Moral Atheism

[rainshine87]

@Mach

Morals are not related to religion, they are related to what people deem to be good, or bad, and behaviors that are said to be good, or bad.
-Mach

In my opinion, they are related to religion, assuming we relate religion back to God and not just to an organisation calling themselves ‘the christians’, ‘the muslims’, etc. Though considering you claim to have found ‘ultimate truth’, you’re probably not willing to accept any ideas from anyone else. That’s not me being snide, that’s just logical psychology. Anyone who truly believes he has the whole truth will not see it as necessary to pay attention to anyone else.

[vfr]

@rainshine87

Having been a theist since fairly early on in my study of philosophy, I’ve often contemplated on moral atheism. I’ve tried to figure out what justification there is for it. I’ve even tried asking a number of atheists, but found that they generally try to dip the question or change the subject. So I thought, though it has probably come up before, I’d start a topic on here.
Here is a a hopefully not too imperfect summation of my conclusions:

If man’s entire existence is inherently meaningless, then so is anything that he creates, or that is born in him. If there is no good reason for existence, then there is no good reason for morality, and the practice thereof. It seems clear to me that atheists should approach morality in the same way that they approach God: “There is no reason or evidence to support the belief that there is any meaning in morality, so it should be considered a ‘chance’ phenomenon”. Some atheists might of course reply, “Morality is a force which I feel inside me, and I would rather yield to that force than fight against it” - a perfectly fair reply. But what that person should surely never do is exhort anyone to morality, for, according to such logic, obeying moral law is simply a choice, and there is no right or wrong choice (right and wrong being both meaningless concepts themselves).

I don’t share this opinion, being a theist. I’m of the opinion that the ‘good’ is that which draws us together, towards our original nature, one of oneness, and leads us toward our ultimate goal, whatever specifically that may be. Hence, killing each other is bad because, not only does doing violence to ourselves (us all being a part of the one) make any sense logically, but killing and wars turn us back towards barbarous animalism, and will lead us to devolution rather than evolution. This is why I feel love to be the greatest force, for it is that which draws us together.

I don’t mean to antagonize any atheists with this. As I said, I’ve tried raising the subject before and it’s generally had a pretty hostile reception. I remember one person saying simply, “You just don’t like atheists, do you!”. Which is a preposterous claim, I assure you.

I’m interested in your thoughts on the subject, so that, if I’m correct, we can build on the theory, and if I’m mistaken, I can correct myself. For I’m a truth-seeker, and hopefully there are others on the board of a similar disposition, that surely being the aim of philosophy.

Hope I don’t sound at all pretentious, I’m pretty new to the board so I don’t know how we all communicate here yet. Oh, and it would be good if replies were worded in a fairly understandable way. I’m no academic, and I suspect there are plenty of laymen on the forum who would like to join in on the debates.

There is a use for virtue or moral behavior outside of the need to believe in God…it promotes peace within…that is the reward of living a virtuous life.

Atheists have little or no connection with their inner peace and they do not operate under a fear of God, so they are left to their own devices.

As such, atheist have no authenticity in their peace practice, but are ‘fear based’ practitioners just as many theists are.

The secular humanists talks a good talk…but in the end they have no incentive to do right other than the fear of pain from breaking man made laws.

Lets look at a few of these atheists to get at the facts:

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=509.0

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=529.0

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=630.0

Until atheists become peace based, they will fail at being ‘humane humans’ just as theists fail, since most theists are not authentic in their practice and run by fear as well.

Fear of the law, fear of God, fear of bad karma, fear of hell…those fears do not make one ‘authentic’ in one’s peace practice.

Take away fear of the law, fear of God, fear of bad karma, fear of hell and you have a different person.

Does the thief that does not steal because a policeman is looking a truly honest person?

A truly virtuous life remains the same irrespective of such fears and is not based on them.

Really the ‘religion of the atheists’ AKA secular humanism does not fail the atheist…it is the atheist that fails to make use of the wisdom that their religion offers them.

See:

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=640.0

The atheists failure is rooted in motivational ignorance and lack of desire.

Until one sees a need to adopt a certain moral direction why would one adopt it?

And motivation and direction is solely based on inner peace and a desire to achieve it and not destroy others inner peace.

But, the atheist is ignorant of what inner peace means, how to achieve inner peace as well as what destroys others inner peace.

A good start to see what does motivate oneself is to ask yourself why you wish to do something?

Is it for inner peace?

Or to massage your ego?

Or scared to go to hell?

Or because it feels good?

Or to improve ones karmic debt?

Or because others say so?

Or to hurt another?

Or to fit in…as Peter van Velzen had expressed?

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=646.0

What is your driving force?

Fear based reasons for doing something are not authentic and natural actions.

The persons actions are based on negative consequences otherwise they would not do them.

My actions are based on inner peace and if I stray - there goes my peace - it is my choice.

Put your inner peace foremost and you will have your answer. When you align real and authentic actions with those that promote inner peace you have found enlightenment.

The facts are this: when people are devoid of religion…they generally stink as humans.

Until atheism can replace theist based religion as a VIABLE and REAL way to inner peace, with a reverence of humanity, it can never take over the world and extinguish religion.

When you get rid of one thing, it makes room for another.

Sure atheist can succeed at pointing to the flaws of religious thought, but they have nothing to replace the flaws with.

So theists choose the lesser of two evils while on earth, with the hopes of hitting the jackpot in the hereafter.

When atheists become successes at ‘the religion of humanity,’ you may become more successful at replacing theist based religion.

Until that time…“a mans mind may be likened to a garden which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must and will bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless ‘weed seeds’ will fall therein and will continue to produce their kind.” ~ James Allen

And religion does a good job at controlling the weeds.

In its history, organized atheism has never succeeded at replacing religion with real humanity and compassion.

The atheists talk a good story, but atheists fail miserably when it comes to practical application of the ‘peace talk.’

And really the vast majority of atheists don’t even have ‘the talk’ to spout, since they have no semblance of inner peace themselves in order to form a basis of ‘lip service’ to pontificate.

Another reason atheists will never win, is in general it takes hatred to fuel atheism if one is a dogmatic, militant atheist.

Hatred blinds one to peace.

See:

groups.google.com/group/alt.phil … 12a06f9ddf

When you lose the hatred and militant foundation, then you do not wish to destroy others or their religion…you are at peace to let them be religious.

Sure you do not let others destroy you with religion, you tell them the facts that they run by faith, so do not get too high and mighty and start forcing you into the religion against your will.

But you only fight in a measured way of self defense, instead of the offensive atheists that sets out to destroy ‘all faith based beliefs’ just for the sheer joy of hurting another.

Sure tearing others down appeals to one’s ego and pride, but so did torturing insects when we were kids. When we grow up we need a different way to find self worth.

As you instill seeds of peace within others you plant the same seeds and water these seeds within you as well.

As you give so you receive.

Is that from the bible or karma?

No, it is just universal law.

Do we like to be beaten down?

Whenever we take it upon ourselves to beat down others, we are headed in a direction of destroying peace. We destroy our own peace as well as others peace.

It takes no energy from me to pass something by and leave it alone in peace. But it takes my energy as well as my peace to pick something up to destroy it.

When I posted this paragraph earlier, an atheist piped to accuse me of hypocrisy, telling me that I destroy a potato when I pick it up to eat it, so I am a liar.

Natural law dictates I must eat, but there is no law that says I must spew venom from my mouth to destroy others.

If atheists can get over fishing for red herrings and get onto bigger fish to fry they will see a world of difference in their peace practice.

The destruction of inner peace by destroying potatoes comes about when I destroy my neighbors crop field of potatoes by poisoning them to bankrupt him in order to take over his farmland…it does not come about by eating a potato.

The God of Nature gives me potatoes to eat, the God of Inner Peace tells me to not eat potatoes in excess or to destroy others if I wish to be at peace. I cannot see either God, I know not how these God’s work, I just know they are and I can abide by their guidance or be defiant to these Gods and end up destroying my life and the lives of others.

See:

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=342.0

Yes, there are theists that stink. See: jesusneverexisted.com/burning.html

I will be the first to admit that religion has done lots of harm but I will also say religion done lots of right.

And just as the question of God cannot be answered with any certainty, so goes the question of whether the world would have been better off without religion or not.

It is a question that cannot be answered like it was in the movie "It’s a Wonderful life.’

But lets look at the facts and see that the vast, vast majority of people are theists or believe in hereafter, so the pot is enormous that we draw from when we pull out examples of evildoing theists that the atheists like to parade around.

The USA was founded with God in the details. I suggest atheists that hate a religious based country like the USA move to China or Russia. Then you can live your dream right now, in your God free country.

In China, it was a common practice to execute political prisoners with one bullet to the head…then they sent the bill for the bullet to the family of the executed prisoner. That is where separation of state and religion can lead a country. Once religion is out of politics, then the only thing left in control is ego.

They say Hitler was a Catholic?

I don’t know if he was Catholic or not.

I do know that Hitler did not practice even the most basic tenants of Christianity.

It takes more than lip service to be a ‘practicing’ Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu or Hebrew follower.

See:

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=380.0

groups.google.com/group/alt.athe … df88ba1701

Now, some 'spiritually based atheist’s can far surpasses many theists in kindness and virtue many times…so it just depends on what ‘type of atheist’ you are talking about?

But these sort of atheists are very rare to encounter, as spiritual values and atheism do not generally mix.

“People that practice religion are worried about going to hell - people that practice spirituality have already been to hell and don’t want to go back.”

A lot of atheists I run into make their intellect their God. They do not know that academic smarts are not the same as peace smarts. Until they can transcend their ego they will never find the answer (peace) they seek.

It is the same for those that think money is all that is standing between them and happiness.

So it goes for the ego and intellect based person that is devoid of spiritual values.

And if the atheists is honest they will see they do not run their lives solely by logic and are no better than the theist that runs their lives by faith.

No, logic only goes so far in life. For what is logical is not always practical when it comes to humans … is it?

Always remember…one thing only goes so far with giving a person a good life. Seek balance.

Spiritual growth as well as humans are not perfect - but we can all do better at being humans if we try to be more humane.

See:

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … ?topic=4.0

There are many flavors of atheists…natural atheists, personal atheists, explicit atheists, implicit atheists weak atheists, strong atheists, discovery atheists, reactionary atheists, indoctrinated atheists and of course the bad ass atheists with attitude aka BAAWA varieties.

But the defining characteristic that leads an atheist to peace is whether they are a ‘spiritual based atheist’ or ‘defiance based atheist.’’

The business of humanism is ‘all our business’ if we with to live life at peace. Egocentricity is not good for spiritual work and we need to be open to others ideas and embrace them as nourishment for your growth and sustenance for life - as no one person is god.

As a freethinking agnostic I AM FREE to look for truth wherever the road takes me. I discriminate against no one. As such, I study with the Christians, the Buddhists, the Jews, the Muslims, the Taoists and even find truth as I study with the atheists.

See:

jesusneverexisted.org/jne/forum/ … opic=470.0

When you practice peace promotion with others you will reap inner peace promotion. When you practice destroying others peace, you will reap self destruction of inner peace.

I suggest any atheists wishing to find inner peace within their life adopt the creed of the atheists (their version of prepackaged morals) and start actually practicing the wisdom that their religion of secular humanism offers them.

The ‘informal creed’ of atheism.

An Atheist loves his fellow man instead of god. An Atheist believes that heaven is something for which we should work now – here on earth for all men together to enjoy.

An Atheist believes that he can get no help through prayer but that he must find in himself the inner conviction, and strength to meet life, to grapple with it, to subdue it and enjoy it.

An Atheist believes that only in a knowledge of himself and a knowledge of his fellow man can he find the understanding that will help to a life of fulfillment. He seeks to know himself and his fellow man rather than to know a god. An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church.

An Atheist believes that a deed must be done instead of a prayer said.

An Atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanquished, war eliminated. He wants man to understand and love man.

He wants an ethical way of life. He believes that we cannot rely on a god or channel action into prayer nor hope for an end of troubles in a hereafter.

He believes that we are our brother’s keepers; and are keepers of our own lives; that we are responsible persons and the job is here and the time is now.”

atheists.org/Atheism/

“The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles”

• We are committed to the application of reason and science to the understanding of the universe and to the solving of human problems.

• We deplore efforts to denigrate human intelligence, to seek to explain the world in supernatural terms, and to look outside nature for salvation.

• We believe that scientific discovery and technology can contribute to the betterment of human life.

• We believe in an open and pluralistic society and that democracy is the best guarantee of protecting human rights from authoritarian elites and repressive majorities.

• We are committed to the principle of the separation of church and state.

• We cultivate the arts of negotiation and compromise as a means of resolving differences and achieving mutual understanding.

• We are concerned with securing justice and fairness in society and with eliminating discrimination and intolerance.

• We believe in supporting the disadvantaged and the handicapped so that they will be able to help themselves.

• We attempt to transcend divisive parochial loyalties based on race, religion, gender, nationality, creed, class, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and strive to work together for the common good of humanity.

• We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.

• We believe in enjoying life here and now and in developing our creative talents to their fullest.

• We believe in the cultivation of moral excellence.

• We respect the right to privacy. Mature adults should be allowed to fulfill their aspirations, to express their sexual preferences, to exercise reproductive freedom, to have access to comprehensive and informed health-care, and to die with dignity.

• We believe in the common moral decencies: altruism, integrity, honesty, truthfulness, responsibility. Humanist ethics is amenable to critical, rational guidance. There are normative standards that we discover together. Moral principles are tested by their consequences.

• We are deeply concerned with the moral education of our children. We want to nourish reason and compassion.

• We are engaged by the arts no less than by the sciences.

• We are citizens of the universe and are excited by discoveries still to be made in the cosmos.

• We are skeptical of untested claims to knowledge, and we are open to novel ideas and seek new departures in our thinking.

• We affirm humanism as a realistic alternative to theologies of despair and ideologies of violence and as a source of rich personal significance and genuine satisfaction in the service to others.

• We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guilt or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness, and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality.

• We believe in the fullest realization of the best and noblest that we are capable of as human beings.

Council for Secular Humanism

Take care,

V (Male)

Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
AA#2

[Mach]

@rainshine87

In my opinion, they are related to religion, assuming we relate religion back to God and not just to an organisation calling themselves ‘the christians’, ‘the muslims’, etc.

Yet there are an infinite number of conceivable gods, and thus an infinite number of contradictory morals. Morality in your definition then has no real meaning, other than the meaning I already communicated to you, namely that it’s whatever you claim it to be. Whether or not you use God A or God B, or yourself, it matters not.

Though considering you claim to have found ‘ultimate truth’, you’re probably not willing to accept any ideas from anyone else. That’s not me being snide, that’s just logical psychology. Anyone who truly believes he has the whole truth will not see it as necessary to pay attention to anyone else.

I have not claimed to find “the ultimate truth”. However, for you to suggest that 1+1=2 has a different answer than 2, would be silly. Why would you think reality likewise offers up multiple true answers?

Futher, you may claim I will not listen, or will not reply, yet here am I both reading, and replying, while attempting to stay correct and answer and demonstate, and take objections seriously.

You may think the “truth” is some hidden and complex and ambiguous thing, yet when I ask you “Is it true you typed on a keyboard”, oddly enough the answer to you is quite easy (and I don’t know the answer).

So, if truth is that easy to be had, why are you accusing me of being crazy if I think I know, for instance, I’m typing on a keyboard?

-Mach

[rainshine87]

@d0rkyd00d

So if a suicide bomber says, “It’s a good thing to kill loads of people”, he is essentially right (or at least, not wrong), in your view, because all morality is subjective. Correct me if I got that wrong.

