Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals.

Nor is that implied in anything I've said. The point is SO simple I know even you get it, you just don't want to admit it: being made of atoms in itself, and that being the sum total of us and every other living thing from which we supposedly evolved, by defining us as nothing but an accident of material physical arrangements denies us any intrinsic worth. I don't deny it but that's because I'm not dependent on evolution for an understanding of what a human being is. The point here is that evolution deprives human beings of any special status in the scheme of things. We may think human beings are special, I always did despite believing in evolution, but I knew that if evolution was true I couldn't make any claim to objectivity for that view.

But that or some equally false proposition seems necessary to your argument. You need to get from "everything is made of atoms" to "everything is equally worthless". How do you propose to do so? I get what your point is, I just haven't seen you make so much as a token effort to justify it. Why would the intrinsic worth of the same person, having the same qualities, differ according to what he's made of? So long as I am the same person with the same thoughts and feelings, how does it affect my worth whether I am made of flesh and blood, invisible soul-stuff, or a mixture of mustard, alpaca wool, and zinc? Nor am I. I'm dependent on it for an understanding of how he came to be --- but what he is is completely unaffected by this question. I am exactly the same person whether the first humans evolved from australopithecines or were made by God out of dirt. Either way, Faith, I am who I am, I have the same thoughts and talents, the same hopes and dreams, the same height and shoe size. No discovery about my antecedents could possibly change who I am.

The bit I quoted.

Yes, it sounds like a moron is parroting me for no particular reason. If the things that you pretend are inescapable implications of science really were inescapable implications of science, then you'd be able to come up with some argument (maybe even an inescapable one!) that science implies them. Speak for yourself.

I already answered this: Being made of atoms is what makes us nothing special. As I said. Being merely physical, or merely animal, which makes soul or spirit at best epiphenomenal, at worst a human delusion, is what denies us specialness. YOu are talking about something other than I am talking about. I'm not talking about individual persons, nor about one person differing from another. I'm talking about humanity as a (God help us) "Species," which as defined by evolution is nothing but material or physical, which puts us in the same category as bugs and leaves us without any objective standard for superior qualities we might like to claim for the Species. If it's all a blind accident, where's the qualitative difference between us and bugs?We all ascribe value to humanness, but the value we ascribe to humanness can't be explained by any physicality whatever. Since physicality is all we're allowed by evolution the value we ascribe to humanness is just subjective, a delusion, it has no objective grounding.Hey, jar agreed way back there. He has the standard understanding that being animals deprives us of an objective standard of specialness, purpose, meaning. You've got lots of subjective valuations, what you don't have is any objective support for it. What you don't have is any objective standard for assessing your qualities since in essence you are nothing but a bunch of atoms and have no way of accounting for anything else about you. It's all epiphenomena or it's delusion since all you are is physical Stuff. And again I'm not talking about persons, comparing persons, etc., I'm talking about Humanity itself. For which I have the objective standard of God's creation and definition of us.Focusing on what you consider to be your qualities says nothing about any inherent value of humanity as such. Would you care to try to determine an objective standard for determining that?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

How does being made of atoms make us nothing special?How does being made of atoms make us less special than people who have identical properties but are made of something else? Well, I would have said that if the individual persons have worth, then so does the species that they constitute.But no biggie, let's just rewrite my question to be about the species, as follows:"Why would the intrinsic worth of the same species, having the same qualities, differ according to what it's made of? So long as we are the same people with the same thoughts and feelings, how does it affect our worth whether we are made of flesh and blood, invisible soul-stuff, or a mixture of mustard, alpaca wool, and zinc?"Happy now? Once again, we have the same personal qualities whatever we're made of. How could it be otherwise? Reading your posts is like listening to someone say (for example) "My shoes are comfortable if they are made out of leather, but they are tight and uncomfortable if they are made out of synthetic material." What would we say if we heard someone talking like that? That's not how anything works. The comfort of his shoes is a given, nothing he can find out about their constituent substance can change it. If, as you claim, I have an inherent value, then that is among my qualities, or is a fact about my qualities.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

There's a documentary program on CNN, Believer, featuring Reza Aslan immersing himself in various religions on the level of a believer. I've not watched it.Today (14 Apr 2017) I heard Reza Aslan being interviewed on the Sirius XM Insight channel. One thing he brought up was how poll after poll after poll find that atheists are among the most moral people while theists, especially Christians, are among the least moral. Therefore, there is very little, if any at all, connection between religion and morality. The two just don't seem to have anything to do with each other.Another point that was raised was how fundamentalists of all religions are pretty much the same with the same mentality and the same attitudes. So Christian fundamentalists have much more in common with Muslim fundamentalists than they do with other Christians.I forget which program that was on, but some of those programs have websites with audio files of programs. Maybe someone could look for it.

