It will be a wild ride, anyway.
It might be a good idea to start looking at how to impose your will onto society.

“… and who can imagine what sort of world will spring up from so unprecedented and so vertiginously uncertain a vision of reality?”
and who could have imagined what sort of Catholic church would spring up from so unprecedented and so wildly mythical a vision of reality as that of St. Paul?
yes, they don’t make Christians like Paul anymore.
is it fair to ask, in reference to Hart’s use of “dreariness” regarding New Atheist writings, if they regard Hart’s writings in the same way?
why can’t we all just get along?
captcha: the unproven

“They don’t make atheists like Nietzsche anymore.”
Thank God.

For you grad students eternal, I just posted a review from the TLS from February, with the exchange of letters ensuing (3300+ words), of the new book by David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian revolution and its fashionable enemies, by Sir Anthony Kenny, a very distinguished Oxford analytic-Thomist historian of philosophy – and Mass-attending agnostic excommunicated ex-priest; Kenny opens:
“In the ongoing suit of Secularism vs God, David Bentley Hart is the most able counsel for the defence in recent years. Though confident in the strength of his case, he does not hesitate to abuse the plaintiff’s attorneys, and he does so in grand style. Richard Dawkins is guilty of ‘rhetorical recklessness’. Christopher Hitchens’s text ‘careens drunkenly across the pages’ of a book ‘that raises the wild non sequitur almost to the level of a dialectical method’. Daniel Dennett’s theses are ‘sustained by classifications that are entirely arbitrary and fortified by arguments that any attentive reader should notice are wholly circular’.
“Hart has the gifts of a good advocate. He writes with clarity and force, and he drives his points home again and again. He exposes his opponents’ errors of fact or logic with ruthless precision. He is generous in making concessions on his own side, provided they leave intact his overarching claims. Above all, he has ensured that his brief is modest and manageable.”

Hart…again, Rod? LOL.
Look, there are two primary problems when some Christians trot out Nietzsche, one of which is on display with Hart. (The other is a really odd thing that some Catholics do these day, including the present pope in some of his previous work, to claim that Nietzsche was actually some kind of believer in Jesus!I’ve done public debates where this comes up and the stupid….it just burns.)
The problem that Hart has is the same one so many have from that blow hard D’Souza to the only slightly less blow hardy William Lane Craig have: which is they trot out some variant of this argument – “Nietzsche claimed that without god there is no morality and therefore atheism (they claim Nietzsche said) leads to an empty meaningless nihilism. And any atheist who is true to his conviction will have to agree with this view, because, after all, Nietzsche said so.”
Well putting aside that the kind of thing Hart is up to is a argument from authority (which is not going to carry much weight with most atheists) is also a pretty shallow reading of Nietzsche.
Take the passage Rod quotes above: “Nietzsche understood also that the passing of Christian faith permits no return to pagan naivete, and he knew that this monstrous inversion of values created within us a conscience that the older order could never have incubated. He understood also that the death of God beyond us is the death of the human as such within us.”
This goes wrong right from the start. Nietzsche did not view pagan antiquity as naive. He actually looks to Dionysus as a source of superior moral values to those of Jesus and bemoans the loss of the Homeric hero ethic. He was very clear that he thought Jesus and Christainity was unspeakably naive. He goes so far as to say that only one man could live up to the naivete of the Christian doctrine, and that was Jesus. There only ever was one Christian, Nietzsche said, and that guy died on the cross.
Moreover, Nietzsche understood that in fact Christianity had been the primary vehicle or morals and ethics in Europe for a good long time and but those morals and ethics were themselves nihilistic because they denied life. This was his pointed criticism of Jesus. He saw Jesus as a figure who denied human life as it is, in favor of a promise of an afterlife. To Nietzsche nothing could be more nihilistic than that. Lets be VERY clear about this. Nietzsche sees Christian values as anti-life and something human beings had to grow beyond.
So Nietzsche sees two problems. First, the morals of Christianity are useless and wrong. But they are the dominate morals nonetheless. If you wipe them out, if god is dead (and when will believers realize that Nietzsche does not refer to “God” as a real being that died? It’s a bloody metaphor! He is talking about the belief in god and the religion that grows around the belief. He was an atheist. He didn’t believe god ever existed!) well what then? If you wipe out the dominate vehicle of morals and ethics what then do you do? Doing nothing is not an option.
Nietzsche understood that allowing Christianity to die was only part of the solution. If you demolish the primary mode of moral and ethical thinking and do not replace it with something else, then you have a mess. The nihilism of Christianity (as he saw it) gets replaced by an even worse situation. This is where Hart and D’Souza and the rest stop and say “QED.” Pity they did not keep reading Nietzsche.
To fill the moral void left behind by the death of god, Nietzsche says human beings have to create new “life affirming” values. A new moral system that is superior to the old one and he sees this as part of man kind’s moral and ethical evolution. He provides the metaphor of the ubermensch, the overman or superman. ubermensch is supposed to create these new values, which Nietzsche said had to rooted in a love of this life. These new values then provide the new foundation for moral and ethical action.
Notice that Hart, and other believers who try and use poor Nietzsche as their trump card almost without fail never mention ubermensch. They always stop with this line about Nietzsche saying without god there can be no morals and then everything goes into the crapper. This is manifestly NOT what Nietzsche was saying.
I can only suspect that Hart et al haven’t actually read Nietzsche or (more likely) they assume their audience hasn’t (and won’t. Nietzsche is not easy reading at all) and will just take their word for it. But for anyone familiar with the breadth of Nietzsche work, about what he thought about morals, ethics, Christianity and atheism, someone like Hart simply cannot be taken seriously. And undergrad in philosophy can see this.
I am not necessarily endorsing Nietzsche’s views, you understand. But at the same time there is something a bit underhanded in Hart’s presentation of Nietzsche.
I mean, disagree with Nietzsche, sure. One could argue he is totally wrong about ubermensch, for instance. But for goodness sake, don’t cherry pick only part of Nietzsche argument and that try to pass that off as Nietzsche’s entire conclusion as some quasi-theist “gotcha” to atheists. It’s intellectually dishonest.

Now, having said all that, let me say this, briefly, in praise of Hart if I might.
He is not fairly representing Nietzsche, but he is right to some extent in that many atheists do not fully think through what the “dead of god” (as a metaphor!) actually means. The universe is pitiless. The earth is, as Sagan, said a pale blue dot and if it vanished tomorrow the universe wouldn’t care. Eventually our sun will flame out and burn the earth to crisp and eventually after that the universe will expand into heat death. And there is no meta-narrative, as a theist would define it, to it all. Not comforting, eh? Not a pleasing tale. But, as Jawaharlal Nehru said: “Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.” I don’t think most atheists have meditated upon this, and they probably should.
It is odd, however, that Hart blasts the “new atheists” for not getting this. They do. Dawkins and particularly Hitchens, has said so more than once in public talks. Hitchens says, in a riff of Nehru, that this might not be a comforting thought (the death of the universe) but he would rather accept an uncomfortable fact than a pleasing fantasy.
Indeed, a reading of atheists including Hitchens, including Russell and so on, you find an almost but not quite Buddhist acceptance of the impermanence of life, which (as Woody Allen sorta notes in Rod’s previous ost) and this under score a need to treat other better, to make things better now, while it is possible to do so. If you want to see this line of thought developed really well check out Sagan’s moving “Pale Blue Dot” monologue. It accepts really, what Nietzsche was saying about the pitiless universe…but I defy you to find a meaningless nihilism in what Sagan says: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw

“If you want to see this line of thought developed really well check out Sagan’s moving “Pale Blue Dot” monologue. It accepts really, what Nietzsche was saying about the pitiless universe…but I defy you to find a meaningless nihilism in what Sagan says”
Challenge accepted! Sagan is eloquent, but completely contradictory. On the one hand, he wants us to hold the Earth, and it’s place within the Cosmos, as totally insignificant, to defuse the importance of nation, culture, power, and so forth. On the other, he wants us to affirm the importance of life on this pale blue dot.
Fact of the matter is, you can’t complain about the smallness of vision of someone who wants to become “momentary masters of a fraction of a dot” and then bemoan the vast size of the rivers of blood they spill.
Sagan is an eloquent atheist, but he is not yet an honest one.

I just read the essay in its entirety. It is nothing more than a skillfully written diatribe full of ad-hoc and strawman arguments. He lumps all new atheists together, simplifies their arguments and then ridicules them without adequately clarifying his own position. He claims the new atheists don’t fully appreciate and account for current metaphysical dialogue. However, why should they need to? The complexity and elegance of any metaphysical argument rests on the shoulders of the duelism of a transcendent reality, of which there is no empirical evidence. Needless to say, I am not impressed.

Rjak, precisely. The absurdity comes in trying to assert that in a meaningless universe there is any basis by which one ought to care especially for the lives of other people, or for preferring one set of behaviors (arbitrarily labeled “good”) over another (labeled “evil”).
The Problem of Evil for theists is that it exists, and we cannot explain why. The Problem of Evil for atheists is also that it exists, and we cannot explain why we should care.

I’ve pretty much been thinking the same thing over the last week. The New Atheists are pretty much worthless cowards both intellectually and personally. They are utterly superfluous to anyone whose read Nietzsche.
The responses on this thread “Not all X are Y, hence your argument is invalid” and the Aspergian misinterpretation of the article are sadly typical of what passes for intellectual ability of these types.

Re: The earth is, as Sagan, said a pale blue dot and if it vanished tomorrow the universe wouldn’t care.
Actually the universe would care a whole heckubva a lot, because one of its most fundamntal physical laws (conservation of mass/energy) would just have failed. No telling what chaos would ensue– and no, I am not just being snarky. The universe knows and “cares” about every last photon and neutrino. Things are allowed to chnage form (subject to various laws) but not to vanish completely.
Re: Eventually our sun will flame out and burn the earth to crisp and eventually after that the universe will expand into heat death.
The former seems certain, the latter is only speculative– too much we do not know yet about time-space and the quantum world.
Re: And there is no meta-narrative
Oh there is– it’s just not a human one.

No time for a fuller response right this moment, but I couldn’t let this pass:
GrantL: Notice that Hart, and other believers who try and use poor Nietzsche as their trump card almost without fail never mention ubermensch. They always stop with this line about Nietzsche saying without god there can be no morals and then everything goes into the crapper. This is manifestly NOT what Nietzsche was saying.
From Hart’s essay: For Nietzsche, therefore, the future that lies before us must be decided, and decided between only two possible paths: a final nihilism, which aspires to nothing beyond the momentary consolations of material contentment, or some great feat of creative will, inspired by a new and truly worldly mythos powerful enough to replace the old and discredited mythos of the Christian revolution (for him, of course, this meant the myth of the Übermensch).
Grant, before you trash Hart, why don’t you trouble yourself to read what he wrote, instead of what you imagine him to have written? I don’t expect you to agree with him, but I do expect you to have read his entire essay before attempting to dismiss it. If you had read Hart’s essay, instead of the fragment I posted alone, you wouldn’t have been able to say this either:
This goes wrong right from the start. Nietzsche did not view pagan antiquity as naive.
Hart is not using the term “naive” in the “just fell off the turnip truck” sense. He means that even though Nietzsche thought Christianity had been a bad thing for humanity, it was not possible to return to what existed before. Humankind couldn’t un-know what it had already come to know through Christianity. It couldn’t say, “Well, that was unpleasant. Let’s pick up where we left off.” Similarly, you really cannot be serious when you assume that a theologian like Hart believes that Nietzsche believed God really existed, but had a cosmic coronary and keeled over in the heavens. Maybe some freshman at Bugtussle Bible College believes that, but give the rest of us theists familiar with Nietzsche a little credit, willya?

“On the death of God and the creation of new values: Nietzsche diagnosed the Christian value system as a reaction against life and destructive; the new values which the Ubermensch will be responsible for will be life-affirming and creative”. “Ubermensch-Wikipedia”
True or not true?(No comments on Wikipedia, please)

I’m not sure I understand what Nietzsche and Sagan (very strange bedfellows, these) are getting at. Life exists (as far as we know) on an insignificant pale blue dot in a universe doomed to ineluctable annihilation. And the prevailing morality among the highest lifeforms on that dot derives from an insignificant ancient people and its greatest teacher doomed to predestined immolation.
Sounds as if that dead metaphor guy at least had a sense of humour while he lasted.
Difficile credere est.
Difficilius et non credere.
Difficillimum est olim credidisse et fidem perdidisse.

Well, my view of Sagan also includes these (from the movie “Contact”):
“If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space.”
“I… had an experience. I can’t prove it, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe, that tells us undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how… rare, and precious we all are! A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not, that none of us are alone.”
For those Christians who are fully engaged in the sin-repentence-atonement belief, I offer without sarcasm: Atheism is as atheism does.
If you don’t want to be continuously bashed for crimes of the past and present — if you insist on using the phrase “but he/she wasn’t really Christian”, then I strongly suggest you offer the same respect to atheists.

