Harbal wrote: ↑Sun Dec 17, 2023 9:59 am
...it needs to recognise that any duty it places on itself should be towards other human beings, not to a mythical tyrant, at the expense of other human beings.
Then what you want is Humanism. That's when small, mortal creatures imagine they're god, and start to worship themselves. It's very popular.
No, I don't want any kind of ism. And I don't know what I said that implies our worshiping ourselves.
What you said was, "...it needs to recognise that any duty it places on itself should be towards other human beings, not to a mythical tyrant, at the expense of other human beings." You're implying there is some objective "duty" that we "have" "should" be to human beings. But Evolutionism tells us that a "human being" is nothing but an accidental byproduct of an indifferent universe, recently ape-like, but still just a piece of cosmic dust-gone-strange.
You can't have any "duty" to such an entity. In order to imagine we do, we have to pretend that "human" means something special and elevated, something objectively deserving of our service and duty. That's Humanism.
Evolution has furnished us with the emotional function we call morality,
...which Evolutionism tells us is just another accident, with no reason for us to pay attention to it at all.
...that other little gift evolution has given us the potential to experience; guilt.
Lots of people think that's just a bad "gift," and we should get over it. They would accuse you of some form of illegitimate "shaming."
Admittedly, many Atheists do not live like that's true. Instead, they live as if life can still have purpose and meaning, as if ethics and morals are still important, and as if the good they do for others is really good...all the while, maintaining a set of basic suppositions about life that cannot rationalize with any of that.
That should demonstrate to you that no concept of God is needed in order to be able to value ethics and morals,
Well, because we were created by God, as moral beings, we DO have such a sense...even when we deny we ought to have it at all. That's one of the follies manifest in Atheism: that many Atheists insist on conforming themselves to ghostly "moral" qualities to which they deny the possibility of any legitimacy or objective existence.
According to their own story, that just makes them superstititious. It doesn't prove their moral nervousness is rational or legitimate in any way.
Still, I'm glad there are more Atheist hypcrites, in that regard, than not. I'd hate to see what they'd get up to if they actually believed their own claims about what we are and where we came from.
Morality is part of human nature,
It is. But Atheistically speaking, it ought not to be. Atheism denies there are any objective duties to be "moral." In fact, it can't even say what "moral" actually is, except by trusting its God-given intuitions about that, or "conscience," if you prefer. But its own worldview has to convince a thinking Atheist (like Nietzsche, Rand, and Huxley, to say nothing of Hitler, Stalin and Mao), that morality is really nothing but an inconvenient fiction: and when Atheists have acted like their worldview is true, millions have died.
I'm always kind of glad they aren't less hypocritical. It speaks well of their consciences and of them as people, if not of their rationality.
I don't think my absence of belief in God makes morality pointless, so it wouldn't be a rational reason to stop behaving morally.
Why would you behave morally, when being moral is so often inconvenient and even dangerous? The Evolutionistic story gives you no reason to stand on the side of good morals when your own interests are at stake.
You're a cheerful soul! Well, I wouldn't wish that upon you. We might not agree, but I certainly bear you no animosity, and I strangely enjoy your cybercompany.
I've heard of politicians who viciously rip one another to pieces in the debating chamber, and then go for a friendly drink together afterwards. I bear no animosity, either.
Well, maybe one day we'll be down at "the local" in Leeds or Bradford, and accidentally have a pint together.
But you touch on the right analogy: being political opponents doesn't mean you have to hate the opposition (sorry, Marxists). You can disagree agreeably; and just so, one can disagree in philosophy without resorting to any spite or ill-will. I think we both prefer that.
); burn them at the steak if you like; I'm sure you're dying to. 
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