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Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)
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Omnipotent, omnisicient and omnipresent? He is is own First Cause? It's very difficult, if not impossible, to consider these ideas logical, or logically.
Difficulty or lack of understanding does not make something logically untenable. Could you, for example, explain to me why the idea of a First Cause is logically impossible? You haven't done so... yet.
After all, I would have thought that for you, the atheist(?), the universe, or some flavour of multiverse, rests upon infinite regress or an eternally uncaused past. Indeed, up until the 60's it was not unheard of to find well respected scientists who thought that our universe did not have a beginning and that it always existed. Fred Hoyle would be one example.
What would be your view on these matters?0 -
Again, a misunderstanding of atheism. Atheism does not make any claim to answer every single question of the universe. It just rejects the various religious answers made by various religions.Fanny Cradock wrote: »After all, I would have thought that for you, the atheist(?), the universe, or some flavour of multiverse, rests upon infinite regress or an eternally uncaused past.0 -
philologos wrote: »I have extensively. It's why I rejected agnosticism about 5 years ago and decided to accept Jesus Christ as my Saviour and follow Him. Simply put, I find the atheistic naturalism that you guys put across as deeply lacking, on a logical level as well as on any other level. Christianity provides a much better explanation for why we are the way we are as human beings than atheism does. Christianity explains the fallen state of man, much much better than atheism does. It gives a robust explanation as to why this world is as screwed up as it is, and indeed it provides a solution to it - namely that Jesus stood in my place (and yours if you're willing to accept it) and by His blood He paid the price for sin. Atheism - offers nothing.
Hogwash.
Point out the bit where Christianity explains the Columbine massacre or the Batman shootings (both explained by naturalistic explanations about the mental state of the shooters, not some fuzzy nonsense about a tendency to sin).
Heck point out where Christianity provides a "robust" explanation for any thing a human has ever done!
Christianity just says that people have evil tendencies because some non-descript event took place a few thousand years ago when "sin" entered the world. The detail is practically non-existent. Why do some have more evil tendencies than others, why do some people skin cats while others beat their wives, why do some people commit insurance fraud while some burn down schools in Alabama. Christianity has nothing to say on the matter.
Good luck getting the Christian explanation submitted into a pyschological evaluation in a criminal trail. Why did the defendant shoot up the building? Well you know, tendency to sin your honour, clearly there is nothing more than needs to be said! :rolleyes:
Christianity explains these things the way saying "Well some times bad things happen to good people" explains 9/11 or the Iraq war.0 -
Zombrex, Christians do attend their GP's too when they are sick, they even recommend that their sick friends go too. Christians have even been known to attend Uni and become Doctors and Nurses.
Treat the doctor with the honor that is his due, in consideration of his services; for he too has been created by the Lord
2 Healing itself comes from the Most High, like a gift received from a king.
3 The doctor's learning keeps his head high, and the great regard him with awe.
4 The Lord has brought forth medicinal herbs from the ground, and no one sensible will despise them.
5 Did not a piece of wood once sweeten the water, thus giving proof of its power?
6 He has also given some people knowledge, so that they may draw credit from his mighty works.
7 He uses these for healing and relieving pain; the druggist makes up a mixture from them.
8 Thus, there is no end to his activities; thanks to him, well-being exists throughout the world.
9 My child, when you are ill, do not rebel, but pray to the Lord and he will heal you.
10 Renounce your faults, keep your hands unsoiled, and cleanse your heart from all sin.
11 Offer incense and a memorial of fine flour, make as rich an offering as you can afford.
12 Then let the doctor take over -- the Lord created him too -- do not let him leave you, for you need him.0 -
Tim Robbins wrote: »Again, a misunderstanding of atheism. Atheism does not make any claim to answer every single question of the universe. It just rejects the various religious answers made by various religions.
Are you reading someone else's post, Tim? I ask because what you wrote has nothing to do with what I said. Nowhere did I state or imply that atheism makes claim to absolute knowledge for everything.0 -
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Hogwash.
Point out the bit where Christianity explains the Columbine massacre or the Batman shootings (both explained by naturalistic explanations about the mental state of the shooters, not some fuzzy nonsense about a tendency to sin).
