Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: November 18, 2024, 5:11 pm

Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
How much pain can atheists withstand ?
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
(May 7, 2023 at 6:20 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: More nonsense. Evil acts are determinable whether or not a supreme moral authority exists. In fact, it is much easier (as well as more accurate) to determine if a a particular act is evil if we proceed from the assumption that such an authority does not exist.

All the facts that are available to the humanists your refer to, are also available to the theist. The atheist, however, doesn't have the framework to assess any given situation as bad. A child needlessly starved to death is, strictly speaking, a net evolutionary gain in the cold, indifferent universe that your worldview promotes. A child's starvation to death is evolutionarily beneficial, as there will less vulnerable life forms consuming scarce resources without making any contribution to the world. Not a healthy perspective huh ?

You should refrain from using the word evil from now on, it's very easy to find weaknesses when atheists start babbling about good and evil.

(May 7, 2023 at 6:20 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: The onus is on those people - like yourself - who insist that all moral authority originates with an ineffable, incomprehensible, unknowable Being to point to the starved child and explain why it may or may not be evil. It’s simply no good to say that we can’t understand God - that’s the excuse YOU people invented to get out of addressing evil acts (almost as revolting an idea as karma).

Are you still using the word "evil" ?
Reply
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
(May 7, 2023 at 6:30 pm)The End of Atheism Wrote:
(May 7, 2023 at 6:20 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: More nonsense. Evil acts are determinable whether or not a supreme moral authority exists. In fact, it is much easier (as well as more accurate) to determine if a a particular act is evil if we proceed from the assumption that such an authority does not exist.

All the facts that are available to the humanists your refer to, are also available to the theist. The atheist, however, doesn't have the framework to assess any given situation as bad. A child needlessly starved to death is, strictly speaking, a net evolutionary gain in the cold, indifferent universe that your worldview promotes. A child's starvation to death is evolutionarily beneficial, as there will less vulnerable life forms consuming scarce resources without making any contribution to the world. Not a healthy perspective huh ?

You should refrain from using the word evil from now on, it's very easy to find weaknesses when atheists start babbling about good and evil.

(May 7, 2023 at 6:20 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: The onus is on those people - like yourself - who insist that all moral authority originates with an ineffable, incomprehensible, unknowable Being to point to the starved child and explain why it may or may not be evil. It’s simply no good to say that we can’t understand God - that’s the excuse YOU people invented to get out of addressing evil acts (almost as revolting an idea as karma).

Are you still using the word "evil" ?

Many children starve when resources are not scarce, so your appeal to evolution is bunk. When children starve, I don’t trouble myself by agonizing over whether it was God’s will or because some petty, tinpot warlord interdicted humanitarian aid.

Yes, I’m still using the word ‘evil’. Why would I not?

Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
Reply
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
(May 6, 2023 at 6:51 pm)Astreja Wrote: My definition of evil:  Deliberately causing pain and suffering to a sentient being.

(May 7, 2023 at 5:54 pm)The End of Atheism Wrote: So, deliberately causing pain and suffering to the Nazis is evil ?

If it's possible to stop an evildoer without causing suffering to them, this is preferable to stooping to their level.

(May 7, 2023 at 5:54 pm)The End of Atheism Wrote: With this in mind, it's laughable, almost pitiful, to try and take the higher moral ground with regards to an all-knowing being.

Existential fallacy:  There is no empirical evidence that any all-knowing being exists; therefore, it's pointless to discuss its alleged morality.

(May 7, 2023 at 5:54 pm)The End of Atheism Wrote: Evil in its objective sense is unknowable...

Good and evil are value judgements.  Value judgements are subjective, not objective.  Morality that comes from a god is also subjective, not objective.

(May 7, 2023 at 5:54 pm)The End of Atheism Wrote: Long story short, there is no possible discussion in the first place, and at any rate, certainly not with an atheist or an agnostic.

Then why are you here?  This is a discussion forum for atheists and agnostics.
Reply
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
I've got a wonderful description of evil, for theists who find it hard to comprehend.  Think of the worst thing you could do.  Whatever is worse than that, is evil. Interesting how that dovetails with your own description of hell, right?
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
Reply
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
(May 7, 2023 at 5:54 pm)The End of Atheism Wrote:
(May 6, 2023 at 9:58 pm)Paleophyte Wrote: Give me one good reason why not. Kindly save us your ignorance and read up on chaos theory, emergent behaviour, and self-correcting systems first.

If you think you can avoid these hard questions by rattling off a few titles from pop sci magazines, you're sorely mistaken. Everything you mentioned depends on pre-existing conditions, or initial conditions, without which no life form can ever arise even in a gazillion centuries.

You're telling me that evolution had 4 billion years of "practice". You forgot to mention that before that we had a .. um .. a universe around. An entire universe governed by elegant laws (whose discovery, by the way, was only done by the smartest elements of our species) is the framework within which the evolutionary process took place. This framework is the equivalent of the oven in the analogy above. You need a smart cook to set the right intial conditions for the oven, that will yield, some billions of years later, human beings. The theist sees this is as more evidence of the superbly skillful master agent that set out all this. The atheist, on the other hand, will be happy to posit an infinite regress of ovens in the past, that kept screwing around until a "good" oven arised. This scenario certainly takes a bigger leap of faith than the theistic scenario: the theist posits an elegant and plausible solution: a personal agent intended to bring about human beings so he did all this. The atheistic scenario is manifestly convoluted. All the principles of reasoning favor the theistic scenario: use Occam's razor, the principle of sufficient reason, etc, whatever you want.

