Occam’s knife fight!
More bitchy-moany “you can be good without God” caterwauling. I realize non-believers read this blog, and I’m not bad-mouthing you. Just the militant whiners.
Atheists claim their philosophy is based on reason. This might even be true for a very tiny minority. Obviously I disagree with that reasoning. And this post shows where…IMOO (in my omniscient opinion)…they go wrong.
Of course most atheists came to their belief the way almost everyone comes to almost every belief. They skip the tedious “reasoning” process and simply accept or reject the premise based on how it makes them feel.
Reason is what you do when working toward a conclusion. “Reasoning” away from one is called rationalization. They are not the same.
You can certainly employ reason within an overarching rationalization. Perhaps most atheistic philosophy is rational and self-consistent. But all arguments I’ve seen fail a basic test of reason. They multiply entities needlessly.
Look at this statement:
Life, the universe, and everything is the product of chance, not design.
In the absence of any other information, what’s the chance this claim is true? Either you see it as exactly 50% or you’re not rational. Everything fails under one of two mutually exclusive possibilities. A chance existence either is, or it isn’t.
(NOTE: Life, the Universe, and Everything is 100% likely to be the product of design.)
This is a hypothesis if tested, an axiom of blind faith otherwise. Being a rational man (the World’s Only, even) I had to test it. More specifically, its explanation of the origin of life:
Organic life arose through chance interactions of non-living matter. As it began reproducing it experienced mutational change (also through chance). From that beginning a billion years and “survival of the fittest” led to the enormous variations of today’s biosystem.
Is that a fair summary? Because it’s sure the one I contemplated. Which leads inexorably to the big question:
Is there a fundamental difference between human beings and animals?
If organic life arose by chance interactions of non-living matter, and every living thing is a chance mutation of that first cell…how is it even possible that man and animal are fundamentally different?
I can prove, using formal logic, that we are the product of either chance or design. But I can’t formally demonstrate a difference between us and critters. Nevertheless, the answer is “Yes, we’re different”. At least, that’s what I conclude, and naysayers are too cowardly to, you know…say “nay”.
At the time I defined that difference as humans having “conscious awareness”. Having since become Christian, I’d now go with “man is a spiritual being created in God’s image”. Whatever that means.
Well, atheists always zip past this basic question or else obsfucate it while spewing ink, a la Richard Dawkins.
Is there a fundamental difference between humans and animals? If you’re an honest atheist who believes there is a fundamental difference…wow, do you have some ‘splaining to do.
Of course, I’ve yet to met an honest atheist. Don’t expect to, either. Fine by me. One of those would probably need killing just like any other rabid animal.
This isn’t an accusation that atheists are consciously lying. They’ve started a bonfire and can’t take its heat. The necessary implication of their belief (we are merely animals) is obvious…blatantly obvious…but none of them can face it!
And this is because we know “right and wrong” doesn’t apply to the animal kingdom. We perform anthropomorphosis even while knowing it’s a lie. A puppy doesn’t put its tail between its legs because it did “wrong”. It’s just dreading the coming pain.
Pleasure and pain. The two explain animal behavior. Can they equally explain human behavior? Of course they can. So is it necessary to add the complication of “right and wrong”? No, it is not. Yet all atheists do it.
Look at this NYT lady’s “thinking”. Twenty-three hundred words of self-justification and assumed conclusions. If you can read the whole thing…wow. Stoic. Now find one thing in it that can’t be explained by solely by pleasure and pain, her likes and dislikes. Go ahead, ma’am:
Consider the following moral judgments — judgments that seem to me to be obviously true:
Conclusion first, debate second. Sorry…never.
• It is wrong to drive people from their homes or to kill them because you want their land.
Every territorial animal proves this statement a lie.
• It is wrong to enslave people.
Ants are “wrong” now? Slavery is a great labor saver! For the slavers.
• It is wrong to torture prisoners of war.
You let cats get away with sadism, but not your own kind? You, woman, are almost infinitely less natural than killing and slavery.
• Anyone who witnesses genocide, or enslavement, or torture, is morally required to try to stop it.
At personal risk? You are crazy, lady! That’s a good way to get tossed out of the gene pool, which…if you weren’t nuts…you’d know is the ultimate “evil”.
