Questions

[norbie]

Hello. This is my first official post (besides my introduction post ), so I apologize if I have asked something that another thread has answered.

I just became an Atheist maybe six months ago. Anyway, I have a friend who is devoutly Christian, and he has asked me some of the following questions, which I haven't been able to answer. I am hoping to find those answers here.

1.) If someone is an Atheist and believes in materialism, how do they account for thought? Is human thought just a chemical reaction?

2.) If someone is an Atheist how do they define morality? Christianity's moral system is irrelevant to an Atheist, so how do they define what is right and wrong? Is there even a difference between right and wrong to an Atheist? If there is no creator of the universe, then there is no truth, so there can be no right and wrong for an Atheist, which means that an Atheist believes that cold blooded murder is just fine.

These are some of the things he asks me, and I am not able to defend an Atheist point of view very well. How do y'all account for human thought and morality? Thanks!

(first time poster be gentle with me)


1. I believe we are always unconsciously absorbing information. I think we are a combination of this flood of sensory information. Other factors that shape who we are is our genetics, the food we choose to eat, pollution in our enviroment, the drugs we take, sex, the physical traumas our bodies experience...things that we see as so irrelevant to who we are in fact play a great deal in how our brain responds to any given situation and thus helps defines who we become. I think we're amalgams of the things we experience in our lifetime...from the time we're small children we're constantly absorbing information that we tuck away to access later. We're like computers...garbage in garbage out...the things we've experienced form our actions whether we're aware of it or not. I don't have a soul that will live forever...when my brain dies I die. When my brain undergoes severe trauma my personality...the thing that makes me ME is fundamentally altered. Everything in the universe is based on entropy...everything falls away. We're not meant to be spirits living forever in heaven living out some sort of wish fullment fantasy for eternity...wish fullment can't sustain you for enternity...I reject heaven because it is purposeless...there is no greater good for yourself or for anyone else that you're really working towards...you're just there wasting time. I think we atheists (myself included) fall into the trap that there is no point to life...life is only pointless if you let it be. Our job is to find that purpose for ourselves. We may not believe there is a God with a meaningful purpose who created the universe but that means we have more of a challenge when it comes to finding our own individual purpose in this life. I'm guessing everyone here thinks they're fairly smart...we need to rise to the occassion and use those smarts for some purpose worthy of such a gift instead of giving into moral absolutism, despair and depravity.

2. I believe as atheists it is our responsibility to show that we can be moral because there is always the misconception that we are not moral. I may not be christian but I don't have a problem with a moral framework...because you know I don't think we should kill, or steal or commit adultery...not because God tells me it's wrong but because *I* know it is wrong. To me religion without morality is fanaticism. Atheism without morality is Nihilism.

I think we all have to some sort of code of morality to function in the real world...there are plenty of believers and non believers alike crowding our jail cells who never learned this lesson. I don't think Atheism gives you carte blanche to be a dick. I hate religion because I think it's a millstone around the neck of people with that spark of greatness that really can change this world for the better...it's a tool to keep the masses in check. The problem is...a lot of the masses need to be kept in check. There seem to be more and more crazy people these days.