are you an atheist?

you can't get people to do things in a coordinated fashion without a religious mandate

how do you explain motor vehicle traffic?

I suppose that depends on where one thinks morality originates from, doesn't it?

morality suggests free choice that is incompatibility w/ material explanations afaict

incompatible* i mean

eh I don't think that's true, but I would need to hit way above my weight class to argue it effectively, so I'll just leave it at that.

but I don't think "materialism" = "determinism"

w/out hearing your argument i'm going to speculatively posit that your belief that morality + materialism are compatible is probably the lacuna in which your atheism breaks down + you believe in GOD.

"how do you explain motor vehicle traffic?"
faith and threat of biblical violence

well done

Knock yourself out! xxp

http://biblicalproof.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/its-gods-way-or-the-highway.jpg

ok now ur gettin ur troll on

i would like to point out the cute reversal where the atheist is backing out of the argument w/ the theist. i don't think it means anything, but i often read arguments between dumbass religious believers and atheists where the atheist runs circles around them and i always wish that someone smart - like a theologian - was on the other side of the discussion.

in any case, the quality of the arguer shouldn't impact the inherent argument so it doesn't really matter

Highways seem like an attractive choice. They let you travel smoothly and quickly to many wonderful places.

au contraire

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7-h4r3d27A

sorry to let you down though, Mordy

not the first time!

There was an interesting bit on Planet Money about tithing among Mormons and tax collection, and while they don't advocate we switch over public fund collections to tithing, it was interesting how people tended to volunteer more money than they needed to as a tithe. It's hard not to see America as a theocracy to be a vastly more efficient enterprise.

However will I live with myself?

Maybe pray to GOD?

Don't hold your breath.

No, on second thought, hold your breath.

Can somebody just spam this thread with a bunch of existentialists already? They're not all atheists fwiw.

What if I can't pray to God, Mordy?

I don't know, Michael. Is that a riddle?

i would like to point out the cute reversal where the atheist is backing out of the argument w/ the theist. i don't think it means anything, but i often read arguments between dumbass religious believers and atheists where the atheist runs circles around them and i always wish that someone smart - like a theologian - was on the other side of the discussion.

Yeah, me too. I liked this debate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVjjpfQgJ2k

Haldane presents a sophisticated argument that the existence of God is the condition for the possibility of anything's having moral significance, and Hitchens doesn't have a decent response to it.

Pray: to ask that the laws of the universe be nullified on behalf of a single petitioner, admittedly unworthy. - A. Bierce

I am often reverent toward creation in an entirely human, irrational way yet I cannot conceive of praying without humility, without reverence and I cannot conceive of a God whom I wouldn't think a made-in-man's image of an imaginary but powerful friend who makes sense of the senseless and helps a bro out of jam every now and then when stuff gets squirrely.

i used to be a pretty religious catholic when i was a kid (pursued it on my own, family didn't care much about religion), but lost the faith in teen years after thinkin bout shit. i wish i could go back to those days, it was nice to have a friend in jesus. but can't unring rung bell etc. etc.

a made-in-man's image of an imaginary but powerful friend who makes sense of the senseless and helps a bro out of jam every now and then when stuff gets squirrely.

yeah, I wouldn't pray to this dude either.

My best answer off-the-cuff for Haldane would be that the agency that is required for the possibility of anything's having moral significance is not an existant god, but the idea of transcendence, of which an existant god is a sufficient instance, but not a necesssary one.

Yet, Judaism (and by extension, Xtianity) has in its very creation myths an anthropocentric vision of mankind as being about as close to the divine as anything in God's creation. It doesn't strike you as self-serving tribal cheerleaderism?

this is my fave prayer of rosh hashana service

All mankind will pass before You like a flock of sheep. Like a shepherd pasturing his flock, making sheep pass under his staff, so shall You cause to pass, count, calculate, and consider the soul of all the living; and You shall apportion the destinies of all Your creatures and inscribe their verdict.

On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; who will live and who will die; who will die at his predestined time and who before his time; who by water and who by fire, who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by upheaval, who by plague, who by strangling, and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted. But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity avert the severe Decree!

you know. just chillin with my bro, God.

do you need a transcendent dimension in order to have morality? there are computer simulations of environments where morality spontaneously evolves as a game theoretic optimum.

Maoism and Stalinism aren't religions/cults IMHO, but the worship of the Kim family in NK is.

Or, Aimless, if we aimed lower, we could say that not to be a dick is its own reward, regardless of the au-delà.

I think a lot of what gets blamed on religion could just as easily be blamed on governments, and in fact, should. It's easy to forget that 'separation of church & state' is in practice more or less a new concept, and that back in the day church and state WERE basically one and the same.

I have been struggling for years with Philip's point, both because 'morality' is usually such a narrowly anthropocentric concept that doesn't take into account ecological balance (or insufficiently) and because the very real insight that religion is based on is that often the sin of the parent is visited on the child, the virtuous man does undergo vicissitudes and senseless humiliations, the crafty and the vile often do prevail, etc...

Afaics, a spontaneous morality based in pure pragmatism, in Haldane's terms, would not be morally significant, but indistinguishable from amoral behavior, because it shares the exact same grounds. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that, in my view.

Mordy, what I like about that part of the Rosh Hashanah service is how it's 90% fatalistic garnished with "repent, pray and be charitable" and maybe the bullet with your name on it will miss.

I agree, except with the "maybe" part. It's pretty deterministic. If you repent, pray and are charitable then the severe decree will be averted.

Of course it doesn't always work out that way. What can you do?

Perhaps the great utility of religion is that, unlike, utilitarianism it effectively damps down the endless discussion over when it's cool to leave grandma out in the snow at night. Some religions feel this way and some that way but it least we get marginally less butthurt when there's a common, more-or-less agreed upon protocol.

Of course it doesn't always work out that way. What can you do?

^^^Judaism in a nutshell

in a way i feel that's right -- you can't get people to do things in a coordinated fashion without a religious mandate -- or at least it's really fucken hard. so insofar that any mass activity is evil, you can't do it without religion.

I don't really agree w this at all, unless you are using a very loose term for religion that would include societal pressures and state/tribal power grabs. People do things as a group all the time without a religious mandate. Look at fashion, look at discrimination, etc.

I have little intention of negotiating with God over averting my ultimate fate. I shall continue to try, imperfectly, to be kind and considerate to my fellow Terrans, regardless of His decrees. It is the pathetic meaning I make for myself.

i just went to a city council meeting so that might be coloring my opinion a bit, but i felt like more things could have gotten done if one of the dudes took out a staff and shot lightning out of it at the beginning.

Adam, I read a somewhat shallow book once that claimed that the dietary rules of most religions were based on long-term goals that individuals couldn't be expected to see. You are an abomination if you eat pork, 'cause then you might raise swine and then, in a Hebrew setting might poison the well or water table. If teh Hindus eat the cattle that give us the manure we use to cook with and there's a famine and you decide to eat all the cattle, what the fcuk are we going to do a generation down the line? Easier to have broad fear-of-God injunctions than negotiate with peasants about the finer points of animal husbandry.

I thought Philip was talking about Folsom Street fair there for a second.

I have little intention of negotiating with God over averting my ultimate fate

Yeah see this makes 0 sense unless God is the white guy in a beard in a cartoon. God as an external authority figure is BS and anyone using that in order to control others is full of BS. That is not real religion, it's fear-based politics.

i would say religion is to a large extent politics and also, fashion in particular goes down along religious lines.