If There Is No God...

[Papist]

Why don't you do it anyway? Are you afraid of hell? Doesn't seem to bode well for showing what kind of person you really are if you only do things to avoid punishment.

 

If there is no God, that would be the only reason to avoid doing evil, me being punished. Why should I care about anyone else? What meaning does it have?

[Era Might]

If there is no God, that would be the only reason to avoid doing evil, me being punished. Why should I care about anyone else? What meaning does it have?

 

Whatever meaning you give it. It's like someone saying "My life is meaningless because I failed." Failure is only a meaning you assign to something. One can look at the same situation and assign growth, or success, or learning.

Edited February 7, 2013 by Era Might

[KnightofChrist]

Perhaps not "evil" as you conceive it. But that's like saying happiness would not exist because your experience of happiness were not satisfied.

We have millions of years of human experience to give us a sense of what is positive and negative, helpful and hurtful, enjoyable and not enjoyable, peaceful or not peaceful. There is no need for a supreme lawgiver in order to construct a meaningful way to live in the world, which one could call "morality."

Most of what we mean, even in a religious society, by "morality" is just applying experience. What does one do about a beggar in the street? Christians can find all kinds of morality to justify anything they do in that situation. Thankfully, Christ never appealed to morality, but to something greater, to love.

I agree that subjective evil would exist in the minds of people, but their ideas of what it is wouldn't exist outside their opinions and imagination, even if millions of others shared similar opinions for millions of years. Without God morality is reduced to subjectivity and the opinions of men and women. One group of persons, group A may find "x" to be evil and "y" to be good. Another group equal in power, group B may find "y" to be evil and and "x" to be good. Without some greater objective force outside themselves both are "right". Edited February 7, 2013 by KnightofChrist

[Papist]

Your experience is not the only one that matters.

 

In what situation do you feel good hurting people?

 

There's a famous photo of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square after the United States dropped the atom bombs on Japan. That, to me, says everything about "good" and "evil" in human society.

 

It's true we often act without really considering whether our actions are good or bad...but one can live an examined life without the existence of a god. One can reflect on the toll of, say, war, in the history of humanity, and come to decisions about that photo in Times Square. Believing in a god doesn't necessarily resolve the issue.

 

Does the message of "The Iliad" and what it says about war, cease to be valid because Zeus and Apollo do not actually exist?

 

If no God, me is the only thing that matters. People do take pleasure hurting people, especially in the form of revenge and jealousy.  

Whatever meaning you give it. It's like someone saying "My life is meaningless because I failed." Failure is only a meaning you assign to something. One can look at the same situation and assign growth, or success, or learning.

 

Exactly! If it can mean anything and everything, it is meaningless. 

[Era Might]

I agree that subjective evil would exist in the minds of people, but their ideas of what it is wouldn't exist outside their opinions and imagination, even if millions of others shared similar opinions for millions of years. Without God morality is reduced to subjectivity and the opinions of men and women. One group of persons, group A may find "x" to be evil and "y" to be good. Another group equal in power, group B may find "y" to be evil and and "x" to be good. Without some greater objective force outside themselves both are "right".

 

That's how the world works anyway. The strong do whatever they want, and the weak find a way to get by.

 

The concept of a god is mainly for the afterlife, to comfort people that the strong will get theirs, and the weak will be rewarded.

 

In actual society, good and evil are not abstract philosophical concepts...people generally act according to customary conceptions of good and evil. In the middle east hospitality is a very important part of the culture, welcoming the stranger. In America, we pass beggars by and don't think twice...indeed, we tell ourselves that god helps those who help themselves.

 

What is this "greater objective force" in actual society? Rarely do people live their lives according to some abstract "good" and "evil." Maybe there is a woman in your neighborhood who's been married 3 times. No doubt, she thinks she's a good person. But if one introduces the kind of abstract morality that we usually mean by "good" and "evil," then she's probably going to hell.

 

Exactly! If it can mean anything and everything, it is meaningless.

 

Well, that's precisely the question we set out to ask. To me, it doesn't say it's meaningless, it just says there is so much human experience, and we do our best to put it all together and find some meaning. That's usually what we call civilization, or in our personal lives, it's what we call growing up. To the young, everything is meaningless when you realize you were wrong. To the mature, that's when the meaning begins.

