Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Atheist why live?

Options
1235»

Comments

  • Options
    #122
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    S_Truth wrote: »
    How do you know this world is not just an illision. Just because you can feel, see, taste, ear, and smell things don't make them apart of reality or make this world reality.

    Why not?

    Why would a existence that we can't see, feel, taste or hear not be "reality"?

    Surely reality is defined as the existence that directly effects us?
    S_Truth wrote: »
    You assume this is reality because that is the best you can do or in this case majority of the world. In other words you have not acheived the highest consciousness.
    I think retreating into imaginary notions of reality would be an example of lower consciousness, rather than higher consciousness.
    S_Truth wrote: »
    What's the point of loving something that will die at end.
    The experience of loving it, surely?

    What is the point of eating a cake if at the end the cake is gone? The point is that you enjoy the cake while it is there.

    Eating the cake means you have the experience and then you don't

    Where as not eating the cake means you never have the experience at all.

    I fail to see how the second is better than the first.
    S_Truth wrote: »
    All people do is cry after someone passes away. Reality is we already knew the person will die so why cry when they leave?
    It is an emotional response, rather than an rational one. The "why" is biology, not a rational reason.
    S_Truth wrote: »
    Your happiness is an illusion, its not reality.
    Surely the experience makes it reality. What else would it be?


  • Options
    #123
    S_Truth
    Closed Accounts Posts: 27 ✭S_Truth


    EamonnKeane wrote: »
    Ah, so as a religious man you have your eye on the reward? Like a politician driving an old dear to the hospital, thinking of her 40 grandchildren and their lovely votes.

    Good is an end in itself. So are happiness and pleasure. All is fleeting - do you think our society has an end purpose? Does history? Do rabbits?

    You believe its good enoug end, but I would disagree with you and say its an excuse. Just to create happiness in the middle is an excuse to say i don't want to know why I am really here. A person avoids there whole life, why am I here, because it scares them or whatever other lame excuse. Just because you have not developed a higher consciousness or science has not got the tools to measure it and say here it is does not mean it does not exist. All this is saying you or science can't prove it exist.

    Its like saying this. Say a person you loved, died and then you go I really loved that person. But then I go show me you did. There is not a way you can prove to me that you loved that person. Logically i can dismiss everything you present to me.

    Some people feel good, killing others and now who are you to say that you are right morally and he is wrong morally. And there are people out there that believe killing is good just for the feeling.


  • Options
    #124
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    S_Truth wrote: »
    Its like saying this. Say a person you loved, died and then you go I really loved that person. But then I go show me you did. There is not a way you can prove to me that you loved that person. Logically i can dismiss everything you present to me.

    True, but then logically we could just not care that you did that. You still end up loving the dead person whether you believe it or not.

    By the way, you do know that "higher consciousness" as a phrase doesn't mean anything and is rather an oxymoron. It belongs to 1950s sci-fi movies and self help books, like the idea we only use "10% of our brain"

    Perhaps you should try and come up with a better description of what you think it is that you have managed to stumble upon.


  • Options
    #125
    pH
    Registered Users Posts: 4,188 ✭✭✭pH


    S_Truth wrote: »
    Some people feel good, killing others and now who are you to say that you are right morally and he is wrong morally. And there are people out there that believe killing is good just for the feeling.

    The point is there's very few, because our innate morals (and society to a certain extent) selects against this type of behaviour. Expressed the way you just have, it ceases to be a debate about morals and becomes hanging him from the nearest tree before he kills anyone else (or at least kicking him out of the community).

    So it's nothing to do with "who's right morally", you admit you enjoy killing, you're looking at my daughter with a grin on your face, debate over, meet my little friend.

    Are you claiming that I should look down on his bloodstained corpse with philosophical doubt as to whether I'm being some kind of hypocritical moral relativist?


  • Options
    #126
    philologos
    Closed Accounts Posts: 22,479 ✭✭✭✭philologos


    AtomicHorror wrote: »
    The burden of proof is not really on whoopsadaisydoodles. You're the one making the extraordinary claim here, so you need to provide evidence.

    Who says? I think all who make any form of claim, that deviates from the only objective position "there may be a God, or there may not be a God" are all liable to substantiate their claims in someform by indication for their belief in anything else that deviates from said position. That applies to both of us.


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #127
    Húrin
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,045 ✭✭✭Húrin


    S_Truth wrote: »
    An atheist moral purpose of life makes no sense whatsoever.
    Since atheism is non-teleological, of course it does not. However, atheists must be excused for living as if life has a meaning. What do you expect them to do, wait at the gates of despair and misery? Inconsistency is a small price to pay for living happily.

