RE: What is our role
November 17, 2015 at 12:58 pm
(This post was last modified: November 17, 2015 at 12:59 pm by Edwardo Piet.)
Who is "our"? As humans or as atheists?
As atheists we contribute by not believing in gods, we may talk about it if we so wish, on the forums we clearly do. But it's no requirement of not believing.
As humans we all have different opinions on what is right to contribute, or indeed what is right or wrong at all. However, to paraphrase Sam Harris, I will say that if the word "bad" means anything it would at least mean the worst possible misery for everyone. Once we can agree that that is bad then we can then speak about how some situations must be objectively closer to or further away from that hypothetical worst possible misery for everyone. We can speak about it objectively in principle. Some situations are objectively more miserable than others in principle whether we can test that or not in practice. And of course there is both epistemological objectivity and ontological objectivity so that is how science can study subjective experience objectively.
As atheists we contribute by not believing in gods, we may talk about it if we so wish, on the forums we clearly do. But it's no requirement of not believing.
As humans we all have different opinions on what is right to contribute, or indeed what is right or wrong at all. However, to paraphrase Sam Harris, I will say that if the word "bad" means anything it would at least mean the worst possible misery for everyone. Once we can agree that that is bad then we can then speak about how some situations must be objectively closer to or further away from that hypothetical worst possible misery for everyone. We can speak about it objectively in principle. Some situations are objectively more miserable than others in principle whether we can test that or not in practice. And of course there is both epistemological objectivity and ontological objectivity so that is how science can study subjective experience objectively.