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I don't deny it but that's because I'm not dependent on evolution for an understanding of what a human being is.

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Neither are any of us. The most important things are what we observe about humans. Why do you find no value in anything you see in humans, so that you are dependant on dubious stories instead of observation ?

Uh, but we are made of atoms. And we are animals. There is no denying either simple observable fact. That you choose to make an extremely negative judgement based on simple, observable, irrefutable facts says much more about you than about anything else.Remember, the Bible is just a book. Nothing but paper and ink and binding materials. You want to be "special"? Please keep in mind that "special" is used to describe individuals of limited capacity, usually mental. Do you still want to be "special"?Also, just whom do we hear using such language? Oh yeah! The fundies and related religious extremists **. For what purpose? To create a strawman argument by attempting to reduce their perceived opposition's position to a ridiculously extreme statement. I just posted a message about how atheists rate much more highly in morality than do Christians and I would think that fundamentalists rate far lower on the scale than other Christians (most of whom they refuse to even consider as being Christians -- I got caught in the middle of one of those stupid disputes at work; please note that Jesus Christ on his radio show gets really bent out of shape when a caller tries to pull that kind of crap).Are we all constructed out of atoms? Yeah! Are we all animals? Yeah! Does that mean we are not special? Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Oscar? (Oscar is required for military transmission) Just exactly what kind of congenital idiot are you?OK, not congenital. Rather, that kind of idiocy is acquired through one's theology.

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A young woman in my Country Two-Step class made me aware of this. She is "one of those", though which one of those I'm not sure. It turns out that while we normals tend to lump a lot of you together, that just ends up rankling you-all.Here's a graphic published by Ed Babinski, a former ultra-Fundamentalist who went on to publish a book of deconversion stories: Basically, Babinski depicted what Bertrand Russel had described, that a Catholic freethinker would naturally become an atheist, whereas a Protestant freethinker would simply form a new church. As soon as Protestantism came into being, it immediately started splintering off into more denominations than anyone could ever imagine. We should really consider renaming Protestantism to "Legion", since they are many.The issue that she had made me aware of is that while to us normals you-all appear to be no different from each other, amongst yourselves you draw very major and extreme distinctions. Referring back to the Babinski graphic and the Bertrand Russel description, we have that you have drawn back from each other along very strong doctrinal lines.Which leaves us normals in a quandry of how to refer to you-all.

I've been moving in the direction of viewing Christianity and its views of humanity as being sociopathic. Or even promoting psychiopathic attitudes or behavior.At least those are the views that I keep seeing its more vocal proponents promoting.

Yay! Hooray! Finally you get something right.There is no objective standard for assessing worth or morality. Both worth and morality are subjective human construct.We have only been saying that since the beginning of the thread.

As usual, such a simple point so strangely misunderstood and unnecessarily complicated.Hey, I found the source of that quote I kept trying to remember. It had finally occurred to me that one of the three was Galileo, but I still couldn't remember the whole idea. Turns out it was Freud who identified the three blows to the human ego:Nowhere near as pithy as I'd thought, and I really don't agree with much of it anyway.But the idea of science demoting humanity from a sense of specialness AS human is certainly there.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Misunderstood how?It may be simple but it appears to be flagrant lunacy, as we can see by considering someone saying something similar about anything else: a computer, a rose, a pair of shoes, etc. "As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return." --- Ecclesiastes, 3:18-20.The biological fact that humans are animals has been obvious for a long time; I don't know if anyone has ever doubted it. And, as you can see, people have always been capable of being unreasonably miserable about it.

All the previous posts on the subject misunderstand. And now you continue to misunderstand with your quote from Ecclesiastes, failing to recognize the sad irony in it. Here's another mention of the same sad situation in the right context:Psalm 49:20: Man that is in honour, and understandeth not, is like the beasts that perish.The Bible shows us to be this amazing creature made in God's image, "in honor," that has become stupid and animal-like. It's not our normal condition in other words, it's what fallenness has made of us.

Science just states what is. What we make of it is up to us.You've got over the ego problem of us being just up-market beasts by choosing to believe a fantasy made of heavens, gods and souls and such, thereby elevating your importance.Us atheists just shrug and get on with life.