RE: End all Suffering now? you have the power.
January 10, 2013 at 4:21 pm
(This post was last modified: January 10, 2013 at 4:27 pm by Mark 13:13.)
(January 10, 2013 at 4:11 pm)Brian37 Wrote:well as its been pointed out there is no single model of the atheist so I wanted your answer; so why not just answer.(January 10, 2013 at 3:50 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: Picture the scenario; you as an athiest have now become the leader of a nation with very advanced technology. You are the full authority, there is no one to answer to and all power to rule is yours. Your scientists have developed a new device so powerful they call it the supernova. It is designed to be the ultimate deterrent from aggression as in 1 push of a button, the one now blinking green on your desktop, the world will be obliterated in a flash so fast that everyone would be dead so fast that the wouldn't even experience pain. The earth would dissappear in one brilliant flash and then nothing.
You believe that death is final, no life after no God to meet. You look at the world around and see that people continue to suffer from all the normal pains, griefs, heartaches, relationship problems. Natural disasters continue to occur. Nations and groups still find reasons for war. The poor continue to be poor and the nutcases still erupt with deadly results. You could end the whole thing in a painless moment and all suffering would be gone in an instant. Everyone is going to die anyway this would be painless for all.
Would you press the button and end suffering?
if not why?
Nice.
Now, to show you how absurd this argument is. Everywhere you use the word "atheist" replace it with "Muslim" or "Jew" or "Christian" or "Communist" or "Mexican".
This is designed, to make us answer so you the theist go "SEE SEE SEE"
Now, the reality of this example is that people are a range. And even if all scientists were Christian, and they found a meteor they knew would hit the planet in a month or a week, the debate of informing the public vs not informing them would still happen.
This is just a mere attempt to create self importance to your personal predilections to falsely pretend that your position is important to evolution.
If you want to know why morality is evolutionary and biological, and not a mere thought exercise "The New Atheism" By Victor Stenger, explains why, no matter what our labels are, these types of issues are not a matter of labels, but individuals in a group and how the individual and group dynamic interact.
(January 10, 2013 at 4:20 pm)Esquilax Wrote:(January 10, 2013 at 4:11 pm)Mark 13:13 Wrote: Ok so am I to take that as no because you still feel there is hope to end suffering in time and want to keep working on it, and that although life is fleeting it is still valuable. Not trying to put words in but just trying to clarify?
Essentially, yes: since I believe in no afterlife, there is no utility in ending the one life I- and everyone else- does have. You can't make anything better through nonexistence. You can, however, improve the world if it's still there; not only for my own lifetime, but for all of them going forward. There's also a host of ethical and moral issues that simply boil down to the fact that I have no right to decide for everyone else on the planet whether they should continue living.
I must also, however, ask what your purpose is in asking this? Nobody is seriously going to say that they would end all life on earth, because we aren't comic book villains. You're simply not going to get the "all life is pointless and therefore yes" answer that you (maybe!) want. Hell, even if you can find an atheist who's also a psychopath, there's an excellent chance that they also won't say yes, because saying yes would also harm them. So... what do you think is going to happen here?
Well I suppose it might flesh out some opinions on if someone really had the power to end everything and stop suffering should they. There could be some that would think why not; it might be interesting as an experiment on how if Theists were taken out of the picture the rules of morality would be arrived at. Maybe its a bit too extreme but it might open the subject. If someone can think of a less dramatic one that could achieve the same result then we could switch to that instead.