This comes up from time to time, so I felt it merited its own thread. Here in the UK, atheism is typically a mark of nothing more than disbelief in gods. I have few friends who attend church, which is less a reflection of my choice of friends than the demographic of the country I live in. I tend not be exposed to bigotry as a result of denoting myself as such. I go online for that!
I don’t wear a badge or steer the conversation towards the subject, but it’s no secret either. No-one cares. If I wanted to run for public office it would be no barrier; people don’t appear to trust me any less, or assume amorality or a lack of goodwill on my part.
But other countries are different. Atheism is the ‘state religion’ in some, in others it can still be a reason to put you to death (surely one of the densest ideas ever dreamed up). I am interested in experiences, and in how you view ‘the other side’. Over to you.
Big Boy pants are a must.
Ah, the No True Theist fallacy visits TSZ.
I’ll get me kilt….
That does not make sense. I am an atheist because I have never seen any objective, empirical evidence for the existence of a god or gods. In fact, I’ve seen vanishingly few definitions of “god” that are even remotely coherent and without internal contradictions.
Are you seriously asserting that people reject theism solely because they want to sin?
Hip waders, in certain cases.
No true theist would sin, because if they were a true theist, they wouldn’t sin. Got it.
All that tells me is that this is written by someone who can’t imagine what the world might look like from a perspective other than his or her own.
In the Christian tradition I’m familiar with, living a completely sinless life is an unachievable goal. Do you know anyone personally who is completely without sin? Will you never sin again?
Atheists also have a conscience, of course, just like anyone else.
Coldcoffee, it appears to me your religion diminishes you. You are a dog who wants the treat and fears the stick. You cannot be good for its own merits.
CC :The set of sins for both atheist and theist is the same. Not recognizing sin as sin does not mean sin doesn’t exist so the number of ways a person can sin whether he is atheist or theist remains the same.
Since all theists don’t believe in the same God, they don’t even agree among themselves what the set of sins is.
it can’t be right because all those who claim to be theist are not necessarily theist. You need corroboration from their friends and church to consider them as true theist.
What if their church and friends aren’t true theists either?
=> Atheist keep demanding evidence for God, as if every scientific theory has evidence – there will be no material evidence of God just like there will be no evidence of birth of universe, OOL, black holes, multiverse. I could say God is in one of the string theory’s curled up dimension and he controls the world via quantum tunneling and quantum entanglement. It would make no sense to you, but can you honestly falsify that theory? It is ridiculous to demand for evidence for what is so obvious – your consciousness is obvious, that you can think is obvious – you don’t need evidence for that, you don’t need evidence for God either.
=> No one can live a sinless life, they can only make themselves strong enough to avoid sin as much as possible, and God expects only that of His subjects. Unfortunately atheist don’t even recognize that their is sin in the world.
=> There is a huge misconception that it is fear of God that drives theist to behave morally. No, it is their conscience, their belief that sin is something to be avoided, that directs their action. Atheist don’t even believe in sins.
=> There is demand for research. No respondent will truthfully declare that he/she is a theist and then proceed to list their sins. It is absurd to expect a realistic research on such topics.
CC : There is a huge misconception that it is fear of God that drives theist to behave morally.
No, sometimes it is fear of being put in prison just like atheists.If fear is not the big motivator what is the point of the Flood?
You appear to be arguing that anyone who claims to be a theist and admits to sinning is not a true theist, because no “true theist” would state that they were a theist and truthfully list their sins.
That’s quite the own goal.
The reality is that rather clever research techniques exist to get people to truthfully provide embarrassing answers, and that such surveys show that people who profess theism report behaviors as bad or worse than those who profess atheism. And there are other studies that don’t rely on self-reporting.
If sinners are excluded from the ranks of theists by definition, that would confirm the point. But then what kind of Christian would call Jesus a liar on this subject?
coldcoffee,
Surely being untruthful would itself be a sin?
Anyway, I don’t think I was talking of self-reporting. There must be some kind of correlation between one’s religious proclivities and misbehaviour, in an arena where both theist and atheist would concur on what constituted misbehaviour, for your original proposal to hold water – that atheists are more likely to [transgress on the Big Ethical Questions] than theists, due to not believing in the All-Seeing Eye and/or divine retribution.
Obviously I cannot speak for any non-theists besides myself, but I do find the whole category of “sin” to be problematic. It looks, to me, like a conflation of two very different things: genuine ethical transgressions, on the one hand, and transgressions against norms of social control, on the other.
