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AgnosTheist
Guest
we are in the “likeness” of God in terms of god’s will? what gave you that idea?
oh like doing good things to get to heaven? doing jihad for the 72 virgins?
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AgnosTheist
Guest
you underestimate humanity. we make our own purposes. we make our own laws.
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ralphinal
Guest
If you rule out the possibility of there being any sort of unabiguous truth, you create the possibility of relativism. I know that not all atheists are alike in thought and morality. It is just with most religions, you cannot separate the religion from the code of conduct. With atheism, what are you left with when you remove the religion? Is there still an accpetable code of conduct or is it to each his own? Some on this board would say that atheism leads to a massive free-for-all.
Maybe. Is it a “what’s right for me is right at all times?” Or is it a “these are my views based on my faith, and they apply across the board?”
Thanks
My point is that I disagree that without God and religion, man will digress into savage brutality. FOr whatever reason, I have more faith in people than to think that.
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justinthemartyr
Guest
how can we make our own purposes and laws?animals have no choice in this how can we?Where did we get this ability that animals do not have? who/what gave us these extraordinary abilities?
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AgnosTheist
Guest
How? By using our superior intellect.
Superior Intellect + Social Nature + Survival Instincts = Community Laws & Personal Purposes
Thats is inevitable with or without God & Religion.
From millions of years of evolution?
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drpmjhess
Guest
Don’t you mean “moot”?
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justinthemartyr
Guest
That is a nice daydreamy thought you have there. all assumption, but nice.
Where did the superior intellect come from and how does that cause us to be able to love?
Prove that social nature and superior intellect “evolved” over 1 million years.
prove that the earth is 1 million years old.
prove that survival insticts come from the previous two fluffy ideas you stated.
animals have survival instincts.
prove that community laws come from ourselves and not from God.
prove that persoanl purposes come from the three previous things you stated. The natural law, given by the creator of the universe causes personal purpose.
you have not one iota of proof for your statements, only theories(guesses) given by mere men who have gotten so many things wrong and have been disproved on so many points it is scary.
pride.
another sin of man, or character defect if you will.
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drpmjhess
Guest
AgonosTheist, I’m a theist (a Catholic theologian), not an agnostic, but you are quite right about the evolution of human capabilities.
I’m unclear, however, as to your signature line: “God gave us Reason, NOT Religion” – do you really need this false dichotomy? If God gave us one, God gave us the other as well. True, God drew reason out the long evolutionary process, but God also drew spiritual awareness out of evolution. If one can evolve, both can. Take a look at Michael Dowd’s Thank God for Evolution, or The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques, ed. Joseph Bulbulia, et al.
Petrus
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AgnosTheist
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man’s superior intellect is an assumption for you?
man’s social nature is an assumption for you?
man’s survival instinct is an assumption for you?
you failed to recognize these basic facts, so its no use trying to prove anything further to you.
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AgnosTheist
Guest
Let us distinguish between Reason & Religion.
Reason is an ability that is imprinted in the human genetic code. We are all born with this ability whether we like it or not. If there is a God, then surely Reason came from him.
Religion is a set of instructions, a system of beliefs and practices. It is learned, not inherited. It is something that varies from culture to culture. It is something that is arguably made up by man. Islam. Buddhism. Wicca. Christianity. Judaism. There is not one shred of objective evidence that any of these had come from God. And without the influence from the followers of these religion, any person can grow up NOT knowing any of it. By this simple little fact, it is clear that religion is not something that God had given to man.
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drpmjhess
Guest
I did not say that the content of human religions has come from God. What I said was “God also drew spiritual awareness out of evolution. If one can evolve, both can.” If God exists, reason is not the only faculty She/He has conferred. Through evolution God has also drawn out the capability of vocalized language, the ability to work with symbol systems to express spiritual experience, etc.
I agree with you that there is no non-humanly created evidence that women should be excluded from priesthoods or should be stoned to death for adulterous conduct; there is no non-humanly created evidence that we should be divided into castes; no non-humanly created evidence that God spoke Hebrew or Arabic or Sanskrit when dictating the first scriptures.
But that does not mean that humans are not animals who have evolved a peculiar sensitivity to spirit, expressed in a bewildering variety of spiritualities. And it does not prove that there is not a real referent to human spiritualities.
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AgnosTheist
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That is possible. But so far we still dont know if there really such a thing as ‘spiritual awareness’ or if its just a product of human fears & self delusions.
we are more than animals, but animals we still are.
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justinthemartyr
Guest
No, they are not, but the fact that you think they are evolved aspects of human beings is an assumption.
Your whole system is based on assumption and no facts. the ONLY way you can try to prove your assumptions is if you were to travel back to the beginning and tell me what exactly happened, and since that is not the case, you are left with a very lacking system of theoretical assumptions.
My system is the norm, what has always been the norm and has never been proven otherwise.
show me in recorded history where man “evolved” to be something other than what man is today. Man is sinful, selfish at the root and defected in character. man also has the aspects of love and giving and a very high intelligence. the fact that man has learned new things because of research and technology, does not mean man evolved at all, man just learned more with the same mind and heart he always has had.
