There is no justice if atheism is true

[Ahanu]

Most people are really non-believers (although they do not term themselves as atheists), since they do wrong things which their God/Gods/Goddesses will not approve of.
Then, it really does not matter if there is a God to know of that or there is none.

All atheists claim to be non-believers, but some of them spend their entire lives devoted to truth - which is really affirming the reality of God when all is said and done.

We can all fall into inconsistencies.

Is justice consistent with atheism? Who is to say? Perhaps what is really consistent with atheism is the will to power instead of justice? Can we arrive at what we ought to do from what is?

 

[Cino]

All atheists claim to be non-believers, but some of them spend their entire lives devoted to truth - which is really affirming the reality of God when all is said and done.

We can all fall into inconsistencies.

It it kind of you to think highly of such atheists, that they are affirming the reality of your god. I hold a different view, and from my perspective, it feels like you are not fully respectful of how non-belief is not just being on the other side of a dividing line.

An analogy from European politics: the Swiss and the Germans. To a German, anyone speaking German is really German at heart, so they embrace the German-speaking Swiss as their own, to the disgust of said Swiss, whose concept of citizenship has never been based on language but on the will to be Swiss. A German struggles to understand how anyone could stand to live together with speakers of French, Italian, or Rumantsch, when they could just be with other German speakers. A Swiss cannot fathom how something as shallow and incidental as language should be a defining political factor.

So I appeal to the right of atheists to be viewed as legitimate and unique in their world-view, on their own merit.

 

[badger]

All atheists claim to be non-believers,

Yeah......... that's about right.

but some of them spend their entire lives devoted to truth

A lot of them, actually.

- which is really affirming the reality of God when all is said and done.

That's your rather twisted opinion, I'm thinking. You should get to know atheists better, maybe.

We can all fall into inconsistencies.

Yeah.....

Is justice consistent with atheism? Who is to say? Perhaps what is really consistent with atheism is the will to power instead of justice? Can we arrive at what we ought to do from what is?

Human Legislation and Justice first....absolutely.
If you disagree then please just name a country with a religious government under your or any Gods and we'll have a look at the dreadfullness.

A Christian organisation in the US would like to insert its idea of a Christian theocracy, complete with (painful) public executions and floggings, with judges all around to deliver God's justice to mankind. For example a girl dressing up to go to a nightclub would attract flogging or death. Gays would live in terror. People who feel sure that their bodies are the wrong gender would never dare to tell. (The late Pastor R. Enyart, Denver Bible Church, and his followers)

There's no Justice worth having under religion.

 

[RJM]

It it kind of you to think highly of such atheists, that they are affirming the reality of your god. I hold a different view, and from my perspective, it feels like you are not fully respectful of how non-belief is not just being on the other side of a dividing line.

An analogy from European politics: the Swiss and the Germans. To a German, anyone speaking German is really German at heart, so they embrace the German-speaking Swiss as their own, to the disgust of said Swiss, whose concept of citizenship has never been based on language but on the will to be Swiss. A German struggles to understand how anyone could stand to live together with speakers of French, Italian, or Rumantsch, when they could just be with other German speakers. A Swiss cannot fathom how something as shallow and incidental as language should be a defining political factor.

So I appeal to the right of atheists to be viewed as legitimate and unique in their world-view, on their own merit.

Good one @Cino

 

[Firedragon]

Do you really believe that all tyrants who have made unjust laws and lived in opulence have been atheists?

Actually, that has been a view of many theists throughout history. There have been many who believed that anyone who is tyrannical and murderous don't really believe in God or theism but are just pretending, and are atheists. It's not necessarily an individual view but a scholarly view of some.

 

[badger]

Actually, that has been a view of many theists throughout history. There have been many who believed that anyone who is tyrannical and murderous don't really believe in God or theism but are just pretending, and are atheists.

Ah, yes..... the 'No true Scotsman' application, or that's what it looks like to me.
A person from a religion does a bad thing, gets caught, and so all the congregation can claim 'that person never was a ------, and must have been ------'.
But that doesn't work when a whole community acts wrongly, or its tenets are seen to be skewed.

It's not necessarily an individual view but a scholarly view of some.

I take no notice of 'claims from authority', only the substance of those claims.
Usually one authority can challenge another which saves us any further difficulty.

 

[Firedragon]

Ah, yes..... the 'No true Scotsman' application, or that's what it looks like to me.

That's absolutely true. It's a no true scotsman fallacy. Excellent.

I take no notice of 'claims from authority', only the substance of those claims.

Very good. You should not. That's why you should study the subject. Good policy.

 

[Ahanu]

It it kind of you to think highly of such atheists, that they are affirming the reality of your god. I hold a different view, and from my perspective, it feels like you are not fully respectful of how non-belief is not just being on the other side of a dividing line. An analogy from European politics: the Swiss and the Germans. To a German, anyone speaking German is really German at heart, so they embrace the German-speaking Swiss as their own, to the disgust of said Swiss, whose concept of citizenship has never been based on language but on the will to be Swiss. A German struggles to understand how anyone could stand to live together with speakers of French, Italian, or Rumantsch, when they could just be with other German speakers. A Swiss cannot fathom how something as shallow and incidental as language should be a defining political factor. So I appeal to the right of atheists to be viewed as legitimate and unique in their world-view, on their own merit.