“If you don’t want to be continuously bashed for crimes of the past and present — if you insist on using the phrase “but he/she wasn’t really Christian”, then I strongly suggest you offer the same respect to atheists.”
This is an interesting point. Many Christians are quick to grasp for this band-aid when a professed Christian goes off the reservation, say as in the case of Scott Roeder. They offer many explanations of why the seemingly wanton violence sanctioned by God in the OT no longer applies under the criteria of the NT and the covenant ushered in at the Cross.
Yet they are much less willing to accept a similarly nuanced approach to a non-theistic belief system, insisting instead that the “strict constructionist” model they eschew for their own faith be applied in total to all others. Thus they reject a non-theist’s analysis of Christian ethos while embracing a Christian’s analysis of atheism as expressed by Nietzsche. Hypocrisy? No, not really. More like positional bias.
GrantL offers an interesting thread in one of his posts:
“He is not fairly representing Nietzsche, but he is right to some extent in that many atheists do not fully think through what the “dead of god” (as a metaphor!) actually means. The universe is pitiless. The earth is, as Sagan, said a pale blue dot and if it vanished tomorrow the universe wouldn’t care. Eventually our sun will flame out and burn the earth to crisp and eventually after that the universe will expand into heat death. And there is no meta-narrative, as a theist would define it, to it all. Not comforting, eh? Not a pleasing tale. But, as Jawaharlal Nehru said: “Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.” I don’t think most atheists have meditated upon this, and they probably should.”
This is the nut of existence. The universe is indeed a cold, hard place. Our existence is neither noticed nor valued by it. To pretend otherwise is to whistle in the dark while walking past the graveyard. In this Nietzsche’s viewpoint is spot on.
But please, if you expect non-theists to give credence to an analysis of our alleged beliefs by someone who clearly does not understand them (and who, in many ways, makes the same mistakes as many of the so-called “New Atheists”) then you surrender any right to complain when they mangle your beliefs to suit their purpose.
Orthodox theologian David Hart should keep his day job, where his training and expertise lie. Moonlighting as a critic of a philosophy he clearly does not understand will not do much for him.

the death of God… left us with only the uncertain resources of our will with which to combat the infinity of meaninglessness that the universe now threatens to become.
Blah blah blah, “unless you pray just like me to the same God as I do your life must be meaningless and empty and why do you even bother living, no, really?”, I keep hoping that someday I will see a Christian critique of atheism that isn’t this intellectually lazy.
Hart and those like him not only never thought about atheism before they started talking about it, they also never think about it after they’re done. If it were really the case that an atheist life is meaningless and worthless and empty, there WOULD be massive epidemics of joylessness and suicide among them. If everybody on the Dawkins forum or Pharyngula really went home at night to weep over an empty universe, unwithstandably cold without the love of a deity, trust me, they’d have all long since offed themselves, since just posting snarky web diatribes wouldn’t be enough of an antidote and wouldn’t keep them going for long. Hart’s fortune-cookie analysis is not only totally ungracious, condescending, and clueless, it is also quite plainly paradoxical. Amidst all his five-dollar-words and namedropping, there is no there there.

Really. I wish, I so wish, that just for once a Christian commentator would come out and say “I can comprehend how a human could exist and live a normal life without the need for God.” Because instead, commentary like this reads like some otaku fanboy declaring that if you haven’t seen the original unedited non-dubbed cut of Dominion Tank Police, your life must be empty and what the hell is wrong with you anyway? If you don’t care, you don’t care, and you very well can get on with your life. It is rather galling that some believers can mentally conceptualize a giant invisible omnipotent deity who oversees (or at some point oversaw) every act and agency in the universe, but they can’t conceptualize that.

I happily accept your rebuke Rob! I missed that paragraph when I quickly read through Hart’s polemic last night.
Having read through it, my criticism of Hart needs to be tempered somewhat.

Christianity offers the alleged certainty that there is a benevolent caretaker in the sky who not only created the world but sustains it and, ultimately, will clean up after us when we mess it up.
Non-theism in general believes that this world is all we have, there is no great caretaker in the sky, and that if we make a mess of it those who follow us will be stuck with it after we are long cold in the ground.
Neither viewpoint can be proven this side of death. We have generations upon generations of people who have followed both viewpoints (or variants thereof) and have lived full, meaningful lives while here among us. We also have tyrants who have embraced the tenets of both and have used them to oppress and murder their fellow humans.
A philosophy, a belief, an intellectual framework is only as good as its weakest link. And guess where that weakest link lies.

Really. I wish, I so wish, that just for once a Christian commentator would come out and say “I can comprehend how a human could exist and live a normal life without the need for God.”
Many Christians have said this, it is simply a fact that many atheists do live a normal, moral, meaningul life. The question is do they have sufficient warrant for doing so, not whether they can and do live a “normal” life. Of course, atheists tend to take on the moral tone of their surroundings, an atheist who lived in ancient Rome wouldn’t have a problem with gladiatorial contests or child abandonment, for instance. This is the tendency that Hart was addressing with his references to Nietzsche, the believe among certain atheists, Nietzsche called them “English flatheads”, to think that you can abandon Christianity and retain Christian ethics (with some adjustments in the areas of sex and drugs). The reason that Hart didn’t dwell on “superman” is that the so-called New Atheists don’t either. They are quite content to see a continuation of Christian ethics, particularly Christian social ethics. This is why they are sometimes referred to, derisively, as “Christian atheists” by other atheists.

Jon, the universe does not “know” anything. It knows about every last particle in the same way a tree knows about every leaf on its branches or you know about every cell in your body. Unless you want to posit a cosmic intelligence, the universe doesn’t know anything.
Therefore there is no “meta narrative” meaning there is nothing writing the path of the future, no control, no “ultimate” purpose.
Yes, the heat death of the universe is “speculative” but it also fits our best evidence. We know the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate – meaning everything is moving away from everything else with increasing speed. There is as yet, zero data to suggest anything can or could stop that. That being the case, heat death is the most likely results billions and billions of years hence.
Frankly, the line from Sagan’s book (if you have not read Contact, you should!) was not about a god existing, but other life in the universe – super advanced, but not a god.

Jon, the universe does not “know” anything. It knows about every last particle in the same way a tree knows about every leaf on its branches or you know about every cell in your body. Unless you want to posit a cosmic intelligence, the universe doesn’t know anything.
Therefore there is no “meta narrative” meaning there is nothing writing the path of the future, no control, no “ultimate” purpose.
Yes, the heat death of the universe is “speculative” but it also fits our best evidence. We know the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate – meaning everything is moving away from everything else with increasing speed. There is as yet, zero data to suggest anything can or could stop that. That being the case, heat death is the most likely results billions and billions of years hence.
Franklin, the line from Sagan’s book (if you have not read Contact, you should!) was not about a god existing, but other life in the universe – super advanced, but not a god.

If everybody on the Dawkins forum or Pharyngula really went home at night to weep over an empty universe, unwithstandably cold without the love of a deity, trust me, they’d have all long since offed themselves, since just posting snarky web diatribes wouldn’t be enough of an antidote and wouldn’t keep them going for long.
This is an interesting statement, because it reveals the truth of our discussions here and on the Woody Allen thread about the stark conclusions of the materialist/atheist view. Of course they don’t go home and weep, and respectfully, this misunderstands the theist point. Because no one can actually live that way, not even Woody Allen. Despite his honest acknowledgement of the meaninglessness of the universe, he still seeks meaning. In theory, the atheist must accept the meaninglessness of the universe on his or her view. In practice, one cannot live their lives this way. The only way that atheists can avoid the “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” of Camus is to embrace a noble lie, to play “let’s pretend” that the universe and our lives have meaning.
Really. I wish, I so wish, that just for once a Christian commentator would come out and say “I can comprehend how a human could exist and live a normal life without the need for God.”
TTT, your wish has been granted. Look at the previous thread on Woody Allen. I made this point, as have many theist commentators over the years. But there seems to be a slight misunderstanding. The argument about the meaninglessness of the universe on the atheist worldview does not presuppose that one must believe in God. The question is one of God’s actual existence. If by “need” you mean belief, then the point is granted. However, it is also irrelevant to the questions of meaning, value or purpose.
As a side note, I would just remind my fellow Christians on this forum that any discussion of theism vs. atheism should be conducted with gentleness and respect. I’m not trying to scold anyone, but I have seen a few comments that drift toward the borderline of being less gentle and less respectful.

Hougton, aren’t you working from two assumptions? First that there is a God, and second that God cares about your life?
Or another way of asking, if God is totally indifferent to your life, does your life still have meaning?

“the dreariness of reading the New Atheists”
It must be dreary reading arguments to the effect that your chosen lifelong scholastic endeavor is devoted to the study of events and characters that did not exist and that there is no real downside to jettisoning the whole thing. This is neither abusive or harsh when you consider Mr. Bentley likely holds this exact opinion of Hindu Theologians. Of course he can’t say that if he has any ecumenical sense.
He only likes the part of Nietzsche assuming catastrophic shift in moral and cultural consciousness.
That is the beauty of being an atheist. Nietzsche is not infallible and I am free to question his premise.
If all religions are man made then the truth and the transcendent good are also man made. If god does not exist then why would a lack of belief cause societal crash?
Of course the implied answer is that religion delivers and enforces societal rules and that true or not its abandonment would be disasterous.
In what other area of life do we say true or not we have to stick with this?

Houghton wrote: “The only way that atheists can avoid the “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide” of Camus is to embrace a noble lie, to play “let’s pretend” that the universe and our lives have meaning.”
This is manifestly false, and exactly the kind of thinking I criticized earlier. “Life is meaningless without god, and the only way to live otherwise is to play make believe.”
Take a look at Nietzsche again. He is not saying the universe is meaningless. It’s meaningless on its own. A star has no “meaning”. A black hole or a comet or a planet are without an IMPOSED meaning from a supernatural agent.
What Nietzsche, and indeed most other atheists who think about these things, are saying is that meaning is a creation of the will. It’s not a “lets pretend” situation at all.
It is not life or the universe that gives us meaning. We give life meaning.
This is why I posted the link to Sagan. You ought to watch it. For him, and for Hitchens, and Dawkins and Russel and even for poor old Nietzsche, the lack of a universal meaning (never mind one with us in mind) is not depressing. It means this is it. Our one and only kick at the can. No mulligans. And so, as Nietzsche points out, you have a choice. Embrace nothing, or choose to embrace the impermanence of all things as a call to treat each other better, to make our existence, brief thought it is, better for all us.

But please, if you expect non-theists to give credence to an analysis of our alleged beliefs by someone who clearly does not understand them (and who, in many ways, makes the same mistakes as many of the so-called “New Atheists”) then you surrender any right to complain when they mangle your beliefs to suit their purpose.
But that’s the nub, isn’t it? There is no philosophically sound defense of atheism apart from Nietzsche.
And, if you take Nietzsche seriously, as Hart clearly does, then you have to admire the courage Nietsche displayed, ie: the denial of any permanence to being or, as TTT posted above:
This is the nut of existence. The universe is indeed a cold, hard place. Our existence is neither noticed nor valued by it. To pretend otherwise is to whistle in the dark while walking past the graveyard. In this Nietzsche’s viewpoint is spot on.
…as he descended into madness — a place of no permanent structure. At least this man faced the consequences of his beliefs.
You can talk about normalcy, good will, even virtuous effort all you want. Atheists certainly can be normal, good, even virtuous. But these values (the values that the apologists for atheism assert make them no different than theists) don’t draw from any well deeper than the cultural memory of a civilization shaped by theism (Judeo-Christianity in our case).
So if there is a philosophical or even “a-theological” (kind of self-negating I suppose but “theological” certainly won’t do) defense of atheism that reaches beyond the Christians-bad — atheists-good moral posturing that usually shapes the substance of the discussion, point me to it. I see no one except Nietzsche.

Grant, I read the book before the movie came out. I was particularly disappointed with the adaptation decision to have only one passenger in the “machine” pod (no doubt to keep the pace moving), because Sagan used the passengers to good effect in the self-questioning dynamic.
I also read “A Demon-Haunted World”. Sagan was not shy about his personal opinions, but he was consistent about the scientific assertion that God/deity/yadda is not subject to proof or disproof whenever he had his scientist-hat on.
In case it remains ambiguous for any reader, I am a Pagan, not an atheist.

Houghton: thank you for seriously engaging on this issue, though I still think there’s an issue of presuming needs that aren’t actually needed. The universe is “meaningless”, in that its existence is a brute fact with no teleology, no moral message waiting at the end. The concept of “meaning”–like all concepts–are human inventions. This should not be taken as belittling their importance: love, music, and air conditioning are all human inventions too. A person need not see any meaning in the universe in and of itself to find plenty of it within their own lives and personal interactions, just as they need not be assured that somehow the tunes of Brahms are being broadcast around Alpha Centauri in order to love hearing the sound of it in their own den.