Well, it’s a small correction, but an important one. He is wrong in my view. He is right in his view. That’s where the subjective morality comes into play. But while his justification for it being “good” is that he is pleasing whatever God he worships per the words of the Koran, my justification that it is bad is as follows:

Using a religious example was a stupid idea, it was just the first thing that came to my mind. A serial killer would perhaps have been better.

You also commented on how it is ‘bad’ because it hurts people - that is again rooted in subjectivity. Because if our existence and life has no meaning, then neither does our pain. I can see that we’re getting into the philosophy of language with people picking apart the use of the words ‘moral’, ‘bad’ and ‘good’. I assumed people would have the same conception of these things as me, perhaps a naive idea. If you use ‘bad’ as meaning something which damages individuals, then you still assume that an ‘individual’ is the center of everything - a concept with meaning. Similarly if you use ‘bad’ to denote something which damages society, you get different conclusions (a poorly written section there). But if our lives are meaningless, neither the individual or society has any inherent worth. We are like woodshavings from a tree who imbue meaning into their being on the floor other than ‘a consequence of the destruction of bark’. That’s a crap analogy, of course, because it presumes the existence of a tree, which most of the bark vehemently deny. (Hey, that analogy turned out all right in the end )

Society would crumble if people followed the logical conclusions of atheism, because atheism, it seems to me, says that our lives and our societies have no real worth, no point to them. Which would lead the majority to see the self as all, and to act in abject selfishness. Why hasn’t this happened yet? Well, It’ll sound pretentious, and all of you will hate me for saying so, but I think it’s because most atheists have neglected to think out the logic of how meaningless and pointless it makes everything we consider worthwhile, and how it turns morality to nothing but an imaginary concept. And for those who say that atheist morality is logical, as it is what is good for men - fair enough, but what is good for ‘men’ is not necessarily good for ‘a man’. If a man suffers for the sake of society, he is suffering for nothing, because society is meaningless. I can’t say I would want to live if I believed that my whole life did not have an objective. I’m with Aristotle with regards to his opinion on the worthlessness of ‘amusements’ and ‘fun’. I may be biased on this point, because I’ve experienced life as an uphill struggle, and wouldn’t see the point in carrying on if there’s no point in it. I’d also find it hard to believe anyone who claimed that their life was peaches and cream, I’ve not seen edenic bliss anywhere.
You also think that the earth is going to be destroyed one day. That makes me wonder even more, why do you want to bother building up society? If you knew a house was going to fall down at the roofing ceremony, would you continue to build it? I asked someone that question before, and he said, “Yes, if it makes me feel good. I would try and make the best out of a bad situation.” That seems to me an incredibly defeatist position, a grasping at straws. I think it was Nietzsche who said 'Man would rather have the void for his purpose than be void of purpose." Though I might well be misinterpreting that, knowing Nietzsche.
I think Dawkins generally has a rather biased view on God because of his hatred for organised religion. Feel free to deny that you ever have any desire to do ‘bad’ things. If stealing makes life easier, and there’s no real reason not to do it, why not? It’s a painful fact, but without a higher purpose, the only point to life is self-fulfilment, which for many people would mean violence and such like. I might be wrong about all this, but this is the way I see it.
So you could say that you thought my rape of your wife (please forgive me for that gross, gross example) was wrong, but you couldn’t uphold a law against me, because it’s subjective, and if everyone has different views on a thing, we can’t rightly make a law in relation to it. Doing so would essentially be doing something which religions often do, punishing someone because they did something you considered to be wrong personally. You could call me a ‘criminal’ like religions call people ‘heretics’, because they do things which disagree with what, according to atheism, is essentially just their opinion.
Regarding evolution: if evolution is just a meaningless morphing of matter what’s the point in trying to evolve? It’s like a piece of plastic going, “I must work hard to become a piece of wood”.
Your comment about ‘making the best of it’ generally sums up the opinions I’ve heard from other atheists. Forgive me if it’s wrong of me, but I find that pretty depressing, and would consider mass suicide a better solution. I also find having children, if you’re a convinced atheist, to be a very cruel thing to do (I can feel the hatred coming towards me already), for is it not cruel to bring a child into the world only to tell him that he has no real reason to be here? You brought him into the world - he spends his time staring into the void - he ceases to exist. That seems a pretty cruel thing to subject someone to, to me - to subject a child to the pain of knowing that his life means nothing and that anything he finds subjective value in and anyone he loves are going to disappear into a black nothingness along with himself. You give birth to a child because you like the idea - he spends his whole life suffering and struggling, sisphus-like, against a door which will never open - and then he experiences the abject terror of death. Perhaps I’m mistaken in my interpretation of this. But anyone who says that “life is actually a really great experience for most people” is surely not looking around. A man loses his wife - her existence meant nothing - his tears mean nothing. What’s the point in continuing in such a pattern? I suppose I’m with Amery on this one (the existentialist who killed himself), we should exterminate the entire species. Even according to morality, that would surely be the kind thing to do. It’s Okay for the animals, they can’t contemplate their own existence, for any man who can, is life not just a prolonged funeral?
I can’t help but think that the only thing to do is follow Pascal’s wager, or at least remain agnostic, until we are completely and absolutely sure that there is nothing above us and no purpose to our life. Otherwise I can see nothing but destruction.

I got carried away emotionally there, which is a recipe for disaster, and will probably spell the death of my reputation on this board. I’m honestly not just trying to upset atheists, this is just the way it appears to me. I also don’t want any of you to kill yourself.
Peace.

[rainshine87]

@aporia

How does the argument in the last sentence work? You wrote

P: Obeying moral law is a choice and there is no right or wrong choice
therefore
C: a person “should surely never” exhort anyone else to morality.

Your premise P just said there are no right and wrong choices. So what do you mean by “should surely never”? Does that indicate that such exhortations are a wrong choice? You just denied that there were right and wrong choices!

Perfectly true. I should rather have said that ‘it would by hypocritical’ to do so, rather than ‘they should never’.

[Sauwelios]

@rainshine87

If man’s entire existence is inherently meaningless, then so is anything that he creates, or that is born in him. If there is no good reason for existence, then there is no good reason for morality, and the practice thereof. It seems clear to me that atheists should approach morality in the same way that they approach God: “There is no reason or evidence to support the belief that there is any meaning in morality, so it should be considered a ‘chance’ phenomenon”. Some atheists might of course reply, “Morality is a force which I feel inside me, and I would rather yield to that force than fight against it” - a perfectly fair reply. But what that person should surely never do is exhort anyone to morality, for, according to such logic, obeying moral law is simply a choice, and there is no right or wrong choice (right and wrong being both meaningless concepts themselves).

This is spot-on. I give you a quote:

“The politically loudest form of contemporary jackass worship is the democratic-socialistic effort to embrace the christian morality while destroying the last vestiges of the traditional Christian faith responsible for that morality.
Contemporary democratic “liberation” movements generally despise traditional Christian orthodoxy while asserting the supreme goodness of its compassion for suffering, impoverished humanity. They insist that men have a right to life, freedom and equality. Had they been tough enough to experience uncompromising atheism, they would see no compelling reason for these rights or for any morality.”
[Harry Neumann, Liberalism, page 155.]

[Ingenium]

@rainshine87

With regards to your first question, you pretty much have pegged what I mean. Yes, it seems to me the only reason to believe that morality has any objectivity would be that it originated from some source above us and is instilled in us for some purpose. Now, some might say that morality is in our genes, and that gives it objectivity, which is a fair point. But that doesn’t explain why we should yield to something, or consider it logical, just because it is in our genes. It may explain why we act ‘morally’, but psychically we seem to have outgrown our ‘base’, if you will, indicated by the fact that we can deny our instinct. Something being ‘genetic’ is not a good reason to assent to it if genetics and the whole of man in general is just an accidental meaningless phenomenon.

It seems to me that your statement ‘the only reason to believe that morality has any objectivity’ already assumes that it must have any objectivity. Why? What leads you to conclude that moral objectivity is a given? You haven’t given your definition of ‘good’ yet, so we haven’t reached consensus as to what ‘good’ actually is, let alone determined how or why it exists as a moral value. Is ‘good’ a quality or a property of things? Is it intrinsic to things? That is to say, can one automatically infer that something is good just by virtue of it being that particular thing? Is it something factual about a thing, or is it a standard or a way of measuring something about things (which raises the question, are some things better than others)? Or is it that which gives human beings purpose for living? Is it happiness? Comfort?

And a response like “It’s all of those things” will fail to illuminate much about your position of morality, theistic or otherwise. If you choose any of the above, or something else, please explain your theistic support for it.

As to your second question, I must say I’m a little unsure about whether to explain. Not because I think it rests on weak foundations (I’m always willing to be proved wrong),

So is the part in parentheses an acknowledgement that, despite holding the belief, you’re open to the idea that you could be mistaken about it?

…but because it might end with this topic descending into people tearing apart my personal theology and using that to show how I “must be wrong” in this because my other theological ideas are incomplete. I do not associate myself with any particular religion. In fact, I find organised religion goes against my ideals because it often sets out a dogma and says that there is nothing beyond that. The whole point behind Christianity, according to Jesus, was that it always keep evolving further towards perfection, and never stop moving until it gets there. “He who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God.” According to this conclusion most of the Christian churches are anti-christian organisations because they suppress growth (Yep, I’ve been reading Tolstoy).

So is good then ‘perfection’?

Let’s acknowledge up front that you’re offering up opinions related to a global morality, not your own personal moral code. You set that as the standard in your OP. And I have no intention of ‘tearing apart your personal theology’; however, if you’re going to use it as your foundation for this discussion of atheism v. god belief and morality, you’ll have to expect that it’s going to be subjected to questioning on that foundation, capisce? Let me try to make the point clear…of course you’re entitled to believe however you want. But any assertions you make using your personal belief as a foundation under this topic of ‘global’ morality will need to be supported with something other than ‘because god declares it so’. (Although I can also address that particular one, if need be. ) Otherwise, it could degenerate exactly as you fear, into a debate on whether or not each person believes in the existence of a particular form of god.

This is essentially philosophical discussion that you’re having with both god believers and atheists (and a smattering of ‘neither of the aboves’). IMO, theology and philosophy have pretty much the same subject matter (in this case, “the basis of morality”), and ask the same questions. The only difference is that the philosopher gets more choices in terms of suitable answers.

I believe that we are all a part of God, or ‘The One’, if you’d prefer. Each one of us is “a splinter of the infinite deity”, as Carl Jung would have it. We are many and one, each being a center which reflects back on the whole. We are here for a purpose. That purpose I am not entirely sure on, but I tend to agree with Colin Wilson that part of it is somehow to “colonise this difficult and inhospitable realm of matter and to imbue it with the force of life”.

So is good then “the force of life”?

I believe in evolution, but one thing that seems to be neglected is the obvious evolution of consciousness. I’ll quote again, because it’ll be more clear than if I try and explain it: “'Consciousness is trying to force entry into matter, as the sea might try to force a small hole in a dyke. ‘In the amoeba, then, you might say the impulse has manufactured a very small leak through which free activity could be inserted into the world, and the progress of evolution has been the gradual enlargement of this leak.’ A dog or cat is a bigger leak still. But man is the biggest leak so far.” This conclusion became much more clear to me upon reading Pierre Tielhard de Chardin’s ‘The Phenomenon of Man’. If you really want to get the jist of it, I recommend reading that. He also seems to have been greatly influenced by Plotinus, who I’m just coming to read now. The appearance of reflective consciousness in man seems to be a massive evolutional leap, us now seemingly having the mental ability to contemplate our reason for living and carry it out. All the animals previous to us have not had that ability, and hence they have remained generally inert and unable to progress and build.

I have no serious disagreement with you concerning the evolution of consciousness when it comes to humans and beasts, but don’t see the connection between that and ‘all of us being part of God or The One,’ unless you’re suggesting that our human consciousness is evolving such that conceivably we’ll eventually have what could be described as a mass mind meld with this “One”.

As for my ideas on morality, I don’t pretend to have a perfect idea of what is moral and what is immoral. I believe morality is within us all, being inherent in the part of us, our consciousness, which is an aspect of God. This is why I believe it right to follow morality, for it comes from God, and us being a part of God, he has our interests, or rather we have our own interests at heart.

This seems to imply that it’s necessary to have faith to be good. If those who don’t believe in God behave in ways that conform to the God-based morality (which of course they frequently do) that you note is ‘inherent in the part of us, our consciousness, which is an aspect of God’, are those behaviors nevertheless immoral because they’re the behaviors of atheists? Does this mean then, that the particular god belief itself is the arbiter of goodness, and not any particular act?

I generally base my morality on the inner guide, but even more so on logic related to my beliefs, or ‘Logos’ perhaps, which I relate to ‘Universal Reason’. Universal love, for example, is surely logical, because we are all from the same source, not just brothers, but fragments of the same ‘one’ - ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ - and our purpose is the same, so fighting is stupid! I would love and forgive a murderer, because I see him both as my brother, and a man who has not realised his own true inner being, which leads him to thinking he is completely seperate from everyone else, as many of us do, which understandably leads to confusion and a lessening of love and caring for others.

Do you think that there could be reasonable alternatives to believing in “God” or “The One” that might lead an individual to an understanding of inseparableness or interdependence? Could, for example, an individual thoughtfully observe the world around her and realize that no phenomena could exist independently? And that it would be possible to come to this conclusion without the additional inquiry as to how all the phenomena got there in the first place?

Is your ability to ‘love and forgive’ a murderer indicative of goodness? Is it a moral choice?

If you want my specific opinion on a moral issue, you’ll have to put it to me,

Okay, then let’s start with the ‘goodness’ issue.

…though as I said, I don’t claim to be totally clear, because our consciousness is being rooted through the material body, and because the body retains many of our animal aspects, morality often becomes clouded or conflicts with instinct and animalism. So essentially I consider morality ‘objective’ but I realise that we aren’t all completely aware of it and we don’t all completely understand it. This is what leads to ‘sin’, in my opinion. I don’t, at this time, believe in a literal force for evil, any sort of devil.

“Sin” being the opposite of good? If there’s a force for good (which you seem to imply), wouldn’t there necessarily have to be a force for evil? Otherwise how can that be?

The devil seems to me an analogy for, firstly, the animal aspects of man which conflict with his spiritual self leading to error, and secondly, the product of the ego when it considers itself totally seperate and does not see the unity in all. As for hell, I consider it the state of distress that comes about when, after death, one realises that he has wasted his entire life in doing things counter to his own true destiny.

And then what? Does anything happen after he realizes this waste?

Is there no consequence for having done things ‘counter to his own true destiny’? How would you complete the sentence, “Thou shall not steal and if thou does, then ______.”

I think morality is from our higher godly self, and is so logically something to aspire to, as well as being the pointer which will most greatly aid us in carrying out what we are here to do, which I believe to be a specific task. The common religious idea that we are just here to prove ourselves worthy is one I find barbarous and not fitting with an all loving God. Material life, cutting us off from our home and our true self, would to me seem unnecessarily cruel if it did not have a good reason. Though, as I’ve said, I don’t pretend to know exactly what that reason is, I have but theories and inklings. I am staying with this system at the moment because most of what I’ve thrown at it has fitted in like a puzzle. If I ever come across anything which smashes it to bits, I’ll be willing to think again.

So if I read this right, then you believe there’s a particular task, not necessarily known by a human, but one that has been determined by the ‘all loving God’ for that human to accomplish. Aside from the obvious question as to how the task can be accomplished if it is unknown, I again would ask if the atheist has a task established, as well. Is the basis for the atheists’ lack of morality then, in your view, that he or she won’t ever be able to discover the task because he or she won’t first accept that God exists? So he or she will therefore lead an immoral (not for the right reason) life?