Heck point out where Christianity provides a "robust" explanation for any thing a human has ever done!
Christianity just says that people have evil tendencies because some non-descript event took place a few thousand years ago when "sin" entered the world. The detail is practically non-existent. Why do some have more evil tendencies than others, why do some people skin cats while others beat their wives, why do some people commit insurance fraud while some burn down schools in Alabama. Christianity has nothing to say on the matter.
Good luck getting the Christian explanation submitted into a pyschological evaluation in a criminal trail. Why did the defendant shoot up the building? Well you know, tendency to sin your honour, clearly there is nothing more than needs to be said! :rolleyes:
Christianity explains these things the way saying "Well some times bad things happen to good people" explains 9/11 or the Iraq war.
The Bible actually doesn't mention "a few thousand years" at all. And we aren't proposing that it is either the doctrine of sin or psychological evaluation. I imagine that most Christians would accept psychological analysis as being valid while also recognising that there is a larger problem that lies a level deeper. And this would be what we call sin.
Furthermore, your summation of what Christianity says is knowingly inadequate. The message isn't that bad stuff happens to good people therefore Auschwitz or no parking spaces. Rather, the message is that the world is broken by evil (and this is the objective evil that you reject) but we should have hope that something was, is and will be something done about it. If you are going to offer an explanation of what other people believe at least try to do a half-decent job of it.0 -
Fanny Cradock wrote: »Difficulty or lack of understanding does not make something logically untenable. Could you, for example, explain to me why the idea of a First Cause is logically impossible? You haven't done so... yet.
After all, I would have thought that for you, the atheist(?), the universe, or some flavour of multiverse, rests upon infinite regress or an eternally uncaused past. Indeed, up until the 60's it was not unheard of to find well respected scientists who thought that our universe did not have a beginning and that it always existed. Fred Hoyle would be one example.
What would be your view on these matters?
Well, the argument from First Cause begins with the premise that everything must have a First Cause, and that’s when I start having problems with it. It seems to me that there is no reason why God should be exempt from this.
I have no views on the idea of multiverses, or on infinite regress. They are interesting possibilities, and they can lead to some amazing ideas, but of course we don’t have the answers to these questions yet. Maybe we never will. I’m okay with that; in the absence of evidence, it’s perfectly reasonable to suspend judgment. But I believe we should keep asking the questions, because they are fundamental, and in looking for answers we learn the most astounding things about the universe, and our place in it.0 -
Fanny Cradock wrote: »The Bible actually doesn't mention "a few thousand years" at all. And we aren't proposing that it is either the doctrine of sin or psychological evaluation. I imagine that most Christians would accept psychological analysis as being valid while also recognising that there is a larger problem that lies a level deeper. And this would be what we call sin.
I don't know what you are proposing, but Phil is proposing that the Christian explanation makes far more sense and is more robust than any naturalistic explanation for human behaviour, specifically human violence.
Do you agree with that?Fanny Cradock wrote: »Furthermore, your summation of what Christianity says is knowingly inadequate. The message isn't that bad stuff happens to good people therefore Auschwitz or no parking spaces.
I wasn't saying that the Christian message is bad things happen to good people, I was saying that the Christian message is as light weight and vacuous as someone using such an explanation to explain something as complex as 9/11 or the Iraq war.
I don't know, maybe some people like vacuous explanations for things, but the idea that these provide a more robust understanding of what happened and why is frankly laughable.Fanny Cradock wrote: »Rather, the message is that the world is broken by evil (and this is the objective evil that you reject) but we should have hope that something was, is and will be something done about it. If you are going to offer an explanation of what other people believe at least try to do a half-decent job of it.
"Broken by evil"?? Can you explain the practical out come of that in any instance of violence or agression? What happens and why?0 -
If we accept that the material universe as we know it came into being with the big bang we have to accept that all the laws that governed its evolution from quarks to atoms to suns to planets to lifeforms to humans were in existence at the instant of the big bang. Surely we have to confront the question of where did such a wonderous and complex set of laws come from? We also have to accept that time as we know it came into being at the instant of the big bang and therefore there was no "before" in terms of our understading of time. This is where most of the confusion is, we are limited by linear thinking and that everything has a past and a future.
