Do atheists believe in Justice?

[Valjean]

As I said above (#47), the bible is frank about God's love of human sacrifices. By my morality, that's abhorrent to the point of insanjty.

Here are some more ─

1. Leviticus 27:28-29
Nevertheless, anything which a man sets apart to the LORD out of all that he has, of man or animal or of the fields of his own property, shall not be sold or redeemed. Anything devoted to destruction is most holy to the LORD.

No one who may have been set apart among men shall be ransomed; he shall surely be put to death.

2. Exodus 22:29-30
You must give me the firstborn of your sons. Do the same with your cattle and your sheep. Let them stay with their mothers for seven days, but give them to me on the eighth day.
(Though this was later modified, that was not much consolation for all those sacrificed to that point.]

3. Joshua 6:21
They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it - men and women, young and old

I find quite a difference in the God portrayed by the Old Testament and the God described by Jesus.
Which is the Christian God?

 

[McBell]

I find quite a difference in the God portrayed by the Old Testament and the God described by Jesus.
Which is the Christian God?

um...
The most common answer to this question that I see and hear is "Jesus"...

 

[Heyo]

I mean... thank God there has always been this need. Otherwise there would be total anarchy as in the savanna.

There isn't anarchy in the savannah. All social species have some sort of code that is taught to their young and enforced by the group. "Justice" is a survival advantage.

One question: in your opinion what did Nietzsche mean, when he said Mensch ist ein Seil, geknüpft zwischen Tier und Übermensch . Ein Seil über einem Abgrunde ?

In your words...no links or quotations.

Humans have come quite a way from their monkey ancestry, but they have also the potential to become much more. But that potential also carries the risk that we misuse it, and plunge into the abyss.

Of course there is no evidence for it, but that's not the topic.

It is, as that is one of the reasons atheists (and especially Agnostics) don't believe in it.

Actually many Protestants themselves misquote and misinterpret the sola gratia, because they believe that it's sufficient to believe in Christ's sacrifice, and you're saved. Even if you are a mass murderer.
No... that's a lie. They forget that Protestant theologies point out the good works are the evidence for salvation, so if you are a mass murderer, that is the evidence for damnation, not for salvation. Aristotelian logic.
So even if there are so many differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, they agree on several principles of soteriology.

Godly justice is a complex topic...
the Bible is very clear. People need to treat the neighbor fairly, and nothing will happen to them in the afterlife.

The Bible is very unclear. That's how all the different opinions arose, and everyone has one Bible quote to support their opinion.

 

[Valjean]

This thread is about religion, not law, indeed.
Well...a Nazi chief who managed an extermination camp cannot demand an award from God when he dies. It would be incredibly impudent, brazen, cheeky. Don't you agree? Please answer.

I'd agree, though I'm not convinced there is a God, or an afterlife, or what either might be like.

I agree. For instance, I really regret the fact we don't have the death penalty in Europe.
I would reinstate it for mass murderers and mafia bosses.

I'm not comfortable with a punishment so severe and immutable, but I can certainly understand the sentiment.

Mercy is something granted to those who repent and those who remedy or try to remedy the damage they have done.
A confession in courtroom is an example.

Sounds reasonable, but there is quite a spectrum of religions opinions on what constitutes or justifies Mercy.

Has Kissinger ever confessed? Has Kissinger ever apologized? Has Kissinger ever remedied?
No...so just put two and two together. Where he is now.

In Kissinger's case, I have my doubts about his capacity even to realize the moral implications of his actions. He didn't strike me as a person capable of either empathy or guilt.

I have said that state justice or worldly justice is intrinsically flawed, so we Christians rely on God's justice.

[/QUOTE]
Understood, given your belief that such divine justice exists. Me, I'm not so sure. I can only hope for tolerable mundane justice.

But you do admit that so many murderers get away with murder all the time...so I guess you will come to the conclusion, that worldly justice is flawed.

I agree. We can do our best, but results will remain spotty.

 

[Nimos]

So my question to atheists is: how can you believe life is fair, since according to your beliefs, there is no justice?

I don't think life is fair, and it has never been.

Humans are what can make life closer to fair when it comes to these things, but even we are not very good at it.

I also think one could make the argument that if there is an ultimate judge such as God, then we as humans shouldn't bother with any justice at all, God will handle it anyway, why isn't that satisfying enough for the believers, why a need to judge people several times?

 

[Valjean]

Exactly. Because some churchmen replaced God and considered themselves God.
Which is what many magistrates nowadays have: the God complex, autolatry. They considered themselves infallible. God.

