So my finger is 2 inches from pressing the button..

[ollagram88]

..that will release nuclear bombs, destroying all of humanity.

What would be the atheist rationale to convince me not to push the button?

[daedalus 2.0]

There is a huge difference between believing in morals and love vs. believing in God and the afterlife.

Morals and love exist as direct conditions and interactions of our existence. Whatever moral values we may hold, they exist because we exist - for no other reason. Love, too. It is seen by actions that we call loving.

God or the afterlife don't exist because we exist. We have no idea if they exist in any form and have no way to verify them.


BTW, I agree with you that most Theists believe in living a good life now. I would explain this by suggesting that most Theists don't really believe in God. For example: I believe in gravity (rather, I believe it exists). I never flaunt its "law". I never "tempt it" not to work - say, walk off the parapet of a building into space.

However, theists often and regularly flaunt the laws of their God - they continually do things they SAY they believe God will punish them for, and chalk it up to them being sinners, or flawed.

If I believed a police was watching me, and knew that he would definately send me to the gas chamber for doing some crime - I would not do the crime unless I had a death wish.

Theists regularly flaunt what they believe to be God's laws, which suggests (at least) 1 of 2 things: they have a death wish, or they don't really think God exists (at least in the way they claim he exists - for example, a Just judge who doesn't like certain actions).

As I said, the actions of Theists lead me to believe they don't truly believe God exists, as I or they believe gravity exists.

Hence, they also realize that the afterlife is a long-shot and realize that they should live a good life now as a wager against the non-existence of God. A kind of Pascal's Wager in reverse. We KNOW we have life now. It is a sure bet to bet on it. All this other supernatural stuff is just wild speculation.

[ollagram88]

There is a huge difference between believing in morals and love vs. believing in God and the afterlife.

i would be careful when you say "believing in morals and love." it is not so much a matter of belief.. morals and love are an observable phenomenon. by this, we don't have to believe, we know.

to believe in some inherent, spiritually embedded "law of morals" or "power of love," however, i would put on the same pedestal as believing in God or an after-life. this is because there is no special property of them, we can reduce both concepts physically without the need to talk about the "power of love" or any such "nonsense."

of course, you already recognize this. i'm simply emphasizing some words. however, i'd like to emphasize this distinction, because very very very few people in this world seem to maintain such a view. there's lots of atheists in this world, growing in number, but i'd like to say most of these "atheists" are more like "don't careists." they brush off the notion of God but don't take the actual time to consider what it truly meants to reject the super natural. to reject the super natural only accepts the natural. to accept only the natural rejects a whole lot of other things about life, NOT just God. while people on this forum and probably an extreme minority out there might understand this, most people out there in the world DO NOT. even some of the most educated people do not.

so we return to my question. am i convinced by the atheist rationale?

going by what you guys have said, i can't quite find anything wrong. i think for all logical purposes, the atheist have reason not to push that button.

so do i find myself convinced? only as far as logic is concerned.

what happened to the experience of living? for some reason, i find the atheist explanation incomplete, such that i want to reject it as much as i want to reject theism. both are a bit crazy because the atheist rationale is based on the truth, the theist based on the experience of living. the atheist says, we're just brought up to not kill people so we shouldn't. the theist says, because lives are meaningful - don't do it.

ask anybody in this world why they wouldn't push the button - the odds are in favor that the person would say "because it's wrong!" not "because according to how atoms and molecules evolved and eventually became complex, organic-based machines that led to the development of the human, who evolved and was socialized all sorts of morals and altruistic tendencies and dispositions for kindness." the two are different. the experience of right and wrong are different than the explanation of.

do you as atheists live your life consciously knowing your free will is null, your body is just a bunch of atoms roving around obeying physical laws, your body obeying the unconscious/subconscious motivations of your mind and the illusion of your conscious thoughts, all in response to the natural environment? i can't speak for you, but if you don't, then you're not just living by the truth, you're also living by the EXPERIENCE.

i don't want to push that button because of my social and genetic dispositions, as well as my feeling that there is something inherently beautiful, meaningful, and precious about life that is not explainable.

[QED]

now i have some other interesting questions:

we also have the genetic and social disposition to believe we have free will, to believe in God, to believe in an afterlife, to believe love is real. are not those with the scientific natural view of the world, thus, on the brink of being "mentally ill?"

so why is it, to believe in God is crazy? to believe that there is a magical power when a man and a woman fall in love is crazy? to believe that we have free will is crazy?

especially the last one. no matter how much science might continue to find evidence that our free will doesn't exist, over and over, free will is always going to seem real to us. our society, our biological make-up tells us that. even no matter how much science pounds into our heads "free will doesn't exist," our biology won't let us deny it because it seems so real.

so who's to say people who believe in religion, love, free will, "meaningful things" are the "crazy" ones? wouldn't it be the other way around?