Demon Haunted World is brilliant, but it is worth noting what Sagan says fully – god is not “subject” to proof or disproof, therefore there isn’t much reason to take it seriously until there is evidence. He would apply that to a theistic god, or more pagan ideas about gods, spirits or the inner animus of all things (depending on what kind of pagan one is.)
And yes, the movie Contact was ok, but not great. At least the movie did keep to his central ideas pretty well though.

Franklin, as I read your post, I remembered this bit from DHW…seems apt for all us:
“Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science — by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans — teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us.”

…what Sagan says fully – god is not “subject” to proof or disproof, therefore there isn’t much reason to take it seriously until there is evidence.
A necessary clarification, for sure… but I would further append that this statement is the precise, logical construction required by science: Scientific assertion, then personal opinion. This logic is often missed, especially by theists, who conflate the assertion with the opinion, or reverse the labels, willy-nilly.

Jacobse – a couple of things. Nietzsche “descended into madness” because he had a viral infection in his brain. It has nothing to do with his philosophical work.
And really, are you going to say that Nietzsche is the ONLY philosophy worth considering for the atheist? That cuts out a large number of impressive things. Baron D’halbach for instance. Russell. Even Epicurus. It is rather disingenuous to say that Nietzsche is the be all and end of all of atheist thought is incorrect.

“You can talk about normalcy, good will, even virtuous effort all you want. Atheists certainly can be normal, good, even virtuous. But these values (the values that the apologists for atheism assert make them no different than theists) don’t draw from any well deeper than the cultural memory of a civilization shaped by theism (Judeo-Christianity in our case).”
Of course, the Christian system drew from wells of earlier beliefs (Judaism and and the teachings of Plato the most obvious), and have drawn from wells of other beliefs as it moved from being a Middle-Eastern variant of Judaism and spread into Europe. For non-theists to draw from the well of cultural memory shaped by the Judeo-Christian values simply is a continuance of what humans have always done…looking to the past, drawing value from it, and moving on in new directions. It is what the early Christians did as they looked to a “reformation” of the Jewish faith of their fathers. It is what Constantine did to popularize the new faith as it became fully European in scope and nature. It is what the Scandinavian peoples did as Christianity displaced earlier polytheistic beliefs. It is what the Reformation did as it separated itself from the Catholic Church. It is what American Christians have done as they adapted the faith and philosophy to the challenges of the New World.
You point to the well of Judeo-Christian values as if it is pure water dug by your own hands. It is not. Many other hands from many other cultures and beliefs began the digging of that well. Christianity added to it, as did other faiths since the inception of Christianity.
The notion that non-theists are somehow taking patented ideas from Christianity, scrubbing off the serial numbers, and then calling it our own is bunk. We are doing exactly what generations before have done.

The notion that non-theists are somehow taking patented ideas from Christianity, scrubbing off the serial numbers, and then calling it our own is bunk. We are doing exactly what generations before have done.
I would be less harsh than that, HL. This is one of those points where a blunt “but everyone does it!” is valid and valuable so long as it remains divorced from ad hominem connotations… something we rarely see, eh?
Syncretics abound in history. The short history of Celtic Christianity is illustrative. The Celts had a strong and deserved reputation for active syncretism, an extension of their tribal trait of adaptivity.

Jacobse: But these values (the values that the apologists for atheism assert make them no different than theists) don’t draw from any well deeper than the cultural memory of a civilization shaped by theism (Judeo-Christianity in our case)
Judeo-Christianity “drew from cultural memory” of prior civilizations, one chain of local pagans after another, in turn going all the way back to smelly savages who made cave paintings, wondered what life was all about, and kept some food aside for the sick and elderly because they still cared about them.
Humans evolved as social organisms. That is the origin of all of the values that have been tweaked by one later philosophical system after another.

TTT: Really. I wish, I so wish, that just for once a Christian commentator would come out and say “I can comprehend how a human could exist and live a normal life without the need for God.”
If you go over to the Woody Allen thread, I actually did say something close to this in dialogue with John E-Agn Stoic., although phrased more subtly. I can’t see how someone can say, “Gee, the universe is a cold, hard, meaningless place, we’ll all die, and everything else will cease to exist forever, no real meaning to any of it, but so what? I’m OK with that because my life is fine!” The indifference to transcendent meaning (which isn’t necessarily God, or a “giant invisible omnipotent deity who oversees…every act and agency in the universe”–after all, the Buddhist dharma is transcendent but quite impersonal) is something I really cannot grasp. Conversely, I imagine that those on the other side can’t see why others consider meaning beyond the here-and-now so vitally crucial. It’s probably based in temperament on a deep, sub-rational level, and is a gulf that probably can’t be bridged by reasoned argument. It’s like trying to convince someone who hates broccoli why it’s really great (to give a shallow analogy).
Hart and those like him not only never thought about atheism before they started talking about it, they also never think about it after they’re done. If it were really the case that an atheist life is meaningless and worthless and empty, there WOULD be massive epidemics of joylessness and suicide among them.
People, atheists and otherwise, rarely understand (I mean not just intellectually, but really fully and deep down), let alone act out, the full implications of their beliefs. Nietzsche was fond of saying that most people’s philosophies are just rationalizations of their own prejudices. I think if he were alive, he’d get a good laugh out of statements like yours and say that the mass of atheists are as much sheeplike as the mass of Christians and that they should think it out so that they would all off themselves, so that there’d be more space for the übermensch who can accept such cold realities!
To GrantL, I’d point out that the late Roger Shattuck (not a conservative Christian), who was well acquainted with Nietzsche in the original German, was highly critical of his morality. You’re right that Nietzsche is more complex and subtle than he’s often portrayed, but does one really think the übermensch is an examplar we want? And when he called for new, life-affirming values, he didn’t necessarily mean by “life-affirming” “what you think that means”, to quote Iñigo Montoya. I certainly don’t think the übermensch would be concerned about the poor, global warming, gay rights, peace, and the other sorts of things that secular humanists support.
It is odd, however, that Hart blasts the “new atheists” for not getting this. They do. Dawkins and particularly Hitchens, has said so more than once in public talks. Hitchens says, in a riff of Nehru, that this might not be a comforting thought (the death of the universe) but he would rather accept an uncomfortable fact than a pleasing fantasy.
The thing is that they’re not really consistent. At times they do show a Buddhist-like acceptance of impermanence, but if you read actual Buddhist scripture, it doesn’t come off as nearly so chirpy, chipper, and doggone upbeat as the New Atheists tend to be. Dawkins, after devising the whole “selfish gene” thesis, stirringly (and self-contradictorily) goes on about how we humans don’t need to be dominated by our genes and can chart our own destiny. Sam Harris talks about the wonders that would be achieved if religion were ended, apparently being a lot more sanguine about the goodness of human nature (atheist or theist) than most philosophers, atheist or theist, throughout time, would have thought is justified! See what I mean?
What Nietzsche, and indeed most other atheists who think about these things, are saying is that meaning is a creation of the will. It’s not a “lets pretend” situation at all.
Isn’t “a creation of the will” by definition pretending?
For him, and for Hitchens, and Dawkins and Russel and even for poor old Nietzsche, the lack of a universal meaning (never mind one with us in mind) is not depressing. It means this is it.
Well, this gets back to temperament. Is it depressing, or isn’t it? Does broccoli taste good, or not? Is French Impressionism the greatest school of art, or not? How do you decide in a way that everyone agrees on, in the same way that we all agree that 2+2=4? The answer is, you don’t.
hlvanburen, you make a good point, but consider this: If Christians preach love, and someone like Roeder shoots an abortion doctor, would non-Christians not be right to point out that this seems awfully inconsistent with the Chrisitian teachings of love, peace, and brotherhood? In other words, to point out that the actions do not flow from the philosophical framework? OK, then, isn’t it equally reasonable to point out that the behavior of modern atheists seems logically inconsistent with the philosophical framework derived by the early modern athessts such as Nietzsche and the Existentialists? Of course an atheist might say he thought Nietzsche’s or Sartre’s framwork was wrong–but then it’s his burden to show what the right framework is, and why such a framework logically follows from basic atheist premises. I don’t think that has been accomplished, nor do I think it will be (though I could be wrong).
Also, regarding syncretism, everybody’s doing it. I don’t think that’s the point. If I do Asian-Mediterranean fusion cooking, the issue isn’t that I’m using bok choy and balsamic vinegar–the issue is whether I’m using them in a way that meshes together to make a good-tasting dish, or indisriminately tossing them together willy-nilly. The issue isn’t whether the Christian ethos is “pure” or not–no systeme is. The issue is whether the ethics (syncretic or otherwise) of atheists follow logically from the premises of atheism.
Once more I come back to what I said on the Woody Allen post–we probably can’t understand each other on matters like this, no matter how hard we try. We all thus need to show some humility, tolerance, and acceptance, and work together in the areas in which we do agree.

“I would be less harsh than that, HL. This is one of those points where a blunt “but everyone does it!” is valid and valuable so long as it remains divorced from ad hominem connotations… something we rarely see, eh?”
I was not intending to come across with an ad hominem, but rather hoping to poke a large hole in this silly notion that “everything bright and beautiful began with Christianity”, and therefore all that follow owe a debt of gratitude to that belief alone. It doesn’t hold water, any more than the idea that the Irish saved civilization, or that the Italians saved cuisine.
The Christian faith built on the foundations of the cultures in which it was founded, as did the Jewish faith. Buddhism built on Hinduism, which built on a prior polytheistic/animist belief.
Truly, it’s turtles all the way down.

Turmarion, I’d like to entertain your rebuttal to “everyone does it!”, but I must reject your food analogy. I’m with HL on this: recognition of syncretics is valuable, but it is not a sound premise on which to base conclusions. I don’t have an alternate analogy to offer at this point.
HL, I apologize: I did not see you as using ad hominem, and I regret that my post implies it. My badly delivered intent was to sarcastically comment on the frequent use of tu quoque fallacies, putting my use of “everyone does it!” at immediate risk.
Oh, and the Irish didn’t save civilization, they invented it.

“If Christians preach love, and someone like Roeder shoots an abortion doctor, would non-Christians not be right to point out that this seems awfully inconsistent with the Chrisitian teachings of love, peace, and brotherhood? In other words, to point out that the actions do not flow from the philosophical framework?”
But has Christianity universally embraced these points? Surely we can point to many. many instances in history where Christians, in the name of God and the Faith, sought to exterminate those who disagreed with them? The Inquisitiors torture of heretics, John Calvin’s iron grip in Geneva, and the treatment of Anabaptists are but three examples I can bring to mind immediately. Were these poorly behaving Christians any more or less true to the faith than Roeder? How was their actions any different than his, in all honesty? No doubt Calvin’s words. were he alive today, would reject any rebuke that might be offered of his sometimes brutal approach to dealing with heresy. He might well use the same logic that Roeder used in his defense. Yet I strongly suspect you would condemn both in their misapplication of Christian teachings.
This is the conundrum. You no doubt would bristle if I insisted that because you did not adhere to the tenets of Christianity as presented by [insert theologian's name here] you were intellectually unfaithful to the faith you claim. Yet you seek to do exactly that by insisting that Nietzsche’s interpretations are the only logical, even the only rational non-theistic approach to existence.

“Oh, and the Irish didn’t save civilization, they invented it. ”
Only due to Danelaw can the Irish even claim to be civilized, my dear man.

Turmarion: It’s like trying to convince someone who hates broccoli why it’s really great
Heh–that’s good. Somewhat more mature than my own example of the anime fan vs the casual observer in a video store. But to be sure, each can intellectually comprehend the other–or at least should try!
isn’t it equally reasonable to point out that the behavior of modern atheists seems logically inconsistent with the philosophical framework derived by the early modern athessts such as Nietzsche and the Existentialists? Of course an atheist might say he thought Nietzsche’s or Sartre’s framwork was wrong–but then it’s his burden to show what the right framework is, and why such a framework logically follows from basic atheist premises. I don’t think that has been accomplished, nor do I think it will be
I don’t see why any “framework” for atheism is required beyond the notion that supernatural forces have no impact on the workings of our universe and our lives (I’ve encountered self-described atheists who claim to believe in healing crystals and the occult, and I’ve told them that they’re Doing It Wrong). Beyond that, there are no “rules” and no “leader” to enforce them. The only place I’ve ever seen people regularly discuss Nietszche is right here on this blog (usually to accuse atheists of being either too much like him or not enough). I don’t see the big deal about him, personally. He certainly wasn’t the star of “A Brief History of Disbelief,” which gave a fuller historical accounting.

“I don’t see why any “framework” for atheism is required beyond the notion that supernatural forces have no impact on the workings of our universe and our lives (I’ve encountered self-described atheists who claim to believe in healing crystals and the occult, and I’ve told them that they’re Doing It Wrong).”
Indeed. And the reported existence of over 35,000 distinct, self-identifying variants (denominations) of Christianity speaks equally loudly against a successful application of the term “Christian framework”.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations

What a great discussion! I recently finished reading “The God Delusion” and I found myself in sympathy with many of Dawkins’ arguments. Personally, I believe there may be a God, but all religions are only guesses as to the nature of God. Some of those guesses include deep insights into the nature of existence. If only we would concentrate on those insights such as the Golden Rule, rather than on the letter of the law, we would be less like the “Whited Sepulchres” that Jesus mocks in the New Testament and more like Jesus.