BTW, you mostly described where you think morality comes from, but not what it is. I think if we can discuss a little more what ‘good’ is, it would help.

Please, please, don’t let the whole debate move away from the original question and solely towards my own personal theism, which is what happened the last time I brought this up - ending with people essentially spitting bile at me and telling me what a pretentious, elitist, egotistical scumbag I was. Which is actually the reason why I chose to seek out a forum particularly dedicated to philosophy. I hoped that people in such a place would act towards me with their reasoning self rather than emotional one, and think my arguments through rather than, upon seeing they don’t fit in with their current world view, throwing them back at me.

I never make guarantees about where these things go, although I’ve not yet called a god believer a scumbag (‘arrogant’ may have popped up now and then, but usually in the context of being advised of my impending judgment and doom, refrain from that and you’re probably safe…with me at least ). IMO, you’ve chosen a tough row to hoe, and you’ll have to do so carefully. From what you’ve described as your belief, it sounds like cherry-picking from a religious doctrine to suit what feels right to you. That happens all the time and certainly isn’t a crime, but you’ve also linked it to morality in a global sense, which may be challenging to support.

[rainshine87]

@Mach

@rainshine87

In my opinion, they are related to religion, assuming we relate religion back to God and not just to an organisation calling themselves ‘the christians’, ‘the muslims’, etc.

Yet there are an infinite number of conceivable gods, and thus an infinite number of contradictory morals. Morality in your definition then has no real meaning, other than the meaning I already communicated to you, namely that it’s whatever you claim it to be. Whether or not you use God A or God B, or yourself, it matters not.

Hello, forgive me if I misunderstood your assertions of having ‘found truth’. It appeared on the surface to be vulgar egotism, but perhaps that was wrong; please forgive me if it was.

As for the above comment, I never, as far as I know, actually claimed to know exactly what morality was. My question was essentially, if we remove the word ‘morality’: “Why would someone who doesn’t believe man has any objective purpose, and believes that man’s existence has no meaning whatsoever, treat ‘good’ and ‘bad’ as if there were some objective meaning in them?”
The problem with the atheist definition is that ‘good’ can mean whatever a man wants it to mean. What is ‘good’ for a group of men is not necessarily ‘good’ for a single man (Gurdjieff believed that no man ever did anything he believed to be wrong, just things that were good for himself). I believe morality to be passed down from above, or created by God (some might say that it might in term be subjective for God, but that is an unanswerable question) - atheists believe morality to be something imagined, or created by man (or at least, in man, but for no reason whatsoever). But if man’s existence is meaningless, then isn’t everything he creates, including ‘morality’, equally meaningless. And so appeals from any atheists for people to be ‘good’, ‘virtuous’ or ‘moral’ have no justification. If morality is an invention of my ancestors, I’ve no reason to practice it if I don’t want to. Just like atheists have no desire to carry out the religious traditions of their ancestors, because they see no point in it.

I think that’s what I meant anyway.

Another question, for anyone - why does all life have the desire to reproduce, if there is no point in doing so? Is someone going to tell me that it was a coincidence? A certain neutron banged into a certain proton (forgive my science), and out of that came a desire to reproduce? A curious coincidence, no? All seems rather strange to me, though I’ve never really thought about it in that way before. Shouldn’t everything be a bit more anarchic and random if this is all just completely random? I suspect I’m being ignorant, perhaps someone could explain the scientific logic behind it.

[Xunzian]

I discussed your philosophy because the root of your misunderstanding of moral atheism lies in it as well as links to a variety of threads that, I feel, have a certain degree of pertinence to how moral atheism works. For example, I don’t think you’ve adequately responded to either my point about money nor Ucci’s extension of it. That is somewhat reasonable given the assumptions you are bringing into the conversation so it becomes important to discuss those assumptions and show you how they are false.

After all, if the atheists are right, then why does the world function as it does? Furthermore, even if the atheists are incorrect, why are atheists, as a class, less criminal than the average population? Given your assumptions, one would expect the reverse.

[aporia]

@rainshine87

Perfectly true. I should rather have said that ‘it would by hypocritical’ to do so, rather than ‘they should never’.

What is hypocritical about not believing in absolute right and wrong, but nevertheless trying to get others (by persuasion, coercion, etc) to behave according to certain rules? Is believing in absolute right and wrong necessary to such persuasion/coercion? What is morality other than this?

[rainshine87]

Ingenium, my good man, I shall try to clarify the best I can! You guys are really putting me to task tonight. Perhaps I’ll sleep well for once. I expect not, I’ll probably just lay awake until the early hours thinking about what we’ve said.

Your first comment had my mind a little-boggled, but I’ll try and answer it.
What leads me to conclude that morality is objective? Well, obviously I can’t be certain, otherwise I’d prove it to a scientist and change the world! It’s more an educated guess come to from the rest of my research, which obviously I can’t completely consciously remember, let alone explain. I believe I have given my personal definition of good (which I admitted to possibly being wrong or imperfect): It is both that which brings us towards realisation of our true being and that which acts as a lead toward our ultimate goal. In fact, those two essentially go together, for I believe it is necessary to realise our true being before we can fully figure out our goal. The problem is, this is just my ‘subjective’ understanding, so proving ‘universal love’ or anything else to be ‘good’ unless you at least partially agree with my interpretation of ‘the meaning of life’ might be difficult. So, to get you to agree with me, I would first have to convince you of the essentials of the rest of my philosophy, which would be a massive task. This is of course why I would call it ‘theory’ and not ‘fact’. I wouldn’t say ‘good’ is that which ‘gives human beings a purpose for living’. I theorise it as that which ‘guides’ us toward our goal, our purpose. The problem there is that you’ll then ask me whether our goal is good, and then I would be wrong to say ‘yes’ because then I would be saying, “our goal is good because it is that which leads us towards our goal”. So all I could fairly say is that our goal is “what we are here for”. I can see how my definition becomes slippery here. But it’s the best I can do for now. Perhaps the only way I can sort this out is by changing the definition of ‘good’ to the horrendously religious sounding: ‘that which God wills’ (which will perhaps make it slightly more universal, it covering religions and philosophies beside my own) - and say that, though I cannot say our goal is ‘good’ in itself, achieving it is ‘good’. You’ve certainly given me something to think about. I hope that made some sense to you.
I wouldn’t consider happiness ‘good’ in itself unless it aids us in our purpose, I also suspect that it will be a necessary outcome of fulfilling our purpose and heading toward our goal. Comfort is even more spurious, for comfort often leads men to idleness, as it can remove the desire for change. So again, I would only consider it ‘good’ if it aids us in reaching our goal.

So is the part in parentheses an acknowledgement that, despite holding the belief, you’re open to the idea that you could be mistaken about it?

Yes it is. I’m of the belief that, considering we have been reduced to a lower level of consciousness than God, claiming that you were entirely correct in your conception of him would be naive and egotistical. Man’s knowledge is always evolving, to say I have all and everything would be to do as the majority of religion does, and is that which leads many to their disgust with it. We also have the ability to look back through history and observe all the people with massively divergent opinions all claiming that they were right. My ideas are simply those which currently appear most logical to me, and I am quite open in admitting they may be utterly false. I can only hope that I have hit my ball into the right football pitch, I certainly don’t believe that I’ve yet scored a goal. I realise that human knowledge and understanding evolves, scientific and philosophical knowledge included. We’ve currently come to a point drenched in materialism, at which many things are confused. Science passes over such things as ghosts as being ‘not real’ and ‘supernatural’. I don’t believe such things are supernatural. There’s so much evidence for them that it seems clear to me that they are as natural as we are, we just don’t understand them yet. If a scientist claims that science at any one time knows everything and has all the answers, he is being as massively vulgar and ignorant as the philosopher who does the same thing.
A long answer for a simple question!

I hope I have explained your next question about ‘perfection’ in my first answer.
I wasn’t aware that - in the original question I posed, at least - I was using my particular philosophy as a foundation. Though naturally if I ask a question my own beliefs will be implied, just as if you ask me a question about God, your questioning will be coloured by your own beliefs.
I agree with you in regard to theology and philosophy, they both radiate from our selves, so the question of what we are is essentially at the root of both of them. I just interchange the words because ‘philosophy’ is a slightly more wide-ranging term, whilst ‘theology’ is more specific to talk of God.

So is good then “the force of life”?

No, I wouldn’t word it like that. But ‘the force of life’ is undeniably our father and master. Surely no one could disagree with that? (I expect you can ) The force of life is perhaps (remember, that’s just a theory) that which God is trying to bring into matter, ever more fully. The ‘good’ would, in my current opinion, be better applied to that which aids in the ‘bringing of the life force into matter’. If we use my other, slightly different, possible definition, we would say that ‘the bringing of the force of life into the world’ is ‘the will of God’ and therefore it is ‘good’.
So, considering I was unsure of which definition to choose, we could perhaps, for the time being, specify ‘good’ as ‘the will of God and that which aids in its implementation’.
As I’ve said many times, I don’t consider that the end of the matter and the whole truth. It might well be complete rubbish, but I’ll go with it for now, that being the nature of theory. (I really love talking to you guys. I never get to discuss these things, so doing this makes me understand how the ancient Greeks must have felt in their philosophical debates and discussions - 'tis quite wonderful (if rather challenging))

I have no serious disagreement with you concerning the evolution of consciousness when it comes to humans and beasts, but don’t see the connection between that and ‘all of us being part of God or The One,’ unless you’re suggesting that our human consciousness is evolving such that conceivably we’ll eventually have what could be described as a mass mind meld with this “One”.

I’m unsure on that, though I don’t see it as inconceivable. If we as individuals eventually reach our highest level of consciousness, which is presumably the level of God consciousness (us being parts of God), then do we have any need to remain separate? We’ll be thinking in exactly the same manner about exactly the same things, presumably, so why not? I’m sure that, considering your wording, you have some scientific objections to such a possibility. Feel free to share them. I’ll do my best to understand! Like I say, I’m unsure on the issue. I thought it likely until I read Jung’s autobiography and he made a few points which made me question the idea. After all, psychology indicates that our individual consciousnesses don’t seem to be a total oneness - more ‘one and many’, as I spoke of before. My knowledge is still limited on such issues.

This seems to imply that it’s necessary to have faith to be good. If those who don’t believe in God behave in ways that conform to the God-based morality (which of course they frequently do) that you note is ‘inherent in the part of us, our consciousness, which is an aspect of God’, are those behaviors nevertheless immoral because they’re the behaviors of atheists? Does this mean then, that the particular god belief itself is the arbiter of goodness, and not any particular act?

No, not at all. As I say, I feel we have this force of morality within us which impels us towards our goal. From my theistic perspective, I would say that an atheist who acts morally just does so without fully understanding why. That doesn’t make it immoral (I certainly don’t see atheists as immoral, because they truly believe in atheism. If they were to act as an atheist despite being truly a convinced theist, that might be considerable as immoral). Psychology has shown that lots of people follow patterns of behaviour without consciously realising why they are doing so.
So, you might ask, if you’re acting ‘good’ anyway, why do I give a damn if anyone is an atheist or not? Well, firstly, I’m of the opinion that if we don’t fully realise our own being we can only get a certain distance towards our goal before we come to a standstill. It might be difficult to explain why I believe that! I suppose because if we don’t come together and realise our innate oneness, we will not be able to bring forth our true potentials, and not be able to fully bring our true being through into matter. As for what potentials we have as a singular organism that we don’t know of yet, obviously that’s difficult to say. Perhaps such things as ‘telekinesis’ coming to light are an example of things which we will find to utilise.
Secondly, because of the implications of atheism which I expressed in my earlier posts. I believe, perhaps correctly, perhaps mistakenly, that true realisation and instigation of a logical atheism will lead to the downfall of society, perhaps even man, and will perhaps be the destruction of everything we have so far built and achieved. I don’t want us to fail! We’ve already seen a ‘fall to man’, I don’t want to see a ‘retreat of man’. (If that’s at all possible. Some might throw an argument at me that, if true being resides beyond space and time - a theory I’ve been recently toying with - then if we are here now, we must necessarily have already achieved our goal, if we have one. An interesting argument for life after death springs from that. But that’s off-topic, so go ahead and ignore these parenthesis).

Do you think that there could be reasonable alternatives to believing in “God” or “The One” that might lead an individual to an understanding of inseparableness or interdependence? Could, for example, an individual thoughtfully observe the world around her and realize that no phenomena could exist independently? And that it would be possible to come to this conclusion without the additional inquiry as to how all the phenomena got there in the first place?

An interesting question. I’m not sure I’m prepared for an answer. So what I say might be nonsense.
Okay… If atheists believe that consciousness can ‘cease to exist’, then they don’t believe in total interdependence. If the universe existed before we were here, it could presumably continue to exist after we went. When a material object breaks down, that which constituted it goes back into the ‘all’ of the universe. When a man dies, where does his consciousness, or the elements of his consciousness, go? You might say that the consciousness has no existence independent of the brain, of course. But I don’t see that as justified. You may have to explain the logic behind that to me. Because, even if that is so, when something which has electromagnetism as a property (if that makes any sense), dies (or stops functioning), where does the electromagnetism go? Back to the ‘electromagnetic field’, one might assume. If I’m not mistaken, you can’t destroy energy! So you’ll have to show me some examples of things which are similar to consciousness which ‘completely cease to be’. Simply replying, “If a brain dies, then consciousness completely ceases to exist” is not satisfactory, because you would have to explain to me the logic behind ‘ceasing to exist’. I’ve never witnessed anything entirely ‘cease to exist’, neither has science, nor have either of us ever seen ‘nothingness’, either directly or indirectly. Obviously this doesn’t prove the idea that the ‘person’ continues to exist after death, but rather that consciousness must continue to exist in some form. And I would conclude, after much research into ‘the paranormal’ and communication with the dead, that the person does continue to exist, though I cannot prove it. If my science was dreadful there, feel free to shoot it down. Like I say, If I’m wrong, I want you to help me understand why so that I can head towards truth.

Is your ability to ‘love and forgive’ a murderer indicative of goodness? Is it a moral choice?

No, it is a realisation that I am he and he is me, and that the reason he murdered was because he doesn’t realise his true being, true purpose, and inner divinity, like I do (to some extent); or that he was unable to overcome the conflicting forces within him. Surely the fact that he doesn’t realise why what he does is wrong, is equally a reason to love him, and not hate him. You wouldn’t think it right to hate a child because it didn’t understand why it shouldn’t do what it’s mother warned it against. Until the mother explains why, or the child can reason it out, it will not see the point in heeding the warning. Yep, I sound utterly pretentious, but it’s just my imperfect theory.
Hate is always wrong, because it separates us. I don’t see it necessarily as a force which always works on man inevitably, no literal ‘anti-love’ force. It is rather born from man’s confused idea that he is separate from other men, so that the forces within him create conflict and hate is born.
I would be wrong to say it’s ‘not a force’, because it obviously is, but I don’t see it as a force which is inherently present, always acting on our being, rather one born from confusion and conflict.

And then what? Does anything happen after he realizes this waste?
Is there no consequence for having done things ‘counter to his own true destiny’? How would you complete the sentence, “Thou shall not steal and if thou does, then ______.”

