Another issue I had was that I wasn't diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder until my early 40's and it caused me a lot of problems before then including suicidal ideation and despair.

So why offer assisted suicide when you don't know what underlying issues or conditions a person may have and when you may not have explored all options and diagnoses?

Along with this my older brother died a couple of years ago from Multiple sclerosis that left him unable to communicate except through blinking and essentially paralysed. When he was in a coma twice we had to advocate to keep his life support on on his behalf but if he didn't have relatives to do this they wouldn't have known his wish because of his increasing communication issues over the years. After he survived pneumonia twice he met his wife and got married which he always wanted to do.

He had a quality of life that seemed objectively horrible in some respects but always wanted to be kept alive until, it was impossible to do so. My dad worked in Geriatrics (Care of the elderly) and he found people there were not eager to die even ill and in their 90's.

I think you can create a cultural that doesn't value life/longevity. I personally don't like any form of suffering but I don't think death is alleviating suffering it is ending existence.

There is extensive forms of end of life palliative care that try to reduce suffering to the minimum

Then don't ask for help. And if somebody offers, refuse. — Vera Mont

The mental health services should be there to help improve a mentally ill persons life.

They should in no way sanctioning suicide or rationalising it. But they have been compromised.

They found people are more likely to commit suicide after seeing a mental health professional. From my experiences the services can leave you feeling more hopeless.

Yes. They can also murder and maim, enslave, torture, rape and imprison us. No anti-suicide law ever stopped a terrorist, an assassin, a revolutionary, a dictator or a plain old criminal. — Vera Mont

An anti assisted suicide law would have meant this young woman would still be alive and there would be decades left of her life in which to truly and improve her mental health.

We need ill people to stay alive to try and cure illness. There are all manner of drastic interventions for mental disorders but now this young woman is completely gone. They could have removed part of her brain as they have done with some people or put in implants for deep brain stimulation tried all manner of legal and illegal drugs.

By her own account she was severely mentally distressed so how can someone in that position give informed consent?

But relating to my wider point we should be preventing, terrorism and mental illness and distress. If I had successfully committed suicide when I was a teen, the school bullies, the local bullies, the church I grew up in and my parents would never have been held accountable now I can advocate on the dysfunctional issues that lead to my suicidal ideation.

But I think it is likely you would not feel comfortable or want to gun down children even if you were allowed. We're a social species, we have empathy, we are part of a culture of agreements and values and options which intellectual positions don't readily override. — Tom Storm

I don't have a desire to gun down children but the Nazis did. Atrocities happen because someone humans wanted to do them. It would be great if we had good moral intuitions but humans display a wide range of behaviour from self sacrifice and kindness to extreme brutality.

Laws as in the proposed laws of physics can be unbreakable but moral opinions are easily overridden or disagreed with.

Most nihilists I've known have mortgages, send their kids to good schools, tend to their garden and are fond of food. Just saying.. — Tom Storm

But that doesn't apply to me. I have always been philosophically minded and responded with actions to my beliefs because I need to be motivated by good reasons or reasoning per se.

People are often wishing to kill themselves and if a person is viewed as a suicide risk they are often placed on close levels of observation, such as having a member of staff at arms length 24/7. I have known people being nursed in this way for over a year. Of course, it is not as if anyone can be on such observations permanently and often the people who do kill themselves don't tell anyone their intent and plans. — Jack Cummins

As someone who has attempted suicide in the past I was deemed not mental ill enough to be sectioned.
I am not sure how one gets oneself sectioned these days.

Despite having had suicidal feelings over the years I don't want the state to aid in my death because since prior attempts I have found some enjoyment in life. I got a degree and learnt a new musical instrument after feeling really suicidal but then I think new medication may have initially increased suicidal feelings as can be the case until it started having positive effects.

The psychiatric, psychologic and philosophical stance on suicide is confusing but nowadays it has been gone from a criminal act and taboo to being seen as divorced from mental illness and a valid choice.

I always want to stop someone from committing suicide and suggest a reason for them to live.

This is a particularly unusual story because it involves a transgender person and assisted suicide. I am startled that the person was given an assisted suicide, unless it was the mother. — Jack Cummins

It was the Mothers child who was euthanised because of botched sex reassignment surgeries.
There is a lot of details about it online.

