Atheism, A Grim Position?

[Mister Agenda]

Your meaning in life is derived from you. My meaning in life is derived from me. Yours is not mine, and mine is not yours. If you've decided that christianity is your meaning in life, then fine. It's a personal thing.

First off, let me short circuit the Christian thing. I'm not a Christian. My theology derives in large part from philosophical ideas like those found in VishishtAdvaita (qualified monism) and absolute idealism. No savior, heaven, or hell in my beliefs.

What, when it's YOUR beliefs, you don't like people assuming a bunch of stuff about them? Ironic, that.

---

Religious ethics fills in the blank with something supernatural. "Pleasing God", "Getting admission to Heaven", "Achieving Nirvana", whatever.

Atheist ethics fills in the blank with something in this world. What is the purpose of human life? We have our choice on that. "Promoting the health and happiness of my family, friends, adopted circle, and our descendants." "Contributing to the long-run survival of human civilization". "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure." There are a million possibilities.

I get that. So then if "Maximizing my lifetime total of pleasure" entailed killing redheads because it was pleasurable, does that go against atheist ethics? If so, how?

There are no peculiarly atheist or theist ethics. There's centuries of moral philosophy without the assumption of God that you can draw upon for reasons why you shouldn't kill redheads if you like it. It's completely worthless to someone who likes killing redheads though, just as much as religion is. Our prisons are full of theists, theism doesn't have much of a track record for stopping bad people from doing bad things. Secular moral philosophies aren't particularly more successful as far as I know, but they don't claim to be backed by some supernatural power that knows more about turning vicious psychopaths into good productive citizens than we do.

The answer to 'what if I was a psychopath' questions is always 'then you'd be a psychopath'. Morality kind of goes out the window if you're a psychopath. If you like killing redheads, a good explanation of why it's wrong won't stop you. Moral reasoning is really only applicable to people who don't like killing redheads.

---

Wrong: the ultimate basis is called "reality," of which we are individual components thereof, with objectively verifiable natures as biological beings. Due to this, some positions, like genocide and torture and all that, are not equally defensible, and are, in fact, indefensible. You just need to rationally reason through these things, keeping in mind the facts of our biology and the world we live in.

Ok, here's how this would go. I'd ask you why they are indefensible. You'd offer an answer, then I'd ask why that? Next answer. Then I'd ask why that again? On and on. There is no stopping point if there is no ultimate basis of value so any answer would eventually go nowhere or just be a personal (or group) preference. In that case any other position would be just as equally defensible.

'Because God' isn't an explanation, it's admitting you don't have one.

There is nothing such "atheist ethics".

From your previous post "Atheist ethics fills in the blank with something in this world"

It would have been better phrased as 'an atheist's ethics fill in the blanks with things in this world'. There are no 'theist ethics', why should you expect there to be 'atheist ethics'?