Is There a Point To Living a Moral Life?

[Bob Kelso]

If something has an on off switch then to use it properly for the function it was intended it must be turned on.

Must you take everything so literally? Nice little petty spin on that giving atheists the attribute of being dysfunctional. Must be so proud of that.

Someone in authority must have told them to turn it off so they did.

Bullshit, I know plenty of atheists who grew up in theistic homes that have always been atheistic. They certainly weren't told to "turn it off" so can it with the conspiracy allusions.

That's because of a cultural influence from a community dominated by a the belief system of materialism. It's not because God and science are incompatible. You do know that most of the major scientific discoveries in history were made by theists?

I don't dispute that some scientific discoveries have been made by theists, but you need to brush that straw off your coat man. I don't pretend to be an expert on theist vs. atheist discovery statistics but either pull up some references or shut the fuck up.

[Chas]

You could say evolution as atheism understands it was a purposeless byproduct of an unintentionally created universe.

Why, yes. Yes you could.

And your point is ... ?

[Esquilax]

Christ is the good part of humanity no-one stole him.

Prove it or shut the hell up.

You don't believe in God though so all of what we consider good in humanity has to be evolutionary instinct and neurological survival hardwiring, I appreciate that. You don't base your moral values on this so called fact of life though, good thing you don't.

I base my moral values on the fact that I'm not a fucking sociopath like you religious people seem to think everyone is. I have my own conscience to rely on, an instinct built into me through evolution and refined by my own experiences with the world. It's not something I intend to abdicate to your fucking fantasy sky daddy until the day you can prove to me that that's where it came from.

But you can't. Which is why all you have are arrogant assertions and unfounded assumptions as to what I believe.

We share the exact same morality. Atheists are keen to point this out and try claim credit for it ignoring that much of this moral progress was spearhead by deeply religiously motivated people who valued people as God creatures and the world as his creation.

Tell that to the slave owners who justified that with their bibles, mmkay? Or the people even today who beat their children unto death and justify it with the bible.

That's what I'm saying: the good parts and the bad of humankind just come from us, from humans. And as desperate as your holy book is to distance itself from the bad parts, it's simply a fact that it's a hell of a good justification for otherwise good people to do bad things, because their minds have been addled with your holy baloney fear mongering bullshit.

If the world is as you think it is then we should care about what exactly? Making ourselves comfortable as possible before we die and are dissolved back into the uncaring cosmos? Of course atheists don't think this way but why? I'd say it's because there is more there than you claim there to be.

Or because we see no need in your make believe crutch to find meaning in our lives, you damn child. Look at you and your fucking self absorbed logic here: you look out at the world and without some magic eternal reward, all you see is the fact that someday this world won't have you in it, so why bother with it?

I look out and I know that when I die, I'll be leaving an entire planet behind me that persists, you selfish fuck. What do I care about? I care about the billions of other people who will survive me, some of whom I care about immensely, and wish to live happy lives even when I'm gone. The fact that it's a temporary life just makes it all the more imperative that I do the most good while I have it.

Apparently, you can't see this without someone dangling the keys to the playground in front of you so you do your chores. And you presume to tell us we're immoral?

[Chas]

How about the thing called "conscience"?

As a by-product of evolution conscience would be no different than any other animal’s instinctual behavior, like bird migration. If conscience is an accidental feature of our species then it is not a reliable guide for ethical behavior.

To avoid the equivocation between conscience and instinct, you need not consider conscience an evolved instinct, per se, even if the means by which it appeared is evolutionary. You could say that it is a product of Man’s capacity to reason. This affords various solutions like enlightened self-interest, tit-for-tat, the “golden rule”, social contract theory, etc.
The problem is that you have started a regress that needs a termination point. By making reason the evolutionary by-product from which conscience gets its force, you must likewise explain how reason, itself being an accidental feature is reliable. First, you could say that the efficacy of reason is axiomatic. While I agree this presupposition is needed, the fact that you can reason at all is itself in need of an explanation. The required explanation forces the regress further back into the deeper prior causes.

The efficacy of reason presupposes that you live in a world with inherit rational order. This appears to be the case. Now either the rational order of the world is essential, a brute fact, or it is accidental, a contingent feature. In my estimation, the four fundamental forces and handful of known constants have all the characteristics of accidental attributes. First you can imagine a world with more or fewer forces and one in which the constants have different values, or even change within this universe. Second, even if the universe did indeed come “out of nothing” on its own, then so also must its physical laws come with it “out of nothing.” In this scenario, the secular response to “out of nothing, nothing comes” amounts to “out of absurdity, something comes.” Any morality that, at root, derives from absurdity is really no morality at all.
So the de-nihilists, atheists who deny that they are nihilists, must, if they are to be taken seriously, show that their favored ethical system is ultimately supported by something other than pure chance.

No, I don't.

My ethical system is based on evolved feelings of empathy, sympathy, fairness, self-interest and on reason.

[mostlysilent]

My reason for living a moral life is really very simple. I don't enjoy treating others like crap and I don't enjoy causing others pain. So I try to never do either one.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Ready, fire, aim. Esq you must have skipped my post. Apparently Chas only read the last sentence. Evolution is not a complete solution.

[Doubting Thomas]

My reason for living a moral life is really very simple. I don't enjoy treating others like crap and I don't enjoy causing others pain. So I try to never do either one.

Why is this concept so hard for Christians to grasp, and they are only moral out of fear? I mean, the golden rule is even written into their bible.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Evolution is not random chance.
It is natural selection.

And mutations come from where? You must support intelligent design.

[Esquilax]

Ready, fire, aim. Esq you must have skipped my post. Apparently Chas only read the last sentence. Evolution is not a complete solution.

Speaking of skipping posts, a little perusal of mine would tell you that I don't lay everything at the feet of evolution, any more than you do. I consider it something of a starting point, but it's not the only factor involved; I've been stating this since I joined in on this thread.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Esq, so you have. You add reason and experience. I address both in the same post. I consider you a thinker even if you swear better than I can.