robinrohan
These boasts--I have run across a lot of them and can provide quotes if you like--just will not do.
I will ask you to kindly provide these quotes if you will.
However, it is necessary that we make a distinction. The reason the atheists boast is to show that they can be happy and can be moral without God. Very understandable.
Without a specific quote to go by I do not think I can even agree that a boast is being made so I will reserve comment.
But we have to realize what is being said here. Yes, one can be happy and one can be moral, but one will also go to one's long home.
It will be, in a hundred years, as if you never existed. You are of no more significance than a roach crawling across the floor.
So we are mortal and will one day be non-existant, insignificant except to family and friends and memories only. I understand this quite well. I have come close a couple times myself to dying as a result of experiencing life. Is there something I have missed that you could explain further?
So one must understand that fact thoroughly before one speaks of "happiness" and "exemplary moral character" and the "wonder of life."
That we are mortal and bound for oblivion only makes the case for happiness and moral conduct of greater import though it does not mean that you need be happy nor act with morally upstanding conduct. This only makes it a sufficient reason and not a necessary one.
Except in a practical sense, it will not do to speak of such things as happiness and morality. If one is an atheist one should never speak this way. One should say, "We are products of a mindless universe, accidentally produced. We will live out our lives, and have some pleasures, and grow old, and die."
I do not understand how the condition of a mortal life in a universe without purpose requires that happiness nor morality be unattainable.
Could you please explain why you find this to be an impossibility?
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