Then I am pleased to put your anxiety on that score to rest.Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Mon Nov 16, 2020 12:37 pm I think you are believing that politicians require to believe in your God and that if they don't (as the atheists don't), then you think they are somehow inadequate to lead because you presume a lack of religion leads to definite corruption at least somewhere.
My contention would not be that politicians require to believe in God. It would merely be that if they do not, they would not be able to justify rationally the laws that they might make. All their policies and pronouncements would become merely arbitrary -- impossible for them to explain in terms of the way the world really is. So they could still make as many laws as they wished, of course; but none would only longer be grounded in explicable rightness, none could only longer be provided justification.
Quite the opposite is true. If there were no God, of course the Atheist would be right. He would be right by definition, in fact. But there would be no further justification available to him after that fact. He could no longer explain why it mattered whether one believed the right thing or a wrong thing, so long as the wrong thing was serviceable to some human end.What I hear you believe is that even IF there were no God, that the Athiest would still be wrong in your eyes.
One cannot "base" things on people. One can choose to respond to popularity, of course, if one chooses to; but popularity is not a "base" for anything, in the sense that human beings are all contingent, transient and changeable, as are all their communities. They are far too wobbly a "base" for anything objectively right to be built on, therefore....one who bases their leadership purely on real people...
I do not assume this. Nietzsche does, and you can see it in his famous "Tale of the Madman." But Nietzsche was that rarest of all beasts, a truly courageous Atheist who wanted to push his own beliefs to their logical and inevitable conclusions. Personally, I find that most people who declare themselves Atheists do not want to do that at all. Rather, they prefer to "taxicab" their beliefs -- meaning that they claim Atheism only so long as it serves their personal preferences and takes them to places they want it to go; but as soon as the logical consequences of Atheism begin to become unpleasant (which they inevitably do, as Nietzsche said) they leap out and run away without "paying the fare," so to speak.How can you assume that IF THERE WERE NO GOD (that possibly you are wrong), that we'd crumble in to chaos?
So you will find that many Atheists continue to celebrate things like human rights, conventional morality, and claims of ultimate human teleology, even though their Atheism will warrant none of these things as even existing. And personally, I'm very thankful that so many Atheists are inconsistent. For as Nietzsche rightly said, the world run by the logical consequences of Atheism would certainly be more cruel than any we have seen so far.
That's not a very good solution. Most philosophers today acknowledge the fact of what they call "incommensurable moral pluralism," which is an egghead way of saying that different groups of people want things so different from one another that often a compromise or middle point is just impossible or immoral.We set up any organization or meeting place with the intent to negotiate between DIFFERENT people and ideas, or between competing demands we have in common.How? On what basis do we know which rules ought to be assigned to government?I already treat government AS the place we assign 'moral' rules.
For example, what's the midpoint between the claims, "The life of a woman is worth half that of a man," and the claim "Women are equal to men"? Different people groups take those views: how do we negotiate that? Or what is the midpoint between infanticide and infanticide being immoral? Can you half-kill a baby?
The upshot is that there are winners and losers in the "multicultural" game. And middle points are not always available to be had. Somewhere along the line, somebody needs to be able to say something like, "I know you think X, but not-X is really right."' And how does one arrive at that?
You're really just valourizing the majority there.That is just the first example of a 'moral' WE create that does not have to be something that Nature itself is bound to obey.
Because you're suggesting that the "we" can bind, you're actually inadvertently praising the power of more people to suppress the desires of fewer people. You're suggesting that larger numbers can legitimately use their power to oppress minorities. But I suspect that's not what you meant to imply. Still, that's what it is.
I do not recall having suggested any such thing, actually.If Nature is God's domain or inclusive of it,
Your only out here is to prove that your specific God exists and disdains our FREE CHOICE to do evil by assuring NO CHOICE exists to cause evil.
Quite the opposite, Scott. I'm no determinist. Again, I've said nothing to suggest I ever was.
This is actually a very sensible question, Scott. I'm glad you raised it.Why would God (as Nature) give us 'free will' to go against his non-free preference to favor only those doing 'what he demands? Why would it penalize the very evil for which it created for us to HAVE free choice at all?
Why would God allow us free choice, and then penalize us for making the wrong choice?
Are you a father, Scott? Have you ever allowed your child to make a choice you knew was a bad one, but allowed it because you knew there was some value in allowing your child to make the decision anyway? I think a lot of parents have done just that. One of the things that a good parent understands, and values, is that in order to be individuals -- to have their own identities and wills -- children must be allowed a certain measure of freedom. And freedom means not just the right to make the approved choice, but even the freedom to choose badly. Absent the real possibility of a bad choice, there will be no sense in which you can say your child learned to make the right choice, or that he/she ever made a personal choice at all.
And children who grow up smothered by the control of their parents never really do become individuals, have their own wills and identity. They remain slaves of their parents' controlling influence. They never learn to choose the good, because there was never any latitude for them to choose anything else.
Could free choice actually be such a great good that it exceeds even the value of preventing all evil? It's an intriguing thought. How do you see that?
