Godlessness and choice

[mindlight]

Most of the godless people I meet today (including agnostics and atheists in that) consider science and choice as the pillars of reality. Science defines how we look at the world and assess the validity of truth claims and choice is the basis for morality and law. I accept that there are other kinds of godless people out there. In the past we had Marxists who had an historical ideological understanding of the evolution of society based on economics. Also Nietzsche had an atheistic world view based on the will to power. Freud argued that our psychology and particularly views on sex determined our understandings of reality. But these previous forms of atheism have mainly been refuted, discredited and overthrown and today the majority of godless people phrase their godlessness in terms of the principles of scientific authority and choice.

The view of science held is that of an old universe, spontaneous emergence of life and macro evolution. It is a bleak and brutal vision of nature in which mass extinctions and biological processes have led to oblivion for many species while allowing others to thrive and survive. Reality is painful and choices determined by biological circumstance.

The view of choice held implies that each person has the freedom to choose their own way and that the basis of morality is to respect these choices. Reasonably they may argue that murder violates another persons freedom, intolerance violates his freedom etc. They may also argue that if I am gay I should be allowed to marry another gay person, if I want to die then I should be able to have euthanasia, if I do not want this baby then I should be able to kill it before it is born.

I have 3 main issues with this godless understanding of choice.

1) It seems to contradict the scientific appraisal of reality as being somehow determined by environment, evolution and circumstance.

2) It is rather selective in what it chooses e.g. the mother choice of her own personal convenience over that of the life of her child.

3) It has no ultimate authoritative foundation that does not change.

In essence can the idea of choice be justified if this high view of science is maintained. Why are the choices accepted by godless people so selective in terms of what is acceptable and what not. With what authority that survives any kind of serious scrutiny can these choices be justified

 

[quatona]

I´m really not getting a clear view of what your argument is here.
To me you seem to describe and evaluate reality (undesired events; the ability to make choices implies the option of making poor choices, etc. etc.).
You seem to be saying that this reality (that you don´t like) is a product of science, and that reality would be different if it were product of a God.
Or something.

 

[mindlight]

I´m really not getting a clear view of what your argument is here.
To me you seem to describe and evaluate reality (undesired events; the ability to make choices implies the option of making poor choices, etc. etc.).
You seem to be saying that this reality (that you don´t like) is a product of science, and that reality would be different if it were product of a God.
Or something.

The godless have no objective basis for justifying the existence of choice or the type of choices made.

Indeed the commonplace ways in which godless people view the world with their version of science and yet see choice at the heart of morality contradict each other and have no basis in any kind of unifying principle or authority.

 

[chriscomplex]

Most of the godless people I meet today (including agnostics and atheists in that) consider science and choice as the pillars of reality. Science defines how we look at the world and assess the validity of truth claims and choice is the basis for morality and law. I accept that there are other kinds of godless people out there. In the past we had Marxists who had an historical ideological understanding of the evolution of society based on economics. Also Nietzsche had an atheistic world view based on the will to power. Freud argued that our psychology and particularly views on sex determined our understandings of reality. But these previous forms of atheism have mainly been refuted, discredited and overthrown and today the majority of godless people phrase their godlessness in terms of the principles of scientific authority and choice.

The view of science held is that of an old universe, spontaneous emergence of life and macro evolution. It is a bleak and brutal vision of nature in which mass extinctions and biological processes have led to oblivion for many species while allowing others to thrive and survive. Reality is painful and choices determined by biological circumstance.

The view of choice held implies that each person has the freedom to choose their own way and that the basis of morality is to respect these choices. Reasonably they may argue that murder violates another persons freedom, intolerance violates his freedom etc. They may also argue that if I am gay I should be allowed to marry another gay person, if I want to die then I should be able to have euthanasia, if I do not want this baby then I should be able to kill it before it is born.

I have 3 main issues with this godless understanding of choice.

1) It seems to contradict the scientific appraisal of reality as being somehow determined by environment, evolution and circumstance.

2) It is rather selective in what it chooses e.g. the mother choice of her own personal convenience over that of the life of her child.

