Atheist In A Foxhole

[Immanuel Can]

I think IC makes straw atheists to decry. Could be wrong tho' as I think him American and they are full of angry ex-theists and atheists living with the more bonkers of the godbotherers.

Bad guess. None of the above. I share your roots, though the UK is not my present home. I live in a nominally secular, developed, Western country. But I have lived in the Developing World as well...

Just FYI. My frame of reference is not America, though I understand America quite well.

[Immanuel Can]

Marx said "Religion is the opiate of the masses." ...

Not quite, he said 'opium' and 'people' and others had said pretty much the same thing.

Wow. Who's splitting hairs? I was quoting from memory, but had I wished to, I could have bothered to look up the precise wording. No big deal: Marx wasn't particularly penetrating on that point.

You conflate atheism with nihilism in your straw men.

Consistent Atheism inevitably issues in Nihilism. Rationally-Inconsistent Atheism happens in many forms, but Humanism and Progressivist versions are common. Both overlay unsupportable positive claims on the essential negation that is Atheism. The "Straw Men" are actually these latter two: and you can see that's true because nothing in Atheism supports any positive claims at all, as you have rightly noted.

The atheist posits many meanings for life.

As a sociological statement, I have already noted that this is true. But if it's sociologically true, then from a rational perspective, it's actually a telling criticism of such Atheists. For to say that Atheists posit meanings is only to say they are inconsistent and irrational in their applications. Nothing in Atheism allows for a "meaning" to exist objectively. "Meaning" itself, then, can only mean "purely subjective valuation," which differs in no important way from a self-delusion, since by Atheist reckoning, no objective data exists to support any such meaning.

Atheists are playing doublespeak: they say "no meaning is objective," then "I have meaning." They cannot rationally have both statements, without fudging the word "meaning."

So I take it you are happy with IS going its way?

What a bizarre idea. Do you suppose that someone who is "religious" must think all other religions are true and good? That's a liberal-democratic conceit, perhaps, but not an idea that has any rational justification or necessity.

You conflate atheism with nihilism...

No need. The former inevitably issues in the latter if it is pressed to its only rational consequence. "Conflation" only happens when two things do NOT automatically coincide.

Otherwise, go ahead and show me the rational justification for a "positive-believing Atheism," -- like perhaps Humanism? Ooops. Wait. You already agreed that Atheism is only committed to the negation of belief in God....So I guess you're going to have to contradict yourself to do it then.

This is a good way to get back to the subject of the strand. The author says that Atheism can be "consoling" in the face of death. So let's just hear how that "consolation" would go...

Console me. Or if not me, then console the Atheist faced with death. Let's hear what you have for him.

[Immanuel Can]

I cannot grasp what "consolation" can come from the non-belief in any values at all. ...

Whoa! There. Where does it say the Atheist has no belief in any values?

You do. Right below.

I wrote: For as earlier commenters have said, that is what Atheism entails: nothing but the statement, "There is no God." And from that statement, of course, you can also draw "There is no afterlife," "There is no Creator," ...

You wrote: True.

You say it's "true" that Atheism entails nothing but the statement "There is no God." If anyone's getting more than that -- values, meaning, morals and so on -- they are clearly not coming from Atheism itself, then, by your own admission.

we can have the objective goal of making this world a more comfortable place for those who agree that this would be a better thing for each of us.

You CAN have any goal you want...again, that's just a sociological observation. You CAN have a belief in the Tooth Fairy too, if you want. That's not the question. The question is, are you rationally entitled to affirm the goal? Is it rational for you have such goals in a systematically defensible way, based on Atheism? That is the question. And Atheism does not provide any title to such things. If you feel the need of them, you'll have to borrow them from somewhere else, some creed overlayed on top of Atheism; for as you note, Atheism entails no such claims.

...apparently cosmologists may be changing their minds about this and it look like the big-crunch and bounce may be back on the cards so Nietzsche and the Hindus and reincarnationists may win the game.

