Ask your difficult questions of an Atheist.

Not for long in Western Europe.

As for Eastern Asia, the populations are very well behaved, but the people and especially governments can be a bit lacking in the ethics department.

Let's not forget WW2 happened in Western Europe only 74 years ago, not that long on a historic timescale. And much of that time they only kept the peace because of the looming threat of Soviet invasion.

As for crime rates, you're talking a developed country with mostly all White people.
And crime rates have gradually been going up with Eastern European criminals and scammers coming over.

 

Do you lack belief in a god or do you believe there is no god?

 

I see no real difference between the two. I lack belief in the "Gods" we humans have created but have no idea what else may be out there (or in here).

 

And that doesn't provide definitive and absolute assurance that something no longer can be doubted because...?

Obviously not. You're welcome.

 

Confirmation of aspects is a part of obtaining proof and is definitive in its piece of the puzzle.

 

I lack belief in God personally.

 

Obviously?

 

As an agnostic I’m often puzzled by atheists claiming the non-existence of an entity claimed to be a meaningless concept.
To simplify the equation I’ll put it another way. What does it signify to say ‘Nothing doesn’t exist”/

 

Most Atheists I know are actually Agnostic in that they admit they don't know what may be out there, For myself I claim Atheism in the context of the "Gods Of Men" and primarily to not be counted as a worshipper or theist.

 

The atheist position is the same as yours regarding Zeus, Odin, Thor and Ra.

 

Thats reasonable.

Do you see any difference between those who are certain there is a God, and those who are certain there is not?

 

In order to believe One has to suspend all logic

 

Yes..the difference being one believes in God and the other does not.

Certainty is another story as it displays a closed hind just as religion does.

 

I'll try to answer these all together this time.

You misunderstand. As an atheist, I understand that all moral laws are human inventions. As a former believer, I understand that no moral laws are binding without some kind of enforcement mechanism, the most effective being an internal fear of the consequences. If you can combine that with the promise of reward for good behavior, you have a doubly effective motivation for moral action. And the most effective way of creating both of those is with a double-sided omniscient God, one who punishes evil and rewards good, who sees all and knows all. Is it fiction? Yes. Is it necessary? Yes.

I think you pretty much have to dismiss it without evidence, ha.

Of course not, every religion has its own morality. Hinduism has a prohibition on killing any animals, including insects. (Yikes.) Aztec-ism had a practice of priests cutting out the hearts of living people and feasting on them. Inca-ism had a practice of child sacrifice. My claim is that there is no morality absent religion. I speculate that the earliest humans who could ponder about morality and religion linked the two from the beginning... if we sacrifice this virgin, then the gods will look favorably on our harvest. But if we don't, the gods will think us evil and ungrateful and will destroy our crops with floods and locusts.

617 separate laws on how the Israelites had to behave, but nothing to do with morality or ethics. You're funny.

Ummm, every time he opened his mouth? Everything he had to say was on the topic of morality, or how you should behave. Even his commandment to the disciples that they shouldn't think of what they were going to eat or what they were going to wear was a statement of morality.

I don't think I ever came across the term "ethics" until I got to college, but the term "morals" was well known to me. So while I'll agree that ethics is what philosophers study, morality is what theologists study. And it seems very straightforward to me that ethics, or what the philosophers study, has absolutely zero solid ground under it. I was still a believer when I took philosophy, and it astounded me that philosophers started from the position of there is no God/gods, and then tried to come up with a system of good and bad, as if good and bad had any meaning absent some kind of religious score-keeping, if you will. Even the notion of karma is a kind of religious score-keeping, one that doesn't require a God or gods to enforce. Shrinks today will tell you that nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. Well, okay, so if I don't think killing is bad, I should go out and kill as many people as I want, right? And this is where ethics fails, because it, too, has no basis in morality, no grounding in religious score-keeping. I remember in business school having a long discussion on the ethics of bribery. Christians really don't have a problem in declaring bribery to be wrong, without even having a good explanation of why they think so. Atheists, agnostics, philosophers, and the like run into a great deal of difficulty explaining why bribery is or should be wrong. We tip waiters for better service, right? So why not tip the politicians for better service? In my book, I said something to this effect: Ethics is morality without God. It's like trying to use a compass that has had the needle removed. There's no due north anymore, so there's no way to use it to orient yourself.