The concept of "God" is that there is a reality outside our material world that gives our world its substance and that it is a reality with the intelligence to design sets of laws to create a physical universe like ours. I can only think of this as mind but what kind of mind is unknown to us. Maybe this is a simulation and we have no more free will than a character in WOW but we currently have about as much understanding of it as a fish has looking out of an aquarium.0 -
If we accept that the material universe as we know it came into being with the big bang we have to accept that all the laws that governed its evolution from quarks to atoms to suns to planets to lifeforms to humans were in existence at the instant of the big bang. Surely we have to confront the question of where did such a wonderous and complex set of laws come from? We also have to accept that time as we know it came into being at the instant of the big bang and therefore there was no "before" in terms of our understading of time. This is where most of the confusion is, we are limited by linear thinking and that everything has a past and a future.
The concept of "God" is that there is a reality outside our material world that gives our world its substance and that it is a reality with the intelligence to design sets of laws to create a physical universe like ours. I can only think of this as mind but what kind of mind is unknown to us. Maybe this is a simulation and we have no more free will than a character in WOW but we currently have about as much understanding of it as a fish has looking out of an aquarium.
If we require an intelligence to have constructed the laws and principles of this universe then why would we not require another intelligence to create this intelligence.
Or to put it another way, the idea that a simple (relatively speaking) set of natural laws can just exist does not require a greater leap than to imagine than an all powerful omnipotent intelligent being just exists.
If something as vast and complex as the god described in Christianity (with though, emotional states, intelligent planning etc) doesn't require a creator why would a set of non-intelligent non-emotional natural laws require a creator?
Its like finding a Lego block and pondering what must have made it, but imagining that the entire Lego factory that did can just exist.0 -
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I think a good way of putting it is that the assumption being made is that you cannot make something more complicated than yourself. If that's true, then our complicated universe requires a complicated creator; but then that complicated creator needs an even more complicated creator.Its like finding a Lego block and pondering what must have made it, but imagining that the entire Lego factory that did can just exist.
If, on the other hand, we accept that something simple can be the parent of something less simple, we've basically done away with the need for a complicated creator. Because everything we see might just be the result of some initially quite simple process.
Or am I just complicating things?0 -
If we require an intelligence to have constructed the laws and principles of this universe then why would we not require another intelligence to create this intelligence.
That's exactly the kind of linear thinking though that confuses people. The laws of cause and effect are laws of our known physical universe. What lies behind or outside our universe is unknown to us and there is little point dwelling on it currently as the greatest human minds in history have pondered this question to no avail. The mind is the least understood aspect of our existance, imo it will take an Einstein like leap in our understanding of mind to even begin to understand the nature of God.0 -
GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »I think a good way of putting it is that the assumption being made is that you cannot make something more complicated than yourself. If that's true, then our complicated universe requires a complicated creator; but then that complicated creator needs an even more complicated creator.
If, on the other hand, we accept that something simple can be the parent of something less simple, we've basically done away with the need for a complicated creator. Because everything we see might just be the result of some initially quite simple process.
Or am I just complicating things?
No, you have it spot on. Complexity increases. The universe is getting more complex not less. The idea that God created a universe entire and whole as we see it now is neither biblical or logical. We don't need God to explain our universe.
And guess what, most Christians don't use Him for this.0 -
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philologos wrote: »I have extensively. It's why I rejected agnosticism about 5 years ago and decided to accept Jesus Christ as my Saviour and follow Him. Simply put, I find the atheistic naturalism that you guys put across as deeply lacking, on a logical level as well as on any other level. Christianity provides a much better explanation for why we are the way we are as human beings than atheism does. Christianity explains the fallen state of man, much much better than atheism does. It gives a robust explanation as to why this world is as screwed up as it is, and indeed it provides a solution to it - namely that Jesus stood in my place (and yours if you're willing to accept it) and by His blood He paid the price for sin. Atheism - offers nothing.
Hogwash.
Point out the bit where Christianity explains the Columbine massacre or the Batman shootings (both explained by naturalistic explanations about the mental state of the shooters, not some fuzzy nonsense about a tendency to sin).