So you concede the possibility of Hinduism and Buddhism? How non-Atheist of you.

Seriously, though, the Big Crunch and Big Bounce, when coupled with Atheism, will not be any kind of consolation or existential answer. If the world "goes around" again, it very clearly will not be YOU that goes around. It will be some other entity, and some other set of atoms. So what is the consolation you find in seeing yourself as the dross of the oscillation of the indifferent universe? Either way, you're dead. You've made no advance for yourself on a linear universe.

But let's say they don't, then as an atheist you do it for your living family and friends and you have descendants so they can do it for theirs, your dreams are for now, as are your contributions, plans and values.

And all of those are for cosmic heat death. Again, what consolation?

Freedom from a tyrannical parent.

You're angry with religions that posit the existence of a tyrannical parent?

... in the main, you are talking to ex-theists, a very bitter and angry bunch, not atheists. I think we are living in the light.

No, actually. I find plenty of both ex-religious people and atheists, and I talk to everybody. But on the matter of how meaning and value can be infused into the universe, I find from them no light at all. I do find illegitimate overlaying of different creeds, but nothing from Atheism itself.

Anyway, it's not "bitterness and anger" that make Atheism nihilistic: it just always is, if you take it to its logical end. Most Atheists do not, though: and that is what allows them to speak of being "happy" or "having meaning." They've never really thought the demands of their own skepticism through to the inevitable conclusions.

That may make some Atheists better persons than they would otherwise be: I have no doubt that it does. But it also makes them inconsistent and irrational in their beliefs, ultimately.

[/quote]But they do, the objective reality of living others and one's descendants.[/quote]
Now, surely you can see that this is merely a holding strategy, though. it moves the essential question only back one step, and rationality then calls for us to ask, "How are these "others" bearers of value? Do they derive their value, like you say you do, from their value to "others"? An infinite regress ensues, and no light appears.

For all one's descendants will also die. And meanwhile, your memory will be gone much sooner. How many of us can even name our mother's great grandfather, for example? Human memory is the most perfidious of all quantities; but even if somehow it were not, what hope does it impart to the dying that other dying creatures will briefly remember them?

To defend such a "consolation," you would have to show that "others and one's descendants" somehow infuse an objective value into life. But Atheism offers no such statement. You'll need to swipe it from Humanism or just blind optimism, because it's just not there.

In sum, we're talking about what we can do to console an Atheist in a Foxhole. You seem to say the only consolation is to give oneself the illusory feeling that one's tiny doings, or the residue thereof imprinted on other doomed creatures gathered on an originally-accidental-but-now-doomed planet will somehow matter to the indifferent cosmos when the aeons of inevitable blackness roll over it all...

So then, surely you can show us why we ought to think you're right? That seems a minimal task for any philosophy claiming to be rational, no? How ought we to be consoled in the face of death, Atheist style?

[Immanuel Can]

Much has been made in the past few years about the trend, of leaving the churches, which is not so much a mass exodus but slowly, bit by bit. At a more general level, the recognition that religion’s usefulness or even benefit has run its course, is precisely what Nietzsche referred to as the death of God.

In fact God has left the building for many and one could say because of a lack of authenticity, it's very message is garbled and untrue. People's former belief has become obsolete and they are replacing God with something else. "We don't need a God centred religion, we need a Man centred religion". Man Replaces God With Himself.

Seems reasonable.

You're out of touch with recent demographics, Vor. You're describing a phenomenon that was happening only in the West, and only up until a couple of decades ago.

It was thought then that the trend was inevitable and irreversible. That has proved wrong. There are massive, massive religious movements afoot in the present world, but especially in the so-called "Second" and "Third" worlds. Even in the "First" world, though, religions of a traditional type may be dying, but variations and new movements are growing quite rapidly. It seems the impulse to seek ultimate answers cannot be repressed.

[Immanuel Can]

We're kind of screwing ourselves out of our historic alibies and coverups aren't we? We're now forced to say WE did it instead of GOD told us to do it. It's the picture of Dorian Gray in reverse.