Yeah, let's not confuse the religion with the practitioners. I'm sure there are Shinto-ists who don't revere their ancestors.

I would term myself an atheism-hating atheist. I'm okay, for the most part. And as for the rest, exactly. If morality is whatever the **** you think it is, then morality doesn't exist. It's exactly why we need religion, to give us a road map, a sense of direction, a lodestone. And of all the religions to choose from, Christianity seems to be the best.

Christ rejected the "eye for an eye" ethical system and introduced the notion of mercy. It took a very long time to catch on, since you could still be hanged in England for stealing a handkerchief in the 19th century. He introduced the concept of the brotherhood of man, which took a very long time to catch on since slavery wasn't abolished (in the West) until the 19th century. Jesus introduced the concept of a personal relationship with God, independent of any intermediary, human or organization, which took a very long time to catch on since the Protestant Reformation didn't occur until the 16th century. Yes, of course, every religion has had its own moral framework, and every philosopher has had his own ethical viewpoints. Ethics, no, ethics is not based on anything objective. Morals, yes, morals are based on the objective laws drawn up by the founders of whatever religion you're looking at. The Ten Commandments are an objective set of laws, set in stone, literally. Ethics asks, "Is it wrong to steal?" Morals say, "Thou shalt not steal." See the difference?

But if it works, we should use it more often, no?

So perhaps you can describe the mind of God in such a way that you can test for his existence in an infallible way, a way that God cannot circumvent or avoid. There's an interesting way to test to see if someone is lying by creating a lie yourself about the same subject and then watching the reaction. If the person is lying, s/he will pause to consider how to evaluate your statement. If s/he isn't lying, the reaction will be swift, "What are you talking about?" The actual response is unimportant, the only clue you need is the pause. So, what test will you use to prove or disprove God's existence that cannot fail? You'll need some kind of double-bind test, that God must do this or that or else God does not exist. Personally, I don't think you can create such a test.

Yeah, like I said, they got mixed results.

There are plenty of miraculous healings, you only have to Google those. That's actually easier to explain than external phenomena miracles as being the action of the mind on the body. Harder to explain are "word of God" miracles, like God telling a 17 year old French girl to go get a sword hidden in a church and to lead the French army.

And yet they are all in retreat before the advance of the barbarous, uncivilized, technologically backwards, uneducated, religious bunch.

I'll agree with all the rest except the "peaceful" claim. Western Europe and eastern Asia are "peaceful" because we exist. Without the Pax Americana, I'm sure the wars of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries would have continued on unabated in both areas of the world, just more and more bloody.

Edit to add: You can be sure China is watching the situation with Iran very closely to see if we still have the stomach for war. So far, Iran hasn't pushed us to the brink, but if it does, and we blink, China will start on their plans for military expansion in the area soon after. If we have to go to war with Iran and don't flinch from it, the Chinese will sit tight for another generation without challenging the Pax Americana.

 

Or develop a particular form of pseudo-logic like Aquinus and St Anselm’s.

 

I’m glad you’re not employed by the Pentagon,

 

Let me try a different approach:

There are those who talk about "God, country, family, me" (roughly. Some say "God, family, country, me").

Well, what if for some of us it's "country, family, me" (or "family, country, me)?

I think that is a significant difference. And, it doesn't imply that I discarded my understanding of morality and ethics.

 

If you want to understand geopolitics, watch westerns.

 

The rule of the old west was "might makes right".

We're better off working toward respect for the rule of law.

 

And confirmation of an "aspect" is not proof of an "aspect" because...?

Yeah. You're welcome.

 

The rule of law only applies where there is a law. There are no laws binding nations. In the realm of geopolitics, might does indeed make right.