Here is another controversial case:

Shanti De Corte was waiting for a plane to Rome on March 22, when she stood just a few meters away from one of the two suicide bombers who detonated high-powered bombs. Miraculously, Ms. De Corte, who was 17 years old at the time, was not injured, but she never recovered from her post-traumatic distress disorder. The young woman suffered years of psychological pain. Supported by her friends and family, she requested euthanasia in April. It was performed on May 7, but her death was announced only a few days ago.

This young woman had an assisted suicide due to mental distress:
ttps://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2022/10/10/2016-brussels-attacks-victim-granted-euthanasia-after-years-of-ptsd_5999805_4.html

Apparently at at 23 she knew her life would never improve and everyone else seconded this opinion.

This seems like a win for terrorism to me that people can terrorise us into losing the will to live.

Not really because no matter what the position people seem to hold, as soon as they leave the keyboard or the class room, they mostly enter the quotidian world of realism, cause and effect, common sense, and ordinary moral agreements. — Tom Storm

That makes philosophy seem a bit like a game where people hold positions for fun or out of curiosity.

I have actually lived as a nihilist (I won't go into details)

I feel like philosophy is restrained by people downplaying the level of disagreement and the strength of a position.

As a moral nihilist (currently not permanently, hopefully) I think saying that Genocide or slavery is wrong is meaningless. It may be that as with tsunamis and the rest of nature extreme brutality and harm is just a feature of nature which is neither good nor bad It means moral values are personal preferences, sentiments, and emotions but that nothing "wrong" has ever happened and that we probably cannot justify prisons or punishments and telling people how they ought to behave.

Why? Once it was extreme going against the widely held belief in God or witches... Once it was considered extreme to think that homosexuality should not be outlawed — Tobias

The consequences of outlawing private property is more extreme than decriminalising homosexuality and witchcraft.
I included Property being theft with anarchy and the general breakdown of social norms. IT could be described a form of nihilism about unscientific claims.

Is there anyone that really held such a view? I think certain philosophical positions are incoherent. I do not think they are 'extreme', just incoherent. — Tobias

I think what makes a position is extreme is when it is enacted. People experience philosophical nihilism and a breakdown of personal meaning which I have done myself in the past.

I think even people who know nothing about academic philosophical terms could reach a nihilistic conclusion.
They might mistakenly commit suicide haven come to a false conclusion about reality.

I think communism was a big mistake that lead to mass oppression and mass murder even if its principles initially seemed reasonable.

I think we sometime have an extreme position or conclusion but supress it because we realise we have to keep up a pretence of shared values for security.

why is private property any less extreme then the idea of not having private property? — Tobias

It is extreme to go against the current wide spread acceptance of private property.

By extreme I did not mean incorrect but making claims that would challenge norms or suggest we need to change our views or action radically.

Of course it has no boundaries. Where would they come from, philosophy, no? — Tobias

The boundaries would be required to make sense.

I think nihilism makes the meaning of philosophy fail. We accept certain meanings to communicate.

Its a sort of self fulfilling prophecy, the premise dictates the behaviour that leads to the expectation outlined in the premise. Could this be self-destructive tendencies, self-loathing or low self esteem masqueraded by the subconscious? — Benj96

There is the nocebo effect which is the reverse of the placebo effect where there is some evidence that mental attitude can affect health outcomes.

There seems to be some evidence just beliefs and not behaviour can effect well being.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo

It is a controversial issue and it appears to suggest mental causation in the strong sense. The degree to which mind controls matter is controversial.

Out of curiosity, supposing the second coming was imminent and you knew of such, what would you do? Would you splash out, go wild, enjoy the pleasures of life while you could, or would you commit yourself to a pious, humble life correcting whatever wrongs you've done in preparation for judgement? — Benj96

My intuition is that our desires are governed by biology or something innate. I would need good evidence to make sacrifices for an unknown future.

I think people can gravitate towards forms of Christianity or other religions that pander to their preferences or just act hypocritically and secretly indulge whilst claiming to adhere.