What an interesting observation, Dubious. Thank you for that thought.

I agree. If God is dead, then who is left to take the blame?

And indeed, how can we even imagine a thing called "blame" can be justified? For there is no ground for establishing which of the random phenomena of the universe are "good" or "bad." All simply *are.* It would seem this completely obliterates any basis for being mad at God for evil; for why should one contingent natural phenomenon (i.e. me), be angry at another contingent natural phenomenon (i.e. crime, earthquakes, disease)?

It makes no sense at all.

[Immanuel Can]

I believe that Atheists must either break with hard science at some point, or they must only allow themselves the consolation that hard science offers. If an afterlife could be proven in a measurable way, then I'm sure that they would believe in it.

I agree. If they claim that only "hard science" is real, then only "hard science" can provide them any answers. If the only real entities are measurable, then only measures can be trusted to tell us truth.

And things like "morals," "selves," "love," or "mind" are all unmeasurable. They can only be inferred from other sociological observations, but not proven.

At the risk of waxing lyrical, I offer this poetic meditation from Archibald Rutledge for the entertainment of those who love such things:



Come, now, you most careful layers of T-squares,
You tedious extractors of square roots and cube roots,
You stooping squinters through microscopes,
You merciless probers and meticulous dissectors,
You would-be plotters of the curves of life,
Mathematically sure or else unbelieving;
You scorners of all but what mechanics
Can drearily prove: I challenge you,
Even in your pride, even in your own citadel,
Using those very instruments in which alone
You have such almighty faith,
Draw for me now the design, the plan
Of the universe; tell me how this earth, a star, is hung,
Diurnally turning for the refreshment of darkness and dew;
With your unfailing knowledge instruct me now
Who sensitively fringed the retiring gentian's beauty;
Or with your calipers, infallibly certain, bound for me
The mystic wild parabola of love.

[Dubious]

Excellent poem and appropriate! Love it when verse is inserted to declare further the meaning of the post. Wish it were done more often. Poetry can contain a great deal of philosophy and is certainly a close relative. From what I recall, philosophy was first rendered by poetry.

[Wyman]

I didn't say anyone claimed that atheism makes one happy. ...

"I'll never understand atheists devoid of angst/despair. I.e. happy atheists."?

If happiness stems from beliefs, I have trouble seeing how atheism does not prohibit people from being happy. ...

Because there is more than just religious belief.

Of course, happiness may stem from something else.

You think only religious belief can make one happy?

I have dealt with nihilism's challenge as well, but I see it as resignation more than a positive victory. ...

I think this means that you are still stuck in nihilism as, for myself, the positive victory comes from the freedom of choice nihilism offers, but then again we'd have to clarify which nihilism we're talking about.

And I have yet to see any good arguments otherwise. What I meant by 'philosophers' as I defined it above (perhaps wrongly) was people who are not resigned, but still curious as to those issues (moral/ethical).

Why do you think the atheist is not?

As for freedom - yes, that's the issue. But I don't 'wish' the world was devoid of freedom, I just haven't seen any good arguments to convince me otherwise. ...

So we agree, a world with a 'God' is unfree?

I quoted Tolstoy once on another thread - 'If we concede that human life can be governed by reason, the possibility of life is destroyed.' Dostoevsky also grappled with this issue throughout all of his novels - both eventually turned to faith after a great amount of searching and despair.

Those Russians eh! Stoic doom and gloom is their favourite pastime.

So I completely agree with Immanuel Cant even though I don't believe in God.

I think IC makes straw atheists to decry. Could be wrong tho' as I think him American and they are full of angry ex-theists and atheists living with the more bonkers of the godbotherers.

I didn't say anyone claimed that atheism makes one happy. ...

"I'll never understand atheists devoid of angst/despair. I.e. happy atheists."?

If happiness stems from beliefs, I have trouble seeing how atheism does not prohibit people from being happy. ...

Because there is more than just religious belief.