These things are merely descriptive. What they are describing may be qualitatively different or even non-existent.

going back to the question of morals.. the atheist accepts morals under his view of the world, yet rejects all else. this is consistent to the extent that the atheist is rejecting the supernatural. as far as i'm concerned, though, the atheists are the "crazy" ones in society.

our genetics and society have led to a world of morals, God, free will, love, meaningful lives. to me, it seems that atheists are very arbitrary in their selection of what they choose, equally as arbitrary as the Christians who believe what roles God plays in our society.

If "God and his morals" is a metaphor for the kind of game-play strategy that can be adopted by anyone to maximise everyone's enjoyment of life -- then why not simply admit it instead of pretending and introducing a plethora of spurious nonsense that goes with the pretence? Isn't it amazing how often one's enemies turn out to be God's enemies for example.

the atheist will say - don't press that button. why? because genetics and society tells us so! yet at the same time, the atheist will reject God, free will, "meaningful" things, despite what our genetics and society are telling us. the atheist may be consistent with their views of scientific naturalism; as far as our world is concerned, however, they seem to be crazy.

Let me try another way to get across the fact that there are things we cannot reject so easily. Take the sensation of pain for example. Evolving as a mechanism to prevent an organism from doing self-harm it must be more than a simple "flag setting". It must be felt to be effective. How evolution went about making such feeling unconditional is a bit of a mystery but it had to work out that way. Of course there are people who can hypnotise themselves into feeling no pain during an operation (I saw someone like this on the TV recently) but the statistical success of the effects are what counts.

So while we can't easily reject the mechanism that gets us where we are, we can properly identify it. What's so crazy about that?

to me, the distinction between who is right or wrong becomes blurred.

Do you mean "right or wrong" in a moral sense or being right or wrong about God's existence? The difference between an easily imagined anthropomorphic father figure whispering into our ears and a functionally equivalent evolved conscience couldn't be much bigger when we can see that the former often comes with a huge amount of additional embellishments geared towards more selfish interests.

is a world that professes scientific naturalism practical and what society should become, is willing to accept? or is it an interesting topic of discussion for the intellectual elite, and nothing more?

If we have to rely so much on fantastic fairy-tales, it remains a system open to great abuses. People will build churches in the middle of nowhere and subjugate those who have less strengths on the say-so of all kinds of phantasmagoria. Why not be open about our areas of ignorance by firmly testing suggestions and beliefs and moving onwards by building on the strengths (and identifying the weaknesses) that nature has built into everyone (except for a small number of psychopaths ).

[Cathar1950]

what make's an individual's life "infinitely precious?"
what's the incentive for an individual to live out his or her life?

Why does it need to be "infinitely precious" to be valuable?
What in the incentive to have children or enjoy a sunset?
Living out ones life seems to be enough for thousands of years.
As one author puts it, if life isn't worth living they how would living forever be any better?
If all you got to live for is the reward of some heaven after you die, why live any longer? I think we should question those that think we need God to make life meaningful as any idea of God should at least suggest living has its own value or why would God bother? Why wouldn't God kill himself as there is nothing beyond God? Any religion worth anything should promote the art of living.

[ollagram88]

These things are merely descriptive. What they are describing may be qualitatively different or even non-existent.

sorry, not quite sure i understand what you meant by that.

If "God and his morals" is a metaphor for the kind of game-play strategy that can be adopted by anyone to maximise everyone's enjoyment of life -- then why not simply admit it instead of pretending and introducing a plethora of spurious nonsense that goes with the pretence? Isn't it amazing how often one's enemies turn out to be God's enemies for example.

how many christians and other religious people couldn't swallow evolution? fortunately, evolution is applicable and moldable to Christianity as one of God's mechanisms. every Christian i know accepts evolution, but what of the greater issues. the flaws of intelligent design? the evolutionary psychology of religion? the undermining of free will?

you don't even have to be religious. imagine art, love, anything "meaningful things" being destroyed (maybe i should say, reduced) by science?

it's not so easy to "simply admit" things. to me, this is blindly imposing one's own ideas to others.