Edited February 7, 2013 by Era Might

[KnightofChrist]

That's how the world works anyway.

Then you agree with me, "good" my phone is about to die anyway.

[Era Might]

Then you agree with me, "good" my phone is about to die anyway.

 

I shall light a candle for this injustice, this evil your phone has committed.

Edited February 7, 2013 by Era Might

[Anomaly]

If no God, me is the only thing that matters. People do take pleasure hurting people, especially in the form of revenge and jealousy.  

 

 

You basically are correct, but "me" isn't the only thing that exists or gives us pleasure.

 

Society is a reality.  Our feelings, emotions, and self esteem are real enough.   Humans are social beings and avoid doing 'bad' because of consequences, both physical and emotional.

 

Monkey's don't need a God to have an ordered society where individuals live happily in a cooperative society.  There are emotional bonds between offspring and parents in elephant herds.  Humans have a higher mental capacity and can ponder and imagine consequences, feelings, wants, and desires.  Most humans aren't happy to live as hermits and will avoid being ostracized from a community.  Atheists, various diests, and agnostics successfully achieve happiness and satisfaction in this life without too much consideration of what God thinks about it.

 

Personally, I came to the conclusion that all I have is my life now.  I'm personally responsible for the things I can control in this life, and I'm personally responsible for my happiness now.  I love and enjoy family, friends, and myself.  A God and and a myth of an afterlife is completely irrelevant to now.  I have little desire to spend my next few years in selfish behavior becuase that doesn't make me happy.  I have desires for an ordered society because I'd like my friends, family, children, to enjoy their lives as well.

 

Empathy is a real human feeling.  A discernable concept.  And is evident in human behavior.  Empathy does not exist for a few simply because a God tells them to behave and think empatheticly.

[Anomaly]

 

Interesting, one could argue that the invisible concept of "god" serves the same function that taboos did / do in other societies, or ideology in any society, a way to navigate the world. And of course, it doesn't have to be an invisible conception of god...the ancient greeks and romans believed in the very real presence of the gods in human form, and that continues in the "apparitions" that pop up. The ancient greeks believed to "see" Apollo and other gods just as truly as the children at Fatima "saw" the Virgin Mary.

I like that. It's a way we navigate our society, both short term and long term. It's a shared muthology or fantasy that helps us to explain, defend, and pass on community standards and beliefs. I think there is rational, emotional, explainable standards and concepts for behavior that don't have to have a GOD decreeing them.

[Socrates]

Physical processes are caused by the electro-chemical activity of the brain.  That does not imply that consciousness is electro-chemical activity.  John Searle has written about this a lot.  

 

What then is consciousness?

 

Is it a material thing?  A form of matter?  Energy?

 

Can it be scientifically observed and measured?

 

If consciousness is not a material thing, and has existence apart from atoms, etc. in the brain, then what is it?  How does unconscious, unintelligent matter create or generate an immaterial thing?  Is this generation a physical process?

 

 

I think there's a lot materialism fails to adequately explain.

[Fidei Defensor]

What then is consciousness?

 

Is it a material thing?  A form of matter?  Energy?

 

Can it be scientifically observed and measured?

 

If consciousness is not a material thing, and has existence apart from atoms, etc. in the brain, then what is it?  How does unconscious, unintelligent matter create or generate an immaterial thing?  Is this generation a physical process?

 

 

I think there's a lot materialism fails to adequately explain.

 

Not understanding something doesn't equate to a default "god must be real" position.

[Socrates]

It goes without saying that atheists construct meaning...that's precisely the point. One can even be an atheist and still believe in the spiritual dimension of man...the personal conceptions of Christianity are not the only way one can construct meaning.

 

It seems to be a general law of human nature that people see what they want to see, whether it is the risen Christ, the glorious Apollo, the glorious or infamous United States, or a big meeting place in the sky. These are all ways people construct meaning...even within a religion, one can see what they want to see (a merciful Christ or a just Christ, a veneration of poverty or a veneration of industry, etc).

 

Assuming we are just "physical electro-chemical activity," it does not follow that free will, intellect, etc. are "meaningless." One can construct all kinds of meaning out of them. You construct a negative meaning...a Buddhist might have a positive meaning. The 12-step program refers to belief in a "higher power," which could be anything...creating a program like 12 steps is another way of constructing meaning, a peculiarly American one at that.

