How is it that some atheists are good people?

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Nope. It’s all faith. You simply choose to only look at it in light of your assumptions.


There are a few problems here. Science HAS evidence, depends on evidence to make conclusions. But science cannot offer up evidence for itself. The problem isn’t with evidence, but rather the thought process. Science offering up evidence for itself is absurd because of petitio principii.

In other words:
1. Everything requires falsifiable evidence to be proven.
2. Science is something.
3. Science MUST be proven with falsifiable evidence.

Perfectly logical, right?

The problem arises that the major premise is also something:

2. The above statement is something.
3. The above statement MUST be proven...

So if your major premise requires proof, how do you get evidence outside of evidence? Deductive reasoning has to assume a major premise, yes. But in this case the major premise is something that itself must be proven, which isn’t humanly possible. Therefore:

“3. Science MUST be falsified”

...is a non-sequitur. And that’s why in practice science gets a free pass from its own standards for falsification. To accept something “on science” as opposed to “on faith,” you either MUST understand that scientific conclusions are illogical yet simply the best the human mind can do, or you just take it on faith.

The other major problem with evidence is that there can always be evidence to the contrary. One can provide evidence FOR God’s existence. So if you are consistent with evidentiary demands, then you are COMPELLED to believe in God really just because I say so. You can say “that’s not how evidence works,” sure, but then...isn’t that really the problem? And finally, the same evidence can be interpreted in opposing ways. “Climate change is a problem,” versus “Humans are immunologically more resilient in warmer climates than colder.” So which is it? Is climate change harmful or beneficial? I’m not trying to make a political point except to show how opposing attitudes can come to conclusions that are not more or less reasonable than the other. So how do you go about deciding which is right? Or are both right? Except with God, either He exists or He doesn’t. Unlike climate change, you don’t get the luxury of sitting on the fence.

If evidence is subjective within the human mind and human logic is incapable of rationality, human beings must reach out beyond themselves for answers. Faith is REQUIRED for that.


That YOU view as immoral? What even IS morality, anyway?

I think we have to be careful making moral assessments because, in a similar way to what I wrote earlier, people tend to just make all this crap up as they go. People will make relativist judgments, which are logically valid, until something bad happens to them they think they don’t deserve. Moral absolutes are absent in our words but always present in our reactions to our world.

That’s why I believe in an absolute, objective morality, and I don’t even have to invoke God to support it (another discussion). The main thrust of living beings is towards LIVING. Every decision made in nature, insofar as it qualifies as a decision, reflects an organism’s self-interest. The goals of living are to extend life, avoid harm, and court pleasure. Morality can be inferred from nature (hence why a theological argument for morality is unnecessary to establish absolute morality when morality is objective). That’s why murder is immoral and self-defense isn’t. Murder is the senseless, deliberate ending of life, whereas self-defense involves harm to another for the sake of one’s own survival. Smoking and excessive alcohol use are objectively immoral because they harm the body and shorten life. F$&@ing someone you don’t love is objectively immoral because it’s self-harm and violates your own pleasure.

But there’s another more important reason why loveless sex is immoral. Unlike animals, humans have the ability to reason and to choose whether to make logical, objective decisions, or to act contrary to self-interest. Sex without love violates the mind more than anything and puts humans on the same level as animals who only operate on reproductive instinct. If you have no intention to procreate, sex serves no PURPOSE. Pleasure? Ok, but there are all sorts of things one can do for pleasure, particularly things that involve less responsibility and less risk. Self-pleasure accomplishes the same thing, anyway. You don’t NEED another person for that, no REASON to have sex. Without REASON, it’s a mindless activity. You’re violating yourself and what you are as an ego with a capacity for reason. So once again nature prevails and reveals indiscriminate sex as immoral. Doesn’t even matter if you’re married, either, because then it’s an insult to and abuse of your partner.

Human beings have the ability to reject morality, hence why there’s so much confusion. Christians are often the most immoral of all because they subscribe to a form of altruism the Bible never taught. Reciprocity is the greatest moral good (the Golden Rule) because it maximally benefits the individual. Once again, objective morality wins the day. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” Altruism? WRONG! It means you cannot love your neighbor UNLESS you first love yourself. Yet churches often teach self-hate. How does the Catholic mass begin? “I confess to You, Almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have greatly sinned in my thoughts and deeds, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.” It’s not a call to repentance. It’s a reminder of what lowlife scum we all are, that we have to have dead people and our enemies define us before God. That we have to give and give and give until there’s nothing left and we’re dead, with nothing at all to gain except the hope that maybe we’ll get lucky and not lose our salvation at the hour of death. If the second-greatest commandment is to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” then the second-greatest sin must be to “hate thyself.” Yet many churches, even Evangelicals, teach this very thing.

ANYONE who seeks to live moral lives should do so objectively. I think that does involve questioning what you were taught when you were young and working things out. I can’t really blame people for leaving the church and becoming atheists when Christians are self-destructive and don’t really help others understand why this stuff is important. I still attend church for my own reasons. I believe in the holy trinity and Jesus is Messiah. I study the Bible. I pray. I THINK about things, discuss things, and don’t try to hide anything. I try to live for myself and be encouraging to other people. So for me, I have those answers and don’t need to justify my church attendance to anyone (hint: churches can get a lot of things wrong, but not all churches are alike. Neither are all Christians alike. It’s possible to find reasonable places and preachers that don’t want to start your week off telling you how horrible you are as a person).

