Atheists,
I’m not going to proclaim a religion or dispute whether there is or isn’t a God or an afterlife. I’m mor curious about these questions, concerning how you get through your day…
#1- With No God, Aren’t "Right" and "Wrong" Constructs? (After all, if there is no concious Creator, and all of existence is random molecular happenstance, then what makes raping a child anymore objectively "wrong" than feeding the homeless? What makes feeding the homeless anymore objectively "right" than beating an old woman for her purse? I hope you have a better answer than "being good for the sake of being good", because that’s a circular comment…it makes "good" a self evident thing…clearly it’s not self-evident if it’s not concrete, and if there’s no Creator making it concrete, than "right" and "wrong" are just arbitrary descriptions we give different behaviors, and if we have no will (after all, we’re all just a guideless molecular domino-pattern of events without a God) then why hold the child rapist or old lady killer in contempt? After all, they had no choice, choice doesn’t exist, they were just fulfilling their moleculary reactive destiny to be what they are, and what they do is neither "good" or "bad", it just "is")
#2- How Do You Have Any Passion For Accomplishment? (After all, physicists all agree that billions of years from now, the entire solar system will collapse in on itself as the universe approaches its entropic heat death. All life not just on our planet but the condition for life in all the galaxy will be annihalated. Which means everything you create in this life: whether its a statue, a panting, a song, a book, a picture you took, EVERYTHING, will one day be completely destroyed and lost forever, and one day, all of humanity will be gone, so it won’t even live on in anyone’s memories. It’s sort of like working your whole life to build a sandcastle that a wave will soon thereafter destroy, along with any photos you took of it, and everyone that saw it, including you, won’t be able to remember it. Sort of fruitless to invest your time passionately knowing how it all will end in a Godless world isn’t it?)
#3- How Can You Value Life Without God? (after all, if there’s no Creator that endowed life with any divine province separate from any other molecular arrangement, then what makes genocide forbidden anymore than, say, weeding your yard? I mean weeds and people are the same without God, there just animated cluters of cells, why treat one with anyore divinity and reverence than the other? All of a sudden, what makes it anymore objectively "wrong" (whatever that means without God) to kill a person than kill a fly? And what’s "killing" mean anyway? After all isn’t that just a goofy word mankind made up to mean "expediting a rapid molecular transformation of a cellular object"?
I guess my point is this…it seems to me, athiests are real good at explaining why there is no God…but they’re real bad at explaining why they still live their life beholden to quasi Judeo-Christian values despite the fact that suddenly, those values carry no divine punishment or reward for having or not having them. And the very basis for "values" themselves, becomes murky and contradictory in the abscence of any objective meaning to "right" and "wrong".
So that’s what I need…I need an athiest to explain why if somebody raped and tortured and murdered their family, why they have ANY RIGHT AT ALL to say the person that did it is "sick" or "evil" or "wrong"…those words suddenly are made of hot air if there is no objective moral compass for human beings. All you have a right to do, is consider yourself unlucky that a molecular entity with such proclivities. But all he did, is what he was programmed chemically to do. There’s no such thing as evil. So how can you hate him? He’s just a sack of molecules.
oh wow girl….I mean, I’m not an atheist, but man, you just stuck yo’ feet all up in yo’ mouth. You are about to get grilled. Questioning a person’s humanity because they don’t believe in God? Wow. Good luck.
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#1 by Alien Jesus at March 11th, 2010
Have you seen the new George Bush doll?
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#2 by Intentional Misinformation at March 11th, 2010
"Quasi Judeo-Christian values" have existed long before somebody decided to write them down in a book and call it religion.
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#3 by Labyrinthine_Anghellica at March 11th, 2010
What would you do for a Klondike bar ?
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#4 by happy at March 11th, 2010
oh wow girl….I mean, I’m not an atheist, but man, you just stuck yo’ feet all up in yo’ mouth. You are about to get grilled. Questioning a person’s humanity because they don’t believe in God? Wow. Good luck.
