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Can The Atheist Do Good?

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  • #76
    Originally posted by JimL View Post
    Many Christians here have said that absent their belief in God they couldn't be good.
    Well that would be me, but I don't act because I am under authority, but purely out of gratitude and love for God - for saving a wretch like me.
    Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

    Comment


    • #77
      JimL, in Christian parlance "Good" is relative. Because we are sinners, we are tainted. Even our best motives are self-serving in one way or another. When comparing the highest "good" we can do to the standard of "good" that God is, if you had a ruler a mile long, God would be at a mile out and the worst human would be at 0 and the best human would be at 1-inch.

      Comment


      • #78
        Originally posted by seer View Post
        Well that would be me, but I don't act because I am under authority, but purely out of gratitude and love for God - for saving a wretch like me.
        Maybe He has not saved you after all and your justification for good behaviour is false and your gratitude misplaced. Does God give you a certificate to prove your salvation? Have you simply performed the appropriate ritual and assumed your salvation? If you look at it closely might you find that you are self-certified, or self-improved or just certifiable?
        “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
        “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
        “not all there” - you know who you are

        Comment


        • #79
          Originally posted by firstfloor View Post
          Maybe He has not saved you after all and your justification for good behaviour is false and your gratitude misplaced. Does God give you a certificate to prove your salvation? Have you simply performed the appropriate ritual and assumed your salvation? If you look at it closely might you find that you are self-certified, or self-improved or just certifiable?
          It's wish fulfilment grounded in the fear of death.
          “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

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          • #80
            Originally posted by Sparko View Post
            JimL, in Christian parlance "Good" is relative. Because we are sinners, we are tainted. Even our best motives are self-serving in one way or another. When comparing the highest "good" we can do to the standard of "good" that God is, if you had a ruler a mile long, God would be at a mile out and the worst human would be at 0 and the best human would be at 1-inch.
            Sez who? Were Stone Age nomads "tainted", were Neanderthal or Homo Erectus humans "tainted"?

            Justify this bald assertion of yours.
            “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

            Comment


            • #81
              Originally posted by Tassman View Post
              were ... Homo Erectus humans "tainted"?
              Yes. As an atheist, you should automatically agree with us on this. No human is perfectly good. We're messy, illogical creatures with many conflicting desires that we choose to act on in inconsistent patterns.

              No what you should be challenging us on whether any truly good people ever actually existed, even temporarily, as we claim with Adam and Eve (and Catholics/Orthodox/Coptics do with the Virgin Mary).

              Comment


              • #82
                Originally posted by Roy View Post
                They may have been uneducated by our standards, and they definitely didn't have access to all the information resources we have today, but they were not idiots or morons or hallucinating.
                A lot of shamans in different cultures around the world use the local mushrooms or use meditative trance-like states to give them a vision of the spirit-world and allow them to perform their spiritual function of interacting with those spirits. It wouldn't be at all surprising, historically speaking, if the prophets in Israel used some of these techniques as part of their standard repertoire for experiencing the divine. Likewise, anyone who naturally has a condition that causes them to hallucinate regularly tended to be prime candidates for religious vocations in most cultures - falling over and frothing at the mouth and shouting gibberish was what the Greek Oracles were supposed to do, for example. Little should surprise us less to find some of that in the Bible.

                In the bible, the prophet Ezekiel did things like lie on his side for 430 days and bind himself with ropes so he couldn't move, and did his baking with cow dung, and occasionally in his life he hallucinated some super-trippy visions, eg,

                Ezek 1:
                in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.

                Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.

                As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.

                When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

                Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked something like a vault, sparkling like crystal, and awesome. Under the vault their wings were stretched out one toward the other, and each had two wings covering its body. When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings.

                Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like burnished bronze. Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. All four of them had faces and wings, and the wings of one touched the wings of another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.

                Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. They each had two wings spreading out upward, each wing touching that of the creature on either side; and each had two other wings covering its body. Each one went straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning as they went. The appearance of the living creatures was like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed out of it. The creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.

                As I looked at the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature with its four faces. This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like topaz, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel. As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not change direction as the creatures went. Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.

                When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. When the creatures moved, they also moved; when the creatures stood still, they also stood still; and when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels.