I am asking atheists to have an honest look at their worldview. Quit adopting religious morality (such as compassion) as a moral value compatible with atheism/naturalism/materialism since it is incoherent.

To play with your analogy, some atheists would point to their Swiss friends and say they are not committed atheists and truly Swiss, and so they have yet to fully embrace atheism and its implications. Some atheists believe their friends are really acting more like believers. Let us take a moment to read from our sharp-sighted and insightful friend Nietzsche:

"After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave - a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way people are, there may still for millennia be caves in which they show his shadow.—And we—we must still defeat his shadow as well!”

Nietzsche invites his fellow atheists to question the value of their values, because once you undermine belief in God, you set fire to the moral values of religion as well.

Atheists can talk about justice 'til they are blue in the face, but is it coherent with their philosophy? Again, we are not asking whether or not atheists are just or not; we are asking whether or not a full-blown naturalism points to justice.

My answer is no.

In my opinion, here is what atheism's moral values should look like:

"What is good? – All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power itself in man.
What is bad? – All that proceeds from weakness."
-Nietzsche

“To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistance and triumph, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength."
-Nietzsche

"The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And one shall help them to do so. What is more harmful than any vice? – Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak – Christianity . . . "
-Nietzsche

"Here we must beware of superficiality and get to the bottom of the matter, resisting all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, overpowering of what is alien and weaker; suppression, hardness, imposition of one’s own forms, incorporation and at least, at its mildest, exploitation . . .
. . . life simply is will to power."
-Nietzsche

You may disagree. But Nietzsche's vision of a post-religious civilization appears closer to the truth to me in its coherence than what these other atheists living under the shadow of God are offering us.

 

[badger]

I am asking atheists to have an honest look at their worldview. Quit adopting religious morality (such as compassion) as a moral value compatible with atheism/naturalism/materialism since it is incoherent.

You have to be joking........ you think there is a religious morality?
Please show me any example of your 'religious morality', and by that I mean tangible and real rather than claimed, spoken or written.
World Religious Governments are mostly utterly shocking in my opinion. Who wants them?

If you're trying to pretend that religion is honest, true, kind, compassionate and caring for all then the very best of good luck to you....you will need it, I reckon.

To play with your analogy, some atheists would point to their Swiss friends and say they are not committed atheists and truly Swiss, and so they have yet to fully embrace atheism and its implications. Some atheists believe their friends are really acting more like believers. Let us take a moment to read from our sharp-sighted and insightful friend Nietzsche:

You're earnestly trying to direct away from the atrocities caused by religious governments and groups all through the past.

Stop trying to prove that you are nicer, kinder, truer than us non theists.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Quit adopting religious morality (such as compassion) as a moral value compatible with atheism/naturalism/materialism since it is incoherent.
Let us take a moment to read from our sharp-sighted and insightful friend Nietzsche:

That is social responsibility (as Badger said). Nothing religious about it.
Don't know. Was Neitzsche an atheist? Atheists differ from one to another.

 

[Cino]

I am asking atheists to have an honest look at their worldview. Quit adopting religious morality (such as compassion) as a moral value compatible with atheism/naturalism/materialism since it is incoherent.

Maybe you are idealizing Atheism into some coherent ideology, like a religious doctrine, but without a god?

I don't think it is a useful or accurate understanding of atheism. Don't let the "-ism" fool you into assuming that there is some kind of scripture, or (a-)theology, or a governing body, or anything of the kind.

To play with your analogy, some atheists would point to their Swiss friends and say they are not committed atheists and truly Swiss, and so they have yet to fully embrace atheism and its implications. Some atheists believe their friends are really acting more like believers

You are mixing metaphors. But that's fun, so let me engage: The Swiss Reformed Christians would point out to their German atheist friends how an unfinished sound shift process in the standard German language (p->pf, t>ts, but no k>kh...) was not the reason they felt Swiss rather than German...

But more seriously:

You may disagree. But Nietzsche's vision of a post-religious civilization appears closer to the truth to me in its coherence than what these other atheists living under the shadow of God are offering us.

Have you considered the possibility that Nietzsche was something like a prophet, in the sense of prophesying what could happen, a descriptive rather that prescriptive thing?

Sadly, we only receive Nietzsche through his sister, who destroyed some of his writings and had rather proto-faschist leanings. She loved passages like the one you quoted. So it is always good to keep in mind that we have a distorted version of his work, when reading him

Also, he is probably read by more believers, for the shock value, than unbelievers, I would say.

Let me repeat, atheists are not invested in presenting or offering spiritual teachings, as a whole. That is a thing believers do. Nothing wrong with either approach, I feel.