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#5 by me at March 11th, 2010
ok so your saying we have to be good because god says so i never heard god tell me anything because he is not real everybody knows what is right and what is wrong and the fact that you talked about raping children to try to get your point across is over the line
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#6 by W. C. Fields at March 12th, 2010
Just because existence is absolutely meaningless doesn’t preclude the choice I can make to give my life meaning. I simply choose to give my life meaning outside silly religious concepts. Believe me, my God and my Heaven are infinitely more beautiful than anything your hocus pocus religion rams down your throat.
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#7 by Nate at March 12th, 2010
1: Constructs of society and byproducts of evolving as a social species, yes. And we hold people responsible for harming society as a whole because the worse off society is the worse off each individual is. Such acts are wrong because they do greater harm to people then they do help.
#2: Because in this finite life I can only do so much, and to me everything that happens now is it. I want the best life I can have, and the only way to do that is by accomplishing things I want. I don’t really care if no one remembers me when I’m gone, its unimportant and will not impact me in the least. In contrast, if life is eternal then everything I do now is totally pointless in comparison to the whole of what will be my life.
#3: Easy: Life is rare and I think its beautiful. I still posses empathy – I don’t like being harmed and harming others would be like doing it to myself.
You’re quite wrong in me living by Judeo-Christian values however, I live by human values. The fact that such religions follow closely these human values is no coincidence – if they did not, they would never be followed.
Also, even if you don’t like these answers, if they’re reality, it doesn’t matter much.
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#8 by Alexis at March 12th, 2010
Atheists value life because we realize this is the only one we get.
We are moral because we appreciate the fundamental benefit of doing good and preventing harm, and we act morally for its own sake, not because we’re threatened or promised rewards by some god figure.
Get off your high horse. You dare to condescend to us morally.
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#9 by magpieix A.L.M.N. at March 12th, 2010
So without your belief in God you’d spend all your time raping and murdering and destroying great works of art, is what you’re saying.
Promise me you’ll never stop believing in God.
edit: why do some Xtians seem to have this morbid fixation with raping children?
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#10 by Golden Monkey at March 12th, 2010
1. If God is not real, you would rap a child? It it just known what is right and what is wrong. It is called being a human. Humans actually added more to you God’s rules. I sure you would not like to be married at the age of 12 or younger, but it was done. Thanks to human laws you do not have too.
To clear the table on this too. In your bible God did make us with the ability to choose right and wrong. We did, by choosing to eat the apple.
2. It again is called being human. No matter how the world will end we have respect for accomplishment. It is your religion that does not. Your God takes all glory for himself right, and according to you bible the world will end anyway?
3. I can answer again that we are human and we know we exist. How hard is it.
Can you not live life?
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#11 by Okami at March 12th, 2010
2# yes I do. That’s billions of years from now! I might a well have joy! Its not like anyone is going to remember me in that time anyway.
3# Because I only get to live my life once, why waste it? I don’t need God to value my life!
and about #1 right and wrong wasn’t created by religion, it was created by mankind. In truth Right and Wrong really don’t exist. but our minds have made such things to exist this is the reason we still live life as anyone else does.
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#12 by Luke at March 12th, 2010
enjoy that rant?
1. The difference between right and wrong should be apparent, beating an old woman is both sick and twisted, But the law would be punishment for Beating the woman, I think punishment for crimes like that should be immediate death.
2. Passion for accomplishment, well yes the sun will swell up and consume the earth, but you forget that man is a genius with his imagination, by then Man would have colonies on a dozen worlds or more.
3 The value of life comes from within the oddity of the conscience, yeah people have those, and it doesn’t have anything to do with god, What makes the difference between right and wrong is the conscience, People should know that torturing their entire family should be wrong, and They should know that the law should punish them. The conscience is part of the brain, which gives us emotions, which makes humans humans, and not robots.
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#13 by whosudaddynow at March 12th, 2010
We have covered this territory endlessly.Do a little research.
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#14 by Henbane at March 12th, 2010
1 "what makes raping a child anymore objectively "wrong"
If you saw that taking place (being a non believer) would you just stand there and do nothing? Didn’t think so.
