The difference between ethical atheism and nihlism is that ethical atheists have more faith

[genkaus]

If naturalism is true e.g. there is no God and the material universe, more or less, is all that exists, the naturalist is faced with two possible stances:

Bravo. Excellent. Very well-done. You start a topic about atheism and in the very first sentence address naturalism - in an extremely pathetic attempt to equate the two and hope no one would notice.

1. Deny the existence of the reality of any morality at all - a human being is no more valuable than an amoeba
2. Ascribe some sort of arbitrary value to human beings

Or

3. Understand that value is a property attached to all self-conscious entities that would make humans more valuable than amoeba.
4. Realize that the concept of value stems from our desires - which are part of our biology - and therefore any assignment of value in accordance with that would not be arbitrary.
5. Realize that a rational mind produces and ascribes value to all entities and therefore to humans themselves

And so on. Don't put forth any more false dichotomies and expect us to swallow them.

I believe that choice two, which is what the vast majority of atheists choose to do is epistemologically very similar to religious faith.

Well, then it's a good thing that most atheists don't pick choice 2. In my experience, they usually go for 4.

In religious faith, people recognize a moral, teleological order of life in which value is ascribed to human beings as a consequence of them being created.

Which would be as subjective and arbitrary as the supposed atheistic assignment,

In atheism, the value is simply ascribed to human life. The atheist might object that the value is not an objective fact, but only what is consider to be objective, but that completely denies the way that atheists use moral language (see, the language of liberalism).

See what I'm talking about - you go from naturalist to atheist as if they mean the same thing. Deplorable.

For the record, as an atheist, I can and have argued for value as an objective concept - thereby proving you wrong before you even showed your face.

I would argue, follow Alaisdair MacIntyre, that atheists have essentially a choice between Nietzschean nihilism or Aristotelian teleological ethics. Many atheists really in secret have a sort of Deist, teleological approach to ethics when they invoke evolutionary processes as grounding human life in some sort of goal driven process that confers moral worth on people. If they were honest atheists, they would simply call themselves Deists and accept that the way they talk about evolution is essentially giving a teleological property to it that it lacks in the naturalistic understanding. Evolution says nothing about why people should be considered more ethically valuable than rocks, to say so is to move from atheistic evolution to theistic or deistic evolution.

Wow, fallacy of equivocation now? You really are trying to hit every one of them, aren't you?

Do you not understand that even Aristotelian ethics is based on naturalism and not on any deistic approach? Do you not understand that even if the evolutionary process had resulted in an in-built purpose and goal for the human species - that still wouldn't make it god - and therefore not make an atheist a deist?

Ethical atheism requires faith. The language of physics, chemistry and biology cannot describe the moral worth of people. It cannot create a political philosophy, or tell people how to live the good life. Of course morality is related to biology, physics and chemistry, but none of these things ground atheist ethics in any kind of remotely rigorous way.

So, morality does depend on biology but biology can't prescribe morality? Way to stay consistent.

The reality, in the end, that the ethical, responsible atheist is just an atheist than happens to have more faith than the nihilist. The process of assigning values to human life is not a rigorous process. Someone might argue "people can feel pain, and I don't want to feel pain, and pain can be measured physiologically or sentience understood scientifically". This may be true, but there is no reason to associate pain with morality, unless people are designed to associate these things.

Ofcourse there is a reason: you gave it yourself. Morality prescribes what you should or shouldn't do. Pain is something that you want to avoid. That connects morality and pain.

The honest atheist might as well go the whole way and either become a Deist and accept some sort of teleological universe that justifies the moral language that constantly refers to this universe, or become a nihilist and strip his vocabulary of all teleological concepts.

Apart form the obvious objection that there are many more options available - making this another false dichotomy - acceptance of teleological universe is unnecessary. Moral language doesn't refer to the universe, it refers only to humanity and therefore, only teleological existence of humanity would be required. And that position wouldn't require deism either. A purpose or goal applicable to all of humanity may as well be inherent to our biology or the consequence of application of rationality or indicative of humanity's common desire or simply agreed upon by all humans. No god is necessary for any of the above scenarios.