3) It has no ultimate authoritative foundation that does not change.

In essence can the idea of choice be justified if this high view of science is maintained. Why are the choices accepted by godless people so selective in terms of what is acceptable and what not. With what authority that survives any kind of serious scrutiny can these choices be justified

If you justify everything by good or evil, you will be forever combatants in a polarized war.

 

[quatona]

The godless

By "the godless" you mean non-believers?

have no objective basis for justifying the existence of choice

What do you mean by "justifying the existence of..."? Why and how does something that exists to be "justified"?

or the type of choices made.

That may or may not be the case. Now demonstrate that you, on the contrary, have such a basis (as opposed to just telling me that you believe there is such a basis).

Indeed the commonplace ways in which godless people view the world with their version of science and yet see choice at the heart of morality contradict each other and have no basis in any kind of unifying principle or authority.

By "commonplace ways" you mean the ways you are imagining they view the world? I´m asking, because there´s a lot of confusion about that in your OP.

 

[KnowtheSilence]

1) It seems to contradict the scientific appraisal of reality as being somehow determined by environment, evolution and circumstance.

I do not see the alleged contradiction here. Can you elaborate?

2) It is rather selective in what it chooses e.g. the mother choice of her own personal convenience over that of the life of her child.

Do you have an example of this being selective in what it chooses aside from abortion? Abortion is kind of a tricky topic, first and foremost because it involves what I think most people think are two moral considerations - the bodily autonomy of the mother and the life of the unborn - that people will weigh differently. On one extreme are people who, while they may recognize the moral value of bodily autonomy, think that the life of the unborn is of utmost importance and therefore no abortions should be permitted, regardless of circumstance; on the other extreme you have the opposite view, that bodily autonomy is the primary consideration and that abortion at any stage of development for any reason is moral. Most people - even religious people - seem to strike a balance somewhere in the middle of these extremes.

3) It has no ultimate authoritative foundation that does not change.

This is not true in in the case of ethical non-naturalists who believe that moral facts are simply brute facts that do not change. And it's irrelevant to ethical naturalists who think that moral facts reduce to non-moral facts; moral facts are then changeable in the sense that if the relevant non-moral facts were different, morality would be different, but that's trivially true and doesn't matter so long as the relevant facts remain the same.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Most of the godless people I meet today (including agnostics and atheists in that) consider science and choice as the pillars of reality. Science defines how we look at the world and assess the validity of truth claims and choice is the basis for morality and law. I accept that there are other kinds of godless people out there. In the past we had Marxists who had an historical ideological understanding of the evolution of society based on economics. Also Nietzsche had an atheistic world view based on the will to power. Freud argued that our psychology and particularly views on sex determined our understandings of reality. But these previous forms of atheism have mainly been refuted, discredited and overthrown and today the majority of godless people phrase their godlessness in terms of the principles of scientific authority and choice.

The view of science held is that of an old universe, spontaneous emergence of life and macro evolution. It is a bleak and brutal vision of nature in which mass extinctions and biological processes have led to oblivion for many species while allowing others to thrive and survive. Reality is painful and choices determined by biological circumstance.

The view of choice held implies that each person has the freedom to choose their own way and that the basis of morality is to respect these choices. Reasonably they may argue that murder violates another persons freedom, intolerance violates his freedom etc. They may also argue that if I am gay I should be allowed to marry another gay person, if I want to die then I should be able to have euthanasia, if I do not want this baby then I should be able to kill it before it is born.

I have 3 main issues with this godless understanding of choice.

1) It seems to contradict the scientific appraisal of reality as being somehow determined by environment, evolution and circumstance.

2) It is rather selective in what it chooses e.g. the mother choice of her own personal convenience over that of the life of her child.

3) It has no ultimate authoritative foundation that does not change.

In essence can the idea of choice be justified if this high view of science is maintained. Why are the choices accepted by godless people so selective in terms of what is acceptable and what not. With what authority that survives any kind of serious scrutiny can these choices be justified

As far as my own atheism is concerned, I can only tell you that you are wrong about how I motivate it.