2 Your number 2 rant is quite silly and the implications of it are that we should all kill ourselves since we will all be forgotten anyways. You must enjoy the time that’s been given to you.
3. As easy as I can take a leak in the morning. I’m in no need of a babysitter. I have passion, a sense of self worth, and self respect, and love. A belief in a deity is not a prerequisite to have all of those.
4 "I guess my point is this…it seems to me, athiests are real good at explaining why there is no God."
Well….atheists have every right to do this. We are constantly attacked and called cowardly sinners who are being deceived by the devil and will rott in hell if we don’t repent. Which is all patently absurd, and we have every right to refute such nonsense.
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#15 by Amanda Taylor <3 at March 12th, 2010
I can give you my opinions, but nothing more.
1. Society and the law also dictate what’s right and wrong, not just religion. For instance, in America cannibalism is considered taboo, but there are still third world countries who see nothing wrong with it. I personally do not believe humans should kill each other (unless it is for self-defense or survival). I think it is just wrong. Anyone can see how that is injust without religion. You are taking away someone else’s right to live. That is not right. It’s the same way parents can tell their children something is wrong, even if the child knows of no religion. And another question is, if atheists don’t believe in an eternal hell when they die, why are they not running around murdering others and stealing? We still believe in right and wrong, based on our personal beliefs, without a stone tablet or a book to dictate our beliefs.
2. If you read Freud, who was an atheist, you will see how he believes humans have a natural desire to be happy. To me, and many others, happiness involves succeeding at our accomplishments. An example of this would be getting promoted. This would give you more power and a higher pay, making you happy, and thus accomplished. Again, no god needs to tell us how to feel accomplished. And how would religious people appreciate this any more? Even though they believe in an afterlife, they are still leaving this world when they die, and thus leaving everything they’ve accomplished here. This is no different regardless of religious beliefs. That’s like saying since we die, we shouldn’t accomplish anthing during our lives.
3. Weeds and people are not the same to atheists. For one thing, people have minds and can make differences in the world, where weeds cannot. And a quote by Douglas Adams explains how we can appreciate the world without believing someone created it: "Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Could you appreciate a work of art not knowing who the creator was?
I could easily hate a murderer because of what I explained above. And if I do not believe in an afterlife, don’t you think I’d hate a murderer MORE than you, since he took away the little time I have on Earth with my family? A believer could just go, "Oh, I’ll see them again in Heaven." An atheist could not.
I hope this answers some of your questions, at least from my point-of-view.
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#16 by Cody at March 12th, 2010
Your right there is no way to go through life with out being depressed if you don’t know God,
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#17 by Herodotus at March 12th, 2010
1 We are human animals. There is a natural attachment to our own kind. We appose harm to our own kind for the same reasons piranha don’t eat there own, and birds tend to their young. It is in our nature to protect and tend, first to our immediate kin, then to those in our group, and lastly to those of our kind. There is no mystery to the mechanisms that make this behavior advantageous to the survival of a set of genes.
2 More to the point, life is fleeting. I only have a few years, and then I will be gone forever. This knowledge does not diminish my passion for life, rather feeds it.
3 I always find it surprising that some believe that it is impossible to value human life without a belief in magical overseers. It is in my nature to love my fellow man, and there is little mystery in why this is so, as afore mentioned.
You might want to consider Roman culture, and the fact that they had a stable and healthy society long before Christianity arrived, and that was little effected by it when it did arrive. Moral standards simply did not come from the old testament. This is a clearly document fact.
Ethics can be based on secular grounds. It is readily apparent that we, as a race, do not condone harm to our kind, and that we then seek to secure means, by laws, to secure such protections is only reasonable. A belief in magic is not a necessary part of the solution.
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#18 by Sans Culture Topless Contributor at March 12th, 2010
1. Yes. Right is altruism, and wrong is ego-centrism. That is what develops in a social species. If we evolved from cats, maybe not.