in order to make rationalism practical, we have to remember whom we are speaking TO and how we can successfully apply that to the EXPERIENCE of life. environments such as this website is where intellectually elite and curious people converse. imagine projecting a TV show worldwide to every person in the country saying that free will is an illusion so if your life sucks right now than you're "unlucky" and such is life --- go to the nearest nursing home and tell that to the kid who was born blind and sits on a wheelchair all day; that when you mom died last night and people said "she can finally rest and go on to a better place" that it's a load of bull**** to help you cope with your loss --- tell that to your sister and tell me how hard it hurts after she slaps you; that you're only married to your significant other because of how evolution and social factors shaped your perceptions of what gets your hormones flowing and your brain obsessed with the person and the chances that you met this person and that it had nothing to do with "it's the inside that counts" or "true love is blind" or "love is special" --- tell that to your wife or husband and pray the court lets you end up with the kids after divorce; that everything you do really means nothing at all --- tell that to your kids so that they grow up to be intelligent, rational, no-nonsense adults; that the only reason why i don't shoot the person next door is because my evolution and experiences tell me not to --- tell that to your neighbor and see how long it takes before he moves to another state.

but a few hundred years ago, the Church ordered that cats be killed because they were considered evil and were causing the plague. lo and behold, the fleas carrying the actual disease were found on mice, and the decreasing population of cats increased the population of mice, increasing the incidence of the disease, and resulted in a "horrifying" number of deaths. of course the truth doesn't always hurt; it continues to do great things for society.

what i'm seeing is that the "nonsense" as put forth by religion is rivaled by the damage to the human condition that the truth can do or what it can potentially do. this point, of course, is very arguable and i could very well be wrong. would like to hear words on this.

Let me try another way to get across the fact that there are things we cannot reject so easily. Take the sensation of pain for example. Evolving as a mechanism to prevent an organism from doing self-harm it must be more than a simple "flag setting". It must be felt to be effective. How evolution went about making such feeling unconditional is a bit of a mystery but it had to work out that way. Of course there are people who can hypnotise themselves into feeling no pain during an operation (I saw someone like this on the TV recently) but the statistical success of the effects are what counts.

thanks to an earlier discussion between us, the pain example remains a great illustration of your point that i haven't forgotten.

i would, however, like to propose that science is finally entering the territory of the last bit of essence of human life: the soul. we are no longer talking about genetic evolution here but of society, and more specifically, the evolution of the human conscious experience. what sorts of implications will this have for humans once the "soul" is destroyed? the incredible achievements of human civilization rested upon our notions of the soul and the artistic expression of morals, love, passion, etc. i've discussed this with you in particular before: remember, great pieces of art and literature that forms the backbone of our society today (esp greek literature) were all divinely inspired. to this day, i would say the vast majority, 99.9% of us still don't view our life as a complex, deterministic and meaningless physical machine that is a mere gear in this vast universe(s).

So while we can't easily reject the mechanism that gets us where we are, we can properly identify it. What's so crazy about that?

and what's so crazy about it? i say the people on this forum are the "mentally ill." this is not a term meant to be insulting, but rather an attempt to create awareness that the extreme, well-read, knowledgeable atheist point of view comprises such a TINY portion of the human conscious experience. remember, the majority of this world lives in poverty. they don't have the luxury to take not just the time to ponder these ideas, but they also don't have the EXPERIENCE and EDUCATION of knowing anything about the ideas discussed here or how to even contemplate and argue about them to begin with. as for the rest of the world living their "relatively" comfortable lives, the overwhelming majority are simply not interested, don't care, and successfully find happiness without the need for it, just as people on this forum find happiness without the need for God and any other "nonsense." the shared conscious experience of those who view life by scientific naturalism is but a grain of sea salt in a sea of water that "lives by the soul."

Do you mean "right or wrong" in a moral sense or being right or wrong about God's existence?

aacck i need to be more careful with my words, my mistake. i was speaking on the best and most practical choices for society. we can extend this beyond mere nuclear button pushing. what truly is the best way to go about living our lives?

Why not be open about our areas of ignorance by firmly testing suggestions and beliefs and moving onwards by building on the strengths

in addition to the stuff i've said above, i just want to emphasize that i hope we could move beyond the the silliest of things like "the world is only 8,000 years old." however, there are still prominent biologists, physicists, philosophers etc. that still profess belief in God or a "deeper meaning" to life that i don't think it's quite fair to portray God like a Santa Clause just yet. but not only that, it doesn't have to be God. that there is a "deeper meaning" to life seems like an issue that science can only barely scratch the surface of but never have the final answer, at least not while we're alive.

[ollagram88]

what make's an individual's life "infinitely precious?"
what's the incentive for an individual to live out his or her life?

Why does it need to be "infinitely precious" to be valuable?
What in the incentive to have children or enjoy a sunset?
Living out ones life seems to be enough for thousands of years.
As one author puts it, if life isn't worth living they how would living forever be any better?
If all you got to live for is the reward of some heaven after you die, why live any longer? I think we should question those that think we need God to make life meaningful as any idea of God should at least suggest living has its own value or why would God bother? Why wouldn't God kill himself as there is nothing beyond God? Any religion worth anything should promote the art of living.