I’m posting this here and on the Woody Allen thread, since they’re both basically the same topic. This is a response to Jon E.’s thoughts on my thoughts, as promised:
Jon E., on the other thread, you asked if I was trying to have it both ways:
First that there is a God, and second that God cares about your life? Or another way of asking, if God is totally indifferent to your life, does your life still have meaning?
I think you’re confusing my position a little bit. In this discussion, I am arguing purely on the grounds of meaning, value and purpose — and whether these things can be sustained on the atheistic worldview.
However, do not make the mistake of thinking I am only a deist. I am a Christian. I will tell you that I was once a very committed atheist, but once I stepped across the threshold into theism (just inside the door, so to speak, as a deist) I found it untenable to hold this position for very long. Just from an intellectually honest standpoint, it became extraordinarily difficult to acknowledge the existence of a God, and then to maintain that this transcendent, eternal Being would simply show up for a cameo appearance at the beginning of the universe.
Now, over the years, I have heartily entreated God to reveal His existence to me in an unambiguous way. I have received no such revelation. From this, the most charitable conclusion I can come to is that God wants me to play a game of cosmic Hide and Seek and go looking for Him. I tried that and now decline to do so anymore. If there is a God that loves me and wants my love, He knows where to find me. If he exists, I don’t know where to find him. I feel the burden is on Him to contact me if he exists.
Jon E., this sounds like a heart cry to me. I would say that God has given sufficient evidence of His existence, but has sufficiently obscured it as well. If he reveals Himself in the way you seem to desire, the show is over and the choice is behind you.
I think you’re right at the edge of an important epiphany — you’re able acknowledge in several of your statements that you accept your own actions might be a pleasant self-deception. You also make several statements that concede the truth of the ultimate meaninglessness of the universe on a materialist worldview. You’ve conceded that on the atheistic worldview there are no objective values. And you’ve conceded that for objective values to exist, God must exist. You’ve also conceded that on the materialist worldview, Western conceptions of human dignity are mere cultural artifacts, and that we have no grounds upon which to assert human value.
But you seem to stop short of the full implications of all of this, saying, for example “Sure it is all ultimately irrelevant in the face of the death of the universe, but so what?”
I think the mistake here is in perhaps a misunderstanding of the relevancy of the scope of time to this issue. What you seem to be saying, and I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, is that this ultimate heat death of the universe doesn’t really matter in the short term of your own life.
But I would ask you to consider that in the microcosm of your own life, the heat death of the universe is played out on a smaller scale — you body will experience entropy, you yourself will die, and on the atheist worldview your existence is perfectly absurd.
The massive age of the universe is really irrelevant to the consideration here.
I’ve heard it expressed this way: In H.G. Wells’ novel “The Time Machine” the main character travels forward to the termination of our planet, when humanity has disappeared from the scene. Wells seems to make the same conceptual error as other atheists in not understanding the import of this, for he simply has the character travel to the past and never truly cope with the full implications of the death of humanity. As I’ve heard it said, he simply travels to “an earlier point on the same purposeless rush to oblivion.”
On the atheist worldview, that’s what your existence is: simply one small point on the same purposeless rush to oblivion.
I fail to understand why the undeniable fact that I exist as part of a food chain is cause for despair, because, after all, I am currently at the top of that food chain.
Jon E., what I was trying to convey here is that there’s no real comfort to be taken in nature, or nature’s beauty, unless you’re actually acknowledging that beauty has some transcendent value. And then you must deal with where that transcendent value comes from. Otherwise, there’s no functional difference between a bunch of rocks, a lion eating its young, or a spiral galaxy — at least on the materialist worldview. There is no comfort to be taken.
Again, I concede you point that there is no ultimate meaning to life in a materialistic worldview. But I fail to understand how a self-chosen, or self-directed meaning is somehow “fake”.
But Jon, what this ultimately means is that your self-directed meaning is merely manufactured and is merely relativistic. If you’re saying that imposing your own will on the universe gives some “temporary” meaning that is ultimately meaningless, that’s basically the same thing as saying it is in fact meaningless. And if you’re saying that imposing your will has meaning for you, then that logically means someone else can simply impose their will in a different way. No?
In what way is stopping sex trafficking a phantom? One can point to objectively real results from fighting against sex trafficking – women rescued, laws passed, traffickers put in jail?
Again, I think this makes the conceptual mistake I alluded to earlier. On the atheist worldview, these are simply occurring along the continuum of the purposeless rush to oblivion. They are, ultimately, meaningless — and they ultimately changed nothing. Their ultimate meaningless is functionally the same as saying they are meaningless now and in the future. They are futile actions.
I find the Dennett position to be quite sensible.
On this, Jon, I am actually at a loss as to what to say in response. I think I could say that your position “I find meaning because I say so” simply enables everyone to say that, regardless of whether you agree with their meaning. And let’s admit that some definitions of meaning would be quite unpleasant.
There is no ultimate reason why someone who wants to kill me should not do so.
This is the same, functionally, as saying that none of us have any grounds upon which to call the Holocaust wrong, or to assert that it’s wrong to torture a child, or that rape is abhorrent, or that one man should not enslave another (a point you explicitly made). Now, if I assert this, I’ll often get the response of someone saying something to the effect of, “Well, you’re obviously a psychopath who needs God to tell them what to do.”
But let’s be intellectually honest enough to admit that is simply an evasion, a one-line conversation stopper.
Your answer, Jon, is to adopt a utilitarian ethic: Earlier, you referred to nature red in tooth and claw. I agree with that, and as part of nature, I participate in that battle and will use the means I have available to to try to see to it that my will, my desires, are advanced.
Surely you can see how this ethic would have troubling downstream effects if carried to its logical conclusion:
But I don’t claim that there is some ultimate right for any person not to be a slave. All talk of rights is fiction. All laws describing rights are fiction.
Really? You think that if someone wants to enslave someone else, they are perfectly free to do so? This is a stark conclusion, but you are now making my case for me — that if God does not exist, then life is meaningless, without purpose, without value and that objective values themselves do not exist.
As Dostoevsky put it, “if there is no immortality, there is no virtue.”
And upon those grounds, anyone could assert their will to do anything they wanted to do. As you yourself have said, on these grounds, even slavery is permitted. So I must ask, since you’ve said it is perfectly acceptable for one person to kill another, or enslave another: What is not permitted?

Countdown to New Atheists casually dimissing the whole piece “pooh pooh no big deal utter garbage” starts now.
Talk about closed-mindedness. How many times have I seen atheist dismissal of articles like this one as opposed to, you know, the actual give and take of discussion. Makes me wonder…

Anglican Peggy, that is in fact what the bulk of comments on the same article posted on Richard Dawkins’ website are saying. There are some who are actually engaging with the arguments of the article, and they make some good points. But by and large, it’s the quality of discussion that one usually finds on a Pharyngula thread, which is to say, a lot of name-calling and little else.

Turmarion, interesting points.
What I noticed right off the bat is that to a degree, perhaps, we are talking past each other. You say you cannot grasp an indifference to a “transcendent meaning” that someone like myself has. Much of theology seems that way to me. I mean when believers go on about miracles and life after death and cosmic purposes and so on, it often sounds like white noise. Like listening to someone arguing about how many angels fit on the head of a pin. I mean, to listen to Christians argue about the assumption of Mary or the transubstantiation of a cracker it just like…what on earth are you people on about?
As I noted early I am not necessarily endorsing Nietzsche. And, you know we need to be clear about what he said and did not say. It is not at all clear what, exactly, these new values the übermensch is supposed to create or what they would look like put into practice. Nietzsche did not present some utopian road map to follow. We know in a broad sort of way what he disliked about Christianity and what he admired about some elements of Greek mythology and so on. But exactly what ubermensch would do and how it would work? Can’t say. His work, it seems to me, is not often literal. That is, I don’t think we can look to ubermensch as a literal, savior figure. I think he is a metaphor that suggests that if you reject a particular moral framework, then you need to replace with something else, and that is a critical if difficult process. You have to be the ubermensch yourself and grapple with what morality, virtue, ethics and “the good” exactly mean.
Nietzsche, who wrote these sometimes trippy mythological tales to get his point across, isn’t presenting a particular Nietzschean “path” anymore than Socrates did. I mean, Socrates essentially tells everyone they don’t know what they are talking about with regard to morals and ethics but never really says “and THIS is the right way.” Nietzsche is much the same, which I suppose is consistent with the idea of ubermensch. Nietzsche was not the ubermensch so he cannot define what the ubermensch values would exactly be.. He is suggesting the vehicle to new moral values, not the new morals themselves. In otherwords, would ubermensch want to take care of the poor? I dunno and ultimately, neither did Nietzsche. Would he support the environmental movement? Gay rights? Angels on the head of a pin, friend. These were not even issues during Nietzsche’s day.
I don’t think defining meaning for one self is “lets pretend”. It would only be pretend if, say, one acknowledges a pitiless universe and then in the same breath says, it has meaning. That is not what I and many others are saying. It’s not as if I am saying “I am deciding the Horsehead Nebula has meaning now.” No, but as a res cogitans can decide “this is the purpose of my life.” and a society can choose what it’s”purpose” is. This does not impose a overall narrative to existance. Or to put it other way, it is what Nietzsche is on about in a sense. Defining meaning in a universe that has none.
It is rather like what Socrates said when he said he did not know what virtue was, but was convinced no one else did either. What mattered was the struggle to find it. If the universe has no meta meaning to it, then the “meaning” of a human life has to be defined by human beings. There is no other choice.
This does not satisfy the theist mind, I quiet understand, because the theist wants meaning imposed from some extra human source and if it is not, the theist cannot see anything worth while.(of course, theists often play at an “objective” moral system that is immutable, but history shows just how easily mutable and contradictory this “objective” meaning actually is. It changes like everything else.) Be that as it may, it is incorrect to say that defining meaning for oneself in regards to one’s life is “pretending”.
One could quiet easily turn it around on you said either that a meaning defined as glorifying and worshiping the boss is about as empty and meaningless as it gets, or that you are “pretending” that a deity you cannot possibly demonstrate exists – let alone demonstrate you know what it wants – in order to avoid the real problem: defining meaning for yourself and defining a large meaning as part of a society. You’re on the hire wire pretending a net is there when there isn’t.
No on claims the answers are as easy as 2 + 2= 4. But as Sam Harris recently pointed out in his TED lecture, we actually know a great deal about human well being and human flourishing from a scientific point of view that we can actual make intelligent chooses and have intelligent debates on the question. That there are right and wrong answers when it comes to human and animal well being. It’s not prefect, nor would anyone expect it to be. But to claim we know nothing is incorrect.
When you ask “who chooses” it seems to be me you are asking “what is certain?”. Well look to the Sagan quote above. Very little is certain. I think that theology pretends, to use your word, to a degree of certainity it cannot possibly have. I understand, to a degree, why having some cosmic father figure defining it all for us is appealing. It removes the uncertainty and the struggle of it all. But it is a process, an imperfect one, that is not just about the selfish individual but that individual living with others. It’s the human struggle and it may never have a single, defining, unchanging answer.
If you find the new atheists a bit too “upbeat” its because the pitilessness of the universe isn’t a particular worry. Is that disposition? Yes indeed. But that doesn’t change facts. You can choose to see the ultimate heat death of the universe as something that depresses you or not. The question is not does this fact make me happy or sad. Rather the question is, what do I do knowing this fact? How do I organize my life, how do I relate to others?
“I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.
The world is so exquisite with so much love and moral depth, that there is no reason to deceive ourselves with pretty stories for which there’s little good evidence. Far better it seems to me, in our vulnerability, is to look death in the eye and to be grateful every day for the brief but magnificent opportunity that life provides. -Carl Sagan.”
And the Buddha was not so sober about it all. I was for most of my adult life a Zen Buddhist and the Buddha always seems slightly impish to me, with a someone Socratic humour about showing people they did not really know what they thought they did. There is nothing somber really, at least through a zen lense, with impermanence as the Buddha defined it. That would be, from a Buddhist point of view, being all somber about the colour of the sky, or overjoyed by the shape of a rock. It is just the way it is.