I doubt many of them really thought it out. Perhaps they dismissed God; put Him out of their minds. Maybe they didn't even believe in Him. Likely many of them -- having grown up with a divine command concept of justice -- had never developed a personal or internalized morality.
An actual autolatry would smack of a serious psychopathology, I would think.

 

[blü 2]

I find quite a difference in the God portrayed by the Old Testament and the God described by Jesus.
Which is the Christian God?

That's a nice point.

The henotheist God of the Torah and indeed up to Isaiah is fullblown bronze / early iron age ─ you may recall how King Og (Deuteronomy 3:11) was such a big shot he could afford a bed made of iron, and Judah (Judges 1:19) even with God on his side was defeated by iron chariots. By the time of Isaiah we're at the end of the Babylonian captivity, a great civilizing influence on the Jewish upper classes, and God becomes at last the sole god.

We have no reliable history of the life of Jesus in history (given, as I suspect, there was such a being) but the earliest gospel is Mark, written in or after 75 CE, whose God is the Jewish God and who adopts Jesus as [his] son on the model of God's adoption of David (Psalm 2:7). The God of Matthew and of Luke, if we ignore the silly virgin birth tale, isn't very different. The real difference comes with Paul and with the author of John, whose God, unlike the Jewish God, is incredibly remote (like the gnostic god of the Greeks) and can't be accessed without an intermediary (Jesus) ─ John chapter 17 sets it all out. (Anyone can pray directly to the Jewish God, no need for any intermediary.) Paul also seems to be the earliest to renounce the covenant of circumcision (on the reasonable grounds that it was bad for sales to pagans) and I'd say that's a clear moment when the Christian god is categorically distinct from the Jewish god.

 

[blü 2]

As a Christian I don't consider the Ancient Testament something to be taken literally.
After all, I believe in Evolution, and that Earth is 4 billion years old.

Those passages need to be interpreted by theologians. I am not one.

I agree that a lot of the Tanakh's history is folk history; and the portrait of God in it changes from the henotheistic and typically Canaanite (though consortless) God of the Torah ─ to the Only God of Isaiah and onward. Nonetheless, the 'human sacrifice' part is central to the NT, albeit for reasons totally opaque to me ─ I have no idea why an omnipotent God would choose such a gross and clumsy manner to make [him]self known.

 

[Estro Felino]

I doubt many of them really thought it out. Perhaps they dismissed God; put Him out of their minds. Maybe they didn't even believe in Him. Likely many of them -- having grown up with a divine command concept of justice -- had never developed a personal or internalized morality.
An actual autolatry would smack of a serious psychopathology, I would think.

I don't know whether you're familiar with the Meredith Kercher's case.
I believe Sollecito and Knox were victims of a judicial error and mismanagement of justice during the investigation phase.

This woman is very courageous, Knox Amanda. She has been fighting for years to make the Italian judicial system acknowledge that she has been the victim of a prosecutor who made a big mistake.
And I totally support her.

the prosecutor claims he didn't make any mistake. He will never acknowledge it.
So yes, they consider themselves infallible. As God is.

 

[Estro Felino]

The Bible is very unclear. That's how all the different opinions arose, and everyone has one Bible quote to support their opinion.

Absolutely true. But it has been proven that the things all Christians agree on outnumber those they disagree on.

 

[HonestJoe]

But this worldly justice is a fake, phony and unholy justice...

I think that is unfair. Criminal justice systems are certainly imperfect but don't completely fail, especially when you consider that their primary purpose is more about reducing harm rather than simply applying conceptual justice (and indeed, many of the imperfections come from obsession over the latter).

At least we theists (Christians or other similar religions) believe in a Supreme God that will judge all those who made others suffer, both unwillingly and willingly.

I'd suggest that is far too simplistic, and you're making the error of assuming most other theists believe very similarly to you when that isn't even necessarily true of most other Christians.

There are long running questions and disputes over who (if anyone) will be punished for their sins after death, if so how, and who should be punished in life. And while the most extreme consequences of those disputes largely don't exist in the developed world any more, they've certainly not been resolved. I would argue that you can't have justice unless everyone is clearly aware of all of the underlying rules and principles.

So my question to atheists is: how can you believe life is fair, since according to your beliefs, there is no justice?

Who said life is fair? Even you don't believe in justice in life (even less so than many atheists I expect) so you're admitting that life is unfair too. And I'm not convinced believing, or even definitively knowing, that there will be some form of divine justice in the next life makes that any better.