The difference is this: genuine ethical transgressions involve (typically) the abuse of power, whereas norms of social control are (typically) uses of power. (So when power is used or abused is the central concern.)
coldcoffee:
It’s several against one here, so I do appreciate that you are responding to my questions
Ok, that’s more in line with what I’ve heard.
Naturally atheists don’t believe in sins, but we each do have a conscience, and we do have a concept of “things one shouldn’t do”. Surely you must be aware of this? Have you ever met any atheist who said that murder is acceptable?
I have a friend who is a fairly conservative Christian pastor, and there really is not much difference between us concerning moral questions. He claims an objective basis for his beliefs, and I don’t, but we conduct ourselves about the same in normal life.
There’s also the difference between claiming that one has (or doesn’t have) an “objective basis” for ethical prescriptions and prohibitions, and actually having one. (Anyone who doesn’t understand that distinction, doesn’t understand what “objective” means.)
I’ve been in these kinds of conversations often enough that I understand quite well why certain kinds of Christians will argue that “atheists” (in their straw-man caricature) lack an “objective basis” for morality, but in my experience, these conversations unfold according to a specific script.
(1) the non-theist realizes that the Christian has in mind here a very specific, very narrow conception of what an “objective basis” must be;
(2) the non-theist proposes a different conception of “objective basis” according to which the non-theist can maintain an objective basis of ethics;
(3) the Christian accuses the non-theist of “changing the definition” (because we all know that the meanings of words never change over time) — and, in a few remarkable instances, the non-theist is even accused of “sophistry” for doing so;
(4) the non-theist decides that reasonable discourse is no longer feasible, and the Christian declares victory.
Since I do not have any hope that this conversation will deviate from this tedious script, I shall bow out of the conversation for the time being.
I think this conversation has gotten somewhere. CC has argued that people who do not sin are less likely to do so, and most of us have agreed.
What CC has not established is that people who grow up being taught to believe in God are, in fact, less prone to sin. So far, the statistics call this into question.
GUANO
Really. No theist believes they have license to sin?
Does the term “once saved, always saved” mean anything to you? You may want to ponder these wise words of Susan B. Anthony: I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires. As best I’ve ever been able to tell, holding a theistic view is largely unrelated to, and independent of, behaving in a ‘good’ manner. Since atheists lack deity-belief, it follows that atheists cannot fall into the delusive trap of believing that whatever they want to do is sanctioned by the Creator and Sustainer of All Existence. Theists can and do fall into that trap.
I don’t agree that “uses of power” are central to the sins which ColdCoffee listed. I see greed, lust, sloth, etc as mostly “sins” which people commit against their own selves, that is, against their own peace of mind and health, irrespective of social interaction.
Clearly, atheist can and do commit these “sins”as do theists throughout their own lives.
Quite so — which is precisely why I call those transgressions against norms of social control (“work hard!” says the State, “avoid pleasure!”) rather than transgressions of genuinely ethical norms.
Of course there are cases where someone acts against his or her own peace of mind and psychic or physical health — lots of those kinds of cases!! — and I’m unsure what to say there.
If someone is highly sexually repressed, such that he cannot have loving and intimate erotic or romantic relationships with another person, is he actually unethically towards himself? If someone deals with intense, painful feelings by cutting herself, is she acting unethically towards herself?
I just don’t know.
Well, someone else said
I am confident that I understand the origin of the myth of the Garden and Original Sin. Of course it’s no surprise that the literalists get it wrong – they get everything wrong – but the sophisticated theologists get it wrong, too, in seeing it as some kind of metaphor for our separation from god. No, if I’m right, it’s a metaphor for our separation from ourselves, from the “angels of our better natures”.
I’m not talking about feeling like a failure compared to the dicta of god, corporation, clan, not even parents, but compared to our own personal intuitions that we could be better. Kinder, stronger, creative, generous … more worthy of the crown of stardust which is each of our birthright. But of course “sin” is also our birthright: temper, apathy, greed … because we’re meat creatures and as we grow we’re broken in little (or big) ways and can’t heal up straight.
So I think the priest clan had some handle on the truth when they wrote down that garden story, but as usual they had the wrong end of the scope; they thought they saw an eye in heaven judging them but they were/are wrong. It’s me judging me, and – I think – you judging you, just like every human has almost certainly done since before we were really even a human species.
Scientific theories are attempts to explain evidence and can be disproven by evidence.
Cosmic microwave background radiation.
At one point in time there was no life. Now there is. Clearly there was an origin.
