If atheism conforms to your desires, perhaps you won't want to leave atheism- so as not to leave desires. I hope you are not like an animal. The "Enlightenment" is so "enlightened" I might get banned if I think outside its perspective, as having an alternate view is deemed unacceptable by its guardians. — Ram
Atheists are caught between two things. On hand, they are given an incentive. An atheist might give one of those strangely pious-sounding lectures on "good without God" for PR purposes- but beneath the surface- they know: atheism gives them a license to do whatever they want. They might deny this for political reasons- they know, though. This is the inescapable conclusion of moral relativism which they don't deny atheism leads to.
On the other hand, atheism leads to the conclusion that life is meaningless. — Ram
Why so negative? This is an excessively long post, and the vast majority of it is a denigration of others rather than an explanation of your own position.
If atheism conforms to your desires, perhaps you won't want to leave atheism- so as not to leave desires. I hope you are not like an animal. The "Enlightenment" is so "enlightened" I might get banned if I think outside its perspective, as having an alternate view is deemed unacceptable by its guardians.
— Ram
I too am unenlightened. But you might well get banned if you go on in this way. Stop telling us how awful we are or are going to be, as if you were seeking virtual martyrdom at the hands of the terrible atheists, and tell us what you have that is better. My background is more Christian, and my interest has turned more to Buddhism, so I know relatively little about Islam. But you are not making it very attractive at the moment. — unenlightened
The "Enlightenment" is so "enlightened" I might get banned if I think outside its perspective, as having an alternate view is deemed unacceptable by its guardians. — Ram
Materialism's gaping hole is its brute-fact, and Materialists inability to define the "objective reality", "objective existence" and "actuality" that they attribute to this material universe, to argue for Materialism over Idealism.
Some Materialists declare that the world of their Materialism is absurd (They're called "absurdists"). Of course they're right about that. ...but it doesn't seem to make them question their Materialism.
I'm dismayed by the way this thread is going. Yes, Ram's post spoke of some negative things, but so, uniformly, do the shorter posts of our aggressive Atheists.
When I reply to aggressive Atheists here, I reply to at least some of the points that they make in their posts and which I disagree with. That's what a reply is. I don't use one-line dismissals of what they say.
Michael Ossipoff — Michael Ossipoff
I do what I do because I want to please God. — Ram
I apologize for not addressing all of your points, but it seems to me that they all would require some work in their exposition to warrant a proper debate. — ivb
My desire is to show that there is a way out for the atheist who is not a follower of desires and that there is a way out if a person wants to pursue it. — Ram
Firstly, the claim that "atheism gives them a license to do whatever they want" would require a separate argument as it is not self-evident to me: While atheism might not give behavioural prescriptions, it does not rule out other sources of behavioural rules. I fail to see how it would grant any license at all. What those other (subjective/intersubjective/objective) sources of morality might be, is discussed in large parts of moral philosophy and ethics and there is no need (and not enough space) to repeat that discussion here. (20-50 years of study would not be enough. And I'm sorry to say that, but if you think that you have grasped it all, then I'm inclined to think that you have not understood it. This is meant as an expression of my hesitation to take your word on that, not as a judgement of your intelligence.)
Secondly, the claim that "atheism leads to the conclusion that life is meaningless" seems to require a very thorough argument as well: Again, atheism might not provide a meaning for your or anyone's life, but it does not rule out meaning either. And again whatever you might intend by 'meaning' can have sources elsewhere. (I personally have found sources for both morality and meaning--albeit subjective.)
Therefore, although you seem to imagine atheism to be a dark and desolate place, it is not necessarily so. Yes, it might require some work to establish all of those things. (It's worth the time and thought for me at least. And I don't see anyone solving the theodicee problem anytime soon.) — ivb
With all due respect for my fellow atheists here, I don't think you are helping the argument.
Moral realism, innate morality etc... is no real justification for morality. All i have to say to you is, like he's been saying all along, I feel/think differently, and we are back at moral relativism. Why should I put my moral beliefs aside for yours?
There is no objective morality without god, you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. — ChatteringMonkey
a person whose heart is pure will not be satisfied with atheism and want a way out- will crave for there to be a God (and thus justice as without God this world is one of injustice and there is no justice for people) — Ram
I'm not on staff, so my comments do not represent there reasons in my comments, but your criticism had been terrible throughout, a series of posts with many unsupported or outright mistaken claims about athiesm and materialism.
You do not engage with ideas on the subjects in most cases. When people try to engage your criticism, you generally do not respond in the space of logic and reasons. You just repeat an assertion of how atheists and materialists must be terrible.
