Is There a Point To Living a Moral Life?

[Esquilax]

No because Nazi morality isn't Gods morality we don't get to say what is and isn't moral we only understand it and adhere to it or not understand it and rebel against it.

See, now you're just stuck, because "god's morality," according to the book you take it all from, states that slavery, the murder of children, gays, apostates, witches and heathens are moral, while the consumption of shellfish and the wearing of mixed fabrics are immoral.

The standard apologetic, here, is that god was using a separate set of rules due to the realities of the time, which are different now: in essence, that these things were morally permissible at one time, but not now. In that view, morality has changed, and rather than dealing with actual morality, you're simply following orders. Given this, there is no morality for you: if god ordered you to murder a child- an act you probably believe is immoral now- then you'd have to accept that it's moral so long as your god says so.

The other apologetic is that the book was written by men and therefore not wholly accurate regarding god's morality: in this case, you have no way to determine what is and isn't god's morality at all.

Enjoy!

[FallentoReason]

^dayum gurl!

[genkaus]

No because Nazi morality isn't Gods morality we don't get to say what is and isn't moral we only understand it and adhere to it or not understand it and rebel against it. Otherwise you're saying we just make it up ourselves based purely on our own standards and Nazi morality is equally just as good. If we all had those moral standards then those are the moral standards we wouldn't be behaving immorally.

On one hand, the Nazi's would disagree. They saw their morality as god's morality. And they do have a point - their morality was pretty similar to your god's morality.

On the other hand, we do get to say what is and what isn't moral. Every morality is made up by humans based on their own standards, but that does not mean that they are all equally good.

In practice however I don't think God would have sustained it and it would have collapsed much like the Soviet Union did.

It would've failed because a war-focused, tyrannical and oppressive regime without sufficient economic infrastructure is bound to be plagued by revolutions and ultimately collapse. Your god has nothing to do with it.

He was most certainly there and he always is but there is a such a thing as freewill and human sin, in this case human outright evil. God does fight against it but he does it through people who adhere to him. That's the way it works he can't do anything directly as he isn't physically present but immanent within creation as spirit as well as being utterly transcendent beyond it and sustaining it all.

Blah, blah, blah.....

[Faith No More]

That's the way it works he can't do anything directly as he isn't physically present but immanent within creation as spirit as well as being utterly transcendent beyond it and sustaining it all.

Have you actually read your own holy book? God intervenese directly all of the time. You're just making excuses for why the world appears exactly as if your god didn't exist.

[Tonus]

They were planning on a thousand year Reich and they could in theory have managed it. <snip>

In practice however I don't think God would have sustained it and it would have collapsed much like the Soviet Union did.

Good thing that he only sustained it for about twelve years, then.

[Marvin]

Of course there is.
You get to go to the burnings,
the be-headings,
and the occasional drawn and quartering.

[Sword of Christ]

Good thing that he only sustained it for about twelve years, then.

Of course, though he would have dismantling it not sustaining it. Though to be fair I'm not really sure if Hitler ever really had any plans on creating or sustaining anything or whether he was in it for destruction, glory and death. The Soviet Union and Communism we can say didn't exactly meet the standards, it did fail ultmately.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Technically, you can disbelieve in god/gods without considering yourself a nihilist. In practice most atheists have, either explicitly or tacitly, philosophies of physical monism and ontological naturalism. Here I am thinking of meaning in semiotic terms and not as a synonym for purpose.
In order for something to have meaning it must refer to something else. It must call to mind something else. So for example, the beads of an abacus or lights on a scoreboard have no meaning until interpreted as a reference to quantities by a knowing subject. Likewise, a depictive painting is nothing more than smears of oil and dirt on a flat surface until the arrangement of colors calls to mind an image of something other than the painting itself.

The foregoing atheistic philosophies assert that human experience reduces to a physical reaction. And physical things and processes have no meaning except those assigned to them by a knowing subject. This raises two questions. First, does the materialistic understanding of human nature satisfy the requirements of a ‘knowing subject’? Second, given a knowing subject, to what can the physical process of an individual’s live refer other than itself? I will leave aside the firs question and focus on the second.

To me “knowing” applies to more than processes like complex data processing or reacting to sensible patterns. Such functions, as functions, can be adequately understood in terms of physical processes. Knowledge includes seeing things beyond what is immediately apparent, i.e. understanding what they signify. In the context of this discussion, the assignment of meaning happens when a particular instance represents a fuller, broader, and more general principle. In physical terms an architect can look at a crack and see it as a particular manifestation of thermal expansion and contraction. Not all references are physical. To what broader quantifiable physical process or state does the word “liberty” point?

Some will say that these are just abstractions derived from experience of physical reality and have no reality apart from the mind. That is partly true. Everything we know, does indeed, ultimately come from our experience with sensible objects. That does not automatically entail that transcendent principles, like liberty, are not real. A physicalist generally has no problem with calling a particular action, like a falling apple, representative of something more universal and equally real, like gravity. What prevents you from gaining knowledge of transcendent principles within physical processes and things by means of observation? When people move freely across borders, this is a sign of their liberty. On what basis do you say that gravity is real, but liberty is not? True, gravity can be quantified in a way that liberty cannot. At the same time, I think it is a mistake to not include qualitative features in your assessment of what is and is not real.

Which leads me to why I think atheism is ultimately nihilist. When you say your life has meaning, you are assigning qualitative significance to what you consider a physical process. However that kind of qualitative assignment is precluded by the physical monism and ontological naturalism.

---

Hitler was NOT an atheist.

Just Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.

[Faith No More]

Which leads me to why I think atheism is ultimately nihilist. When you say your life has meaning, you are assigning qualitative significance to what you consider a physical process. However that kind of qualitative assignment is precluded by the physical monism and ontological naturalism.

What makes you think the part I put in bold is true?

[MindForgedManacle]

If you're going to seriously reject the existence of God or a purpose to the universe/life you will have to face the consequences of the truth which is going to be a little bit nihilistic whether you like it or not.

As I demonstrated earlier, you can be just as nihilistic even if you believe God exists.

Further, the idea of a purpose to the universe would be irrelevant. For it to matter, such an externally imposed purpose would have to conform to your preferences.

And by your own belief, God is a nihilist. He was no created and thus cannot, by definition, have an externally imbued purpose. And you cannot claim that God gives himself purpose because then that's special pleading, since you don't grant that people can create their own purpose.

In other words - to paraphrase the philosopher Shelly Kagan - the non-existence of cosmic purpose has no bearing on the existence of immediate purpose and value.

QED.