Teaser question...

[All Becomes New]

This is what I was talking about. Being a nihilist is not the ultimate fate of an atheist. It may be their ultimate fate but apart from moody teen edgelords I’ve never met a nihilist.

I agree it is NOT the fate of many atheists to be a nihilist, but that doesn't mean nihilism should not be the ultimate fate of atheists. There's no actually purpose of anything if you want to be an atheist and to be consistent with your worldview.

I went through a nihilist phase when I was a moody teen edgelord but now I’m a grown up I’m in no way a nihilist but I am an atheist.

So explain to me why anything matters at all as an atheist.

An atheist does not have a God shaped hole in them.

An atheist also has no moral grounds to stand on objectively.

 

[All Becomes New]

Never the less my point still stands. Things are better now.

Which means exactly nothing because if WWII wasn't that long ago, there's no saying the pattern that "things are better now" is going to hold.

 

[All Becomes New]

Is there a difference between these two statements: "I know" and "I believe"?

Depends on how you define what it means to know something.

 

[Larniavc]

So explain to me why anything matters at all as an atheist.

Because some things are meaningful and rewarding to me (an atheist). I get a kick out of doing my job, being a dad and husband. I enjoy video games and D&D with my friends.

All those things make me happy, they matter not because someone told me that they should matter but because if they were not there my life would be meaningless.

And can we please not go back down the road of you telling me what an atheist thinks ands feels?

Not being an atheist you have no first hand experience of how an atheist thinks or feels.

 

[Larniavc]

An atheist also has no moral grounds to stand on objectively.

That’s because all morals are subjective.

 

[All Becomes New]

Because some things are meaningful and rewarding to me (an atheist). I get a kick out of doing my job, being a dad and husband. I enjoy video games and D&D with my friends.

All those things make me happy, they matter not because someone told me that they should matter but because if they were not there my life would be meaningless.

And can we please not go back down the road of you telling me what an atheist thinks ands feels?

Not being an atheist you have no first hand experience of how an atheist thinks or feels.

That is why I say nihilistic hedonism is an alternative for atheists, but it still fits within nihilism.

 

[All Becomes New]

That’s because all morals are subjective.

I disagree. It is always wrong to torture a baby for fun, for example. That's an example of objective morality.

 

[Larniavc]

Which means exactly nothing because if WWII wasn't that long ago, there's no saying the pattern that "things are better now" is going to hold.

I don’t understand. WWII was ages ago. 75 years is longer than most human lifespans.

Things are better now than 75 years ago.

 

[Larniavc]

nihilistic hedonism

I can go with that.

 

[Larniavc]

I disagree. It is always wrong to torture a baby for fun, for example. That's an example of objective morality.

Then an atheist has objective morality because I (an atheist) agree with you.

Got to go to bed, now. Work in the morning. Good night

 

[All Becomes New]

I don’t understand. WWII was ages ago. 75 years is longer than most human lifespans.

Things are better now than 75 years ago.

My point stands. 75 years is not actually that long of a time for human history. To say things have magically gotten better, without the possibility that we could very well experience some other disastrous thing sometime in the future is a bit naive. Take Covid, for example. Is everything "better" in the instance of a new disease?

 

[All Becomes New]

Then an atheist has objective morality because I (an atheist) agree with you.

Sure. You agree because you KNOW it's wrong to do that. But your worldview isn't conductive to believing in any objective morality. That's what my point is. There's no objective morality outside of nihilistic hedonism that "makes sense" with atheism.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

I'm done repeating myself, so I'll only be responding to new claims. Anyone reading along is welcome to go back and follow the exchange up to this point.

Those things are CURRENTLY unexplainable.

If that is literally all you've said - that there are some things currently unexplainable by natural means - then that's a pretty banal claim. I don't think any honest person would object to it.

But that's not all you've said. This entire exchange began with your assertion that one must either believe Yahweh created the universe, or offer some other explanation. That is a false dichotomy, and argument from ignorance.

Except its done in the face of huge amounts evidence, to which the atheist has to tie themselves in knots to maintain their unbelief.

Don't flatter yourself. You have failed, miserably and comprehensively, to provide any such evidence. All you've done so far is make a few vacuous naked assertions, and demonstrate a lack of understanding of some very basic philosophical concepts.

 

[Eight Foot Manchild]

I agree it is NOT the fate of many atheists to be a nihilist, but that doesn't mean nihilism should not be the ultimate fate of atheists. There's no actually purpose of anything if you want to be an atheist and to be consistent with your worldview.

You're still confused.

Firstly, atheism isn't a worldview.

