re is morality constant was re biblical rape bill conner bil okcforum osrhe edu wrote there are a couple of things about your post and others in this thread that are a little confusing an atheist is one for whom all things can be understood as processes of nature exclusively this definition does not include all atheists see the faq however i for one do think there is no need to invoke any divine or spiritual explanations it makes a big difference to claim that all things can be understood as natural processes and to claim that our observations do not require us to postulate any divine intervention or anything spiritual for that matter humans are not omnipotent and neither is science however science has one advantage theology doesn t it is self correcting with nature as its judge it is delightful to see how scientific inquiry is revealing a self consistent simple picture of our universe science is no longer a bunch of separate branches it is one from particle physics to psychology and no aspect of our life or our universe is safe from its stern and stony eye not even our consciousness there is no need for any recourse to divnity to describe or explain anything there is no purpose or direction for any event beyond those required by physics chemistry biology etc everything is random nothing is determnined actually determinism vs indeterminism is a philosophical question and science cannot say whether the whole thing is actually somehow superdeterministic or not i think the question does not have any meaning as far as individual human beings go if their apparent free will is an illusion it does not appear to be so from their perspective bill can you say for sure whether you have a free will or not this would also have to include human intelligence of course and all its products there is nothing requiring that life evolve or that it acquire intelligence it s just a happy accident maybe who are we to tell it seems intelligence is useful when during the history of earth has one species been able to control one third of the whole biosphere this can still be a result of numerous happy accidents our genetic machinery blindly replicates and preserves even that machinery can be result of the same principle only the systems that can start replicating will survive those which don t don t make it recommended reading t o for an atheist no event can be preferred to another or be said to have more or less value than another in any naturalistic sense and no thought about an event can have value from whose perspective i value events and things subjectively from my perspective nature does not have values because it does not have a perspective values arise from awareness if i have a subjective perspective it is easy to assume that other people also do and if i think about what it would it be like in their position i will eventually discover the golden rule morality is not necessarily a gift from heavens in fact it may be a product of evolution perhaps we are aware of ourselves because a sense of identity is helpful allows us to play the roles of others and make us respect others who seem to have identity too bill have you ever read aristotle try his ethica nikomakhea sp for starters how then can an atheist judge value what is the basis for criticizing the values ennumerated in the bible or the purposes imputed to god on what grounds can the the behavior of the reliogious be condemned it seems that in judging the values that motivate others to action you have to have some standard against which conduct is measured but what in nature can serve that purpose what law of nature can you invoke to establish your values c s lewis tells us that this argument was the main reason why he abandoned his atheism and became christian the argument is severely flawed some values such as the golden rule can have a rational basis some others like the basic idea of wanting to live has probably its roots in the way our brains are wired lewis ignored the very real possiblity that natural selection could also favour altruistic behaviour and morality as well indeed as humans evolved better and better in building and using tools they also became better at killing each other it is a logical necessity that evolution could only favour those who knew how to use tools but not against one s own people the bible reveals quite nicely that the morality of the early jews was not beyond this a simple set of rules to hold the people together under one god their god did not care much about people of other nations at the time of the nt things were quite different the jews were under rule of an empire and could no longer simply ignore the gentiles a new situation required a new morality and along with it a new religion was born a mutation in a meme pool since every event is entirely and exclusively a physical event what difference could it possibly make what anyone does religious or otherwise there can be no meaning or gradation of value the only way an atheist can object to any behaviour is to admit that the objection is entirely subjective and that he she just doesn t like it that s it any value judgement must be prefaced by the disclaimer that it is nothing more than a matter of personal opinion and carries no weight in any absolute sense it looks like you haven t bothered to read philosophy whenever there is an observer there is a subjective point of view which may value its existence and happiness even if that were just a result of some physical event and other s happiness too if the observer comes to think about it in an absolutely objective sense that is without any observers or subjects moral judgments lose their meaning it is not possible for a value to simply exist without a point of view this includes gods too their values are only their personal judgments not absolute truths since such truths do not exist the fact that most people do not deliberately want to hurt others is a manifestation of the way we have fought for our existence by becoming social beings who can think and value others existence morality is not property of humans alone chimps dolphins and many other species show great care for each other dolphins have sometimes saved humans from drowning a good deed indeed that you don t like what god told people to do says nothing about god or god s commands it says only that there was an electrical event in your nervous system that created an emotional state that your mind coupled with a pre existing thought set to form that reaction that your objections seem well founded is due to the way you ve been conditioned there is no truth content the whole of your intellectual landscape is an illusion a virtual reality the last statement does not logically follow in fact there is every reason to believe our thoughts can model reality very well and our senses can convey reliable information solipsism is still a logical possibility but not a very likely one you are continuously mixing two different views the subjective point of view which we all share and an objective point of view which does not exist any observer or thinker any personal being has its own point of view it does not matter whether this point of view is a result of some physical events or not it does not cease to be subjective from a non observers non point of view values do not exist neither does pain or pleasure or beauty or love such things are inherently subjective once again if god wants wives to submit to their husbands or even to make a leap of faith into the unknown or wants to punish us if we don t i disagree with his morals i do not think my morals come from any supreme being to remove my morals means the same than to make me a zombie a machine without a single thought if god gave us morality to judge but i disagree with him it is not my fault he is free to replace my morals i cannot see what is the point of giving someone a moral system which disagrees with one s own and then to get mad at this god must be schizophrenic all of this being so you have excluded yourself from any discussion of values right wrong goood evil etc and cannot participate your opinion about the bible can have no weight whatsoever neither can the opinion of any god for that matter i cannot understand why a subjective opinion of a thing made of matter is in any way less credible than an opinion of a thing made of something else bill take note absolute values must be independent of any being including gods if god has a subjective viewpoint it is his own point of view and his morals are his own petri petri pihko kem pmp mathematics is the truth pihatie c finou oulu fi physics is the rule of sf oulu kempmp the game finland phoenix oulu fi chemistry is the game