"infinitely precious" was not my wording, i was the one asking.
i'm unsure of my beliefs in an afterlife or God, so i'd like to refrain from speaking for this issue.

What in the incentive to have children or enjoy a sunset?

hm, well what is your answer to that question?

[Cathar1950]

what make's an individual's life "infinitely precious?"
what's the incentive for an individual to live out his or her life?

Why does it need to be "infinitely precious" to be valuable?
What in the incentive to have children or enjoy a sunset?
Living out ones life seems to be enough for thousands of years.
As one author puts it, if life isn't worth living they how would living forever be any better?
If all you got to live for is the reward of some heaven after you die, why live any longer? I think we should question those that think we need God to make life meaningful as any idea of God should at least suggest living has its own value or why would God bother? Why wouldn't God kill himself as there is nothing beyond God? Any religion worth anything should promote the art of living.

"infinitely precious" was not my wording, i was the one asking.
i'm unsure of my beliefs in an afterlife or God, so i'd like to refrain from speaking for this issue.

What in the incentive to have children or enjoy a sunset?

hm, well what is your answer to that question?

They have the incentive of joy.
It seems it is joy and beauty of this life would be a good reason to want to extent it beyond. If this wasn't worth it then I could hardly see how this forever would be better. I am unsure also but was responding to their wording too.
If we can't find meaning here without God what meaning would God have?
There is this small passage where God creates for his own good pleasure.

[ollagram88]

hmm, to make some points of emphasis, i'd like for you to define the "incentive for joy." where does that incentive come from and what brings us joy?

[Cathar1950]

hmm, to make some points of emphasis, i'd like for you to define the "incentive for joy." where does that incentive come from and what brings us joy?

Are you talking to me?
I think we create it or sometimes discorve it in the living or experience.
We have millions of years of evolution that found some vaule in joy and pleasure.
Even bees like flowers.
Bird seem to like song.
Other primates like to cuddle.
You ever had a good back rub?
Why do we smile when children laugh?

[ollagram88]

i'm going to do a little summary of what has been reached so far while responding to you (yes i was asking you haha).

the problem, i feel, is that concepts such as "joy" are terribly abstract. the "I" is abstract. "life" and "experiences" are abstract. to get at the heart of what "joy" really is seems to be the observable phenomenon of our biological body motivated towards that what makes us happy (in the most general sense). this is shaped by evolution (as you mentioned) and our experiences. i'm going strictly by an entirely "natural" POV. we're a bunch of deterministic roving particles that, thanks to biological and social tendencies, have this tendency to interact with other certain complex arrangements of particles. THAT is "our" "reason" for "living."

i, joy, life, experience, are all mere labels of physical phenomena over billions of billions of years.

so what the atheist lives by is simply their experience of these particles in motion. it seems somewhat arbitrary that the atheist does not want to kill other humans, because what's a human? it's just a "label" for a complex physical machine. so what really is it to me if i pushed the button? i'll just totally alter the physical composition of this planet, an even more complex physical arrangement.

according to QED, and i would think this makes great sense, we humans are so motivated towards NOT killing other humans (and other such moral actions) that we would NOT want to push the button.

to this i say, we're also motivated towards religion and other "nonsense" tendencies, yet the atheist rejects it. every human society has in one form or another created the concept of God. really really really old "non-civilized" human cultures buried humans which shows that they might have believed in the afterlife.

but as QED brings up, there are certain genetic tendencies (ex: the experience of pain) that statistically we could NOT do without, or else the evolution of humans would have probably been wiped off or messed up. whew. so things like pain, the appreciation for human suffering, regard for human life, are powerful concepts that just can't seem to leave us.

i must say it's very convincing from a logical standpoint. i could probably play devil's advocate and throw out a couple random ideas here (i just came up with these a few minutes ago):

-if the person found joy in DESTROYING human life, he'd push the button under the atheist rationale because it actually supports his pushing of the button. contrast this to a theist perspective, which by mere dogma, pushing the button is immoral. in the latter, the moral decision is theoretically ABSOLUTE.
-a lot of people argue that our morals have evolutionary origins which undermines any sort of "moral law" as proposed by religion that claims it holds society together. couldn't you say, however, that the genetic tendency to value human life along with other morals is so overwhelming, that the argument actually supports religion to some extent?

otherwise, seeing the atheist logic as very reasonable, i have (as i admittedly planned) shifted the rest of the discussion to which is best for society - the atheist reason not to push the button or the religious reason not to push the button. from here we can extend this dilemma to which viewpoint is best for society - one which proposes a natural view of the world vs. one that is both natural and supernatural. we are now looking at the practical implications of our point of views. the meat of my arguments can be found in post 25.