You think my worldview is convoluted when your requires an infinitely whatever this time, unknowable, invisible daddy figure? Godidit explains nothing, which is why Occam's razor cuts god's throat every time.

And you're making the classic mistake of looking at the universe being finely tuned from the perspective of life that has evolved to inhabit it. Viewed accurately, the universe is barely sufficient at the present for life to survive on one insignificant ball of dirt. The universe is not well-tuned to suit you, you are well-evolved to survive the universe. Even that you will only manage to do briefly. And it's a passingly odd creator who builds an oven 93 billion light-years across just to get one half-baked planet.

Or perhaps you can explain why god needed dark matter and dark energy.  Popcorn
Reply
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
(May 7, 2023 at 7:36 pm)Astreja Wrote:
(May 7, 2023 at 5:54 pm)The End of Atheism Wrote: So, deliberately causing pain and suffering to the Nazis is evil ?

If it's possible to stop an evildoer without causing suffering to them, this is preferable to stooping to their level.

The person who tortures a rabid dog is one nasty piece of work. Kill it cleanly and have done.
Reply
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
(May 7, 2023 at 6:30 pm)The End of Atheism Wrote: The atheist, however, doesn't have the framework to assess any given situation as bad. 

Christian accusing non-Christians of being immoral is one of the most dangerous Christian delusions there is. It is a straight inquisition mentality.

Thus it reminds me of Mel Brooks playing the inquisitor Torquemada and singing:

We have a mission to convert the Jews -
We're gonna teach them wrong from right
We're gonna help them see the light
- And make an offer that they can't refuse -


Needless to say that this delusion caused Christians to commit countless genocides throughout history on people whom they deemed as immoral.

And the other thing is that religion does not provide morality. Religious people see something as good or bad because their god supposedly said it was good or bad, which is not morality but taboo. So religion provides taboo but not morality.

Morality is when you can explain why something is bad. For example in the movie "Borat" Borat asks some guy if is it ok to make fun of and laugh at retarded people, the guy tells him "no" because these people have family members who would suffer because of it - notice how he does not need god to explain why something is bad, he only uses empathy, and that is because empathy is on what morality is based on. And if you don't have empathy you are a psychopath.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
Reply
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
(May 8, 2023 at 1:24 am)Fake Messiah Wrote:
(May 7, 2023 at 6:30 pm)The End of Atheism Wrote: The atheist, however, doesn't have the framework to assess any given situation as bad. 

Christian accusing non-Christians of being immoral is one of the most dangerous Christian delusions there is. It is a straight inquisition mentality.

Thus it reminds me of Mel Brooks playing the inquisitor Torquemada and singing:

We have a mission to convert the Jews -
We're gonna teach them wrong from right
We're gonna help them see the light
- And make an offer that they can't refuse -


Needless to say that this delusion caused Christians to commit countless genocides throughout history on people whom they deemed as immoral.

And the other thing is that religion does not provide morality. Religious people see something as good or bad because their god supposedly said it was good or bad, which is not morality but taboo. So religion provides taboo but not morality.

Morality is when you can explain why something is bad. For example in the movie "Borat" Borat asks some guy if is it ok to make fun of and laugh at retarded people, the guy tells him "no" because these people have family members who would suffer because of it - notice how he does not need god to explain why something is bad, he only uses empathy, and that is because empathy is on what morality is based on. And if you don't have empathy you are a psychopath.

(Bold mine)

For those deprived enough never to have seen it, it's the greatest Brooks musical number since Lilly von Schtupp's 'I'm Tired':





Boru
‘I can’t be having with this.’ - Esmeralda Weatherwax
Reply
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
Oh, nice to see the new person is still around.

Good for them. Popcorn

Cheers
Reply
RE: How much pain can atheists withstand ?
[Image: 10_16_ChaiTime_Trophy.jpg?w=400]
[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
Reply



Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Are Atheists Afraid to Join Atheists? Asmodeus 10 594 October 26, 2024 at 9:09 am
Last Post: Asmodeus
  Atheists how much do you hate God? Authari 139 12481 June 12, 2024 at 10:50 pm
Last Post: arewethereyet
  [Serious] The Purpose of Pain zwanzig 60 6835 February 9, 2021 at 2:16 pm
Last Post: Nogba
  I enjoy far right atheists more than lgbt marxist atheists Sopra 4 2410 February 28, 2018 at 9:09 pm
Last Post: Edwardo Piet
  Pathos article atheists can identify with. Brian37 6 2375 September 19, 2017 at 10:50 pm
Last Post: Rev. Rye
Question How Much Evidence Will It Take You To Believe In God??? Edward John 370 51839 November 16, 2016 at 4:03 am
Last Post: robvalue
  Atheists: Can You Still Accept X'n Friends? Detachable 76 12941 August 12, 2016 at 10:06 am
Last Post: Jesster
  When Atheists Can't Think Episode 1: No Evidence for God? Delicate 510 98782 December 30, 2015 at 4:48 pm
Last Post: Mister Agenda
  When Atheists Can't Think Episode 2: Proving Atheism False Heat 18 3809 December 22, 2015 at 12:42 pm
Last Post: Edwardo Piet
  True Origins of Man - Ascent to Dominance much more complicated than the bible's tale bussta33 1 1270 December 20, 2015 at 2:42 pm
Last Post: Anomalocaris



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)