I will become Atheist if.....

[Seraphina]

I'm just asking you guys to justify the human experience in a Atheistic framework.

I recite a famous quote by Christopher Hitchens when people ask similar questions about my lack of belief:

"The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth with all its mystery, beauty and pain is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more".

If you're asking questions you're already at least halfway there to dropping your god. Perhaps your questions are better directed to yourself. What are you afraid of by leaving religion? Fear is what keeps many people in religion, rather than high-minded questions. Keeping questioning; you'll get there.

-Teresa

[robvalue]

I think the "what if I wrong" question is a big one.

But when you take a step back, it's really silly. It's just as reasonable to think that doing a load of weird stuff an ancient book says is going to piss off some psychotic judge, as thinking it will save you from it. So you literally can't win, you can't hedge your bets. Whatever attempts you make to play it safe, you're failing some other contradictory criteria.

[pocaracas]

I am getting awfully bored...so I am going to give you guys the best opportunity to bring me to the dark side which will allow me to do all these things I really want to do but restrict myself from doing!

Ok... I'll bite.
But do understand that, before answering any of those questions, considerable legwork must be undertaken.
For justice, love and value, I suggest you start in the animal realm - perhaps with the work by Jane Goodall and others that have shed so much light in ape societies, from Gorillas to chimps, to bonobos to orangutans.
Human societies very likely (not to say certainly) arose from societies very similar to those these apes have. And even the ape societies came out of other pre-existing mammalian societies that we see in others mammals, like lions, zebras, gazelles, elephants...

When you see a wildlife tv show, when a herd protects their young from predators, do you suppose they do that because they posit some value in those youngsters?


To arrive at animals, you must start with life.... to get life, you need biochemistry.... to get there, you need chemistry, which relies on quantum physics of all the elements. The elements seem to come from nuclear fusion within previously existing stars that coalesced due to gravity. Before that, there were only simple elements, hydrogen and electrons and neutrons... and before that we had a quark and gluon plasma... and before that.... pfff> the unknown. Anyone who claims to know is a liar.

1. You can rationally justify belief in a value of a human being in the framework of Atheism (and I am using this definition as in non-belief in supernatural gods).

From a purely genetic point of view, we are machines that aid in the task of gene propagation. As such, these machines evolved to propagate their own genes, regardless of other species. The emphasis is put on the self species.
We see this in bacteria, in fish, in birds, in mammals... propagate as much as possible, each on its own.
I'd say humans value themselves, at first, for this exact reason. the ingrained need to propagate their genes.
Since we are a societal and sexual species, some value must be put on other members of the species.

All that said, one must go also into "what is value"?
How do we define value?
A practical example: Why is money valuable? Is money objectively valuable, that is its value is there regardless of any human being? or is it subjectively valuable, that is it depends on humans to make it something of worth?
I've also come across the notion of objective value when that value is agreed upon by society. I feel like this paves the way to muddying the waters, so I prefer to say that societal value is considered subjective, as it pertains to a human attribute, even if that is a shared one.

Is a human being valuable, in the absence of any human beings to give it value? Is the value of a human being something that comes from other human beings (and itself) or something that just is?

5 million years ago, before any homo sapiens roamed the Earth, did humans have value?

2. You can rationally justify you being the same person as a child with that framework, that despite all the changes, you are the same person.

Define person.
As a legal entity, the adult is the same person as the child.
From the basic atomic element point of view, the adult is composed of different atoms. But the functional relationship between them is mostly unchanged. And same-nuclear-charge atoms are pretty much indistinguishable from each other.

On a higher level, the adult has more experience, more information in memory, than the child. That experience gives it better understanding of the world around it. In that sense, it's in a different state.... but does that render it a different person? Not by our standard accounts.

3. You can rationally justify your actions being linked to who you are and there is a such thing as "better" or "worse" when it comes to humans.

I don't get what you're going for here...
My actions are made by me. My brain, triggered by a complex network of stimuli, sends out signals to my muscles to perform those actions.

Better and worse for humans I would describe as that which brings less and more overall suffering to humans, respectively.
Of course, it is not always easy to see how an action can affect people. Sometimes, you think you're doing something that is better for humanity, but it turns out to be worse (e.g. combustion engine leading to better mobility..... but also to poor worldwide air quality and the greenhouse effect leading to global warming and an increased number of extreme weather phenomena)

4.  You can rationally justify the belief in justice with your framework.

Justice is something else that is not human-only.




