The logical consequences of omnipotence

[Esquilax]

Religion is based on the human moral instinct. You have no reason to view the world as a 'just' place, and your morality must reflect that. otherwise you have some serous cognitive dissonance going on.

You bet it does. Just in the opposite way than what you're thinking.

I get what you're trying to do, you're trying to make us feel like the religious folks have some extra thing going on that we atheists can't have, some light of the soul bullshit, but let me tell you, it's far, far more valuable to a world that is unjust to have people like me in it, who don't labor under any illusions of cosmic, posthumous justice.

The world is unjust and there's two things you can do about that: you can cloak yourself in a safety blanket like religion and lie to yourself and those that believe like you that the world you inhabit is ultimately a place that will be kind to you. That's one option. The other is that you accept that the world is unjust on the face of it, but you can always remember that it's up to you to change that.

Yes, there's no natural justice meted out by the cosmos, no grand arbiter to reward those that do good and punish those who do evil, but that doesn't make my life any more hopeless. Because change, and accountability, and true justice, justice that matters, lies in the palm of our collective hands, and it's up to each of us to pull toward it. The world is an unjust place if you let it be. Isn't it more noble to realize that and struggle to make it a better place without the expectation of an ultimate reward for doing so? Isn't it better to fight because the world we have now matters, and the people within it are worth fighting for, even if the best you can do is fractional, almost imperceptible?

Is my life really that much worse off because I'm living it to see my fiancee smile, rather than to be reunited with her in eternity?

It's the people who make the second choice and look reality in the eye who make things happen. People who accept the world as it is can change it. People who make the first choice tend to be the ones who pray their children's illnesses away until they die, or who bluster righteously about gay marriage and such.

Huh, that whole thing sort of got away from me a bit, and I don't want to seem didactic, but you did say so yourself: atheists aren't necessarily more immoral for their worldview, nor are theists happier or more moral for theirs. So where do you get this idea that there's any difference at all, at a root level? And how do you support that? I'd be interested to know.