Toaster strudel alliance takes on drugs, atheists and liberalism

[Darkstar]

I think the notion of being responsible is very questionable.

Wow...you're off to a great start...

In a world in which atheism is true, what is the atheist thinker responsible to do? Responsible to provide for self and probably avoid breaking the law. But what is the responsibility atheists have?

You say "atheist thinker". Do you mean to say what responsibilities pertain to the thinker aspect? If you simpy mean what responsibilities in general, you needn't quantify "thinker".

Noam Chomsky talks about the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and challenge power, how can intellectuals carry this out if they are atheists?

????????
Non-sequiter. Or are you saying they can't speak the truth because you pressupose theism to be correct? And why not challenge power? I thought it was the theists* who were suposed to be obedient always. (May or may not apply to non-Abrahamic religions)

It is like they feel they have this responsibility to challenge power, but they have no established authority of exactly how to do that.

What do you mean by this? Do you suppose that the church is the "established authority" by which theists can challenge power? Does it matter if this power is legitimate? Ironically, I would think that the church was itself a form of power to be challenged.

I think it is different for each intellectual. They all have their own ethics and epistemology, and each sort of does whatever they want, obeying the law when it agrees with their ethics, starting revolutions when their beliefs tell them violence is justified.

Hey...that's actually the closest to correct you've come. The only thing I think you may have been mistaken about (unless I draw the wrong conclusion about an assumption you may or may not have made, just that you have assumed this in every post up until now)is "sort of does whatever they want" does not mean hedonism and immorality.

There is a quote out there somewhere, but I can't find it for the life of me. It goes something like this:

People say that in a world with no god you could kill all the people you want. But I already kill all the people I want. None, because I don't want to kill people.

An atheist with morals is not the abberation you make it out to be. People can be responsible without specific rules being laid out for them. Those are only required for those incapable of being responsible without them.