Houghton: you body will experience entropy, you yourself will die, and on the atheist worldview your existence is perfectly absurd.
In H.G. Wells’ novel “The Time Machine” the main character travels forward to the termination of our planet, when humanity has disappeared from the scene. Wells seems to make the same conceptual error as other atheists in not understanding the import of this, for he simply has the character travel to the past and never truly cope with the full implications of the death of humanity. As I’ve heard it said, he simply travels to “an earlier point on the same purposeless rush to oblivion.”
On the atheist worldview, that’s what your existence is: simply one small point on the same purposeless rush to oblivion.
Much like the “broccoli and anime” concepts, I think some people really need the concept of permanence of the self a lot more than others do.
What should Wells’ character have done? By getting on with his life, he very much was “coping with the implications” of the basic biological fact of the death of humanity. The human species will go extinct someday, because all species do. Large animal species rarely persist in the fossil record for more than 10 million years. Even if they do, some billions of years from now the sun will expand sufficiently to boil all life off Earth’s surface. We all go some way or another, yet here we are, still living our lives. How is that not coping?
Even for believers, there is usually some mechanism that would disqualify them from entering Heaven or the afterlife (unrepentant sin, excommunication, whatever) and thus they’d have spent their own lives “rushing towards oblivion” too. How could they live in any manner other than absolute terror that on any given day they might screw up and irrevocably refile themselves from the “afterlife” cabinet into the “oblivion” cabinet? The mental urgency would have to be orders of magnitudes greater for them than for any proposed atheist, because they actually think they have something extra to lose.

Life has to be lived, felt and appreciated. We can see beauty, we can feel it..but what is it in our design that creates the postitve response to it? What allows for us to be in awe? What creates honor and respect in our character?
and would does God still exist,even if no man believed in Him?

Houghton wrote: “But I would ask you to consider that in the microcosm of your own life, the heat death of the universe is played out on a smaller scale — you body will experience entropy, you yourself will die, and on the atheist worldview your existence is perfectly absurd.”
Why exactly? Because I do not survive my own death? There is nothing absurd about it. You are simply making a faith declaration. YOU find it absurd to not believe in a life after death or some kind of cosmic narrative written for our species. But that is not absurd to any atheist view.
I did not exist before I was born. I will cease to exist when I die. Whatever I leave behind when I die: family, my writings or whatever, will be there. But I, as a living, thinking thing, on the best evidence we have, will cease to be. And that will be it. This is no more absurd than saying the sky is blue, or lamenting the fact that a horse has four legs instead of eight. Facts are facts, and knowing that death is a consequence of life isn’t absurd at all.

hlvanburen: You no doubt would bristle if I insisted that because you did not adhere to the tenets of Christianity as presented by [insert theologian's name here] you were intellectually unfaithful to the faith you claim. Yet you seek to do exactly that by insisting that Nietzsche’s interpretations are the only logical, even the only rational non-theistic approach to existence.
There’s a point here, but it’s not quite equivalent. There are different interpretations of Christianity (and no non-Fundamentalist would deny that much in the faith is a matter of interpretation). However, at least from the more hard-core, scientific/materialist atheist view, atheism isn’t a matter of interpretation—it’s a matter of what is. The structure of reality and the universe, and the absence of God, is no more an interpretation than 5 is an interpretation of the answer of the question, “What is 2 + 3?”
Of course, not all atheists would necessarily take that tack. However, I think atheists like Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus at least thought that they were starting from first principles as to how the universe actually is and drawing logical, ironclad inferences from them, just a a scientist draws inferences from the data or a mathematician does so from initial axioms. Once again, one might disagree with the aforementioned worthies as to whether they were correct; but if one thinks that, given their premises, they were, then I think the critique of the New Atheists vis-à-vis Nietzsche et. al. is still valid.
TTT: I don’t see why any “framework” for atheism is required….
Well, that gets back to what I said about temperament, and ties in to what Rod on the later post about scientific worldviews and the truth more or less said. Not even all atheists would agree with you on this statement! Atheist or theist or cabbage worshiper, it seems that some of us find a strong intellectual “need” (to use a very inadequate word) for a framework or structure to reality, whereas others seem not to have such a need. As I’ve suggested in a different context over on Gus DiZerega’s blog, it might in part be the difference of attitude between a Jungian Perceiver and a Judger (though I’m not a Jungian, the concepts here make sense).

Houghton, you make a very interesting argument above, and your journey from atheism to theism (exactly the opposite of my own journey) is intriguing. I’m curious about the following statement:
“But Jon, what this ultimately means is that your self-directed meaning is merely manufactured and is merely relativistic. If you’re saying that imposing your own will on the universe gives some “temporary” meaning that is ultimately meaningless, that’s basically the same thing as saying it is in fact meaningless. And if you’re saying that imposing your will has meaning for you, then that logically means someone else can simply impose their will in a different way. No?”
Is the meaning you ascribe to your own existence not equally as relativistic? You state:
“I will tell you that I was once a very committed atheist, but once I stepped across the threshold into theism (just inside the door, so to speak, as a deist) I found it untenable to hold this position for very long. Just from an intellectually honest standpoint, it became extraordinarily difficult to acknowledge the existence of a God, and then to maintain that this transcendent, eternal Being would simply show up for a cameo appearance at the beginning of the universe.”
Is this not a similar self-creation of meaning generated by a dissatisfaction with your own perception and practice of atheism? Or is your encapsulation of the move from atheism to Christianity simply a shorthand for a much longer, more nuanced process?
And yet, even in that more nuanced process is there not some point at which you, as an individual, must create for yourself a platform on which to base your philosophical worldview…a worldview that now embraces the existence of deity, the primacy of monotheism, and the centrality of the Christian message?
In short, do you not also make the same self-guided construction of meaning that you see others in the non-theistic realm making?

hlvanburen: You no doubt would bristle if I insisted that because you did not adhere to the tenets of Christianity as presented by [insert theologian's name here] you were intellectually unfaithful to the faith you claim. Yet you seek to do exactly that by insisting that Nietzsche’s interpretations are the only logical, even the only rational non-theistic approach to existence.
Your Name: There’s a point here, but it’s not quite equivalent. There are different interpretations of Christianity (and no non-Fundamentalist would deny that much in the faith is a matter of interpretation). However, at least from the more hard-core, scientific/materialist atheist view, atheism isn’t a matter of interpretation—it’s a matter of what is. The structure of reality and the universe, and the absence of God, is no more an interpretation than 5 is an interpretation of the answer of the question, “What is 2 + 3?”
Well, depending on the context in which you operate, 2 + 3 could be 5 (base10) or 11 (base4). It is all based upon the context in which the question is presented, the intellectual framework you adopt, and the methodology you apply to the reasoning. Assumption of a decimal number system does not necessarily preclude the existence of other equally valid number systems.
Likewise there are many approaches to non-theistic philosophies, perhaps as many or more than those in Christianity. And as you suggest, only a fundamentalist would insist that the “one true way” exists for all who follow that path.

“But I would ask you to consider that in the microcosm of your own life, the heat death of the universe is played out on a smaller scale — you body will experience entropy, you yourself will die, and on the atheist worldview your existence is perfectly absurd.”
Only if you posit that looking into the eyes of my beloved wife, children, or grandchildren is equally worthless and absurd. Or that the enjoyment I derive from sitting on the porch on a warm spring day while the greenery of life grows around me has no intrinsic value.
I would suggest that if the only thing that gives life value is the hope for something more beyond death, it is those people. not non-theists, who have an existence that borders on the absurd. It makes life here into an ongoing drama in which the protagonist is always looking to the horizon expectantly for that which is to come, always longing and anticipating, while the rest of the world goes by truly unappreciated for what it has to offer in its own right.

I’m not sure what this universe ever did that’s so awful that we’re supposed to be horrified at living in it without the promise of ANOTHER universe that we get later. I do not believe in original sin, either anthropological or cosmological.
An afterlife would just be more of the same. If one half had no purpose or worth, neither would the other.

What seems to be an underpinning of many arguments here is the inability to reconcile the concept of human life having a fixed beginning and a fixed end, with nothing before or after. The notion that we come into existence, live our three score and ten years, and then move back into the nothingness from which we came is almost a fearful idea for some, it would appear. Thus there are many attempts to ascribe some “greater meaning” to life beyond what we all experience.
In branding such a position as “absurd” and claiming that one cannot find meaning and purpose in such a limited paradigm I wonder if the claimant is merely masking his or her own fears with a wish, a hope, or a song in the night? I mean no hostility here, but simply want to suggest that those pushing non-theists to grasp for a deeper understanding of the ramifications of their position are, themselves, overlooking a foundational reason for their position of belief in a supernatural deity.

AAAAAAAAAA!!! Your Name at 2:37 was me!

hlvanburen, yah I know what you are saying.
I find the discussing interesting from a intellectual point of view, but practically speaking, the notion of a supernatural “meaning” imposed by some kind of god upon my life or the universe, is just not even a relevant question to me anymore.
I sometimes wonder if my indifference toward the theist ideas of imposed meaning and death is a hold over from my zen days – so much of zen training is focused on shedding a fear of death and recognizing it just a part of life. Even when one removes reincarnation from the equation, that seems factually correct and not something to fret over.
But to your bigger point, the idea that meaning is ONLY possible if imposed by a non human source, or that the entire universe has to have a purpose with us in mind seems fairly untenable to me now.

GrantL, hlvanburen, TTT, yeah that’s what I’m trying to get across when I say that even if human life is in some cosmic sense unimportant and ephemeral, well so what? Why does that suggest not generating your own meaning?

I’m sorry everyone, I’m really not able to delve any further into this today. I would love to continue to engage on this topic, I find the give and take absolutely fascinating and rewarding. But duty calls.
I did just want to dive back in shortly to clarify that in using the term “absurd” I did not mean to insult anyone. I was simply using Albert Camus’ term of choice.

hlvanburen, come on–the math example is silly and spurious. 5 (base 10) is 11 (base 4) or 101 (binary), etc. It’s the same thing; only the notation is different. There are no “other number systems” in the sense that something such as this couldn’t be necessarily true. In no number system, for example, could 19 be a composite number–it’s absolutely impossible, and self-evidently so. It could never be possible that 2+3 is 6 (base 10) or 12 (base 4) or 110 (binary); this, too, is self-evident.
In branding such a position as “absurd” and claiming that one cannot find meaning and purpose in such a limited paradigm I wonder if the claimant is merely masking his or her own fears with a wish, a hope, or a song in the night?
Of course one could turn the table by saying that those who claim you can find meaning in such a limited paradigm are obtuse or insensitive or subconsciously distracting themselves from the abyss, etc. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, arguing like this is pointless. People may or may not have deep-seated psychological reasons for what they believe, but that has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of those beliefs. If I believed that the acceleration due to gravity on Earth is 9.8 meters per second per second because 9.8 is my favorite number, the motive would be weird and spurious, but that wouldn’t make said acceleration different!
I would suggest that if the only thing that gives life value is the hope for something more beyond death, it is those people. not non-theists, who have an existence that borders on the absurd.
I’d be more subtle than that. If I thought that life was limited but that there was some transcendent meaning within which that made sense, then I’d be more or less OK with it. For me, anyway, it’s not so much a matter of wanting “more” in a quantitative sense; it’s the idea that if there is no over-arching ultimate meaning (not necessarily a God–it could be an impersonal concept such as nirvana or satori), then the limited provisional meanings that intersperse our life seem to be pointless. To me, to live for nothing ultimate, whether or not we survive death, is what seems to me absurd. You’d obviously disagree, which is where we get back to temperament and unbridgeable gaps in perception.
TTT: I’m not sure what this universe ever did that’s so awful that we’re supposed to be horrified at living in it without the promise of ANOTHER universe that we get later.
As I pointed out above, it’s not necessarily about another universe later, but ultimate meaning. As to the rest, I notice it’s almost always comfortable, middle-class, First World inhabitants that say things like this. If you don’t see “what the universe ever did that’s so awful”, then either you’re not paying attention, or we are in such different worlds of thought and outlook that we can’t communicate on this issue. Which as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is in fact my theory.
GrantL: Interesting what you say about Zen. One could argue that it’s not so much that Zen encourages one not to fear death but that it inculcates a type of consciousness in which life and death, the ultimate and the here-and-now, nirvana and samsara, are all perceived as just different aspects of the same thing. I’m not actually sure that such experience isn’t, in fact, a kind of meaning itself. In any case, while I respect Zen, two of my problems with it is that for one, this experience (satori or kensho or whatever you want to call it) is not accessible to most people. Most lack the time, resources, and temperament to be able to achieve Zen awareness.
Secondly, as this controversial but interesting book makes clear, many great 20th Century Zen masters of Japan, who had presumably also had the Zen experience of satori were quite comfortable with vigorously promoting the worst and most brutal behavior of the Japanese government during World War II. What good does any amount of supposed enlightenment do you if it doesn’t keep you from promoting barbarism? I might point out that the author, Brian Victoria, is himself Buddhist, as the the author of this interesting Web essay that supports the same point.
This, btw, is why many Zen masters of the past insisted that one had to be thoroughly grounded in the sutras and in śila, “ethics” (something Westerners often neglect), before even beginning Zen training, since otherwise one might end up rather monstrous. By me, Zen, properly understood, doesn’t get you a free pass out of meaning–see the famous “Hyakujo and a Fox” koan.