It seems to be a mechanism that keeps the elements of the society at an equal level, minimizing strains and conflicts and leading to a healthier population, thus allowing an easier gene propagation.

5. You can rationally justify the nature of love that has language that judges all things and gives value to all things from your framework.

Why are you loading the concept of love with all that garbage?
Love is the feeling you get when bonding with another member of the species. There's a chemical action in the brain that provides that feeling at the "rational" level, and also leads to increasing the value attributed to that individual. This is also in line with human value being subjective. Each of us values close relatives over strangers.

I am not saying you have to do all 5. You can do 1. Trust me, my faith will fall and shred, if you can and I'm not joking.  It will shred.

I doubt it...

---

I am searching the answer if an action can be considered good without belief in the true nature of goodness.

Wow.... "belief in the true nature of goodness"?
If you've decided what that is, then how can anyone even begin to convince you that your conception is wrong?

What is the true nature of goodness?
How do you know that?

[Angrboda]

I am searching the answer if an action can be considered good without belief in the true nature of goodness.

Wow.... "belief in the true nature of goodness"?
If you've decided what that is, then how can anyone even begin to convince you that your conception is wrong?

What is the true nature of goodness?
How do you know that?

It has something to do with throwing homosexuals off the roofs of buildings.

[Amarok]

I am searching the answer if an action can be considered good without belief in the true nature of goodness.

Wow that statement is not reinforcing

[GrandizerII]

2. You can rationally justify you being the same person as a child with that framework, that despite all the changes, you are the same person.

Continuity of the person through space and time (or at least the perception and memory of it).

So ... let's see you shred your faith.

[downbeatplumb]

I think the "what if I wrong" question is a big one.

But when you take a step back, it's really silly. It's just as reasonable to think that doing a load of weird stuff an ancient book says is going to piss off some psychotic judge, as thinking it will save you from it. So you literally can't win, you can't hedge your bets. Whatever attempts you make to play it safe, you're failing some other contradictory criteria.

And if you try to please a god you may be pleasing the wrong god!
What if the Aztecs were right!

[Pat Mustard]

I am getting awfully bored...so I am going to give you guys the best opportunity to bring me to the dark side which will allow me to do all these things I really want to do but restrict myself from doing!


1. You can rationally justify belief in a value of a human being in the framework of Atheism (and I am using this definition as in non-belief in supernatural gods).
2. You can rationally justify you being the same person as a child with that framework, that despite all the changes, you are the same person.
3. You can rationally justify your actions being linked to who you are and there is a such thing as "better" or "worse" when it comes to humans.
4.  You can rationally justify the belief in justice with your framework.
5. You can rationally justify the nature of love that has language that judges all things and gives value to all things from your framework.

I am not saying you have to do all 5. You can do 1. Trust me, my faith will fall and shred, if you can and I'm not joking.  It will shred.

So ball is in your court.

You and I both know that the only reason you're not an atheist right now is that during your recent crisis of conscience you weren't strong enough to accept what your reasoning, your intlligence and your experience was telling you and in your fear you ran to the primitive and violent barbarism of some of your forefathers.

[Brian37]

MK, ask yourself this:  Could our species survive if we didn’t care about each other’s well being?  How many babies would survive to childhood if mothers threw them out of a third story window every time they screamed in the middle of the night?  If we don’t care about each other, we go instinct.

Extinct

LOL.  I’ll leave the error so others can have a snicker at my expense.  😁

I wish Twitter had an edit option, all you can do is delete and retype. I can't tell you how many times I've transposed "Their" and "There" knowing what both mean.

[robvalue]

I read the OP as, "I'm tired of carrying around this religious dogma, but I don't feel comfortable letting go of it until I have some other belief system to replace it with".

I can understand that, it could seem weird for someone raised in a heavily religious setting to develop their own ideas from the ground up. It's like leaving an on-rails shooter and entering an open-world RPG. My advice would be to embrace this as an opportunity rather than worrying about the uncertainty. There's no need to come to all your conclusions at once.

But what is the purpose of the game? Who made it? What do they want us to do? How do we know if we're winning? Gays should be excluded from hunting parties?

It doesn't matter, just play the game while you can, and figure out how you want to play it. You'll probably be surprised to find you don't actually want to kill all the other players, and not because the programmer is constantly supervising you.