Westerns are also informative about things like alliances, betrayal, watching your back, the importance of reputation (the more gun battles you avoid because you're known as the toughest hombre on the block, the better), military readiness (think Eli Wallach in the bathtub), military superiority (Winchester rifles, e.g.), scale of engagement (in Pale Rider, Clint beats the crap out of the first set o' bad guys with a hickory ax handle rather than shooting them; later, facing the seven murderous lawmen, he has no trouble shooting them down), the danger of an enemy with a score to settle, etc. There are plenty of lessons to be learned from history, but historians and politicians too often learn the wrong lesson. Westerns offer their lessons in a cut and dried, black and white format that is difficult to miss.

 

We are founded on the rule of law. And, we've worked at spreading that fundamental belief by being instrumental in establishing NATO, the UN and a good number of individual nations. And, when we make decisions, we appeal to the rule of law as justification.

It's obvious that there is no law where there is no law. And, it's true that there does need to be force behind our law (otherwise, why do we have police?).

But, that's not an excuse for abandoning our fundamental commitment to law as the means of moving forward and the principle we believe must be established.

And, it doesn't refute that our best future is through furthering what we stand for - the rule of law.

 

If you're refering to prioritizing devotion, I tend to agree with what I understand to be 'humanists'.
I don't believe God needs us to do anything for Him. We're to do for eachother now. We are made in the image of The Creator, with an endless universe of resource and energy, and an instinct to explore and discover. Its clear (to me) that we're meant to spread across, overcome and master it. Perhaps one day in the distant future, we'll meet Him on equal grounds, having discovered the secrets He used to create us. Perhaps we'll build Heaven and end suffering.
Theres no reason to expect that God will just provide us with this. He might, but we should build it ourselves until He does, in case He doesn't. If God is The Father, we should seek what all parents want of their children- to build a better world than the parents did.

Human creative energy is meant to serve humans. The best we can build in God's eyes is soiled rags... so we should build things that are great for us, ourselves and eachother.

 

The ethics attempts to define "wrong" which is inherently prescriptive just as "good" is prescriptive. Both ethics and mores generate prescriptive proposition: "X should do Y, because Y is good." It is a tautology by goodness sake!

You stated, "It becomes nearly impossible for an atheist to condemn anything because in order to condemn something, you have to have an objective basis from which to practice moral judgement."

You are still using "ethics" and "morals" interchangeably depending on the context as a matter of convenience.

You wrote, "An objective basis from which to practice moral judgments" But you just said morals judgments are "objective." No, judgments (thoughts) are clearly subjective.

If religions and philosophers have there own moral framework, why would they have trouble condemning anything?

If I write, "The world is flat" on a stone, it does not make it objective truth." I would not want to base any action just on the fact of it was written on a stone! Ethical principles are needed. Atheists could make a big pile of stones just as big as the theists.

I would want to base moral action on ethical principles. "Mores" from the word "moral" are merely customs. That is why I don't get the death penalty for using the wrong fork at dinner time--even if it is written stone!

So what makes Zeus' values different than any other deity's? My objective stone is just as "good" as yours.

 

In the United States, we have the rule of law, more or less. There is a law, there is a government that enforces that law, and there is a mechanism for changing the government when it no longer enforces law. When it comes to international relations, there are no laws, no government, no mechanism for changing that government. In the United States, if Joe Schmo feels he has been aggrieved by his neighbor, he can sue or petition the government for assistance. The government will provide the court, the judge, and the full weight of its enforcement power to bringing the outcome to reality. Sometimes it will even provide the lawyer. But to whom can Botswana appeal if it feels it has been aggrieved by its neighbor? The United Nations? The International Court? Neither has any authority except that granted by the members, and if a member chooses to ignore it, there's little they can do. No, Botswana's only options are to engage with the neighbor on its own or to try to recruit allies to come to its aid. The UN is more like the pirates' council in Pirates of the Caribbean 3 than it is a world government.