I’ve noticed a tendency among several apologists here to talk about the atheists’ views not just from the perspective of Christians (which is understandable) but also projecting some of that Christian perspective onto atheists’ views.
This isn’t just a barrier to understanding and conversation, it shows a lack of willingness to understand others’ views that is off-putting and detrimental to any attempt of changing atheists’ minds.
One person here recently asked how they could better communicate with me, and my reply to them might be useful to others too.
So here it is:
… stop referring to atheists that “lack belief in God,” which is a mischaracterisation because atheists reject all religions, not just Christianity, and instead refer to atheists as ‘lacking belief in gods’.
To atheists, Christianity is not special. It’s no more true than Hinduism, Nahua, Ukonusko or any of the myriad other religions that have existed. It’s merely more prevalent.
Saying atheists ‘lack belief in God’ shows an inability to empathise with atheists or to understand their point of view.
I have nothing to hide Roy. I write from the perspective of Christianity being true on this forum because it is a Christian forum aimed at understanding God’s word in the context of God’s world and I share that belief. I’m not here to cater to your atheism nor am I going to celebrate it like some Christians on here appear to. It not a drop of reason in a pool of confusion, its nihilism. And all you do is nitpick. I rarely see anything of substance from you.
As you wrote in another thread here:
Claiming that philosophical naturalism is a rejection of Jesus is like saying that vegetarianism is a refusal to eat chilli.
and my response was:
This is a Christian forum in case you forgot where you are. Chili is the way the truth and the life here.
I don’t care if some atheists use tarot cards or what not. Philosophical naturalism entails --at a minimum-- the intellectual rejection of God and his Son. I frame things from a Christian perspective on a Christian message board.
Edited to Add: And as I’ve previously noted, most of my comments towards atheism are directed specifically towards the version that embraces materialism. I honestly do not care about any other form except the one that tries to hijack science.
The trend I have noticed is some Christians can’t imagine having meaning and purpose in their lives without their Christian beliefs, so they assume atheists also have no meaning or purpose in their lives. At least that is what I think is happening. I could be wrong.
Just to make this clear, I and many, many other atheists do not think the universe or life has intrinsic purpose. However, we can choose to find meaning and purpose in our lives, just as Christians choose to find meaning in their religious beliefs. This can be our families, passions in life, new adventures, learning new things, helping others, etc. I don’t personally know a single atheist that ascribes to nihilism, nor do I personally know a fellow atheist who feels it is their life’s goal to defend materialism to their final breath.
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Or rather, based on your two comments, they are simply pointing out that this meaning and purpose is completely made up. It is entirely subjective, on par with what flavor of ice cream you like best. You appear to concede the point. The argument is that a matter only approach leads to this posture on an intellectual level. Not that atheists don’t love their wives (or husbands) or like puppies.
Yes, it is the meaning and purpose that we have invented as humans.
Yes, just as the beauty of a sunset, the wonderful sound of a classical guitar solo, and the relaxation of a mountain trail walk are all subjective. Some of the most wonderful things in life are subjective.
Nowhere did I say it is a matter only approach. That is you trying to force a position onto me.
It is an evidence based approach. Perhaps someday I will have some sort of spiritual epiphany, and it will lead to a faith based belief. I don’t know. Hasn’t happened yet. As of now, I haven’t found compelling evidence for deities or the supernatural.
I do not think I am forcing anything. I would say after years of reading your posts with some dialogue, it seems clear to me what classifies as evidence to you. That is my “evidence based approach.”
And I suspect the majority of people do not consider our abhorrence to murdering babies akin to what we find pretty like a sunset or nonsensical scribble (modern art), or the type of music we like, or on par with say my dislike of sauerkraut. To do so is to undermine morality.
Reading comprehension much? No one insulted you. If you said the God of the OT is evil I wouldn’t respond with " Yet another example of the type of insults Christians regularly face. I am now someone who believes in the evil baby murdering God of the Old Testament. Great." Come back to earth. I know I am a white Christian male so 50% of the American populations views everything I say as evil, racist, insulting or misogynistic, but I can still have a conversation about ideas without resorting to such tactics. It’s a discussion of ideas or worldviews.
