an existentialist on atheism

[Romanman]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism#Concepts

this past week it seems i have been encountering a lot of theological arguements in my ordainary life. One being when my mom told me to read a christian novel i kindly told i would, if she read "Fight Club" . I thought i'd vent and answer some misconceptions i think some people have about atheism.

"If their is no god we are not special we are just animals with more intelligence and the product of chance."
to this i would say i totally agree accept and in fact it is better than being the products of god, think of the freedom you possess, to me being the product of chance makes me feel more special and more uplifted.

"If their is no god people will slip in to depression because they see no meaning in life."
Its true that some people become depressed when they reject god (though i find it to be a small percentage). But i find the people that become depressed are the ones who were really really religious and had used the idea of god as an imaginery friend to because nobody liked them. atheism gives people the oportunity to make their own meaning for life.

"If there is no god anything is permitted."
In my opinion once god is gone theists are right in claiming that there will be no good and evil. Their will only be actions and consequences: If you steal you go to jail, if your an jerk nobody will like you.
Societies don't need a god to figure out that stealing, murder, and genocides are bad.

"If there is no god their is no spirituality"
This is straight wrong, i'm an atheist and i feel more spiritual than ever. In fact in my opinion theism is a spiritual dillusion, in stead of focusing on this world your focusing on another you've never encountered.
When i was a christian i felt alienated there was the world and then there was me, as an atheist i feel (not trying sound too touchy feely) like im part of the universe.

"Emotions and feelings aren't real"
In fact emotions and feelings are as real as ever something natural not a gift from god. It's just my personality that i get that certain feeling when certain females walk near me.

Now for my attacks on Theism and christianity.

1. The Bilbe is not valid in my opinion, if you believe in books written by eyewitnesses of eyewitness and then composed hundreds of years later be my guest.

2. Creationists usually say that a god could have created the universe, lets just say one did but how do we know that that god isn't Allah, apollo, or thor etc. Their logic tends to be if we can prove creationism then we can prove Christianity is right.

3. Just think for a second of what really motivates christian acts, such as charity i think you'll find its mostly snobbery not empathy.

4. the idea that " All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". Did the holocaust really happen because god had a greater plan? This is an addicting view to theists when something bad happens to them... its because god has a greater plan. Here is my view, people tend to Love themselves!! Events make us who we are, so when a bad event happens to us it becomes part of us, since people tend to love themselves they will make up an excuse for why it happened ie. i learned my lesson. (struggling to put this idea of mine into words)

5. Theists tend to claim that religion is enlightening and makes people better while atheism makes people evil. But on closer inspection look at what religions really say about humans, Original sin, sin in general, humans are basically evil, without humans there would be no evil, do you really want to have those sick beliefs.

6. Why is faith good.... WHY??? Why is believing in something you have no proof of good. Lets establish that faith is not hope or trust because those are from personal experience or from reason, Obama didn't run his campaign on faith (lets all pray the economic crisis goes away) he said lets hope that we can fix it lets trust in him that he will do his best.

7. Which is better doing an atheist giving charity because she wants to or a theist because god says to?

I'll leave you with an existentialist quote i'm not sure who said it (Camus?) or its exact phrasing but it goes like this...... "I do not just argue that god does not exist, i argue that if he did it wouldn't matter"

I often hear theists talk about atheism like this " If you want to believe that we are mutant monkeys that aren't special and have no purpose you can, but if you think your better then that, insert religion is here for you!!"

so my reply is "If you want to believe that a man in the sky is watching you, humans are basically evil, your morality and meaning in life comes from a book written in the bronze age then go ahead, but if you think that you can have your own purpose in life, that your not evil, that you choose to do things because you want too, not because a invisble man tells you too then existential atheism is here for you!"

btw if you read all this props to you actually your a nerd

[VALIS]

"If there is no god anything is permitted."
In my opinion once god is gone theists are right in claiming that there will be no good and evil. Their will only be actions and consequences: If you steal you go to jail, if your an jerk nobody will like you.
Societies don't need a god to figure out that stealing, murder, and genocides are bad.

That doesn't explain why they are bad and why we think such things are morally wrong. Why should we send a person to jail for murder if there is no objective morals and everything is subjective? If morals are subjective then everyone is right and no one is wrong!

[Blau&Gruen]

I recommend the lecture of the two essays (Sartre and Heidegger) in the other thread about Existentialism.

-> http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=268830&page=2

Jean Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism
http://www.marxists.org/reference/ar...ist/sartre.htm
Martin Heidegger, Letter on Humanism
http://www.wagner.edu/departments/ps...N_HUMANISM.pdf


It would be a good base for any discussion about the topic here in the future.

