How much pain can atheists withstand ?

[The End of Atheism]

More nonsense. Evil acts are determinable whether or not a supreme moral authority exists. In fact, it is much easier (as well as more accurate) to determine if a a particular act is evil if we proceed from the assumption that such an authority does not exist.

All the facts that are available to the humanists your refer to, are also available to the theist. The atheist, however, doesn't have the framework to assess any given situation as bad. A child needlessly starved to death is, strictly speaking, a net evolutionary gain in the cold, indifferent universe that your worldview promotes. A child's starvation to death is evolutionarily beneficial, as there will less vulnerable life forms consuming scarce resources without making any contribution to the world. Not a healthy perspective huh ?

You should refrain from using the word evil from now on, it's very easy to find weaknesses when atheists start babbling about good and evil.

The onus is on those people - like yourself - who insist that all moral authority originates with an ineffable, incomprehensible, unknowable Being to point to the starved child and explain why it may or may not be evil. It’s simply no good to say that we can’t understand God - that’s the excuse YOU people invented to get out of addressing evil acts (almost as revolting an idea as karma).

Are you still using the word "evil" ?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

More nonsense. Evil acts are determinable whether or not a supreme moral authority exists. In fact, it is much easier (as well as more accurate) to determine if a a particular act is evil if we proceed from the assumption that such an authority does not exist.

All the facts that are available to the humanists your refer to, are also available to the theist. The atheist, however, doesn't have the framework to assess any given situation as bad. A child needlessly starved to death is, strictly speaking, a net evolutionary gain in the cold, indifferent universe that your worldview promotes. A child's starvation to death is evolutionarily beneficial, as there will less vulnerable life forms consuming scarce resources without making any contribution to the world. Not a healthy perspective huh ?

You should refrain from using the word evil from now on, it's very easy to find weaknesses when atheists start babbling about good and evil.

The onus is on those people - like yourself - who insist that all moral authority originates with an ineffable, incomprehensible, unknowable Being to point to the starved child and explain why it may or may not be evil. It’s simply no good to say that we can’t understand God - that’s the excuse YOU people invented to get out of addressing evil acts (almost as revolting an idea as karma).

Are you still using the word "evil" ?

Many children starve when resources are not scarce, so your appeal to evolution is bunk. When children starve, I don’t trouble myself by agonizing over whether it was God’s will or because some petty, tinpot warlord interdicted humanitarian aid.

Yes, I’m still using the word ‘evil’. Why would I not?

Boru

[Astreja]

My definition of evil:  Deliberately causing pain and suffering to a sentient being.

So, deliberately causing pain and suffering to the Nazis is evil ?

If it's possible to stop an evildoer without causing suffering to them, this is preferable to stooping to their level.

With this in mind, it's laughable, almost pitiful, to try and take the higher moral ground with regards to an all-knowing being.

Existential fallacy:  There is no empirical evidence that any all-knowing being exists; therefore, it's pointless to discuss its alleged morality.

Evil in its objective sense is unknowable...

Good and evil are value judgements.  Value judgements are subjective, not objective.  Morality that comes from a god is also subjective, not objective.

Long story short, there is no possible discussion in the first place, and at any rate, certainly not with an atheist or an agnostic.

Then why are you here?  This is a discussion forum for atheists and agnostics.

[The Grand Nudger]

I've got a wonderful description of evil, for theists who find it hard to comprehend.  Think of the worst thing you could do.  Whatever is worse than that, is evil. Interesting how that dovetails with your own description of hell, right?

[Paleophyte]

Give me one good reason why not. Kindly save us your ignorance and read up on chaos theory, emergent behaviour, and self-correcting systems first.

If you think you can avoid these hard questions by rattling off a few titles from pop sci magazines, you're sorely mistaken. Everything you mentioned depends on pre-existing conditions, or initial conditions, without which no life form can ever arise even in a gazillion centuries.