Secondly, you are the one who purports to derive his purpose from Yahweh. Therefor, your life has no purpose if he doesn't exist.

Thirdly, morals do not magically become "objective" when derived from Yahweh. You are no closer to bridging the is/ought gap, whether or not he exists.

 

[InterestedAtheist]

I must say, I'm quite enjoying this! You ask very easy questions.

I guess my problem would be that the person would say it's not evidence at all of anything, which is pretty silly. Claims carry the weight of evidence of something. You can say the evidences points to something else, but that doesn't mean the claim isn't evidence of anything.

Okay, then. Prove to me that Santa Claus doesn't exist. And you'd better take this question seriously. Did you know, I have mountains of evidence on my side. Millions - literally millions - of believers. Millions of testimonies. Videos. Stories. Newspaper articles, Centuries worth of evidence - yes, evidence - which I expect you to read, research and take seriously.
Does this make sense to you? No? Why not? Probably because although there are indeed huge amounts of evidence for Santa's existence, it is all of extremely low quality. And so it is with Christianity.
Do you now see my point?

Right, I call that the moral law written on your heart which is basically just your conscience. This doesn't mean it makes the moral framework of atheists consistent, it means atheists have a moral frameworks they have that they can't defend.

Sure we can defend it. It is wrong to attack other people because it hurts them. Would you like it if other people hurt you? No? Then don't hurt them. Because if you do, they may hurt you. What kind of a society would we live in if everyone hurt anyone they wished, with no thought of the consequences, and with no consequences imposed by society? Would you like to live in such a world? Of course not.
If this sounds simple, that's because it is. It was probably explained to you by your parents and schoolteachers as soon as you were able to walk and talk. While there may be very many complex moral problems, morality itself is a fairly simple thing, and does not require the existence of God in order to explain it.
So, have you ever heard of Euthyphro's Dilemma? It's a marvellous tool for showing Christians how it is, in fact, impossible to base their morality on God. Care to try answering it?

To show maybe it is not so silly to believe in gods after all.

If so, it fails. Consider: yes, most humans throughout human history have believed in a god or gods, in one form or another. And almost all of them have disagreed with each other. Now, if they had all believed in one god - the same god - that might be evidence, of a kind. But they all believe in different gods, and even the ones who believe in the same God - Christians, for example - disagree with each other. Religious history is chock-full of such disagreements, leading to heresy, inquisitions, holy wars, and throwing stones at the windows of people who go to mass instead of chapel. The fact that humans throughout history believe in a wide range of different and mutually exclusive gods is an argument against Christianity being true, not for it.

Sure, but my point is that if you were going to teach the same thing to people thousands of years ago, they would have no problem learning it. Hence, our rationality hasn't actually changed that much.

But they didn't know about it, and it wasn't taught thousands of years ago. Our rationality as a species has changed enormously, in our understanding of what rationality is, our understanding of how and why to use it, and the percentage of the population who do use it.

You don't think people debated in the past? Some things philosophers have said thousands of years ago are still just as relevant, or more relevant today, then they were when they said them. How do you figure that?

No problem. I already explained. The difference is that today such concepts are widely known, used and valued. Today, the average human being has a much greater knowledge of them. therefore, humans as a whole are much more rational.

I'd say a certain kind of thinking was passed on and it remains to be seen if it is actually "better".

Since it has produced the Renaissance, Enlightenment, democracy and the scientific and industrial revolutions, I would say that it is.

Whether it is acceptable or not depends on how you are doing it. It still makes it lazy, however.

It's lazy to quote another person's argument? Several millenia of academics would disagree with you. Didn't you learn about how to properly quote another person in college?

Here's a YouTube video:

I'd better mention: I live in China, and can't watch youtube.

Yeah, I am familiar with the term. Don't know why it actually exists. Doesn't seem to make any sense. "Gnostic" seems to be a pretty useless term.

Read Richard Dawkins, and you'll find it fully explained. Basically, gnosticism and theism combine in a number of ways. You have:
A gnostic theist - someone who knows that God exists.
An agnostic theist - someone who believes that God exist, but doesn't know for sure; they would say they believe God exists, but are open to having their mind changed if evidence is presented.
An agnostic atheist - someone who lacks knowledge of God (ie, evidence) and so also lacks belief. That would be me, and Richard Dawkins, and most of the atheists I have met or heard of. "I have seen no convincing evidence for god's existence, and so am unable to believe in such a being," we would say.
A gnostic atheist - someone who, because of knowledge they have, knows that God does not exist (for example, an agnostic atheist might argue that the definition of God is logically impossible, and so it is impossible for God to exist).