Of course, happiness may stem from something else.

You think only religious belief can make one happy?

Prohibiting happiness is not the same as creating happiness - the former is negative.

Yes there are more than just religious beliefs, but I was saying that atheism prohibits those beliefs from leading to happiness - but here I am equating happiness with 'meaning in life.' Perhaps that is wrong and happiness can come from something other than beliefs; but I haven't found that. I think atheism is a negative, prohibitive belief system - if followed to its logical extremes. Most don't follow it there, so they are deluded in to thinking that it does not prohibit meaning in life.

Yes, I agree that God implies a lack of freedom.

I'm tired of dealing with little generalities involving 'Americans' and how they think. Or Russians for that matter. You're better than such ad hominems.

[Arising_uk]

Wow. Who's splitting hairs? I was quoting from memory, but had I wished to, I could have bothered to look up the precise wording. No big deal: Marx wasn't particularly penetrating on that point. ...

I think that quote of his that you ignore says differently.

Consistent Atheism inevitably issues in Nihilism. ...

It's a fair point.

Rationally-Inconsistent Atheism happens in many forms, but Humanism and Progressivist versions are common. Both overlay unsupportable positive claims on the essential negation that is Atheism. The "Straw Men" are actually these latter two: and you can see that's true because nothing in Atheism supports any positive claims at all, as you have rightly noted.

I think this 'rationally-inconsistent' is a nonsense upon your part and just more of the strawman you wish to build as as the positive claims made for these positions arise from being consistent with the rational that there is no 'God' or external being providing meaning or demanding obedience.

As a sociological statement, I have already noted that this is true. But if it's sociologically true, then from a rational perspective, it's actually a telling criticism of such Atheists. For to say that Atheists posit meanings is only to say they are inconsistent and irrational in their applications. Nothing in Atheism allows for a "meaning" to exist objectively. "Meaning" itself, then, can only mean "purely subjective valuation," which differs in no important way from a self-delusion, since by Atheist reckoning, no objective data exists to support any such meaning.

But nothing in the Atheist position stops there being an objective world, nor intersubjectivity, nor subjectivity, as such in a world without a 'God' or external being to provide meaning we are left to ourselves to decide what we value and find meaningful, so sociology not theology holds sway and there is no telling criticism.

Atheists are playing doublespeak: they say "no meaning is objective," then "I have meaning." They cannot rationally have both statements, without fudging the word "meaning."

They don't say there is no meaning, just no meaning provided by a 'God' or external being.

What a bizarre idea. Do you suppose that someone who is "religious" must think all other religions are true and good? That's a liberal-democratic conceit, perhaps, but not an idea that has any rational justification or necessity.

Not so, this Liberal atheist thinks such creeds should be opposed whereas you said the atheist should not be negating anyone's creed so presumably this applies to creeds other than your own? No, don't tell me, yours is the only one true creed, and yet all the other creeds tell the same story? How is this poor atheist to choose.

No need. The former inevitably issues in the latter if it is pressed to its only rational consequence. "Conflation" only happens when two things do NOT automatically coincide.

You know that you are an atheist with respect to others 'God's' don't you? Or are you like the protestant Africans who believe that the Bible tells them that there are other 'Gods'?

Otherwise, go ahead and show me the rational justification for a "positive-believing Atheism," -- like perhaps Humanism? Ooops. Wait. You already agreed that Atheism is only committed to the negation of belief in God....So I guess you're going to have to contradict yourself to do it then.

Not so, atheism just says it doesn't believe in your 'God', that the atheist can believe in positive behaviours towards others is the result of having to choose one's way of life rather than have it dictated.

This is a good way to get back to the subject of the strand. The author says that Atheism can be "consoling" in the face of death. So let's just hear how that "consolation" would go...

You're going to die but we'll miss and remember you with the love we had for you in life.

Console me. Or if not me, then console the Atheist faced with death. Let's hear what you have for him.

You're going to die but we'll miss and remember you with the love we had for you in life.