As always, and as you've been repeatedly told, there is absolutely zero commonality of beliefs or attitudes across atheists beyond the concept of not believing in the existence of any gods. Equally, there is pretty much zero commonality of beliefs or attitudes across all theists too and even little if your perception is limited to the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths.

 

[Estro Felino]

I think that is unfair. Criminal justice systems are certainly imperfect but don't completely fail, especially when you consider that their primary purpose is more about reducing harm rather than simply applying conceptual justice (and indeed, many of the imperfections come from obsession over the latter).

I'd suggest that is far too simplistic, and you're making the error of assuming most other theists believe very similarly to you when that isn't even necessarily true of most other Christians.

There are long running questions and disputes over who (if anyone) will be punished for their sins after death, if so how, and who should be punished in life. And while the most extreme consequences of those disputes largely don't exist in the developed world any more, they've certainly not been resolved. I would argue that you can't have justice unless everyone is clearly aware of all of the underlying rules and principles.

Who said life is fair? Even you don't believe in justice in life (even less so than many atheists I expect) so you're admitting that life is unfair too. And I'm not convinced believing, or even definitively knowing, that there will be some form of divine justice in the next life makes that any better.

As always, and as you've been repeatedly told, there is absolutely zero commonality of beliefs or attitudes across atheists beyond the concept of not believing in the existence of any gods. Equally, there is pretty much zero commonality of beliefs or attitudes across all theists too and even little if your perception is limited to the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths.

Okay...but I started this thread to get answers, I wasn't assuming anything. Just wondering.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Exactly. Because some churchmen replaced God and considered themselves God.
Which is what many magistrates nowadays have: the God complex, autolatry. They considered themselves infallible. God.

No, they didn't. They believed god was on their side and their work holy.

 

[Revoltingest]

.....I don't consider myself superior to a fishmonger that has no high school diploma

On this we agree.

 

[Estro Felino]

No, they didn't. They believed god was on their side and their work holy.

As Hannah Arendt said in her The banality of evil, evil is extremely banal because it arises every time humans undo their capability of thinking critically, and utterly surrender to traditions and practices.
The Holy Inquisition was just like the Nazi trials meant to eliminate people the Reich didn't like.
The mechanism is the say: the incapability of thinking "is what I am doing moral or acceptable?". "can I feel empathy towards my fellow human being?".

 

[Revoltingest]

But I believe you do believe you are superior to the commoners.

You have so very many beliefs.
They entertain me.

 

[Revoltingest]

You started it by saying that you agree I am not superior to a fishmonger.

I seized the rare opportunity for common ground.

 

[Estro Felino]

I seized the rare opportunity for common ground.

I don't get what it has to do with the topic.
But since you are an atheist, you can express your take on the Op.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

As Hannah Arendt said in her The banality of evil, evil is extremely banal because it arises every time humans undo their capability of thinking critically, and utterly surrender to traditions and practices.
The Holy Inquisition was just like the Nazi trials meant to eliminate people the Reich didn't like.
The mechanism is the say: the incapability of thinking "is what I am doing moral or acceptable?". "can I feel empathy towards my fellow human being?".

They still think morally. They still feel empathy. However, those they didn't like were so thoroughly demonized and dehumanized that it became doable because you were protecting your family and country from evil.
You are taking a painfully naive, oversimplified and even dangerous approach to this. They aren't thinking like "mindless animals" (we are animals, by the way and by default think like one), they haven't developed psychotic disorders that made it so they don't feel empathy.
It's group thought, pressure and conformity. It's being taught lies until the truth is confused. It is demonizing and dehumanizing others to the point you see those others as a threat and danger. Sort of like how MAGAs are able to soeak their hate are seeing violence as justified because they have been so thoroughly lied to amd scared that they think those like immigrants and queers are destroying America and they believe the elections are compromised. Add in they are believe liberals are hurting kids then things are getting ripe for a disaster and for America's freedom amd democracy to end and be replaced by a dictatorship.

 

[Heyo]

It's group thought, pressure and conformity. It's being taught lies until the truth is confused. It is demonizing and dehumanizing others to the point you see those others as a threat and danger. Sort of like how MAGAs are able to soeak their hate are seeing violence as justified because they have been so thoroughly lied to amd scared that they think those like immigrants and queers are destroying America and they believe the elections are compromised. Add in they are believe liberals are hurting kids then things are getting ripe for a disaster and for America's freedom amd democracy to end and be replaced by a dictatorship.

250 years old and still true: