Not origianally mine, but I like the argument.
1) IF God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3) Therefore, God exists.
No. You must endure the Hell that is Foodcritic.
Since this statement is false, is this proof that god doesn't exist?Not origianally mine, but I like the argument.
1) IF God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2) Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3) Therefore, God exists.
Knucklehead....you seem to jump the gun.
1) I never mentioned the bible or christian faith. The argument presented is just a logical one for "God" not christianity specific.
There isn't really any logic involved in this, it's just a bunch of rambling text.
2) Some atheists indeed are less than virtuous just like some religious people. Is that your scientific observation?????
Are you actually disputing that there are some less than virtuous religious and athiestic people, or are you just typing to fill the page
the silliest point you made was..
But I think I can speak for most atheists when I say that cheating on one's spouse, abandoning one's children, raping the neighbor or killing an innocent is not morally acceptable.
The point is that you can't say that. You have no frame of refrence to determine what is morally acceptable UNLESS you borrow some sort of religious (christian or other) context to which you can determine what is ethical or not.
Why do you think it's impossible for me to decide by myself, for myself, what is right or wrong. It may be difficult for you to exist without having something outside of yourself tell you what is or isn't acceptable behavior, but a lot of us don't have that problem.
In an HONEST evolutionary/atheistic worldview survival of the fittest and self-preservation are the ONLY thing that matters. Selfishness should be your ultimate goal.
We get to this argument a lot, and I'm not quite sure why....
To be sure we're talking the same thing, can we agree that the definition of a moral, as discussed here (from Dictionary.com) is this one:principles or habits with respect to right or wrong conductIf so, then everyone has morals based upon their belief of what is right and wrong - God notwithstanding. The question then becomes, "how does one decide what is right and what is wrong?"
Certainly, everyone has the ability to ascertain this on their own - thus everyone has morals based on what they perceive as right and wrong.
So, where does a person, stereotypically, get their concepts of right and wrong from? Well, generally speaking, it would come from their parents and the community with which they spend the bulk of their formulative time, and the experiences they've had.
For a religious person, this generally means that they'll be taught a set of standards from their religion. That's easy.
And, if one has non-religious parents, or have bad experiences with religious people, or have some issue with submission to power, or simply believe that science can come up with better answers than a diety to the inherent questions of humanity, or (I'm sure there's something out there that doesn't fit into one of these categories), they'll not directly use religious beliefs as the basis for what is "right and wrong". They'll use their experiences, the society around them, their own thoughts to decide. For Americans, the bulk of the society around them (better than 90%) profess to believe in SOME religion (I'm not saying some Christian religion, I'm saying SOME religion). So, better than 90% of the society around them could be said, reasonably, to help instill "right and wrong" from some religious background. The experiences that virtually all of us have come with interactions of others with religious backgrounds. Even most atheists I know of grew up with either religious teachings or parents or schooling.... some form of religious background. So, it's fair to say that where they learned "right and wrong" from came from religious teachings.
So, a non-religious person person saying they decided their morals without religion is just not realistic. They may have decided their morals on their own, but they determine what right and wrong is, as we all do, by what they perceive as "fair", or "equal" based upon, almost in its entirety, religious-tinted (tainted, if you prefer Tommy) experiences.
Where can we go to see actual non-religious morals? The only place I can imagine is pre-historic (and, we can't really interview them or determine how they lived except through our religion-tinted eyes), or the animal kingdom.
So, how do animals treat each other? From what I've seen, mostly okay. They only eat each other if there's no other options, they provide for other adults in their species if they're full themselves, they don't seem to actively push each other off cliffs just for entertainment, etc. The natural standard seems to be "Once I'm taken care of, and my off-spring (that I haven't eaten) is taken care of, anyone can have my left-overs". When their fellow animal is sick, they generally don't antagonize the sick one (unless they're a different species and especially tasty). In most ways, they seem to treat each other as people did in the stadium in New Orleans after Katrina - mostly not horrific, with a few minor exceptions.
My point is that there is no atheist whose morals are not to some degree religious influenced, and different religions have very different moral standards. And, we all have morals, but none of us have morals that come from thin air; they're all based upon our experiences and upbringing. We're all conditioned by our surroundings to certain beliefs. Until we take a thousand babies and put them on an island somewhere with no outside influence, and come check on them 60 generations later, we'll have no idea what the human condition is without religious influence. Anybody wanna take bets on whether that society will have a "God"?