I feel like the threat of Jesus's return in my church was just a control mechanism. Now I tend to indulge myself based on not knowing what the future holds. I probably had to sacrifice too much as a child to do that again for a religious belief.

This experiment is famous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment

and other experiments in delayed gratification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_gratification

It looks at the reasons people might have for having more self control or the ability to focus on long term goals and rewards.

I have the problem in that I don't know whether there will be a long term reward and maybe no one really knows.

I grew up being told that the rapture was near. God was going to return to earth as Jesus Christ and The Saints would randomly float up into heaven.

My mother even predicted it would happen in 2000 because things a happened every thousand years.

This was in The Plymouth Brethren sect of Christianity. I occasionally thought my family might have been raptured, if I was the only person at home and didn't know where people were, and I couldn't make plans for the future. Later on I discovered other former members of this sect and some of them developed a similar outlook and apathy.

Based on your post it made me think what is that actual probability of Jesus return any moment? These kind of predictions have been made for thousands of years and never come true.

So even if this scenario was possible statistically it's imminent occurrence seems unlikely.

Likewise the probability of us living to a great age is statistically varied. So maybe people are making a false assessment based on information they have received. I received false religious information that made me fatalistic and really had a profound effect on me.

there are many factors in peoples lives that could lead to their assessment of their longevity. Upbringing, theology, family illness, desires etc.

"What do you mean by happiness?" — Mikie

Its hard to define but maybe an absence of sadness and a level of contentment.

The absence of sadness is pleasurable in itself.

I am the happiest I have been as an adult.

I do not wish to impose my values on you, but you want to impose yours on all of society. — Vera Mont

You are making things up here.

I mentioned this case:"A Paralympic army veteran told stunned lawmakers in Canada when she claimed that a government official had offered to give her euthanasia equipment while fighting to have a wheelchair lift installed in her home"

This is in Canada not the USA and I am, in the UK not the USA and we have a Free health service.

Assisted suicide is legal in Canada who also have free health care. The issue is the way it has spiralled inappropriately so the preservation of life is being less and less valued.

People values are imposed on each other through democracy and when one persons values triumph another persons loses out.

You are clearly expressing your biases here which seems to prove my point in the opening post. Atheism is not usually just a lack of belief in God.

I was involved with the care my brother who died a couple of years ago after a 25 year illness that paralysed him for many years. He was a Christian and I am sure that gave him some comfort. It was a horrible situation but he always asked to be kept alive until the last moment so I have a lot of experience around the issue of severe illness, palliative care and how the health service deals with these issues.

Religious people have caused an incredible amount of unnecessary suffering with their "value of human life" claptrap — Vera Mont

What are your examples here?

You don't personally have to value human life but I want to live in a society that values human life and doesn't endorse or encourage suicide and devalues palliative health care and encourages the elderly and disabled to feel like a burden.
Capital punishment doesn't place value on human life. Peoples moralities are inconsistent and hypocritical.
You say religious people have caused immense suffering but which ones? All of them what about the communist atheist regimes I mentioned? Who is responsible for the immense suffering caused by two world wars?

I have not met a pessimistic child myself so it seems like it is not a disposition.

It took a lot to make me pessimistic and now I am relatively optimistic about somethings.

Probably

It probably has to be based on reasons and those reasons may include personal adversity and external insecurity.

The Wikipedia entrance is interesting.

"Entropy pessimism" represents a special case of technological and environmental pessimism, based on thermodynamic principles.[25]: 116  According to the first law of thermodynamics, matter and energy is neither created nor destroyed in the economy. According to the second law of thermodynamics — also known as the entropy law — what happens in the economy is that all matter and energy is transformed from states available for human purposes (valuable natural resources) to states unavailable for human purposes (valueless waste and pollution). In effect, all of man's technologies and activities are only speeding up the general march against a future planetary "heat death" of degraded energy, exhausted natural resources and a deteriorated environment — a state of maximum entropy locally on earth; "locally" on earth, that is, when compared to the heat death of the universe, taken as a whole."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pessimism#Pragmatic_criticism

"Free will" cannot interrupt the determinist chain. — Edmund

I don't believe their is a determinist causal chain.

The future doesn't exist so you can't know what will happen next only speculate.

Determinism seems to require psychic powers to know all Outcomes.