What the honest atheist cannot do is tell a Christian that he is corrupted epistemologically by his faith and then proceed to deny that God exists and talk about human rights. He must either choose to ground his ethical concepts in teleology and ethics that he cannot completely percieve that seem reasonable as a Deist or Christian or stop using ethical concepts at all.

Or he can ridicule the ideas of a Christian blowhard for the nonsense they are and figure out that
a) he does not need to ground his ethical concepts in teleology - deontology would serve him as well
b) even if he does ground it on teleology, he still doesn't need to use any faith. There is a host of objectively proven facts that serve as the basis.
c) and realize that the deistic or Christian grounds are the more unreasonable than the above.

The Christian is not irrational in grounding his beliefs in a supernatural religion (I myself have experienced many supernatural confirmations of the Christian faith).

My friend, grounding your beliefs in the irrational is by definition - irrational.

It is the atheist who is irrational in grounding his ethical concepts, the most important in life, in arbitrary ethical concepts that, no matter how much evidence is revealed, will never be found to have any value, because the concepts have no ground other than the opinions of the atheist.[/u][/i]

Good thing then that atheists rarely base their ethical concepts in other "arbitrary" ethical concepts.

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That person should not vote, they should abandon all pretense of having a moral authority, they should not marry or raise a family because they will be unable to teach their children to be good people, they should not engage in any activity which requires moral reasoning, which is almost everything.

Most of all, they should never pressure anyone to accept their beliefs, because there is no ethical imperative attached to following or not following their beliefs.

Actually, if he is a nihilist, then none of your "shoulds" are applicable to him. If he so wants, then he can vote, pretend to have moral authority, marry, raise a family or pressure others to accept his beliefs. Randall says it best:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/nihilism.png

Of course, most atheist who read this will acknowledge the contradiction involved in their "ethical atheism" and go on, continuing to exist that Christians have some sort of made up imperative to be "honest" according to the standard that atheists make up.

They may be able to do it legally, but they cannot be consistent with themselves. They should not do it without a deep sense of cynicism.

Read and rejected.

I see no contradiction involved in my "ethical atheism".

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You are repeating the main point of the post. Exactly, what makes people more important than dolphins? Or ants, for that matter? Why should human civilization exist at all, why not be a primitivist? Why not believe that one race is superior to another, or create a nationalistic morality?

The human capacity act rationally. That is why dolphins are such an issue - they seem to be showing signs of being able to do that as well.

The most important question in the world is how to be a good person.

Not for me. The most important question for me is "how do I live a happy and fulfilling life?".

You are not really getting to the bottom of the issue. Nothing that you have written scratches the surface of the debates surrounding moral skepticism. Because you have a nicer sounding name for moral skepticism, called existentialism, does not answer the question. What makes people more important than dolphins. Or in another way: How do you know that Jewish people aren't inferior to whites? Why shouldn't one group enslave another group?

Because the human capacity to act rationally is superior. And there is no known variation between racial capacity - thus it must be assumed equal.

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If there are no moral imperatives, the only ground for actions is pure cynicism.

Nonsense. You still have self-interest to go on.

It is even more egregious cynicism to suggest there is some sort of paradox there, as you are doing.

Other than you, I see no one suggesting a paradox.

If you are a nihilist, you cannot be a moral person. You would argue, as someone that is incapable of being a moral person, I have no duty to be a moral person.

Sounds logical to me.

No, as a person who is amoral, what you are free to do is to live in complete cynicism. If you participate in the political processes and speak as if there are moral absolutes, you are a liar, plain and simple. Of course you do not have duties to avoid lying, but the linguistic categories of cynicism and deceit still apply to you.

Still not seeing a paradox.

But this gets back to my original point: there is really no duty attached to any of this, for the nihilist. But the nihilist will separate himself from the rest of the world, which does not function according to this pattern, and will be hated, as is appropriate.

Why would he do that? He has no pattern according to which the world is supposed to function. And why would anyone hate them? When you want to have some fun, nihilists make a splendid company.