You are trying to attach all kinds of baggage to my unbelief, but in reality none of it is directly related to it.

The only reason I am an atheist, is that I don't have valid reasons to believe theistic claims. And that's it. Whatever else I believe about anything (including morality etc) is unrelated to that.

 

[quatona]

Been wondering the following:
Assuming for a moment, your assertion that without God there can´t be choice were accurate: Wouldn´t that mean that choices like abortion have been brought to us by God?

 

[mindlight]

If you justify everything by good or evil, you will be forever combatants in a polarized war.

If you have no concept of good or evil you will go wherever your heart leads you whether through the gas chambers of Auschwitz, the Gulags of Stalin or worse.

 

[mindlight]

By "the godless" you mean non-believers?

Yes

What do you mean by "justifying the existence of..."? Why and how does something that exists to be "justified"?

Anything whose existence is conditional on something else needs to be justified by the greater thing on which its existence is conditional. Man being finite, mortal and weak is such a creature. Nature having a beginning and borders is also such a thing.

That may or may not be the case. Now demonstrate that you, on the contrary, have such a basis (as opposed to just telling me that you believe there is such a basis).

The purpose of the thread is to prove the inconsistency of a standard godless perspective in which the values of scientific determinism and faith in freewill contradict each other and undermine the possibility of anything but the illusion of choice.

By "commonplace ways" you mean the ways you are imagining they view the world? I´m asking, because there´s a lot of confusion about that in your OP.

Not imagining no. Most godless people I meet regurgitate these 2 twin values as a part of the positive worldview that they subscribe to even without understanding that these values, as they understand them, contradict. The point of the thread is to show the confusion and contradictionary nature of most godless peoples world views.

 

[mindlight]

I do not see the alleged contradiction here. Can you elaborate?

If your choices are determined by irresistible natural causes then how do you have choice?

Do you have an example of this being selective in what it chooses aside from abortion? Abortion is kind of a tricky topic, first and foremost because it involves what I think most people think are two moral considerations - the bodily autonomy of the mother and the life of the unborn - that people will weigh differently. On one extreme are people who, while they may recognize the moral value of bodily autonomy, think that the life of the unborn is of utmost importance and therefore no abortions should be permitted, regardless of circumstance; on the other extreme you have the opposite view, that bodily autonomy is the primary consideration and that abortion at any stage of development for any reason is moral. Most people - even religious people - seem to strike a balance somewhere in the middle of these extremes.

Godless people have also differed massively on when and whether it was right to kill generally. Atheists like Stalin or Mao killed more than 100 million people between them while modern atheists oppose the death penalty yet believe in abortion. Obviously the choice to kill violates the choice of its victims but the conditions in which the godless choose to kill and justify their killing morally vary enormously. Hitler waged racial warfare and exercised racial cleansing, Stalin and Mao mixed ideology and personal aggrandizement, a modern liberal will kill babies (abortion) or old people(euthanasia) and yet be horrified by the death penalty. There is no consistency and morality has little to do with it. Conditional and relativistic ethics is a better description.

This is not true in in the case of ethical non-naturalists who believe that moral facts are simply brute facts that do not change. And it's irrelevant to ethical naturalists who think that moral facts reduce to non-moral facts; moral facts are then changeable in the sense that if the relevant non-moral facts were different, morality would be different, but that's trivially true and doesn't matter so long as the relevant facts remain the same.

A godless person by definition will not have an eternal, infinite, perfect foundation for ethics by definition because they do not believe in the only foundation able to supply that. The variance on what constitutes facts when it comes to ethics between scientific rationalists, Nazi racists, Communist ideologues and liberal moral relativists who elevate an unjustifiable concept of choice above all else speaks for itself

 

[quatona]

Anything whose existence is conditional on something else needs to be justified by the greater thing on which its existence is conditional.

Sometimes I wonder how you guys come up with all these alleged laws - other than simply very much wanting a God to exist.
Now, if you feel the existence of e.g. a rock needs to be "justified" by a "greater thing", then be it.
The first question here, however, would be: What "greater thing" is the thing in question contingent on instead of jumping to conclusions. (And, btw., a unspecifically valuing term like "greater" isn´t really that usable for such an argument).