[Arising_uk]

Prohibiting happiness is not the same as creating happiness - the former is negative. ...

Who's prohibiting anything? All the atheist says is 'I don't believe in your 'God' or 'There is no 'God''. If that upsets the godbotherers then their faith is pretty weak.

Yes there are more than just religious beliefs, but I was saying that atheism prohibits those beliefs from leading to happiness - but here I am equating happiness with 'meaning in life.' Perhaps that is wrong and happiness can come from something other than beliefs; but I haven't found that. I think atheism is a negative, prohibitive belief system - if followed to its logical extremes. Most don't follow it there, so they are deluded in to thinking that it does not prohibit meaning in life.

I think this wrong, followed to its logical consequence it involves one in exactly making a meaning to one's life.

Yes, I agree that God implies a lack of freedom.

So Nietzsche was correct, slave mentality and sheep? As the 'Lord' is thy shepherd.

I'm tired of dealing with little generalities involving 'Americans' and how they think. Or Russians for that matter. You're better than such ad hominems.

Wasn't meant to be an ad-hom, just a reflection upon what the internet portrays life in religious America as. Are you truly saying that Tolstoy did not embody Russian stoicism and their gloomy outlook upon most matters?
p.s.
I've stand corrected by IC.

[Arising_uk]

...

It was thought then that the trend was inevitable and irreversible. That has proved wrong. There are massive, massive religious movements afoot in the present world, but especially in the so-called "Second" and "Third" worlds. Even in the "First" world, though, religions of a traditional type may be dying, but variations and new movements are growing quite rapidly. It seems the impulse to seek ultimate answers cannot be repressed.

As Marx pointed-out, the poor and downtrodden will always grasp for succour, its what the pastors and preachers rely upon to fill their coffers.

Still, in a strange way I look forward to this possibility as at least it will put to bed the 'atheists have killed more people' argument as this time around religious wars will be fought with advanced weaponry.

[Hobbes' Choice]

It seems the impulse to seek ultimate answers cannot be repressed.

The unending skill for humans to produce idiotic, false and meaningless answers is undiminished also.

[Arising_uk]

You do. Right below.
...
You wrote: True.

You say it's "true" that Atheism entails nothing but the statement "There is no God." If anyone's getting more than that -- values, meaning, morals and so on -- they are clearly not coming from Atheism itself, then, by your own admission.

But you said the atheist has no belief in any values not atheism? So whilst it is true that the atheist cannot get its values from Atheism, because it is not a belief system like religion, it is exactly because one is an atheist that one has to make or find values to believe in.

You CAN have any goal you want...again, that's just a sociological observation. You CAN have a belief in the Tooth Fairy too, if you want. ...

You can, just as you can believe in a 'God'.

That's not the question. The question is, are you rationally entitled to affirm the goal? Is it rational for you have such goals in a systematically defensible way, based on Atheism?

This is just your straw man again as it is not a belief system in the way that religion is. What it is is the acknowledgement that you better have a good reason to believe and value what you do as there is no 'God' to provide one nor to judge you upon your choices, just others and they tend to want rational justifications for ones actions against them.

That is the question. And Atheism does not provide any title to such things. If you feel the need of them, you'll have to borrow them from somewhere else, some creed overlayed on top of Atheism; for as you note, Atheism entails no such claims.

Never said it did, although I'd be interested in you showing me this 'God' whom I'm supposed to obey? Especially since there seems to be much conflict amongst believers and that historically there appear to be many of them.

So you concede the possibility of Hinduism and Buddhism? How non-Atheist of you.

Personally, if I was going to bother with such things, I find a pantheon more plausible but I like the Buddhists as they don't bother with 'Gods' but just stick with man. Why did you skip Nietzsche?

Seriously, though, the Big Crunch and Big Bounce, when coupled with Atheism, will not be any kind of consolation or existential answer. If the world "goes around" again, it very clearly will not be YOU that goes around. ...

Not so, Nietzche might out as in his model you will exactly be repeating your actions and there is nothing in the Physics that says this won't happen.