…yeah that’s what I’m trying to get across when I say that even if human life is in some cosmic sense unimportant and ephemeral, well so what? Why does that suggest not generating your own meaning?
It doesn’t suggest that at all. It only says that the suggestion, even while providing a psychological palliative, is still inherently meaningless. It takes a great deal of faith to believe that the ground of meaning is merely subjective intention. Why discuss it otherwise if not to find confirmation in something or someone outside of yourself?

I have not read Nietzsche, but I have read Homer, and if Homer is Nietzsche’s ideal, a society based on slavery, women and children as property, cunning (Odysseus), and brute force (Achilles) sounds pretty unappetizing to me.
Who is the best English translator of Nietzsche, anyone?

Turmarion, just to be clear, I am not a Zen practitioner anymore. I still use some scraps of it (meditation for stress relief and so on) but it came down to asking a very simple question for me: if I reject god or gods on the basis of lousy evidence, what actual evidence is there for the notion of reincarnation, samsara, karma etc? The answer is the same: none. It would have been, I think, intellectually dishonest to say “well that supernatural thingy over there is total crap, but the one I believe in sooo true because its what I choose to believe.” Either reincarnation is real or not, and if it is there ought to be some compelling evidence for it. For a while I use to try and square by saying its like thermodynamics where energy is either created nor destroyed, only transformed. But the Buddha was not just talking matter and energy but a spiritual thing (though not a soul in the Christian sense of it) that gets reborn based on how you lived your life. not really any evidence to back that claim up.
To your point about life and death being the same thing, yes indeed that is the case. The distinction is near meaningless in Zen, which so focused on living in the now.
It’s also true that Zen is not accessible unless you train at it. Not sure why that would be a criticism though. (Christianity is better because it requires less of a person? cannot see that as a plus). It does require a pretty relentless amount of focus and training over a substantial period of time. It’s even harder if part of your training is martial focused. (either way you end up getting hit with sticks though!) There has always been a greater divide between the monks and the laity in just about every form of Buddhism than there is between clergy and lay Christians, particularly in Protestant forms of the religion that reject the authoritarian structure of the Catholic church.
Any religion can be used for awful ends. Some easier than others, but I don’t know of any that cannot be used so. Although in Japan this was more a religious devotion to the emperor and a fascist nationalist ethic and just a use of Zen. Shinto is and was the official religion of Japan anyway. It was a weird mix of religion, nationalism and samurai mythology that drove a lot of that. Remember the stories about people killing themselves out of shame and disillusion when the emperor finally surrendered.

Nia, you have both missed the point of the Homeric ideal hero and, not having read him, Nietzsche’s ideas.

Turmarion wrote: “By me, Zen, properly understood, doesn’t get you a free pass out of meaning.”
No it doesn’t, but it is not a “supernatural” meaning. There is no god handing out orders. If you look at the history of it, meaning and ethics and the like develop over time. Even in the case of the buddha, he comes up with his stuff literally by trail and error, not by divine command. He is, in some sense, an ubermesch.(though FN would not agree much I suspect.)

I notice it’s almost always comfortable, middle-class, First World inhabitants that say things like [the universe isn't so horrible that I find myself horrified to live in it and want a better one]
That rubric can be expanded CONSIDERABLY. People who are poor enough and desperate enough will successively stop caring about all kinds of “comfortable middle-class First World” notions, such as museums and the arts, courteous relations with neighbors, keeping their children out of slave-grade jobs, not committing cannibalism, etc. etc.

@Jacobse
You repeat that the world is a cold hard place, and then offer the cheery alternative of a God who would condemn to eternal hell, finite creatures who committed finite sins in during a minute existence?
If that type of “loving” God is what is being offered, I’ll take that cold hard place, thank you.

God doesn’t condemn people to hell. Here is what I believe: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/KalomirosRiverFire.php

When I saw this thread this morning I figured it would be pretty active. But someone opened the gates of heck this week and work has been crazy. So my mind is fried and I can barely read the replies, let alone contribute.
captcha: loop department

Skip the intro, start here: A reply to the questions: (1) Is God really good? (2) Did God create hell?

It doesn’t suggest that at all. It only says that the suggestion, even while providing a psychological palliative, is still inherently meaningless.
Well, yeah, I’ve been saying that.
It takes a great deal of faith to believe that the ground of meaning is merely subjective intention.
I suppose it would. But I’m not saying that at all. I’m agreeing that in an atheist world view there is no ground of meaning at all and I’m suggesting that instead of getting all despondent over that and killing oneself, one might as an alternative decide on a meaning for oneself and work on that.
Why discuss it otherwise if not to find confirmation in something or someone outside of yourself?
Because discussing philosophical ideas is fun?

Tumarion – “hlvanburen, come on–the math example is silly and spurious. 5 (base 10) is 11 (base 4) or 101 (binary), etc. It’s the same thing; only the notation is different. There are no “other number systems” in the sense that something such as this couldn’t be necessarily true. In no number system, for example, could 19 be a composite number–it’s absolutely impossible, and self-evidently so. It could never be possible that 2+3 is 6 (base 10) or 12 (base 4) or 110 (binary); this, too, is self-evident.”
The math example strikes at the very heart of our disagreement. Perception, preconceptions, and paradigms are crucial for common understanding. In your example you did not specify the system in which you were operating. You ASSUMED that I would view the equation in the same manner as you. Having spent a good number of years in the computer programming field I simply pointed out this assumption that you made by demonstrating other ways of understanding and representing the number.
In our discussion about finding meaning in life we are doing exactly the same thing. You are assuming that the theistic position is the normative, and that any variance from it demands explanation and/or is by definition inferior. Having spent a good number of years living and studying under the theistic model, I came to a point where I found it wanting with respect to a number of fundamental questions. I searched and found a paradigm that offered a better fit to the world that I saw around me and, in adopting it, changed my viewpoint
The illustration of the math question is merely an encapsulation of this difference of viewpoint. You assume a decimal based system as normative, and react negatively when someone else responds to your inquiry with a different system. Because of my experience I do not necessarily make the same assumption, and can easily see where other number systems may represent the answer differently.
So, far from being silly and spurious, it is an excellent example of the core of our problem. And I agree, it is very difficult to bridge the gap successfully. Even though I have lived on both sides of that gap I still have a difficult time verbalizing the changes I experienced in the transition. A common base of understanding is necessary, and really does not exist.

Q: Why discuss it otherwise if not to find confirmation in something or someone outside of yourself?
A: Because discussing philosophical ideas is fun?
I would add that not only is it fun, it is also how one learns and grows. If I only talked with people who agreed with me, sooner or later I would be bored and my growth would be stifled. But as I enter into discussions with others who have different viewpoints about life issues I not only learn things (and as a result modify my own views), but I also am forced to dig deeper into understanding my own views and their logical extensions.
How can you NOT wish to have these discussions?

Well, sure, it is fun but fun and meaning are two different things. My point was that if the ground of meaning is subjective, discussion might be fun, but it is also, in the end, meaningless.
Discussion, in other words, implies that the self as the ground of meaning, might not be all that it is cracked up to be. It assumes meaning can be 1) shared, and 2) is actually meaningful.
“No man is an island” functions not as a sociological truism, but declares an existential impossibility.

Well, sure, it is fun but fun and meaning are two different things. My point was that if the ground of meaning is subjective, discussion might be fun, but it is also, in the end, meaningless.
Discussion, in other words, implies that the self as the ground of meaning, might not be all that it is cracked up to be. It assumes meaning can be 1) shared, and 2) is actually meaningful.
Please define what you mean by “meaningful”.

hlvanburen: You assume a decimal based system as normative, and react negatively when someone else responds to your inquiry with a different system
No, see, you’re misunderstanding me. There is no “normative” system for numbers, since any base could be used (though we use decimal most often) and none is intrinsically superior to any other. What I originally said was that, from the perspective of the atheist philosophers of whom I was speaking, “The structure of reality and the universe, and the absence of God, is no more an interpretation than 5 is an interpretation of the answer of the question, ‘What is 2 + 3?’”, emphasis added.
My point was that 2 + 3 =5 is not an interpretation of the truth–it is the truth; and that for some philosophers, what they are doing is not trying to give their opinion about the universe, but what they see as truth about the universe.
You responded by saying, “Well, depending on the context in which you operate, 2 + 3 could be 5 (base10) or 11 (base4). ,” emphasis also added.
This entirely misses the point. Whether you choose to represent the number that in decimal notation is referred to as “5″ as “11″ in base 4, “101″ in binary, etc. the fact is that the number referenced still represents the number of fingers on my hand, still is prime, and so on. The different representations, all equally valid, are just that: representations. There is no representation such that 2 + 3 = some number that is a composite number, or some number which is does not represent the number of fingers on my hand, no matter how such a number is represented. Do you see? So the “context in which the question is presented” is totally irrelevant.
It’s like if your name were John but I decided to call you Bob, that doesn’t change your height, hair color, weight, cellular structure, age, or anything else, right? It’s just a name, a referent. Different bases are useful for different purposes, but the mathematics they are used to represent is unchanged and unchanging.
You are assuming that the theistic position is the normative, and that any variance from it demands explanation and/or is by definition inferior.
You misrepresent me again. It’s no secret I’m a theist, but my point is the necessity, from my view, of a transcendent meaning. Some philosophies and religions (Buddhism, Daoism, some strands of Neo-Platonism, Jainism, etc.) conceive of a transcendent meaning without positing a god. For example, Buddhism posits the Dharma (notoriously untranslatable) which is an objective and transcendent, but non-theistic and impersonal framework for how the universe works. They have no God, but they do have a strong belief that ultimate meaning is superior to the transient meanings of samsara, and that this ultimate meaning functions whether we know it or even like it or not.
If I were persuaded that God does not exist, I could still find meaning and purpose in a Buddhist-like belief system. I can’t understand a system that doesn’t posit or even care about a transcendent meaning, though.
And I agree, it is very difficult to bridge the gap successfully.
On this I agree with you. Simply put, the concept that finite meaning is enough, that transcendent meaning is worthless, irrelevant, or unneeded is totally opaque to me (and to others, both theists and non-theists). For many on the other side, I imagine that my perspective is equally opaque. À chacan à son goût, I guess.

darn html-fu
Well, sure, it is fun but fun and meaning are two different things. My point was that if the ground of meaning is subjective, discussion might be fun, but it is also, in the end, meaningless.
Discussion, in other words, implies that the self as the ground of meaning, might not be all that it is cracked up to be. It assumes meaning can be 1) shared, and 2) is actually meaningful.
Please define what you mean by “meaningful”.
There have been two types of ‘meaningful’ bandied about here. One of them is ‘real’ meaning which comes from a transcendent source, the other is an illusionary meaning that people simply agree to pretend is meaningful.
Of which type is an internet conversation such as this?

Tumarion, what is the difference between an atheistic system such as Buddhism that posits a transcendent reality and a consciously created atheistic system that after careful study and with continuous feedback, sets up a social system that is designed to work to maximize the good of the species?
For the purpose of the thought experience, assume that an individual in either system experiences the same sort of rewards and responsibilities to the social group for similar actions.
Why wouldn’t the created system be ‘enough’?

On this I agree with you. Simply put, the concept that finite meaning is enough, that transcendent meaning is worthless, irrelevant, or unneeded is totally opaque to me (and to others, both theists and non-theists).
Hang on a second – you’ve changed the terms of the debate right there.
The claim isn’t that Nietzschean atheists think that ‘transcendent meaning is worthless, irrelevant, or unneeded’, the claim is that in a worldview without a Transcendent Source than no action or belief can be transcendent.