2. No. I had no passion fro accomplishment when I was Christian either though. I am of the personality that tries to maintain a homeostasis of moderate happiness instead of enduring discomfort for a shorter but stronger happiness. Are all you your motivations about "God?" Don’t you fret the "End of Days?" No, you don’t, because it’s irrelevant and out of the way of your life.
3. Life is more valuable as an atheist, because we recognize that you only live once. Theists will go to war before talking about problems because they believe in the afterlife. Atheists don’t. We also respect other forms of life more that Christians abuse, like animals and fauna.
4. I told you altruism is good, ego-centrism is bad… so I can make subjective statements like rapists are terrible people, but likely have need for help. And to be honest, I might actually kill someone who hurts my family. Hate is a result of chemicals in your brain. You are not a computer that you are in complete control of. You have an OS pre-installed (DNA cause personality) and have ".exe" files pre-installed too. Hate is and will always be. Why shouldn’t it? It got us this far, imagine if we were more trusting…
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#19 by Pull My Finger at March 12th, 2010
Your first and your third questions are related, so I hope you don’t mind if I address them together.
1 & 3 – I am capable of both reason and empathy. I know that having certain things done to me hurts or is unpleasant in someway. I can guess that other beings like me feel the same way under the same circumstances (more or less). Therefore, it would not be reasonable for me to needlessly inflict pain and suffering on others without justification (as in self-defense). But it goes much further than this. I also want to survive. My odds of survival increase when I cooperate with other humans. If all humans agree not to harm each other, then then quality of life and odds of survival increase for all of us. Also, our experience tells us that it is likely that empathy is just "hard-wired" into us (probably because the more empathetic and cooperative humans survived and prospered more than aggressive ones) – most of us actually feel sickened and sad at the spectacle of violence and suffering of other humans. If we did not, tearjerker movies wouldn’t make any money.
The relation of this to the value of human life should be obvious. I value human life for its own sake, yes, but if this is not obvious or seems "circular" to you, I value human life inasmuch as its protection means my life is protected as well.
2 – Suppose tomorrow you saw convincing evidence that there was no God and that death was the end. I know such evidence is not possible – I’m not trying to convince you that this is the case, I just want you to pretend in order to help illustrate my point. Would you stop loving your friends and family? If you were writing a novel or painting a picture, would you stop working on your project, or would you finish it because the act of expressing yourself artistically gives you joy? Would you stop enjoying the taste of your favorite foods? Not all accomplishments are satisfying because they "leave our mark on the world." Do mountain climbers get to have their accomplishments noted for posterity, or do they find enjoyment merely in the challenge of overcoming the obstacles of climbing?
If your life has no value without it being conferred by God, what value does it really have? I would think even a religious person would think that life had intrinsic value – perhaps enhanced by God, but certainly not solely dependent upon him. The same is true for immortality. It would be nice and comforting, but it certainly does not take away from the value of the life we are living now if it does not continue forever. You did not exist before you were born – quite a long period of time – yet you manage to enjoy your life still; even if you did show up to the party late.
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#20 by David at March 12th, 2010
You are complicating things.
1. To me HERE on EARTH, I try to figure out the consequences before I act. It’s just a simple matter of knowing right from wrong. I don’t have to be of any faith to have a good or bad conscience.
2. Every one (Including religious) and everything will be annihilated eventually ambitious or not. What makes you so special that the same won’t happen to you?
3. Simple. I can value life by enjoying the quality I get by just being secure about what I believe and knowing if I do something irresponsible, there are consequences to follow here.(Not hell). It seems you would live life insecure and more stressed believing you will be tortured eternally by a loving god for every mistake you make.
If you understand the right and wrong and the consequences down here on this planet, you need no supernatural being to do so. People can survive with just a little common sense.
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#21 by Carbon 14 at March 12th, 2010
I will be as respectful to your questions as possible…..
1. Human being have an inert understanding of right and wrong based on what is beneficial to his survival and ultimately the species. Would we have come to the conclusion that we should not kill each other or steal each other’s stuff without the bible, Yes im sure we would have. Individuals who do not understand this will still be subject to the laws based on Our humanitarian governing system. Laws are not dictated in intelligent society by religious texts, Religious texts were conceived before man’s intellectual maturity, our founding father’s understood, the necessity to remove religion and personal bias from the governing bodies.