It will be some other entity, and some other set of atoms. ...

Not necessarily.

So what is the consolation you find in seeing yourself as the dross of the oscillation of the indifferent universe?

Well, one is that if I'm a follower of Nietzche then I'll be doing the moral actions that I chose and two that since I'm not Christian the idea that we are dross does not entail and since the universe is indifferent I care not about it.

Either way, you're dead. You've made no advance for yourself on a linear universe.

But with a bit of luck my descendants will, as for myself I'll console myself with the advances I can make in the here and now, not some pipe dream dependent upon an imaginary being.

And all of those are for cosmic heat death. Again, what consolation?

Unlike the Christian I find life the consolation.

You're angry with religions that posit the existence of a tyrannical parent?

No, I care little for what the religious do unless they impact me. You asked me what consolation I could have from not believing in your 'God' and I told you.

No, actually. I find plenty of both ex-religious people and atheists, and I talk to everybody. But on the matter of how meaning and value can be infused into the universe, I find from them no light at all. I do find illegitimate overlaying of different creeds, but nothing from Atheism itself.

That's because it is not a belief system like religion. It is exactly that we can infuse meaning and value onto an indifferent universe that allows you to erroneously assume that your 'God' exists in the teeth of no evidence. Show me your 'God'?

Anyway, it's not "bitterness and anger" that make Atheism nihilistic: it just always is, if you take it to its logical end. Most Atheists do not, though: and that is what allows them to speak of being "happy" or "having meaning." They've never really thought the demands of their own skepticism through to the inevitable conclusions.

It is exactly because they have thought them through that they can talk about being happy and having a meaning, it is that you cannot conceive of living without your belief that causes you to think otherwise as your life would apparently be meaningless.

That may make some Atheists better persons than they would otherwise be: I have no doubt that it does. But it also makes them inconsistent and irrational in their beliefs, ultimately.

Not so, its that you keep switching between it being a belief system and not.

Now, surely you can see that this is merely a holding strategy, though. it moves the essential question only back one step, and rationality then calls for us to ask, "How are these "others" bearers of value? Do they derive their value, like you say you do, from their value to "others"? An infinite regress ensues, and no light appears.

No infinite regress, just the circle of light

Talking about infinite regress, who or what made 'God'?

For all one's descendants will also die. And meanwhile, your memory will be gone much sooner. How many of us can even name our mother's great grandfather, for example? Human memory is the most perfidious of all quantities; but even if somehow it were not, what hope does it impart to the dying that other dying creatures will briefly remember them?

It shows that they knew how to love and be loved. One's existence is the tribute and memory to ones ancestors, I guess thats why ancestor worship predates your 'God'.

To defend such a "consolation," you would have to show that "others and one's descendants" somehow infuse an objective value into life. But Atheism offers no such statement. You'll need to swipe it from Humanism or just blind optimism, because it's just not there.

Never said it was, Atheism is the ground upon which one stands to make ones meanings and values, not the source. If Man is not the source of objective meaning then what is? If you say your 'God' then I ask you to show it to me objectively.

In sum, we're talking about what we can do to console an Atheist in a Foxhole. You seem to say the only consolation is to give oneself the illusory feeling that one's tiny doings, or the residue thereof imprinted on other doomed creatures gathered on an originally-accidental-but-now-doomed planet will somehow matter to the indifferent cosmos when the aeons of inevitable blackness roll over it all...

No, that is the Christian sheep attitude, I say the consolation is that without you there would be no meaning.

So then, surely you can show us why we ought to think you're right? ...

I just have and leave it to others to make their minds up but on the whole I could give two tosses whether the theist believes me or not.

That seems a minimal task for any philosophy claiming to be rational, no?

I think I've been fairly rational about it.

How ought we to be consoled in the face of death, Atheist style?

