Well, some have gone past the point of being guests. But I feel you because what you write above is exactly how conservative Christians are sometimes treated and often described here.
Vinnie
2 Likes
1 Like
Saving Christians from not sharing his definition of atheism, one forum at a time.
Vinnie
2 Likes
“The atheist position”?
Which one do you mean—yours, T_aquaticus’, Apistos’, Gary_M’s, Paulogia’s, Richard Carrier’s, or one of the so-called “four horsemen”?
Atheism isn’t a creed; it’s a negation. Beyond that, it fragments immediately into dozens of incompatible philosophical positions. If atheists want Christians to understand atheism, step one might be acknowledging there isn’t a single one.
3 Likes
I’ve noticed this as well. It is interesting to me that atheists, on average, are more comfortable with saying that there are important things in our lives that are made up, and also many things that we just don’t know (e.g. where the universe came from). The love I feel for my extended family is subjective, but that doesn’t make it any less important.
2 Likes
No, it doesn’t.
One knows that morality is better by using our subjective appraisal of morality.
One opinion is better than another because morality is based on human nature which is subjective. That’s what I already quoted for you.
And yet that is exactly how morality works in our society.
Evidence please.
1 Like
For some people, it holds the most value.
2 Likes
I completely agree - there isn’t a philosophical position common to all atheists. That’s mainly because atheists’ philosophical positions are not based on their atheism - because it is, as you note, a negation - but based on whatever philosophy they do adopt. That’s a basic misunderstanding that’s common here, that atheism is the final result of some-one’s worldview formation rather than just a springboard towards something else.
But there is general agreement among atheists regarding what atheism is, and it isn’t focussed on Jesus.
The danger that I see is the infamous, “I was just following orders”. Evil does and has occurred when people ignore their subjective sense of morality in the name of obeying an objective morality they have been told to follow. I consider this to be an abdication of our role as a moral agent.
The other issue is the contradictions between different religions who each claim to have an objective morality. How do we determine which of those claimed objective moralities is actually true? I would say that we judge those contradictory and claimed objective moral standards using our subjective sense of morality.
2 Likes
I guess the moral of the story is to ask atheists what their worldview is instead of just assuming or portraying them as immoral nihilists.
It’s been a while since I watched the videos, but Sean McDowell is a Christian apologist who has pretended to be an atheist in order to educate his fellow Christians. Overall, he does a decent job at it, and I think the lessons were appreciated by his audience.
2 Likes
The BioLogos forum FAQ is clear enough on who has been invited that there need be no dispute:
At BioLogos, “gracious dialogue” means demonstrating the grace of Christ as we dialogue together about the tough issues of science and faith. Whatever your stance on evolution and Christian faith, we welcome your gracious, thoughtful contribution. The Church desperately needs to learn how to discuss these important issues with charity and humility.
The former includes atheists.
3 Likes
Exploiting the kindness of friends so you can dance almost naked is pushing things.
Let’s just agree that your best behavior would be praiseworthy.
G.Brooks
2 Likes
Granting your minimalist account of atheism, I still find it mildly amusing that Paulogia abandoned Young Earth Creationism in his early 40s and then promptly unloaded the Resurrection.
If Paulogia could become an atheist in his 40s, and I could still become one in my late 70s, what’s the objection — that I’ve only now realized atheism is minimalist, or that I’ve missed the deadline for intellectual enlightenment?
1 Like
Lewis had some answer for this, which I think still carries some water even if falling short of being any sort of objective slam-dunk that some may wish. And that is that one can still find common themes across nearly all the major religions (& certainly the Abrahamic three - but I think he had others in mind too) that will discourage murder or theft and such, and encourage kindness and generosity for example. So it isn’t like one is totally rejecting all other religions by accepting the more-or-less uniform body of morals that most of us (and even the non-religious) so widely agree with. It’s only ‘around the edges’ - specifics like ‘how much should I tithe to my local church’ or much more specific questions where divergence is more significant.
So he would answer that nearly all (all?) major religions are plugging into some objectively real truth (or non-believers would say plugging into culturally conditioned moral realities) in order to arrive at the moral packages they promote.
2 Likes
Yes, and my comments are largely limited to the specific version of modern materialists. Is isn’t the tarot card reading, magic lamp rubbing atheists who believe in ghosts and astrology that are militant in their scientism. It’s the modern atheists generally committed to a mechanistic and anti-teleological view of the natural would they believe has been established by modern science. This to me is the largest percentage of atheists engaging in online debates with Christians or frequenting forums of this nature. Gary, T, Roy, all fit that bill. If this needs to be spelled out for some individuals all time, I suggest they stay at the children’s table.
It absolutely does. An atheist name Alonzo Fyfe called him out for this despite agreeing morality is subjective.
Imagine living in a world in which prisoners have not done something really wrong, and don’t really deserve their punishment, but instead are deprived of freedom and sent to jail because they act out on desires the majority of people just don’t like. This sort of thinking is detached from reality.
How it works socially doesn’t necessarily define how it is or how it should work. Morality by consensus is terrible. That makes chattel slavery moral at one time. Now it is no longer moral. That undermines morality and human value. Complete rubbish. Is sex trafficking moral because a cadre of sex traffickers believe it to be so?
