Your reasons summed up are: “if atheism and naturalism were true then X, and since I don’t like X I’m a theist and believe Y instead cause I’d prefer it to be true”.
That’s fallacious reasoning, since the correct way to arrive at the truth would be to judge which position has better evidence supporting it, not which position you like more. That’s a logical fallacy known as Argument from consequence, when you judge the truth of a hypothesis depending on how desirable the consequences are.
Also, this whole thread you have been only criticizing the atheistic and naturalistic worldview, you didn’t explain how does a being such as God existing endow love with any more value than it already has, aka in which way theistic worldview explains love better than atheistic and/or naturalistic worldview?
And you also didn’t address my arguments on the first page when I elaborated on why theistic worldview has in fact much more trouble explaining love and especially why I find it unreasonable to put forward God as a source of love. As I see it, theism simply has too many issues with explaining evil. Atheism doesn’t have a problem explaining evil or good. If you take the atheistic/naturalistic worldview the world suddenly makes sense. There is love, yes, but there is also hate. Some people are dying of hunger and diseases, others, more fortunate ones, are enjoying happy long lives. Sometimes justice is served, sometimes it isn’t. Some people are born rich and smart, some are born poor and stupid, most are somewhere inbetween the extremes. The universe we observe has exactly the properties we’d expect it to have if there is no designer and no purpose except the subjective purpose we ascribe to our lives.
If we presume a designer, there are too many flawed designs that then require an explanation, not to mention the lack of evidence which doesn’t make it reasonable to believe in the first place.
You know what, I actually care more about what results a belief would produce. Is that wrong?
One of the leading figures in atheism Richard Dawkins says this; “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. . . . We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA. That is exactly what we are here for.”
If this notion becomes the center of one’s belief system, I don’t think it’ll produce people like, Mahatma Gandhi, Father Damien, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., those who would give their lives for others and safeguard the equality of all people - Natural selection, whose principle is the survival of the fittest, is the farthest thing from safeguarding equality, because you’re supposed to compete against others for superiority in order to propagate your DNA.
Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that atheism has the truth, that Dawkins’s perspective is correct … then I’d rather not follow the truth, but follow the aforementioned great people in their footsteps as much as I possibly can … and that’s my decision to make and not yours, right?
Atheris, I’m not interested in arguing over which (theism or atheism) has the truth, that’s something each individual should decide for themselves. I believe in ‘freedom of thought’ (don’t you? if you don’t, you’re just as narrow-minded as a religious fanatic who discriminates against others for having different beliefs), so I don’t intend to impose my beliefs on anyone. I may share my thoughts from time to time to see what others may think, but I don’t care to spend my time on an endless argument, such as to prove or disprove god.
As I keep saying in this thread, I’m not trying to convince you (or anyone) of theism. You don’t have to believe in god, please be an atheist, if that’s what you want. We’ll all know what the truth is at the end of our lives.
So, you don’t have an answer to the forth post on this page. That’s all I wanted to know, really.
If you’re not interested in truth then there really is no good reason for any honest person to argue with you about philosophical subjects or even communicate with you.
I can already notice that you have adopted the religious selective thinking of only seeing those things that you want to see.
You can choose to be wrong, I don’t care as long as your ignorance doesn’t affect me. You can go ahead and believe all kinds of ridiculous things, from unicorns to dragons to 2+2 being 22, if it really makes you happy. Just don’t get angry when us folk who care about truth and prefer to stay in reality laugh at your silly ideas, we have freedom of expression too don’t you forget
What a luck for you that you were one of the first, child, because children are inculpable, and you are even the most childish child, although already
14 years old.
What a luck for you!
No, although the atheists are very much religious (in a modern way: ideological), more religious than many of those who say that they are religious (atheists wouldn’t say that because they tell others and especially themselves a lie).
Yea, Atheris, I’m interested in making a world a better place and the equality of all people, sorry if you find that unsatisfying.
If Richard Dawkins is right, there’s nothing wrong in what Hitler did. He was merely trying to propagate Germen DNA which he believed to be superior (the fit), and eradicate Jewish DNA which he believed to be inferior (the unfit). He lost the battle {thank god!}, but you can’t blame a man for trying if that’s what we’re all made for, and that’s what you believe, just as Dawkins does, right?
