s gun and no regard for the impact of using that gun on society.
More like “Loves us more than we could ever know and wants us to be with Him in heaven, so He makes his Commandments known so we can be there.” This complaint makes no sense.
 
The theist, however, does have an objective ground for morality which is transcendent to this or that view of human individuals.
Saying “god” is the reference point is no different than saying the “monarch” is the reference point, or ‘bob’ is the reference point. This goes to provide evidence for my point about worship - to shelve your moral assessment of the dear leader in any way, just because its the most powerful leader, and follow orders.
I don’t care if Socrates or Plato existed, I do care that they taught people how to think, not what to think. Theists need a dear leader to tell them what to do so that they don’t get shouldered with the actual responsibility of learning to care for each other. Want to solve poverty, get off your damn knees and hand out education and birth control. The number one way, that’s been documented across the cultures to raise a civilization out of poverty and despair, is to give women control over their reproduction, education, and agriculture.
The theist, however, does have an objective ground for morality which is transcendent to this or that view of human individuals.
Nope, it’s bob. Bob gets more done than a deity will every day. Bob also transcends me as well since Bob isn’t me and I have decided to do whatever Bob says. See once you have a reference point for your morality, you can have objective good and bad. But why should your reference point be bob, a deity, human wellbeing, etc? I go with Human Well-being since its the most universal overlapping reference point of good and bad in reference to people, regardless of class, race, gender, etc.
 
Nope, it’s bob. Bob gets more done than a deity will every day. Bob also transcends me as well since Bob isn’t me and I have decided to do whatever Bob says. See once you have a reference point for your morality, you can have objective good and bad. But why should your reference point be bob, a deity, human wellbeing, etc? I go with Human Well-being since its the most universal overlapping reference point of good and bad in reference to people, regardless of class, race, gender, etc.
We believe God is being itself. From what I understand the concept of “good” is intrinsic to that. I’m not very well read on Christian arguments for what God is exactly and how we can know it, but I think that’s a lot more objective than “pick your own subjective reference point and go from there”.
Theists need a dear leader to tell them what to do so that they don’t get shouldered with the actual responsibility of learning to care for each other.
I don’t think this is fair.
I go with Human Well-being since its the most universal overlapping reference point of good and bad in reference to people, regardless of class, race, gender, etc.
Why does this mean it should be valued?
 
Want to solve poverty, get off your damn knees and hand out education and birth control.
I think you missed the part where the Catholic Church is the largest charitable organization in the world…
 
Clarification - I am stating that what has been presented to me so far, not from this thread but rather from theists, is a deity that can not be distinguished between an idea of a deity and an actual deity. How do you distinguish between the two? I don’t see how you can. The way we currently have justified belief about a claim that directly references reality, is to test that claim against what reality actually demonstrates to be the case. Otherwise, every idea, true or imagined, are valid to conclude as a true statement about reality since you can not falsify either claim. How do you determine that the theistic deity presented so far is anymore than just an idea? The process for determining fantasy from reality can’t be distinguished, apparently, from the theist process of making claims about reality.
Sorry I cannot help you with: “How do you determine that the theistic deity presented so far is anymore than just an idea?”

My small inadequate analogy to illustrate the existence of God is a first edition comic book, sealed in the package. Front cover visible, heroes and villains pictured, action shots give hints of the story inside. The Story is God. The reader yearns for the Story, or not. The package is sealed, who’s to say it contains anything more than 20 blank pages. Some readers open the comic book and talk about how wonderful the Story is, urging others to do the same. Some have no interest in opening the pages to that particular Story. Others struggle with the seemingly impossible physical aspect of ripping through the packaging.

The book in the link below “Your God is Too Small,” comes to mind now and then. Says online it was first published in 1952.


I’d like to hear from you in a year or two or more, after you have found a way to break through that “comic book packaging” I referenced above. I don’t think you will find it empty.
 
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You can do all the mental gymnastics you want, you still cannot apply your own standards to things like “love, joy, peace”.
So as to “love”, “Joy”, “Peace”, etc. These are all mental states we are in and when we are in these mental states, we display ways to communicate that we are in this mental state.
Evidence please. You make assertions about imaginary things. See how this logic works?
Evidence, not pink unicorns.
 