Definitions are important whether we use morals or ethics etc. To quote Dostoevsky ""If God is dead, everything is permitted."
This really is the point. Unless the atheists want us to believe that morality is some sort in evolved trait ......
Definitions are important whether we use morals or ethics etc. To quote Dostoevsky ""If God is dead, everything is permitted."
This really is the point. Unless the atheists want us to believe that morality is some sort in evolved trait ......
I thinke to a certain degree what you say has SOME truth to it (see merlin about made up laws etc) We live socially and adopt some rules.
You really need to research, Jean-Paul Sartre is the one who started that quote, based on dialogue from a Character out of Dostoevsky's book (The Brothers Karamazov). It isnt even a direct quote from the characters dialogue, Jean-Paul Sartre extrapolated what the character was saying.
Thats far from a quote from Dostoevsky himself.
.
If I'm understanding your theory correctly, you're saying all people are influenced by religion, just because they've been exposed to it or to someone else who was. If that is the case, couldn't it also be said that all people are influenced by cartoons, just because they've been exposed to it, or to someone else who was? Cartoon's could be swapped out for any ther cultural influence, i.e. parents, grandparents, bankers.We get to this argument a lot, and I'm not quite sure why....
To be sure we're talking the same thing, can we agree that the definition of a moral, as discussed here (from Dictionary.com) is this one:principles or habits with respect to right or wrong conductIf so, then everyone has morals based upon their belief of what is right and wrong - God notwithstanding. The question then becomes, "how does one decide what is right and what is wrong?"
Certainly, everyone has the ability to ascertain this on their own - thus everyone has morals based on what they perceive as right and wrong.
So, where does a person, stereotypically, get their concepts of right and wrong from? Well, generally speaking, it would come from their parents and the community with which they spend the bulk of their formulative time, and the experiences they've had.
For a religious person, this generally means that they'll be taught a set of standards from their religion. That's easy.
And, if one has non-religious parents, or have bad experiences with religious people, or have some issue with submission to power, or simply believe that science can come up with better answers than a diety to the inherent questions of humanity, or (I'm sure there's something out there that doesn't fit into one of these categories), they'll not directly use religious beliefs as the basis for what is "right and wrong". They'll use their experiences, the society around them, their own thoughts to decide. For Americans, the bulk of the society around them (better than 90%) profess to believe in SOME religion (I'm not saying some Christian religion, I'm saying SOME religion). So, better than 90% of the society around them could be said, reasonably, to help instill "right and wrong" from some religious background. The experiences that virtually all of us have come with interactions of others with religious backgrounds. Even most atheists I know of grew up with either religious teachings or parents or schooling.... some form of religious background. So, it's fair to say that where they learned "right and wrong" from came from religious teachings.
So, a non-religious person person saying they decided their morals without religion is just not realistic. They may have decided their morals on their own, but they determine what right and wrong is, as we all do, by what they perceive as "fair", or "equal" based upon, almost in its entirety, religious-tinted (tainted, if you prefer Tommy) experiences.
Where can we go to see actual non-religious morals? The only place I can imagine is pre-historic (and, we can't really interview them or determine how they lived except through our religion-tinted eyes), or the animal kingdom.
So, how do animals treat each other? From what I've seen, mostly okay. They only eat each other if there's no other options, they provide for other adults in their species if they're full themselves, they don't seem to actively push each other off cliffs just for entertainment, etc. The natural standard seems to be "Once I'm taken care of, and my off-spring (that I haven't eaten) is taken care of, anyone can have my left-overs". When their fellow animal is sick, they generally don't antagonize the sick one (unless they're a different species and especially tasty). In most ways, they seem to treat each other as people did in the stadium in New Orleans after Katrina - mostly not horrific, with a few minor exceptions.
My point is that there is no atheist whose morals are not to some degree religious influenced, and different religions have very different moral standards. And, we all have morals, but none of us have morals that come from thin air; they're all based upon our experiences and upbringing. We're all conditioned by our surroundings to certain beliefs. Until we take a thousand babies and put them on an island somewhere with no outside influence, and come check on them 60 generations later, we'll have no idea what the human condition is without religious influence. Anybody wanna take bets on whether that society will have a "God"?
