Rod,
If I recall correctly, Waugh said, “Madam, without my religion, I’d be barely human.”
Pithy, indeed. I should probably get around to reading “Brideshead, Revisited” one of these days.

I have two problems with this argument. The first is that it is a necessary fiction argument. The second is that it is the only argument for God that I find somewhat convincing.
So we have evidence that religious people can do evil, and that atheists can do evil. So the common denominator seems to people. In the face of existential terror I do the only sane thing and turn to Douglas Adams:
- In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
- To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
The rat-hole potential of this thread is enormous.

My other comment is that I wouldn’t equate Auschwitz and the bombing of Hiroshima. A really good argument can be made that using the bomb to get Japan to surrender saved not only American, but Japanese lives as well. The invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been a bloodbath all around, and I’m glad it wasn’t me who had to make the brutal moral calculus. Auschwitz was just pointless cruelty.

Re: A really good argument can be made that using the bomb to get Japan to surrender saved not only American, but Japanese lives as well.
So what? There may be necessary evils, but no amount of necessity renders the evil part one whit less evil. If you could preserve whole universes by murdering a single innocent, then you still should burn in hell for the act- don’t ever forget that, lest the terrible become desirable.
And yes, the two are paired well: In Auschwitz, we have evil seething in the darkness of Nacht und Nebel; in Hiroshima evil shining fiercely in a single bright millisecond.

Uh, instead of suggesting things would be worse without some almighty being, why not deal with the problem of evil?
Cute video in link.

Rod, you’re begging several questions, none of which I think are relevant to the matter of atheism.
1. You feel the “New Atheists” possess some “Enlightenment optimism about human nature”–what’s the evidence for this? When have Ditchkins shown any more inclinations than Feagletish to say that if only people believed as they do, the world would be a perfect utopia of 24/7 rainbows and all people would automatically be better? Atheism is just about the unbelievability and unlikelihood of all supernaturalist claims. That’s it. As the old saying goes, you can’t get an ought from an is.
2. You ask “if this is how man acts with God, how will he act without it?” I’d say exactly the same. You even grant that people don’t HAVE to have God to be good and that religious people can do terrible things. Not only is there no net benefit, I wager there would be no overall change. Well-adjusted empathetic people would still be kind, violence-prone greedy sociopaths would still be cruel. To say otherwise–that the darkness of human nature can be largely mitigated by supernaturalisms–just strikes me as, well, an Enlightenment optimist’s argument about the perfectability of man. Either beliefs make us better or they don’t.

Once again, this line of argument ignores entire areas of the world with cultures based on non-theistic faiths. The people in them are no worse than those in cultures that proclaim loyalty to a theistic mythos.

Jon said, “There may be necessary evils, but no amount of necessity renders the evil part one whit less evil.”
That’s why it is a terrible moral calculus. You know you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Jon said, “If you could preserve whole universes by murdering a single innocent, then you still should burn in hell for the act- don’t ever forget that, lest the terrible become desirable.”
Um wasn’t killing a single innocent to save the universe what substitutiary atonement was all about?

Zetetic, Edward Current is awesome.

Until the Europe showed pretty much anywhere people lived stable lives as agrarians or hunter/gathers. Life was nasty brutish and short but religion, family and community were the
center of everything. Individuals had few choices and didn’t count for much.
Our culture destroyed that. What replaced it is varies in its repulsiveness based mostly on who showed up to do the exploiting and how long they stayed.
What you are condemning is not a lack of God but a surfeit of us.
We can’t fix it but we should have the guts to own our part of it.

MH-Just a couple of points from my point of view. First, your view of God just seems to me to come from a very “clinical” or “sterile” point of view. This is not meant to be as derogatory as it probably sounds, just a reference to the seeming disregard of the “unquantifiable” nature of miracles and happenings that defy coincidence, and point to the supernatural. I could give you numerous examples from my own life but let me give just this one. One Sunday at Mass I gave every penny I owned in the offering plate, about $30. Afterwards I got chill bumps because I realized that I had never given all the money I owned, and then story from the Gospels about the widow’s mite crossed my mind. Just then I felt in my spirit that God was going to do something supernatural, not necessarily financial, but just something “out of the ordinary”. This was about 3 years ago and at the time I was selling real estate and the market was just beginning to go really bad. A couple of days later, a man calls me on the telephone at work asking me to make him a list of comparable quadraplexs for sale, as he was looking to sell his. This was the second list I had made for this gentleman and he mentioned on the phone that he wanted to pay me when he got to the office, I insisted that the CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) was a free service and I wouldn’t accept payment. When he arrived at the office we chatted for a while, then he told me he appreciated my help as he got up to leave. Just then he stopped and said, “Oh I want to pay you for your service”. Once again I insisted not to be paid, but he insisted that I be compensated. This went back and forth 3 times until finally he looked at me exhausted and said “Chuck, I’m not leaving this office unless you take my money”, to which I said “are you serious? Well O.K. but at least let me earn the money in the future” and he said “O.K., it’s a deal”. Then he laid some money on my desk and left. I should tell you that at this point I had been selling real estate for about a decade and never received, or to the best of my memory, even been offered a penny for this free service. As I picked the money up off of my desk, I was thinking it would be $10-$20 max., I began to rejoice and worship God as I counted $300! I failed to tell you that I am married and the father of 7 children, 5 naturally, and 2 children willed to us from a neighbor friend that committed suicide in 2001. To us this was a tremendous amount of money! And at a very trying time in my real estate career, when homes were getting hard to sell. Then it dawned on me that God had given me 10x what I had given to Him. Now please don’t think that I believe that I, or anyone else, can manipulate God like a slot machine, or place Him in a box. I’m just saying there is no way to quantify what happened other than God’s tender mercy and providence.

Wow.
re: Hiroshima
- the Japs started it.
re: Eastern Congo
- They may need God, but right now, they need about a half million UN peacekeeping forces to impose order on an anarchic situation.

“If you think people are bad with God, just imagine what they’re capable of without Him.”
Unlike the “new atheists” I’m convinced that religion and God are irrelevant when it comes to people doing bad things. Like you said, “If religion gives them an excuse to dehumanize their enemies, they’ll take it. If it doesn’t, they’ll find something else.”

It is sad that your civility lies only in some fear of a greater power, which one. Hilter was a Catholic and those that perpetrated evil had an agenda driven by belief. Looking back over history, Atheism wasn’t even tolerated by the religious until recently. Most moral gains, such as the end of slavery and women’s suffrage, were driven by secular people – religious people owned slaves and justified them with the bible.
Rethink what you say, you’re only sounding like your trying to defend an unsound position.
As for miracles, in a country of 350,000,000, we should expect about 350 events that “could not be coincidence”, but are one in a million, every day. Probability would tell you this. When an amputee grows legs though prayer, I’ll believe too.

MH,
Sorry, I’m going to have to disagree that Hiroshima was in any way justifiable or permissible. It constituted the deliberate targeting of civilians- over 100,000 of them, old men, women, children- which can never be legitimate as a tactic of war. It falls into the category of things that are inherently evil, no matter what you hope to accomplish by them.
As Elizabeth Anscombe pointed out, it is not permitted to boil a baby alive in order to save the world from Hitler.

TTT: When have Ditchkins shown any more inclinations than Feagletish to say that if only people believed as they do, the world would be a perfect utopia of 24/7 rainbows and all people would automatically be better?
Dawkins is on record as comparing raising a child in a religion to child abuse, so I’d say he evidently thinks the world would be, if not a “perfect utopia of 24/7 rainbows” (straw man, anyone?), still a substantially better place. If you go back to the Beliefnet archives for the blogalogue between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris, or read any of Harris’s books or interviews, Harris explicitly says the world would be far better without religion and says that fellow atheists must fight moderate believers, since in his view they provide respectability for the extremists, who, in his view, are the ultimate face of religion.
The secularist Damon Linker in this article, and the atheists Thomas Nagel here and James Wood over here take issue with the New Atheists and tend to see them not just as being “about the unbelievability and unlikelihood of all supernaturalist claims,” but of actively opposing religion and not making the best or most original arguments, to boot. The point is that it’s not just the religious who think that Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and co. are axe-grinders with an agenda.
elizabeth: Once again, this line of argument ignores entire areas of the world with cultures based on non-theistic faiths.
True, but non-theistic faiths as actually practiced are very much different from what Westerners tend to view them as. Buddhism, the classic example, is indeed non-theistic, but the most widely practiced version, Pure Land, practices devotional prayer to Amida Buddha every bit as intense and personalistic as any prayer in the Abrahamic faiths. The underlying theology (buddhology?) is non-theistic, but the practice is for all intents and purposes theistic. A difference that makes no difference is no difference, you know. Also note the widespread devotion to Avalokiteshvara/Kannon/Guan Yin in various Buddhist denominations. Finally, though karma is impersonal, the heavens and hells to which it sends one are every bit as gorgeous and horrendous, respectively, as anything out of Dante.
Perhaps it would be a little more precise to say that humans, without a transcendent source of values (and trust me, the values in non-theistic and other Eastern religions are understood, for the most part, as being every bit as much transcendent as anything Western religions teach) human behavior tends to degenerate. I think a strong case can be made for this.
Peter A.: Hilter was a Catholic….
Sigh–canard day. Hitler was a Catholic in the same way that Christopher Hitchens is Anglican, both having been baptized into faiths they ceased to profess. Not that I’m comparing the two in any other way, but if you count people’s faith by what they’re raised as, then most of the New Atheists aren’t atheists, and there’s no such thing as conversion, right?

I’m always mystified by stories like the Charles just told. That’s supposed to show that God exists? I just don’t know. It reminded me of back in 1974 when some men came to our prayer group asking for money to feed the people starving in Bangla Desh. I had a roof over my head and knew of all kinds of places where I could get food if I needed it. So I gave them my whole paycheck, which I’d just received and which amounted to about 100 dollars. They were amazed and asked if I was sure I wanted to give them that much. I said yes, take it. Neither then nor at any point did I receive a mysterious windfall of 1000 dollars, however. I was out the 100 bucks and I had no money for a couple of weeks. But that was okay, because the point was to feed starving people, not to cut myself a deal with God, nor, indeed, to prove whether he existed or not.
So I just don’t know what to make of either Charles’ story or mine. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, because I have been fortunate in being often poor but never really lacking for the necessities of life. Perhaps God did that. But then again, I’m lucky enough to be healthy and smart and to live in a country full of excess resources, so it’s not impossible to scratch up a little something. If God is really good, and provident, I wonder why he doesn’t take better care of the sparrows–those who don’t have my advantages and mysteriously don’t seem to be blessed by a kind providence either. They deserve good fortune every bit as much as I do, but they don’t seem to get it.

Hi Rod,
I’m just tired of hearing various commentators using Serbs as examples of Christians doing bad things. I’m sure many Serbs committed war crimes and they deserve to be charged/punished etc…
What I’m concerned about is how unproportional and inappropriate this type of reporting is. I say this for two reasons.
Firstly most of the Serbs who fought in the Yugoslav wars were either communists or at best none believers. Yes maybe some of these people were Christians by birth but not in spirit.
Secondly I would challenge the notion that Serbs were the aggressors/perpetrators of most of the crimes but I would rather see them as the greatest victims of the Yugoslav wars. I believe that love and truth always wins.
Roy

Blame God.
IF humans indeed are more inclined to evil without God, then
why doesn’t the Absent God just show up?
only God knows why not, but It shows NO good solid evidence of Itself.
so blame God.

If you think people are bad with God, just imagine what they’re capable of without Him.
I think this is a quite wrong-headed way of looking at the world. People are paradoxical, the most faithful church-goer is capable of being a serial murderer, the most adamant atheist is capable of laying down his life for a stranger. Faith or the lack thereof has little to do with these things.
And unless you’re making the claim that Harry Truman and Adolf Hitler are morally equivalent and religiously equivalent, you’re using two examples that are more confusing than enlightening.

Why am I not surprised that Rod Dreher immorally tries to bash atheists all the time?

Wow, I am amazed at all the fine intellects commenting on here; I’m sure you could all debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin…oh, I mean sprites since angels are a religious concept, and thus cannot be spoken of in our brave new atheistic world, right? Once again, you all with this sort of viewpoint show your REAL ignorance. You think that your pseudo-intellectual musings make a difference; they don’t. Great people do great things, terrible people do terrible things. Hitler wasn’t MUCH of a Catholic…the Serbs didn’t murder all those Bosnians ONLY because they were Muslim…and the war in the Congo isn’t really ABOUT religion, either. Many politicians and dictators USE religion as a trapping; that has as much to do with a real belief in God and spirituality as the Easter bunny does. Real religious belief is something that is part of who you are…and if you folks were REAL atheists, you wouldn’t care what anyone believed in, as long as you weren’t forced at gunpoint to worship a deity. However, most of you secretly want God removed from daily discourse so that you can feel “free”, and won’t have Him looking over your shoulder at the things you do…I do consider myself a Christian, just not a very good one…I slip up and don’t always do my best…but God is merciful, and knows that we are mere mortals, and I hope he takes that into account come Judgment Day…so, console yourselves with thoughts of a long dirt nap…I guess it makes you feel so much better.

“Why am I not surprised that Rod Dreher immorally tries to bash atheists all the time?”
Brian Westley
February 10, 2010 1:37 AM
Brian, reread Rod’s post. Can you honestly call that “bashing atheists”? And in what way is it “immoral”? Rod is trying to run an open forum of big ideas here, and he has many thoughtful commenters, plenty of whom are atheists (as you can see above). They wouldn’t keep reading and commenting regularly if they felt “bashed.” That’s a really unfair accusation against our blog host.

I have read all of the popular “New Atheist” books. I’m not sure where you get this idea that they have a Utopian view of humanity’s future. Perhaps you could provide a quote to give me some idea what you’re referencing.
Each of the New Atheists points out that believing claims without evidence, believing you have the One True Magic Book from the Creator, eschewing rational thought in general, and welcoming the end of the world as a glorious future to look forward to — these are definitely bad ideas. And, as nasty as human nature is already, aren’t helping pull us from any potential dangerous brink.
Think of it this way. A doctor might say, “Hey, don’t get hundreds of chest xrays for fun — it’s a dumb idea and you’ll probably end up getting cancer…” A critic who writes for beliefnet might ask whether this doctor thinks he has cured cancer! No, he doesn’t. But he has helped identify a rather dangerous way to live.
People are nasty creatures? Ok, I’ll bite. How does promoting superstition help address that? Starting with the Old Testament, First Samuel 15 has God ordering His followers to kill every man, woman, child and infant of a neighboring tribe with swords.
Moving on to the New Testament. Jesus says love your enemies — an easy thing to say. What actions back up those words? Well, consider that I’m an atheist, and an enemy of superstition in general — and how will Jesus claims he will treat me as his enemy. By throwing me in a lake of fire to burn in torment for eternity… Sure, humans might be nasty creatures — but wow, can you come up with a nastier human than that?