Then how do you know they have an explanation that isn't supernatural?

I don't. If there is an explanation that is supernatural, I would like to see evidence of it. If the evidence is convincing, I shall be convinced.

Atheists are largely prudes. That's one problem I have with them.

Seriously?
prude
[pro͞od]
NOUN

1. a person who is or claims to be easily shocked by matters relating to sex or nudity.

That doesn't sound much like an atheist to me.
But perhaps you're referring to the synonyms:
synonyms:
puritan · prig · killjoy · moral zealot/fanatic · moralist · Mrs. Grundy · Grundy · old maid · schoolmarm · pietist · Victorian · priggish person · bluenose · goody-goody · goody two shoes · holy Joe · holy Willie · Miss Prim
Well, several of those came from ideas of Victorian religious morality; some of them are explicitly religious.
But if you are saying we are prudes in the sense that we take away your joy in religion by being so rude as to point out the mistakes in your arguments - well, I can just say that far from killing joy, it gives us a certain amount of amusement to do so!

Atheists say they seek truth, but they dismiss claims altogether, which is intellectually dishonest.

Nonsense. Identifying and dismissing false claims is something only someone interested in finding the truth woyld do.

That's not all atheists. Some atheists don't believe because they legitimately don't agree with the evidence.

Agreed. Such as me.

But people like you, who know the arguments, and then, perhaps like you, but perhaps not, say there is no evidence, that's just sloppy.

It's actually us being kind. If you like, I can be more precise, and point out that what you are referring to as evidence is of the lowest, weakest kind that would only believed by someone who was ignorant of science and logic, or by someone who didn't actually care about the truth, but only about advancing their own agenda.

You will notice, an atheist actually liked my post in my definition of supernatural. So I'm afraid it is not just the default of atheists who don't like my definition.

I would be interested to know why they liked it. Possibly because they thought it was amusing?

And most Apologists think Dawkins sucks at philosophy. In fact, a lot of atheists think Dawkins sucks at philosophy and that he should stick to biology.

Most apologists are wrong, as you can see when you read Dawkins. In The God Delusion he goes through most of the main apologetic arguments and points out their problems. In twenty years of debating theists, I can say that he has been more or less right every time.

Oh, and would this be The God Delusion that has 6, 133 global ratings, 71% of them five star ratings? (Tenth Anniversary Edition). Yes, I can see that the atheist community has completely rejected Dawkins' arguments! Look at these horrible things they've said about him:

"Richard Dawkins has applied the scientific method to the phenomenon of religious beliefs examining the evidence for and substance of those beliefs. Through simple logic he demonstrates the inconsistencies and irrationalities upon which religious beliefs rely. An immense amount of research and analysis has gone into the production of this book. "
and
"I read this book shortly after it was first published and was wholly inspired by its depth of critique."
and
"I’m impressed with the tons of research."
and
"Excellent, cool dissection of the points it examines."

These are all reviews taken from Amazon. Seriously - atheists love Dawkins' book! It mainstreamed atheism, was and is a best-seller, and made thousands of apologists say "Sour grapes." As they still are.

 

[All Becomes New]

I apologise if anything I said has given you offence.

I appreciate this post isn't laced with insults.

No religion is the same as any other. But apparently you have no trouble dismissing my mountains of evidence despite the fact that you accuse atheists of doing the same with you.

What other religions have the same kind of evidence for it? Islam can't demonstrate itself to be consistent, but there is certainly evidence that there was a guy named Mohamed who wrote about book about things. Buddhism is based on virtually zero historical evidence. Judaism largely pulls from the same sources as Christianity, but they have a bit different view of things currently. Plenty of archeology for King David existing currently. Atheists used to say there wasn't any evidence for King David as a way to disprove the Bible and now we have lot's of evidence he existed.

Why not? "The collective happiness and wellbeing of the human race" seems quite a noble goal to me.

Sure, but why should you actually care about that?

Your privilege, of course. You've been told that it is a strong argument against the Christian belief that morality can be based on God. If you don't wish to explore that, fine.

Do you expect me to change my mind on God because of this if I was to participate? My faith isn't really based on Apologetics, but on personal experience. Apologetics is just the icing on the cake.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, Chapter 5:
"We observe large numbers of people – in many areas it amounts to 100 per cent – who hold beliefs that flatly contradict demonstrable scientific facts as well as rival religions followed by others. People not only hold these beliefs with passionate certitude, but devote time and resources to costly activities that flow from holding them. They die for them, or kill for them. We marvel at this, just as we marvelled at the ‘self-immolation behaviour’ of the moths. Baffled, we ask why. But my point is that we may be asking the wrong question. The religious behaviour may be a misfiring, an unfortunate by-product of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful. On this view, the propensity that was naturally selected in our ancestors was not religion per se; it had some other benefit, and it only incidentally manifests itself as religious behaviour."