No. I presume that, after having his mistakes explained to him, he continues to evolve spiritually as other men do, though perhaps a little more slowly. Another logical conclusion might be reincarnation, which I have seen evidence for, but not enough to conclude that it happens to everyone who fails to use their life well. So currently I’ll have to say I’m unsure on this point.
What I can be sure of, is that, in the light of our previous conclusions, there is no punishment for a man who does wrong (if that’s what you’re getting at). After all, God would essentially be punishing himself, would he not - the man being a part of him? Let us use an analogy: If your leg became diseased, you would be a moron to express hate towards the leg, and hack it off, or smash it to pieces with a hammer in a blind rage. The only logical thing to do is to nurse it back to health, however difficult that might be. If you hurt it more, you are hurting yourself more! This logic also applies to my conception of how one man should act towards another. If I hurt another man, I’m hurting myself. I think Jesus realised this, though perhaps subconsciously, which is why he exhorted us to ‘turn the other cheek’ and ‘love our enemies’. For though a man may appear your enemy, he is not, he is yourself! (No jokes on a man being ‘his own worst enemy’ please ).

So if I read this right, then you believe there’s a particular task, not necessarily known by a human, but one that has been determined by the ‘all loving God’ for that human to accomplish. Aside from the obvious question as to how the task can be accomplished if it is unknown, I again would ask if the atheist has a task established, as well. Is the basis for the atheists’ lack of morality then, in your view, that he or she won’t ever be able to discover the task because he or she won’t first accept that God exists? So he or she will therefore lead an immoral (not for the right reason) life?

Actually, I think we do know our purpose deep down, perhaps in the depths of our subconscious, or some other deep layer of our being. The whole of human history has been us figuring out the world outside of us and inside of us. People think religion is nonsense because it usually mistakenly says ‘this is the whole truth, the only truth, and nothing but the truth’, when it should say, ‘this is the furthest we have currently come in our spiritual journey and it will continue to evolve, so these are just temporary guidelines which should not always be placed above a man’s inner light and insight. This is particularly important because these conclusions are inevitably clouded, them having been filtered through a material, animal medium’, or such like. This inevitably means we can not be perfect at any point (until the end, perhaps), if we don’t fully understand the truth at any time. We can only get glimpses of the truth, and we must build it up. We often look at the massive length of time from the beginning of reflective consciousness until now, and conclude that we have evolved so little that we can’t really have a purpose. But to God, who has existed for all time (and may even be beyond time), the time from Plato to Wittgenstein is very little or nothing. We are always in a state of becoming, this is why religions and philosophies and the people who practice them are always imperfect.
An atheist is not being immoral for he truly believes that there is no God! He is following what he believes to be correct. Of course the atheist has the same task as all men, he just doesn’t realise it (many religious people don’t realise it either). (As I’ve repeated, this is all just my personal, probably temporary, conclusions). Morality is essentially in the action, though as I’ve said, I believe it can only go so far in such a manner before it comes to a standstill. Unless we come to belief and some understanding, we will never go all the way. Personally I’m of the opinion that science will come to a paradigm shift at some point and will begin to realise the existence of ‘psi’, ‘soul’, ‘independent consciousness’, or at least the possibility thereof, and such like. Yes, obviously a man does have to come to at least a limited belief in God, or serious contemplation on the possibility of God, before he will be able to figure out any task we have. For without God he shall see no ‘true’ meaning in anything, and will consider many amazingly striking things as ‘coincidence’ before submitting to the idea that it might have anything to do with any God (Unless perhaps you saw a ghost, or such like. Though many ‘logical’ people who see ghosts often try to write off the idea as being imaged or explainable in other ways). Obviously this makes be sound bad in your eyes, because I’m saying that you have to come to some limited belief in God before you’ll ever figure out what our purpose is, but isn’t that logical anyway? If you don’t believe in the tap, you won’t think of the water as ‘coming’ and ‘going’ somewhere. If you don’t believe in God, you have no reason to even consider anything having ‘divine meaning or reason’.
Of course, I might be wrong, there might not be a specific task, but if there’s not then I cannot yet see another reason for material existence, it being such an uphill struggle. An all-loving God wouldn’t put us / himself to such an incredibly painful and difficult task if there was not a good reason. Presuming he’s not a mad God!

I know I’ve ‘chosen a tough row to hoe’ but, as I feel I might be somewhere in the region of truth, I’m willing to carry on with it even though it may turn out to be wrong and will inevitably bring a lot of negativity and stress my way. I see my duty to God as higher than my duty to myself (them being of course, in my opinion, the same thing - call me mad), so doing what I believe to be ‘good’ is the greatest joy to me, and I only hope that I never become elitist or biased, but always remain a truth-seeker.
My arms and legs hurt like hell right now, after typing all this. But if it helps anyone, even in the slightest, to get a little closer to the truth, it’ll be worth my while.
I may as well finish with a long quote, considering how long this bloody thing has become already (sorry if your eyes and brains hurt). This was once supposedly written through the hand of the medium ‘William Stainton Moses’ by a spirit. Whether you believe in such a possibility or not, it’s compelling and inspiring reading:

“The philanthropist and the philosopher, the man who loves mankind, and the man who loves knowledge for its own sake, these are God’s jewels of priceless value, and of boundless promise. The one, fettered by no restrictions of race or place, of creed or name, embraces in his loving heart the whole brotherhood of humanity. He loves them as friends, as brethren. He asks not what are their opinions, he only sees their wants, and in ministering to them progressive knowledge he is blest. This is the true philanthropist, though frequently the counterfeit, who loves those who think with him, and will help those who fawn on him, and give alms, so the generous deed be well known, robs the fair name of philanthropy of that all-embracing beneficence which is its true mark.
The other, the philosopher, hampered by no theories of what ought to be, and what therefore must be - bound by no subservience to sectarian opinion, to the dogmas of a special school, free from prejudice, receptive of truth, whatever that truth may be, so it be proven - he seeks into mysteries of Divine wisdom, and, searching, finds his happiness. He need have no fear of exhausting the treasures, they are without end. His joy throughout life shall be to gather ever richer stores of knowledge, truer ideas of God. The union of those two - the philanthropist and the philosopher – makes the perfect man. Those who unite the two, progress further than spirits who progress alone.”

Signed, your friend,
Lee (possibly God, possibly You, possibly Plato, possibly Richard Dawkins…)

[Ingenium]

@rainshine87

What leads me to conclude that morality is objective? Well, obviously I can’t be certain, otherwise I’d prove it to a scientist and change the world! It’s more an educated guess come to from the rest of my research, which obviously I can’t completely consciously remember, let alone explain.

Hmm, well until you can explain it, I guess we can also then consider moral relativism to be an option. After all, it’s certainly reasonable that different courses of action may appear sensible, or moral, to rational people who have different ends in mind. Mind you, atheism is not equivalent to moral relativism. I’m just offering it as a reasonable alternative to what you’ve assumed as a given.

I believe I have given my personal definition of good (which I admitted to possibly being wrong or imperfect): It is both that which brings us towards realisation of our true being and that which acts as a lead toward our ultimate goal. In fact, those two essentially go together, for I believe it is necessary to realise our true being before we can fully figure out our goal.

This sort of definition has come out before on ILP (although not in these exact words), and I’m guessing you’ve heard before the serial killer/mass murderer version of the response. That is to say, I wholeheartedly believe my purpose is to achieve “X”, therefore I’m justified in doing it, regardless of the outcome. The end justifies the means.

Then you’re forced to say, 'Well, of course not only must the goal itself be good." (Q: Why? R: Because it comes from a god and the god would only give us goals that can be achieved in a good way) and “of course the means of achieving the goal must also be good.” But there are many circumstances in history where great suffering, destruction and loss of life were considered justified in the pursuit of a ‘greater good’, even considered to be doing god’s will.

I wouldn’t say ‘good’ is that which ‘gives human beings a purpose for living’. I theorise it as that which ‘guides’ us toward our goal, our purpose. The problem there is that you’ll then ask me whether our goal is good, and then I would be wrong to say ‘yes’ because then I would be saying, “our goal is good because it is that which leads us towards our goal”. So all I could fairly say is that our goal is “what we are here for”. I can see how my definition becomes slippery here. But it’s the best I can do for now. Perhaps the only way I can sort this out is by changing the definition of ‘good’ to the horrendously religious sounding: ‘that which God wills’ (which will perhaps make it slightly more universal, it covering religions and philosophies beside my own) - and say that, though I cannot say our goal is ‘good’ in itself, achieving it is ‘good’.

If it’s 'horrendously religious sounding," then isn’t that then your answer? No matter how you try to disguise it, you must eventually resort to the “Because of god” rationale, because there’s nowhere else to take it when you start right at the gate with the god assumption. At some point in the past, you have made the choice (whether consciously or not) that comfort supercedes reason. This must be the case because, taken in reverse, your main argument for theistic morality is that there must be a god because there must be a purpose given to you by that god because there must be a meaning to life for you that is to be realized through both discovering and achieving that purpose.

Yes it is. I’m of the belief that, considering we have been reduced to a lower level of consciousness than God, claiming that you were entirely correct in your conception of him would be naive and egotistical.

So the mistake is not that you’re open to the possibility that there is no god, only that you can’t properly conceive of god? If you admit that it’s possible you’ve mistakenly conceived of god, then how can you be certain that you’ve properly conceived of the purpose given to you by that god?

Man’s knowledge is always evolving…

How has ‘man’s knowledge’ about the truth of god’s existence evolved? Are we any closer to discovering that than we were 2000 years ago? No. About all we can say in terms of advancement is that some behavioral scientists have come up with plausible explanations as to why religion provides humans with a practical context for living a moral life.

Science passes over such things as ghosts as being ‘not real’ and ‘supernatural’. I don’t believe such things are supernatural. There’s so much evidence for them that it seems clear to me that they are as natural as we are, we just don’t understand them yet.

Actually, if you take a closer – and dispassionate – look at the ‘evidence’ available for the supernatural, you’ll see that there’s very little of it that is considered credible. As well, there are reasonable alternative explanations for much of it, including how the human brain perceives and how the human psyche reacts to cope with deep-seated fear.

I wasn’t aware that - in the original question I posed, at least - I was using my particular philosophy as a foundation.

When you identified yourself as a theist in that original post, you weren’t aware that it was your foundation for questioning the possibility or viability of atheistic morality?

No, I wouldn’t word it like that. But ‘the force of life’ is undeniably our father and master.

Then how is it that I CAN deny it and still have ‘the force of life’ within me?

If we as individuals eventually reach our highest level of consciousness, which is presumably the level of God consciousness (us being parts of God), then do we have any need to remain separate?

I’d say that the question instead is why then would humans have any need of a god? Doesn’t this then presume that the god’s purpose is to create humans with an evolving consciousness that eventually turn them all into gods…or that the god belief any human holds now has a built-in obsolescence?

So, you might ask, if you’re acting ‘good’ anyway, why do I give a damn if anyone is an atheist or not? Well, firstly, I’m of the opinion that if we don’t fully realise our own being we can only get a certain distance towards our goal before we come to a standstill.

So it doesn’t matter if an atheist conducts himself throughout his life in a manner equally moral to a god believer, that atheist will always be considered ‘lesser’ morally because of what he has not achieved?

I believe, perhaps correctly, perhaps mistakenly, that true realisation and instigation of a logical atheism will lead to the downfall of society, perhaps even man, and will perhaps be the destruction of everything we have so far built and achieved.

Why? You already know that humans who identify as atheists are capable of moral conduct and ‘building up’. Atheists keep promises, are loyal, do things to benefit other people. You also know that those who identify as god believers are capable of evil and ‘destroying’. Christians break promises, betray, do harm to other people. So what is the rationale that ‘logical atheism’ will be the downfall of society, perhaps even humans? Why wouldn’t it instead be just as attributable to irrational religious belief? Also, if reason can be considered a significant virtue in any other regard than religion, then why do the rules change there? Wouldn’t atheists not be considered more virtuous than people who choose to believe in the irrational, to believe without regard for evidence or its probability?

I don’t want us to fail! We’ve already seen a ‘fall to man’, I don’t want to see a ‘retreat of man’.

Are you implicitly assuming that atheists want, or are resigned, to the concept of ‘failure’? And to what ‘fall to man’ are you referring?

Okay… If atheists believe that consciousness can ‘cease to exist’, then they don’t believe in total interdependence.

Now you’re just making up propositions. I can do that, too, but it won’t get us anywhere.

When a man dies, where does his consciousness, or the elements of his consciousness, go?

Good question. Do you understand that believing it goes somewhere is not the same thing as where it actually does go?

Like I say, If I’m wrong, I want you to help me understand why so that I can head towards truth.

I’m not claiming that you’re not heading toward it. But I can’t tell you what the truth is. We can’t definitively pronounce capital-T Truth, but we can always head in directions. I can only make a case that assuming a god explanation for what happens in life doesn’t provide anything but one alternative. Once you accept that explanation on faith (because it’s impossible to do so through reason), then you’ve chosen to proceed down a particular path with that set of blinders on. The atheist by definition is less limited, since she rejects that explanation and can therefore be open to any and all of the others. That doesn’t mean that all atheists do this, it’s only a characterization of their philosophical path as less limited than a theist’s.

My view is that the questions are all that can be truth; once you pull any of the myriad answers out of the air (and there are as many of these as there are people asking the questions) for whatever reason – it sounds good, it gives ‘meaning’, it helps you to deal with pending death – then you’ve reduced the scope of reasoned inquiry. Like reasoned inquiry into what virtue really is. Or the nature of ‘goodness’. Or meaning. Or fear.

@rainshine87

@Ingenium

Is your ability to ‘love and forgive’ a murderer indicative of goodness? Is it a moral choice?

No, it is a realisation that I am he and he is me, and that the reason he murdered was because he doesn’t realise his true being, true purpose, and inner divinity, like I do (to some extent); or that he was unable to overcome the conflicting forces within him.

“I am he and he is me.” Yet the fact remains that he is a murderer, and I’m guessing that you believe he as a murderer is not you, right? So you are selective in those parts of him that you choose as ‘being you’. Even though you can rationally see that he is many things other than a murderer, you choose to accept just the good parts, the ‘non-murderer’ parts, as it were, even though it defies the evidence of his conduct that lies before you. Why? Do you believe yourself incapable of murder? Does the fact that one ‘realizes inner divinity’ preclude them from committing immoral acts?

Surely the fact that he doesn’t realise why what he does is wrong…

How do you know that he doesn’t realize it? And this also begs the question of how an atheist might be able to make a ‘moral’ choice that murder is wrong because it’s harmful. The atheist might have concern for not harming others because of a respect for other human beings and life. That concern might be considered more virtuous than the concern of a god believer, who could hold the wishes (or commands) of the god higher than humanity. In fact, that’s why it’s quite possible for ‘believers’ to kill in the name of the god they believe in, and feel certain that they are comforming with a ‘higher’ morality.

@rainshine87

@Ingenium

And then what? Does anything happen after he realizes this waste?
Is there no consequence for having done things ‘counter to his own true destiny’? How would you complete the sentence, “Thou shall not steal and if thou does, then ______.”

No. I presume that, after having his mistakes explained to him, he continues to evolve spiritually as other men do, though perhaps a little more slowly.

I was referring to your statement about realizing the waste at the end of life. What happens then? Of course you’re ‘unsure’, but what do you believe? You have figured out what you believe up to that point, but it seems to me that a god believer would consider it necessary to have at least some view of what happens after death.

People think religion is nonsense because it usually mistakenly says ‘this is the whole truth, the only truth, and nothing but the truth’, when it should say, 'this is the furthest we have currently come in our spiritual journey and it will continue to evolve, so these are just temporary guidelines which should not always be placed above a man’s inner light and insight.

In fact, as I’ve already noted, we’ve not evolved at all in terms of figuring out the truth of a god’s existence.