If your worldview treats moral issues the same way as “what flavor of ice cream you like” then your worldview is broken. Fix it. I’ve said this to you before.
Yet another insult atheists regularly face, that we lack morality. I would contend I use the very same subjective sense of morality that you use every day of your life. We all (i.e. all of us who aren’t psychopaths) have an inner sense of morality, and it is subjective by definition.
Even if there is some objective morality, we don’t have access to it. We can’t know if any religion has access to this objective morality. The best we can do is use our own subjective sense of morality to guide us.
Subjective does not mean unimportant. A subjective morality is one rooted in human feelings and desires. These are the things that are most important to us, indeed the only things important to us!
Subjective does not mean arbitrary. Human feelings are not arbitrary. It is not arbitrary that we love our children while most of us dislike and fear spiders and snakes, nor that most of us like the taste of chocolate while shunning excrement. Our feelings and attitudes are rooted in human nature, being a product of our evolutionary heritage, programmed by genes. None of that is arbitrary.
Subjective does not mean that anyone’s opinion is “just as good”. Most humans are in broad agreement on almost all of the basics of morality. After all “people are the same wherever you go”. Most law codes overlap strongly, such that we can readily live in a foreign country with only minor adjustment for local customs. A psychopathic child killer’s opinion is not regarded as “just as good” by most of us, and if we decide morality by a broad consensus — and that, after all, is how we do decide morality — then we arrive at strong communal moral codes.
I can see the historical plausibility of that, since Christians were also called atheists because they lacked belief in gods. But today that would seem to miscommunicate. Today the word is for those who lack belief in any god, not just those who reject polytheism.
Right. As a Christian I don’t see the need to deny that a materialist can also find meaning in life. And I recognize that to a materialist my meaning seems based on something made-up. It’s possible to think someone has the wrong foundation for their purpose and meaning without demeaning their intelligence or character – or expecting them to let go of that meaning.
Partly, that’s because my own perspective is that God has made things muddy on purpose. The truth about all the fundamentals doesn’t jump out at us, and you don’t have to be stupid or have your head in the sand to get it wrong. Some receive more revelation than others. At death, there’s a huge spectrum of what knowledge a person had access to, what they experienced, and where their natural and hereditary makeup led them in thought and action.
If it was all clear, if each person received a blinding revelation of truth, then Jesus wouldn’t have the opportunity to say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Divine hiddenness puts human rebellion on a leash.
Perhaps some find it arrogant that I imagine the end of the story as if I’m right. But to expect otherwise would be to expect me to not believe my beliefs. That would be the real insult to another’s meaning and purpose: to insist they can’t live and speak as if they really believe it.
I think one difference that emerges here between many atheists and many theists is that for some theists, it’s an existential put-down to acknowledge that something is made by humans. Captured by the phrase we may use: “it’s all just in your head.” (and no less pejorative for it being our “collective head” as a culture). In scientific minded (or modern-world-view-oriented) communities, which is the air we all breath and which some theists remain nearly blind to and in adamant denial of; - in their minds, it’s akin to calling someone’s ailment merely psychosomatic (or all ‘just in your head’.)
But if theists are able to acknowledge that humans make many real things, and that those things can be considered real even if not rooted in an absolute (as still conceived by the human mind), then a lot of this difficulty goes away. Perhaps it isn’t as universal over all times and cultures as the theist may wish it to be, but … existing? meaningful? real? significant? Definitely yes.
Nonsense. Stop crying wolf. No one said you are not a moral person. We have been through this before.
We have access to it. Even your link desperately tries to access it while simultaneously denying it.
We humans have a lot to be proud of: by thinking it through and arguing amongst ourselves, we have advanced morality hugely, with Western society today giving vastly better treatment to individuals, to women, children, religious minorities, foreigners, those of other races, the disabled and mentally ill, criminals, etc, than any previous society.
Little bit of a slip there. He states it as if it’s factual that morality is now better. Advanced? Towards what objective end? How does one know morality has advanced without an objective standard to compare it to? Oops. He also says:
Subjective does not mean that anyone’s opinion is “just as good”. Most humans are in broad agreement on almost all of the basics of morality. After all “people are the same wherever you go”. Most law codes overlap strongly, such that we can readily live in a foreign country with only minor adjustment for local customs. A psychopathic child killer’s opinion is not regarded as “just as good” by most of us, and if we decide morality by a broad consensus — and that, after all, is how we do decide morality — then we arrive at strong communal moral codes.