The purpose of the thread is to prove the inconsistency of a standard godless perspective in which the values of scientific determinism and faith in freewill contradict each other and undermine the possibility of anything but the illusion of choice.

Yeah, determinism and freewillism are incompatible, by definition.
You don´t need to invoke deities for pointing that out, and there´s no need to blame such a contradiction on the lack of belief in a deity - especially since the existence of a deity wouldn´t render determinism and freewillism compatible.

Not imagining no. Most godless people I meet regurgitate these 2 twin values and a part of the positive worldview that they subscribe to even without understanding that these values as they understand them contradict. The point of the thread is to show the confusion and contradictionary nature of most godless peoples world views.

Then let´s hope you will find some of these "most" guys here, so that you can discuss it with them.

 

[mindlight]

As far as my own atheism is concerned, I can only tell you that you are wrong about how I motivate it.

You are trying to attach all kinds of baggage to my unbelief, but in reality none of it is directly related to it.

The only reason I am an atheist, is that I don't have valid reasons to believe theistic claims. And that's it. Whatever else I believe about anything (including morality etc) is unrelated to that.

Why you are an atheist is not really the point of this OP. The inconsistency and indeed foolishness of a standard and commonplace atheist world view that tries to marry personal choice with scientific determinism is the target here.

You choose not to believe because you do not believe you have reasons to do so. The twin assumptions that 1) your choice is valid in the absence of a divine guarantor and 2) that the tools you use to demonstrate invalidity can actually demonstrate that invalidity with any authority are both questionable however. Indeed the valuation of personal choice and the deterministic scientific method used often contradict in the arguments of godless people against God. They say it is their choice what they believe BUT also say that facts gleaned from a deterministic understanding of science support them. You cannot have both in a consistent world view.

Facts are often selectively chosen, the reality of personal choice is assumed. But if a person believes in facts that indicate his choices are determined then does he really have any choice.

This is not a dilemma to the same extent to a Christian because the one who determines reality also guarantees the freewill that Christians possess.

Personally and positively I believe in a God who has given all of us freewill, our choices are valid ones. Science is a limited method that cannot yield answers about the existence or non existence of God but can in exploring Gods creation give reasons for wonder. So choices and facts can be held in the orbit of a higher principle to both.

 

[quatona]

You choose not to believe because you do not believe you have reasons to do so.

...while you are determined to believe there´s a God.

 

[mindlight]

Yeah, determinism and freewillism are incompatible, by definition.
You don´t need to invoke deities for pointing that out, and there´s no need to blame such a contradiction on the lack of belief in a deity - especially since the existence of a deity wouldn´t render determinism and freewillism compatible

God can rule the universe and yet create me with freewill. A deterministic natural order cannot do that. In the case of the former my choice is real, in the case of the latter it is an illusion.

 

[mindlight]

Been wondering the following:
Assuming for a moment, your assertion that without God there can´t be choice were accurate: Wouldn´t that mean that choices like abortion have been brought to us by God?

NO that God has given us real choice and freewill is a fact of how he has created us. But the choice by a mother to violate the choice of her infant and indeed deprive that infant of all possible future choices is an act of freewill.

 

[quatona]

God can rule the universe and yet create me with freewill. A deterministic natural order cannot do that.

If you say so.

 

[mindlight]

If you say so.

Standard teaching of the church and witness of scripture. You would have to use these authorities to demonstrate that I was merely arguing a personal opinion like yourself.

 

[quatona]

NO that God has given us real choice and freewill is a fact of how he has created us.

Ok, now there´s your explanation why there´s abortion and stuff.

 

[quatona]

Standard teaching of the church and witness of scripture. You would have to use these authorities to demonstrate that I was merely arguing a personal opinion like yourself.

No, you would have to establish that they are authoritative in order for anyone to entertain the idea that your personal subjective opinion is anything but your personal subjective opinion.