Suffice to say, the reasons your claims attract censure is likely because the break forum rules with regards to giving supported arguments. Most of the time you aren't reasoning about what is true, you are just engaged in a practice of attacking a terrible atheists and materialists. In an environment which is dedicated to reasoning and pursuit of truth, just spewing attacks against you enemies doesn't cut it. — TheWillowOfDarkness
The "Enlightenment" is so "enlightened" I might get banned if I think outside its perspective, as having an alternate view is deemed unacceptable by its guardians. — Ram
These materialists want everything to fit into their preconceived framework and reject things not on the basis of whether or not they're true but whether they fit into the preconceived framework. This is no way to search for truth.
Materialists literally cannot think outside of their preconceived framework. Islamic epistemology or the epistemology of The Varieties of Religious Experience.... these epistemologies are literally unthinkable for them. They think the epistemology handed down from the Enlightenmennt is the only conceivable epistemology and can't conceive of other epistemologies, much less evaluate them. — Ram
Well which one is it? I got one post telling me that my post was excessively long and now this one telling me I didn't go in depth enough. — Ram
In my defense, it's been said that Kant was a great philosopher and a terrible writer. I definitely believe in what I believe as far as my religion but I don't think I'm a particularly good writer or claim to be. But like I said- it's possible for example for Kant to be a good philosopher and a bad writer. So whether my writing is particularly good is not necessarily the barometer of whether or not I'm right or not. — Ram
On a side note: Let's not bring Kant into this and just stick to the claims at hand. (Comparing oneself with that calibre can only bring ridicule.) — ivb
I'm not talking about a specific belief unique to one side of an argument. My point is about the use of logic and reasoning to support one's arguments and claims.
In most of your arguments, you don't engage with the question of actually justifying your position with logic. You just repeat some assertion of what athiesm or materialism does. You don't engage in terms of logic to actually justify your claims over oppositions. You don't give us a reason to think your position is correct over others. — TheWillowOfDarkness
My remark was not about the length but about the clarity of the argument. I suspect that more thought about how exactly to formulate your points more clearly will actually lead to a shorter post.
It is also very difficult to have a debate about many claims at once because it becomes hard to follow which claim some comment applies to. Concentrating on the most important claims (you decide which that might be) also leads to shorter posts. After clarifying one claim, the debate can then move on to the next. (This is the reason why I picked only few claims--those which seemed clear enough to discuss while still central enough to what I assume your post is about.)
So, no, on the contrary I would have preferred a shorter post. In some parts the claims were very vague--especially beginning with "they...". It wasn't clear to me who you refer to and it wasn't clear to me what the point to be thought through is at that instance. — ivb
Now as far as 1)- I already made a thread about that. I can't remember the title off the top of my head and I want to be quick so I can respond to more people. I'm getting a lot of responses.
Anyways, if you look in the religion section, I think you'll find a thread by me called something like "there is no secular basis for morality". So there's already a whole thread on that one issue. — Ram
If you want to think atheism doesn't necessarily lead to the conclusion that life is essentially meaningless... I mean... you're free to think what you want. But I do think life is essentially meaningless from an atheist perspective. — Ram
a person whose heart is pure will not be satisfied with atheism and want a way out- will crave for there to be a God (and thus justice as without God this world is one of injustice and there is no justice for people) — Ram
My point was you don't support that point. You just come along and expect everyone to believe it because you say so. When challenged, you just revert to saying how the "big problem" must be true, rather giving reason why that would need to be the case.
To give you an equivalent opposing argument, it would be like if I announced there was a big problem with religious beliefs: that no religious person could be moral because God didn't know what was moral, then proceeded to just assert this was the case.
It's an argument which tells nothing because I have given no reason as to why God cannot know morality, nor any reason to say why being religious cannot act morally anyway. — TheWillowOfDarkness
But like I said- it's possible for example for Kant to be a good philosopher and a bad writer. — Ram
If "without God this world is one of injustice and there is no justice for people", then the theodicy problem is about how the world can be considered just *with* god. And so that question remains open. (And I beg you not to try to answer it in a post--at least not before checking against the existing literature that your answer is not a repetition of an existing attempt and that it does not have any serious weaknesses; in which case you are more than welcome to submit it to an academic publisher, as it will be genuinely appreciated by the community.)
*edit*
I did not take your post as an attack on anyone. Rather, that was the impression that I had about how you might perceive atheism. Forgive me if I was mistaken. — ivb
I'm saying you've just asserted there is a big problem with materialism. You haven't show why that is true or logical conclusion. Everytime you are challenged, you just return to the initial assertion there is a big problem.
This is what others meant when accusing you of "begging the question." Everytime you are challenged, you return to just the assertion of the "big problem" as you justification for your position. You don't address the objections in terms of how opponents mistaken or logically flawed. You just return to asserting there is a "big problem." — TheWillowOfDarkness
Attractive to you. — Ram
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