Atheism and morality

[NoahsFarce]

You keep changing your position. Originally you said he had no reason. Now you are saying he has a reason. What reason? He doesn't give a damn about the survival of the species. What's that to him? He doesn't care. He wants to disembowel a prostitute and he's going to die very shortly. He has everything to gain and nothing to lose by doing so. YOu can go on about 'the species' all you like - he doesn't care about the species.

Now, let's go back again - does he have reason not to disembowel the prostitute? (And this time do stick to one answer!)

Oh no you don't. Don't you dare try to trap me with semantics.

I said Jack has no reason not to kill the prostitute... I was speaking from his perspective.

You then told me that you didn't want his perspective. Okay then, in that case, he has plenty of reason not to. But his disorder blinds him from this.

Which answer do you effin want? From his perspective or mine? THIS TIME BE EFFIN CLEAR ABOUT IT AND STICK TO IT. Don't play these games with me. It won't work.

And thank you captain obvious for pointing out that Jacky boy doesn't care about the species. No where did I ever posit that he did.

This is now the third time you have shown to either:

1) Lack reading comprehension

or

2) Just plain not give a flying fuck about what anyone says to you because all you want to do here is hear yourself talk.

I'm beginning to think it's the latter.

[Rahul]

He doesn't have any personal abhorrence. He likes disembowelling prostitutes. It is his thing. Just as you like eating rice pudding and watching nature documentaries he likes disembowelling prostitutes. it doesn't upset him in the least. He likes it. And he's about to die. He's go nothing to lose.
Now, does he have any reason not to disembowel a prostitute?

Then him believing in a sky daddy isn't going to stop him from disembowelling a prostitute.

Why do you think it would? Jesus forgives all sins if you are truly repentant.

If Hitler himself (yeah, I went there) asked Jesus to forgive him of his sins before he bit down on that Cyanide capsule while simultaniously putting a bullet through his head while the Soviets overran Berlin, he'd go to Heaven.

So where is the big motivator to not do evil?

Christianity gives you a free pass. You can consider yourself to be "good" even while doing truly horrific things.

Atheists don't have that pass.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Here's how he'll pay for his horrible acts.

People who care about the prostitute might retaliate by going after him, if he's still alive, or going after someone he cares about. If that doesn't happen, and word gets out about what he did, people closely related to him would suffer the discrimination and would be shunned because people are afraid of them. The publicity itself would be enough to ruin family businesses and friendships. Even family members would disown him. But this dude will probably go on with his horrible plan because anyone crazy enough to hatch a plan like that clearly doesn't care about anyone else. But the things I mentioned would still happen, and it'll make it harder for his offsprings to have successful relationships and have kids and eventually his gene will die off from the population.

[downbeatplumb]

Jack really loves disembowelling prostitutes. He bloody loves it! He's got terminal cancer and is going to die next week. He decides he'll disembowel one last prostitute for old time's sake.

Well it sounds like Jack is not a very nice man and will disembowel that prostitute no matter what.

If you think he has reason not to disembowel a prostitute but do not believe there is any god or afterlife kindly explain.

People do kill prostitutes you know!
Many of them deeply religious people so I can't see what your point is here.

[Creed of Heresy]

This can all be summed up in a very very simplistic manner.

Personality dictates everything.

Everyone wants a nice, ordered reason as to where morality comes from in an objective sense but in truth iobjective morality just an abstract concept and there is no determining factor for it. It's just a goal, an idea, and a powerful one at that. We don't understand where morality ACTUALLY comes from right now other than just someone saying "this is bad" and someone else going "yeah it is," and then another person going "this is good" and someone else going "yeah I agree." There are reasons for it, too. Person A can say to Person B "this is bad," and Person B can say "Why is that?" And then Person A explains why he feels this way. There's always a reason for it, even if it's not concrete. It's not solid and set in stone because if it WAS, then everyone would have the same moral values, but we don't.