Charles, I’m was a science major who now works as an engineer. I have a clinical view of everything! It’s just the way I’m wired up. I won’t comment on your story because I agree with earlier observations made about it.
Hector, the whole enterprise of war is morally round the bend. It wasn’t just Hiroshima, what about Dresden? It’s easy for us to judge the people invovled, but we weren’t living at that time. But our safety was purchased by those acts.
But what about my comment on substitutiary atonement? If you believe in that you seem to be accepting that it is OK to kill an innocent to save others from hell. Saying evil isn’t evil if God does it doesn’t strike me as a good defense.

elizabeth: Once again, this line of argument ignores entire areas of the world with cultures based on non-theistic faiths.
OK, let me restate this a different way: I don’t see how people (or a people) can be good, in general, without a shared belief in an objective moral order that exists outside the individual, and which holds the individual with enough binding force to order his behavior over against his instinct. The Tao, in theory, could suffice here, as could Buddhist belief. In the sense I use “atheism” here, I’m talking about a worldview that denies any objective moral order, believing morality to be something wholly derived from human desires, and having no independent existence outside human consciousness.
Without that, I don’t see how one can answer “Why be good?” in a convincing way — at least not in a way that’s convincing if one is put to the test. Perhaps I’m wrong. Help me see how.

quote: “Each of the New Atheists points out that believing claims without evidence, believing you have the One True Magic Book from the Creator, eschewing rational thought in general, and welcoming the end of the world as a glorious future to look forward to — these are definitely bad ideas. And, as nasty as human nature is already, aren’t helping pull us from any potential dangerous brink.”
The New Atheists claim that the world would be better if humans abandoned religion. They may not be utopian. But they do glorify science and seem to view it as the solution to most of mankind’s problems. Yet all the evidence of twentieth century, from the world wars, to the Holocaust to the creation of the atomic bomb clearly shows that humans are quite capable of killing each other for reasons that have little or nothing to do with religion. Moreover, science and scientists can just as easily be used to kill humans (and in the case of the atomic bomb destroy the earth) as it can be used to improve their lives.
As a historian of twentieth century Europe, count me as unimpressed with the New Atheists. When it comes to history, they believe all kinds of things that lack evidence and smack of the naive dogmatism of nineteenth century Positivism. Science isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. But ultimately science is in the hands of humans. How one can place such faith in science after August 1914 is beyond me. I don’t think it is an accident that you won’t find a historian among the New Atheists and most of them seem to be scientists who have little knowledge of modern history, or much of anything else outside of science for that matter.
rr

Rod, I think many atheists do hold that an objective moral order exists outside of the individual. In a sense they view it like mathematics in that it is bound up in the fabric of the universe and is discovered by humans.
If you observe ants for example they display group cooperation and altruism. So any life form that evolves will eventually stumble upon similar moral strategies. While ants are ignorant of their strategies, we are not.
So where we differ is in the enforcement mechanism. A theist believes that God is the ultimate enforcer of morality and some cosmic destiny awaits based upon your decisions. An atheist thinks that morality is enforced because it creates stable societies and you ignore it at your long term peril, but people can cheat and get away with it. Also your instincts can be a bitch and remorse and regret are powerful motivators to toe the line.
So if morality is something we discover, then we can inadvertently add things to the list of moral or immoral actions that belong on the other list. So examining and revising that list is something humans are allowed and required to do. For example we might think slavery is moral, but upon examination decide it was not. While ants being incapable of introspection can never make this leap.
From previous discussions I know rr views this pragmatic morallity as useless because people can cheat and get away with it. But I tend to view it pragmatically and accept that possible outcome but not one I wish to take.

I think there’s a blind spot here that makes our analysis unnecessarily complicated. Who is actually committing all these atrocities? What we have here is not a problem of human evil. What we have here is a problem of male violence control. Male-oriented religions provide an elaborate system of threats and rewards that allows social leaders to incite violent male behavior and then turn it toward their own ends. You’ll note that “God” invariably forgives and exalts the warrior. There is always a loophole that allows war, because in the kind of society we’ve built, centering around the glorification of dominant males, it’s impossible to imagine giving it up. Even though saints and prophets, including Jesus, have warned us to stop. But hey, Jesus couldn’t really have meant that, could he?? There’s always some earnest though twisty exegesis to prove he didn’t.
I finished the Kristof column and thought to myself, “How is it that people still believe in the basic goodness of man?” Gee, Rod, I often ask myself that question, but when I do, I get bashed for being a bad ol’ feminist. ; )
I understand your question–how can you get people to be good if you don’t have some uber-dominant force in the wings to enforce it? And I think it’s a good question. Certainly it’s one that has puzzled me. But look at the facts. Goodness supposedly enforced by a supernatural power has never really worked throughout the history of man. Men who want to continue wreaking violence simply excuse themselves from the rules. And they get away with it. And, in addition, they write stuff into the rules that glorifies and validates what they want to do anyway. God wills it! So looking to some kind of “objective Truth” to control violent male behavior isn’t working, and has never really worked. I wish it did–but it doesn’t.
It seems clear to me that people who are “good”–by which I mean, people who treat others as they would wish to be treated themselves–are created in childhood, by caring adults who model compassion and kindness for them. Sometimes people who have not been treated that way can learn to set aside their rage and hurt and become good people anyway. Sometimes. With great struggle and pain. More threats and bullying in the name of a dominant, punishing God DO NOT create good people. In fact, it usually has just the opposite effect. Goodness comes from being loved. There is no other way. There is no other religion, culture, or method that will produce good people. There are structural work-arounds that help control the mess once we’ve created a bunch of angry, damaged people who are not particularly good. But there is no other way to make them good. It frustrates the heck out of me that it seems so difficult for people to grasp this.

Without that, I don’t see how one can answer “Why be good?” in a convincing way — at least not in a way that’s convincing if one is put to the test. Perhaps I’m wrong. Help me see how.
Because ‘being good’ results in a society that is more stable and stable societies have feedback mechanisms that encourage ‘being good’ and discourage ‘being bad’.
Some might argue this is not convincing, to which I suggest going out in public and acting badly then seeing how quickly someone comes along to convince you that being good is better than being bad.

Rod, I have a comment where I addressed your question about morality but it is held for approval. I’m reposting.
Rod, I think many atheists do hold that an objective moral order exists outside of the individual. In a sense they view it like mathematics in that it is bound up in the fabric of the universe and is discovered by humans.
If you observe ants for example they display group cooperation and altruism. So any life form that evolves will eventually stumble upon similar moral strategies. While ants are ignorant of their strategies, we are not.
So where we differ is in the enforcement mechanism. A theist believes that God is the ultimate enforcer of morality and some cosmic destiny awaits based upon your decisions. An atheist thinks that morality is enforced because it creates stable societies and you ignore it at your long term peril, but people can cheat and get away with it. Also your instincts can be powerful and remorse and regret are motivators to toe the line.
So if morality is something we discover, then we can inadvertently add things to the list of moral or immoral actions that belong on the other list. So examining and revising that list is something humans are allowed and required to do. For example we might think slavery is moral, but upon examination decide it was not. While ants being incapable of introspection can never make this leap.
From previous discussions I know rr views this pragmatic morallity as useless because people can cheat and get away with it. But I tend to view it pragmatically and accept that possible outcome but not one I wish to take.

The good is that which is proper to the life of a rational being. A rational morality is the code by which the good is achieved. Morality teaches you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live. Yet, morality is itself an achievement. It is not merely the abstinence from evil just as light is not the absence of darkness. See “Atlas Shrugged” for more details.

There is a direct statistical correlation between violence and education level. The uneducated tend to be more violent and religous, while the latter are not.
If the world wants to decrease violence, then educate the world and lessen the divide between the rich and poor.

Mr. Dherer;
Your argument, and Hart’s might be more convincing if you paid a little more attention facts. Pesky things I know, but you make a couple of errors here that are so elementary that it then becomes difficult to take the rest of your piece serious.
Lets begin with that Dawkins, Hitchens and others say about religious roots of violence. They DO NOT say, as you imply, that religious is a requirement for violence. They point out, if you bother to read their books, that there are many other reasons for people to go about killing each other. Rather they point out, correctly, that religion does provide a handy justification for horrible actions – such as used by the Nazis which were theistic to the core. Unlike the officially atheist regime of Stalin, Hitler and company not only believed in god but thought they were doing god’s work. They even had their own Nazified version of Christianity and the SS motto, worn on their belt buckles was “God is with us.”
That you do not know this, or ignore it, is frankly, staggering.
Further, the “new atheists” do not claim AT ALL that man is “essentially good” whereas you believers think we are born in sin. The only people making these sorts of utopian claims are the religious. Rather the new atheists look at human nature in totally, understanding we are as a species capable of great good and great evil and it is up to us work to rise about our more nasty impluses. Your presentation here mischaracterizes what Dawkins et al are actually saying, leaving one wondering if you have actually read the books or merely repeating what apologists (who often have clearly not read the books either) are saying. This is not to say Hitchens and company are above criticism, but you cannot criticize what you have clearly not bothered to read.
Finally, Friedrich Nietzsche. The extent to which Christian apologists misunderstand Nietzsche is embarrassing and you should be embarrassed for repeating oft debunked canards about his word here. Again it makes me ask “Have you bother to READ Friedrich Nietzsche?”
Nietzsche was not saying, as you suggest here (via your story about Hart) that without god we have no morals. He was saying that religion had been the primary mode by which morals and ethics was disseminated. If god is dead – by which he means that religion is no longer relevant – then new, life affirming moral and ethics must be formulated and disseminated. It is in this line of thinking that he talks about his idea of the “overman” or ubermench. He was not being a pessimist saying we needed god. He was saying we do not need god and can conduct our own moral and ethical lives ourselves.
The line that Friedrich Nietzsche was saying without god there is no morality is utterly wrong and betrays a ignorance of what the man actually wrote.

Mr. Dreher,
Isn’t your god the one that demands genocides in the Old Testament? Is there crime of Hitler’s not celebrated in the Book of Joshua?

MH: But what about my comment on substitutiary atonement? If you believe in that you seem to be accepting that it is OK to kill an innocent to save others from hell.
The Atonement is a can of worms, but in brief I’d say that I don’t necessarily buy the forensic view of substitutionary atonement as developed by Anselm and others. Second, remember that Christ is God, by normative Christian understanding, so he is a unique case. Thus I don’t think you can generalize to say that it’s OK to kill innocents for a good result, no matter how good. Third, it’s more like an act of love freely done by God. If a soldier freely jumps on a grenade to save his buddies, you don’t say, “Good grief, he has practiced substitutiary atonement and denigrated his life for the lives of his buddies. Killing an innocent (himself) is never moral for any reason, so he is a true villain!” Of course, what you do say is, “What a noble hero who sacrificed himself for his friends!” This is the problem with many theologies of the Atonement–they downplay the sacrifice aspect and imply that God “had to” kill His innocent son. That misses the point, in my view.
sigilaris: Goodness supposedly enforced by a supernatural power has never really worked throughout the history of man.
sig, I think you’re missing the point by speaking of “enforcement”. If I don’t believe that there is an objective moral order, God or no, then why shouldn’t “do as thou wilt” be the “whole of the law”? Neitzsche and the atheist wing of the Existentialists were all both very clear that there is no standard in the indifferent cosmos and that everyone makes his own meaning, period. This is why the protagonists of existentialist novels are so often villains, anti-heroes, and borderline psychopaths. If one rejects any transcendent meaning (and theism isn’t really the issue here), then I don’t see how one can get around this.
MH: A theist believes that God is the ultimate enforcer of morality and some cosmic destiny awaits based upon your decisions. An atheist thinks that morality is enforced because it creates stable societies and you ignore it at your long term peril, but people can cheat and get away with it.
John E.-Agn Stoic: Because ‘being good’ results in a society that is more stable and stable societies have feedback mechanisms that encourage ‘being good’ and discourage ‘being bad’.
I don’t think the more thoughtful theists see it as enforcement (that word again!). If I touch a bare high-tension line, the God of Electricity doesn’t smite me for my insolence (I’m riffing on Erewhon here!); that’s just how electricity affects living organisms. If I smoke, drink, drive too fast, and lie around eating Cheese Doodles all day, God doesn’t punish me by shortening my lifespan–that’s the natural effect. Conversely, if I exercise and work out, I am not “rewarded” by beconing fit and buff–it’s just the natural result. I see morality as much the same thing. The more I live a good, loving, and moral life, the more like God I become and the more naturaly I gravitate towards Him. The more I am the opposite, the less fit I am to be in His presence. Read C. S. Lewis’s great Till We Have Faces for a dramatic presentation of this (in a pagan context, to boot).
MH, John E., and sigilaris all speak of stable societies–but a despotic and vicious society can be quite stable for decades or sometimes even centuries. The morality in such a society is what Nietzsche would call “noble” or “master” morality Those with power do what’s good for them, and too bad for everyone else. What all of us, theist or atheist, embrace is what Nietzsche would call “slave” morality–stuff about compassion, taking care of the weak, equality of all people, etc. Nietzsche thought that the “death of God” cleared the way to get rid of this morality, which he despised. Even if, with MH, we posit a non-religious but objective morailty, it doesn’t necessarily imply the morality we’d like.
Christianity and the Abrahamic faiths, with their teachings of the brotherhood of all people, as well as, for example, Buddhism, which teaches the inner Buddha-nature of all sentient beings, can logically serve as bases for the type of morality we all take for granted. A “natural” morality, I submit, cannot–at least not without making some probably unsupportable assumptions.
GrantL: Nietzsche was not saying, as you suggest here (via your story about Hart) that without god we have no morals. He was saying that religion had been the primary mode by which morals and ethics was disseminated. If god is dead – by which he means that religion is no longer relevant – then new, life affirming moral and ethics must be formulated and disseminated. It is in this line of thinking that he talks about his idea of the “overman” or ubermench. He was not being a pessimist saying we needed god. He was saying we do not need god and can conduct our own moral and ethical lives ourselves.
I have read Nietzsche, and I think it’s debatable that he is promoting an ethos that is life-affirming for everyone or that he had any concern for the masses who weren’t ümenschen. Go back and read Beyond Good and Evil for his discussion of master and slave morality. If you don’t believe me or think I know what I’m talking about, the late, great Roger Shattuck, who read Nietzsche in the original and studied him quite a bit argues forcefully that his morality wasn’t one most of us would like. Now I’m not doing simplistic Nietzsche-bashing by equating him with Nazism (which he would have loathed); but people who understand Nietzsche quite well don’t all agree with your take on him.

Rod, let’s say someone tomorrow were to prove that societies of people who believed that Thor exists and will be very very angry if they do bad things, are measurably less violent, would you then recommend that we shape a society where everyone believes in an actual Thor?
If no, why not?

Brava, Turmarion. Nice post.
I was going to bring up Stoicism as an example of an essentially atheist system with a strong view of morality… but y’all pretty much beat me to it.
Among other excellent posts, @ MH: I think many atheists do hold that an objective moral order exists outside of the individual. In a sense they view it like mathematics in that it is bound up in the fabric of the universe and is discovered by humans.
This is essentially the Aristotelian and Stoic view of morality, at least as I understand them.