In other words, Dawkins has no idea why people invented God. Noted.

Just because the average mother around the world (and especially in the developed world) doesn't spend all day constructing theorems and syllogisms, that doesn't mean she doesn't enormously value a good education, a huge amount of which is to do with critical thinking, rationality, evidence, proof and the scientific method.

Yeah, she values that for her children, but practically speaking, she can do her job perfectly well if none of this sophistry existed.

In many ways, they have. Five hundred years ago in England, people could be hung, drawn and quartered, and the population would lap it up, screaming and fighting for souvenirs. Three hundred years ago, bull-baiting and [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]-fighting were popular pastimes. Today, people would look on such things with horror.

Perhaps you are unaware of the underground slave trading going on right now.

That sounds lazy indeed. But it's quite different from quoting another person, whose views you understand and can discuss, in order to make a point.

I agree.

In fact, I'm British. I just live in China.

I was thinking your English was pretty good for being from China.

That wasn't clear from what you said earlier. Still, hopefully now you understand what an agnostic atheist is and why their views are reasonable.

Not sure why you thought I was talking about gnostic knowledge then.

And what if they all say no?

Try it and see what happens.

I've studied quite a lot of arguments on the resurrection. And no, the minimal facts argument does not seem particularly strong. Because it's largely based on hearsay and poor quality evidence.

It's based on historical facts that pretty much every NT scholar agrees with.

Not sure. I only said he addressed most of the main arguments. Why, what do you think about Isaiah 53?

I think it was a prophesy about the death of Christ and this holds completely independent of when you date Isaiah.

You said that atheists don't like Dawkins' book. That was mistaken, as I hope you now see.

When another atheists philosopher is quoted saying something to the effect of the book being "an embarrassment" that is what I was talking about.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Is anyone who calls themselves an atheist "past the point of no return"?

Exodus 9:12 But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had spoken to Moses.
2 Thessalonians 2:11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false,
2 Thessalonians 2:12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

That would be quite foolish. To say that nothing would change my mind would be to say that I won't take reality into account when making decisions. I think it's mostly Christians who do this, and not rational skeptics.

In fact, I've already established criteria that would give me great pause and cause me to greatly reconsider Christianity:

1. It is attested that a person saw the resurrected Jesus

2. This person was captured and given the opportunity to recant the faith, but refused and faced torture/execution

I allow absolutely any source that is within 200 years of Christ. Secular sources, sources from other religions, the Bible itself, and even non-canonical Christian texts that you reject. The source can be in any language and can be first-hand, second-hand, or even tenth-hand.

I'd prefer that you find me two or three who meet these criteria, but let's just start with one and go from there. You'll definitely have my attention.

However, this would only convince me that Christianity is true. It wouldn't make me a Christian. I don't know what would convince me to love a god that kills children.

 

[All Becomes New]

That would be quite foolish. To say that nothing would change my mind would be to say that I won't take reality into account when making decisions. I think it's mostly Christians who do this, and not rational skeptics.

In fact, I've already established criteria that would give me great pause and cause me to greatly reconsider Christianity:

1. It is attested that a person saw the resurrected Jesus

2. This person was captured and given the opportunity to recant the faith, but refused and faced torture/execution

I allow absolutely any source that is within 200 years of Christ. Secular sources, sources from other religions, the Bible itself, and even non-canonical Christian texts that you reject. The source can be in any language and can be first-hand, second-hand, or even tenth-hand.

I'd prefer that you find me two or three who meet these criteria, but let's just start with one and go from there. You'll definitely have my attention.

However, this would only convince me that Christianity is true. It wouldn't make me a Christian. I don't know what would convince me to love a god that kills children.

Are you aware of the martyr stories that are in the NT already? Why do you reject those if you know about them? Stephen, for example, was said to have been martyred in the book of Acts.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Are you aware of the martyr stories that are in the NT already? Why do you reject those if you know about them? Stephen, for example, was said to have been martyred in the book of Acts.

I'm aware of Stephen. He doesn't meet the criteria.

 

[All Becomes New]

I'm aware of Stephen. He doesn't meet the criteria.

He doesn't meet the criteria because he never saw the risen Jesus? I would assume he would have been one of the 500 people who saw Christ after Resurrection. IDK if he is specifically mentioned, but it would seem very plausible he was.