Without God(s), what is the point?!

[KWED]

Not when they are dying. Deathbed testimony is considered reliable because at that point there's no motivation to lie.

Of course there is. You may as well say that there is no motivation to leave a will, or set up a legacy or endow a college, or commit a suicide attack, etc, etc.
Deathbed testimony is only reliable if it can be corroborated. Same as any other testimony.

 

[KWED]

No but he did say we should give freely. Why are you making up a different story rather than replying to what I actually said?

You said that Jesus "turned on its head" the principle of giving to others when it is practical, but keeping it close when in dire straights.
Turning on its head means doing the opposite.

TBH, I'm getting pretty tired of some apologists on here not understanding the implications of what they say. It makes exchanges unnecessarily long and painfully tedious. There should be some kind of entrance exam to be able to post on these forums.

 

[KWED]

It's the same thing. You have a moral compass to some degree because God created you with one. So even if you don't believe in him, it's still there.

So god is required for a moral compass than.
So why does he create people with widely different moral compass?

 

[Link]

In the Quran, Allah bangs on about sending disbelievers to hell, not believers.
And yet, you claim that hell does not exist for disbelievers.
Go figure!

Where did I claim that? You have reading comprehension issues.

 

[YoursTrue]

It's better that they stopped, but they shouldn't have started in the first place. If they stop through fear of punishment/desire for reward, then it is an act of self interest rather than genuine goodness. Of course, if someone believes in the concepts of Abrahamic heaven and hell, it is impossible to separate the two motives.

It's like the gangster who stops smashing up your business because you started paying protection money. Was their stopping a good act?
Or the thief who stops trying to break into your car because the police drove by. Was their stopping a good act?

Yes, so then one's definition of good is not always the next person's way of looking at it. The conscience and view of right and wrong or good and bad is certainly not something mankind agrees on, is it? Either way, whether a person believes in God or not. It's an interesting question, which leads to other questions.

 

[YoursTrue]

So god is required for a moral compass than.
So why does he create people with widely different moral compass?

Who said He did? But then, there's free choice, too.

 

[YoursTrue]

Jesus was wrong

How?

 

[YoursTrue]

Your statement here undermines your prior premise: "And, no I don't believe I'd feel any particular caring for others if I thought they were just animals. I think that, like many people, I'd just be selfish. To say what you believe doesn't affect your feelings about others is nonsense IMO. How would you know that if you don't believe in something?"

If everyone has faults but are still basically good and caring, then the idea that you would cease caring about people if you lost faith is undermined. It might be true that *you* could feel that way, but its self evident that such would not be the norm.

I used to be a Christian, so I know what it feels like to have faith, therefore I know that how I feel about people now is actually a *lot* more altruistic and caring than when I was Christian.

Per God giving everyone a moral compass, there's no evidence of this. And just as you called me out for presuming what's in your heart, I'll call you out on this--You have no idea what my motivations or reasoning are. Your claim is tantamount to 'You actually believe in God but just pretend not to' which is pretty offensive because it presumes superior knowledge about *me* than me.

Per your barbarians statement, society is not Christianity. Social behavior is a point of genetic adaptation for humanity. From a beginning of anarchy people would form social units for basic survival.

Per no crime or war if people are inherently good, this is undermined by my prior statement that people can have certain hereditary traits that undermine the essential social caring humans have, and also certain tragedies can undermine this as well.

Overall, I find the doctrine of us all being sinners to be deeply disturbing. It establishes two dangerous ideals: 1) Superiority to those outside the preferred group, and 2) That humans by default are cruel to each other. These are premise that can lead to atrocity.

Since the idea is that all humans are sinners, the relativity and definition must take place. Speaking of atrocities, I can think about the atrocities committed by various ruling and religious entities over the centuries.

 

[Wildswanderer]

So god is required for a moral compass than.
So why does he create people with widely different moral compass?

You are assuming you don't have any say in how much you listen to your conscience.

 

[Wildswanderer]

It may well be that your adherence to an essentially selfish ideology has led you to assume that everyone else is like you. We are not.

Lol, my ideology literally is self sacrifice, so what are you talking about?!

 

[Wildswanderer]

Partly, but we are also inherently empathetic and altruistic.

That's not true of everyone. I'm not convinced it's natural for anyone. It's part of their connection with the divine.

 

[Kharisym]

Since the idea is that all humans are sinners, the relativity and definition must take place.