I see morality as much the same thing. The more I live a good, loving, and moral life, the more like God I become and the more naturaly I gravitate towards Him.
Tumarion – I’m not being sarcastic when I say, “Good for you.”
I’m really glad you have an external reason to live that way. Some folks say, “It is good do do good.” That’s cool too.
MH, John E., and sigilaris all speak of stable societies–but a despotic and vicious society can be quite stable for decades or sometimes even centuries. The morality in such a society is what Nietzsche would call “noble” or “master” morality Those with power do what’s good for them, and too bad for everyone else.
That is a true statement. I like to think that if I found myself in such a place, I would leave at the earliest opportunity.
A “natural” morality, I submit, cannot–at least not without making some probably unsupportable assumptions.
Maybe, maybe not. I suspect that societies that develop altruism and what we call ‘justice’ will be more successful in the long run that those that don’t.
But since we can’t set that experiment up or find untouched societies in the ‘natural’ state, all we can do is argue about the question.

Re: If you believe in that you seem to be accepting that it is OK to kill an innocent to save others from hell.
Christ’s death was, in effect, God subjecting himself to death in order to free humankind. This is a very different matter from sacrificing someone else to acheive your ends. Also, note that death was transfigured by Resurrection in this case.
Re: They even had their own Nazified version of Christianity and the SS motto, worn on their belt buckles was “God is with us.”
Not that hoary old chesnut again! “Gott Mitt Uns” was a traditional insignia of German militaries since the days of Friedrich Hohenstauffen Der Grosse. The Nazis did not invent it; they just thought it was a nifty hold-over from an earlier age of Teutonic greatness.
Re: Who is actually committing all these atrocities? What we have here is not a problem of human evil. What we have here is a problem of male violence control.
Huh? If you are simply saying that most violence is committed by males, I don’t argue. But if you’re trying to say that violence, or even just just religious violence, is exclusivekly male, that’s nonsense. Mary Tudor was not some prince in drag when she sent all those Protestants to the stake.
Re: You’ll note that “God” invariably forgives and exalts the warrior.
Huh, again? Your evidence for this is what? In Christianity of course God inevitably forgives any and all sinneers who sincerely repent: the pauper no less than the prince. There is no favoritism for warriors in this faith, and “He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” At its core, Christianity is not martial.
Re: Um wasn’t killing a single innocent to save the universe what substitutiary atonement was all about?
This was handled above, and by Tumarion more expansively.

Turmarion, a thoughtful reply as always.
While I agree a non-religious objective morallity might not be one we’d like, that could be true of God as well. Indeed some atheists are actually maltheists and object to religion because they think God is not good.
However, on average I would argue that we would like this morallity because we would evolve to find it good. Like your example you become more healthy and happy by following it, so those individuals and societies do better over the long term.
I agree that despotic societies can be stable for long periods, but they have a tendency to come to an abrupt bad end. Romania would be a good example and later this century North Korea and Burma will like be on that list as well.
So they represent a false local maximum, but not a true maximum if you’ll let me use math jargon.
My understanding of the atonement and Christianity in general were formed by a hell fire rural upstate NY Church with a distinctly literal bent. So I tend to reject that version of God and theology.
The problem I find with it is that God handed the grenade to innocents (Adam and Eve either literally or figuratively), who threw it not understanding what evil was. After all how can you understand an evil act until you have knowledge of good and evil? God then throws himself on the grenade which seems odd given that he should have known this outcome ahead of time. He’s also the judge who would have jailed the humans for the outcome of someone getting hurt by the exploding grenade!
Now I understand God is something of a special case, but if God were a human setting up this situation we wouldn’t look kindly at it. What would be his defense?
Claiming evil isn’t evil if God does it wouldn’t be a good one.
If he stated that the whole situation was damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and he picked the best of all the bad alternatives, then I would think that might fly.
That’s basically how I was looking a Truman’s situation at the end of WWII. It’s also worth noting that no one ever dropped an A bomb before and he didn’t really have knowledge of how bad it could be.

Yet all the evidence of twentieth century, from the world wars, to the Holocaust to the creation of the atomic bomb clearly shows that humans are quite capable of killing each other for reasons that have little or nothing to do with religion
Both of the World Wars were at least partially religiously motivated; the Holocaust was explicitly devoted to wiping out minority religions; and the atomic bomb was developed in response to same. Remember that Hirohito was able to command such fanatical, suicidal devotion from his followers, and drive them to such depths of butchery in China and southeast Asia, because he was actually supposed to BE a god!

Turmarion – I am not endorsing Nietzsche, nor saying his moral or ethical view is my own. However, as your own post indicates, he was NOT saying there was no goodness without god. He was ultimately talking about a non-thestic morality. Nietzsche is not systematic nor presents a “way” to live – as you know. But he certainly was not suggesting that without god there is no morals. One must also be keenly aware that when he says god is dead, he is not implying god ever existed. He is talking about a concept, not an actual thing.
Moreover, I have never understood by some theists insist that atheists must treat Nietzsche in a manner akin to the way they treat gospels. Most atheists stand in the camp of Russell rather than Nietzsche, and certainly Nietzsche is not the be all and end all of philosophy for atheists. You see this sometimes with Flew – with Christians saying that if one is an atheist one must accept Flew’s arguments – which is patent nonsense. It is only because of a drastic misreading of Nietzsche, as presented in the above article, that you end up with people saying that he was suggesting no morals in the absence of a god.
Jon – yes well done. Germany attitudes of the WW2 period were inherited from their past. Including their anti-semitism, which was Christian in origin by the by. And in any case, the reason they kept that around is not because they thought it was “nifty” it is because Nazi Germany was awash in a national religious fervor that was part Christian, part personality cult, part old school paganism. Hitler and his gang were all believers in god – not the god you choose to believe in perhaps, but they were theists nonetheless. Hitler himself saw Jesus as god’s warrior to fight the Jews and saw himself in the same role. It’s complete mad, but historical fact. Claims that Nazi Germany was atheist flies in the face of facts. Stalin was an atheist. Hitler was not.

It makes perfect sense for those congenitally unable to control themselves or to do good of their own internal volition to erect external means to coerce them to do so. The alternative is to perish from social dysfunction in failed competition with those who are naturally moral already. Whether these artificial creations built like iron lungs to sustain their artificial morality can function over any meaningful span of time remains an open question.

People are basically good when they are within stable institutions; and existing within stable institutions is the norm meant by “basically.” The monster capable of anything that orthodox religionists worry about is an individual isolated from institutions or in profoundly broken ones. More humanistic thinkers see this situation not as a baseline norm but as a catastrophically bad set of *environmental influences.* I think it is the Calvinists and their ilk here who are making the enlightenment error of imagining man’s basic condition as isolated and self-generative — an imaginary condition with no real-life correlative.

quote: “Both of the World Wars were at least partially religiously motivated; the Holocaust was explicitly devoted to wiping out minority religions; and the atomic bomb was developed in response to same. Remember that Hirohito was able to command such fanatical, suicidal devotion from his followers, and drive them to such depths of butchery in China and southeast Asia, because he was actually supposed to BE a god!”
No reputable historian agrees with the above statement. There is simply no factual basis for it. Religion had little, if anything to do with the First World War. The main causes were nationalism and imperial rivalries. Nazi ideology was first and foremost about race, not religion, which is why the Nazis went after Jews who had converted to Christianity and why they treated Slavic peoples so brutally. It is also worth pointing out that the Nazis were deeply influenced by Social Darwinism and eugenics, which at the time was considered cutting edge science. The Japanese used religion, but it was in the service of extreme nationalism and imperialism.
None of what I have written above is controversial among historians, and that very much includes secular ones. Your post only illustrates my point about the ignorance of history in certain quarters.
rr

MH,
Interesting point about the substitutionary atonement. I disagree though, and here’s why.
First, let’s note that while the Substitutionary Atonement is believed by most Western Christians, it’s not shared (as far as I know) by the Eastern churches, which tend to place less emphasis on the crucifixion. As a Western Christian I do believe it, but you can reject it and still be a Christian. St. Athanasius had a quite different view of the purpose of the Incarnation, and Christ’s death on the cross was rather incidental to it.
Secondly, God does have rights over life and death, which we don’t have. He is the author of life, and can withdraw it when he chooses. Death is not, per se, an evil; murder is an evil. Of course, _God the Father_ didn’t put Christ to death, evil men did.
Thirdly and most importantly, you’re making an error here which is to assume consequentialist reasoning. Christianity is not consequentialist, and we hold that something can be wrong in itself, and yet be used by God to accomplish something good. The crucifixion of Christ was an injustice inasmuch as it was done against an innocent Man, but God directed that injustice to the end of atoning for human sin. That doesn’t mean that those who carried out the crucifixion were doing something good, even though they unknowingly were playing their part in the drama of salvation. As it’s said, “It is written that offences must come, but woe unto the man by whom they come.” Judas is generally considered to be in hell, after all.
Rod,
Your correction makes a lot more sense. I’d agree that I don’t think goodness can exist in the world without a general belief in an objective moral order. I don’t think that objective moral order necessitates belief in a personal God though. Of course, in a trivial sense it’s true that morality could not exist without God- the reason we are moral is because our consciences and our souls were created by God. But I don’t believe it’s necessary to believe in God to believe in said moral order- I believe in God for quite different reasons.

I’m an atheist and I don’t subscribe to any particular set of beliefs or morals stated by an famous atheists or philosophers. I was raised a non denominational Christian but never really bought into the whole “god” thing. I still try and live by the basic laws/commandments that are found in the Bible our Constitution and our society, but I don’t put much creedence into many of the other stories/fables found inside it.
I have a major problem when someone wants to group all atheists under one umbrella of morals and values. Atheists are as diverse as theists in their beliefs, or lack there of. I’m a registered Republican and would consider myself fairly conservative when it comes to national issues. I’m an American first and an atheist second. To label atheists as liberals, communists, socialists, Nazis etc., is irresponsible and bigoted. I’ve never read Nietzsche or Flew or Dawkins or Hitchens or any other atheist authors. They have their opinions and agenda just as I have mine and you have yours.
Live and let live. Enjoy this life to it’s fullest, but not at the expense or suffering of others, because as far as anyone can prove, this is the only life you’ll ever have. People can be good witout god. In fact people can be better than good when they’re not being oppressed and living in fear of eternal damnation or the promise of a “heaven”.
Have a great day!

MH,
I don’t know how much more time I will have today to make comments here, but I did want to address two of your points.
quote: “Rod, I think many atheists do hold that an objective moral order exists outside of the individual. In a sense they view it like mathematics in that it is bound up in the fabric of the universe and is discovered by humans.”
I think you are correct that many atheists that believe in an objective moral order see morality as akin to mathematics. The problem I see with this is that morality isn’t all similar to mathematics. Morality is about how humans treat (or should treat) each other, and if God exist, how they should relate to God. In short, morality is about right relationships between beings. And relationships are quite different from mathematics.
Quote: “From previous discussions I know rr views this pragmatic morallity as useless because people can cheat and get away with it. But I tend to view it pragmatically and accept that possible outcome but not one I wish to take.”
This isn’t entirely the case. “Enforcement” is an issue, but it isn’t the most important one to me. The most important one is who defines morality and how it is defined in the first place. And I very much mean objective morality as you put it earlier. If God exist and is an eternal, all-knowing, all powerful, loving God who created the universe and everything in it (including of course human beings), then it stands to reason that he would get to define morality. Moreover, it isn’t real proper to say that morality is his “opinion” as God is above having such a thing as an “opinion.” Again, God is very different than humans, and humans, who neither created the world and are limited in their knowledge, have no right to judge God. That includes when God decides that a group of people as so wicked that they should be wiped out.
If on the other hand God does not exist, there is no objective standard to measure morality. Morality boils down to various human conceptions of the “good,” which differ widely from person to person and culture to culture, not to mention age to age. After all, some people think actions such as cannibalism, having relations with children and killing are good. Some even derive great pleasure from this actions. Others obviously do not and view them as profoundly evil. In short, without God, good and evil would boil down to subjective preferences. Things such as “enlightened self-interests” and pragmatic morality thus are no morality at all as they are in no way objective. They are rational to a certain degree, but not an objective standard.
rr

John E.-Agn Stoic: Tumarion – I’m not being sarcastic when I say, “Good for you.” I’m really glad you have an external reason to live that way. Some folks say, “It is good do do good.” That’s cool too.
You’re actually missing the subtlety, or I’m not expressing it well. My point was that Christianity, properly understood, doesn’t have God as the Cosmic Enforcer, but more the Cosmic Goal. Nevertheless, most theologians have always said that the good is its own reward. You should do good because it’s good, period. To the extent that I as a frail human can do the good, that’s my main motivation–that it’s, as Wilford Brimley says in the oatmeal commercials, “the right thing to do.”
Most people, religious or not, in most situations, need more motivation–the Will of God, the movement of history towards the perfect communist state, the way one was raised, fear that Mommy or Daddy or the cops will catch one, etc. Socrates, in the Euthyphro was right in saying that the good is good because it’s good, not because it’s god-beloved; but then as now that’s too abstract for most people.
MH: The problem of evil is something that could occupy us from now on, but I guess I’d say this. A non-religious person would say that evil is just the way the show is set up, no God or karma behind it, no salvation or nirvana, “no hell below us, above us only sky”, just too bad for us.
A believer might not claim to understand why God set it up like that, or why the Four Noble Truths are so, or whatever, but they believe that there is a core of meaning and hope behind it all. Not just local hope (tomorrow might be better, or we might build a better society someday, etc.), but universal and cosmic hope. Some would argue that such cosmic hope is a delusion, and some may be able to do without it. Fine, if that’s their perspective. However, many would say that a meaningless cosmos is the worst conceivable thing. So, while I don’t claim to have an ultimate answer to the points you make (though we could discuss aspects of them from now on, since I have some opinions), I see it more as the broad perspective. Which is more satisfying on a deep level–a meaningless, hostile (or at least indifferent) universe, or one with meaning (theistic or otherwise)? We all pays our money and takes our chances.
GrantL: But [Nietzsche] certainly was not suggesting that without god there is no morals.
Never said he was. What I said is that the morals he seems to approve, and which he seems to feel flow logically (if not systematically) from his philosophy would be repugnant to most of us, as you seem to acknowledge in your first paragraph of your 12:17 post. I don’t think any intelligent Christian should deny that morals can’t exist without belief in God–there’s too much contradictory evidence to say that.
However, I do think one can make an argument that without some objective, transcendent meaning, theistic or otherwise, morals of which we’d approve are very difficult to support logically. Nietzsche thinks there is no transcendent standard, which is why he says it’s each individual’s responsibility to develop his own morality, as you point out. But, if that’s so, there is no logical ground on which anyone can criticize anyone else’s morality. Even Nietzsche was inconsistent in this–he obviously preferred the master morality of the übermensch, but from his own perspective even the hated “slave morality” is equally valid, if that’s what others choose.
Most atheists stand in the camp of Russell rather than Nietzsche, and certainly Nietzsche is not the be all and end all of philosophy for atheists.
Yes, and this is the nub of what some of us are saying. My opinion is that Nietzsche is more honest and consistent in his atheism than Russell et al are in theirs. If there really is no transcendent, objective, universal meaning, then “nice” atheism (equality, fairness, improving the human lot, etc.) of the secular humanist, Russellian stripe is no more “valid” or “invalid” than the not-so-nice atheism of Nietzsche and the existentialists. It’s just a preference.
Of course, as MH points out, you can be an atheist while still positing objective morality, but that is much harder (not impossible, but harder) to do without a universal meaning (Divine or otherwise) and it’s honestly not going to work for most people, in my opinion.

rr, mathematics is everywhere and can even define relationships through game theory. Now I would lay good odds on the computational theory of mind being how our brains work. Our reproduction and genetics certainly seem to algorithmic in nature and we are a manifestation of them. So even our thoughts, motivations, and feelings could be manifestations of mathematics.
Now for a yardstick of morality I’d like to make a point that we know that absolute zero is as cold as it gets. It’s not our choice, it just a property of reality. So we measure all temperatures by that absolute standard. Since I’m postulating that morality is a property of reality, we might find some measure of it which exists outside us. Either in game theory or something we haven’t thought of yet.
Now I suppose this point of view is why I’m willing to hold God to the same standards he holds us to. I’m not judging him, if he exists then this absolute standard is binding on God as well. His transcendence is no escape because 1 + 1 = 2 everywhere.
Turmarion, the motivation to be good in the absence of God is why the necessary fiction argument is the only argument for God I find compelling. While the new atheists would say that I hold a dim view of my fellow man, I can see how feeling that you live a meaningless life in a meaningless universe could drive a lot of people round the bend.