So you want to see the brain scans, increased heart rates, hormone levels, etc. of people being in these states? We looked the people’s biochemical states when they all claimed to be in a specific emotional state like depression, love, rage, etc. Then compared that to base line people claiming to not be in those states. Compared the differences and then found drugs that affect those biochemical states and viola you Prozac and antidepressants.
Okay, even before we could do that, I can experience these emotional states. I have references of other people sharing this common experience as well. I also have experience of performing rituals to work through these emotional states, like exercise, meditation, etc. that affect my mental state as well as observing other people do this as well. The label we put on those emotional states and the way we communicate those emotional states appears to be common to lots of people that have never actually talked to each other. These states are also found in other animals as well. Dogs get embarrassed, love, anger, depression, etc. Same with the concept of “hunger”. Its universal to all people and it can be alleviated with the chemical process of digestion by adding the medicine of “food”. Is that enough “evidence” for you then? What “evidence” do you have for the deist theory? I’m claiming that all these emotional states are all just brain chemistry, since I can demonstrate:
1: a brain exists
2: damages to the brain changes personality and mental states
3: chemicals change the brain states and personalities
Can you demonstrate the supernatural at all and what it can and can’t do and that it can do anything to brain states?
 
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Can you demonstrate the supernatural at all and what it can and can’t do and that it can do anything to brain states?
There are probly a billion people in the world who every day get on their knees and pray to God, and their brain states change. Their lives are affected.
So you have no answer to the question.
There are realities existing that you have no evidence for.
Your position is inconsistent, and revolves around your own dogmatic belief that God cannot exist.
 
Okay prayer is just meditation practice. You see the exact same mental state changes. Reduced heart rate, calming of heightened emotional states, etc. All your saying is that:
Person A: Prays and then turns on the light switch. Voila god turned on the lights.
Person B: Just turns on the light switch and gets the exact same result.
The supernatural explanation for Person A’s result indicates zero difference from the results of Person B performing the exact same experiment. That demonstrates that the inclusion of the idea of Supernatural is zero.
But also, you have not demonstrated that the supernatural exists at all, so its no different than an imagined idea of reality. So it’s not allowed to be part of any reason for anything at this point.
For example:
Person A: eats an apple a day for a week and doesn’t get a cold.
Person B: eats a pear a day for a week and doesn’t get a cold.
They both contribute the fact they didn’t get a cold was from the fruit. Are the correct? Well they are correct for thinking the fruit had something to do with it since we can actually demonstrate that fruit exists. However, when we studied the two people, we discovered that they both contained the cold virus, just their immune system kept it at bay enough so that the virus didn’t affect their body’s functions in a way that the two people could consciously notice. It was a rounding error, but they technically still had the virus.
Now Person C: meditates to Thanos and doesn’t get a cold. Is person C justified in thinking that Thanos is now part of reality because they didn’t get a cold? No because Thanos has yet to be demonstrated to be part of reality at all and thus we are not justified in believing that anything that happens in reality was because of Thanos. All person C is doing is using “thanos” as the label for their unknown reason for why something happened. But its logically correct that, if Thanos exists, that Thanos could have the power to stop person C from getting the cold virus. See logically correct, but actually factually wrong.
 
Every comic book nerd loves their comic book series as well and argue over minutia of the characters and love to go down the logical rabbit holes. AKA apologetics for XMEN for example. They all find moral dilemmas to deal with, ethical situations, etc. I enjoy historical fiction and actual historical novels as well. The fact that the characters may or may not be real is irrelevant to me for understanding how to live the good life and to be a better person. Same with comic book nerds. But the difference is that the comic book nerds don’t actually need to believe that Thanos is actually real for it to mean something to them or to anyone else.
 
I think you missed the part where the Catholic Church is the largest charitable organization in the world…
Sure they are, but not really helping with those two points are they? If you’re civilization is collapsing due to your cultural practices that are against women’s rights to control her reproduction, education, and business entrepreneurship, then no amount of religious education and free food will ever solve that problem. Funny how the more secular a nation becomes the less they fall into ruin and despotism.
 
how to live the good life and to be a better person
That’s nowhere near what it’s all about. Hope you find what you’re looking for. (I pray it turns out to be what many have found.)
 