Have fun and enjoy'em. They are not too long. It may be good to start with Sartre's essay as it is more accessible on the surface.

[persianfan247]

That doesn't explain why they are bad and why we think such things are morally wrong. Why should we send a person to jail for murder if there is no objective morals and everything is subjective? If morals are subjective then everyone is right and no one is wrong!

Because no one wants to be murdered, and to prevent people from being murdered we all agree to punish the murderer to prevent future murders. No one wants their stuff stolen, no one wants to be raped, we all agree to punish the criminal, now there are some morals in all societies which are silly and probably originate 1000s and of years ago and are just followed because people are taught what is right and wrong. I think a lot of people aren't critical enough about what we think is right and wrong.

[Romanman]

Because no one wants to be murdered, and to prevent people from being murdered we all agree to punish the murderer to prevent future murders. No one wants their stuff stolen, no one wants to be raped, we all agree to punish the criminal, now there are some morals in all societies which are silly and probably originate 1000s and of years ago and are just followed because people are taught what is right and wrong. I think a lot of people aren't critical enough about what we think is right and wrong.

you took the words right out of my mouth

i've read sartes existentialism is a humanism and i loved it, it is a support of existentialism against accusations from marxism, right?

[Hippolord]

That doesn't explain why they are bad and why we think such things are morally wrong. Why should we send a person to jail for murder if there is no objective morals and everything is subjective? If morals are subjective then everyone is right and no one is wrong!

Thats what i believe!

I is a moral Relativist.

There is no Right though either... There is no Right, there is no wrong. Just like there is no good or evil. They are simply terms my friend, that we apply to things, in order to make life, and "Moral" decisions easier to make.

[AscendingIndigo]

Great post and your a nerd for writting it that long.

I know very well what you mean when you talk about feeling connected with the universe. When you take God out of your view of reality you can also rethink the idea of what can be defined as right, wrong, good or bad by the opinions resulting from "his" word. You get to a point that you realize that those are words based on someones personal opinion or experience with the world and that there is no official definition, only what you earn from your own personal experience. That makes you see things as they are apparent to you, without words to define them or tell you what they are.

You can see things from your own eyes for what they are and for everything you know them to be, defined so much more profoundly than any word could ever tell you. Instead of asking 'What' something is, as if asking for someone to tell you, you start asking 'Why it's that way' to yourself which is what resulted in your "if" and "then" statements. You then start to realize that you earn everything that you are just as all your past relatives earned their existence all the way up to your birth as far as human history can stretch. They earned their way to this point because they earned their existence by staying alive even through the toughest days just as you do. The only diffrence with the world today and the one they come from is that there is not as much of a challenge in life that makes you strive to define your existence, it's practicly handed to you now and we are all free to create whatever destructive habits we want without conciquence... and that is the legacy that will be passed onto our children.

I only hope the future is kind to us.

[PacSubCom]

"Without God everything is permitted." is true. That's reality - everything IS permitted, the universe doesn't care. Now some need illusionary punishments to hold them back. Some are evidently nice enough without such things. I suspect that the people with the punishments are nice enough without them too, they are just convinced otherwise.

[ket222]

persianfan247,
The problem with the 'although there is no God and therefore no objective standards for right and wrong, we don't have to worry bc there are laws and prisons to stop people from committing crimes" argument, is that people can very well get away with the worst crimes if they are cautious, and given the complete breakdown of society (which happens on occasion, see fall of Rome, WW2, etc), what is to stop people from committing crimes or atrocities?

A fascinating movie by Woody Allen, Crimes and Misdemeanors. I am convinced it is his rebuttal to dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. In Dost, raskolnikov can very easily get away with a meaningless murder of an old mean landlady (significantly he wants to become an ubermenschen 'beyond good and evil', but his newfound faith makes him realize his error, and he turns himself in.

In the Allen version, a family man has his mistress murdered, no one finds out about it, and years later at the wedding of his daughter, he believes that not only was his action justified (news of a mistress would have torn his family apart) but there would be no judgement upon him. Allen specifically says this is his vision of a world in which God is dead. And frankly he is right, if there is no God, one can occassionally find good enough justifications for such crimes.

This sort of thing infuriates many atheists on this board bc they react personally to it "I would never do such a thing!" but 1) that is not looking at the question objectively/philosophically; 2) we can never know what we would do if we were in desperate circumstances or societal laws broke down.