Turmarion,
Adding a God doesn’t help with the problem of moral foundations. This goes back to the Euthyphro dilemma. Either morality is the completely arbitrary fiat of God’s will (in which case morality has no authority), or there are moral standards independent of God’s will (in which case God is redundant).
Also, for the record, Nietzsche’s ethics is more about towering creativity than about destroying the weak and feeble. Think Goethe, not Hitler.

Re: Germany attitudes of the WW2 period were inherited from their past. Including their anti-semitism, which was Christian in origin by the by.
Nope. Anti-semitism was alive and well among the Greco-Roman peoples in the immediate pre-Christian era. You’ve heard of Antiochos Epiphanes perhaps? Under Roman rule too the Jews were occasional targets of discriminatory legislation, and most Romans regarded them as a weirdly backward and uncouth ethnicity. (Yes, yes: there were philo-Semites among the Romans too) Christianity in effect inherited its anti-Semitism from its Greek and Roman converts.
Re: Hitler himself saw Jesus as god’s warrior to fight the Jews and saw himself in the same role.
I’d apreciate some back-up on this. Most Nazi idelogues saw Christianity as a Jewish-created cinspiracy to corrupt the Aryan peoples. Yes, they may have been theists, but their God was a god of the philosophers when not some pastiche of old German Pagan notions, definitely not the God of Abraham and Isaac.
Re: Stalin was an atheist. Hitler was not.
I could make a better case for Stalin having some relict attachment to Christianity (at least the level of emotional superstition) than Hitler.

Your Name at February 10, 2010 1:00 PM
Glad you liked my post and it was interesting to hear your take on it. I would agree that I’m applying consequentialist reasoning. But from my post prior to this one maybe you can see why. Even if God is the author of life it won’t free him from the problem of evil. He has to deal with the moral repercussions of his actions just like everyone else. Ending a life will have consequences both negative or positive depending upon who it was and when they died.

Rod wrote: “Stories like this reinforce my belief that we cannot sustain goodness without God. I believe individuals can be good without God, and I know atheists of exemplary character. And I believe having God — in the sense of professing belief in Him — is not enough to prevent individuals and sometimes entire societies from turning to evil (I think from time to time of a story I told here about Serbian butchers — Orthodox Christians, presumably — massacring innocent Bosnian Muslims; it was related to me by my friend Rich, who was haunted by the black mold on the wall of the warehouse, feeding on the bodily fluids of the murdered men). But if we are to be good, God must be present, and present in a real way in our hearts, such that His laws are binding on our conduct.”
Rod, what do you mean by that? Could you be clearer? It seems like you are claiming both that some people are good without believing in God and that no one can be good without believing in God? Those two claims are logically inconsistent. Or, are you claiming that MOST PEOPLE cannot be good without believing in God?
It’s overwhelmingly likely that, at least for the vast majority of people, not believing in God doesn’t make it harder for them to be ethical. First, I’m an atheist, and I’m a good person.
Second, nearly everyone in my family is an atheist, and they are all good people.
Third, every atheist I know well is a good person.
Fourth, the vast majority of atheists that I know of are good people. The percentage of atheists in the Scandinavian countries, Iceland and Holland is higher than the percentage of atheists in most other countries. And the Scandinavian countries, Iceland and Holland are relative good countries. They are strong democracies with low infant mortality rates, relatively high life expectancy rates, relatively low poverty rates and relatively low violent crime rates.
Finally, perhaps five to fifteen percent of the U.S. population is atheist or agnostic. And a much smaller percentage of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons are atheists or agnostic. Here is a link:
http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm
Moreover, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that being an atheist makes it harder for some, most or all people to be ethical. That believing X makes it harder for some, most or all people to be ethical is irrelevant to whether I know (or am warranted in inferring) that X is true. For instance, suppose that, for some people, believing that heliocentrism is true makes it harder for them to be ethical. I’m still quite sure that the earth revolves around the sun. Thus, whether being an atheist makes it harder for some, most or all people to be ethical is irrelevant to whether I know or am warranted in inferring that no Gods exist.
Finally, at least some people SHOULD believe that there is no God. First, knowledge is an end in itself. For example, suppose that my believing that I’ve been abducted by aliens helps me be a good person. There would still be something morally problematic about my believing that I’ve been abducted by aliens. Moreover, I think it is very likely that there are no Gods. For one thing, I haven’t experienced any Gods or anything remotely similar to a God. Finally, for at least some people, believing that there is no God doesn’t make it harder for them to be ethical. I’m an example. In fact, I’m very confident that, for some people, believing that there is no God helps them be ethical. A friend of mine is most definitely an example. Therefore, at least some people (for instance, me) should believe that there is no God.

rr, mathematics is everywhere and can even define relationships through game theory. Now I would lay good odds on the computational theory of mind being how our brains work. Our reproduction and genetics certainly seem to algorithmic in nature and we are a manifestation of them. So even our thoughts, motivations, and feelings could be manifestations of mathematics.
MH,
Briefly, I’m a diplomatic historian. Quite frankly, my knowledge of mathematics (unlike say my knowledge of the machinations of French, German, British and Soviet leaders) is rather basic as I only use it to balance my checkbook. Consequently, I don’t know much about game theory or what it claims to explain. But your view of humans and human behavior above strikes me as overly mechanistic.
quote: “Now I suppose this point of view is why I’m willing to hold God to the same standards he holds us to. I’m not judging him, if he exists then this absolute standard is binding on God as well. His transcendence is no escape because 1 + 1 = 2 everywhere.”
If God exist then he created the moral standard in the first place. It does not exist outside him, and indeed derives from his holy nature and will. Thus, there is simply no way of “holding him to the same standard as he holds us.” The idea is absurd on its face. Honestly you seem to approach God as if he is a man or is on the same level as humans. This is a profound error. By definition (or at least the Christian one), he is not. In the Christian view, there are no outside standards that are “binding” on God as he is the origin of all standards.
rr

Turmarion wrote: “Most people, religious or not, in most situations, need more motivation–the Will of God, the movement of history towards the perfect communist state, the way one was raised, fear that Mommy or Daddy or the cops will catch one, etc. Socrates, in the Euthyphro was right in saying that the good is good because it’s good, not because it’s god-beloved; but then as now that’s too abstract for most people.”
Could you elaborate on that? For instance, what do you man by “motivation?” I’m an atheist, and I’m a good person.

rr, being a science major with a degree in computer science so I know way too much math. Probably not enough other things too.
I have a strong inclination towards metaphysical naturalism and view humans as fully caused beings. So we can’t escape the physical laws which created us and as such we are massively complicated molecular machines. So like a chess game we tend to overlook our deterministic nature because the variation is so great. But under the surface I would say it is always there.
Not believing in something makes it very hard to put yourself in the place of people who do, or even fully understand their point of view. So if my understanding of God doesn’t line up with yours, that’s why.

“It is sad that your civility lies only in some fear of a greater power, which one. Hilter was a Catholic and those that perpetrated evil had an agenda driven by belief. Looking back over history, Atheism wasn’t even tolerated by the religious until recently. Most moral gains, such as the end of slavery and women’s suffrage, were driven by secular people – religious people owned slaves and justified them with the bible.”
Dear God in Heaven, the historical illiteracy of some people is shocking. But as always, scratch a new atheist, uncover one more fundamentalist.
Yeah, I mean you, Paul.

I say this with the upmost sincerity; this is juvenile naivete at the heart; “if we are to be good, God must be present, and present in a real way in our hearts, such that His laws are binding on our conduct”
With or without religion, human atrocities knows no limit – the key is empathy and sympathy. Once lost, even those with ‘God in their heart’ turn to evil as evidenced in the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment.

Dave2: Adding a God doesn’t help with the problem of moral foundations. This goes back to the Euthyphro dilemma.
My post may not have been up yet when you were posting, but if you look at my post at 1:42, I explicitly mentioned the Euthyphro, and you’ll note that I agreed with Socrates. The issue is this: If ethics are arbitrary (because they’re God’s fiat or because there is no meaning, moral or otherwise, in the cosmos), then indeed they have no authority. It seems to me that only if morality is objective and independent of the individual can it have authority. Theists and atheists could both make the argument for objective morality, as MH points out; but it seems to me that for the atheist it would involve much more intellectual heavy lifting.
Granted that an atheist can derive an objective and authoritative morality, then I think the issue isn’t so much foundations, but, as I said before, meaning. If there is no meaning (theistic or otherwise) beyond this world, if all human endeavor ends with death, if all the greatest achievements of humanity are ultimately doomed to extinction when our species reaches the end of the line, then why be moral, anyway? Why not live it up, for tomorrow we die? Why bother? I’m not saying that most atheists live this way–just that there is no real answer to my question here that doesn’t either sneak meaning back in through the back door or ultimately evade the issue. To me a meaningful cosmos is the only thing that really, ultimately can motivate human nobility. Some might disagree; but eventually we’ll all find out.
Also, for the record, Nietzsche’s ethics is more about towering creativity than about destroying the weak and feeble. Think Goethe, not Hitler.
I’m aware of Nietzsche’s admiration for Goethe, seeing him as a proto-übermensch. I also pointed out, if you read my posts, that Nietzsche would have loathed Nazism and Hiter. I don’t buy the old canard that Nietzsche was the father of Nazi thought. However, one could promote Goethe as an ideal for the superior man, while still not giving a fig for the weak and feeble. It’s not either/or. In any case, I would challenge anyone to show where Nietzsche in any of his writings is on the side of the weak and feeble. Certainly he speaks glowingly of “master morality” which if it bothers with charity at all does so not out of obligation but out of an overflowing of vitality. Not much of a basis for social justice! Finally, as I’ve also pointed out, there are people well-acquainted with Nietzsche, such as Shattuck, who aren’t too impressed with the implications of his thought.
Steve: Turmarion wrote: “Most people, religious or not, in most situations, need more motivation–the Will of God, the movement of history towards the perfect communist state, the way one was raised, fear that Mommy or Daddy or the cops will catch one, etc. Socrates, in the Euthyphro was right in saying that the good is good because it’s good, not because it’s god-beloved; but then as now that’s too abstract for most people.”
Could you elaborate on that? For instance, what do you man by “motivation?” I’m an atheist, and I’m a good person.
I’m sure you are a very good person, nor did I imply that atheists, by and large, were not. In any case, I thought the section you quote of what I said does elaborate. I’m inclined to think that much human behavior is motivated by internalized punishments and rewards from childhood, and a continuation of this in adulthood. Lots of people, if they could get away with it, with a fair degree of certainty, would do all kinds of things that they normally wouldn’t. Many surveys, especially of the under-thirty set, consistently indicate that when you ask people, “If you could do X with no punishment, though X is wrong, would you?” large numbers reply, “Yes.” My experience as a teacher, talking to students and observing what even some that I’d thought unimpeachable have done, leads me to believe such surveys are absolutely true. I think the person who does something good purely for the sake of the good, and would do so even if unpunished for doing wrong, is rare.
To put it more simply, I think I agree with Glaucon that very, very, very few people could be trusted with the Ring of Gyges. Maybe I’m cynical, but it seems that way to me.

quote: “Not believing in something makes it very hard to put yourself in the place of people who do, or even fully understand their point of view.”
I can understand where you are coming from here. Also, I wish I knew enough about game theory to converse with you more on this. I enjoyed intro math and science courses as an undergraduate (especially astronomy and statistics), but alas am no mathematician or scientist. There are many things I don’t enough about as well.
rr

Turmarion,
I’m not sure why, but you seem to be drawing a connection between meaning and eternal life: i.e., that there can be no meaning unless we all live forever. But why on earth think that’s true?
And if there are objective moral reasons for not “living it up”, as you grant, then those reasons would seem to answer your “why bother” question. Or are you presupposing that reasons of self-interest are automatically much more important than moral reasons? If so, why make that presupposition?
As for Nietzsche, I’m just making sure a common and distorted picture of his thought doesn’t get reinforced. I’d never deny that his ethical writings can come across as one-sided.

Turmarion,
I’m not sure why, but you seem to be drawing a connection between meaning and eternal life: i.e., that there can be no meaning unless we all live forever. But why on earth think that’s true?
And if there are objective moral reasons for not “living it up”, as you grant, then those reasons would seem to answer your “why bother” question. Or are you presupposing that reasons of self-interest are automatically much more important than moral reasons? If so, why make that presupposition?
As for Nietzsche, I’m just making sure a common and distorted picture of his thought doesn’t get reinforced. If his ethical writings prove one-sided, that’s fine by me.

It seems to me that working on reducing human suffering is the better approach to the problems discussed in the article (better than say, increasing our preaching)
Highly secular first-world countries indicate that people’s expressions of selfishness and general “evil” are more a measure of their government & economy’s stability. I just don’t see how the religious bent is justified.
This is jumping the gun when the first step would be to do a survey measuring the correlation between: religiosity, education, economic status and crimes of various nature.

In thinking more about my concept that morality is equally binding on God. I would say my thinking is similar to one solution to the omnipotence paradox with God being accidentally omnipotent. God starts out truly omnipotent, but this is temporary and any action God takes begins to limit his omnipotence. In this solution it isn’t God’s preference to obey the limits he creates, he now has no choice in the matter.
So if God were the creator of a standard of morality he would accidentally limit himself to that same standard, God would become unable to not obey it and necessarily limit all future actions.
Conversely in the case where an external standard exists that God didn’t create. God’s decision to be good would necessarily limit all future actions as well.
The problem I can see with this line of thinking for a Christian is that it is temporal because it implies a change in God who isn’t supposed to be like that. But creating a universe would change God because the universe is dynamic and if he relates to it in any way I would think it would change him.