Heck point out where Christianity provides a "robust" explanation for any thing a human has ever done!
Christianity just says that people have evil tendencies because some non-descript event took place a few thousand years ago when "sin" entered the world. The detail is practically non-existent. Why do some have more evil tendencies than others, why do some people skin cats while others beat their wives, why do some people commit insurance fraud while some burn down schools in Alabama. Christianity has nothing to say on the matter.
Good luck getting the Christian explanation submitted into a pyschological evaluation in a criminal trail. Why did the defendant shoot up the building? Well you know, tendency to sin your honour, clearly there is nothing more than needs to be said! :rolleyes:
Christianity explains these things the way saying "Well some times bad things happen to good people" explains 9/11 or the Iraq war.
Yes Christianity explains these much better. It explains definitively what has happened to the human condition. You mock but realistically I do think Christianity provides a much better answer to why do bad things happen to "good" people and so on. Atheism provides no reasonable explanation for this. Rather it claims that anything we like can be moral. So the Columbine shooting or the Batman shooting in Denver could be OK it depends on the beholder.
Christianity says God takes sin seriously and that He will judge those who refuse to accept His rightful rule. Atheism provides nothing.0 -
philologos wrote: »Yes Christianity explains these much better. It explains definitively what has happened to the human condition. You mock but realistically I do think Christianity provides a much better answer to why do bad things happen to "good" people and so on. Atheism provides no reasonable explanation for this. Rather it claims that anything we like can be moral. So the Columbine shooting or the Batman shooting in Denver could be OK it depends on the beholder.
Christianity says God takes sin seriously and that He will judge those who refuse to accept His rightful rule. Atheism provides nothing.
Why should atheism say anything of the sort? It's only a statement regarding belief. You know this, so I'm not sure why you're saying it.
You're also conflating human psychology (i.e. why do humans act a certain way) with morality and ethics (i.e. what way ought humans to act.) When it comes to "why do humans act as they do," it's a question best answered by psychology, and not a question relevant to morality or ethics; psychology is a far better means of explanation than simply regarding man as bad because of "sin." This is why an atheist has no problems when it comes to questions about how man acts.0 -
That's exactly the kind of linear thinking though that confuses people. The laws of cause and effect are laws of our known physical universe. What lies behind or outside our universe is unknown to us and there is little point dwelling on it currently as the greatest human minds in history have pondered this question to no avail. The mind is the least understood aspect of our existance, imo it will take an Einstein like leap in our understanding of mind to even begin to understand the nature of God.
If there is little point dwelling on it why propose God created the universe as opposed to anything else?0 -
Why should atheism say anything of the sort? It's only a statement regarding belief. You know this, so I'm not sure why you're saying it.
You're also conflating human psychology (i.e. why do humans act a certain way) with morality and ethics (i.e. what way ought humans to act.) When it comes to "why do humans act as they do," it's a question best answered by psychology, and not a question relevant to morality or ethics; psychology is a far better means of explanation than simply regarding man as bad because of "sin." This is why an atheist has no problems when it comes to questions about how man acts.
Your still one question away from what religion attempts to answer.
This is why science is not religion and vise versa.
Why did PolPot do what he did? Psychology and political science will be the best route to answer that.
Why Pol Pot at all? Religion if thats the question you need an answer to.
It's not a competition, some zero sum game where the gains of one takes from the other. Both offer something entirely different.0 -
philologos wrote: »Yes Christianity explains these much better. It explains definitively what has happened to the human condition. You mock but realistically I do think Christianity provides a much better answer to why do bad things happen to "good" people and so on.
Can you detail how Christianity explains something like the Columbine shootings. In as much detail as required.
Or if that is too general, can you detail how Christianity explains why Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold carried out the shootings as opposed to any of the other humans in the school that day?
Detail how Christianity provides a "robust" explanation for their actions.philologos wrote: »Atheism provides no reasonable explanation for this. Rather it claims that anything we like can be moral. So the Columbine shooting or the Batman shooting in Denver could be OK it depends on the beholder.
Eric Harris was suicidally depressed and Dylan Klebold was a sociopath with violent tendencies, two mental conditions explained by natural biology and human psychology.