                Spread out above the heads of the living creatures was what looked something like a vault, sparkling like crystal, and awesome. Under the vault their wings were stretched out one toward the other, and each had two wings covering its body. When the creatures moved, I heard the sound of their wings, like the roar of rushing waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the tumult of an army. When they stood still, they lowered their wings.

                Then there came a voice from above the vault over their heads as they stood with lowered wings. Above the vault over their heads was what looked like a throne of lapis lazuli, and high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.

                I've never done drugs or been high myself (though I endorse the legal ability of others to do so of course), but if the above isn't a description of an amazing drug-trip I don't know what is. And have you read Revelation? The multi-headed beasts are doing things and so are the dragons and all sorts of things. Mushrooms through and through, IMO.

                Paul's hallucination of Jesus on the road to Damascus I would put down to some sort of innate epilepsy on his part though. He mentions elsewhere in his writings that he has an ongoing health-problem, and also mentions being "caught up to 7th heaven" which it seems reasonably safe to presume was another seizure / hallucinatory experience.

                As far as the "idiots and morons" comment goes, the gospels don't much hide the fact that Jesus' followers were fairly random uneducated yokels - fishermen and the like. They weren't the geniuses of their day.

                So I don't understand what your grounds are for out-rightly denying that these people definitely didn't hallucinate and definitely weren't morons. Personally I've had 3 hallucinations in my life (as I was waking up from sleeping and I was half asleep and dreaming and half awake and seeing my bedroom), and they were not religious in content (one of them was giant spiders), but imagining that they had been religious in content and imagining I had thought they were visions rather than hallucinations, perhaps I would be religious today? It doesn't seem at all a stretch to think that of the lots and lots of people in history who had hallucinations, that some of them had religious content, and that some of them thought they were visions, and those people were totally convinced they had had important religious visions and that some of those found their way into the bible... little would be less surprising IMO.
                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                Comment


                • #83
                  Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                  No human is perfectly good.
                  That's a change in standard. Sparko was saying "Because we are sinners, we are tainted. Even our best motives are self-serving in one way or another.", and the whole thread has been about the claim that atheists can't do an action that is good or 'true' good (whatever that is specified to mean). A discussion about whether people are "perfectly good" is quite different again. I would say that nobody is "perfectly good" and in fact I don't think the term "perfectly good" has a lot of meaning, but I would certainly say that a specific human action has the capacity to be good and I absolutely reject the OP view that atheists cannot perform actions that are 'truly' good.

                  We're messy, illogical creatures with many conflicting desires that we choose to act on in inconsistent patterns.
                  True, but that's not the same as tainted in the Original Sin theological sense. Your description applies to any intelligent being as it starts to develop from its childlike innocence... it will inevitably flail around as it learns and grows and make some mistaken choices and learn from them and will grow and develop as a rational being. That's not at all the same as the idea that it might have such a deeply and strongly ingrained wrongness and evil that it tends towards evil actions to such an extent that it can never truly choose the good.

                  No what you should be challenging us on whether any truly good people ever actually existed, even temporarily, as we claim with Adam and Eve (and Catholics/Orthodox/Coptics do with the Virgin Mary).
                  Adam and Eve seem like an example of childlike innocence rather than true goodness - they didn't even have "knowledge of good and evil" until they ate the fruit. They were the messy illogical creatures with conflicting desires: That was what led them to eat the fruit because God said one thing, the snake said another, the fruit looked nice etc - they wanted to both do as God commanded, and not do as God commanded.

                  Your virgin Mary example seems like a theologically sounder example of a perfectly good person. At least she lived in a world where she understood what evil was, and yet consciously chose not to do it, and represents the sort of holiness that the believers can aspire to aim for.