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Why does this mean it should be valued?
Because what we value is demonstrated by our actions. We value emotional stability, social acceptance, safety, access to resources, etc. We kill ourselves to try to reach these goals. We would rather be beat up by our tribe than to be kick-out of our tribe for example. Which is one reason why religious families love to threaten their children with kicking them out of the family for leaving the faith, or in some religions, death. Being a part of our social group is that important to us. Human Well-Being is the label for all these things we actually work towards because we value them. They fulfill our physical and psychological needs because we are animals that evolved to need this to thrive.
This question is like asking, why should we value being fed, why value drinking water, being loved, being held, having community, etc. Because we would go crazy if we didn’t have these things. You seem to imply that you don’t understand that caring for our psychological well being is just as important as caring for our physical well-being. Both are physical design properties of a mammal though because mental states are actually chemical states of the brain and too much stress can and does actually damage the body, including the brain.
I don’t think this is fair.
Okay, but is it a fair conclusion to make? I acknowledge that it is uncomfortable to point out though.
“pick your own subjective reference point and go from there”.
This point of the conversation bypassed something that wasn’t pointed out. Everything that is grounded in an intrinsic good or bad is all from a subjective reference point. But once you subjectively pick your reference point, you can have absolutes of good and bad. Just like mathematics will still work if you use 10 as your reference point of even or odd numbers instead of zero. Just everything is shifted over by 10 now. You picking a deity is no more subjective than picking bob or human well-being. But I can argue that Human Well-Being and Bob are actually part of reality. The deity concept is currently just a concept, nothing more in reality than that. No more real than Thanos. But you can still create a moral structure and codes based on what we’ve read about Thanos. We can argue over what Thanos would or wouldn’t want of us, etc. But once you are determining what is “good” or “bad” in reference to what benefits people, you can by-pass Thanos and just use Human Well-Being as the reference point with the caveat that you need to reference your rules to that by always assuming that you would not know which person under that rule you would be. You need to assume you would be anyone from a homeless person to the most powerful social person in that group under those rules of society.
 
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That’s nowhere near what it’s all about. Hope you find what you’re looking for. (I pray it turns out to be what many have found.)
That’s pretty all encompassing for me. I’m sure there are some minutia that I left out. What am I leaving out there that doesn’t fall under that?
 
He didn’t make us sick, we made us sick.
Agree to disagree. Eve was the only person in the garden that actually acted human. To pursue knowledge for knowledge sake and then learn how to live a life with that knowledge. Adam was just pathetic in this. He couldn’t seem to have a desire for understanding reality any more than his food bowl and his marriage bed. But then again, men are simple creatures this way. Don’t see why women need to read too much into how to make us happy. They’re really reading about how to make us become someone that keeps them interested in us it seems. 😛 After all, the Y chromosome is actually a genetic defect from the original X chromosome
He doesn’t demand perfection either, but to be with Him we must not destroy our relationship with Him and fail to repair it.
We have the knowledge of good and evil now, according to the biblical story, and thus we have the ability to morally assess the deity and what it is asking of us to keep it happy. Guess this is what the Devil had and probably why your deity removed that from its people. We have our own standards for who we would want to have a relationship with and why, even if I learned that this deity actually exists and is biblically accurate, I would do everything I can to stand in its way from people.
If you’re ignorant of the gravity of a sin, it cannot be mortal.
The bible states that its rules are written on our hearts from creation and so we are without excuse. It implies that we are not ignorant but “hard hearted” to not acknowledge that about ourselves.
Also, if I am aware of it’s lists of moral pronouncements and I find them immoral and broken, am I still held accountable for not following the immorality of it?
God the Holy Spirit is here on Earth to guide us, and God established His Church as well.
This deity is playing the greatest Hide and Go Seek game in the world. Having a church does not make the being exist. Every year, 100’s of 1000’s flock to comicons all across the world. Does that make the Hulk real? The greeks had their places of worship and codified it as well. Does that make Zeus real?
What you are calling Holy Spirit, I’ll call human empathy and compassion.
 
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God values all people equally: We are all worth His only Son. He doesn’t play favorites.
Every religious leader in the bible are favorites, Jobe was a play thing, Abraham and Issac was a play thing, women and children are treated as property, slavery is promoted and discussed in detail how to own people as property, homosexuals and people not of your tribe are to be exterminated (genocide here, including the unborn and born children), etc.
When the thoughts are willed and strengthened by you even though you know they’re wrong, yeah. That’s a rejection of Him.
I’m okay with having thoughts about anything because that is being human. We are curious about the good and the bad. However, my actions are what makes me known as a good or bad person to the people around me.
This complaint makes no sense.
Okay, the example of this deity killing all the first born in Egypt is the mentality of a socially underdeveloped child wielding a gun.
 
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