Can you point how Christianity explains this better than the naturalistic explanations? Heck can you point out how Christianity explains this at all? Demons perhaps?0 -
From what I remember you entered into special pleading with the comparisons offered between the resurrection and other death cults.philologos wrote: »In short for now - I'll come to the rest of your posts (plural) later. You are aware that I made responses to those posts showing how they were flawed also?
By the by I've responded to the second post also albeit inadvertently quite recently on After Hours.
I've pointed out why I find both posts flawed as have others on this forum before.
We've just looked at how Sai Baba isn't a good comparison with the Resurrection. I suggest you look back a few pages.
Anyway if there's any specific reply you feel I've missed just point it out. Or if you want any clarifications on why your points were flawed I can restate them for you.0 -
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Why Pol Pot at all? Religion if thats the question you need an answer to.
If you absolutely need an answer to such a question, then perhaps religion is your solution. But I would maintain that such a question is a meaningless one; I don't believe it's worth asking why a certain individual was born, because to me there is no "why" behind it.0 -
If you absolutely need an answer to such a question, then perhaps religion is your solution. But I would maintain that such a question is a meaningless one; I don't believe it's worth asking why a certain individual was born, because to me there is no "why" behind it.
Well their you go. Thats the point. I wont force you to answer it if you don't force me to not ask?0 -
Well their you go. Thats the point. I wont force you to answer it if you don't force me to not ask?
Of course. If somebody feels they need to find a solution to such a question then they should be perfectly free to do so. I doubt you'll find too many that object to that right. The fun of discussion arises from examining the solution -- in this case Christianity -- as is evidenced by this thread's existence.
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I only say that it holds people back from understanding the world as it exists in reality. Science informs both sides but the conclusions reached by one side are not consistent with our current best scientific understanding. Having a different conclusion from the same evidence is annoying but only human. What actually annoys me is the hypocrisy of accepting some naturalistic conclusions while rejecting ones that conflict with a religion, even though the conclusions are supported by the same reasoning and methods.Well, you see that's where you are making the unsubstantiated presumption that one worldview holds one back, and another doesn't based on the presumption that science only informs Atheists or that science in and of itself has an 'ethos' - it has a method, not an ethos.
No argument here. Progressive is just a buzz word. We try our best to make ethics better by our self assigned standards but where it's going we don't know. You seem to be one of the few here to actually understand that atheism says nothing about ethics.Look, I get why you think what you do, but I don't subscribe to it. There's always this underlying hint that a 'shifting' ethical outlook is 'progressive' - but no reason why it is....or indeed where it's going....it's just 'shifting', and we're told that's very progressive progress to somewhere..... This is humanism though, it's not 'Science', it's a worldview.0 -
If there is little point dwelling on it why propose God created the universe as opposed to anything else?
The options are to either accept that a mind designed the universe or that the universe just popped into being from nothingness complete with all the known and as yet unknown laws that caused it to evolve as it did. What I would not dwell on is trying to understand the mind that designed the universe but my admittedly limited mind cannot comprehend anything other than a mind is behind it.0 -
I don't know what you are proposing, but Phil is proposing that the Christian explanation makes far more sense and is more robust than any naturalistic explanation for human behaviour, specifically human violence.
Do you agree with that?
What I would say is that I find any purely reductionistic explanation to be utterly inadequate. Phil can speak for himself.I wasn't saying that the Christian message is bad things happen to good people, I was saying that the Christian message is as light weight and vacuous as someone using such an explanation to explain something as complex as 9/11 or the Iraq war.
Then I am confused as to why you would say exactly those words. If you have a point, make it. People shouldn't have to second guess your posts.I don't know, maybe some people like vacuous explanations for things, but the idea that these provide a more robust understanding of what happened and why is frankly laughable.
I suppose that this is another example of people on this forum talking past each other. I would gather that Phil is presupposing there are moral absolutes - good and evil - and that discovering causal factors in somebodies decision to commit a particular evil deed doesn't itself explain the existence of evil in the first place. Anders Breivik might have killed 77 people and injured 245 for any number of reasons we can pin down but that doesn't in any way address why his actions were evil or from whence this evil came. You don't believe in evil so therefore you and Phil are both having different conversations.