Objective morality removes a lot of the need for guilt. If an objective person feels guilt, he should immediately question it. Did I cause harm to myself or someone I love? Does someone else have an agenda that can only be served by making me feel guilty when I’ve not harmed myself or anyone else? I’ll apologize any time my actions, knowingly or unknowingly, caused another person harm. I absolutely will NOT feel guilty for taking the lion’s share of an arts grant when I know full well my colleagues have done nothing to have earned it (yeah, there was a thing at work...), and I don’t care what their loss of funding means to them. The difference between me and them is I have no desire to parasitize a big donor when there might be even more important stakeholders interested in what I have to offer. I can leave the table and let them fight it out without me. And while it may on the surface seem harmful to others, I’m not the one responsible for how THEY chose to do their jobs in the first place. If YOU are an entitled self-hater, don’t drag me into your mess. I think it would be immoral to side with them, particularly when I know I couldn’t move the needle in my department with an even split and they haven’t produced abundantly positive results. I’d have more to feel guilty for if I’d simply let it go and not tried to compete.

Whether I’m going to win this one remains to be seen, of course. But win or lose, my conscience is clear and I have nothing to be ashamed of. I think having that kind of confidence, whether in my religious life or in my professional life, has been the most comforting feature of having an objective morality.

Nope, it's rooted in lack of evidence.
Similar but subtly different.

Very true. Science also require a hypothesis to be testable. I don't thing theistic beliefs qualify as testable hypotheses, and so fall at the starting line.

It’s definitely possible to test theistic beliefs.

For example: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

We know the universe is not infinite because of entropy. Neither can it cause itself.

There are only two problems with this, though. First, by starting with a null hypothesis, you begin with the unreasoned assumption that there is no God. If someone already knows God exists, why would they bother getting into a discussion that assumes otherwise? Second, all this proves is that the universe has a cause outside of itself and that cause possesses consciousness. It doesn’t identify who that consciousness is.

A third problem is one I bring up almost every time: the evidence doesn’t compel anyone to actually believe it.

Doesn't really get you anywhere, though. Certainly not to theism. At best points us towards our understanding of the universe being unsufficient.




Your weird disapproval of the scientific approach not favouring your preferred conclusion from the start aside, this is the proper thing to do.




If they are prepared to make that assertion, then they are guilty of a near limitless level of arrogance.




How else are they going to find suckers to convert?




Proves nothing of the sort, and the "possesses consciousness" bit is just assumed.




“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.”

― Philip K. Dick, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

Except that it explicitly is a theistic point. All you’re doing is a flat denial without a reasonable counter argument. YOU’RE understanding might be insufficient. You can’t make that same assumption for everyone else.


Except I never disapprove of science. I’m just not in denial of personal bias and wishful thinking that people use to rationalize their conclusions. The existence of God is plainly evidenced by the natural world, so there’s really no excuse for saying you didn’t know. To deny the obvious implies something problematic with the mind itself. If it’s really about evidence, you’re compelled to believe. Everyone would. But if the mind itself is problematic, what does someone believe about the evidence, and why? You have the ability to accept the evidence as pointing to God or to deny it. So do I. Only one of us with opposing views can be right. NEITHER conclusion will ever be a scientific one.


Or they are infinitely correct. Which is it? How do you know?


Someone who makes the correct choice is hardly a sucker.


Aren’t you just assuming that?


Reality isn’t much concerned whether you believe in it or not. It doesn’t go away just because you do believe in it, either. What’s unreal to me, metaphorically speaking, is just how many people don’t even know for sure what reality is.

The entire preceeding post can be summed up thusly:



Since this appears to be your preferred level of substance I don't think I'll indulge your rampaging rudis any longer.

Have a good day.

Rampaging? I’m just giving my response and asking relevant questions. Suit yourself.

All behavior is motivated. What is the basis for your morals and what do you get out of doing good for others? Discuss further?

I feel good when I do good for others.

It might be “selfish”—but it’s a heck of a lot better than NOT doing good for others.

It’s just the “right thing to do.”

Atheists think like this. Extremely devout people think like this.

Then again, you have both atheists and extremely devout people who don’t think like this. Being religious, or being atheist, does not confer any moral authority onto you.

I agree. My point is merely that all behavior is motivated. Doing good for others helps the one doing it (it feels good), a byproduct is that it helps the one in need. Why does it feel good?

For that matter, why is it the right thing to do? And how do we know it's good? Who decided what was good?

I don't believe anything is ever as simple as it seems.

Bears were thought to be the animals most like humans, by the Northern Native Americans. A mother bear will box a baby bears ears for failing to behave, very rough mothering skills. Male bears will kill the offspring of other male bears to bring the female back into season and secure their own traits within the gene pool. That's good bear behavior. Why is that good? Instinct? Where does instinct originate? Why does instinct survive? Why is survival good, if the end result is still death? The bear shouldn't have a concept of death, yet it is driven to acts that help ensure the survival of a species. Who put that there?

We frequently default to evolution as a reason for everything, but attempt to remove man's behaviors as individualized higher consciousness and civility. That shouldn't be. We are animals, we share much of our DNA with certain species.

Humans additionally have cultures to provide "default" behaviors.
Cultures evolve just like species, only faster.

Of course, nonhuman animals can be civil and they do have certain moral values and certain moral restraints. And do altruistic things, and feel good about them.

I wasn’t even conceiving of a separation of humans and nonhuman animals in an evolutionary sense.

Animals have “cultures,” too...but they are usually less complex than humans at this present moment.

At the point of the advent of Homo, our cultures were rather similar to that of nonhuman primates.

All right...here, there’s an “evolutionary” element....but I feel this is right.

Oh, yes, definitely!
Humans just evolved that direction much further than any other species and won competition with other large omnivorous ground apes - probably because of flexibility that relying on culture over nature grants, filling many ecological niches that way - leaving no "intermediate stages" alive. But I totally agree that the differences are mainly quantitative.

Last edited by magz on 17 Nov 2019, 8:58 am, edited 2 times in total.