 

I suppose it is possible for someone to be an atheist and still believe in a spiritual realm, though I don't think it would make much sense logically or philosophically.

I'm not sure how the spiritual would come into existence in an atheistic framework.  It makes more sense philosophically to believe that immaterial intelligent Being created unintelligent matter than vise-versa.

 

Most atheists are materialists (that is they believe that nothing exists outside of matter in some form or another).

 

 

If there is no spiritual reality, and physical, material universe is all there is, then all human "meaning" and philosophies, "higher powers," etc. have no actual existence outside of physical brain activities.  They are not real in any transcendent sense.

 

My point about free will is not that it is "meaningless, but that if we accept materialism, we must conclude that it is illusory.  If all the choices we make are simply the result of physical activity in the brain, these choices are physically determined, and bound by the laws of physics.  They are in reality no more free than a pool ball is free to change direction on its own after being hit with the stick.  That free will is ultimately illusory is actually a conclusion that atheist philosophers and scientists have come to.

 

 

 

The basis of human knowledge and ideas is not that we believe in non-material things, but that we experience knowledge and ideas. The experience exists before the construction of meaning.

 

Are these knowledge and ideas material or immaterial?  Do they have actual existence outside the brain matter that experiences them?

[Socrates]

Indeed...I think the virtual reality of television, etc. are very bad for humanity. I am constantly aware when I watch TV that I am not seeing anything but pixels on a screen, and if I believe I am seeing something (which is the purpose of TV, to convince us of something that does not actually exist) then I have become hypnotized into a fantasy.

 

Our conceptions of things like knowledge, memory, etc. are constructed according to physical conditions. There was a time when humanity did not have books...in which case, "memory" could not be conceived as the writing of information on an inner page. Plato, closer to pre-literate society, warned against the alphabet...he described memory as logs running downstream, never to be seen again, not permanent markings on a page. Even when it comes to our own perceptions we are lost in our constructions of meaning. Right now as I type I am, unconsciously, identifying my ability to think with this artificial system of communication. I become the computer, it defines how I perceive human communication, even though computers are completely unnecessary to human communication, just as one believes in a god because it is there...whether it is Apollo, Jesus, or Allah.

Nobody grows up in isolation and conceives of Apollo, Jesus, or Allah. They believe in the conception of their society, which changes across centuries, even if the general concept remains the same.

 

Interesting, though it appears you missed my point, which is simply that if atheistic materialism is true, the thoughts, ideas, and philosophies we discuss have no existence outside of physical activity in brains and elsewhere.

 

if we were having this conversation face-to-face, you could substitute, "blowing air" or such for "pixels on a computer screen" and the point would still stand.

[4588686]

What then is consciousness?

 

Is it a material thing?  A form of matter?  Energy?

 

Can it be scientifically observed and measured?

 

If consciousness is not a material thing, and has existence apart from atoms, etc. in the brain, then what is it?  How does unconscious, unintelligent matter create or generate an immaterial thing?  Is this generation a physical process?

 

 

I think there's a lot materialism fails to adequately explain.

 

 

Yeah.  These are all very reasonable questions and they aren't questions that I am competent (I haven't read the relevant material in years) to answer nor is it a question that can really be answered in a few paragraphs.  I generally agree with the direction of your questioning.  I think that the field of philosophy of mind and neuroscience has had some ideological blinders on.  And are too dogmatic in their conceptualization of what constitutes 'material' (as Searle points out, using the normal criteria for matter that most philosophers of mind and theorists in neuroscience us, the traditional Cartesian criteria, electrons would not be 'matter').

 

 

http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Papers/Py104/searle.prob.html

[Era Might]

Are these knowledge and ideas material or immaterial?  Do they have actual existence outside the brain matter that experiences them?

 

I don't see how knowledge and ideas have "existence." I've never experienced anything except through our experience in the world...even dreams are based on the world as we know it.

 

Religion proposes an invisible world where angels and demons wander to and fro. Perhaps such a world exists, but I have no experience of it, and have no reason to believe such a world actually exists, since I don't see anything of the kind in actual experience.