You mean, aside from these?
Still speculative, but based on evidence.
You’re half right — it makes no sense. You’ve got no evidence for that assertion, though, and since you admit there is no way to falsify it, it isn’t a scientific theory.
In other words, you are admitting that you have no objective, empirical evidence for the existence of a god or gods. Why then would you believe in such a thing?
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
— Christopher Hitchens
The desire to reduce ethics to seven (or ten) neat categories is understandable but nonetheless laughable.
=> Why are the major sins missing from the short list ? The reason – short list are what could be called the ‘root sins’. Avoid those sins and you will never ‘graduate’ to the major sins. You can be happy and laugh all your life if you avoid those sins.
=> CMBR is evidence for after glow of BigBang – not of origin of universe. Just after BigBang Plasma was too hot and light could not have penetrated the plasma to leave any mark.The low entropy state of BigBang is unexplained and it is one of the reasons for multiverse theory It is believed that an earlier universe crunched to form BigBang, so no one is sure of Origin of universe.
OOL – at one point life was not there , now it is there, sure the question is how? Who is responsible? That’s not settled yet.
Blackhole – There is no blackhole according to latest paper by Hawkings and Lawrence Krauss believes there is no black hole. The list you link to are the detection of matter being pulled towards an object purported to be blackhole. No one has the image of the ‘event horizon’. Hawkings himself believes there is no event Horizon and hence no blackhole.
String Theory – If I say God exist in one of the dimensions of string theory, till you falsify string theory can not prove God doesn’t exist in the dimension
Everyone rejected Sun as the center of universe for centuries, Many refused to believe Earth was not flat, but ultimately truth prevailed. You will realize God’s existence sooner than later.
In your original post you said “Atheist keep demanding evidence for God, as if every scientific theory has evidence – there will be no material evidence of God just like there will be no evidence of birth of universe, OOL, black holes, multiverse.” I pointed out, with evidence, that you are wrong with respect to every claim you made in that sentence. Scientific theories explain evidence and are supported by evidence. Your attempt to create an equivalence between the utterly and completely unsubstantiated claims of the existence of a deity and the deeply evidenced and researched claims of science fails.
You’ve got the burden of proof backwards. If you want to claim that a god exists, you need to provide objective, empirical evidence. A deity is not the default assumption.
Our Sun is not the center of the universe (any more than any other point is the center). I’m not sure what your point is here.
The Christian Bible claims the Earth is flat. Do you deny the truth of that book?
Sure, just as soon as someone presents some objective, empirical evidence for anything that could reasonably be called a god. Got any?
.. then the burden of proof is upon you to show that the claim is correct. If you can’t, the claim should simply not be believed.
End of discussion.
I say invisible pink unicorns exist in one of the string theory dimensions.
Never mind that there is no evidence for string theory.
Which God? At last count Humans had invented at least 2,500 of them.
=> CMBR as birth of universe ,OOL ,Blackhole
deeply researched, yes, yet there is still no evidence of it.
=>What evidence do we have of ET ? NASA is spending billions to find ET. Has any scientist spent even a pence searching for God? How would you find Him till you seek Him?
=> Of course there is no evidence of String theory. That is precisely my point. What exists in String theories’ dimensions will not be known to you, so you can’t claim God (or pink unicorn) doesn’t exists till you disprove String theory.
=> Doesn’t matter which God is found, just like it doesn’t matter which ET is found first
You’re simply wrong. You should learn more about those topics before opining on them.
Really? Please provide proof of that statement, including official budget numbers and the specific programs.
This is just insulting. I was raised in a Congregationalist church. I listened to what was taught. I accepted it as a child. It was through seeking that I found out that no one has any objective, empirical evidence for any god.
Many other atheists have similar backgrounds. Many had deconversions far more painful than mine. Truly honest seekers find that there is no reason to believe.
Once again you have the burden of proof reversed. You are claiming that a god or gods exist. Prove it.
Let’s start simply with two questions:
1) What exactly do you mean by the word “god”?
2) What objective, empirical evidence do you have for the existence of such an entity?
Unless and until you can provide a coherent definition and solid evidence, you are quite literally talking nonsense.
I have to learn a lot, but even what little I learned proves you wrong. Please read my earlier comments again:
Can you refute even a single sentence?
========
Do you seriously believe the Kepler spacecraft launch and maintenance was cheap and didn’t run into billions of dollars? or NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite will cost just a few millions?