You're telling me that evolution had 4 billion years of "practice". You forgot to mention that before that we had a .. um .. a universe around. An entire universe governed by elegant laws (whose discovery, by the way, was only done by the smartest elements of our species) is the framework within which the evolutionary process took place. This framework is the equivalent of the oven in the analogy above. You need a smart cook to set the right intial conditions for the oven, that will yield, some billions of years later, human beings. The theist sees this is as more evidence of the superbly skillful master agent that set out all this. The atheist, on the other hand, will be happy to posit an infinite regress of ovens in the past, that kept screwing around until a "good" oven arised. This scenario certainly takes a bigger leap of faith than the theistic scenario: the theist posits an elegant and plausible solution: a personal agent intended to bring about human beings so he did all this. The atheistic scenario is manifestly convoluted. All the principles of reasoning favor the theistic scenario: use Occam's razor, the principle of sufficient reason, etc, whatever you want.

You think my worldview is convoluted when your requires an infinitely whatever this time, unknowable, invisible daddy figure? Godidit explains nothing, which is why Occam's razor cuts god's throat every time.

And you're making the classic mistake of looking at the universe being finely tuned from the perspective of life that has evolved to inhabit it. Viewed accurately, the universe is barely sufficient at the present for life to survive on one insignificant ball of dirt. The universe is not well-tuned to suit you, you are well-evolved to survive the universe. Even that you will only manage to do briefly. And it's a passingly odd creator who builds an oven 93 billion light-years across just to get one half-baked planet.

Or perhaps you can explain why god needed dark matter and dark energy.  

[Paleophyte]

So, deliberately causing pain and suffering to the Nazis is evil ?

If it's possible to stop an evildoer without causing suffering to them, this is preferable to stooping to their level.

The person who tortures a rabid dog is one nasty piece of work. Kill it cleanly and have done.

[Fake Messiah]

The atheist, however, doesn't have the framework to assess any given situation as bad. 

Christian accusing non-Christians of being immoral is one of the most dangerous Christian delusions there is. It is a straight inquisition mentality.

Thus it reminds me of Mel Brooks playing the inquisitor Torquemada and singing:

We have a mission to convert the Jews -
We're gonna teach them wrong from right
We're gonna help them see the light
- And make an offer that they can't refuse -

Needless to say that this delusion caused Christians to commit countless genocides throughout history on people whom they deemed as immoral.

And the other thing is that religion does not provide morality. Religious people see something as good or bad because their god supposedly said it was good or bad, which is not morality but taboo. So religion provides taboo but not morality.

Morality is when you can explain why something is bad. For example in the movie "Borat" Borat asks some guy if is it ok to make fun of and laugh at retarded people, the guy tells him "no" because these people have family members who would suffer because of it - notice how he does not need god to explain why something is bad, he only uses empathy, and that is because empathy is on what morality is based on. And if you don't have empathy you are a psychopath.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The atheist, however, doesn't have the framework to assess any given situation as bad. 

Christian accusing non-Christians of being immoral is one of the most dangerous Christian delusions there is. It is a straight inquisition mentality.

Thus it reminds me of Mel Brooks playing the inquisitor Torquemada and singing:

We have a mission to convert the Jews -
We're gonna teach them wrong from right
We're gonna help them see the light
- And make an offer that they can't refuse -

Needless to say that this delusion caused Christians to commit countless genocides throughout history on people whom they deemed as immoral.

And the other thing is that religion does not provide morality. Religious people see something as good or bad because their god supposedly said it was good or bad, which is not morality but taboo. So religion provides taboo but not morality.

Morality is when you can explain why something is bad. For example in the movie "Borat" Borat asks some guy if is it ok to make fun of and laugh at retarded people, the guy tells him "no" because these people have family members who would suffer because of it - notice how he does not need god to explain why something is bad, he only uses empathy, and that is because empathy is on what morality is based on. And if you don't have empathy you are a psychopath.

(Bold mine)

For those deprived enough never to have seen it, it's the greatest Brooks musical number since Lilly von Schtupp's 'I'm Tired':





Boru

[Peebothuhlu]

Oh, nice to see the new person is still around.

Good for them.

Cheers

[Angrboda]