I don't understand, can you please rephrase? I'm a pretty literal minded person and I need things spelled out pretty specifically. I have lots of weird cognitive quirks, so I apologize if I seem dense.

Speaking of atrocities, I can think about the atrocities committed by various ruling and religious entities over the centuries.

Many atrocities stem from seeing some as part of an ingroup and others as part of an outgroup. That in and of itself isn't detrimental, but you start getting into the 'makes a history book' territory when you start seeing discrepancies of superiority and inferiority between those groups, if you see the ingroup as in a state of aggressive disadvantage to the outrgroup, or if the ingroup establishes rationalizations to minimize the harm of their actions. A sense of superiority and proclamations of presumed cruelty lead very well into these negative tribalist dynamics

I do fully agree that calling everyone sinners isn't the only cause of atrocities, but it is one of many. Think of it like this, "We are all sinners. My ingroup is saved, the outgroup is not. Given this, I have the right and obligation to enforce being saved on them." There are many other ways to end up in the trigger pulling side of an atrocity, but this is one of them.

 

[KWED]

Where did I claim that? You have reading comprehension issues.

You said that believers fear hell because it is separation from god.
So, is hell "separation from god" or is it a place where disbelievers are tortured with hooks, fire, boiling metal, etc?

Or are there different hells for believers and disbelievers?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Look around you. Read some comments on the internet. People ARE cruel by default. And it's humility that leads believers to right motivation for their actions, not superiority. The ground is even at the cross. Everyone is broken. If you think you aren't you haven't lived much or are in denial.

It's quite dishonest of you to seemingly imply that humility is somehow exclusive to christianity.
And the part about everybody being "broken", that's just the guilt trip part of your religious belief.

Such assertions are meaningless to me.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

And there it is folks! Atheism doesn't actually have any ethics because it's a system where ethics are completely relative.

No.

It doesn't have ethics because atheism is a single position on a single issue.

It's not a "system".
It's just answering "no" to the question "do you believe theistic god(s) exist?".

Did you really think that was some kind of "gtocha" moment?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Not when they are dying. Deathbed testimony is considered reliable because at that point there's no motivation to lie.

Right. Because dying brains notoriously perform very well.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

It's the same thing. You have a moral compass to some degree because God created you with one. So even if you don't believe in him, it's still there.

You have a moral compass because you are the member of a social species that's been evolving for millions of years. So even if you don't believe in the evidence of reality, it's still there.

 

[Link]

You said that believers fear hell because it is separation from god.
So, is hell "separation from god" or is it a place where disbelievers are tortured with hooks, fire, boiling metal, etc?

Or are there different hells for believers and disbelievers?

(1) Believers don’t go to hell
(2) hell has punishments including burning from flame but a believer fear losing their faith and going to hell out of fear of intense pains while the idea of being far from God in hell is their biggest fear about hell
(3) disbelievers concern of hell is not that they are far from God. If they care about that at all with the punishments awaiting them their prayer might have meaning and probably would save them from hell at that moment. But they won’t pray for that reason and will even per Quran want to ransom their family friends and all of humanity if it can save them from the pain. Their prayers will only be in error at this point and won’t have meaning.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

So in an atheists world what ultimate benefits are there in helping sick people survive? None that I can see...

If you don't see it, it's probably because you have bible blinders on.

We are humans. We are a social species. We literally depend on assembly and cooperation for our very survival. Not just your own survival, but the survival of society itself. However big or small it is. Healthy members of society are better for society then sick members. That, by itself, is already incentive enough to help the sick.

Next to that, because of such environment, we have traits like empathy. Which serves as extra motivation to help the sick and unfortunate. It's not just a call from society now to help out when you can. It's also you yourself telling yourself you should help.

It's not surprising. If humans didn't help each other, we would have gone extinct a long time ago.

we all die anyway and our existence here, as you already admit, is pointless in a godless universe.

Why would any of that make it not worth it to live your life?

And just because it's pointless in a grand cosmic objective scale context, doesn't mean it's pointless in smaller localized scale.
I also don't really see that "how you feel about it" makes any kind of difference to what is actually true.
In any case, I don't share your nihilistic view you express here.

 

[KWED]

Yes, so then one's definition of good is not always the next person's way of looking at it. The conscience and view of right and wrong or good and bad is certainly not something mankind agrees on, is it?

No. That's what I've been saying. Morality and ethics are subjective and conditional.