    Also, I would agree both that good morality is a reward in itself. Saying that atheists have no reason to live morally just because their lives lack an ultimate purpose is as stupid as saying that religious people only are moral because they fear divine punishment for not acting so.


  • Options
    #128
    axer
    Registered Users Posts: 5,517 ✭✭✭axer


    Morality is something you develop growing up. Doing morally good things can actually make someone feel good without the need of any spritual or religious influence.


  • Options
    #129
    AtomicHorror
    Registered Users Posts: 5,888 ✭✭✭AtomicHorror


    Jakkass wrote: »
    Who says? I think all who make any form of claim, that deviates from the only objective position "there may be a God, or there may not be a God" are all liable to substantiate their claims in someform by indication for their belief in anything else that deviates from said position. That applies to both of us.

    Yeah, but he said the world is an illusion. You reckon it's up to us to give evidence against that claim?


  • Options
    #130
    AtomicHorror
    Registered Users Posts: 5,888 ✭✭✭AtomicHorror


    S_Truth wrote: »
    Some people feel good, killing others and now who are you to say that you are right morally and he is wrong morally. And there are people out there that believe killing is good just for the feeling.

    You reckon a 2000 year old book is the sole reason why killing people is wrong? Morality is subjective, but part of the input into our value systems are from our society. So the closest thing to the absolute morality you seem to think we need is the average of a whole load of subjective moralities. And it turns out that they tend to be compatible for the most part. Societies are built on agreed rules that are, and always have been, based on that collective morality. Those who break the agreed rules are thus defying the society and are subject to punishment.

    We agree what is right and wrong. So we are "who is to say" that killing is wrong. I suspect the mutability of that frightens you and many others, but really it's always been this way. The scriptural justifications, the notion of objective morality, it's an illusion and always has been.


  • Options
    #131
    Seifer
    Registered Users Posts: 2,265 ✭✭✭Seifer


    S_Truth wrote:
    My question to an atheist is: What is the end goal of an atheist who lives a good moral life?
    The hope to have found some squirrels along the way.

    nihilism.png

    http://xkcd.com/167/


  • Advertisement
  • Options
    #132
    deleriumtremens
    Closed Accounts Posts: 491 ✭✭deleriumtremens


    Listen. The reason an atheist lives is because they are born with an irrepressable desire not to die, this desire having been grounded into all us animals with nervous systems over the course of evolution. Even the suicdal have great trouble in carrying out the act because of the neural pathways acting against it. So an atheist lives because they really cant do anything else; they might aswell use the time they have here to have the craic ya know?

    You imply that it is pointless to live a moral life if you know there is nothing waiting for you when you die. But people live by morals in any case. To behave in a moral fashion out of fear of going to hell or something instead of to improve the lives of you're fellow human beings, is not an admirable stnce to take.

    A person obtains their morals from the environment in which they grow up and live. For example, 18th century governments thought little of letting the majority of a population starve and even most 19th century Americans didnt bat an eyelid with regards slave-trading. Nowadays, such things sicken us because our enviroment tends towards us seeing each other as equals and towards us condemning such things as bad.
    Also, I'm sure this has been said in this thread previously, but the reason people behave in a way that seems moral as opposed to completely selfish, like a lot of other animals, is because our ancestors, while their nervous systems were still evolving, took to altruistic behavour because it tended to increase the copies of their own genes (which in turn reinforced altruistic behaviour) that would get passed down through the generations (by helping relatives and by reciprocal altruism with neighbours and tribe members you would meet often).

    People behave in the way they do because they can not behave otherwise, so when I do something good I didnt "choose" to do it in the way most people intuitively think...thats a major illusion a lot of people (although I'm sure less than average on this forum) are unnaware of. Also, anytime I do something good or moral, the reason for my carrying out the action is, ultimately selfish eg. me doing charity work so I can see the good results so I feel good. So realise that humans are pathetic, ultimately selfish, hedonistic beings but then again, if we wernt, we wouldnt be here!


  • Options
    #133
    Zombrex
    Closed Accounts Posts: 25,848 ✭✭✭✭Zombrex


    Húrin wrote: »
    Since atheism is non-teleological, of course it does not. However, atheists must be excused for living as if life has a meaning. What do you expect them to do, wait at the gates of despair and misery? Inconsistency is a small price to pay for living happily.

    It is only inconsistent if someone takes the theological position that if a supernatural sky god hasn't decide what your purpose in life is supposed to be then you shouldn't, or don't, have one.


Advertisement