                  I have zero problem with a claim on your part that "truly good people" can exist so long as by "truly good" you mean some sort of decent or high standard of morality where the person never commits any serious offences. I would say that humans have evolved with the tendency to be benevolent to others, because we are herd animals. So it's totally reasonable to think that a small proportion of humans will be outliers on the bell curve (or whatever the shape of it is) of morality, and will be particularly good. Perhaps some humans will have unusual genetics or unusual brain development which causes them to be absolute altruists and perhaps prevents them from ever even entertaining an evil thought. Evolution totally allows for such variation to exist within the population and Dawkins explicitly discusses it at length in his book how computer models show that in terms of morality you can have a mix of types of people in your population, some of whom are 100% selfish and some of whom are 100% altruistic and all sorts of complex variations in between all existing in your population at once. (The most successful strategy in the game-theoretic analyses of these interactions is known as generous tit for tat and variants thereof, where in repeated interactions with someone, you act benevolently and altruistically the first time, and thereafter copy the selfishness or altruism of their previous action. This and complex variations of it tend to give the best overall outcome for the actors in such repeated-interaction situations. This is because people who are always-altruists can get ruthlessly exploited by the more selfish people in their populations, so some sort of punishment for past wrongdoings is necessary, so the tit-for-tat strategy "strikes back" whenever someone strikes against it, but the first time around it tries to be altruistic and hopes for the best. But as Steven Pinker has observed in his massive volume on the decrease of violence, one significant social change that occurred a few centuries ago was that we let the government take over the punishment of misbehaving individuals in our society instead of dishing out such punishments ourselves, thus freeing us up as individuals to take always-altruist strategies in our lives with the knowledge that the government is there as a 3rd party and referee to punish the wrongdoers, and this has had big social effects because it has removed any rational need for individuals in society to dish out violence against others and so the amount of casual violence has plummeted. Anyway, I find it fascinating ).
                  "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                  "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                  "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                  Comment


                  • #84
                    Originally posted by Leonhard View Post
                    Yes. As an atheist, you should automatically agree with us on this. No human is perfectly good. We're messy, illogical creatures with many conflicting desires that we choose to act on in inconsistent patterns.
                    I completely agree!

                    I was querying the very notion of “tainted”, with its implication of an original perfect state, which has never existed, either for modern man or his Stone Age predecessors or prehistoric humans such as Neanderthal or Homo-Erectus humans.

                    No what you should be challenging us on whether any truly good people ever actually existed, even temporarily, as we claim with Adam and Eve (and Catholics/Orthodox/Coptics do with the Virgin Mary).
                    That’s what I was challenging.
                    “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                    Comment


                    • #85
                      Originally posted by Tassman View Post
                      Sez who? Were Stone Age nomads "tainted", were Neanderthal or Homo Erectus humans "tainted"?

                      Justify this bald assertion of yours.
                      Tassman, sez the bible. I was explaining what Christians mean by "no one is good" - you don't have to believe it. I was explaining what we mean so we would not talk past each other. You're welcome.

                      Comment


                      • #86
                        Originally posted by seer View Post
                        Well that would be me, but I don't act because I am under authority, but purely out of gratitude and love for God - for saving a wretch like me.
                        And by saving you, you mean what exactly?

                        Comment


                        • #87
                          Originally posted by JimL View Post
                          And by saving you, you mean what exactly?
                          Forgiving me of my sin, accepting me as His beloved. Let me ask you something Jim - are you a good man?
                          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                          Comment


                          • #88
                            Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                            Tassman, sez the bible. I was explaining what Christians mean by "no one is good" - you don't have to believe it.
                            Thank you. Of course I don't believe it.

                            I was explaining what we mean so we would not talk past each other. You're welcome.
                            So at what point in evolution did Homo sapiens become “tainted”...were Stone Age nomads "tainted", were Neanderthal or Homo Erectus humans "tainted"? When? Or are you going with the literal Garden of Eden scenario with the forbidden fruit and the talking snake?
                            “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

                            Comment


                            • #89
                              Originally posted by seer View Post
                              Forgiving me of my sin, accepting me as His beloved.
                              But you said saving you. Saving you from what?

                              Let me ask you something Jim - are you a good man?
                              I think so, relatively speaking of course. No ones perfect of course, but I certainly wouldn't ever order the murders of many innocent men, women and children for their land and their property, or for their beliefs.

                              Comment


                              • #90
                                Originally posted by JimL View Post
                                But you said saving you. Saving you from what?
                                Separation from the Creator I love.


                                I think so, relatively speaking of course. No ones perfect of course, but I certainly wouldn't ever order the murders of many innocent men, women and children for their land and their property, or for their beliefs.
                                So Jim, you are a good man? Of course it is an interesting question - where this idea of moral perfection come from, certainly not nature.
                                Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                                Comment

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