You will find no where in any recorded history where man was more of an animal than he is today. Man has always acknowledged God, has always worshipped in some way shape or form and has always been evil to a degree since the fall.
You have no evidence otherwise, only assumption.
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AgnosTheist
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Evolution is a scientific theory and scientific theories are not assumptions. Besides, WOLVES- though they are not nearly as intellectual as us, they are still clever, social, and has an instinct for survival. And they werent around during the Dinosaur era. You think God just dropped them from the sky?
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justinthemartyr
Guest
scientific theories are assumptions. Scientists take things ar=lready existing, try to guess through means they deem as “intelligent” how old these things are, and try to explain how they looked, behaved etc…Evolution is a scientific theory and scientific theories are not assumptions. Besides, WOLVES- though they are not nearly as intellectual as us, they are still clever, social, and has an instinct for survival. And they werent around during the Dinosaur era. You think God just dropped them from the sky?
based on things already existing.
They are guessing at it, with the minimal amount of evidence they have in order to sound as if they really knew what they were talking about. Such as when they call a formation in the sky a planet, and then several hundred years later changing their minds, realizing that their “fact” was not a fact at all, but an assumption, or theory if you will.
Unless you were there, it is a guess.
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jimmy
Guest
This is exactly what the point of the OP was. There is no morality because there is nothing objective to judge your morality against. Man had a begining and will have an end so how can you possibly say that murder is wrong? You can’t give an objective answer. You can only give a subjective answer that says something like ‘it is good for us all that murder is outlawed.’ However it might not be good in a thousand years.The same goes for every other ‘evil’. There is no such thing as ‘evil’ in an objective sense, only what each individual calls evil.
Now, you say atheists have a sense of what is right and wrong but really that is a sense of what their society or their parents or their govt. has taught them. And as you said it is different from person to person. This is the essence of the point. There is no such thing as right or wrong that is objective.
Your rights. They are all subjective. You have no dignity as the Physicist would like to believe. The only reason why you have rights is because the govt. chooses to allow you to have those rights. Consequently your dignity is determined by the govt. which basically means that you have no dignity.
The only way there can be truth, right, wrong, good, or evil is if there is a god. The only way man has any dignity above any animal is if he has a god who has ordained him toward a purpose. Without a god it is simply natural selection. Without a god good is only what the society or the individual or the govt. determines to be best for the survival of the self or the group. And that can change.
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AgnosTheist
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Theories are a lot of facts, and a little bit assumption.
So what do you think about WOLVES? Are they a direct product of creation, or a product of evolution?
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jimmy
Guest
Who says it’s not both?
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Gottle_of_Geer
Guest
It is also possible to reason - from nature, but more securely from metaphysics - to the existence of a Malevolent Designer 
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From nature, because a Good & All-Wise & Omnipotent God what not have created the Ichneumonidae, or else would have designed their mode of birth differently from the present horrible arrangement;From metaphysics, because objections to design are often arguments for a Malign or Incompetent Designer. The evidence of design is a selection from a kaleidoscope of possibilities - we see design, because to do so is important to us. It is also important to us that the Designer be a Single, Benign, Designer. So anything that may suggest undesign is treated as irrelevant - if a Malevolent Designer (or Designers) needed to be found, we would find it (or them). In either case, we would have to ignore the patterns that did not lead to the results we wanted.
The trouble with argument from design - or argument from design in the natural world at least; metaphysical arguments may stand on a firmer foundation - is that it is anthropomorphic. A tribe of theistic horses might be very puzzled to understand what place man has in the scheme of things: their arguments from design would probably give a higher place to oats, hay, & sugar-lumps than human arguments for design. The Heaven hoped for by devout mosquitos might be a Hell for men - as C. S. Lewis points out.
One of the problems in reasoning to a Good Being is, that the good things in one’s life cannot be proved to be from that Being. A worshipper of the Cat in the Hat might see the good things he has as gifts of TCITH, & not of Christ; so he might reason that the Good Being from whom they come is TCITH & not Christ. On purely rational grounds, this problem of identification looks unanswerable. Maybe that’s why love & hope & faith are of such vast importance: because they identify the Good Being as Christ Himself, from Whom they come, to Whom they tend, & in Whom they rest.
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Skavau
Guest
Morality is ultimately a human invention. We have the intellectual capacity to gain new knowledge which leads to discovering new information. We have the emotional capacity of altruism which leads to co-operation and co-operation leads to society, which is built on and progressed by our intellectual capacity to learn.
And you say that there is ‘nothing objective to judge your morality against’. According to you, precisely what constitutes as objective?
Because I assert that no-one has the right to murder. Why? It is against the other persons will. What right does one have of imposition of force be it murder, rape or violence?
You can add that too. So what? Morality is a human invention. I and most humans assert interest in self-preservation, progression and co-operation. To murder is to attack that.
Everyone who has developed moral values have been taught them from various sources through upbringing.
So you are now defining a difference of perspective as subjective. Now, since virtually everyone has a difference of perspective on morality - then would that not negate your own moral ideology to subjectiveness?
Why does the existence of a God make such a difference to all of the above, exactly?
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