How is one subjective opinion of human nature better than another subjective opinion of human nature? You cannot have a hierarchy of value here if everything is subjective. Relativism is the answer. You can only say “I like this better than that.” You want the freedom of subjectivity but the authority of objectivity. You can’t have both.
I also disagree. Human nature has objective shared characteristics (we feel pain, we need food, we are social etc). Which is the answer to your request for evidence (I already gave it).
I already told you with this quote from Feser: “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.”
Think of an object like a heart. For me, its job is to pump blood. An eye is meant to see. When things have final causes, some of their ends are quite obvious in nature. A good heart is one that pumps blood. A good eye is one that see. Humans of course are not merely physical systems, they have intellect and will as well. Given our natures, there are objective ends that certain actions will inhibit while others will lead to their flourishing. Your article tries to get to this by pointing to nature but that is not good enough and nature has to be more carefully defined in this discussion anyways.
Feser: Hence, for example, given that we have intellect as part of our nature, and that the purpose or final cause of the intellect is to allow us to understand the truth about things, it follows that it is good for us - it fulfills our nature - to pursue truth and to avoid error. So, a good human being will be, among many other things, someone who pursues truth and avoids error. And this becomes moral goodness insofar as we can choose whether or not to fulfill our natures in this way. To choose in line with the final causes or purposes that are ours by nature is morally good; to choose against them is morally bad.
Obviously it gets much more complicated. You think human nature is subjective. You think humans don’t have a substantial form. These are all things you would need to likewise prove in a discussion.
Vinnie
3 Likes
I can’t put it that way because I would be indulging in a category error: most “gods” are in a different category than Yahweh because they are just parts of Creation that happen to have more power than other entities. Yahweh is distinct in that He is greater than the sum of all created things.
OTOH, “lacking belief in deity” would work, since the Latin behind “deity” referred initially to the broad category of gods and only later extended to Yahweh.
1 Like
My reaction to the OP is wondering whether I should pick a fight with people because their understanding of Christianity doesn’t agree with my particular one. The simple fact is there is a spectrum in the cases of both Christianity and atheism. Though to be sure the spectrum is a lot wider in the case of Christianity since many more beliefs are involved. And it is hardly universal that atheism is a rejection of all religions since there are atheistic religions (e.g. many forms of Buddhism).
Well… I certainly don’t see the invented meaning of this statement as having any value.
Well I believe in an objective aspect to morality, but don’t see it as having anything to do with theism since the only objectivity I see in life comes from science. Objectivity consists of a reasonable expectation that others should agree. Science provides this with the demonstration of written procedures which give the same results, regardless of what someone may want or believe.
This is distinguished from an absolute aspect to morality which comes from reasons why as opposed to relative aspects which are a simply a matter of convention (because it is more important to have a rule than what the rule actually is).
Theism has no role in either of these because I am certainly in the camp which believe God gives commands because they are good as opposed to the authoritarian nonsense that things are good simply because God commands them. But this means when God commands something then there are reasons we might discover and understand for ourselves.
I would rephrase this to say those Christians are plastering the labels of “objective” or “absolute” on authoritarian morality which is frankly neither. Authoritarian morality is clearly relative to the so called authority and any expectation that other should agree on that basis isn’t even close to reasonable.
My objection is that there are clearly both relative and subjective aspects to morality as well as the absolute and objective aspects. Morality is not just one of these.
Indeed! All these labels: atheism, theism, Christian, etc… are just first approximations helping you to ask intelligent questions if you want to know more.
1 Like
There’s a failure to connect two things when people defend Trump as being like Cyrus, not even necessarily a good person yet appointed by God: under Cyrus, the Jews did not mimic him or adopt whatever morals he had, they stuck to the Torah! Today’s Trump-endorsing evangelicals are too often cheering at things they ought to be condemning vociferously.
The irony is that those who claim moral progress almost universally measure progress by a standard that comes from Christ.
Fallacious conclusion: just because someone has access to something doesn’t mean they know how to apply it. My first calculus professor made this point: just because you can do calculus doesn’t mean you’ll know how to apply it in the real world.
Oh, come on – that use of “if” is something a seventh-grader should understand.
Same fallacy as above.
2 Likes
What exactly was ‘invented’ in the sense of that statement? I simply don’t believe that meaning can be invented. One may believe that they can invent meaning — but that’s a different matter entirely.
Of course.
Yes.
You’ve hit the nail on the head with this one. Many — though not all — would be glad to see Christianity disappear, without realizing that its disappearance (which, by Christ’s promise, will never actually happen — I’m speaking hypothetically) would lead us straight back to pre-Christian morality. Abortion is a clear example. It could never have become acceptable in a society that had not already, to a large extent (though not completely), rejected Christ. The irony is that it’s hailed as progress, when in fact it’s a return to paganism — the pagans were already practicing it. Even concern for the weak, the disabled, and the marginalized is something uniquely rooted in Christian ethics. Even hospitals have been created by Christianity Invention of the Hospital | The Engines of Our Ingenuity
Peter Singer’s radical — and, in my opinion, thoroughly satanic (even if he himself doesn’t believe in the reality of Satan I think that Satan sees him as one of his more eminent prophets) — idea that a newborn human is less worthy than a pig is a striking example of how far one can go when Christ is truly rejected.
2 Likes