Dave2: Maybe it would be a little more accurate to say that I draw a connection between morality and the transcendent and absolute. Any other meaning, by definition, would be relative.
Consider: If I lived only for myself, I would rightly be considered selfish. Moreover, the meaning I gave to my life would be limited and finite, since I ultimately will die. Generally it is considered nobler to live for something greater than oneself–family, country, art, helping others, etc. This is where morality comes in (if I were the only person on Earth, there’s be no need for morality). There are two problems here, though. One, priorities: I could live (morally) a life in which I’m satisfied and happy; or I could live a life of service to others in which I might be miserable (physically, anyway) and less happy than I would be in the first case, but in which I’d increase the happiness of others, leaving the world a better place. Which is the better life? Without some a priori assumptions, this is unanswerable (this is why utilitarian philosophers get into tangles on such issues).
But suppose I live for something greater than myself, be it family, country, world peace, helping the poor, or whatever. Well, families die; nations fall; the poor are always with us; peace is elusive. All greater meanings fail. Even if I brought about Utopia on Earth, the human race will eventually die, being a mere speck in the eternity of time and space. All, ultimately, is for naught; and given that the vast majority of humans throughout history have suffered and died in misery poverty, how does the possible felicity of the future justify all the misery of the past.
So what I’m saying is something like this: A secular ethics can explain to me why I shouldn’t just do as I wish, as you point out and as I agree. However, such reasons usually come down to something like the overall happiness of humanity or saying that everyone has to follow the same rules so that most people are at least able to pursue happiness. This much I admit. However, since all temporal happiness is fleeting, and the human race itself will someday die, leaving no trace, what motivates me to seek these limited, finite goals? If humanity becomes blissful and yet is doomed to extinction, what’s the point?
Now one could say that that’s just how it is, that we can only make ourselves and hopefully those around us and to come happier and better; and that the suffering of those who did and will die in misery and the ultimate death of the cosmos is just unavoidable, too damn bad, and not our proximate problem. I can respect someone who holds this, but I must say it’s very difficult for me really to understand. To me, if there is no eternal, transcendent meaning, all is lost and the human race might as well die now and be out of its misery. I could accept even my own mortality if I thought that I could contribute to something eternal. For me, finitude isn’t enough.
I notice that even many atheists fudge on this. Nietzsche managed to sneak in eternal life with his “eternal recurrence” and many secular humanist types work for the “good of humanity” (which is a reification of something that doesn’t really exist, but anyway) as if it were an absolute somehow. Dawkins and company talk about the beauty of the cosmos, neglecting to mention that without us around to observe it, there is neither beauty nor ugliness–just the cosmos as is. Even Sam Harris (inconsistently) admits the possibility of survival after death.
To me, at least, human life without the transcendent, the Absolute, the Eternal, lacks meaning and is totally pointless, no matter how nice it may be along the way. The Absolute doesn’t necessarily imply immortality, but it seems to me that it would be a cosmic injustice that so many who had no chance to live to the fullest died utterly with no recompense. No one said the cosmos is just, but it seems to me that the injustice must be redressed somehow. For reasons too complex to go into here, I do think the human mind has an immaterial component, from which it’s not unreasonable to assume existence after death. Given this, I do believe that the Absolute is tied in with the ultimate Meaning of human existence, which involves the final reconciliation of all that have lived. This does not necessarily imply theism, but for other reasons, I am a theist.

rr: “Yet all the evidence of twentieth century, from the world wars, to the Holocaust to the creation of the atomic bomb clearly shows that humans are quite capable of killing each other for reasons that have little or nothing to do with religion.”
And which New Atheist would disagree with that statement? You almost seem to be saying, “Why study cancer to improve a person’s health? Don’t you know heart disease kills more people?” Seems like both are fine things to work on.
It’s strange to me that society shields religious wishful thinking from criticism that might otherwise go to work on changing a person’s mind — to a perverse extent that is not mirrored in any other area of discourse.
One of the biggest points that each of the New Atheists HAVE actually made is that there is this terrible double standard when someone criticizes another person’s religious beliefs.
Criticizing racist thought, for example, is not shushed because stupid ideas should be criticized. Also, stupid ideas can cause many Very Bad Things.
Criticizing religious thought is not shushed because there seems to be some sort of respect for religious wishful thinking. Also, it should be pointed out, stupid religious ideas can cause many Very Bad Things.

Re: Glad you liked my post and it was interesting to hear your take on it. I would agree that I’m applying consequentialist reasoning. But from my post prior to this one maybe you can see why. Even if God is the author of life it won’t free him from the problem of evil. He has to deal with the moral repercussions of his actions just like everyone else. Ending a life will have consequences both negative or positive depending upon who it was and when they died.
MH,
‘Your Name’ was me, sorry about that.
Turmarion,
You’re right, I think, to agree with Plato on the question of the origin of morality. I agree with him too. The existence of a transcendent, objective moral order needs to be separated from the idea of God (though you and I do believe in both of them.) One can logically believe in one without necessarily believing in the other.

Turmarion, I suppose I’m one of those people who is generally OK with proximate meaning, and if ultimate meaning doesn’t exist then oh well.
However, I think you view of time is a bit limiting. If you view time like another physical dimension them just as I am bounded in space, I am bounded in time. Now just because I don’t exist on the far side of the moon doesn’t mean I don’t exist at all. Likewise just because I don’t exist 1000 years from now doesn’t mean I don’t exist at all. I just have finite limits in space-time.
Where this line of thinking gets weird is when it encounters quantum mechanics. Because as you know the Copenhagen interpretation says that pieces of me exist smeared all over universe at really low probabilities. So my spacial boundaries are fuzzy and who knows what that would say about my temporal ones. It gets even weirder in the multi-universe interpretation.

Turmarion: “Dawkins and company talk about the beauty of the cosmos, neglecting to mention that without us around to observe it, there is neither beauty nor ugliness–just the cosmos as is.”
He does not neglect to mention any such thing.
A Devil’s Chaplain, Dawkins: “Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous–indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”

Conversational Atheist: A Devil’s Chaplain, Dawkins: “Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous–indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”
Fair enough. So if it lacks all purpose, why bother with anything? To me (as to many atheists, too–see the existentialists, for example) life in such a cosmos is unbearable. Some might disagree, but that’s probably a matter of temperament.
MH: Turmarion, I suppose I’m one of those people who is generally OK with proximate meaning, and if ultimate meaning doesn’t exist then oh well.
Well, this illustrates my increasing belief, as I get older, that it’s a matter of temperament. To me, to say, “oh, well” about ultimate meaning is as incomprehensible as someone saying, “Well, I think the cancer’s not terminal, but if it is, oh well”! The importance of ultimate meaning vis-à-vis proximate meaning is one place where we probably can’t really understand each other, since our perspectives are extremely different. Which is OK–as I grow older I’m also more OK with the idea that some of my views others just aren’t going to get, no matter what, and vice versa. Ultimately we’ll all find out, anyway, one way or the other.
Likewise just because I don’t exist 1000 years from now doesn’t mean I don’t exist at all.
I think maybe you’re misinterpreting me. I’m not saying that just because I don’t exist a millennium hence doesn’t mean I don’t exist now; I’m saying that the lack of ultimate meaning renders proximate meaning pointless and that any ultimate meaning implies the Absolute, which in my opinion implies some kind of existence beyond death. Of course, we’ve already established that we have different attitudes towards ultimate and proximate meaning, so there you go. As to what time is, I think the verdict is out on that. Time will tell (pun intended)!
Because as you know the Copenhagen interpretation says that pieces of me exist smeared all over universe at really low probabilities.
That’s you all over….

I would only add that there is often confusion on this sort of particular discussion and it usually revolves around a subtle, but important, distinction — that is: the theological understanding as I have heard it has been that anyone can indeed act in good ways without believing in God.
Belief is not required, and this is often a misunderstanding.
But goodness itself, as a thing, cannot exist apart from God.
The argument is not, nor should it be, that a person cannot act in good ways apart from a belief in God.
The moral argument for God’s existence is thus:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

Turmarion: “Fair enough. So if it lacks all purpose, why bother with anything? To me (as to many atheists, too–see the existentialists, for example) life in such a cosmos is unbearable. Some might disagree, but that’s probably a matter of temperament.”
Your question sounds as strange to me as (hopefully) the following will sound to you: If there is no God or ultimate objective “delicious” giver of the universe — why do you continue to think that chocolate ice cream is delicious?
My experience of ice cream does not require — or even acknowledge — an external “delicious giver”.
Regarding: “life in such a cosmos being unbearable…”
You’re not making an argument about reality with this thought…
Whether or not property X in the universe is true depends nothing whatever on whether you would be sad either way.
If you’re just making a claim about your personal temperament in dealing with such a universe, then I have no qualms with your statement.

Houghton,
It’s true that WE could not be good (at a trivial level) without the existence of God, because without God we would not exist, nor would our world exist.
But it’s not true that without God, objective moral values would not exist. I think one of the medieval natural-law theorists put it boldly but correctly: even if we postulate the most impious premise possible- that God does not exist- the edifice of natural law would remain standing, even if it might need to be changed a bit in places. The good is the good because it’s good, as Plato and Turmarion said, and independently of the existence of God.
Turmarion, I do agree with you, though, that I wouldn’t see any _meaning_ in life if I didn’t believe in God. And I can’t really understand the concept of saying ‘oh well’ to ultimate questions, or saying ‘the meaning of life is what we choose to give it’ which to my mind is no meaning at all. It’s quite foreign to my weigh of thinking (though i actually was an atheist in my youth, I stopped being one fairly quickly).

Tumarion:
To me, at least, human life without the transcendent, the Absolute, the Eternal, lacks meaning and is totally pointless, no matter how nice it may be along the way.
Hector:
Turmarion, I do agree with you, though, that I wouldn’t see any _meaning_ in life if I didn’t believe in God. And I can’t really understand the concept of saying ‘oh well’ to ultimate questions, or saying ‘the meaning of life is what we choose to give it’ which to my mind is no meaning at all.
Well guys, it must be a matter of temperament then.
I don’t see that just because something – like living my life – is ultimately pointless than there is no reason not to do it.

If someone says they see your life the way you look at it as pointless and meaningless, isn’t that sort of a put down, but in a squishy, warm and huggy sort of way? Sucks to be you, living your empty and hollow life the way you do, when you could be so much better, like them. I guess we all treat each other like that though.

Aushwitz and Hiroshoma? Really, Really. There is zero moral equivelancy there.

I understand how “oh well” seems really foreign to someone religious. For example in the book “Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death” by Irvin Yalom, he mentions his conversation with a Rabbi which ends with the Rabbi asking him how he can life with his view on life.
But it’s my attempt to be content with existence as I find it, and not wish it were otherwise. So I deal with issues like these as follows:
If I am mortal and doomed to personal extinction then no amount of fear, worry, or gnashing of teeth can change that.
If I ultimately exist only because I can exist then no amount of despair can alter that.
If suffering exists for no reason then all I can do is endure it and hope for future joy.
Now I understand this might seem like despair, but I don’t view it that way. Often I find that discontent with things as they are is worse than things as they are.

MH, John E., and Conversational Atheist, I think we are indeed up against a wall. Our temperaments do indeed differ to the extent that mutual understanding is not possible. The only thing I want to note, as I pointed out, is that it’s not just theists who say that without ultimate meaning life is worthless. Many atheists have said that, too. In short, to say that without ultimate meaning there’s no purpose in life isn’t just an excuse by theists to smuggle in God. One may not agree with it, but it’s a respectable view, though one probably determined largely by temperament and personality.
I would say, Conversational, that to me it is a false analogy to compare a sense (taste) with moral intuitions. Look at it like this: How you perceive things (pretty, ugly, delicious, appalling) is indeed a mere matter of sensory input not implying transcendent Beauty, Deliciousness, etc. (although Plato would have said otherwise!). On the other hand, the fact that 19 is a prime number or the proofs of Euclid seem to exist independently of humans and their world. They are objectively and transcendently true (yes, I know some mathematicians would disagree with this, but I think they’re wrong; and most of the great mathematicians have tended to view mathematical truth as objective). The question is, are morals more like sense-impressions or more like mathematics? My vote, for reasons way too complicated to go into here, is that they’re more like mathematics. I am a theist, but to say that morals are objective, as has been demonstrated by others here, doesn’t necessarily imply theism.
MH: I understand how “oh well” seems really foreign to someone religious.
Slight quibble: one doesn’t necessarily have to be religious. Existentialism is soaked in sadness, despair, and anomie because many of the philosophers representing it not only believed that there is no meaning, but that that was a bad thing. They believed that man’s lot is horrible because he lives in a hostile and indifferent universe. Sarte’s “No Exit” expresses this quite well.
I’d also point out that many falsely equate the drive for meaning with the Abrahamic faiths, usually along the lines that they are trying to impose their will on people by convincing them that this life isn’t enough, and then regimenting people’s behavior. This displays an ignorance of religions and history. The pagan authors of Greco-Roman antiquity were more or less agnostic, not particularly believing their traditional religion, and much of their verse is about the sadness and futility of human existence in view of its brevity and meaninglessness. Also note the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, which are pretty bleak, too. Neither the Greco-Roman philosophers nor the Buddhists imposed any kind of control structure on people or tried to make “the world grow gray” from their touch (as Swinburne accused Christianity). Thus, the idea that non-belief frees one from the shackles of some demanding God and allows one to live joyously (or at least contentedly) in this world only is, to say the least, questionable.

The only thing I want to note, as I pointed out, is that it’s not just theists who say that without ultimate meaning life is worthless. Many atheists have said that, too.
Well, so much the worse for those atheists, I guess.
The way I see it, my life is an interesting experience. I’ve seen some interesting places, befriended and loved some interesting people, learned some interesting stuff – I’m pretty much satisfied with the way life is going and seems likely to go in the future.
And if this is all that is, that’s okay too. I don’t require that my life be Ultimately Important – I’m just glad for the experience.

I took an existentialist literature course and came to the conclusion that happy people make bad drama. So I canceled plans for my book called “Diary of a Happy Person”, but here’s an excerpt.
Day 20123, I exercised the eggs Benedict option for breakfast, concluded that bacon and hollandaise sauce will save civilization from a new dark age.

MH said: “Charles, I’m was a science major who now works as an engineer. I have a clinical view of everything! It’s just the way I’m wired up. I won’t comment on your story because I agree with earlier observations made about it”. sigaliris (aka earlier observations) said: “I’m always mystified by stories like the Charles just told. That’s supposed to show that God exists? I just don’t know. It reminded me of back in 1974 when some men came to our prayer group asking for money to feed the people starving in Bangla Desh. I had a roof over my head and knew of all kinds of places where I could get food if I needed it. So I gave them my whole paycheck, which I’d just received and which amounted to about 100 dollars…..Neither then nor at any point did I receive a mysterious windfall of 1000 dollars, however. I was out the 100 bucks and I had no money for a couple of weeks. But that was okay, because the point was to feed starving people, not to cut myself a deal with God, nor, indeed, to prove whether he existed or not”. What Charles actually said: “I felt in my spirit that God was going to do something supernatural, not necessarily financial, but just something “out of the ordinary”. Nowhere in my story did I imply that I gave money expecting to receive a financial “windfall”. What I was implying, was that on that particular Sunday, I FELT that something “out of the ordinary” was going to happen, and it did. I abhor the “prosperity doctrine”, but this is what Sigaliris seems to be implying as my motivation, it wasn’t, and after rereading my story I’m not sure why he would come to that conclusion. The point I was trying to make was the point made by the blind man in John 9:41 when he told the Pharisees who were grilling him with questions about the “sinner” Jesus who had healed him. The man, now healed, in simplistic, childlike, yet gloriously supreme wisdom says in verse 25, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!” The Pharisees couldn’t see the “forest for the trees”. And this is what happens when we try to box God in exclusively with our personal intellects instead of coming to him humbly as “little children”. This is why Jesus performed miracles, to prove himself to unbelievers. What happened to me was a miracle and it strengthened my faith, simple as that.