“If I were persuaded that God does not exist, I could still find meaning and purpose in a Buddhist-like belief system. I can’t understand a system that doesn’t posit or even care about a transcendent meaning, though.”
Paul Harrison has written extensively about what he calls “scientific pantheism”, which looks to the universe around us through the lens of science and finds transcendent meaning absent any supernatural underpinnings.
http://www.pantheism.net/paul/index.htm
“When scientific pantheists say WE REVERE THE UNIVERSE we are not talking about a supernatural being. We are talking about the way our senses and our emotions force us to respond to the overwhelming mystery and power that surrounds us.
We are part of the universe. Our earth was created from the universe and will one day be reabsorbed into the universe.
We are made of the same matter and energy as the universe. We are not in exile here: we are at home. It is only here that we will ever get the chance to see paradise face to face. If we believe our real home is not here but in a land that lies beyond death – if we believe that the numinous is found only in old books, or old buildings, or inside our head, or outside this reality – then we will see this real, vibrant, luminous world as if through a glass darkly.
The universe creates us, preserves us, destroys us. It is deep and old beyond our ability to reach with our senses. It is beautiful beyond our ability to describe in words. It is complex beyond our ability to fully grasp in science. We must relate to the universe with humility, awe, reverence, celebration and the search for deeper understanding – in many of the ways that believers relate to their God, minus the grovelling worship or the expectation that there is some being out there who can answer our prayers.”
He also offers some thoughts on atheism that may help advance the discussion here.
paul-harrison.com/blog/
“On our Facebook pantheism page I posted a video of Richard Dawkins reading from “The God Delusion,” the section where he talks about how atheism, pantheism, deism, and theism relate to each other. I commented that what he said there was fairly accurate.
Of course he oversimplified. Of course his line “pantheism is sexed-up atheism” is just a quick attention-grabbing slogan that says very little. However, what it does imply (which he may not have intended) is that Pantheism is more appealing than straight atheism. Coming from the world’s best known atheist, that is a useful endorsement among a large and growing segment of the population – many of whom may be looking for something beyond your basic stripped down atheism.
For me the difference is like this:
Atheism describes what I do NOT believe.
Pantheism describes what I DO believe.
Atheism covers a limited area of one’s beliefs – all it means is that you do not believe in a Creator God, and most especially not in a mental entity that’s watching every one of us and will judge us all when we die.
There are some extra things that nearly always go together with atheism which are more significant that just that one basic disbelief.
Usually atheism indicates that you are an independent-minded thinker who refuses to accept claims of special authority without carefully investigating them.
It usually implies that you don’t believe in supernatural forces, realms, beings or afterlives.
It probably also implies that you place a high value on empirical evidence and logic.
It probably implies that you believe that humans choose their own ethics, and/or have certain social ethics built into their evolved genotype.
All of the above things are important. They are not at all trivial matters.
However, beyond these, atheism leaves you on your own.
On your own in finding answers to many of life’s most important questions.
On your own in the face of an immense Cosmos that – without some extra framework – can seem meaningless, absurd or hostile.
Atheism gives you no guide framework at all on ethics.
You can be Hitler or Stalin, or you can be Warren Buffet or Bill Gates with their immense philanthropy.
You can think humans are the greatest animals on the planet – or the worst.
You can be a nurturing carer, or a homicidal egopath.
It gives you no framework about what to value in life.
You can love life, or hate it.
You can love getting out in the wilds, or you can live all your life in bars or playing computer games with your curtains drawn.
You can revere the Cosmos as a creative force – or regard it as a destructive presence that could easily wipe the Earth and everything on it.
Pantheism offers a positive framework, probably the most positive of any spiritual path.
The naturalistic version of World Pantheism shares with atheism the disbelief in a Creator or judging God, in supernatural forces, realms, beings or afterlives. It shares the rejection of scriptural authority, the respect for empirical evidence and logic, and the belief that human choose their own ethics.
But it goes far beyond that:
It loves and cares for Nature and reveres the Cosmos as a creative dance.
It respects and promotes the rights of humans and other living things.
It encourages people to love their life, in their physical bodies, and to strive to be active and fit.
It considers this life as the only heaven and Earth as the only paradise.
It values life but accepts death as natural.
It stresses memories, deeds, creations, genes and the recycling of elements as the only forms of afterlife we have.”
This is essentially an extension of the transcendentalism of Emerson, Thoreau, and the early transcendentalists in this country, who based their transcendentalist viewpoint of a theistic belief. However, as Harrison ably demonstrates, holding to a transcendent belief does not require a belief in god, or even a belief in the supernatural. His writings demonstrate one approach that can provide a well-grounded non-theistic philosophy which holds compelling transcendent beliefs.
John E. – Agn Stoic offers the following: “Tumarion, what is the difference between an atheistic system such as Buddhism that posits a transcendent reality and a consciously created atheistic system that after careful study and with continuous feedback, sets up a social system that is designed to work to maximize the good of the species?”
I suggest Harrison’s Scientific Pantheism as one example of such an atheistic system, at least for purposes of our discussion.

Turmarion: “It’s like if your name were John but I decided to call you Bob, that doesn’t change your height, hair color, weight, cellular structure, age, or anything else, right? It’s just a name, a referent. Different bases are useful for different purposes, but the mathematics they are used to represent is unchanged and unchanging.”
Yes, I understand where you are coming from on this. However, the analogy is somewhat faulty in that mathematics, while a fascinating science with many areas that are only now being understood, is perhaps one of the least supernatural areas of human understanding that exists. Each concept within it (prime numbers, composite numbers, base nomenclature) has hard and fast rules under which it operates, with often complex proofs involved in each case.
But let us go back to your original statement:
“There’s a point here, but it’s not quite equivalent. There are different interpretations of Christianity (and no non-Fundamentalist would deny that much in the faith is a matter of interpretation). However, at least from the more hard-core, scientific/materialist atheist view, atheism isn’t a matter of interpretation—it’s a matter of what is. The structure of reality and the universe, and the absence of God, is no more an interpretation than 5 is an interpretation of the answer of the question, “What is 2 + 3?””
Atheism at its core is a belief that there is no supernatural being(s) in control of the universe and its destiny. Period.
Theism at its core is a belief that there is/are supernatural being(s) in control of the universe and its destiny. Period.
Just as there are many, many applications of theism in the world, there are also many, many applications of atheism in the world. Attempting to boil down atheism to one hard-and-fast definition that fits the paradigm you wish to assail borders on the straw man.
It would be like me using Norse Paganism to represent all of theism, and then branding all theistic beliefs with the weaknesses/inadequacies I might find in Norse Paganism. No doubt you would strongly suggest that your particular application of theistic belief not only differed radically but also addressed the weaknesses I “discovered”.
Likewise as you attempt to label all atheists as hard-core disciples of Nietzsche, there are many of us who call out “not so fast!”
For your mathematical analogy to work then we need to focus the discussion here on theism vs. atheism, which really only addresses a small portion of the underlying philosophical belief that most humans possess.
Thus, I contend, that context is still quite relevant, and necessary for us to determine exactly what there is there. 2 + 3 may equal 5, but to a starving man 5 loaves of bread is a lot more valuable than 5 troy ounces of gold.

“Sagan is an eloquent atheist, but he is not yet an honest one.”
Sagan is no longer an atheist.

We atheists don’t need christianists telling us what kind of atheist we should be. It often seems to me that christianists like their atheists to be like Nietzsche, Sartre or Camus – tortured souls wracked by existential angst. They can point to this intellectual suffering, contrasting with their own smug certitude, as validation of their fairy tale. What affronts them about the “new atheists” is the latter’s scientific objectivity and matter-of-fact rejection of posthumous aerial pie. So what if this life is all that exists, let’s make the most of it instead of cowering on our knees, say Dawkins and Hitchens. To which the apologists can only respond with incoherent outraged spluttering.
Ding Dong the Wicked God is Dead!

Rjak you missed the point entirely. Sagan is saying because the universe is so vast and our little film of life so small that we have to cherish what we have. This is not a contradiction at all.
And Max, that is a terrible argument. Just….ugh.

Raytheist:
To which the apologists can only respond with incoherent outraged spluttering.
So, in your rational wisdom, answering them in exactly the same tone is the best rebuttal you can come up with?
Hitchens, Dawkins and the rest have plenty of interesting things to say. It’s just too bad they are more interested in ad hominem pithicisms against religion. Don’t you think some atheists should step up and try to do better?

@ GrantL
I don’t think I’ve missed the point that the Homeric Hero embodies brute force. The only truly heroic moment for Achilles is when he returns the body of Hector to Priam.
And I think Homer (differentiated from his characters) did not necessarily despise compassion. But clearly his heroes distrust it.
The books are a magnificent read, but to live in a society where the heroic ideal is an Achilles or an Odysseus? No thanks.

Nia, I have to ask have you read Nietzsche? Do you know why he looked to the Greek heroic ideal? Do you know why he looked to Dionysus?
The stories of Greek heroes are, at the end of day, about consequences. What are the results of one’s actions, or inaction. What is the result of selfishness and greed. What happens when the pursuit of glory goes too far?
The Iliad is a story about the consequences of hubris – in this case Agamemnon and Achilles. The Greek camp falls into ruin because of their squabble.
You are missing significant parts of the story by not seeing the consequences of actions of the heroes. Paris and Helen start a bloody and pointless war because of their selfishness. Agamemnon and Achilles thrown their camp is total ruin because they refuse to cooperate. Later, Achilles refuses to forgive Agamemnon making the Greek situation worse. Ultimately Troy is destroyed because of the poor decisions of Hecktor and Paris. And so on. All you are apparently seeing is a hero doing something not so nice, and therefore you think the heroic ideal of the greeks is bad and Homer’s story is morally wrong. Yet you miss the lesson.
The Odyssey which does focus on warfare, has many interesting and worthwhile moral lessons, the key of which being the idea that you should be careful who you turn from your door. The Greeks had a wonderful notion – illustrated time and again in the Odyssey – that you ought look after the poor and strangers who show up in your country. Because one day you might be poor, or a lost in a foreign land will have to depend on the kindness of strangers in order to survive. In the Odyssey, those who fail to understand this – from Polyphemus to the suitors in Ithaca (who so badly mistreat Odysseus disguised as a beggar) – all end up suffering greatly.
And again, in that story we see the results of hubris. Odysseus’s entire travail is due to the fact that he cannot control his ego and hubris. His misfortune is ultimately his own fault.
If you look at the Greek tragedies, which tell the tales of the heroes after Troy, and almost all of them fall from greatness because their greed or hubris got the best of them. The Greeks, it seemed, revealed in stories about the fall from greatness due to foolishness – a lesson the Athenians in particular could relate to.
No, Homer is not often showing his characters acting out of compassion. But the story illustrates, then as now, what happens when compassion is missing from the equation.
In our popular culture we tend to prefer being spoon fed our moral lessons. The good guy is like Superman, always doing good. Never failing to do the right thing. The is lesson is simple, and basic. The Greeks told the same kind of stories by looking at it the other way – what is the result of acting badly?
No, you do not see Ajax feeding the poor or something in Homer. But this is not Homer’s intention. He is showing the results of negative actions, greed, arrogance and foolhardiness. Consider his descriptions of battle. They are horrifying. You see, in full gory detail, the consequences of combat and the tragic losses that result. By comparison the Biblical account of a crucifixion is pretty tame considering how horrible a torture it was. This is a simple, but fine illustration of what Nietzsche is on about. Homer does not flinch away from human life – from its gentleness to its horror. Its all about living in the world. The biblical authors are about turning one’s back on the world, ultimately looking to something else. For Nietzsche, this was a betray of human existence, an morality for the weak.
The Greek hero was to face life head on, defeat it’s challenges, even defeat the gods if need be. One did not whimper, or allow one self to be executed, or wait for a reward in the next life. The hero grappled with with life to achieve greatness. This is what attracted Nietzsche.
One can certainly debate Nietzche’s view of it and I am certainly not endorsing the Greek hero myth in its entirety as some kind of moral compass. But I think you have drastically under estimated the content of Homer and the Greek story tellers.

As an Atheist, I find myself agreeing with this rather negative assessment of the average Atheist.
We have freed ourselves from the invalid morality of religion, but we have failed to replace the old invalid morality with a new morality based upon scientific investigation.
Some of us have fallen into the moral despair which Nietzsche warned against and have accepted the mistaken conclusion that there is no morality. Moral relativism is the greatest danger to civilization and we as Atheists have thus far failed to address this issue.
Other among us have fallen for the propaganda which is promoted by many religious believers that morality can only be determined irrationally through faith and that questions of morality are beyond the scope of scientific investigation. This defeatism prevents rational inquiry into issues which are critical to the survival of our species.
Nietzsche was right, life without god *is* hard. The death of god requires the evolution of man to a new level of maturity. It’s long past time that we stepped up to that challenge.

Good luck in “creating” a new morality folks! You truly do miss the point – it can’t be done!