We are always in a state of becoming, this is why religions and philosophies and the people who practice them are always imperfect.

Why? If there is no way to know what perfection is, then it’s equally possible that ‘becoming’ is perfection. And if ‘becoming’ is perfection, then…well, I’ll let you carry on with the thought.

Of course the atheist has the same task as all men, he just doesn’t realise it (many religious people don’t realise it either).

Then I’m glad I’m not a man, because that must be why I can see all sorts of holes in the logic of it, lol.

Unless we come to belief and some understanding, we will never go all the way.

You appear to be equating ‘belief’ and ‘understanding’. I thought you already claimed that we can never go ‘all the way’. Wouldn’t that make us god?

Yes, obviously a man does have to come to at least a limited belief in God, or serious contemplation on the possibility of God, before he will be able to figure out any task we have. For without God he shall see no ‘true’ meaning in anything…

The claim that “without God he shall see no ‘true’ meaning in anything…” sounds a bit like a sermon-tape that’s running through your head. (I’m only saying…) But let’s consider ‘true’ and ‘meaning’.

What is truth? Are there a bunch of lower case ‘t’-truths and then one capital-T Truth? Is this an ultimate truth that’s a secret to humans? If so, is the god the one holding onto that secret? Why? If having this truth would give all humans the meaning they need to be happy, live in peace and understand the purpose of life (which sounds like what you think is moral), then why would the god withhold it from anyone? That doesn’t seem like a virtuous act. It seems like madness. Or maybe it’s because there’s something humans can’t know because it will destroy them. But if, as you say, they’re already being destroyed by ‘atheistic logic’, then is there a point when it won’t make any difference to reveal this ultimate god truth? This can’t be the biblical revelation, because that’s supposed to save some of the humans (the ones who have maintained a dedicated belief in the god), so that theory doesn’t work. Maybe, since the god created the humans, the god understands that the humans must have mystery in order to have something to pursue (like many who would probably be disappointed if there really WAS a mundane explanation for ghosts). This sounds like a mad creator to me. Even an evil one.

Another thing about truth is that it has a relationship with power. For example, if the current administration in Washington knows things that are ‘true’ about the situation in Iraq that they decide to withhold from the American public because it would defeat that same administration’s goal to ‘win the war’, then is that moral? Do you understand why they get to do that (power) and that morality becomes fuzzy when you hold to a standard that truth is hierarchical and one lesser truth can serve a greater one?

As for ‘meaning,’ it’s somewhat circular, since it goes back to determining what’s good. But I’ll say more about the quest for it in a minute.

…and will consider many amazingly striking things as ‘coincidence’ before submitting to the idea that it might have anything to do with any God

Why can’t coincidence be just coincidence? After all, the term just means a perspective, or view, that’s applied to a particular event. If there were a god, does that preclude coincidences? If so, then shouldn’t god believers be banned from using the term? Wouldn’t it be immoral for them to use it?

(Unless perhaps you saw a ghost, or such like. Though many ‘logical’ people who see ghosts often try to write off the idea as being imaged or explainable in other ways).

Well, those would be the ones who just don’t like a good mystery, I guess. But I can’t help but wonder why seeking alternative explanations for the cause of something is a bad thing. Is it better, more moral, to say, 'well, it’s magical, it’s not to be known by humanity and that’s good enough for me!"

Obviously this makes be sound bad in your eyes, because I’m saying that you have to come to some limited belief in God before you’ll ever figure out what our purpose is, but isn’t that logical anyway? If you don’t believe in the tap, you won’t think of the water as ‘coming’ and ‘going’ somewhere. If you don’t believe in God, you have no reason to even consider anything having ‘divine meaning or reason’.

An atheist would deem your linking of ‘divine’ with ‘meaning or reason’ as a revelation of your inability to address the concepts freely, because you’ve already (willingly) surrendered your other options. What I find interesting is the seemingly universal assumption of god believers that atheists don’t also have concerns or questions about purpose and meaning, but that these questions arise in a completely different context than god belief. Or that atheists don’t ponder and worry over the consequences of nihilism as our potential companion in life or that not maintaining belief in god removes those particular tools for living that seem to work for so many others. This lack of empathy with the experience of non belief is, IMO, an outcropping of the idea that non belief is inherently ‘wicked’. In and of itself, non belief is attributable to evil (as a moral absolute), therefore there can be no value in the pursuit of meaning outside of a god belief. Along those lines, atheists don’t even have a convenient explanation like Satan when they seek to come to terms with the massive scope of human evil and suffering. They’re forced to look at the absurdity of it without turning around to get a quick hug and a promise when it gets hard.

So in fact, it could be argued that atheists, by seeking for answers to the ‘meaning of life’ question beyond the comforting belief in ‘god’s greater plan for us’ may perhaps exhibit the virtues of strength, perserverence and courage to a greater degree than the believers do. And in that respect, the atheist path is of greater morality.

Of course, I might be wrong, there might not be a specific task, but if there’s not then I cannot yet see another reason for material existence, it being such an uphill struggle. An all-loving God wouldn’t put us / himself to such an incredibly painful and difficult task if there was not a good reason. Presuming he’s not a mad God!

Well, that’s a distinct possibility that’s quite apparent to atheists, because they can evaluate the madness of the thing without feeling wicked or disloyal to what they’re supposed to be feeling or believing.

[rainshine87]

Okay, thanks for replying, I’ll try and get back to your questions in a short while. However, I’ve been thinking about these things over the last couple of days, and today I typed out some of these thoughts. It seems to me that they might not only make my position much clearer (some of the stuff in your last posts seemed to equate me with other theists who use ‘because God says so’ as an argument, and see that as acceptable, which it isn’t).
You also, if I’m not mistaken, employed the psychological argument, one which I’m fully aware, that I (and all other theists) might simply be ‘fundamentalists’ in that they rely on the idea of God to keep them sane, and if they allowed any thought of atheism to creep in, they would fall apart. This is of course a possibility. It would be stupid of me to deny it. But I could also throw back the counter-argument that it’s the same for an atheist. They may also be deluding themselves en-mass, because if they allowed themselves to fully comprehend the outcome of atheism, they would equally fall apart.
I don’t want to make this a war. I sensed a little hostility in your last post, though that may be due to the fact that you misunderstood my position. I reiterate that my position is just theory. If it were completely backed up by fact, I would reveal it to academics and change the world. Hopefully this post, for those who can be bothered to read it, might clear things up a bit. (However, I still think that my opening argument, about how atheism necessarily makes morality entirely subjective, is logically thought out, and still can’t see clearly what anyone’s problem with it was).
Oh yeah, and in your last reply, you didn’t seem to understand that I actually do believe people (should I stop saying men? I don’t mean to offend) are parts of God, and that we, at our deepest root, are God. It was necessary for me to clarify that (It might be worth you going over all my previous posts).

All atheists must necessarily believe morality to be ‘subjective’, for it is clear that what is ‘good’ for one man is not usually what is ‘good’ for all other men. Because of this we can have no ‘law’ (and so no ‘government’ either), because a law would indicate a right, objective, true set of principles and regulations. But if there is no objectivity in morality, then all men see it as something different. This means that no man can tell another man what is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, for it is only his opinion, it is only ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ for him, and for everyone else that can be completely different. Under theism, God acts as an authority, but under atheism there is no authority whatsoever. The state has no authority, for that is just a collection of men, all with varying opinions on things. So, atheism necessarily means anarchy, which, if there truly is no God, no guide, no objectivity to morality, will undoubtedly lead to the death of society. From this perspective, one can perhaps see the worth of Pascal’s wager (though I would perhaps deign to substitute his terms ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ for ‘success’ and ‘failure’).

Atheists will of course point out that theists themselves have no general consensus on what is true morality. “So,” they will ask, “how on earth are we supposed to figure out any sort of guideline for morality?” Well, logic would seem the best way to approach it. I’m no expert in this area, but on taking just two of my personal beliefs into account, I think I could come up with a rough guideline for morality. The first of those things is that, at their deepest root, all men are actually one being. The second is that we are here for some sort of purpose. Neither of these are unreasonable, though I understand that to get people to agree with my logic on morality I would have to prove the logic behind both of those conclusions, which may be significantly more difficult. So, if we take these two things as given, what becomes clear? Well, the one thing which appears as obvious straight away, is that we must do whatever it takes to realise our true nature, our true oneness. For without doing so, we become ever more distant from our true self, and it is our true self which knows what our task is. Now, I consider ‘good’ as ‘The will of God and that which aids in its implementation’. If implementing the will of God is ‘good’ then it is ‘good’ for us to do whatever is in our power to fully realise what his will specifically is. Moving closer to our true oneness, or becoming more like God, should, logically, help us to understand what his will is. So it is ‘good’ to come together, to synthesise. And what is the greatest force for synthesis? It is love! So, from this we conclude that love is ‘good’. This elucidates my logic.
But let us define ‘bad’, to make it easier to know what is ‘bad’. Logic would tell us that the ‘bad’ is the opposite of the ‘good’. So the ‘bad’ is: ‘That which halts or hinders the progress of the implementation of the will of God’. Some might notice that we have not included in the definition the opposite of ‘the will of God’. That is because I cannot see a clear one. Some might postulate that it is surely ‘the will of the devil’, but as I have explained before, I don’t believe the devil to be an ‘anti-God’, but rather a force formed from conflict in men. Others might prefer us to say ‘that which is not willed by God’, but I’m not sure that that is right, for just because I don’t will something doesn’t mean I am against it, just as if I don’t like something, it does not mean that I actively ‘dislike’ it. But on second thoughts, it becomes clear that in our case, ‘the will of God’, means what he wills ‘for’ something. So the opposite of that would be willing ‘against’ something. So, we have concluded, at least for now, that the ‘bad’ is ‘that which God wills against and that which halts or hinders the implementation of what God wills for’. (This assumes that God activity wills against something, which could be wrong). Necessarily, now, we also need to update our definition of ‘good’ as ‘that which God wills for and that which aids in the implementation of what God wills for’. From these definitions, we can see that ‘love’ still remains as something ‘good’, but we can also now begin to consider what is bad. ‘Hate’ is essentially the force which separates us and draws us apart. This must necessarily then be ‘bad’ for it stops us from realising our divinity, and that which god wills for, and so ‘hinders the implementation of that which God wills for’.
There will inevitably come situations which are likely to cause conflict. If a man loves two people, but these two people still hate each other, how is the man to act towards them. Should he side with one? No, rather, it seems to me, he should stand back from the whole thing, continuing to love and support them both equally. This inevitably means that if one man murders another, it is wrong to actively hate the murderer. At our current point in evolution, it may be impossible for many people to not hate that murderer inside themselves, at least on some level. But they must try to stifle that hate, and not let it get a hold of them, for that leads to such things as revenge and degeneration. We must forgive, and educate. For if a man truly realised that it was in his own interests not to murder, he would not do so – and if he did, it would only be through conflict in himself, perhaps between his animal instinct and his spiritual self, which leads him to do it. We concluded before that such conflict is part of the makeup of ‘the devil’, which leads us towards evil. It is not the killer’s fault, he could not control himself, he should be forgiven!
We could even use this seemingly objective (presuming my beliefs in oneness and purpose aren’t totally wrong) guide for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ with regards to such things as music. What would we, then, say is ‘good’ music? Roughly, I might conclude that it is that which reminds us of our true spiritual selves and that which inspires us to love and to conscious/spiritual progress and growth. ‘Bad’ music, on the other hand, might be music which makes us feel separate and alone and inspires us to hate and to conscious/spiritual retrogression or apathy. Those are just very quick conclusions come up with on the spot. There will always be, whilst we, as individuals, remain ‘different’, a confusing level of subjectivity involved with regards to music, though. For whilst a sad song may make one of us feel completely alone, it may make another realise that there are other people like him who have the same feelings, and struggle with life in the same way. Other things, which could lead to confusion, relate to certain emotions. Angry music, for instance, can be of at least two types. There is that which says, “I hate the world, all people are fools, destruction is good”, and other which says, “This world has faults, many people ignore the faults, we must do something about it”. Two different approaches, the latter being ‘good’, the prior being ‘bad’. Of course, people who like what I might call ‘bad’ music may be deeply offended by my interpretation of this. But even I will admit to occasionally listening to music I consider bad. Bad things often seem very attractive, and it can be very difficult to divorce yourself from them entirely, even if you know you should. This would of course cause problems were my interpretation to be accepted among the general population, it being very difficult for many people to outright give up things that they like. Hence, expecting people to give up such things straight away is ignorant. As long as people are trying, temperance must not be scorned. The Christian church has suffered by not realising this fact. When priests are told that, to carry out their job, they must necessarily completely desist from all sexual activity, this, not surprisingly, causes conflict in them, their sexual instinct coming to blows with their spiritual duty (the devil turns up, you might say). This is why such an inordinate amount of priests end up abusing children. This doesn’t shock me at all. It is inevitable, and so it makes no sense hating the priest for what he does. He was not fully conscious in choosing to sin, the devil made him do it! If I’m to be totally honest, I must admit to fairly regular masturbation, even though I think it a bad thing. I have certainly tried to control my sex drive, but I realise that if I simply stop outright then it will cause conflict. And there’s a possibility that something even worse will happen if I create such a sudden conflict. I am not ‘evil’ because I have a sex drive. We all have sex drives, it is an unavoidable part of our animal nature; it is, as Plato put it ‘a slave-driver’. Upon writing this, I remember reading of Gurdjieff being quoted as expressing a similar idea in Ouspensky’s ‘In Search of the Miraculous’. Though it made some sense to me at the time, it now becomes much more clear.
Let us think of one more example that we could use to elucidate my logic in regards to morality. When a religious extremist believes that he will become blessed and a martyr by killing a large number of ‘infidels’ or ‘heretics’, according to my logic, he is sorely mistaken, for he does the exact opposite of what God wills and hampers the progress of unification. ‘Martyr’ means one who dies or suffers in carrying out God’s will – one who sacrifices his material comfort and even existence for the sake of the divine. According to my logic, such a person as a suicide bomber is no martyr, just a murderer! We should not hold it against him though, for he does not realise what he is doing – “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.”
There is one more important thing to note in relation to morality. We must answer the question: “is it bad to hate the bad?” This is obviously difficult, but we must approach it with the same logic we used before. The force of hate is that which separates us (we could consider love and hate like the dualities of magnetism). So what we are asking is, “is it bad to separate ourselves from the bad?” As shocking as it may seem, the answer is surely, “yes”! For in separating ourselves from the ‘bad’, we become more ‘good’. So, paradoxically, it is alright to hate the bad. But there are things we must take into account in doing so. Though it may be alright to hate the bad, it is not alright to hate bad people, for we have concluded that it is necessary to love all people. So, we should only hate ‘the bad’ in itself, and not the agent through which it manifests. (There is also the danger that a man’s reason may be clouded, and thinking something bad which is not so). And, finally, this brings up the question, “is it ever right to seek good ends through bad means”? No, I don’t believe it is. For in doing so, you sow more seeds of badness into the world, and we shall never purify ourselves through such a means. For if every time you try to reap the badness you sow down more seeds of badness in doing so, you will never be free of badness, and will be moving in a vicious circle, fighting a never-ending battle.