It’s odd for me to be looking on at this conversation. Because there was a time when I would have been nodding at the earnest words of Turmarion and the other Christians who find it necessary to have eternal, ultimate validation from God to find meaning in their lives. Back then, when I imagined that maybe there was no such validation from God, I felt panicky. But then what does it all MEAN? Without God to tell me I was valued, I’d just be nothing. It was all too easy to feel like that anyway, what with all the humans eager to point out my uselessness and badness.
Now I don’t feel that way. And I’m not sure how that happened. The need for God to tell me my life is meaningful kind of evaporated somehow. Now it seems awfully diminishing and reductionist to say that nothing has any meaning unless a transcendent being is taking notice and approving of it, and making it eternal. I still wish that things and people–including me!–could last forever. If it turns out that they do, this will give me great happiness. But unless I’m finding great happiness and meaning in being here now, why would I find happiness in living forever?
Is a much-loved dog’s life meaningless because the dog will die, and doesn’t have an immortal soul? Should a dog obsess constantly about this and lead a sad, miserable life? The dog doesn’t seem to think so. I don’t understand why the moments of my life have to have meaning for anyone but me, and possibly those who love me. It gives me great happiness to look around me on a sunny day and know that no one else will ever see the shadow of a bird’s wing on snow in just the same way I do, and that every moment like that is a gift that resides only in me. And everyone around me is a treasury of such gifts, and we can share them with each other if we like. It is extraordinarily meaningful to the people I love that I was here for them, for as long as I can be.
Pierce Pettis, a songwriter who is a Christian, said this in “You’re Gonna Need This Memory:”
If all I got for all my trouble
Is just a box of souveniers
Still it’s worth a lot just to remember
Just to know that I was here
And Angelus Silesius, also a Christian, wrote this:
No thought for the hereafter have the wise
For on this very earth they live in paradise.
All heaven’s glory is within, and so is hell’s fierce burning
You must yourself decide in which direction you are turning.
Unless you find paradise at your own center
There is not the smallest chance that you may enter.
From my point of view, if there is a God, we insult the beauty and wonder of his universe by saying it has no meaning of its own. As a writer, I’d be greatly irritated if someone read one of my books and said “Well, of course this story is quite meaningless unless we can go talk to the author and have her explain it to us.” I’d like to think the story is worthwhile whether I continue to exist or not.

Charles, I didn’t mean to imply any venal motive on your part, and I’m sorry if it came across that way. However, I still don’t see what happened to you as proof of God’s existence–any more than the lack of such an event in my case proved that there was no God. I just don’t see it as relevant. Especially since, for both of us, a financial windfall was not a matter of life or death. For starving millions, a gift of food WAS a matter of life or death. So, if God wants to make his presence known, why not make it known by rescuing those who really need it? That was my point. No personal slight on you intended!

sigilaris, the only things I’d say are
1. I’m not as earnest as you think I am.
2. I was at great pains to point out that meaning is not an issue of validation, per se, or of God, per se. Yes, I believe in God, etc., but the non-theistic Buddhism has just as much an absolute, objective, and transcendent meaning as any theistic religion. One might disbelieve in God while still requiring some ultimate meaning from the world.
Having said that, it is very clear from the discussion here that some people seem not to need an ultimate meaning while others do, for mysterious reasons probably having to do with temperament, and thus have great difficulty “getting” each other. Which is OK–in the end we’ll find out if there is an ultimate meaning, one way or the other.

Day 20123, I exercised the eggs Benedict option for breakfast, concluded that bacon and hollandaise sauce will save civilization from a new dark age.
Chortle!

For reasons too complex to go into here, I do think the human mind has an immaterial component, from which it’s not unreasonable to assume existence after death.
Turmarion,could you briefly touch upon why you think the human mind has an immaterial component?

I thought this was a really enjoyable thread overall. It was really interesting getting some pretty divergent views.

meh: Super-brief: My training is in mathematics. It seems evident to me from direct experience that mathematical truth is objective, having real existence, though obviously not in the material world. This is a subject of great debate, by the way, which you can read about in the Wikipedia articles on “philosophy of mathematics”. In any case, I’m in the Platonist school on that (along with greats such as Cantor and Gödel). From my experience of math, it doesn’t seem possible that it’s just a complex game made up by humans. It seems directly evident, to repeat, that mathematical truth is real, objective, idependent of us, immaterial, and, to at least some degree, intelligible to the human mind.
By the way, “material” includes energy, since it can be changed into matter. When I say math is immaterial, I don’t mean it resides in the magnetic impulses of computer RAM or in the synapses of our brains. I mean mathematical truths are neither matter nor energy, and that they do not reside in this cosmos at all.
So, if math is real but immaterial, if it is not in the physical realm, but if nevertheless we can perceive it, then it seems necessary that the mind be (at least in part) immaterial, since it seems hard to see how the completely material can perceive the immaterial.
That’s my main perspective, though there’s a lot more detail and nuance. On shakier grounds, it seems to me that at least some mystical experiences involve perceptions of an immaterial realm (not the mathematical one, this time) and seem to be authentic. I would be less vehement in arguing for these, but I’d hold firm on the math.
MH, I second you–it has been a fascinating thread

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics#New_Empiricism
“The conundrum created by our certainty that abstract deductive propositions, if valid (i.e., if we can “prove” them) are true exclusive of observation and testing in the physical world gives rise to a further reflection…What if thoughts themselves, and the minds that create them, are physical objects, existing only in the physical world?”
“This would reconcile the contradiction between our belief in the certainty of abstract deductions and the empiricist principle that knowledge comes from observation of individual instances. We know that Euler’s equation is true because every time a human mind derives the equation, it gets the same result, unless it has made a mistake, which can be acknowledged and corrected. We observe this phenomenon, and we extrapolate to the general proposition that it is always true.”
“This applies not only to physical principles, like the law of gravity, but to abstract phenomena that we observe only in human brains: in ours and in those of others.”
Me like.

meh: Me not like. I don’t think it accounts for everything.
[E]very time a human mind derives the equation, it gets the same result, unless it has made a mistake, which can be acknowledged and corrected. We observe this phenomenon, and we extrapolate to the general proposition that it is always true. (emphasis added)
This sentence, of course, invites the problem of induction (induction here is not to be confused with mathematical induction, as the article notes).

Rod, I read this post several days ago and have been mulling it over since then. My apologies for returning to it to comment so late in this thread, but as so often happens, by the time I’ve formulated a coherent response the time for posting it has passed. Nevertheless, this is one question that has niggled at me and I feel the need to offer my quite belated two cents.
While I understand the concern that without God it might not be possible to act morally, it begs another question: What if there is no God? Does that mean that mankind has not been able to be moral for the ten thousand or so years since the first complex human societies formed? For the sake of argument, let’s accept for a moment the premise that God does not exist. What has been the cement that has kept social order in place all that time? The likely answer, of course, would indeed seem to be religious beliefs.
But the fact that religions have existed at least as long as recorded human civilization does not mean that God (and by the term “God” i mean to say whichever God or Gods you care to posit) actually exists. If religion has been a cohesive influence on human societies, then in a Godless universe that would suggest that God-belief is a beneficial evolutionary trait. If belief in God causes people to cooperate more effectively, minimize social friction, form stable relationships, inhibit behavior harmful to the group, etc., then those members of society possessing God-belief would become more prosperous while those early atheists lacking same would dwindle. Like our respective individual capacities for certain emotional conditions such as fear, hope, empathy, altruism, depression and paranoia, our need to believe in a higher power may have its roots in our genetic makeup. By definition, such a genetic trait would become dominant in a population over time–the “God gene” has become the genetic norm. Therefore, it can be legitimately argued that God-belief has become the predominant societal paradigm because it is a winning evolutionary strategy for the human animal, and this would be true independent of whether God exists or not.
Given the above hypothetical, the next question to be asked is this: What happens once humans reach a point in their collective development when they recognize that their dependence on religion may have been based not on God’s existence but on their genetically hard-wired need to believe that God exists? If the atheists are correct and there is no God, what then? Does mankind possess the collective wisdom and maturity to act morally and in mutually beneficial cooperation once we are forced to accept that there is no supernatural retributive Force waiting to punish our wrongdoings? Frankly, I have no idea, but I’m not very optimistic that a world that jettisons religion would be better.
Karl Marx may have been correct in describing religion as the opiate of the masses. But keep in mind that using opiates is sometimes necessary when the body would otherwise be so incapacitated by pain that it could no longer function. And while prolonged opiate usage can lead to dependency and addiction, the withdrawal symptoms from going cold turkey can be severe indeed.

Turmarion wrote: “Yes, and this is the nub of what some of us are saying. My opinion is that Nietzsche is more honest and consistent in his atheism than Russell et al are in theirs. If there really is no transcendent, objective, universal meaning, then “nice” atheism (equality, fairness, improving the human lot, etc.) of the secular humanist, Russellian stripe is no more “valid” or “invalid” than the not-so-nice atheism of Nietzsche and the existentialists. It’s just a preference.”
—
Well no. This is certainly not the view of Russell or indeed most humanist or atheist thinkers. It’s not “preference” as though there is nothing but human choice at work. It’s a bit like saying if there is no extra human source of morality, then what is stop you or me from running about and raping and killing? The standard, plebeian theist line is to say “nothing.” which says more about the person making the argument than it does about the nature of human moral and ethical thinking.
It’s long been recognized that human moral behavior, as Chomsky points out, is hard wired in our brains much like language. It has an evolved, selective advantage. As Hitchens is fond of pointing out, we would not have got very far as a species without it. We lack most of the natural advantages of the species that preyed on us in prehistory. We are not particularly fast or strong, we see in colour with binocular vision, but our visual range and acuity is pathetic compared to other animals. We cannot fly or swim particularly well. We have no scales or claws and don’t even have the body hair of our primate cousins. Our evolved advantages are our ability to think abstractly (lead to tool making and problem solving.) and working in groups. If we just ran about willy nilly, doing whatever we wanted whenever we wanted to whomever we wanted, well the species would have died out as lunch.
Indeed, we see this kind of basic moral/ethical behavior in our primary cousins. It’s all well documented in the scientific literature. As we created civilization we codified our moral impluses in philosophies and religions.
Is our innate moral impulses perfect? Hell no. Obviously. And this is where the theist falls apart I think There is this utopian desire to have a perfect, unfailing and unflinching moral compass that is given to us by some extra human source, ie the gods or a god. This is, I am sure you are aware, the “moral argument” for god, and it is rather unconvincing.
In the dialogue Euthyphro, Plato poses the question this way: “Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?”
If the first conclusion is true then the entire moral argument for god is rendered inert. It would imply that god orders that which is intrinsically moral – and if that is so then what makes those standards moral has nothing to do with god. He merely recognizes their moral character. Therefore there is no extra-human source of morality, or if there is, it isn’t god.
If the second is true, then morality is not objective at all as the theist defines it. It is an extra human morality, but not objective. The whims of human beings are replaced by the whims of a supernatural agency. Anything and everything god orders is moral by definition. That means that any horrible act can be justified simply by saying “god said so.”
In other words, the “objective” morality of the Christian or Muslim or whatever, is just a “preference” in the same way you say someone who reasons as Bertand Russell is, isn’t it? You CHOOSE to follow a Christian moral code as opposed to a Buddhist or Jainist or humanist one. But you are left the same puzzle as the non-believer: what makes your chosen morality more moral than anyone elses?
In the end, I look at it this way: we all have an innate moral sense that is part of our evolutionary heritage. As with all things evolved, it is sort of jim-crack and imperfect, but it is all we have. The rest lays in our ability to choose our actions. So in this sense, this is a very long winded way of saying I agree it is a “choice” to the degree that we all choose how we ought to behave. I have yet to hear and argument that can demonstrate why this is bad.
I have written about the moral argument for god before here, and would be interested in your thoughts as you present well thought out arguments: http://theatheisthandbook.blogspot.com/2008/07/beyond-mere-atheism-pt-2-some.html

It’s long been recognized that human moral behavior, as Chomsky points out, is hard wired in our brains much like language. It has an evolved, selective advantage. As Hitchens is fond of pointing out, we would not have got very far as a species without it.
Y’know, I assumed that the thoughts I expressed in my post were hardly original ones, and I see I was correct. (I’ve never read Chomsky’s nor Hitchens’ work, BTW,)

GrantL: This is certainly not the view of Russell or indeed most humanist or atheist thinkers.
As I pointed out, I disagree with Russell and like-minded humanist/atheist thinkers.
There is this utopian desire to have a perfect, unfailing and unflinching moral compass that is given to us by some extra human source, ie the gods or a god.
Non-theistic religions such as Buddhism have an “unfailing and unflinching moral compass”, but it is not given by God or a god or gods. Karma is looked at as being as much an objective and impersonal force as gravity. Additionally, I’d say the way out of the Euthyphro dilemma is similar to ths. If you view God as a big guy in the sky like Zeus, with preferences, emotions, etc., then if He is the Divine lawgive, then indeed morality is merely His whims.
If you view God as the absolute ground of being, as eternal, objective, and immutable as gravity, then morality is not God’s whims, but an expression of His unchanging nature. God and the moral law are one.
In any case, I’d point this out: One, some atheists argue for an objective morality. Two, many atheists would agree, contra Russell and company, that the implications of atheism are bleak. I assume you’d disagree with them, but the point is that it’s not just the theists sitting around razzing on atheism for its bleakness, or arguing for objective ethics.
In any case, my main argument wasn’t about morality, but about meaning. If there is no meaning beyond this limited, brief life, if all humans individually and the human race collectively, are doomed to ultimate death, a mere eyeblink out of eternity, if all human suffering and misery have ultimately been for naught, then it seems to me that there is no purpose in life. We might as wrap the show up right now.
As seems apparent from some of the comments here, some people are apparently OK with saying in effect, “We’re here, we’ll die, in the meantime life often sucks, and when we’re gone it’s all over. Oh, well–might as well enjoy it as much as possible while it lasts.” I must admit that this view is unintelligible to me, and the reverse is probably also true. It probably has to do with temperament, maybe what William James spoke of in discussing what he called the “once-born” and the “twice-born”.