I don’t see any such demands for ET search, Holographic universe; Universe is simulation theory, Rainbow universe, Bubble universes, Worm hole etc.
How about ‘What do you mean by Dark Matter and Dark energy?’. ‘Where is the empirical evidence of both’. How about ET? Where is the empirical evidence?
Astronomy and astrophysics are rather ancient pursuits, not tied to SETI in any specific way.
Are you going somewhere with this?
I’ve read your comments carefully before responding. You seem to be attempting to make the case that scientific theories are as lacking in evidential support as is your claim that a deity exists. You’re wrong.
Rather than continue down the rathole you’ve dug, I’ll just point out that all scientific theories, definitely including those you mention, are based on evidence that they attempt to explain and are supported (or refuted) based on evidence turned up by further research. You admit this yourself when you reference data acquired via scientific research in your attempt to cast doubt on certain conclusions.
Your confusion is manifest in statements like this:
And this:
No one is suggesting that anyone accept any scientific hypotheses as true without evidence. No one is saying that evidence for these hypotheses is unnecessary. Science doesn’t make things up without evidence — that’s the role of theology.
Now let’s get back to the core issue. You are claiming that a god or gods exist. Please answer my two simple questions directly:
1) What exactly do you mean by the word “god”?
2) What objective, empirical evidence do you have for the existence of such an entity
It’s obvious that the evidence that convinces a theist is unlikely to convince an atheist. Whether or not one believes is a matter for each individual. Rationalising that something one has decided exists may actually be hidden in one of the dimensions of an unproven theory is creative, to say the least! But there’s no point expecting evidence that will convince anyway.
I don’t have a ‘difficult deconversion’ story. I’ve simply never found it convincing. But if people do, and it helps them in their lives, that’s great. I think if religion were wiped from human memory it would be back in a generation. I think it’s just how we are – a way to cope with possessing a strong sense of self independent of the body, and a reification of our innate propensity to admire some behaviours and abhor others. Where theists err, I think, is in thinking that, because they perceive morality as existing outside of human minds, denial of that must equate to the abandonment of morality. Whereas if I am right, and God’s morality is an approximate projection of our own, it’s not something we can abandon. We share that sense, whether we externalise it or not. We’re human, fallible but generally well-intentioned.
Theists just take the self-abasement, miserable-sinner lark a tad far IMO. Particularly in the matter of sexual conduct. Everything‘s a sin in that arena! But we wouldn’t be here without good old Lust. I’m all for it, personally. Just have to convince the wife! 😉
Euthyphro dilemma
If morality based on authority? If so, it is just the whim of the authority. The authority could enjoy inflicting pain.
If morality is independent of authority, it would not be changed by the nonexistence of the authority.
William seems to have embraced a variation of natural morality, asserting that there are natural consequences for moral and immoral actions. Natural morality is arguably objective, but it doesn’t require faith.
petrushka,
Yes, the Euthyphro dilemma is posed a dilemma for divine command theory — which is how it was originally posed in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro.
Interestingly, in the dialogue itself it is actually a dilemma about piety, not morality in our sense. Euthyphro proposes to define “piety” as “what the gods love.” Socrates’s question is, do the gods love what is pious because their love of it makes it pious, or do the gods love what is pious because they recognize piety as being worthy of being loved? Interestingly, Euthyphro does not hesitate to chose the latter. But this then raises the further question, in virtue of what characteristic do the gods recognize the pious acts as being worthy of their love? and so on!
Natural-law theory is developed by Aristotle (and indeed by Plato himself, on one reading of Republic) as an alternative to divine-command theory, and the Aristotelian view becomes “Christianized” in the late middle ages with Aquinas and others.
That’s a plausible view, but it’s not William’s view. William has stressed that objective morality requires necessary consequences for moral and immoral actions. But, on a reasonable interpretation of “natural,” everything natural is contingent, not necessary — although there are indeed physical laws which are necessary (“nomological necessity”), one might object that there is no necessity to those laws themselves. (The necessity is contingent, one might say.)
So, on William’s view, we must posit non-natural necessary consequences to moral and immoral actions, if those actions are to be regarded as objective, and since (according to doxastic voluntarism) we are free to believe whatever we chose to believe, we are free to chose that there are non-natural or trans-natural necessary consequences to our actions.
Patrick,
As best I can make sense of coldcoffee’s reasoning, one posit is as good as another. Dark matter, super-strings, gods, unicorns — what’s the difference? It’s all good — once we’ve departed from the strictly observable to unobservable posits, there are no rules!