I don't understand your questions."Broken by evil"?? Can you explain the practical out come of that in any instance of violence or agression? What happens and why?GCU Flexible Demeanour wrote: »I think a good way of putting it is that the assumption being made is that you cannot make something more complicated than yourself. If that's true, then our complicated universe requires a complicated creator; but then that complicated creator needs an even more complicated creator.
If, on the other hand, we accept that something simple can be the parent of something less simple, we've basically done away with the need for a complicated creator. Because everything we see might just be the result of some initially quite simple process.
Or am I just complicating things?
I think you are certainly misunderstanding at least one view from classical Christianity. Assuming we take your statement that less complex things don't give rise to more complex things (why exactly do you think this, by the way? And why do you assume that God is less complex than the universe?), the doctrine of Divine Simplicity would hold that God is not complex in the way people like Richard Dawkins so clumsily state he is.
According to this doctrine, God isn't composed of parts; he doesn't have toenails, hair, eyes or brain functions. It is therefore a category error to compare something like the universe to God. Indeed, I would say that you are comparing apples to oranges but that analogy doesn't even hold because both apples and oranges are both examples of composite objects.
Aquinas wrote about this if you are interested. There is a handy introduction to Aquinas by Ed Feser here. He also appeared, and in typically robust fashion, on this radio show to talk about Aquinas amongst other things. If I've got the correct show he discusses how Dawkins wrote on Aquinas without understanding what his argument was.0 -
Well, the argument from First Cause begins with the premise that everything must have a First Cause, and that’s when I start having problems with it. It seems to me that there is no reason why God should be exempt from this.
I have no views on the idea of multiverses, or on infinite regress. They are interesting possibilities, and they can lead to some amazing ideas, but of course we don’t have the answers to these questions yet. Maybe we never will. I’m okay with that; in the absence of evidence, it’s perfectly reasonable to suspend judgment. But I believe we should keep asking the questions, because they are fundamental, and in looking for answers we learn the most astounding things about the universe, and our place in it.
That's actually not how the argument is formulated. It is commonly formulated that everything that comes to exist has a cause. God is by definition uncaused. You seem to have misunderstood the argument being made. We aren't talking about a God that is complicated and requires another Creator and another and another. That would not be God by definition of Christianity.
Again, can you explain to me what reasons you have for claiming that the concept of God is illogical? That is really all I am trying to get at. If it was a throwaway remark that is fine. But I want to understand why the notion of God is apparently illogical. So far I haven't seen you expand on this.
The reason I ask about the universe is because I think it is relevant to the topic. I can think of only 3 options (with some variations in between) when it comes to existence -
1) There is some First Cause, prime mover, uncaused Cause etc, which in the context of this forum is referring to God.
2) An uncaused universe - one that had no beginning and always existed.
3) An infinite regress of causes that are individually finite but part of an infinite whole.
It is not obvious to me why 1 is illogical but the other two aren't.0 -
I think this is a very pertinent point. I think that, in a lot of atheist/theist discussion, we all tend to circle around this kind of point without getting to the nub of it. Because you are right - a consequence of the atheist position is that nothing evil happened when Breivik killed those people. Whether sane or insane, a consequence of the atheist position is that he's no more evil than an extreme weather event.Fanny Cradock wrote: »You don't believe in evil so therefore you and Phil are both having different conversations.
I haven't come across the concept of divine simplicity before - but my first reaction to reading that material was "um, so this says he doesn't exist either - because he's such a different creature that you couldn't call it existing in any meaningful sense".Fanny Cradock wrote: »Assuming we take your statement that less complex things don't give rise to more complex things (why exactly do you think this, by the way? And why do you assume that God is less complex than the universe?), the doctrine of Divine Simplicity would hold that God is not complex in the way people like Richard Dawkins so clumsily state he is.
When I made those statements about complexity, I was really just making explicit the assumption behind the "something complex couldn't come from nothing, or next to nothing, it would have to be the product of a conscious creator" type of argument. My sole point is to say that it is possible to conceive of something simple leading to something complicated. I've no idea how the universe came to be - I'm just trying to bring out the extent to which we actually cannot make any definite statements about it.
