Ask the godless heathen - AKA Ask An Atheist

Ok, I'll bite. Ask me anything. You also have my permission to be offensive.

Disclaimer: I do not claim to represent the opinion of every atheist, or of any majority or minority of atheists, because the thing with us is, we don't group (well, most of us).

JEDIT: since this is not a religious thread, we can talk about anything, my pretty eyes for example. :D ;)

Well, define "great" ;)

42

Life's a bitch, the Universe is definitely great (as in humongous) and everything's coming up Milhouse.

A classic:

Can you morally condemn the holocaust, and, if so, on what grounds?

The usual idea is that, without some sort of ultimate authority, there's no way to absolutely say that something is bad.

This is an interesting question. I'll try to answer as best as I can, and Reegar, I'd like to hear your take, too.

okay,

Can you morally condemn the holocaust, and, if so, on what grounds?

You're asking me if I think genocide is bad. I'll tell you, I think murder is bad, genocide is horrific. On what grounds? Well, I wouldn't kill anybody. The "Do unto others" rule, doesn't only exist in Christianity and probably 99% of other religions in the world (look it up). It's plain common sense, dictated by self preservation, killing people is "bad" because it would be detrimental to the survival of the species.

Of course the death of six million Jews is bad. And the death of all the gypsies and homosexuals that the Nazis rounded up, too. And the death of millions of Russian soldiers. And German soldiers, and American soldiers, and Japanese soldiers.

I'm sad that all these people had to die, for one reason or another. The ideological backing behind the Holocaust, though, is what makes it even more insufferable. The mere thought that these people had to suffer, be separated from their families, starve, die, just because Germany had lost the war and was in an economic crisis and needed a scapegoat, is incredibly saddening.

However, you can look at the good that came from the bad. If it weren't for Schicklgruber, Von Braun wouldn't have left Germany, and maybe a German or Russian cosmonaut would've walked on the Moon. I like to think that WWII, while a horrible scar in humanity's past, has brought life to endless material for comedians, whole generations of them. Some have based their entire career on it!

I'll make another example that will, no doubt, make every American cringe. We all know lots of people died on 11 Sept 2001. We all feel bad about it. But maybe (to quote comedian Louis C.K.) there were a couple of assholes that day, on the towers. We don't know for sure, but statistically we can assume at least one person saw the buildings collapse, and sighed with relief, because somebody they had a beef with, was in the middle of that disaster.

Leonardo said:

This is an interesting question. I'll try to answer as best as I can, and Reegar, I'd like to hear your take, too.

okay,

Can you morally condemn the holocaust, and, if so, on what grounds?

You're asking me if I think genocide is bad. I'll tell you, I think murder is bad, genocide is horrific. On what grounds? Well, I wouldn't kill anybody.

Not good enough. "I wouldn't do it" is hardly a firm ground for condemning the acts of others.

The "Do unto others" rule, doesn't only exist in Christianity and probably 99% of other religions in the world (look it up). It's plain common sense, dictated by self preservation, killing people is "bad" because it would be detrimental to the survival of the species.

Unless you're killing people who would be detrimental to the survival of the species, of course.

However, you can look at the good that came from the bad. If it weren't for Schicklgruber, Von Braun wouldn't have left Germany, and maybe a German or Russian cosmonaut would've walked on the Moon. I like to think that WWII, while a horrible scar in humanity's past, has brought life to endless material for comedians, whole generations of them. Some have based their entire career on it!

It's unknowable how much good could have happened without the war, the war could have happened without the holocaust and still led to the space race, and the death of millions is hardly a satisfactory justification for men on the moon.

I'll make another example that will, no doubt, make every American cringe. We all know lots of people died on 11 Sept 2001. We all feel bad about it. But maybe (to quote comedian Louis C.K.) there were a couple of assholes that day, on the towers. We don't know for sure, but statistically we can assume at least one person saw the buildings collapse, and sighed with relief, because somebody they had a beef with, was in the middle of that disaster.

Yeah and some people sighed with relief because America had taken a blow and some people sighed with relief because the Jews were dead and... I don't see where you're going with this.

The usual idea is that, without some sort of ultimate authority, there's no way to absolutely say that something is bad.

Well, turns out there is no ultimate authority, in every sense. What was good once, may not fly today. In other words, humanity will make its own rules. If everybody agrees killing each other is good, well, guess what, it's good. But until further notice, it's bad.

