(August 4, 2017 at 12:19 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(August 4, 2017 at 11:49 am)Whateverist Wrote: Aren't you really just arguing for comfort in the face of death? Think I'll wing it without a security blanket. I'm sure I'm not worried about any awkward posthumous interview at the pearly gates. So really it just seems to be about spinning our mortality in a candy-land direction.
That's not the issue. Deciding if and when it is permissible to end a human life, what it means to be human, and how to make and live in a just society has very little do with what someone believes about the afterlife. Whether we acknowledge it or not, everyone has a philosophical world view.
Personally, I find non-theistic appeals to the "golden rule" and evolved empathy to be such loosely held principles that one could justify almost any horror that is personally or collectively convenient at the moment. That is not to say that poorly formed and rigidly held philosophical and religious convictions don't often result in judgmental and heartless choices, but corrective measures and restraints are contained within those traditions that are not available to atheistic ones.
When societies spiral into war and atrocities are committed I don't imagine it is on account of which philosophical world view the main players hold. I mean that in the sense that such considerations rarely factor in for the worst of the worse. What they do then doesn't follow from their failed philosophical views but from their particular psychological twistedness and character failings. You can say, "well if they'd just embrace xtianity this would never happen" but you know, it wouldn't happen either if I was simply appointed absolute ruler of the earth.