I would think pessimism came after adverse circumstances.

You can be selectively pessimistic about different things.

I think that to be pessimistic about everything would suggest depression but to be pessimistic about your job prospects or relationship prospects might relate to an honest appraisal of your chances.

I mildly disagree, having heard some of Dawkins' opinions on Islam.
But I don't really care what he thinks.
And again - Why do you? — Vera Mont

He is an influential (his opinions seems to have softened recently in some areas.)

I am concerned about the status of human beings in law and ideology.

For example:
"A Paralympic army veteran told stunned lawmakers in Canada when she claimed that a government official had offered to give her euthanasia equipment while fighting to have a wheelchair lift installed in her home"

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/christine-gauthier-paralympian-euthanasia-canada-b2238319.html

Peoples beliefs attribute a different value to human life and death. People religious belief or atheism and metaphysical stance are being used to advocate for policies that effect us all.

I do not believe the elderly or disabled or mentally should euthanised by stealth or encouragement.

I have no faith in humanity. — Vera Mont

I have faith in some people not others and faith in human reason to some degree.

I favour general agnosticism about knowledge because one is not committed to making claims of certainty.

I can't think of an atrocity committed by an agnostic.

some of the crimes of religious organizations and religious men - and he's quite right in feeling that way: those crimes have been enormous in scope and depth. In the present world, a number of very dangerous religio-political organizations are are perpetrating and contemplating further egregious crimes, in the name of the same deity — Vera Mont

What about the crimes of Atheist and non theist regimes Like Stalin, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao and The slaughter of the French revolution? The current Genocide of the Uighurs in China.
Religious people were specifically targeted in these regimes. Also the crime of eugenics. What about the World Wars that were nothing to do with religion and Japanese nationalism?

There is no reason believe that an absence of religion leads to a better society or better people. The current Russian atrocity is irreligious. Modern Western societies are pluralistic with the cohabitation of multiple belief systems.

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett et al are not targeting theocratic regimes but the soft beliefs of moderate Christians.

I posted this link earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism

But we never get a chance never to have heard of the gods. They're in our faces all the time — Vera Mont

This sounds like you are from The States.

I grew up in a fundamentalist cult in England. I had religion all day every day until I was 17 from birth. The bible was read and prayers said everyday. On leaving I have felt under no compulsion to be religious

In UK in general now it is easy to avoid religion. It is interesting how People like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens arise from the UK which has never had the same religious culture as America and was already very secular in their childhoods.

They became very prominent and loud in talk about theism/atheism and opposing religion so it was in the public consciousness to the same extent as religion. Also militant atheism and secularism entered universities. It seems that atheism is most prominent in liberal non theocratic countries where there is no compulsion of belief (ironically?).

Those are questions best left open, as far as this atheist is concerned. — Vera Mont

Everyone has a wide range of differing information they are exposed to that lead to different questions arising for them.

People are entitled not to investigate different questions just like most people have limited concerns and some people like a university professor has a specific in depth area of concern.

But I think it is a state of agnosticism not to commit ones self to an opinion on something.

In this thread I am not suggesting all people who classify as atheists are committed to XY and Z but that there are prominent strands of atheism that make positive claims and have a belief system.

I don't know where you stand on each issue. As a gay person there are lots of things I don't agree with other gay people about including the whole LGBTQIA+ ideology. I am not at all saying this relates to you but I think as a gay person I need to distance myself from things I disagree with that are labelled as part of my identity.

I am not saying atheists need to do this but certain things that come out of the what can be called the atheists community are claims that people can disagree with. Especially provocative books like "The God Delusion" and a promotion of physicalism and non dualism.

I don't know what this issue is called but there is something about beliefs that can lead to infinities.

For example if I believe that Paris is the Capital or France then that entails I believe London is not the Capital of France and That Berlin is not the capital of France and that A Monkey is not the capital of France.

So a belief can have weird entailments. In the previous case you could say believing that Paris is the capital of France entails that an infinite number of other things are not the Capital of France.

So I think it is probably impossible to have beliefs without entailments.

Stop with this strawman. Atheism does not make any "claims". Atheism is disbelief in god/s. Period. — 180 Proof

How can you disbelieve in something you have heard of with out any reasons?