[Romanman]

as can lets say radicals muslims get away with murder if their cautious enough, your logic failed when you assume that believing in god places moral boundaries to.
How many KKK members have lynched blacks because they believed god approved.
How many radical muslims suicide bomb because god said so.
I know many christian kids who have committed the "sin" of stealing, in my opinion people are more deterred by laws then they are of god or their soul
In fact my dad commited adultery so i know from first hand experience that christians do continue to sin even if they believ in god.
So you wrong when you suggest that god instills these strict moral boundaries, in fact religion compensates for them because you can be "forgiven".
Second your wrong in that you didn't mention the fact that theists can find their own justifications for cimes.
So to give you a historical perspective compare the Early Middle Ages where religion was the guiding factor to the enlightenment where god was seperate from the state, their were wars in both their was murder, rape, etc in both.... arguably more in the middle ages. Look at all the ages where god guides man vs reason compare the accomplishments and the lifestyles of those periods

[Ummon]

5. Theists tend to claim that religion is enlightening and makes people better while atheism makes people evil. But on closer inspection look at what religions really say about humans, Original sin, sin in general, humans are basically evil, without humans there would be no evil, do you really want to have those sick beliefs.

Humans are basically evil, unless they make big efforts to become good.

[AscendingIndigo]

Humans are basically evil, unless they make big efforts to become good.

Good or Evil is defined in the mind of someone who see's a person do something that is particularly out standing in a positive or negative way according to what they have been conditioned to in life. A murderer raised in a cruel world where he had to kill since he was young wouldn't see anything wrong with killing but would probably find it strange that someone would save his life.

Good and Evil is based on the opinion of a specific person and not on any written rule.

[Ummon]

Good and evil are defined by exploitment and imposed suffering between equals.

[MaximiIian]

Good and evil are defined by exploitation and imposed suffering between equals.

I'd agree to that. At least as a personal ethic. I think people should treat others the way they want to be treated, which generally would mean not exploiting others or causing suffering.

Of course what "suffering" entails can differ from person to person. Your mileage may vary.

[AscendingIndigo]

No matter how you look at it, it's still based on opinion and not fact. I'm sure you have a good idea of what Good or evil is but I doubt very much that your definition would match very many others. Assumptions or affirmations based on popular opinion does not define fact especially if that fact changes from person to person.

[spartan117]

No matter how you look at it, it's still based on opinion and not fact. I'm sure you have a good idea of what Good or evil is but I doubt very much that your definition would match very many others. Assumptions or affirmations based on popular opinion does not define fact especially if that fact changes from person to person.

Not so much person to person but from one community there can be vast differences however there are some common values to be had. Many view incest as immoral as well as murder and theft. However they can be a bit relative but these can be explained as a result of biology influencing the creation of certain values that would encourage or allow humans to live in a community of other humans. Hence 'unjustified' killing would be considered immoral as it would be difficult for a community to function the way it does if such a behavior was tolerated.

But that does not make any particularly value absolute however that would be the reason for the similarities between some values among different communities in the human species.

[Ummon]

No matter how you look at it, it's still based on opinion and not fact.

Therefore you won't object if I kill you to rob you of all your possessions. It's an opinion, thus subjective, that killing and robbing is unfair.

[Hippolord]

Therefore you won't object if I kill you to rob you of all your possessions. It's an opinion, thus subjective, that killing and robbing is unfair.

Actually, thats how i look at things...

It's all an opinon. Humans are not good or Evil, they are what they choose to be, and no other can place upon them such alabel, except for themselves. You can kill me and rob me, sure go ahead, and you will be punished for it. Not because it is inherently Evil. But because you have aided in the Degradation of Society, and therefore to stop the further spread of such ideas and/or actions, you must be "removed" from said society.

We do not punish those, or should not punish those, based upon whether we belive them to be good or evil. For that is a matter of opinon. We should punish people, for the fact that they have aided in the destruction of a stable society, in your case, through removing one of it's members, and causing fear among the others.

Now on the other hand, if you so happen to belive that the destruction of said society, is benefical to the human race as a whole. Then so be it, but if you trully believe in what you say, you will take the consequnces for it...

[Taiji]

Therefore you won't object if I kill you to rob you of all your possessions. It's an opinion, thus subjective, that killing and robbing is unfair.

Because it's subjectively wrong to rob him he can't object?

Presumably you are the subject or else what you said is utter nonsense to me.

[Ummon]

Because it's subjectively wrong to rob him he can't object?

Presumably you are the subject or else what you said is utter nonsense to me.

Given he said subjectivity is the source of distinction between good and evil, I may disregard his distinction in favour of mine own and kill him nonetheless. And he must agree with me, as well. Because he said it is subjective.