Disemboweling prostitutes is wrong. To pre-emptively answer the question: Because if it was me, I wouldn't want to be disemboweled. So why would I disembowel someone else? This is where my moral grounding comes from. Jack thinks disemboweling prostitutes is fun. Well, if he thinks that way, and he acts upon it, then perhaps in equal exchange someone should disembowel him. If his own disembowelment happened immediately after his disembowelment of someone else, he might suddenly think he has a reason to, well, not disembowel prostitutes. Reasonably speaking, if he spent his entire life thinking "I really want to disembowel a prostitute," he's not going to hold himself back and only give in once death is knocking on his door. He's already a psychopath. Death isn't going to give him the guts; he's gonna do it regardless.

---

Now, the question of course is boiled down to "where does morality come from, and how valid is it?"

Well, evolutionary biologists think it comes from group selection, but it's a topic of controversy and debate, something that hasn't yet been nailed down.

The answer, therefore, is "I don't know."

I don't know where morality comes from, I don't know why it exists, and I don't know why my own system of morality is the way it is. But I'm not about to start inventing reasons for its existence, such as "it must be god," because there is no evidence of that other than unfounded claims. And worse than not knowing something is making claims without basis, and just as bad as that is believing claims without basis, because it is taking a shortcut in the pursuit of knowledge to an easy answer for a difficult question.

Better to say "I don't know" than to say "it must be god." Because unless you are privvy to some higher level of knowledge than we all are in regards to this, you don't actually know, either. And if you ARE privvy to this knowledge and are refusing to share it...then you're an asshole and we have no reason to believe you until you actually show the information and prove it as well. And by the way, proving the information will require a lot more than just pointing at a dusty old book and saying "THIS HAS ALL THE ANSWERS!" For such a difficult question, the answer will need to be very complex and flawless at every turn for such certainty.

[FallentoReason]

Better to say "I don't know" than to say "it must be god." Because unless you are privvy to some higher level of knowledge than we all are in regards to this, you don't actually know, either. And if you ARE privvy to this knowledge and are refusing to share it...then you're an asshole and we have no reason to believe you until you actually show the information and prove it as well. And by the way, proving the information will require a lot more than just pointing at a dusty old book and saying "THIS HAS ALL THE ANSWERS!" For such a difficult question, the answer will need to be very complex and flawless at every turn for such certainty.

As far as I can tell, he's a sort of Deist. This of course means that he *doesn't* have experiential justifications for believing morals to be the works of a god. Therefore, the *only* other justification is one of philosophical reasoning. Well... 38 pages later and all we have are the bare assertions without so much as an attempt to show why *objective morals* exist.

C'mon Inigo... show us the money already.

[Creed of Heresy]

That's the problem with deism. It's a claim of something existing without even a claim. It's the most clear-cut version of "goddidit."

As a certain creator of the planetary orrary is credited with saying... "It works just fine without that hypothesis."

[FallentoReason]

That's the problem with deism. It's a claim of something existing without even a claim. It's the most clear-cut version of "goddidit."

In his defence (and speaking for myself) Deism is appealing because it cuts out all the superstitional bullcrap and gets down to the last plausible proposition: God exists. Forget miracles, dead men coming alive, prayer, divine command theory, salvation, divine justice blah blah blah.. all of that has been refuted by science (the study of God's Creation) and reasoning from the Deist's p.o.v. therefore, I'd say Deism is the most modest claim out of all the supernatural claims.

[Creed of Heresy]

Sure, but it is still technically a god of the gaps kind of thing. It's certainly the weakest form of theism [hence why it gets its own term as deism] and it's definitely the most easy to reconcile with logical thinking. It sure doesn't try to make specific claims and honestly given the choice between deism and every other belief system out there, I'd certainly rather associate with deists than the rest. Still it's one of those things where I have to point out; "are you sure god exists?" Then again it's very broadly defined...god could be the universe and it wouldn't necessarily need to be conscious.

Of course if you go that route, you must throw out concepts of objective morality...something Inigo clearly isn't doing.

[FallentoReason]

Yeah, lately I don't really associate with Deism as much as I used to because the reasoning behind it is lacking... but if there were a few sound arguments, then I'd say Deism would have the best of both worlds.

As for our friend Inigo here.. I have no idea why he's even bothering. Clearly it's an emotionally presupposed belief that isn't budging, much like a cancer patient refusing to believe they will die. Rationality doesn't mix well with it, clearly.