I don’t remember getting angry when you guys (atheists) laugh at me … (how can I, when I do the same to you in my head? ) I only get angry when people are condescending or rude.
But, Atheris, I care about the truth too. And I believe what Francis Collins says to be true.
Francis Collins, the American physician and geneticist who lead the Human Genome Project argues, “How is it that we, and all other members of our species, unique in the animal kingdom, know what’s right and what’s wrong… I reject the idea that that is an evolutionary consequence, because that moral law sometimes tells us that the right thing to do is very self-destructive. If I’m walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don’t know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who’s drowning? He’s one of the weaker ones, let him go. It’s your DNA that needs to survive. And yet that’s not what’s written within me”.
Well, either way, we’ll both find out what the truth is at the end of our lives as I said.
If you turned out to be correct, well, no big deal there really, I’d just disappear, whether I believed in god or not, right? The fact that I believe in god can’t bring me any worse consequence anyway, so no harm done.
Wait, the right beliefs in god (not the ones that are distorted by tribal mentalities, like the beliefs of terrorists) command me to love my neighbor as myself … so, it’s all gain, nothing to lose.
But those are separate issues. Both could be wrong, confused, lead to poor consequences, etc. A theist does not have to demonstrate that their beliefs are not or do not do those things when looking at physicalist or naturalist systems of belief.
And you think the best way to achieve that is lying? I agree that people deserve equality of opportunity, but if you think all people are equal that’s just another delusion you choose to believe.
Errrm no. I can argument against it, but since you admitted you don’t care about truth why should I take anything you say seriously and waste time arguing? You might as well say “I’m willing to believe any lie I find emotionally appealing”. But then again, I ask, why come on a philosophy forum if you’re close minded and don’t care about truth? Oh wait, your answer doesn’t matter since you admitted you don’t care about truth so you will probably just lie anyway.
You got angry at my signature, no? Even though it didn’t even mock most theists, it was only related to them.
You care about truth after all? But how can I trust you when you already claimed that you care more about the possible consequences of a belief rather than how true it is? Is this just another lie you’re willing to tell to support your position? Evolution doesn’t say the exact opposite. Either you’re intentionally misrepresenting it (lying) or you’re ignorant.
Seriously, if you can’t figure out why it’s not in contradiction with the theory of evolution that one human being would want to help another… wow.
And by saying that you’re already implying I’m not right.
You think that a belief in God can’t have any bad consequences for you? Haha, I just wonder if you’re really that ignorant or just choose to not see the bad things about religions.
No, Atheris, I just rolled my eyes at the childishness of using signatures as a tool to ridicule other posters. That’s different from getting angry.
You know … this is what I expected that might happen … Now you’re focusing on repeating how I’m a liar, closed-minded and ignorant than actually engaging in the substance of the topic, which is “Dose Darwinism explain the selfless love humans are capable of?” … well, Dawkins’s view certainly doesn’t.
If you think anyone who believes in god is ignorant, Mahatma Gandhi, Father Damien, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are ignorant to you too (so are all the current justices of the SCOTUS, they’re all theists btw). And if you think I’m wrong in trying to follow (to the best of my ability) their footsteps, then our value systems are too far apart from each other to produce any meaningful conversation. I feel our discussion will go nowhere but deteriorate … So, adios Atheris, have a nice life.
If God exists, he is necessarily great.
Since God exists in mans imagination, the Idea of God means that man is great, able to conceive of greatness, carrying it in himself.
But what is this greatness man has been able to perceive? It is the view beyond his objectives into the nature of himself, that is of nature, in which he finally fully partakes.
But this was true with all Gods. The Christian God is the God of smallness. After many thousands of years of hallowing the Great, the nature of the small and insignificant was to be the object of study, which is to say of love.
In the end we were able to perceive the smallness of nature into the very scale where it disappears, is again ‘Great’ - unfathomable, encompassing.
The word god is like the word great, in many ways. At least the word ‘divine’ is. And this is really the form of god-hood that we can understand and apply most concretely.
The idea that God created the universe means that man needed to interpret his existence. That God is great means that man had interpreted his existence as being rooted in greatness.
These are all stories made up by men, and the stories are really stories about the men that made them up.
) I only get angry when people are condescending or rude.