2.Yes in fact. We have an understanding of the amazing beauty, and power of the cosmos, why tack limitation or explanation based on the supernatural. Why be satisfied with our limited imagination when the infinite imagination of reality is forever going to be fuzzy. We have just this one moment to be inspired the seas of space, and time. You think we need God to feel inspired and don’t understand how just knowing the fact that stars died for me to exist is amazing in of itself. We want to experience the great and vast phenomenon of life, beyond "Just believe as i believe with no question…"
3. I am inspired daily by the complexities of life. The billions and billions and billions of stars, and the complexities of the human genome, we have not tapped into knowledge as it could be. We have only scratched the surface of life, and the cosmos. This knowledge is Inspirational. I dictate my own value of life, without becoming an autonomous human shell by accepting truth as claimed by religion. God gives you Value? How? You trade all personal freedom, all knowledge, and all understanding we as humanity experience in exchange for what? Life after death? I will not be sold by man the illusion that our time can be infinite. I want to know and see everything I can before returning to a life stream from which we all came. Instead of attempting to beat the judgments of mythical supernatural entities who demand subservience. This Gives my Life, Meaning, and honestly I also believe this gives me a much MUCH stronger understanding of the Value of life than you.
If someone rapes, murders, and kills your whole family, but accepts Jesus in prison you sit next to them in heaven what will you say? I don’t believe in "Evil" But people can very much be sick and wrong for their actions. I again disagree, you should only describe things in spiritual terms. If a man rapes your sister/mom/daughter do you pray for God to release the spirit of evil that overcame him, or pray for Justice from our godless government system?
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#22 by BlueEyes at March 12th, 2010
Differences between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are (and even laws) subjective, but I think MOST people recognise that raping a child is wrong. I say most people because perhaps some rapists would not see it that way. I’m moral because I don’t like to do anything that’ll hurt anyone or anything else. I have a lot of compassion and empathy towards people. As well as feeling this way I do also recognise that by doing wrong we face bad consequences. If murdering people was legal then I still wouldn’t do it because 1, I would never be so angry towards someone as to want them dead and 2, it would be taking a life away for an unnecessary reason, causing pain to everyone who knew them. Plus I would feel guilty as hell. (no pun intended).
I value my life because it’s the only one I’ve got, and I want to make the most and achieve as much as possible. Why? Because it makes me feel good. It gives/would give me awareness, knowledge, a sense of contentment, happiness. It also makes me proud of myself and others proud of me (and we all need some form of acceptance in our lives from family and friends). I am not worrying about what happens in billions of years time, because I won’t (and I doubt any humans will) be around then. I’m living for NOW. Making the most of what I’ve got because I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.
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#23 by nautilus at March 12th, 2010
1 Right and Wrong are constructions by definition. A god wouldn’t change anything. Furthermore the God-Hypothesis doesn’t explain the origin of complexity.
#2 Passion, and Motivation in all kinds is emotional and can NOT be rational. Again: A god wouldn’t change that!
#3 Valuing is emotional and subjective. It has nothing to do with a god, since there cannot be an absolute value: We could even value god and the bible or any other holy book.
You remember me on Immaluel Kant, who claimed, that we had to belief in a god to be good. But since Sigmund Freud we know that he was wrong.
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#24 by frou frou at March 12th, 2010
1-yes, our preferences and social rules are constructs, but the desire to do right, and wrong, are not, they are biology
2-because im alive, and have the same biology , brain function, psychology as any beleiver does
a desire to live, to survive, to be happy
3-quite easily, your talkign about morality, that goes to answer 1
iove never been "real bad" at answering this question, i answerd this fine, and with honesty as i always do
maybe some people are "real bad" at accepting the answers?
morality, is not a religious issue, its a biological one, we ALL have it
whether there is or isnt a god
its that simple
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