I have just started reading the SEP article on atheism and agnosticism by Paul Draper.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atheism-agnosticism/

"The purpose of this entry is to explore how atheism and agnosticism are related to theism and, more importantly, to each other. This requires examining the surprisingly contentious issue of how best to define the terms “atheism” and “agnosticism”."

One issue it mentions is whether there would be atheists without theists.

I think there would have been because people have a commitment to the notion of an explanation of reality excluding creators and deities.

But I think once someone has raised a concept people form beliefs about it and then make claims to justify rejecting it such as the lack of necessity of a creator deity.

Has anyone heard of state atheism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_atheism

In 1967 Enver Hoxha, the head of state of Albania, declared Albania to be the "first atheist state of the world" even though the Soviet Union under Lenin had already been a de facto atheist state

Or the Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_France_during_the_French_Revolution

Or The Brights movement?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brights_movement

Or Eliminative materialism?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism

Or the God delusion.

I am responding to thing that have actually arising amongst atheists and stances taken by atheists not a caricature of them. I feel some gaslighting goes own when you confront people with things which have copious information in the public domain but they make it seem like you are imagining it.

You could say no beliefs matter whatsoever. Life is temporary we live between 0 to 100 years. What we do in that time is irrelevant.

However beliefs are motivating and demotivating. How you spend your 0 to 100 years could be marred by false beliefs.

It actually seems impossible to know what beliefs we should have and there appears to be no right answer about how to live our lives. I was posing that issue in my thread "Deciding what to do."

For some people a religion tells them what to do and or gives them something to aspire to. I can't think of a secular replacement for that other than an existential situation where you make up your own meanings and hope for the best.

But I do believe we need hope and some world views are not providing that. I think the major religions appear to offer some hope but are tainted by some nasty theology like hell and damnation. But I also think atheism does not offer hope if taken to a brutalist, reductionist no afterlife, humans are machines, consciousness is illusory (Daniel Dennett) eliminativist materialism (The Churchland's) et al.

I also think a lot of atheists seem to take for granted they can preserve things like morality and societal norms, law etc. In the absence of God without justifying claiming these things as part of their world view.

However, the stories and strictures and influence and threats from all those versions of deity that people tell about are very much present in my consciousness. That's what I actively disbelieve — Vera Mont

I was surprised as a young adult to find out the bible has numerous contradictions in it. And I felt I had been lied to as a child and not exposed to criticism of Christianity. I also think a lot of biblical stories are repugnant. Someone sacrificed his daughter to God (Jephthah), God has thousands of people arbitrarily killed, a man was stoned to death for picking up sticks on the sabbath under gods orders.

But that is an anti Judaeo Christianity stance.

Atheism tends to focus on wider concepts. It could be true a creator deity exists and every religion is false and nonsense.

Once atheism makes claims about wider issues such as about whether there is a creator, whether reality needs a first cause, whether reality is purely physical and so on whether morality can survive the death of religion etc.
These issue are separate from a general critique of very particular religious claims and where atheism becomes a metaphysical belief system in my opinion.

The idea is once you abandon religion the only other option is to be a materialist atheist reliant only on science. At one stage I felt that was the only option one or the other but now I feel atheists are trying to make that the only option.

This is the start of Wikipedias article on Atheism:

"Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities"

At one stage in my life I had an absence of belief in the country Burkina Faso (a country with an unusual name and low profile.)

But that absence of belief had no bearing on the existence of the country.

My lack of evidence justified my absence of belief. But as has been said lack of evidence isn't evidence of absence.

I would be unwise to comment of the affairs of Burkina Faso based on my position of ignorance.

What about 'I believe that there isn't any God or gods'? Unambiguous disbelief. — 180 Proof

I am not sure I understand you.

I think disbelief requires a belief. How are you defining disbelief?

I don't believe in Santa Claus because I have another explanation of how my Christmas presents arrived.

If Christmas presents arrived at the end of my bed and no one I know claimed to have sent them and there was no explanation of how they got there, then disbelief in Santa Claus would be less valid because it is proffering a potential causal explanation for something.