You're going to die, we will remember you with the love and affection we held for you in life. Thank you for being you.
p.s.
It's always puzzled me that the bulk of Christian funerals I've attended are such mournful affairs, why is this? Given the congregation supposedly believes that the deceased has gone to heaven and they they'll be meeting them later anyway.

[Immanuel Can]

Arising wrote:

I think this 'rationally-inconsistent' is a nonsense upon your part...

Really? You're interested in philosophy, but you don't think rational consistency matters? I think many will beg to differ with you...including every other philosopher.

But nothing in the Atheist position stops there being an objective world, nor intersubjectivity, nor subjectivity...

Under Atheism, there can be objective facts, but no objective values. There can be made-up meanings, but no ultimate meanings. There can be people, but no true purpose to their existence. And it was an Atheist who showed it...David Hume, as a matter of fact.

They don't say there is no meaning, just no meaning provided by a 'God' or external being.

You're making a common mistake. When someone says "Atheism cannot rationalize meaning," some people hear "Atheists don't believe in meaning."

I'm affirming both, because they don't contradict. Atheism has no meaning. Atheists feel the need of meaning, and make stuff up that they cannot rationalize from their Atheism. Both are true. Atheism is nihilistic, and Atheists are afraid to be nihilistic.

...you said the atheist should not be negating anyone's creed...

You misread me. I said that Atheists steal their values inauthentically from creeds. Many of those creeds from which they steal their values are just as wrong as Atheism. For example, Humanism is clearly a faith-based wish, and no more -- one that Atheism has to deny, because it cannot accept that human beings are somehow "special" in this indifferent universe. Nevertheless, hypocritical Atheists often meld Humanism with Atheism in the vain hope of abating the sting of nihilism inherent in Atheism itself.

...so presumably this applies to creeds other than your own? No, don't tell me, yours is the only one true creed, and yet all the other creeds tell the same story? How is this poor atheist to choose.

No creed thinks every other is equivalent to itself. No creed thinks other creeds tell the same story. Ask anyone, including Atheists, if they think their creed is on parallel with, say, fire-worship or astrology, and of course they will say "No." So there's no surprise there.

Anyway, what an Atheist "chooses" would only matter in a non-Atheistic universe. Otherwise, "choice" is also merely a happenstance, an accidental phenomenon of the universe.

...the atheist can believe in positive behaviours towards others is the result of having to choose one's way of life rather than have it dictated.

Not so. An Atheist has no grounds for even saying what a "positive" behaviour would be. All behaviors are equal, given an Atheist universe. Thus, if an Atheist does anything we can call "good" it can only be by accident, or because he fails to follow through on the logic of his own ideology. But he cannot know why it is "good" that he does so. He has no grounds for morality.

You're going to die but we'll miss and remember you with the love we had for you in life.

Very touching. But I will not be able to care. And you will forget me very soon anyway. And then the universe will end in overwhelming cosmic silence forever.

The blanket you offer is too small. Our feet stick out at the bottom and our sides are exposed to the chill winds of cosmic indifference. You'll have to do much better if you want to keep us warm.

[Immanuel Can]

Still, in a strange way I look forward to this possibility as at least it will put to bed the 'atheists have killed more people' argument as this time around religious wars will be fought with advanced weaponry.

How does it escape your notice that some religions have caused absolutely no wars at all? How is it that Atheists are possessed of such blind hatred that they cannot see the differences between creeds?

You yourself used ISIL as some sort of paradigmatic example of religion; but that religion, Islam is single-handedly responsible for 1/2 of the religious wars in history. And though that is still only 3.5 % of the wars that have been fought, it's the equivalent of every other religion and creed combined.

I have yet to detect any Mennonite massacres, any Hassidic pogroms, any Baptist Inquisitions or any Mormon crusades...

And yet you think ISIL = all religions?

What SOME bad religions may do, we cannot yet say. What Atheism already has done, we certainly CAN say. Last century, 148 million died in entirely non-religious wars. There is a 58% chance that the leader of any Atheist regime will kill a sizable portion of his populace. That's what we know about the compassions of Atheists.