No, I'm speaking of what really happens in THIS world...what has happened, in fact, in every declared Atheist regime in history.Now you are moving into the realm of the 'next' worldBut nothing can be "based on" people, because people are temporal, contingent, local, personal beings. Not one of them has any universality. So in order to "base things on people" you're going to have to put some people in charge of the others -- but you will never be able to say why the power-group you put at the top is the right one, the legitimate one, because no reasons for that actually exist.They are people-based because that is all we CAN deal with.
So Atheism is going to issue in tyranny, every time. It can't do anything else.
"Animal"? You mean "human animal"? Would poor human behaviour, prove that God exists?Given any animal's bloody past, even if there were no god, would the poor behavior of the animal, if it is assumed 'bad' to you, prove that God exists?Given Atheism's bloody past, I hardly think there's anything "odd" about mistrusting it at all.Your concern against the atheist is odd though.
Actually, yes. That will shock you, but it's true. If there is no God, then there is no objective category "evil." (You even suggest this in your wording, so I assume you realize it.) So if "evil" is a real category, and really exists, and if you suppose that it can be used or called-upon to form an objectively valid accusation against God, then you also have to be assuming that God must exist.
Shocking thought, no?
No, that wasn't my point. Unlike your suggestion, I'm not in favour of the majority of "the people" being permitted, without further justification, to dictate to the minority. So I wasn't pointing to the fact that Theists are a majority (though they are). What I was pointing to is the rather shocking fact that you're not even talking about the majority.If everyone jumped off a bridge, does this mean it is a 'good' thing to do?Yes? You think so?While the tendency of one who is not religious may lead one to feel nihilistic, those who admit of having no religion are still being ACCOUNTABLE to the people in that they have no means to back out of their responsibility.
Let's think again. On what legitimate basis are they being "accountable"? What gives this group you call "the people" the right to demand "accountability" from individuals? And why do you exclude "religious people" from "the people," as you call them? After all, agnostics are not more than 4% of the world's population, and avowed Atheists not more than another 4% (CIA). That means you are claiming that 92% of the people are not "the people" of whom you speak.
So what gives that 8% the right to demand of the other 92% that it should be "accountable" to them?
That's a stunner, isn't it? I mean, since Atheists and agnostics are only 8% of the world's population, then to say that their suppositions should be used to shape the whole rule of law is to say that 8% should be allowed to dictate to 92%. I want to understand, then, if that is your position: because very clearly, you're no longer talking about the majority ruling, but about a vast minority.
Personally, I reject majority rule as a principle, except in modus vivendi arrangements. It can never be established that the majority is always right, is always legitimate, is always deserving of getting its way. It's merely a provisional arrangement in democracies, because no better metric can presently be located. But I think it's an unstable arrangement.
No amount of people can assure what is true about God's existence either, without God actually existing independent of our opinions.
You are exactly right about that. But also, even if every person in the world were to disbelieve in God, that would not result in God not objectively existing. His existence, either way, is an independent fact. Agreed.
But given we cannot literally force God to come down here and take over the throne,
"Force"? No, of course not. But you are too impatient. For now, all we have is human political arrangements, which are all temporary and fallible. But that does not tell us anything about the future.
No, I'm simply pointing out that if you ask an Atheist WHY anybody should be accountable to anyone else, his answers will all be thin and dusty, or else, if he's smarter, just silence. For Atheism does not imply that anybody has any duty to "account" to anyone else at all.If the reality is nihilistic, then so be it.
Well, if it is, then nobody is legitimately "accountable" to anyone or anything.
Then you are suggesting that you would see no option BUT to BE deceptive given it would be all that is left to compete with, correct?
Well, Atheism is not a rationally defensible belief. Even Dawkins has openly admitted that, and prefers to label himself a "strong agnostic," so as to avoid that obvious trap. Atheism is a private wish, not a set of public evidences.The athiest would be an idiot to admit themselves openly AS an "athiest" IF they recognized your belief was correct.
Then you're back to this: that you want the 4% who decisively disbelieve in God (Atheists) to create all the rules for everybody else. Is that what you are intending?Humans in general in a world that lacks any 'god'.Who is "we"?We have to face it and then CREATE our own rules of ideal conduct.
IF there were a God (let us continue to speak hypothetically here) then "taking advantage" would be the last thing it was safe to do.Note that IF there is a 'god', the one thing that you COULD take advantage of this process is by proving the we can create the very properties of what we think some real God could be.
I think I've made an excellent argument here that you cannot deny.
The thought never entered my mind.I am not trying to defeat any 'goodness' in you.
What if God had not left you in the dark about this, but had actually spoken? What if God had already revealed what would be pleasing to Him, and what would not be? What if He had already pointed us to the good we should choose, but left us the option to choose otherwise, so that we would have freedom, choice, personality, identity and soul?If a God exists that set us free to behave AND he chose it in such a way that you CAN doubt his existence, perhaps this 'God' would be welcoming of our intent to TRY in light of no hope!
These are interesting questions to ask, are they not?