What logic is there for oneness? Here is one possible theory, though my science may be tragically wrong: If all matter is connected, why shouldn’t all consciousness be connected? Does that not make sense? This would certainly explain such things as telepathy, which has been proven, but is largely ignored because it does not fit into the current scientific status quo (See Dean Radin’s book ‘The Conscious Universe’, which is not a new-age book of theory, but a book of mostly facts, with plenty of meta-analysis graphs and diagrams thrown in to please even the most thorough or academic readers). We cannot see with our eyes the connections in matter, yet we know it is so. So why, because there is no visible connection in consciousness, should we refuse to believe that it is all connected. Perhaps my science is wrong, but is not all matter connected through fields? Why should there, then, not be some sort of consciousness field. And if both physical and psychical have fields as a common element, this may also explain why mind can influence matter and matter can influence mind. In relating a field to consciousness it may appear that I am considering ‘mass’ a property of consciousness. This would of course be highly theoretical, and not a view I would be at all confident to align myself with, though it would perhaps bring consciousness more within the scientific spectrum.

In considering myself a part of God, many may think that such a conclusion means that I believe myself to have whole divine knowledge and access to truth. This is not so. Because, in order to force himself down into matter, God had to ‘partition’ himself, like one partitions a hard drive. Now, when a hard drive is partitioned, there is one main partition (God) and the other, we’ll call them lower, partitions (ourselves), though together they are still one. The lower partitions, though one with the main partition, and essentially still ruled by it, can contain only a small part of what the main partition has (unless we revoke the idea of God as all-knowing, in which case perhaps it could be argued that they could also contain ‘different’ information). This gives them a disadvantage in that they cannot think or act with the ability that the primary partition does. If we assume that the main partition is larger than the lower partitions, a lone small partition can achieve very little in comparison to the main one, so that if that higher partition asks it to do something, it may be unable, it not having the adequate information or computing ability necessary. But if the lower partitions band together, they increase both their information (knowledge) and ability significantly. The more they come together, the more they will know, and the closer they will be to the main hard drive, and hence the more capable of carrying out any task that may be assigned to them. All this while, the whole is one, but not in absolute terms. Only when they collectively achieve the full knowledge and ability of the main partition does the hard drive become fully one.
Now, you only need to go back over this, considering the main partition as God, the lower partitions as humans, and the whole hard drive as ‘the one’ and you have a good analogy for our relation to God. (You might also consider the sending of information from the main partition (God) to a lower partition (a man) as insight, or logos (reasoning could be perhaps considered the requesting of information from God. This would explain why ‘Logos’ is alternately translated as both ‘universal reason’ and ‘the word of God’). But only if the lower partition has enough information and ability will it be able to understand and process what it has received, and then it will still be an imperfect understanding, only moving closer to perfection (though never fully getting there until full realisation of ‘the one) when it is shared with other partitions).
This idea originally came to me upon thinking about how God is trying to get into the world. I was thinking about how evolution makes consciousness appear like the work of a virus trying to get into a computer, attempting every configuration and probing every weak spot until it finds a way through, which it seems to have done with man. It was then that the partition analogy, in a much more basic form, came to me.

It seems logical to me that the reason consciousness leaves the body at ‘death’ is because the body has degenerated and is no longer suitable to be a seat for mind. Why from this should we assume that persona must also crumble at death? Some may argue that people mentally degenerate as they get old also, and so that is a reason to treat matter and consciousness as the same. But there are many who, in their old age, are just as clear, or almost as clear, as when they were young. Perhaps age related mental degeneration would be better blamed on the degeneration of the brain rather than of consciousness. When the legs degenerate, it becomes difficult to walk – though a man hasn’t forgotten how to do so. Naturally, then, when the brain degenerates, it becomes difficult to think, though the persona and consciousness itself is perfectly intact. From such a conclusion it would become clear that such things as Alzheimer’s are not diseases of the mind, but of the body. This seems to perhaps be an argument in favour of my previous assertion that the persona continues to exist after death, and that consciousness does not dissipate. To back up my logic more fully, though, it would be necessary to understand why it is that matter decomposes, and, if I’m not mistaken, we don’t.

I might also add a brief note on the question you often hear people ask as to whether God is a man or a woman. Well, physically, the answer is obviously neither, for God (the one) is not a physical being, or at least not in the way we understand the meaning of the term (he certainly doesn’t have a penis and a beard). As for mentally, or in his consciousness, the separation of the two sexes is completely unnecessary. It is a delusion caused by our observation of ourselves, but if we were to look more carefully and consult psychiatry we would realise that our psyche’s have both male and female sides, one taking dominance depending which sex we are physically. This was most likely made so for the sake of evolution. If men were too effeminate, they might not have been able to do things like hunting – aggressive things which are generally far more prominent in the male. Perhaps homosexuality is actually an attempt by God to show us this fact - at our root, in the one, we are neither man nor woman - we are both. Hence, presumably, so is that part of our selves which I consider ‘God’.

[rainshine87]

@Xunzian

I don’t think you’ve adequately responded to either my point about money nor Ucci’s extension of it.

Sorry for taking so long to answer your questions Xunzian. In response to this first one, I’d perhaps be best to sum it up simply:
If all men cease to exist, money becomes worthless. If God ceases to exist, man becomes worthless.
Someone else in this topic said that something is valuable “because we value it”. Similarly, we can only be valuable if something values us. It seems to me, though I may be wrong, that something is not made valuable just because it values itself. If money could value itself, but had no use, would it be ‘valuable’? Two dictionary definitions of ‘value’ are “relative worth, merit, or importance” and “import or meaning; force; significance”.

After all, if the atheists are right, then why does the world function as it does? Furthermore, even if the atheists are incorrect, why are atheists, as a class, less criminal than the average population? Given your assumptions, one would expect the reverse.

That’s pretty much what I was trying to gleam from starting this topic. If atheists do not believe in objective morality, believe that man does not have a purpose, so that what is good for one individual may not be good for another, then why do they - why do you - continue to act as if there is such a thing? You might reply, “because what might not be good for me might be good for the species as a whole”. But if the species as a whole, just like every other species and every other thing in the universe, has no real worth, no real meaning, is simply born of a random chance event, then ‘what is good for the species’ has no meaning or worth at all. Why treat a cosmic accident as if it has some special significance?
A possible explanation for why theists are more criminal than atheists is that a lot of organised religions discourage free-thinking. In fact, it’s almost a pretext in a lot of religions that what they teach you is ‘perfect, whole and full truth’. You are supposed to just sit back and listen to a preacher spouting rhetoric at you. All of this probably means that a lot of people will become mentally lazy. They will look at their scriptures in the mindset: ‘this is whole, unclouded truth. I need make no attempt to interpret it or reason with it in any way’. Understandably, this might lead to a literal interpretation of religious literature, as when people quote passages out of context and say ‘it must be true, it says it here’, or when they quote conflicting passages to suit different times. For example, when a man is looking for peace, he can quote a passage extolling peace, and when he is looking for war, he can quote a passage extolling war. If he were reasonable he would see that there cannot be two ‘truths’. Sadly, a lot of people are not reasonable.

[rainshine87]

@aporia

What is hypocritical about not believing in absolute right and wrong, but nevertheless trying to get others (by persuasion, coercion, etc) to behave according to certain rules? Is believing in absolute right and wrong necessary to such persuasion/coercion? What is morality other than this?

If you don’t believe in objective morality, then you believe it is only subjective. This means that right and wrong can and will be different for every person. A rich man might feel that it’s good to steal, because if he steals it makes him even more rich, or he might think that stealing is wrong because he doesn’t want to lose any of his money. A poor man might feel that stealing is good because it makes him more rich, or that it is wrong because if he is stolen from it makes him even more poor. Who is right and who is wrong? Both of them are both ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, for with subjective morality what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is different for everyone. Hence you can’t enforce rules because then you are just enforcing a single opinion. “Stealing is wrong”, you might say. Not for the homeless man it’s not. If he didn’t steal food, he would die of starvation! That might not matter to everyone else, but to him it does. And in a subjective society, “I’m number one, for nothing beyond me is real”.
The perfect analogy: Preaching morality when you believe it’s only subjective is like not believing that cars are real, but telling a man he should buy a red and not a blue one.

[Xunzian]

The problem is that non-theists maintain their value. I mean, look at the gyrations you have to go through to try and illustrate why non-theists are more moral. Wouldn’t it be easier to just that they are, on average, better educated and materially better off? I’m not saying that atheism causes these things, but I do think that the self-reliance that both creates and arises from these conditions does favor atheistic thinking. Furthermore, looking at some of the nontheistic traditions of the world (Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism), one can see that cultures based on nontheistic traditions (yes, gods often existed but were relegated to unimportant roles and/or roles that were indistinguishable from material reality like “the ocean”) failed to collapse into debauchery.

As for the rest of your justification, you’ve shown how God is a subjective construct (whether or not it exists), as the individual believer can twist the concept into any meaning they so desire. So, for a moment, let’s entertain the idea that God exists. To simplify matters, we’ll assume it is more-or-less along the lines of Judeo-Christian thinking. Keeping in mind what you said, what we have is the idea that God creates man, but then man interacts with God solely through a human perspective (be it Bible, Church, or “inner mystery”) meaning that man’s perception of God is entirely centered on man’s subjective viewpoint. What this means is that, from our human perspective, the only meaningful expression of God we can have is as a reflection of human values. So, you say that money loses its value without man, I would argue that God would likewise lose his value without man. The relationship is contingent.

As a side note, I don’t feel you’ve justified why man loses its meaning without a God. That is, unless you are willing to claim that you have access to God and a complete understanding thereof (which could render my subjectivist comments moot).

[aporia]

If you don’t believe in objective morality, then you believe it is only subjective.

The objective/subjective dichotomy is a false dichotomy. It is not the case that everything either 1) exists like an object independent of its observer or 2) exists only in the mind of an individual with no connection to other people. There is a third alternative – 3) something can exist in many different minds at once while subsisting entirely in those minds. This third alternative is sometimes called “intersubjectivity”.

The value of money is an example of an intersubjective concept. Money has no objective value, but its value is not entirely subjective either. Money does not lose its value if one man decides it is worthless, because the idea of monetary value still exists in the minds of everyone else. Money only loses its value if everyone, intersubjectively, decides it is worthless.

Morality works in the same way. Although it does not exist objectively, for example as God-given tablets, it does exist intersubjectively as a social consensus. We decide together what is moral and what is not. An individual can proclaim that morality no longer applies to him, but he will still be exhorted to morality and punished for immorality because everyone else still demands moral behavior based on the social consensus.

This means that right and wrong can and will be different for every person. A rich man might feel that it’s good to steal, because if he steals it makes him even more rich, or he might think that stealing is wrong because he doesn’t want to lose any of his money. A poor man might feel that stealing is good because it makes him more rich, or that it is wrong because if he is stolen from it makes him even more poor. Who is right and who is wrong? Both of them are both ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, for with subjective morality what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is different for everyone.

Right and wrong are intersubjective concepts as well as subjective. People have their personal feelings about what is right and wrong, but there are also rights and wrongs that are widely agreed upon in a society. Those agreements lead to enforcement of moral rules.

Hence you can’t enforce rules because then you are just enforcing a single opinion.

The agreed-upon, collective opinion is enforced, not a single opinion.

“Stealing is wrong”, you might say. Not for the homeless man it’s not. If he didn’t steal food, he would die of starvation! That might not matter to everyone else, but to him it does. And in a subjective society, “I’m number one, for nothing beyond me is real”.

Morality exists independently of any individual’s opinion (since it is a consensus of many individuals), but it exists only in the minds of that society’s members. Morality is neither objective nor subjective, but intersubjective.

The perfect analogy: Preaching morality when you believe it’s only subjective is like not believing that cars are real, but telling a man he should buy a red and not a blue one.

Cars do not exist intersubjectively, so your analogy encourages the “subjective/objective” dichotomy. However, ideas like the value of money and morality exist intersubjectively.

Preaching morality when you believe it is intersubjective is like saying that morality is not a “real” object like a car, but you still encourage people to be nice to each other anyway.

To conclude, here’s a little thought experiment. Suppose everyone found out tomorrow that God definitely does not exist. Would you immediately defect from the usual morality and lie, cheat, and steal? Or would it possibly occur to you that this would be a very dumb idea? As it turns out, this thought experiment has been run in largely atheistic countries already and people remain pretty moral. So how exactly do your moral theories account for this fact?

[rainshine87]

This sort of definition has come out before on ILP (although not in these exact words), and I’m guessing you’ve heard before the serial killer/mass murderer version of the response. That is to say, I wholeheartedly believe my purpose is to achieve “X”, therefore I’m justified in doing it, regardless of the outcome. The end justifies the means.

You can use the guidelines in my previous post to reason out this one. In a subjective society, the one that the atheist believes in, he’s right. The ‘good’ for him is whatever he feels it is. From my perspective - that we are all one, and that one has a purpose - he is doing an immoral action because by killing his fellow beings he is seperating them from himself, his actions push apart the whole. Murder is not an action imbued with ‘love’, it has nothing in it which will aid us in realising our goal as humans and it stands in the way of a full human unity.

Then you’re forced to say, 'Well, of course not only must the goal itself be good." (Q: Why? R: Because it comes from a god and the god would only give us goals that can be achieved in a good way) and “of course the means of achieving the goal must also be good.” But there are many circumstances in history where great suffering, destruction and loss of life were considered justified in the pursuit of a ‘greater good’, even considered to be doing god’s will.

Again, you can use my guidelines for this. An example of a deed committed for ‘the greater good’ that caused great “suffering, destruction and loss of life” would perhaps be the holocaust. This was obviously not good, according to my definition, because it separates man - it is a hateful action. It says “those men are not as good as us, let us kill them”. In doing so, they unwittingly tear themselves apart. You’ll argue that my initial conclusions, which my whole basis for morality is based on, cannot be proven and so should be ignored. A fair point, and I plan in time to work much more on building up and going over my argument for those two assertions. “Until you have done so”, you may say, “we must remain full atheists”. This is understandable, but I really do fear, for the reasons I have explained multiple times in this thread, that atheism, carried to its logical extremes, will lead to the death of society, if not the death of the entire species (unless science, some time soon, changes its viewpoint on God’s existence). I’m not just on an ego-trip, trying to convert people to act as my disciples. I really do not want man to degenerate or die, because I believe that we are one, and we are here for a purpose. This is why I see a value in Pascal’s wager (though an updated version) which others do not.

If it’s 'horrendously religious sounding," then isn’t that then your answer? No matter how you try to disguise it, you must eventually resort to the “Because of god” rationale, because there’s nowhere else to take it when you start right at the gate with the god assumption. At some point in the past, you have made the choice (whether consciously or not) that comfort supercedes reason. This must be the case because, taken in reverse, your main argument for theistic morality is that there must be a god because there must be a purpose given to you by that god because there must be a meaning to life for you that is to be realized through both discovering and achieving that purpose.

I’ve explained before that my ideas of morality are built on the grounds that we are all one, and that this one has a purpose. The problem is, all theism will essentially fall back to a point beyond which we can see, so it is necessary to say ‘we don’t know’. Why does God put us to the task of bringing spirit into matter? I don’t know. I could of course theorise:
At the big bang everything once unified was thrown out wildly, and though perhaps still being connected on a level, it was no longer completely unified. God’s role is perhaps to connect it all up again, to bring it back to total wholeness and unity. Our job, the penetration of matter with spirit and life, is just a small part of the work that is going on in every corner of the universe, which we are unaware of, to bring about the ‘grand unification’ - which upon full realisation will perhaps result in the end of the universe as we know it.
It’s unanswerable, at our current level of understanding, so we must theorise. Similarly, science has many currently unanswerable questions. If I were to ask, ‘fields are below matter, holding it together, but what is below the fields’, science would only be able to theorise. Replying ‘nothing’ would be as unsatisfactory as replying ‘because of God’. If I ask ‘what’s inside a black hole?’ - until we send something into one, we can only theorise. If someone asks me, “why does this person behave in such and such a way”, I cannot say truthfully without getting to know him first, anything else is just theory. Of course, science also (including people like Richard Dawkins), if questioned about what caused the big bang, will generally reply, “Chance”. But if you look up ‘chance’ in the dictionary, it says: “absence of a cause or an explanation”. So what they actually say is ‘we don’t know’, just as the theist does. Yet despite being exactly the same answer, it is considered more viable. (Theism has at least tried to theorise on the big bang, by saying that ‘will’ caused it. Not an idea I necessarily agree with, for I cannot see a good reason for it. But it’s also not a nonsense theory, considering that recent experiments in psychokinesis (as well as observation of the placebo effect) have shown that mind seemingly can influence matter.)