He clearly wants some moral views to actually be more true than others. Oops. Why is one made up opinion not just as good as another? I note that morality by broad consensus is nonsense. Just the same as by local consensus. If slavery is morally wrong then it was morally wrong even if most of the world deemed it an acceptable institution. It was wrong in South Carolina in 1855 even though the majority of people thought it was their God-given right to own slaves. A community of pedophiles will have a different moral outlook than a community of non-pedophiles. If most men in the world think women are their property, does that make this view morality correct? Clearly, your own author is desperate to sneak in some sort of objective morality despite writing an entire paper denying it.
Any worldview, be it one from a materialist or even a Christian perspective, that cannot say raping women is objectively wrong, should be thrown in the trash. The problem is coming at the world through a philosophy that denies final causes. That is what a matter only outlook leads to.
Feser: Now, natural law theory as understood in the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) tradition presupposes this understanding of natural objects. Human beings, like every other natural substance, have a nature or substantial form, and what is good for them – what constitutes their flourishing – is determined by the ends or final causes that follow upon having that sort of nature or substantial form. But just as we can normally determine the efficient causes of things without making reference to God, so too can we normally determine the final causes of things without making reference to God. And thus, just as we can do physics, chemistry, and the like without making reference to God, so too can we do ethics without making reference to God, at least to a large extent. For we can know what is good for a thing if we can know its nature, and we can know its nature by empirical investigation guided by sound (A-T) metaphysics. At least to a large extent, then, we can know what the natural law says just from the study of human nature and apart from any sort of divine revelation. That’s why it’s the natural law. Goodness, or at least the possibility of it, is just natural to us (as Philippa Foot might say).
Morality is as objective as physical law. Moral truth is mind independent–meaning it exists like gravity, whether you believe it or not. Chattel slavery was immoral in the 1800s regardless of how many people accepted or rejected it.
And that includes some of the people in history who have murdered millions in some of the most Satanic kinds of evils imaginable. In other words, our so-called “objective” appeals have not delivered you to your promised land where moral objectivity is everything, and subjectivity is nothing.
I find Lewis to be insightful when he notes that it’s religious bad people who are the worst. The non-religious tyrant may at least tire of his cruelty. But the religiously motivated one believes he has God on his side. His cruelties continue.
Overall, I’m with you in that, as a theist, I do believe in objective morality. But if Christians around the world (and especially in the U.S. right now) want to claim that their “objectivity” is serving them better than the so-called secularist’s subjectivity, then maybe those Christian should stop demonstrating the moral squalor that their so-called ‘objectivity’ has led them to! I (and I bet @T_aquaticus as well) can say without any qualm or doubt that not only is raping women wrong, but so is subjugating them (and immigrants and others) to second-class status, so is oppressive tyranny and greed. We can say all those things, Vinny - and yet we have “Christian” churches here in the U.S. still busy not just defending, but even promoting and celebrating many of these cruelties!
So much for their “objective” standards of morality, right?
What are we to make of it when the atheists are closer to Christ’s teachings than those who go about shouting Christ’s name with their lips? Look - the tax collectors and ‘reprobates’ (and atheists!) are busy entering the kingdom of God ahead of you!
So while I’m with you in thinking of morality as objective, I also think that those most eager to push such things have been the ones most effectively flushing it all down the toilet. Maybe if they want others to take their own morality seriously, they ought as least start by showing that they themselves take it seriously. If the current crop of leaders admired and supported are representatives of where their morality leads them, then … well, so much for your/their “objective” gold standard! If they aren’t willing to dig their own morals back out of the toilet where they’re putting them, why should anybody else enshrine them or want to worship the at the same depraved altars where they currently prostrate themselves?
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gbrooks9
(George Brooks, TE (E.volutionary T.heist OR P.rovidentialist))
18
How ironic to find an atheist complaint about lack of compassion for the atheistic perspective on a forum designed - - in part - - to help Creationist theists understand other Mainstream theists and that being a Christian evolutionist does not make one an atheist.
