The Monkey

It's a deeply disturbing thought that the only thing that stops people from murdering and raping is an old book filled with fairy-tales (remember, the same book also encourages slavery, the killing of homosexuals and selling out your daughters as sex slaves).

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Anteater

I dunno why you ever bothered cardboard_adolescent. This whole back and forth thing has been a closed circle. It comes down to the fact that there are those who choose to cast themselves into a void after death and those who hope for something more beyond the body. People tend to prefer the latter, if for no other reason than the fact that its preferable to believe in the existence of an incorporal soul which never dies and continues on. Its why people seek higher forces and meaning even though such may not be real.

This whole argument has given me something to think about though, as I have five or six atheist friends, though two of them have told me they are actually agnostic. Coincidently, all of them are suffering from depression because they are absolutely certain that their lives mean nothing and that there is absolute emptiness beyond their lifespans. I've tried to cheer them up before, but sigh...

The Monkey: Documenting rather than encouragement is probably closer to the truth of the matter on two of the three. Slavery was common in the ancient world, even before the advent of the "book of fairy tales". The same could be said about the killing of homosexuals and the selling of children for various purposes. Why blame the Bible when that sort of crap happens even in third world countries where nobody knows who Jesus is?

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dac

I do not believe in the bible and I have yet to murder or rape anybody.

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streetwaves

By our species advancing I meant "continuing to survive". That is, of course, all we're really here to do. Perfect society, while it will never be reached, is defined by our goal to continue to survive. The threats to human survival have made themselves apparent over the years, and our sense of what's needed to survive has evolved. Whether we believe in God or not is irrelevant - he's an entirely man made concept. Even the concept of anything "higher" than the individual human being is a thought of our own, not something needed to exist in order to justify any of our other innate senses. I do find your ideas to be fascinating, but I see morality as a sense that has become instilled in us via evolution (the same way any other trait is introduced), which has continued to exist and evolve due to its potential to sustain our existence. Religion, quite simply, was an attempt to explain the unknown, including the sense of morality that we already had.

And I do thank you for the conversation, and I think it's lovely that it has been without negativity.

That's silly. I think you'll find that relatively few atheists are truly suffering from depression because they think their lives mean nothing. God's pointless "human game" makes me feel no more meaningful than the idea that we're just floating in space, and that's it.

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cardboard adolescent

But doesn't that view of morality lead to nihilism? If morality is simply an evolutionary trait that helps a species survive, what does that mean for the individual? Why should the individual be concerned with his own or others' survival, if the only reason to be concerned is that that is the only way his survival is ensured? Survival has become its own end with nothing justifying it but our instincts. But, as I think we agreed on earlier, all we have is our instincts. Even reason, in attempting to overcome our instincts, is just another instinct. So in that case if all that justifies morality is our own instincts, but our instincts are everything, then everything justifies morality! But I think it's well worth noting that if that is true, then there is no such thing as free will. And morality operates on the principle of free will, it assumes that we are actually free to make moral choices. If we're not, and our instincts, as programmed into us by our environment, make all our choices for us, then morality is just an attempt to justify the choices we were always going to make, and as such is meaningless.

streetwaves

No, not in the sense that I mean. The fact that this innate sense of morality helps us to advance is why it has survived natural selection, but it's purely coincidental. This isn't to demean morality in any way, but to explain how it came about and why it continues to exist. Morality doesn't need justification, in the same way that we don't need further justification for any of our other senses or traits. The fact that it helps us to survive is enough. Morality is a sort of instinctual trait, but at the same time, it does not mean there is no free will. To consult your moral beliefs before doing something doesn't eliminate free will (just as consulting any form of information before making a decision doesn't mean you didn't really make a choice), and choosing to do something in spite of what your morals might tell you doesn't render morals meaningless (just as making the wrong choice doesn't render the information you read meaningless). They didn't help that particular situation, but the potential was there. Even if we do something wrong, us knowing of our mistake can contribute to improving ourselves for the future. This doesn't need to be something purely instinctual in the way that you describe it in order to avoid being weeded out by natural selection, it only needs to be something that better ensures our continued existence. I think perhaps that empathy is another trait that has evolved in human beings that complements our morality, and similarly has been accepted by evolution.

I tried to sound coherent there, but I might have contradicted myself somewhere. My point should be, though, that an idea of God doesn't make us any more free-willed than we are without one. By the way, if my view seems to be leading anywhere, I'd say it'd probably be leaning more towards Existentialism than Nihilism.

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The Monkey

It's not written in a such a way.

Take the following passages:
Leviticus 20:13: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

That isn't an objective documenting, that is God specifically telling people to execute homosexuals.

And the next one:
Genesis 19:4-8: Before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, surrounded the house, both young and old, all the people from every quarter; and they called to Lot and said to him, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have relations with them." But Lot went out to them at the doorway, and shut the door behind him, and said, "Please, my brothers, do not act wickedly. "Now behold, I have two daughters who have not had relations with man; please let me bring them out to you, and do to them whatever you like; only do nothing to these men, inasmuch as they have come under the shelter of my roof."

So the hero of the story, Lot, wants to protect the angels from being raped by the people of Sodom, and instead wants to give out his daughter to be raped. What morals can you draw from that?

Now, I'm not a saying that all Christians are immoral, but the reason people are moral can't be because of the bible. If it was, the sense of morality would be much different than is the case with most Christians.

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Terrible Lizard

Morality came from people, we made it up as we made up everything else in our world.
Nature does not regulate itself by the idea of "right" and "wrong" or any other known force in existence. If that is so, then it is stupid to believe that a possible "creator" follows by those ideas as well.

God if anything is silent.

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cardboard adolescent

Existentialism uses nihilism as a starting point. I came across this bit of Sartre and felt compelled to share it here:

"When we speak of forlornness, a term Heidegger was fond of, we mean only that God does not exist and that we have to face all the consequences of this. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain kind of secular ethics which would like to abolish God with the least possible expense. About 1880, some French teachers tried to set up a secular ethics which went something like this: God is a useless and costly hypothesis; we are discarding it; but, meanwhile, in order for there to be an ethics, a society, a civilization, it is essential that certain values be taken seriously and that they be considered as having an a priori existence. It must be obligatory, a priori, to be honest, not to lie, not to beat your wife, to have children, etc., etc. So we're going to try a little device which will make it possible to show that values exist all the same, inscribed in a heaven of ideas, though otherwise God does not exist. In other words nothing will be changed if God does not exist. We shall find ourselves with the same norms of honesty, progress, and humanism, and we shall have made of God an outdated hypothesis which will peacefully die off by itself.
The existentialist, on the contrary, thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears with Him; there can no longer be an a priori Good, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that the Good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is we are on a plane where there are only men. Dostoievsky said, 'If God didn't exist, everything would be possible.' That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to. He can't start making excuses for himself."

kaleidoscope..

I think that people here need to be careful when they use bible verses that they know what they are talking about when the use them.That they understand the whole story of the Bible. The old testament was written to show the sin the people were living in so they would be without excuse. Christians claim they follow Jesus who came to fulfill the law set out in the old testament. And if you look at the way Jesus spoke he did not ever say anyone should be put to death. Jesus's law was love.
Read the bible and understand it before saying that God says people should be put to death. Because God would certainly never do this. Jesus has given a way for all to be forgiven.