It’s not part of the reasoning here that (i) posits must be introduced on the basis of evidence that provides the support for introducing the posit (e.g. “these observations are surprising, but if there were some unobserved entity causing these observations, the observations would follow as a matter of course”) or (ii) some posits really are more reasonable than others by virtue of having testable consequences (e.g. “if these observations were being caused by some unobserved entity, then we would expect further observations — so let’s look for them, and if they find them, that bolsters our confidence in the posit, and if we don’t find them, that weakens our confidence in the posit, unless there is a further posit such that . . ..”).
It’s a bit hard to have a conversation about the difference between science and metaphysics with people who doesn’t appreciate that there is a difference to begin with.
No. Natural means regular. Jump off a building, you fall down. Shoot someone and they are injured or dead.
I’m afraid I don’t follow the part about there being no necessity in the laws themselves.
Natural law are just formal summations of observation. The law of gravity, for example, is not a statement about why there is gravity,It’s just a formal description of what happens, based on observation.
One could discuss certainty regarding natural phenomena. Some are more certain than others. Clouds suggest rain, but not with any certainty.
CC : Hawkings himself believes there is no event Horizon and hence no blackhole.
Can you refute even a single sentence?
This is incorrect, Hawkings believes black holes exist,just the model is different.
I don’t see any such demands for ET search, Holographic universe; Universe is simulation theory, Rainbow universe, Bubble universes, Worm hole etc.
Except there is a effort to find evidence for each, but for now the truth of each is unknown, none are assumed true. Are you willing to say the same thing about God?
What I had in mind there was just this: that there is no deeper reason as to why the inverse-square law (for example) is what is is, or why the speed of light is what it is. Though there are indeed nomological necessities, they are necessary only respect to the actual world (and possible worlds like it); they don’t hold across all possible worlds, as the laws of logic do.
As best I can understand, I believe William wants to believe that there are “necessary consequences” to moral and immoral actions comparable to the necessary consequences that hold in logic and mathematics.
Needless to say, this is not something that I believe myself; natural morality is more than objective enough for me.
Kantian Naturalist,
Indeed. I’m just hoping that s/he will eventually admit that there is no evidence for her/his beliefs. That would be refreshingly honest.
Of course, getting some evidence from her/him would be even more interesting!
That’s kind of how we got here from UD. By asserting that the world is not Platonic, and “things” do not necessarily conform to the objects of formal logic.
Formal logic — as with Euclidean geometry — is self-consistent, but not descriptive of the real world.
Patrick,
Actually, I do think that the arguments in favor of a metaphysical conception of God — one that just defines God as “the ultimate explanation for all things” or “the necessary being which explains why all contingent beings are as they are” — are deeply compelling, and certainly not the sorts of considerations that can refuted on the basis of any empirical considerations.
Metaphysical speculations — whether theistic, naturalistic, or anything else — must be addressed on their own merits. When we are dealing with rival metaphysical systems — all of us living in pluralistic societies do — I doubt that we can find an easy resolution between the conflicting claims they make on our reason. The very best that any metaphysical system can do is make sense of all everything is connected to everything else, and I doubt that there is a single correct way of doing that.
However, if one is making empirical claims rather than strictly metaphysical ones — as, I suspect, the vast majority of theists are in fact doing — then question of evidence (whether physical, biological, psychological, or historical) does become relevant.
petrushka,
There’s a deep question here about whether logic is just an internally consistent system or something more.
The more metaphysically-inclined logicians will say that logic holds across all possible worlds, and therefore tells us how any possible world must be. But they would admit that, just because it tells us how all possible worlds are (and how they must be, in order to be possible at all), logic alone can tell us nothing about how the actual world is.
I find this interesting:
petrushka,
That’s quite interesting; it indicates that the most rationally compelling alternative to theistic creation — the multiverse theory — is incompatible with nominalism about mathematical objects. So if one is a nominalist about mathematical objects, that option is closed off: nominalists cannot accept the mulitverse.
A nominalist naturalist might very well have to say that the question, “why is there something rather than nothing?” has no answer.
I don’t find that at all compelling.
I also do not find it objectionable. If one is going to have a concept of God, then something along those lines is the way to go. But I see no particular benefit to having such a concept.
I see logic as a useful method.
Our access to the world is via categorization. That is, we divide up the world, then subdivide each of the divisions. That gives what is approximately a binary tree organization to how we conceptualize the world. Logic is the natural way of exploring a binary tree structure.