I feel like I rambled. Did that answer your question?

Nope.

And Jaitea, I'm not going to defend religion being used to justify or itself causing terrible suffering. Of course it has.

EDIT: I forgot to bold Jaitea's name. Fixed that.

Short easy answer = Because I feel empathy.

I don't need a God to tell me that something is wrong because I can work it out for myself using my brain. e.g. I would miss my family if somebody murdered them so I know somebody else would be sad if I commited murder.

That of course extends and answers every other moral question.

Reegar said:

But while the question may be relevant to some religions, the question is irrelevant to someone's lack of belief in God.

Sure it does. If a belief system has undesirable or unappealing end-results or implications, that changes how people view it.

Morality and theism at their core are two different things. Christians, for example, are a bunch drawing an abstract connection between the two.

I'm not saying atheists don't have morals and I'm not saying theists do. I'm interested in the justification for those morals.

Ryan McAvoy said:

Short easy answer = Because I feel empathy.

I don't need a God to tell me that something is wrong because I can work it out for myself using my brain. e.g. I would miss my family if somebody murdered them so I know somebody else would be sad if I commited murder.

That of course extends and answers every other moral question.

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

Short easy answer = Because I feel empathy.

I don't need a God to tell me that something is wrong because I can work it out for myself using my brain. e.g. I would miss my family if somebody murdered them so I know somebody else would be sad if I commited murder.

That of course extends and answers every other moral question.

It doesn't though. Lots of people have felt empathy for some and still done terrible things to others. 

Those people were wrong.

Ryan McAvoy said:

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

Short easy answer = Because I feel empathy.

I don't need a God to tell me that something is wrong because I can work it out for myself using my brain. e.g. I would miss my family if somebody murdered them so I know somebody else would be sad if I commited murder.

That of course extends and answers every other moral question.

It doesn't though. Lots of people have felt empathy for some and still done terrible things to others. 

Those people were wrong.

 Says who? You? Why do you say that, and how could you justify the statement to them?

Jaitea said: Yeah, thats no problem, I just found that your original question - 'can you morally condemn the holocost?',...being atheist, & understanding Hitler's religious beliefs......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

The Most Reputable Source said:

The adult Hitler did not believe in the Judeo-Christian notion of God, though various scholars consider his final religious position may have been a form of deism.

So there's that.

I know right from wrong

How?

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

Short easy answer = Because I feel empathy.

I don't need a God to tell me that something is wrong because I can work it out for myself using my brain. e.g. I would miss my family if somebody murdered them so I know somebody else would be sad if I commited murder.

That of course extends and answers every other moral question.

It doesn't though. Lots of people have felt empathy for some and still done terrible things to others. 

Those people were wrong.

 Says who? You? Why do you say that, and how could you justify the statement to them?

To go back a step, when you said "terrible things" what did you mean? I'm guessing you mean something that you consider morally wrong because your feelings of human empathy tell you they are "terrible things".

Humans can be wrong, stupid, sociopaths, ill informed, evil, manipulated, drunk, high etc etc allowing them to ignore, deaden, forget or bypass their feelings of empathy (For sociopaths they never had them of course).

Ryan McAvoy said:

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

timdiggerm said:

Ryan McAvoy said:

Short easy answer = Because I feel empathy.

I don't need a God to tell me that something is wrong because I can work it out for myself using my brain. e.g. I would miss my family if somebody murdered them so I know somebody else would be sad if I commited murder.

That of course extends and answers every other moral question.

It doesn't though. Lots of people have felt empathy for some and still done terrible things to others. 

Those people were wrong.

 Says who? You? Why do you say that, and how could you justify the statement to them?

To go back a step, when you said "terrible things" what did you mean? I'm guessing you mean something that you consider morally wrong because your feelings of human empathy tell you they are "terrible things".

Okay, I should be more clear. I meant something I consider morally wrong because it's not loving towards people, because that's the ultimate (albeit fraught with difficulties of interpretation, I admit) standard handed down from on high. Not all theists will agree on standards, of course, as I'm particularly a Protestant Christian and not the mythical generic theist.

Humans can be wrong, stupid, sociopaths, ill informed, evil, manipulated, drunk, high etc etc allowing them to ignore, deaden, forget or bypass their feelings of empathy (For sociopaths they never had them of course).

 What makes a person evil?

timdiggerm said:

What makes a person evil?

 Feeling empathy yet ignoring it.