[i]If you view God as the absolute ground of being, as eternal, objective, and immutable as gravity, then morality is not God’s whims, but an expression of His unchanging nature. God and the moral law are one.[/i]
This doesn’t really answer Plato’s concern does it? I mean, first, its based on your personal preference. It’s not any statement of fact. It’s what you choose to believe about the deity you choose to believe in, which carries no more weight than the belief the guy next to you believes in Thor or karma or whatever.
Secondly, you have to just choose that what you think god commands is moral because god commands it. The actual morality of said commandments is not even questioned or explored. (plato’s second option). I mean, I you seem like a decent, intelligent person. I am certain you, like any normal thinking person, reads the morality of the Old Testament and is fairly repulsed by the god ordered and god committed violence. Whether one takes them as metaphor or not, this is a description of a bloody, jealous and vengeful god. We regard ethnic cleansing as utterly immoral and never justifiable. Well, is it or is it not morally acceptable in the bible? If one says yes, well, then one has effectively abandoned moral judgement to rigid obedience. If one says no, perhaps invoking the far more gentle tone of the sequel texts or makes an appeal to the changing moral zeitgeist of civilization, then one has to admit that god is in fact not “immutable” but in fact changes what is moral acceptable and what is not. (indeed thou shalt not kill and wiping out nearly all life in a flood, or ordering the butchering of a city are not just incompatible, but hypocritical. Even if taken as metaphor, you are left with a confused and conflict moral “law” that depends entirely on the believers personal interpretation of what those passages are supposed mean. You can find just as many Christians who think the Old Testament genocides are morally fine, as you will find those who think they are not, as you can find those who think it is metaphor and interpret their meaning in a host of different ways.)
I suppose if Christianity was divorced from the previous Hebrew texts – as the Gnostics wanted – the morality of the bible would be on firmer ground. But the new testament depends entirely upon the old, and there is no way to avoid that the purported god of “love” in the new is the same god of war of the old.
The point is, you pick and choose what you regard as god’s “unchanging” morality based upon your own preferences, reasoning and experience the same way as anyone else. There is nothing “objective” about any of it.
[i]In any case, my main argument wasn’t about morality, but about meaning. If there is no meaning beyond this limited, brief life, if all humans individually and the human race collectively, are doomed to ultimate death, a mere eyeblink out of eternity, if all human suffering and misery have ultimately been for naught, then it seems to me that there is no purpose in life. We might as wrap the show up right now.[/i]
Well that is because you seem to require your morals and meaning to be handed to you from what you perceive to be a non-human authority. But in point of fact, the life is meaningless and depressing so lets all kill ourselves kind of view of atheism is not and has not been the thrust of non-theist philosophy. I understand why the (limited and I still content unfair) view of Nietzsche is so favoured by theists. It supports their already well entrenched view that without THEIR god, there is no worthwhile moral code. (Buddhism by the by, does not subscribe to an imposed moral “law” – karma is an inheritance from Hinduism that the Buddha obscured. and the Buddha himself says several times he doe snot know what happens after death, or even refused to speculate. Moreover, he says, in effect, this is the world as I see it Go forth and test it against your experience. If I am wrong, then discard it. “Be lamps unto yourselves.” This is vastly different than the authorities model Christians subscribe to)
However, there is a massive body of work – which I understand you do not accept – that goes back to Epicurus and Democritus, and comes up through men like Diderot, D’Alembert, D’Holbach, Condorcet, and others that finds a world with an authority god to be meaningless. That in some entirety where one’s job is to worship the boss, anything we do in this life is by definition meaningless, that hope is not found in living forever in some heaven, but in finding ways to improve our lot in the here and now, and recognizing that this is the only shot we get to make things better for those who follow us. No mulligans. This is not a hopeless view, nor a naive one. Indeed the believe in a utopian afterlife is far more naive than this. It is, rather, an acceptance of the finite nature of our existence and, as Sagan so powerfully points out in Pale Blue Dot, underscores the need to treat each other more kindly. One shot, and one shot only, is not bleak and hopeless, but a call to make things better. One does not need the permission or instruction from a god to do so.
Our lives and what they “mean” is up to us. One can choose to see it as you do – without meaning being to you, meaning that amounts to an enteral serfdom in my view, then why bother? That is a choice. The other is to recognize that we can make the best of the time we have. To enjoy life and make it better for others. That too, is a choice.
Indeed, I would go as far to say that if meaning has to be bestowed upon you from some non-human source then is it a shallow and cold “meaning.” A god given meaning is as unintelligible to me as the opposite is to you.

Spambalaya: Chomsky wrote: why does everyone take for granted that we don’t learn to grow arms, but rather, are designed to grow arms? Similarly we should conclude that in the case of the development of a moral systems, there’s a biological endowment which in effect requires us to develop a system of moral judgment and theory of justice, if you like, that in fact as detailed applicability over an enormous range.”
He is saying that just as with the development of language, which he clearly showed is an evolved, species trait rather than a culturally determined artifact, our moral sense is the product of evolution. It’s as much a part of our genetics as the development of eyes, or abstract reasoning.
For some reason, people find this rather bleak, as though if our moral are rooted in our biology, rather than a commandment from some god or another, then our morals are useless and meaningless. Mind you, they never explain WHY that is. They just say it. “Without god there is no morals” or “Without god there is no meaning.” Well, that’s a belief with precious little to sustain it other than personal conviction.
On the other hand, what Chomsky is talking about, which we can and do observe not just in human beings but in the great apes and other animals, explains much about human behavior and why the moral zeitgeist changes so radically. I mean, consider: if god’s meaning and morals were so immutable, why is that what a Christian of 200 years ago believed to be moral or meaningful is drastically different than what they believe today? Unless someone wants to make the claim that burning witches is still moral, the so called “immutable” nature of morals as given by an unchanging god becomes a conflicted mess.

I would say that if our morality is rooted in our biology, and our biology is rooted in the physical laws of reality, then in a real sense morality is rooted in the physical laws of reality. It would be objective because differing life forms would need to solve similar problems and use similar strategies.
That’s why you see altruism and group cooperation show up in many species in nature. I realize that these are an outgrowth of kin selection, but I think my point is still valid.

Mh – I agree with you to a point. However, I don’t think it’s “objective” in the same sense that the religious mean when they use the term.
It’s usage is simply a way to say that morality is non-human and given to us to an extra human source, namely a god. They also mean that it is unchanging and immutable.
(of course, the very fact a human intelligence is required to assess the moral content of a particular commandment or standard pretty much does in the argument I think.)
Our moral sense is obviously rooted in our biology, and therefore not “objective” in the sense that is extra human in origin. It is totally human.

GrantL: This isn’t the place to do it (time and space considerations), but I think a fairly sound philosophical case can be made that
1. The concept of “God” is intelligible.
2. “God”, properly so-called, is the ground of being, eternal, objective, and immutable.
3. This God exists.
I think that such an argument can be made without reference to any particular religon, too. Many of the pagan Greek philosophers made such arguments, in fact, as did the modern philosopher Mortimer Adler at a time when he described himself as a “modern pagan”.
If these arguments are correct, then it’s not a matter of “choosing to believe” in God, any more than one chooses to believe in gravity.
Of course, the case for God, unlike that for gravity, isn’t decisive. Adler puts it as “beyond a reasonable doubt”, or at least “by preponderance of the evidence”. This doesn’t mean that people of good will can’t disagree, as you obviously do. It also means that atheists must remember that intelligent people of good will believe in God for reasons deeper than the teachings of a church or their childhood rearing. You probably don’t intend this, but you do sublty imply this, since you go immediately into the barbarity of the Old Testament which seems to indicate inconsistency or thoughtlessness on my part, or that I don’t see the contradiction.
Most of the great theologians have argued, based upon the properties that philosophical thought indicates (goodness, immutability, etc.) that the nasty parts of Scripture are to be understood allegorically, or that they are the unfortunate perversions of a society that was then still semi-barbaric when they tried to understand Divine revelation. Strong signal, poor receiver, to use an analogy. Thus, the idea is not that God changes, but our understanding of him becomes increasingly refined.
Tangentially, I don’t agree with your interpretation of Buddhism. The sutras are clear that the Buddha knew his own past lives and those of others. What he refused to speculate on was the existence of an arhat (enlightened being) after death. He didn’t say he didn’t know–just that it was inexpressible and not conducive to attaining nirvana. I also don’t think he “obscured” karma nearly as much as you indicate–read the sutras, it pops up over and over and over. Certainly it is clearly portrayed as every bit as much a transcendent law as the Will of God in any theistic tradition, and given time, I can cite you chapter and verse on that.
I understand why the (limited and I still content unfair) view of Nietzsche is so favoured by theists.
Well, there it is, right? You consider Nietzsche’s view limited and unfair, as presumably you also do regarding existentialist thought. But that’s your choice, right? Atheists often accuse theists of eliding the nasty parts of their scriptures by accentuating the positive, eliminating the negative; but they themselves choose the flavor of atheism they prefer, too, don’t they? One might characterize Nietzsche, e.g., as limited and unfair, but he might reply by laughingly chiding one for not having the strength to look at the world as it is.
The point is, as I often say, we all “pays our money and takes our chances”, atheists and thesists of all stripes. We probably don’t even do so completely out of “reason”–as I’ve said several times, I think our temperament and disposition have a much greater influence than we’d like to believe. In any case, heists need to remember that atheists are not horrible, wicked destroyers of morality and tradition; and atheists need to remember that theists are not stupid, narrow-minded rubes who can’t face reality. We must be courteous with each other. All of us will die one day, and we’ll find out one way or the other then. Until then, each must pick his own way, and respect those whose ways are different.

I think that such an argument can be made without reference to any particular religion, too. Many of the pagan Greek philosophers made such arguments, in fact, as did the modern philosopher Mortimer Adler at a time when he described himself as a “modern pagan”.It also means that atheists must remember that intelligent people of good will believe in God for reasons deeper than the teachings of a church or their childhood rearing.
Well, it’s quite evident that the kind of God believed in and afterlife aspired to tends to reflect the kinds of psychological needs the believer has here on Earth.
Thus, the idea is not that God changes, but our understanding of him becomes increasingly refined.
What if that refinement leads leads to a notion of God for whom theism is a bad approximation, a superficial understanding?
One might characterize Nietzsche, e.g., as limited and unfair, but he might reply by laughingly chiding one for not having the strength to look at the world as it is.
What is persistently wrong about Christian characterizations of Nietzsche is to deny that (a) there are two Nietzsches, one a skeptic and the other a variety of occultist, and (b) that he was a man of a particular historical time and place in which his thinking rooted. In his day and places the traditional aka pagan (i.e. Ancient World), mostly Christianity-identified worldview(s) still had a monopoly in the popular mind. Perceptible popular social evolution out of these by increments (as began a generation or two later in central Europe) was then not even a hope. So he dreamt of revolt and revolution by the few.
Like many occultists he can be read for the destructive, black color of occultism (as the Nazis did, and Rightist extremists still do everywhere) or the white, almost mystic proper, kind that often sees things through a passion so strong he burns up lots of comforting excuses and distortions. It’s more clear in the German originals than in translations.

Sigh. Let me try that again:
I think that such an argument can be made without reference to any particular religion, too. Many of the pagan Greek philosophers made such arguments, in fact, as did the modern philosopher Mortimer Adler at a time when he described himself as a “modern pagan”.
The argument you cite is not proof of existence of a God, it’s proof of something less- perhaps the ability to imagine a God. As for the supposed reliability of the specific arguments of 2., the second link of the following is a dismantling of the Aristotelian one.
http://www.uncrediblehallq.net/2009/02/25/review-of-edward-fesers-the-last-superstition-part-i-morality/
http://www.uncrediblehallq.net/2009/03/10/the-last-superstition-part-ii-ditching-aristotles-metaphysics/
It also means that atheists must remember that intelligent people of good will believe in God for reasons deeper than the teachings of a church or their childhood rearing.
Well, it’s quite evident that the kind of God believed in and afterlife aspired to tends to reflect the kinds of psychological needs the believer has here on Earth.
Thus, the idea is not that God changes, but our understanding of him becomes increasingly refined.
What if that refinement leads leads to a notion of God relative to which theism is a bad approximation, a superficial understanding?
One might characterize Nietzsche, e.g., as limited and unfair, but he might reply by laughingly chiding one for not having the strength to look at the world as it is.
What seems persistently wrong about Christian characterizations of Nietzsche are the denials that (a) there are two Nietzsches, one a skeptic and the other a variety of occultist, and (b) the context, which is that he was a man of a particular historical time and place in which his thinking rooted. Both things probably reflect the tropes within conservative religious thinking that legitimate certain kinds of occultic belief and reject all evidence contrary an unchanging nature of the world.
In his day and places the traditional aka pagan (i.e. Ancient World), mostly Christianity-identified worldview(s) still had a monopoly in the popular mind. Perceptible popular social evolution out of these by increments (as began a generation or two later in central Europe) was then not even a hope. So he dreamt of revolt and revolution by the few. These days evolution of religious belief in Western populations is evident, an incremental identification and paring away of objectionable elements of traditional religion. He has about the relationship to religious modernization that Robespierre has to French democracy.
Like many occultists Nietzsche can be read for the haughty, destructive, black color of occultism (as the Nazis did, and Rightist extremists still do everywhere). He can also be read for the white, almost mystic proper, kind; often he sees things through a passion so strong he burns up lots of comforting excuses and distortions. That’s why militant religious conservatives can’t get him out of their heads- he’s so much like them, just opposed to their ends.

Jillian, atheists and theists could go back and forth over arguments for and against God from now on, with no resolution. I notice you say, “Well, it’s quite evident that the kind of God believed in and afterlife aspired to tends to reflect the kinds of psychological needs the believer has here on Earth.” I know of at least one book that argues that atheism reflects the psychological needs of its proponents. I think you’d agree that it’s ultimately pointless and boring to impugn each other’s motivations. That’s also a game that could go on indefinitely with no resolution.
As to Nietzsche, I don’t necessarily agree with all aspects of your take on him, but I pointed out the existentialists, too. My point was this: Many atheists accuse Christians of painting the atheist worldview as harsh and bleak in order to push arguments for their faith. However, there have been and are many atheist philosophers who paint atheism in equally bleak terms. Thus, one cannot blame this on the theists. That’s all.
Once more, I assume most atheists/agnostics/non-theists are good, decent, and intelligent people of good will with whom I happen to disagree on certain issues. Each side should feel free to point out areas in the other’s belief system that they think to be wrong, but they should give the benefit of the doubt to the people who hold those beliefs. We are all, after all, only human.