Which, to an extent, isn't too far from the thinking in that "divine simplicity" view. However, I do find that view somewhat unsatisfactory as a description about a deity, as it really takes you nowhere. If this god is such a completely different yoke that we can't even call him a yoke, how are people suppose to relate to him at all?
Take a statement like "Jesus is God". What can it mean, if God is such a different (what? being/thing/concept) that to apply the word "is" between God and Jesus makes no sense - because this man that you might hope to know, with skin and hair and bone, cannot possibly be anything like the God that he's meant to be telling us about, or leading us to, or whatever.0 -
Why should atheism say anything of the sort? It's only a statement regarding belief. You know this, so I'm not sure why you're saying it.
You're also conflating human psychology (i.e. why do humans act a certain way) with morality and ethics (i.e. what way ought humans to act.) When it comes to "why do humans act as they do," it's a question best answered by psychology, and not a question relevant to morality or ethics; psychology is a far better means of explanation than simply regarding man as bad because of "sin." This is why an atheist has no problems when it comes to questions about how man acts.
You seem to not understand that atheism isn't just a stand alone idea. It affects a persons entire philosophy, much as Christ affects my whole philosophy. Individuals are not an island, and everyone has a worldview. Those worldviews are built on some underlying source whether that be Christ, something else or atheism. The underlying source affects our thinking in various ways.
For example, moral subjectivity is borne out of a godless attitude to the world. Moral subjectivity is entirely incompatible with Christianity, because Christians believe that God created this world, and as a rightful result of that Creation gave us standards to live by.
The philosophies that are constructed on atheism, lack explanatory power as to the fallen nature of man.
By the by, I'm dealing with worldviews and philosophies. That's all I'm touching on, and the beautiful thing is, everyone has one even if you're an atheist that view has logical implications on how you live your life, and how you think. As an agnostic, I found that my agnosticism affected how I led my life. As a Christian who is trusting step by step in the sovereignty and holiness of God, I'm finding that changes everything.
The crux of the question I find is this: What is your worldview, and under what authority do you believe or subscribe to said worldview?
EDIT: Fanny Craddock explained perfectly my view point on morality. The good or evil behind an action, not the brain processes that bring that about. Psychology can tell me many things, but it doesn't inform what I believe to be right or what I believe to be wrong.0 -
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Just came across this thread so apologies if this ground has been covered. Just like in other walks of life I find dogmatic views on this subject insufferable and frankly lacking in intellect. The greatest minds in history have pondered this question and no one has an answer. I believe this question is a human paradox, there is no answer within our narrow frame of reference. We are severly limited by our narrow range of senses, and the easy way out is to say if we cannot percieve it then it cannot exist.
The question that I find most interesting is "where did the laws of nature come from?" They were clearly there at the instant of the big bang as everything after the big bang followed these very specific laws. Man did not invent them, man has come to know them through centuries of careful study. Who knows what undiscovered laws remain to be uncovered as we continue our evolution. There is strong evidence that music is like mathematics and is already out there waiting to be uncovered like calculus. Mozart for example used to relax by having his wife read to him and after she finished he would transcribe whole finished pieces of music with no apparent effort of composing. Which begs the question, "where did such complex beautiful music come from"?
I think we just have to accept we cannot even imagine the answer to the question of what lies behind the design of the universe. We should accept our limitations because there are many topics where we just cannot understand due to our mental limitations. A good example is time. In concept people accept Einstein's work without actually pondering its significance. In discussions about the big bang theory, one frequently hears the comment "but what came before the big bang". The answer of course is there was no "before" since time as we know it came into being at the instant of the big bang. Its hard to imagine a world without time but it must exist outside the constraints of our universe otherwise our universe could not exist.
Your view is about as dogmatic as mine. Let's stop pretending. Atheism is about as dogmatic as Biblical Christianity is. At least I'm willing to accept that Christianity is dogmatic, insofar as it teaches about the state of reality and the universe. It teaches a doctrine, or a thesis about reality. Any philosophy that is built on atheism does the same.0
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