If God turned out not to exist — then slavery would be O.K.?
It isn’t O.K. or not-O.K., it simply is. If you hate slavery so much, why don’t you free the termites from the ants? You’re bigger than they are, after all.
——-
I call timeout. She’s got much, much more sanctimony than I have time. Seriously, she rambles about “Divine Command Theory” and “Divine Independence Theory” and Plato and Hobbes, on on and on…
Endless complications. Anything to avert her gaze. A mountain of hay to hide the needle of cold, hard fact: with godlessness we are but animals. “Right” is only what gives you pleasure or eases your pain. “Wrong” is only the opposite.
Yes, taking your wealth or maidenhood by force causes you pain, naturally you’ll whine about “wrong”. But what about me? Pleasure is “good” for me.
You blathered for 2,303 words, NYT atheist. Whereas I can sum up the honest atheist belief in 15:
We are animals, life is only pleasure and pain, and might is the only “right”.
The Apostle Paul, being the better man, simply said this:
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.
World's Only Rational Man 
That’s very well argued. At least, it seemed so to me. I’ll have to give the NYT writer’s article a more careful going over.
This is more like an extra data point than an argument contra what Worme was saying, but I was listening to this Catholic Answers podcast the other day
http://www.catholic.com/radio/shows/how-to-know-right-from-wrong-6565
featuring J. Budziszewksi on “how to know right from wrong.” At some point this topic came up (I can’t remember where on the broadcast). According to natural law theology, atheists can certainly be good, because they have the natural law inscribed in their hearts just like all of us (which more or less means that absent underage reasoning ability or brain damage they know right from wrong), but they can’t explain it completely from atheism. So that changes the question somewhat from “Can we be good without God?” to “Can we explain good without God?” This fits more with reality, I think, where my experience has shown me moral atheists and woefully morally challenged believers (not excluding myself!).
A further complexifying factor for me is “cultural reception,” as in when people “receive” morality from the culture, family, milieau, etc. typically without being aware of their indebtedness. An individual atheist may not be aware of how much of their putative individual morality is received, the NYT writer being a perfect case in point. She radiates moral presuppositions that she obviously received from a Judeo-Christian cultural heritage, and then she’s going to turn around and present that as a rational/ethical achievement or self-evident hard-wiring or something. However, let it be said in her favor that the fact that she thinks this morality is self-evident is a kind of inadvertent nod to natural law, which can only really be explained theologically. (It’s more complicated than that. She, like most of us, is wrestling with at least three overlapping and sometimes contradictory forces: natural law, Judeo-Christian inheritance, and bourgeois “values”–what’s icky or not icky or socially acceptable in your sub-cultural milieu).
An extension of the above is that, while an individual atheist could be very moral (either through natural law or cultural inheritance) an overall atheist milieu (see “North Korea”) will indeed be a pure embodiment of “might vs. right” (the “morality” Worme ably describes). Although, human evil is so twisted that it seems an insult to our animal friends to equate human immorailty to animal ammorality! But the depravity of human evil is, I suppose, another “proof” of natural law.
Crap, that was mangled! Maybe reboot and try again later.
One point, perhaps, worth retaining from that mess: “Can we be good without God?” vs. “Can we explain good without God?”
“that was mangled” referring to my comment, not Worme’s post.
Obviously you’re spot on. She sees “self-evident” rights and wrongs. Look at nature and almost all of human history. What she finds natural is almost absurdly atypical. She’s a hothouse flower. She thrives in this incredibly safe and costly (in historical sweat and blood) greenhouse and imagines she knows nature. I don’t wish ill on her or anyone, but most of us rich Westerners would be vastly improved by a little travail.
I’vea buddy who’s a very vocal atheist and likes the concept of socialism….whichI explain is state enforced Judaic law with the religion filed off. Tends to drive him into fits
Urk. That’s like the worst of both worlds.
Yup, he definitely has the self-rightous part down pat and tell him he’d make a good preacher. Since he hates the church and makes a big thing about being a Universal Life Minister.
I shake my head and state I was thinking Secular Funadmentalist, as he’s just as narrow minded as the other religious bigots I’ve noted over the years
Secular Fundamentalist, good label. I like it.
The folly of atheists is that they perceive not the significance of the Christian ocean in which they float.