Turmarion wrote: “Well, there it is, right? You consider Nietzsche’s view limited and unfair, as presumably you also do regarding existentialist thought. But that’s your choice, right? Atheists often accuse theists of eliding the nasty parts of their scriptures by accentuating the positive, eliminating the negative; but they themselves choose the flavor of atheism they prefer, too, don’t they? One might characterize Nietzsche, e.g., as limited and unfair, but he might reply by laughingly chiding one for not having the strength to look at the world as it is.”
Ah, you have misread me there. I did not say Nietzsche was limited and unfair, I said the view of his work as often floated by theists is limited and unfair because it cherry picks and, I have long contended, misread him in order to say that without their chosen god, then there is no reason to behave in any sort of moral or ethical manner. Anyone who has studied the scope of his work – even the crazy bits at the end when, tragically, his mind was being eaten by syphilis – knows this is not his view. He does not, as you pointed out earlier, provide us with some kind of plebeian morality, but really, so what? That isn’t the point. THe point was I understand why so many theists with a fairly thin understanding of the man’s work cling to him as a “magic bullet” against atheists. Because he says (or rather they THINK he says) what they had already claimed and indeed, what is claimed in the bible: that without god, there is no good. And so they say “ah ha! you see! if you are an atheist you must subscribe to Nietzsche who understood without our god everything is meaningless.” This was, it must always be noted, not Nietzsche’s view at all.
Further, when the non-believer chastises the believer for ignoring the ghastly morals of the bible (god order and committed genocides, human sacrifice etc) it really is not the same thing as someone say, ignoring or praising Nietzsche. Why? Well because it is only the believer that claims his book carried the weight of divine authority. All Christians of all stripes claims this, and therefore, on some level, the bible cannot questioned. (this varies from sect to sect of course.) It is immutable and the how one knows what this god fellow wants and what he is going to do in the future.
On the other hand, there is not a single philosophical or scientific work that the atheist regards as immutable or unquestioningly true or carries an unchallengeable authority. So one might fancy parts of John Stuart Mill, Plato, Epicurus and Russell and reject other parts of their work after consideration. And because it is the work of human beings, non of it is considered to be above reproach, above being examined under the light of reason and logic and evidence nor above being rejected in part or in the whole. No matter how profound a Nietzsche or Russell or Darwin or a Plato might be, one is under no obligation to accept on faith anything they say. On the other than, taking the bible on faith is part and parcel of the entire Christian thing.
Once you remove ultimate authority from the equation, then you have an entirely different ball game. I long suspected that part of the gulf between theists and atheists is that the theist often has a hard time understanding how one can live without accepting a “supreme authority” as they do with the bible. So they, in their imaginings, cook up one to one substitutes for their religion: if they have a bible as the ultimate authority, so must the atheist – and so they claim its Nietzsche or Darwin or whatever. But the fact is there is nothing that even approaches for the atheist, the kind of regard the Christian has for the bible.
It is only the believer who makes the claim that their text is the word of the almighty master of the entire universe. Once you make that claim, you sorta paint yourself into a corner where cherry picking the texts, or ignoring the awful bits, becomes rather suspect.

Turmarion wrote: “Most of the great theologians have argued, based upon the properties that philosophical thought indicates (goodness, immutability, etc.) that the nasty parts of Scripture are to be understood allegorically, or that they are the unfortunate perversions of a society that was then still semi-barbaric when they tried to understand Divine revelation. Strong signal, poor receiver, to use an analogy. Thus, the idea is not that God changes, but our understanding of him becomes increasingly refined.”
Ok well this needs to be deconstructed a little bit. Firstly the “properties of philosophical thought” you mentions are not, in the end, statements of faith that really just say “I believe, god is good, just and perfectly moral.” It does not demonstrate anything, including the three stage argument you provided above, other than the belief of the person making it. So theologians can argue it until they blue in the face, but they are arguing about what they belief in the religious sense. To the Buddhist or Jainst or the someone with a radically different philosophy it is just so much nonsense.
And OF COURSE the view of god changes in time doesn’t it. The ugly bits have to be explained away otherwise one has to face the obvious contradiction – and since you seem to fond of our friend Fredrick, I would direct you this critique of Christianity because it highlights this contradiction – of a god who is said to be “of love” who also (in the texts) goes on bloody rampages.
The fact is that as time went on in the west, particularly (although not exclusively) post Enlightenment, biblical criticism became a serious academic effort, philosophers began to deconstruct the texts and expose plainly this contradictions. Believers are left with a choice – accept that the bible does not, in fact, describe of a god of “love” or ignore the bits they don’t like. Overwhelmingly, outside of fundamentalist circles, the choice was to ignore the bad bits.
Of course, this really does not solve the problem or clarify the confused morals of the bible. saying “oh its just a metaphor” gets you know place. For instance, so we are to accept as fact that Jesus was born a virgin and was executed and then rose back to life. We are not to accept that god killed nearly everything on earth in a flood. We are to accept that on the day that Jesus rose from the dead, something like 500 dead Jews also climbed out of their graves and walked around. But we are not to accept that god ordered the Hebrews to a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The earth did not stop rotating so Joshua could continue to savage attack, but the prophets were right in predicting Jesus…And so on and so forth.
The writers of the OT got it wrong but the ones of the NT got it right? The only basis for a such a claim, when it comes to deciding which bits of supernatural stuff you want to accept, is one’s own personal preference. There is “objective” nature to it at all – you’ve clearly shown that. And that being the case, why should one consider any of it objective at all?
And what exactly is the lesson in the metaphor of god ordering his chosen people to wipe out entire cities? Or the flood? Or the taking of slaves? Or Lot offering his daughters to raped by a mob? There is no morality there, other than the morality of the sadistic bully. As a metaphor or allegory? what does it teach?
it is also worth noting that, relatively speaking, the idea that that old testament, with all its nasty bits, is merely allegory but the new is not allegory but fact, is something that is rather new. There can be little doubt that not all that long ago it was accepted as fact as well. (heck, “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” was serious business for Christians only a few hundred years ago.”) One can find thinkers going way back who were clearly attempting to do away with the nasty stuff and focus on what they took to be the good stuff, but the prevailing view for most of Christian history is that both testaments were true and factual.
Which is FINE. Really, if you want to believe that I don’t care. I actually prefer it if people do not believe the OT is some kind expression of fact because it is such a horrible book. You pick and choose what bits you like, and reject the bits you don’t in informing your own personal morals and ethics. But then do not at the same time, turn around and tell us that there is no good without your chosen deity or that the bible is the immutable word of the master of the universe.
Because what the bible means to you is not what it means to the next believer, which is not what it meant to a believer 200 years ago which is not what it will mean to be a believer 200 years hence. Of course the morality of the bible is mutable. You’ve just shown that it is. Which is fine and dandy. Cherry pick away. But then don’t expect people to take serious the idea that this book is worthy of more serious consideration than any other text of religious, morals or philosophy.

pls excuse the typos….writing on the fly…

Jillian wrote: “What seems persistently wrong about Christian characterizations of Nietzsche are the denials that (a) there are two Nietzsches, one a skeptic and the other a variety of occultist, and (b) the context, which is that he was a man of a particular historical time and place in which his thinking rooted. Both things probably reflect the tropes within conservative religious thinking that legitimate certain kinds of occultic belief and reject all evidence contrary an unchanging nature of the world.”
I actually think it is more basic than that. The typical Christian apologetic view of Nietzsche goes like this: “Nietzsche said without god there is no objective morality, and therefore no justification for any moral behavior and therefore this is nihilism. Morality is meaningless. If you are an atheist you must accept this.”
Putting aside the fact that this is an argument from authority that will only ring true to the theist – theist after all is one big argument from authority – it is a pretty shallow reading of Nietzsche.
Nietzsche saw nihilism in what he believed to be the weakness and life denying morality of Christianity. He saw the religion as running from reality rather than living it. The advance of science and secular politics, he thought, had “killed” god and the Christianity world view. (not killed god as a real thing, but as a concept). One the one hand, he thought this to be a good thing because Christian morals were to him useless and wrong. However, it was also terrifying because for good or ill, Christianity had been the main vehicle for moral discourse. If he was right, and it was “dead” what then? What then becomes of meaning and morals?
This is where the apologist stops and goes “Ah HA! Even the arch atheist knew there was no meaning without god and Jesus! You atheists must admit that your world view is devote of hope and meaning and morals mean nothing!”
Of course, if they kept reading they would see that he poses the problem and then poses his solution. Nietzsche thought that “objective meaning” was the result not of a divine authority, but of the creative force man. Meaning was made, not given. And if the values of Christian Europe were dead, new values had to take their place. He said nihilism and meaninglessness would arise if this creative action was not taken. He saw the creation of what he regarded as new, life affirming meaning and morals (which he saw in the model of Dionysus and heroes of Homer) as a critical step in human evolution. He suggested that man would rise up when the “overman” arrived to create new meaning and values and a new morality.
His vision is complex one, and agree with it or not, to say that he believed in a valueless world without the Christian god is simple incorrect. It makes for a good sound bite for apologists and for those who do not know Nietzsche’s work might be baffled by it, but it really does not reflect what the man actually wrote.

Dogs (and myriad other animals) show moral behavior. Does that mean they believe in gods? If the humans who existed before the invention of gods showed moral behavior….
i’m atheist and a vegetarian. How many animals were tortured and killed for YOUR lunch and shoes? i’m not fearing punishment for eating animals from any source other than my own guilt.
Morality comes from within and from culture. There are things we do every day that 100 years ago would have been horrific. Things they did 100 years ago every day might be horrific to us. How long ago was slavery in the US?
People will justify atrocities with religion or with logic. People will do the right thing because of or in spite of religion or logic.

“Brian, reread Rod’s post. Can you honestly call that “bashing atheists”?”
Oh, yes. ” If you think people are bad with God, just imagine what they’re capable of without Him.”
Right there, Rod is bashing atheists. Again.
“And in what way is it “immoral”?”
He’s lying about the morality of atheists.
“Rod is trying to run an open forum of big ideas here, and he has many thoughtful commenters, plenty of whom are atheists (as you can see above). They wouldn’t keep reading and commenting regularly if they felt “bashed.” That’s a really unfair accusation against our blog host.”
That’s a ridiculous assertion. I’ve always felt that Rod has an irrational fear and hatred of atheists, and I post on his blog to call him on it.

GrantL: Here’s a question for you: If there is a God, and if there is an eternal afterlife where all the people will be rewarded or punished for what they did here during mortal life, would it make sense for God to continue sending His innocent newborn children into societies where 100% of them will be raised and trained to become murderers or sexual perverts? When an entire society has reached that point, God shows his love by termininating that society and sending future children to another family or nation where they at least get half a chance to choose for themselves whether they will follow good or evil. God knows that this life is temporary. It is also a test. Sure, many people who are evil don’t get struck down, and many good people have to endure suffering and torture. If God stepped in on every individual case, it wouldn’t be a test, would it? It is temporary, and God will sort out all the rewards and punishments after we die. The victims will testify against the murderers and torturers. When you step back and look at the big picture, there is no contradiction or confused morals.

Mr. Taylor:
Not sure what your reply has to do with anything I wrote above, but here we go:
Consider carefully what you have done here. You have, attempted to morally justify genocide, or as you put it “terminating that society.” And you do on the grounds of “because god said so.” This is a frightening and barbaric morality. I’m sorry but the concept that an entire society should be killed to the last man, woman and child is not only barbaric, but hopeless naive. Even in Nazi Germany, where millions fell in line with Hitler’s entire barking mad scheme of things, there were still good people doing what they could to help their fellow creatures. There were still, in maybe the most immoral society of the 20th century, the Oskar Schindlers who saved the lives of those who would have otherwise been butchered. To claim that EVERY last member of a culture is evil because it says so in broze aged text is astounding, And frankly, anyone who attempts to justify the murder of a small child on the grounds that they MIGHT grow up to become something evil is a ridiculous proposition. One does not convict people of crimes they have not committed, and one does not certainly attempt to justify their murder as “justice.”
Now, fortunately, none of these exterminations really happened, or at least did not happen as the bible says they did. But that is hardly the point. The point is that one cannot say in the same breath that a god who is all “love” is also the same maniac who committed or ordered (sometimes with the explicit instruction to put children to the sword.) the extermination of entire cities. You can attempt to justify such a morality, making excuses for the killing of children or, bizarrely, genocide, but don’t expect anyone to take anything you have to say about morals and ethics seriously after that. The only sane response is to say genocide is never morally justified and that the old testament was written by people with a drastically different moral outlook than most of us have today.
Essentially you have chosen to say “it is just because I believe god says so.” And if you cannot see what a slippery moral slope that is, then well, I need say no more. It means that anything can be justified so long as you believe is it condoned or ordered by your chosen god.
There is a reason the Gnostics regarded Jesus and the god of the old testament as completely distinct creatures. Jesus, they believed, showed the path to an ultimate knowledge. The bloody and murderous god of the old testament was, from their point of view, a creature to be avoided at all costs.
And I would say if the scenario you describe were to be true, and we should be thankful it isn’t, then this god would be a creature to opposed at all costs on the grounds of basic morality and human solidarity. Perhaps you fancy being nothing more than a lab rat that can be “tested” via some kind of bloody torment, but there are those of use who have more respect for ourselves and others.
Nietzsche’s criticism of Christian morality is rather different – he sees it as totally nihilistic because it denies life in favor of some kind of banal afterlife in which one is to spend all time telling the boss how great he is. Which is why he cooked up the idea of the ubermench.
Finally, your argument depends greatly on an undemonstrable supposition. That is, what if the god you choose to be believe in, who possess qualities you’ve decided it says, exists what then? I could just as easily turn it around on you and say “What if Odin exists and when you die you are judged by him and sent to the underworld because you were not sufficiently courageous in life and did not die in battle. Going to war to win glory for oneself is, if you take this “bigger” view of things, completely justified because life is temporary and Odin knows the true value of things.” That argument carries exactly the same weight as yours. Which is to say, none at all.

Hmm. beliefnet – Inspiration, Spirituality, Faith. What’s a guy like GrantL doing on this site anyway? A missionary for the anti-religion crusading wherever he can find a comment box? I already knew GrantL wasn’t going to get it, and he probably understands his arguments have no chance of swaying me, but hopefully some people who were wavering can see the point and why Old/New Testaments are not contradictory. And don’t tell me that a child raised in a totally self-indulgent, amoral home stands half a chance of turning out normal and well-adjusted. In fact, if the sex addicts of those days were anything like the modern ones, I would expect that many of the children of Sodom were doomed to be abused and tortured, and then to grow up and repeat the cycle on the next generation. God was being very merciful when he put an end to all that. The flood was sent to end different crimes, but similarly serious and self-perpetuating ones. Sometimes death even saves the criminal, as it keeps him from doing worse things. The New Testament states that it would be better for you to tie yourself to a millstone and be thrown in the sea rather than offend a little one. In those cases where God didn’t perform the cleansing himself but sent an army to do it, yes, you would want to be sure your prophet was the real prophet, not some former stoner who hears God’s voice in a cardboard box and kidnaps little girls to tell them that “God told me you need to marry me”. Those people knew they were following a real prophet, and there are some ways to find out if your prophet is legit if you follow the Bible.

And how exactly does one tell a “real” prophet from a fake one?
And the alleged “sex addicts” were worse than today? And you know this how exactly? Where is your information? Where is the scholarship upon which you base that statement? Upon what warrant can you make the claim that Sodom (if it actually existed, which is doubtful. Even the names of the city give away their mythological origins) was filled with people that make Paul Benardo look tame?
What I find so disturbing is how causally you discuss the murder of children, and use your interpretation of an ancient text to justify it. To suggest that is a fine and dandy to kill a child because they were raised in a bad home is staggering. You talk about ethnic cleansing as though it is no big deal. Either genocide is wrong and immoral or it is not. Either the butchering of children is immoral or not. Either killing people for crimes they might, maybe, perhaps at some point commit is immoral or not. When I talk about the often confused ethics of some stripes of Christianity, I am talking exactly about this sort of moral equivocation, of the justification of horrible acts because one believes one’s chosen god endorsed it.
and I am here by the by, because Rod often has interesting things to say, even if I do not always agree with him.

Another religionist who is incapable of admitting to himself his own philosophical contradictions. He hates atheists and atheism, yet recognises, on some level, that openly showing his bigotry is wrong. Substitute “black” or “jew” for “atheist” in this nonsense, and the bigotry is easier for Christian Americans to see; but use “atheist” and, well, this bigotry is just fine.
Yet another reason why the rapid decline of Christianity in all educated societies is a good thing.