Yes, most of us have been atheist 15 year olds, we know the arguments...
>God, the one in Quran or Bible, doesn't exist. It's as simple as that. The same with morality; as dark as that thought is. We are just too weak to face the truth.
So, do you act morally when you're sure you're not gonna get caught? Do you try to do the right thing for others? For your kids? Why, since "morality doesn't exist"?
The truth is that we've built morality and so it exists. The universe might not care, but we do.
Yes. Because I have free will and chose to. In my experience, one's religious beliefs have no bearing on whether they act morally or not.
Second, this "free will" choice is either random (so could go either way), or determined on some previous shaping of your character. In other words on a morality (didn't have to happen through specifical moral education, e.g. church lessons, could just be through example by your parent behavior etc. But it's still a morality).
For fun basically. The game of life seems really easy to cheat at and so I self-impose some rules to make the game more interesting, just like I avoid using cheat codes in video games.
Also, slightly more seriously, no one is a perfect actor and to not act morally in private will absolutely spill out into one's public persona.
We did but it is a concept not a physical thing. It's also relative from person to person and from a culture to another. It is not a truth.
Which is neither here, nor there.
For one, concepts are also physical things (e.g. the correspond to chemical changes and neuron synapses in the brains on those knowing about them).
Second, even if abstract, concepts still affect the physical world by influencing actions.
Besides, nobody argued morality is a physical thing.
>It's also relative from person to person and from a culture to another. It is not a truth.
Physical things are also perceived differently rom person to person and from a culture to another. A dish might be great for one, but disgusting for another, for example.
Something being relative is opposed to it being absolute, not opposed to it being true.
E.g. if I say I love X, that is relative and personal. But my love can be true.
We actually don't know this. People have qualia, which is an unexplained physical phenomenon. It could be that the universe comes with some universal signal that twists the thought processes of all beings with qualia, so as to shape their feelings about moral questions, to align them with true universal morality.
Obviously, I just made this up, and even if it were true, maybe you'd call the signal false universal morality, but it could be a physical thing.
> We’re all very sure we’re right, and the other people are wrong, conveniently forgetting that we made up those things too.
Science is a systematic, evidence/reasoning based method of discovering the truths and eliminating the wrongs.
It boils down to whether or not you believe in an objective reality.
And yet, that's not logically possible, as it's circular reasoning.
You basically take a principle of faith (e.g. regarding induction), and you combine it with an empirical method.
If you define "right" and "wrong" as "true" and "false" then you can understand them via science.
There's nothing "true" and "false" about not defauding you/killing you/treating you like shit you if I'm to benefit from it.
Scientifically speaking it's just a cost/benefit calculation (e.g. whether I'd get caught or not).
Many people go for just that. We call them sociopaths. If we all started doing just that (and ignored moral principles), society would be chaos.
Science can't replace morallity, except in trivial cases.
Even if science says "it is true that society would be better if everybody did X" (e.g. didn't do X bad thing) that's still not enough of a basis for a morality.
Because for science it is also true individually that "If you can do X and know you wont have any negative backslash on you particularly, you can benefit from it".
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism
* https://blog.apaonline.org/2018/01/25/the-problem-with-scien...
I'm not. But I'm not sure why is anyone advocating for a particular God. I think he should speak for himself. If you are advocating for religion as a way to structure and control society, I can see sense in that.
There is no scientific basis for Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem either. That doesn't mean it it false.
> God, the one in Quran or Bible, doesn't exist. It's as simple as that.
Aristotle would disagree:
* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/first-way-some-backgrou...
* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/08/first-way-moving-tale.h...
* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/09/first-way-part-ii-two-l...
* https://tofspot.blogspot.com/2014/10/first-way-part-iii-big-...
See also Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, and Leibniz, not of whom make reference to the any kind of Sacred Scripture
* https://www.amazon.com/Five-Proofs-Existence-Edward-Feser/dp...
You just have to let go of religious distortions of the concept. Take a step back and look at it more from an evolutionary biology perspective.
To me it has to do with aligning your goals with the goals of others. It is a very important concept for a social animal, especially one with high degree of cognitive sophistication such as humans, to have.
That is fine but you have already put it relative to what you think. If everybody does that, then morality will differ from a person to another; and thus it becomes meaningless.
But the words aren't meaningless just because we might disagree on some edge or corner cases.
The thing is, lots of people use words all the time without getting analytical about it. My daughter is 5 and knows what right vs. wrong is, but I doubt she could explain it to anyone without it just being circular.
When people use the words "right" and "wrong" (and all the related words such as good and bad and moral and immoral), most of the time they all pretty much agree with what it is. Stealing is wrong, cheating is wrong, killing is wrong. Helping someone who is hurt is right.
You can come up with scenarios where there are ambiguities, sure, just like with up and down, but most people agree on the basic ones.
C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, the second() most famous fantasy literature ever written in English as well as a number of other famous books. He is as much a classic as Dickens and a damn sight more accessible than Bill Shakespeare.
I'm an athiest and don't agree with his assertions but he's definitely worth reading if you haven't already.
()Okay, perhaps Beowulf gets this spot.
Hmm. C.S. Lewis is perhaps the most influential Christian thinker of the last century. If not, he's second to Francis Schaeffer. You wouldn't think much of a Christian who didn't know who Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris were.
> but anyone advocating for a God or a religion is a person with an agenda
Perhaps so. So is a person advocating for atheism a person with an agenda. So where does that leave you?
As C.S. Lewis said in reply to a different atheist: "That is why the motive game is so uninteresting. I decline the game and continue the conversation."
So: You claim that God - any God - does not exist. What is your basis for claiming this? It sounds like your basis is science. Is that correct?