If you admit that it’s possible you’ve mistakenly conceived of god, then how can you be certain that you’ve properly conceived of the purpose given to you by that god?

I can’t at the moment, I can only look around me - theorise. Which is what I am doing. My conclusion on our purpose, though perhaps being incorrect, is not wildly illogical, as you might think. I recommend reading Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘The Phenomenon of Man’, to elucidate the logic. Even if that’s not our purpose, and our purpose is other, that does not change the fact that atheism, according to very clear logic, if it is logical atheism and not ‘blind’ atheism, will eventually bring about the death of society. Pascal’s wager again pops it’s head up. Which is better, possible life or absolute death?

How has ‘man’s knowledge’ about the truth of god’s existence evolved? Are we any closer to discovering that than we were 2000 years ago? No. About all we can say in terms of advancement is that some behavioral scientists have come up with plausible explanations as to why religion provides humans with a practical context for living a moral life.

As a philosopher, it seems to me that our knowledge has evolved. I believe that science can go hand in hand with philosophy, it just has yet to slot into place (Science generally moves in Paradigm Shifts, so hopefully one is coming). Science is necessary to get us to objective truth, if that’s at all possible. We also now have masses of philosophy, which means more ideas, though philosophy alone cannot find truth. Science and philosophy necessarily must co-exist. If you remove science from philosophy, everything becomes theory - if you remove philosophy from science, everything becomes meaningless. Perhaps Einstein worded it better when he said, “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
The two appear to move in separate directions, but a time will come when everything falls into place, and we realise the two are perfectly aligned (though perhaps it was wrong for me to use the term ‘philosophy’ over ‘religion’ or such like, because there is of course atheist philosophy - So consider ‘theistic philosophy’ what I meant).

Actually, if you take a closer – and dispassionate – look at the ‘evidence’ available for the supernatural, you’ll see that there’s very little of it that is considered credible. As well, there are reasonable alternative explanations for much of it, including how the human brain perceives and how the human psyche reacts to cope with deep-seated fear.

Though I admit that the great mass of ‘evidence’ for ghosts is inconclusive, though compelling (most accounts are far more complex than - a man saw a ghost, he vaguely described it, it vaguely matched someone in a painting on the other side of the house). There’s such a new-age glamour surrounding the whole subject which gives it an air of stupidity it does not deserve. However, saying that all things considered ‘supernatural’ are totally unsupported by evidence would indicate to me that you have yet to see the evidence that I’ve seen. I recommend, forthwith, that you purchase a copy of Dean Radin’s ‘The Conscious Universe’. The man is no quack or new-age theorist, he’s a serious scientist - a trained parapsychologist with a P.H.D. This book includes details - included meta-analysis graphs and diagrams - of the many experiments carried out by him and others. He also explains, reasonably and thoroughly, how his experiments were constantly criticised and picked at by skeptics, possible faults subsequently being corrected, and then criticised and picked at some more, until the experiments had been carried out successfully so many times, and to such a high level (significantly more times and to a higher level than other experiments relating to things which fall within the current scientific world-view) that the skeptics were left completely stunned and dumbfounded, most admitting defeat. There’s even a generally unknown quote from arch-skeptic Carl Sagan in the book. This “astonishing admission” was hidden away by Sagan in a single paragraph at the end of one of his last books:
“At the time of writing there are three claims in the ESP field which, in my opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that by thought alone humans can (barely) affect random number generators in computers; (2) that people under mild sensory deprivation can receive thoughts or images “projected” at them; and (3) that young children sometimes report the details of a previous life, which upon checking turn out to be accurate and which they could not have known about in any other way than reincarnation.”
Anyone who knows the level of Sagan’s skepticism will realise what a leap this is, and will inevitably be spurred on to take the subject a little more seriously, and to look into it more carefully.

When you identified yourself as a theist in that original post, you weren’t aware that it was your foundation for questioning the possibility or viability of atheistic morality?

How would the question have been treated differently if I had not identified myself as a theist? Do we get a different answer?

Then how is it that I CAN deny it and still have ‘the force of life’ within me?

You came to be because of the force of life - life is your father. You would not be without the force of life - life is your master.
Would you deny these statements? If so, on what grounds?

I’d say that the question instead is why then would humans have any need of a god? Doesn’t this then presume that the god’s purpose is to create humans with an evolving consciousness that eventually turn them all into gods…or that the god belief any human holds now has a built-in obsolescence?

No, I theorise (I should probably start using that word instead of ‘believe’) that humans are parts of God which have been partially separated off from the main part of ‘God’ (see my partitioned hard drive analogy, above) to achieve a specific purpose. If God could have fully penetrated matter without creating us, he presumably would have done it, and not gone to such unnecessary waste.

So it doesn’t matter if an atheist conducts himself throughout his life in a manner equally moral to a god believer, that atheist will always be considered ‘lesser’ morally because of what he has not achieved?

Not lesser ‘morally’. Morality is in the action. But he may less fully realise his own being, which makes him lesser in a manner. Many atheists are more moral than a lot of theists, as has been pointed out. Just because a theist believes in God, doesn’t mean they know anything about God. If a man can fix a car but doesn’t know what it is, he’s more useful than someone who knows what it is, but doesn’t have the first clue how to fix it.

Why? You already know that humans who identify as atheists are capable of moral conduct and ‘building up’. Atheists keep promises, are loyal, do things to benefit other people. You also know that those who identify as god believers are capable of evil and ‘destroying’. Christians break promises, betray, do harm to other people. So what is the rationale that ‘logical atheism’ will be the downfall of society, perhaps even humans? Why wouldn’t it instead be just as attributable to irrational religious belief? Also, if reason can be considered a significant virtue in any other regard than religion, then why do the rules change there? Wouldn’t atheists not be considered more virtuous than people who choose to believe in the irrational, to believe without regard for evidence or its probability?

If there is no ‘rules’ for all to follow, then anarchy will inevitably ensue once people figure out that there are no real rules (which might take a little while). If all morality is subjective, a man is right to do what he thinks is good, not what others think is good. I’ve made that argument many times in this post a lot more clearly. You assume that humans are all the same, in that they all consider murder ‘bad’ and helping the poor ‘good’. You only need to look around to see this isn’t the case. I’d say that most people care significantly more about themselves than they do everyone else.
Christians so often do bad things for many reasons. Firstly, Christianity is a dying religion. It is a static religion which refuses to adapt with the times. Outsiders looking in can see the insanity of anti-evolutionist teaching, but they are holding on to something they don’t understand. There are many Christians who take the bible literally. The bible is not meant to be taken so. It is supposed to be interpreted and reasoned with. The old testament in particular, as Jesus makes quite clear numerous times in the new testament, is far from infallible. It is awash with contradictions. As for the new testament, there is a passage at the end of the gospel of John which says, “I have spoken to you in the language of metaphor. A time is coming when I shall speak to you in metaphor no longer, but shall tell you plainly what the Father is.” Could that be made any clearer? Anyone who takes the bible literally, is not a Christian! (as for the time when he shall not speak to us in metaphor, I believe that time to be now, as science and philosophy and religion begin to work hand in hand) Of course, Christianity is not a reasonable religion anyway - not for this day and age at least. The bible often asserts not ‘you should do this because…’, but just ‘you should do this’. Obviously that will undoubtedly lead to people either ignoring a teaching because they don’t understand the impetus behind it (I can actually see the logic behind many of Jesus statements, though a lot of my interpretation relies on the more recent discoveries of science and psychology), or misunderstand the meaning of a teaching and so putting it into practice incorrectly. A Muslim who reads ‘you should kill infidels’ in one section of the Qu’ran uses that as justification, despite the fact that if he read a different section it will say, ‘all killing is wrong’. It’s excusable in the bible, because that was written by many different people, but the Qu’ran, which was supposedly written by one man, should logically be less contradictory. It’s often difficult to know whether the context it comes across in is the one truly meant.
The only thing to do then, is to kill off these old religions, which no longer appeal to our logic, and create a new one, or at least, a new guide for living based on acceptable modern standards. Dogma is bad, as is stasis in religion. The only religion that directly comes to mind which is at all suitable for our age is ‘Unitarian Universalism’, though it is essentially just a collection of people all trying to find the truth through varying different means, and hence some might not consider it a real religion. It also has no specific guides. Until we can find some guide for objective morality, or at least, make a ‘leap of faith’ in choosing a theory as acceptably logical and reasonable to live our lives by, we are lost.
You make a fair point, conflict between varying illogical religions could lead to the destruction of society. However, because these are generally a few large groups, the members within each being in rough agreement, there is not so immediate a risk. For even if members of different religions should kill each other, there are always children to fill the gaps, and so unless we have an all out religious war, the religions can sustain themselves. With atheism and it’s subjective morality, it is not just a few groups, it is every man for himself. This inevitably leads to much greater anarchy. Religious groups can separate themselves off in different corners of the world if necessary, an individual cannot separate himself from many other individuals who think it’s alright to kill him if he ‘looks at them in the wrong way’. Even if groups of atheists who had very similar moral views got together and tried to install some sort of law, they would undoubtedly be met by people who reminded them that, according to their own logic, this ‘law’ is just ‘their opinion’, and would proceed to mow them down with a machine gun.
A lot of the conflict in at least the two most prevalent organised religions - Christianity and Islam - is, it seems to me, caused by misunderstanding of the original message. A good example would be the current conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Muhammad made it quite clear, by banning pictures of him from being made, that the message was infinitely more important than the messenger. So what did Muslims do when they realised they couldn’t deify him? They moved straight on to his two closest relatives. By deifying them, and treating them as if they have some importance for the religion, anyone who is a Sunni or a Shia is essentially being un-Islamic. Christianity does the same thing. It says in the Gospels, something along the lines of, ‘obey not men’. By blindly obeying the dogma of the Church, and treating the pope as somehow special and divine, Catholics are being un-Christian.
What any of this has to do with my original point, I don’t know. Whether a theist acts morally or not is beside the point. Theism, in principle, says that there is one moral law and it is given to us from above, atheism says there is no moral law but that which each of us chooses for himself.

Are you implicitly assuming that atheists want, or are resigned, to the concept of ‘failure’? And to what ‘fall to man’ are you referring?

No, I am implying that an atheist doesn’t believe we have any particular task to fail in.
When I talk of the ‘fall to man’ I am essentially referring to what Christians call the ‘fall of man’. Though they consider it the point where men sinned by partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge - a confused analogy - I consider it to be the point when mankind first appeared and ‘reflective consciousness’ burst forth into the world. My interpretation differs from the Christian idea on a few key points. Here’s a quote from my diary:

“Adam and Eve signify the earliest humans - not literally the first two, but the earliest to evolve as homo-sapiens. In taking fruit from the ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’ they are taking on the burden of consciousness. This was in a way a ‘rise’, in that it rose the level of consciousness that has penetrated into the material world, but it was a ‘fall’ in that, upon this transformation, we took, almost literally, ‘the weight of the world’ onto our backs; it was also a ‘fall’ in that, the extra consciousness that appeared at this time had to come from somewhere, and it could rightly considered to have come ‘from above’, and so it ‘fell’ into the world. The Christians mistake, I think, is their belief that this was somehow ‘forbidden by God’; that we were somehow committing a sin by eating of this fruit. Actually, it was inevitable. We simply evolved to a point where we were capable of rising to the next level of consciousness - that which brought the ability for self-reflection. In doing so we lost that innocence which is a characteristic of the animals. The Christians see this as a terrible thing, as if this innocence, this ignorance, were in itself a heavenly state. But I disagree whole-heartedly that ‘ignorance is bliss’.”

My interpretation, that ‘edenic innocence’ was not a good state to be in, and that man’s conscious evolution was inevitable, seems to throw the Christian idea of ‘original sin’ out the window. I can’t say I’m sad to see it go, I never saw the sense in it.
The fact that an old proto-Christian myth seems to fairly accurately described a point of ‘evolution’ makes you wonder whether, as Carl Jung believed, ‘myth’ is not just pure fiction. Such an idea, that myth contains a primitive sort of insight, would fit with my previously established idea that we can only receive a certain fullness of understanding at any point in our mental evolution.

Now you’re just making up propositions. I can do that, too, but it won’t get us anywhere.

I guess I misunderstood the rather vague term ‘interdependence’. According to atheism, if I die, do you die? If you die, does the sun die? If not, that’s surely not complete interdependence. If I’m talking nonsense, I’d ask that you explain a little more clearly what you mean.

When a man dies, where does his consciousness, or the elements of his consciousness, go?

Good question. Do you understand that believing it goes somewhere is not the same thing as where it actually does go?

Yes, of course I do. I could try and theorise where consciousness goes, but I don’t have the spacio-temporal awareness to know where to begin. I could throw out abstract concepts like ‘a different state’ or ‘another dimension’, but they’d be wholly theoretical and unsatisfactory.
It seems a common view among scientists and atheists that it is logical that consciousness cannot continue in any form after death and must necessarily completely cease to exist. The thing that confuses me there is how they find it logical that anything can completely ‘cease to exist’. I have a whole argument to support this, though it’s rather long, so let’s just say it’s like a mixture between Parmenides theory on being and non-being and sciences inability to observe nothingness either directly or indirectly. ‘Nothing’ is a completely ungrounded concept. Hence, it seems logical that when I die, my consciousness will continue to exist in some form. This does not necessarily mean my persona exists, though elsewhere in this topic I have made it clear that it doesn’t seem illogical. Consciousness and persona does not seem to degrade like the body does, so why should it necessarily come apart on death? It seems people say that it can’t possibly go anywhere just because they can’t yet comprehend where it could go or how it could have an extra-bodily existence. That, however, doesn’t overrule the logic that it cannot ‘cease to exist’.

I’m not claiming that you’re not heading toward it. But I can’t tell you what the truth is. We can’t definitively pronounce capital-T Truth, but we can always head in directions. I can only make a case that assuming a god explanation for what happens in life doesn’t provide anything but one alternative. Once you accept that explanation on faith (because it’s impossible to do so through reason), then you’ve chosen to proceed down a particular path with that set of blinders on. The atheist by definition is less limited, since she rejects that explanation and can therefore be open to any and all of the others. That doesn’t mean that all atheists do this, it’s only a characterization of their philosophical path as less limited than a theist’s.

Isn’t the atheist necessarily limited in the same way as a theist by ‘choosing to proceed down a particular path with that set of blinders on’. If you were an agnostic, it would be different. But by saying ‘this seems most rational to me’ an atheist is doing the same as a theist. “Absence of proof is not proof of absence”! You assume all theists have a complete and utter blind faith. But as I feel I have shown, the idea of God is not completely without foundation, as many atheists treat it. Not all theists are totally illogical, as many great philosophers before us have shown. In fact, theists have a lot of theories on things still not understood by science. Certainly, it’s only theory, but it’s worth pointing out that, if I’m not mistaken, science took for granted the existence of the atom before it had ever observed one.
I still fall back on the main point of this discussion. Rather than turning it into a ‘let’s pick apart rainshine’s theology so that no one will take his inital argument seriously’ debate, perhaps you could return to the original argument - ignoring the fact that I’m a theist, if that would make it easier - and tell me your objections to it. Because the few other people who have added to the post seem to have affirmed that, for atheism, all morality is indeed subjective. If that’s the case, my argument is right, and my theory on the downfall of society is far from unfounded.