But once you start offering explanations for your disbelief you have an underlying belief framework that can be scrutinised. So eventually atheism amounts to a system of beliefs in my opinion.

However agnosticism is admitting a lack of knowledge or claiming that the evidence you have seen is inadequate for you to form a strong belief. Some atheists attack agnostics because they claim there are good grounds to reject the idea of God.

The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation, nothing but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects.
Baron d'Holbach

also

All religions are ancient monuments to superstition, ignorance and ferocity.
Baron d'Holbach

1770's

Julien Offray de La Mettrie was an atheist Philsopher and Physician in 1749 he Published the book "Man a Machine"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_a_Machine

There is eliminative materialism largely founded and supported by atheists that has gone to the absurd point of denying mental states in order to shore up a mechanistic view of humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism

Key Proponents The Churchland's had this conversation:

"Paul says, he was home making dinner when Pat burst in the door, having come straight from a frustrating faculty meeting. “She said, ‘Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, my brain is awash in glucocorticoids, my blood vessels are full of adrenaline, and if it weren’t for my endogenous opiates I’d have driven the car into a tree on the way home. My dopamine levels need lifting."

and

"Already Paul feels pain differently than he used to: when he cuts himself shaving now he feels not “pain” but something more complicated—first the sharp, superficial A-delta-fibre pain, and then, a couple of seconds later, the sickening, deeper feeling of C-fibre pain that lingers. "

Atheists appear to be trying to make us just another senseless causal determined mechanism of brute nature in my opinion.
"Appear" to whom? Which "atheists" are "appearing" so? Clearly, Andrew, you haven't the slightest comprehension of atheism — 180 Proof

I quoted Richard Dawkins earlier:

"Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control.

They are in you and in me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines."

Besides, Andrew, why must reality as whole "make sense" to us when, in fact, we can make sense of tiny parts of reality, proximately, in order to survive and thrive in our daily lives? — 180 Proof

I think the break down of causality is a serious problem. Humans have survived through varying states of ignorance from having basic knowledge of our environment to the the high levels available now.
I wouldn't celebrate living in a primitive state personally. Our ability to ask questions challenges us. Once we have asked a question we can't unask it for peace of mind unfortunately.

I would question who is thriving. Some people consider themselves to be and other don't. Surviving is temporary until out inevitable death.

Some people don't want to just make do with what the current state of life and knowledge throws at them but do further investigations and their values and explorations lead to completely different and sometimes incompatible opinions and to than other people.

I think there are a lot of unanswered questions that challenge societies current trajectory that science can't resolve and sometimes the answer might be purely subjective such as what are my values and preferences.

Of course it is. To begin with, no one can demonstrate what this morality consists of and everyone interprets their god's morality differently. In the end, humans cannot avoid morality as an expression of personal preference. — Tom Storm

That wasn't my point.I said if a God created us he or she could know what's best for us like we know how a computer best functions because we created it. I am not saying this god exists or has revealed anything to us.

We have discovered how some of the human body works and that is is how medicine cures us. We can only discover a moral basis if one preexists for us to uncover in my opinion. Like how we uncover how the body functions.
But you didn't respond to the issue of the lack of arbitrariness. The arbitrariness would arise if a god made rules like "you must wear pink on a Fridays" which would seem to have no bearing on anything.
I was responding to this point

even if God exists and has handed down moral guidelines (via divine revelation/inspiration -> scripture, presumably), one could still ask whether these guidelines are right or correct. So even theism doesn't solve this issue, — busycuttingcrap

If you create a serious notion of a creator deity with super intelligence it wouldn't struggle to justify its actions in my opinion. Our problem is we have limited powers to make morality stick.
But with something highly sophisticated we created in its entirety like the computer we are the master of it.
But as I say I am referring to the concepts involved not any currently religiously followed deity.

Another issue is subjectivity where we end up just having a society focused on individual preferences, viewpoints and theories. This is what we seem to have now especially in modern western democracies. But this can descend into solipsism. We treat the whole world like our own and try and make it fit around our own preferences and values and just detach ourselves from groups that don't share our principles. We individually become the final arbiter of truth. I am semi solipsistic myself and my values is that I have to trust my own judgement or have faith in a high power.