Having been raised in a church that didn’t really grab my attention, drifted through a reasonably compassionate fascination with various forms of atheism, paganism, and agnosticism, and returned to regular church attendance, even membership, in my late 40′s, I find The New Atheism rather pathetic, just like almost any “The New” is pathetic. Red is the new red, green is the new green, and atheism has always been atheism. The most important question, as C.S. Lewis would say, is not whether atheism is good or bad for us, but whether it is true? If there is no God, then all the philosophizing in the world about the benefits of faith won’t provide us with one. If there is a God, then all the philosophizing in the world about how and why there is none, or that God is dead, will not reduce his omnipotence by one whit.
This may, in turn, call into question the significance of stock phrases such as “God is good.” If an omnipotent Creator were insufferably bad, would we be any more able to dethrone him? Is there something about a propensity for Creation which is inevitably linked to some sort of goodness?
There is something about modern atheists and pagans in a politically stable, economically prosperous culture, with fairly well-protected civil liberties (we tend to repent our secular sins of massive First Amendment violation within a generation or less), that makes atheism and paganism rather trite. One has only to take a second look at the conflicting claims for the meaning of Homer to see why.
Homer did not write tales of moral instruction. He wrote about the society he lived in, and/or the society which preceded it and had similar values and experiences, as they were. It was a brutal time, thinly populated, but highly competitive. Might made right, literally. The best one could hope for was a gentle giant who was big and bold enough to squash evil doers — and every gentle giant was prone to hubris and self-aggrandizement himself eventually. Women’s rights were not an issue, because most women could be thrown over the shoulder of the first man who wanted her. (The notion of a gentle matriarchal vegetarian society before the arrival of the Indo-Europeans has been pretty well discredited by further evidence — Neolithic communities had walls for military defensive purposes, because they fought each other). A woman accepted the strongest man who wanted her precisely because he stood a chance to protect her from any other. Odysseus is a charming rogue, a reader tends to root for him to get home and wipe out the evil suitors, but he robbed, raped and plundered without compunction all the way.
Christianity was in many ways a feeble voice of opposition. Whenever it became a powerful institution, it immediately partook of most of the evils of the unabated power structure under which it arose. Bishops were forbidden to use swords, but rode into battle armed with maces. Churches became feudal landlords. For the first time in history, those who did not believe in a specific faith were subject en masse legal persecution, rather than the casual acceptance, each to his own gods, which characterized pagan society, and was more a part of Jewish culture and Old Testament prescription than most Christians (or Muslims) have ever admitted.
Still, there is an ethical framework generated by Christianity which has modified the raw impulses of earlier centuries, and offers some hope now and then that we can do better. It provides the foundation for the Enlightenment, however much Established Christian Institutions may have sought to retard progress. Maybe, just maybe, this is the result of a beneficient deity calling to us. If there is not such deity, perhaps we are “indeed to be pitied,” as Paul wrote, or perhaps we can fill the cultural and ethical void left when we are disabused of our mass delusion. Or perhaps we cannot. Without some beneficient divine intent, it IS a cold cruel, indifferent universe. But, as Simon Conway Morris and Francis Collins, among others, are able to point out with complete intellectual integrity, there is good cause to believe that God is quite real, whether we find that convenient or not.

You forgot to mention that Nietsche was also rabid bigot who hated women too. I remember hearing him described in a humanities class as a bitter old man who used to be pushed around in a wheelbarrow.

Will,
You must understand that your position places you in the category of atheists, with whom Nietzsche would disagree. C.S. Lewis once chided those, who wanted to keep Christ as a “moral teacher,” but failed to recognize that, this being the case, Christ’s teachings would hardly be moral. He said that was “patronizing nonsense,” and the same is true, here: the philosophical premises, principles and prerequisites, which are necessary for an internally consistent approach to morality, are simply not available to empirical science. Nietzsche specifically argued against both religion and science as equally impotent shackles upon a man’s moral powers, and the “mere atheists,” whom Nietzsche opposed, are precisely the atheists who think there is still a basis for some kind of conventional morality in their philosophy.
The death of God – if, by that, we mean the death of all gods/religion, and not just of the Judaeo-Christian God – inherently involves the removal of the only possible basis for morality. No, this is not a fundamentalist rant that “only Christians can be moral,” etc. I deal with immoral Christians all day long, and I am often one of them. I’m not defending a Christian moral monopoly; I’m speaking in terms of the necessary logical premises for moral claims. Science lacks these.
Science investigates material facts, and then attempts to make more or less accurate theories for describing the observed and tested facts. Science can say “Mercury orbits the Sun” – but, to go beyond this, and to say “It is good that Mercury orbits the Sun,” is another thing altogether. This involves a statement of opinion. And, even the statement of an opinion does not yet amount to a claim upon moral truth. I.e., “I’m glad my Rosary is blue.” It is not immoral to have a Rosary of some other colour; I just happen to like the fact that mine is blue.
A moral statement is an assertion that something is good (or bad), objectively and transcendently, beyond my personal opinion. This is the inherent problem in trying to derive a morality from science. Science studies cause and effect, the laws of the material world. It has no capacity to discover a transcendent moral value, by which to compare things in the material world; indeed, moral judgments of the same empirical facts are varied. Science can tell us that antibiotics cure certain sicknesses, but it cannot claim any scientific evidence for the moral goodness of curing disease. It may seem self-evident to us that curing a disease is good, but it only seems self-evident because of a number of unquestioned assumptions. I.e., life and health are moral goods, it is good for humans to have these, there is no greater moral good to be acheived by temporarily suffering the effects of illnesses, etc., etc. Some of us wouldn’t agree with all these “moral goods,” and science certainly can’t proffer any evidence for or against their moral quality… it can merely offer more supposedly “good” consequences of health and happiness, but – it must be affirmed again – this is not the same thing as scientific proof of the moral goodness or badness of health and happiness. Science just can’t do that. As I say, some of us would never question the goodness of these things – but, that does not mean that our moral instincts are in any sense scientific!
This is the problem with a “consequentialist” view of morality – a view, to which science is inherently limited, since it is limited to the material study of cause and effect, without recourse to transcendent, supra-material sources of knowledge. A consequentialist morality attempts to judge the moral quality of an action by the effects consequent thereto. So, science would say that birth control is good, because it sometimes prevents disease and children. But, this begs two questions: 1) How can we assert that morality is determined by consequences, if this assertion is itself not a consequence? This is already an ontological assertion of moral values *without reference* to consequences! 2) If morality is only determined by consequences, by what moral standard could we possibly evaluate the moral quality of consequences? We must have a transcendent moral standard to give meaning to the consequences, or our evaluation thereof will be inherently relative. I.e., some view the prevention of children as a “good” consequence, and some view it as a fundamental evil. Science tells us it must sometimes be good to prevent children, or there will be overpopulation. This presumes that overpopulation is morally bad in a transcendent sense, when science is really only capable of telling us that it happens to be inconvenient for us. In fact, in the scientific “big picture,” the fate of our particular evolutionary model on this particular, backwater planet could hardly be a morally important matter. And religion would attribute to human beings, ironically, an even greater importance than the atheist humanist… but, at the same time, would be less concerned with the fate of our species, considering the moral imperatives of self-control and rightly-used sexuality to be greater moral goods. Science is not capable of proving the moral transcendence of its materialist claims, nor is it capable of disproving the moral transcendence of traditional religion’s claims. It can only deal with the material. Thus restricted in scope to consequentialism, it has no meaningful basis for moral theorizing, though it can lend its assistance to moral philosophy, by focusing its powers of observation upon the consequences, which must be evaluated from the ontological (and inherently religious) moral standpoint.
The point of this last item needs to be emphasized: if we think that we can define an act’s morality based upon consequences, we have to assume the existence of a fixed moral standard, by which to make such an evaluation in the first place. Unless there is such a transcendent and absolute moral standard, moral evaluations of consequences are meaningless. So, for example, a Nazi can say “Genocide is good, because it gave us the final solution to the Jewish problem,” whereas most people would say “Genocide is an unmitigated horror that is never justified.” Science has no power to affirm or gainsay either statement, since it only has the power to investigate this material world and the acts and consequences that occur therein. Science observes one and the same set of events… but, different men have different moral evaluations of those consequences. Science doesn’t enter into the moral evaluation, it can only report the data.
In fact, science will more often than not be used as the justification for horrific moral evil (as in fact it has been in this past century), precisely because science inevitably shifts the focus away from transcendent moral values, and into the world of temporal goals and activities… where radically different assessments, possessed of radically different moral quality, are made of the empirical facts. One can easily excuse all manner of genocide, butchery and horror by “science;” Darwin mentions that the “less advanced” races would inevitably be eliminated, and the same policies deduced from Darwinism were implemented by American eugenecists in the Tuskegee Experiments, by Margaret Sanger in planned parenthood, and by the Nazis in their infamous crimes. The Atheist Soviets declared religion to be a scientific defect in humanity, and then butchered millions of Orthodox Christians, who did not take kindly to this point of view – more people, in fact, than all wars of religion have ever killed.
In point of fact, such immoral conclusions are the inevitable result of materialism, and materialism is the beginning and end of the Scientific Method. If Science is to be the basis of our morality, and materialism is the only subject matter of Science, then materialism will be constrained to give mere *justification* (since it cannot give a basis or a validity) to our moralizing whims. Everything can and will be justified. And to further demonstrate the difficulty, imagine the many shades and degrees of morality, when one takes this consequentialist view: say, science determines that over-population is a potential problem that threatens the species and the whole planet. This merely invites a series of follow up questions: is the aversion of over-population so important, that we should tolerate the social ills consequent to sexual promiscuity (itself an all-but-inevitable product of a contraceptive mentality)? So important, that we should legislate against more than two children per family? So important, that we should stop treating people who get sick with long, terminal illnesses? So important, that we should proactively cull “excess” population? Science has no objective means for investigating, let alone defining, the “moral” subtleties of even the most superficial questions, let alone these more complex.
None of this is to say that Science is not a great good, when its limitations are understood. But, unpleasant as it must be for an Atheist to acknowledge, the fact is that only “religion” possesses the internal consistency with its own presumptions and principles, to provide a moral framework. This does not mean that these presumptions and principles of religion are *true!* All that it proves, is that *if* morality exists, it is fundamentally religious. If religion is inherently false, than morality is a fiction, too.
Neitsczhe recognized that the death of God (in which he implicated all religion, even if Christianity was a special target) heralded the death of trascendent notions of morality. In fact, he specifically argues, in his essay “What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals,” that science is not a good alternative to God and religion, because it simply replaces one kind of slavery to a morally impotent power, with another. He argued that the healthy human spirit had to question the value of truth, period – whether religious or scientific. He saw the moral impotence of “science,” and he rejected the “slave morality,” which he found in Judaeo-Christian religion. He therefore sought to find a new “morality” in the power of the will, in the total freedom of the Superman to exercise mastery and pursue his own reckoning of “goods” without restraint. We all know whither this moral viewpoint goes: relativism – which, as you correctly mark, is the great evil of our time.
In the end, morality asserts an over-arching, transcendent truth, which is an opinion of sorts… but, morality properly so called, requires that the opinion not be of relative or questionable worth, but an opinion involving a totally correct and personal judgment of good and evil (by “personal,” I don’t mean “a belief that is merely personal,” but, “made by something we recognize as having the basic qualities of a person” – since, obviously, an “opinion” or “judgment” implies will and judgment… qualities involving some kind of sentient, thinking, acting agent). Ultimately, the only possible agent behind a trascendent judgment of infallible rectitude is a Personal God… and, once we reach that point, we will discover that even here, morality cannot be rooted simply in the judgments of God – for, that would imply that there was a standard above and beyond God, to which He merely conformed His thoughts and judgments. Ultimately, the only true Origin of morality, must be the nature of God. Only if God is transcendent, perfect, the Sum of all Good, etc., can we say that there is a morality rooted in the continuum that flows from His very being.
Otherwise, morality is relative – even if it is simply an opinion with divine backing. If Zeus says something is “pious,” but he is merely concurring with amoral facts about the pre-existent cosmos, of which he is a part, then this is not morality, properly so-called. Morality cannot be grounded in the amoral facts of the Universe’ nature, nor can it be grounded in the opinion of the deity, if the deity is merely another cog in the cosmological machine. Only if the Deity is Sovereign and the very ground of all that Is, can morality properly exist. For, why should even the opinion of God be binding, unless God is the very ground and being of Truth and Goodness?
As I say, none of this proves that there is any such thing as morality – it merely proves that if we can speak of a real and non-relative morality, it must be rooted in such a philosophy. Empirical Science with its material limitations, lacks the necessary prerequisites and philosophical bases for any *moral* claim. Many religions, even, lack the necessary bases for truly moral claims. If Pantheism wants to push the notion that “all distinctions are illusions” to the logical conclusion of that belief, then there is no good, nor evil, and morality is a comedy of errors. Those are our options, then: either morality is rooted in a Personal God, Who admits of distinctions in the cosmos, or there are no grounds for morality. Again, as C.S. Lewis said in another situation, so we can say here: “Let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about [science] being a great moral teacher.” Science does not treat of the necessary principles to create a true morality. It can only inform us of the actual facts of temporal cause and effect. It is up to us to interpret the moral meaning of those facts – and, so long as morality is not rooted in something transcendent and authoritative, there is no ultimate arbiter between the morals of eugenecists, atheists, genocidal despots, etc., and traditional religous mores.

Just to be clear, I am an atheist. While I agree that the New Atheists are rather dull and pathetic in comparison to Nietzsche, I disagree with Hart’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s pronouncement that “God is dead”. Nietzsche did not see it as a bad thing. Nietzsche saw the death of the Judeo-Christian god (and indeed of all gods) as an opportunity for man to free himself from the moral and intellectual shackles of Christianity. However, he saw that the men of his day, and indeed the men of our day, were not ready to let go of the false hopes and promises that Christianity once provided. He saw the modern age as nothing more than an attempt to naturalize, rationalize and secularize Judeo-Christian morality. He thought that this was foolish seeing as there is nothing natural, rational or practical about the idiosyncrasies of Christianity. He saw the erecting of new idols like liberalism, nationalism, mass democracy (universal suffrage), egalitarianism, feminism, socialism, communism, Marxism and anarchism as nothing more than attempts to replace the old idol with new, equally false idols. He believed that modern, western, European civilization would not realize the true gravity of the crisis of modern nihilism until well into the 21st century. He believed that he was foreseeing the history of the modern world for the next 200 years.