“I am he and he is me.” Yet the fact remains that he is a murderer, and I’m guessing that you believe he as a murderer is not you, right? So you are selective in those parts of him that you choose as ‘being you’. Even though you can rationally see that he is many things other than a murderer, you choose to accept just the good parts, the ‘non-murderer’ parts, as it were, even though it defies the evidence of his conduct that lies before you. Why? Do you believe yourself incapable of murder? Does the fact that one ‘realizes inner divinity’ preclude them from committing immoral acts?

Actually, if we’re to be specific, at my root, I am exactly the same as everyone else, and have committed every wrong that they have. So, yes, I am a murderer. Though of course, that is simplifying matters, because in the partitioned situation we are in, each of us with free will, the separated ‘I’ has not killed anyone. As a whole, I am a murderer (though perhaps ‘suicide’, or a ‘self-harmer’ would be better, for the murderer essentially kills a part of himself), but as an individual, I have not murdered anyone in this incarnation.

I was referring to your statement about realizing the waste at the end of life. What happens then? Of course you’re ‘unsure’, but what do you believe? You have figured out what you believe up to that point, but it seems to me that a god believer would consider it necessary to have at least some view of what happens after death.

I meant continues to evolve spiritually in some form of afterlife (though it is not really after-life, for it is a continuation of life). This fits in with my previous comments on the logic that nothing, at its roots can ‘cease to exist’, so continuation of life after so called ‘death’ is not so illogical. Again, you seem to draw the conversation back to attacks on my personal theology. Whether theism or atheism is most logical is not relevant to the topic, which is how atheists justify the objectification of morality, when atheism necessarily means it is only subjective.

We are always in a state of becoming, this is why religions and philosophies and the people who practice them are always imperfect.

Why? If there is no way to know what perfection is, then it’s equally possible that ‘becoming’ is perfection. And if ‘becoming’ is perfection, then…well, I’ll let you carry on with the thought.

I think you need to read my comment (which you quoted) again.
I said that we are in a state of becoming so are ‘imperfect’. You seemingly took it as me saying - we are in a state of becoming and so are ‘perfect’, which makes no sense, anything which is constantly evolving can’t at any point be perfect, at least until it finishes evolving.
The word ‘perfect’ is a slightly useless one anyway, which I prefer not to employ. What is the highest ideal of perfection in our understanding is probably not the highest ideal of perfection for whatever is above us. ‘Perfection’ also assumes an end - ends and beginnings are human concepts based on our form of sentience which, as great scientists have pointed out, is not necessarily absolute. If I’m not mistaken, Kant would agree with them.

Then I’m glad I’m not a man, because that must be why I can see all sorts of holes in the logic of it, lol.

I use the term ‘man’ to mean human, not ‘male’.

You appear to be equating ‘belief’ and ‘understanding’. I thought you already claimed that we can never go ‘all the way’. Wouldn’t that make us god?

Yes.

The claim that “without God he shall see no ‘true’ meaning in anything…” sounds a bit like a sermon-tape that’s running through your head. (I’m only saying…) But let’s consider ‘true’ and ‘meaning’.

Poor use of words. Forgive me. I meant to say - will see no ‘objectivity’ in meaning.

Why can’t coincidence be just coincidence? After all, the term just means a perspective, or view, that’s applied to a particular event. If there were a god, does that preclude coincidences? If so, then shouldn’t god believers be banned from using the term? Wouldn’t it be immoral for them to use it?

Actually, I was referring to the depth of many peoples skepticism. I see no problem with people being skeptical, in fact, it’s very important, but when they have piles after piles of evidence thrown at their feet and still say ‘no, this is nonsense’ just because it doesn’t fit into their current world view, you get a sense of ‘fundamentalism’ from them. Refusing to even consider well attested, though strange, phenomena, just because you’re not comfortable with the idea. I’m not saying that all atheists or scientists act in such a way, it was just a general comment about an observation.

Well, those would be the ones who just don’t like a good mystery, I guess. But I can’t help but wonder why seeking alternative explanations for the cause of something is a bad thing. Is it better, more moral, to say, 'well, it’s magical, it’s not to be known by humanity and that’s good enough for me!"

Not at all, it’s good to look at all possible explanations. As for the paranormal being ‘magical’, and upon seeing a ghost, saying, “I couldn’t possibly understand such a thing, I must take it as ‘supernatural’ and ask no more”, I find that just as repulsive as you do. But one should at least begin to look seriously into the subject rather than going, “all paranormal phenomena is obviously nonsense, I’ve no need to look at any serious research in the field”. As I mentioned before, I recommend Dean Radin’s book ‘The Conscious Universe’ to everyone who says that all paranormal phenomena must be explained away as something we already fully understand. Carl Sagan would even give you backing to read it, so go ahead!
Science seems to act at any one time as if we know everything there is to know. You can bet that when the idea for quantum physics first turned up there were masses of relativity theorists who said, just as people do to the paranormal, “this is obviously rubbish because it doesn’t fit in with our current theory, which must be right. We’ll ignore it and it’ll probably disappear after a while.”

An atheist would deem your linking of ‘divine’ with ‘meaning or reason’ as a revelation of your inability to address the concepts freely, because you’ve already (willingly) surrendered your other options. What I find interesting is the seemingly universal assumption of god believers that atheists don’t also have concerns or questions about purpose and meaning, but that these questions arise in a completely different context than god belief. Or that atheists don’t ponder and worry over the consequences of nihilism as our potential companion in life or that not maintaining belief in god removes those particular tools for living that seem to work for so many others. This lack of empathy with the experience of non belief is, IMO, an outcropping of the idea that non belief is inherently ‘wicked’. In and of itself, non belief is attributable to evil (as a moral absolute), therefore there can be no value in the pursuit of meaning outside of a god belief. Along those lines, atheists don’t even have a convenient explanation like Satan when they seek to come to terms with the massive scope of human evil and suffering. They’re forced to look at the absurdity of it without turning around to get a quick hug and a promise when it gets hard.

Actually, my relation of divinity to meaning is an outcrop from my opening question, and was perfectly valid (without God, meaning is subjective, etc, etc). My starting this thread was actually to try and figure out why, if atheists agree with my stated logic about moral atheism, still continue to act as if they don’t. I wasn’t presuming that you don’t have worries or fears, in fact, I was showing how, if you only believe in subjective morality, you should generally have a lot more fears than you display. Hopefully you have realised from my previous posts that I don’t equate ‘non-belief’ with wickedness, and that my interpretation of ‘the devil’ is one which is reconciled with both psychology and science. I assume that my coming here and posing such a question has proved that I am far from getting a ‘quick hug and a promise’, but am looking the prospect directly in the face with more open fear than I’ve ever seen any atheist express towards it. It may well be because, in the public eye, atheists generally come out, talk about how atheism is “infinitely more logical than theism” and then retreat without talking about the necessary consequences of widespread atheism. That’s why I posed the question, I want to understand the atheists point of view better.

So in fact, it could be argued that atheists, by seeking for answers to the ‘meaning of life’ question beyond the comforting belief in ‘god’s greater plan for us’ may perhaps exhibit the virtues of strength, perserverence and courage to a greater degree than the believers do. And in that respect, the atheist path is of greater morality.

How could the atheist path be of greater morality, if morality is only subjective - what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ for any individual. In fact, the word makes no sense unless you are talking to me from the perspective of a theist. Is that how you meant it? Because otherwise it just says: “And in that respect, the atheist path is what I personally think is right”. Someone else might consider perseverance bad, because it is wasting energy on something which has no objective purpose.

Anyway, this whole long thing seems somewhat unnecessary. I still don’t see what my theism has to do with the original question.
Forgive me if I come across as at all arrogant, I don’t meant to. My Mum always told me I had a lack of tact, which isn’t something I’d care to develop, it seeming to me to be a mild form of deception.

[rainshine87]

@Xunzian

The problem is that non-theists maintain their value. I mean, look at the gyrations you have to go through to try and illustrate why non-theists are more moral. Wouldn’t it be easier to just that they are, on average, better educated and materially better off? I’m not saying that atheism causes these things, but I do think that the self-reliance that both creates and arises from these conditions does favor atheistic thinking. Furthermore, looking at some of the nontheistic traditions of the world (Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism), one can see that cultures based on nontheistic traditions (yes, gods often existed but were relegated to unimportant roles and/or roles that were indistinguishable from material reality like “the ocean”) failed to collapse into debauchery.

First of all, I don’t see how being materially better off and better educated has anything to do with morality. Is that not more to do with Capitalism’s dominance among the more irreligious nations of the world? We could even postulate that having money and education means that you have got enough money to make sure that you are never left without something to do, and hence are never forced to sit and think about things to do with God. I know a lot of such people, most of them calling themselves atheists because they’ve never really given any though to it, and only know what they have been ‘educated’ to think. Namely, that the idea of God doesn’t fit in with ‘modern scientific understanding’ and that he’s not necessary to give man’s life meaning anyway.
I, myself, am quite poor because I’d rather spend my time in philosophy, trying to comprehend the nature of my life than wasting said life processing spreadsheets for a company run by a man who bathes in champagne. Am I a theist because I’m poor? No. I’m poor because I’m a theist (or a philosopher, anyway). I’m not saying it’s like that for everyone, but it’s worth taking into account. (Now I know why that guy called me ‘sanctimonious’.)
I suspect my dislike for Capitalism came across in all that, so it might be unbiased. The capitalist society appears to me to just put money in place of God. “If you don’t break the law and take your place in society, you can make as much money as you want.” This sounds to me like, “If you act morally and do what the church says you can go to heaven when you die.” A striking comparison, perhaps you’ll agree.

Your point about previous ‘nontheistic’ societies is an interesting one, but I can see a flaw in it. Though they don’t have specific ideas of a Godhead, they do have a significant ‘supernatural’ element. Traditional buddhist beliefs include reincarnation, life after death and karma:
“Following death, according to Tibetan Buddhism, the spirit of the departed goes through a process lasting 49 days that is divided into three stages called “bardos.” At the conclusion of the bardo, the person either enters nirvana or returns to Earth for rebirth.”
It’s worth pointing out that, to me at least, Buddhism appears something of a defeatist religion, the essential aim of it being to completely free yourself from the inevitable suffering of the material world. I might be wrong, but it seems then, that the only ‘purpose’ for Buddhists is escape from the material world and so ‘society’! The cycle of reincarnation is considered a curse, and it is considered imperative to free yourself from this cycle, because material life is a bane. This seems to be equivalent to a desire for suicide.
Taoism also has very noteworthy beliefs in what you might term ‘the supernatural’:
“Taoism places an emphasis on the unity of the universe, the unity of the material world and the spiritual world, the unity of the past, present and future.”
This seems to posit both a ‘spiritual world’ and a belief that being resides beyond time, which would presumably mean a taoist believes that he exists always, and so lives forever (that may be incorrect).
With regards to Confucianism, however, I’m almost tempted to agree with you. However, it seems to generally have an agnostic viewpoint in relation to all such things as God and the afterlife. Rather than denying the possibility of such things, it says ‘we cannot yet know such things’:
“Till you know about the living, how are you to know about the dead?”
Still, it’s food for thought, I’ll take it into account.

As for the rest of your justification, you’ve shown how God is a subjective construct (whether or not it exists), as the individual believer can twist the concept into any meaning they so desire. So, for a moment, let’s entertain the idea that God exists. To simplify matters, we’ll assume it is more-or-less along the lines of Judeo-Christian thinking. Keeping in mind what you said, what we have is the idea that God creates man, but then man interacts with God solely through a human perspective (be it Bible, Church, or “inner mystery”) meaning that man’s perception of God is entirely centered on man’s subjective viewpoint. What this means is that, from our human perspective, the only meaningful expression of God we can have is as a reflection of human values. So, you say that money loses its value without man, I would argue that God would likewise lose his value without man. The relationship is contingent.

Absolutely, I’m completely aware that the ‘God as a subjective construct’ argument is entirely plausible. However, it would be a mistake for me not to point out another alternative. You could consider the differences in religion as the differences in relativity theory and quantum physics. They’re are missing elements which mean that the two won’t completely fit together. Yet should we totally dismiss them just because of this? Is it not possible that they are simply missing the key necessary to make them fit together? Religion, philosophy and science are three parts of a puzzle which has many pieces missing, and until we find them these sections will not fit cleanly together and the whole picture will not be complete.

As a side note, I don’t feel you’ve justified why man loses its meaning without a God. That is, unless you are willing to claim that you have access to God and a complete understanding thereof (which could render my subjectivist comments moot).

Perhaps the best way to proceed would be for you to explain to me why you think man has meaning without a God to put us to purpose.
(No, as I’ve explained, I certainly don’t believe myself to have entire access to truth. I hope it doesn’t come across that way. I try to repeat as often as possible that most of what I type is only theory or logical reasoning. I’ve explained why I think that we don’t, as individuals, have access to higher truth in my ‘partitioned hard drive’ analogy (itself, again, just a theory).

[rainshine87]

Aporia, you’ve actually given me a pretty good understanding of what the atheist considers as morality. So, if I get this right, morality is something invented by man as a guide for the organisation of society?
I had not thought of it as something specifically invented for such a purpose. I suppose that gives it meaning in the sense of ‘meaning’ being ‘having purpose’. So if we consider morality as something completely invented by man, then that explains ‘moral atheism’, presuming all atheists recognize it as just that, and don’t see it as something ‘beyond man’.
So my example of cars was bad because something intersubjective can ‘only exist in the mind’?

Perhaps what leads to particular confusion in regards to morality is the use of the terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’. These terms being used in such a vague manner makes them seem utterly subjective, whereas if one were to say ‘good for keeping society together’ it would be more clear. Perhaps it’s about time that an atheist got to writing an essay on morality, so that what atheists consider as morality was made perfectly clear. Perhaps you could point me towards such an essay, or perhaps you could write one.

(EDIT: I’ve just realised that ‘society’ is also what the Nazi’s had in mind. So tell me, what the hell does an atheist think morality specifically is? Would I have been better if I’d called it something ‘invented by man as a guide for the organisation of an equal society’? No, that seems ‘equally’ as useless a definition. For a Capitalist society is not equal, and according to that definition we would consider communism much more moral and yet seemingly (at least in the west) we don’t. You guys need to help me out with this one.)

Of course, if I’m not mistaken, atheist morality is still essentially worthless if we consider man himself as a meaningless, worthless, random occurrence. Because whatever is created by something meaningless is surely similarly meaningless. By that I mean that if man has no particular purpose, then that which he creates cannot aid him in that purpose. Another way to describe it might be if ‘purpose’ in regards to what we do with our life is completely subjective, then whatever we use to achieve that would similarly be different for each of us, and so ‘subjective’. Unless we all have the same ‘end’ in view to our lives, which I suppose a lot of us actually do. A wife or husband, 2 kids, a house, a car, a dog - for example. Not one which at all appeals to me, but which seems rather to be a ‘common objective’.
Perhaps I’m still talking nonsense, forgive me if I’m getting on your nerves, but I may as well try and get the whole thing as clear as possible.
Would atheists agree that a coincidence has no real meaning?
So if man is just a coincidence, a random accident, then doesn’t he have no inherent worth?