 

[RJM]

If you're trying to pretend that religion is honest, true, kind, compassionate and caring for all then the very best of good luck to you....you will need it, I reckon.

You're earnestly trying to direct away from the atrocities caused by religious governments and groups all through the past.

The fact that people do not always manage to live up to the moral values taught by their religions does not cancel the compassionate values of those teachings. People are imperfect and often easily deceived and there will always be wolves in sheep's clothing who use religion as a cloak or twist religious 'ahimsa' non-violence as a battle call.

'Religion' has also bought a lot of good.

But I wonder if the society imagined by Neitzsche could exist? Tribal values impose laws upon members against violence, theft, adultery and disrespect to elders, etc. The violence is directed outward, against other tribes.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Basically, there is nothing 'divine' about morals and ethics. They are the products of society. Many things are common betwen societies. All soieties want peace and brotherhood. Prophets/Sons/Messengers/Manifestations/Mahdis of Abrahamic religions and Zoroastraianism have only plagiarized them and have tried to make them as their own inventions.
A 'divine' message is essentially a fake.

 

[RJM]

Basically, there is nothing 'divine' about morals and ethics. They are the products of society. Many things are common betwen societies.
All societies want peace and brotherhood.

I think societies require a certain set of laws in order to function. I'm not sure that equates to personal morals and ethics?

A 'divine' message is essentially a fake.

Some people think so. Others differ. The Divine is mostly about the soul; it is not essentially about material values, imo -- although good society and family values are (should be) an emergent outcome of personal 'spiritual' values in that society?

The difference is that 'spiritual' values apply compassion to all, not just to the tribe or the society, imo

 

[Aupmanyav]

All atheists claim to be non-believers, but some of them spend their entire lives devoted to truth - which is really affirming the reality of God when all is said and done.

Is justice consistent with atheism? Who is to say? Perhaps what is really consistent with atheism is the will to power instead of justice? Can we arrive at what we ought to do from what is?

Search for truth is not search for a God. My search has made me abandon Gods in favor of science.
No, I do not have much will power. I have been smoking for 65 years though I do not want to.
Atheism does not ask us to behave inhumanely. What we do is fact, what we ought to do is more of a fiction.

Sadly, we only receive Nietzsche through his sister, who destroyed some of his writings and had rather proto-faschist leanings. She loved passages like the one you quoted. So it is always good to keep in mind that we have a distorted version of his work, when reading him.

I did not know that and read it today in Wikipedia. However, I have not read anything by Neitzsche. He is not relevant to India. Basically, I have read hardly anything of Western philosophers, even the atheists, except just one book of small essays by Bertrand Russell - and that did help to form my views.

 

[muhammad_isa]

A 'divine' message is essentially a fake.

..and yet major civilisations developed as a consequence of people believing otherwise.

You might feel that this world exists due to coincidence, but many find that hard to believe.

 

[badger]

'Religion' has also bought a lot of good.

Can you give examples?
That would be helpful.

 

[RJM]

Can you give examples?
That would be helpful.

The Catholic Church is the biggest non-gov charity on earth, and has missionaries working with lepers and aids patients in the most difficult and dangerous places in the world
https://catholicherald.co.uk/a-worldwide-force-for-good/

The world’s biggest charity

"Stalin famously said of the Church, “The Pope! How many divisions has he?” Less well known is Churchill’s response that Stalin “might have mentioned a number of legions not always visible on parade”. Indeed, the reach and influence of the Church are not easily described by statistics alone, yet the raw statistics are staggering enough.

The Church operates more than 140,000 schools, 10,000 orphanages, 5,000 hospitals and some 16,000 other health clinics. Caritas, the umbrella organisation for Catholic aid agencies, estimates that spending by its affiliates totals between £2 billion and £4 billion, making it one of the biggest aid agencies in the world.

Even these numbers only tell half the tale. Caritas does not include development spending by a host of religious orders and other Catholic charities, while most of the 200,000 Catholic parishes around the world operate their own small-scale charitable projects which are never picked up in official figures. Establishing like-for-like comparisons is hard, but there can be little doubt that in pretty much every field of social action, from education to health to social care, the Church is the largest and most significant non-state organisation in the world.

A sceptic might point out that that influence can be both positive and negative. So, for example, it might be queried whether the Church’s work in education or health would be more effective if control was switched to the state. In some ways, this is the wrong question – in much of the developing world, if the Church was not involved, the services would not be provided at all. But there is a good deal of research which has attempted to compare the performance of Catholic provision of education or health with that of other providers and, in general, Catholic institutions come out rather well.

The health analyst Kenneth White, of Virginia Commonwealth University, found Catholic hospitals in the US to be on average more efficient than equivalent secular hospitals. This was a particularly remarkable finding given that he also discovered evidence that Catholic hospitals, reflecting their mission to reach out to disadvantaged communities, were providing more compassionate care and stigmatised services (to groups that often face discrimination) than other providers.

In Africa, a recent research review found not only that maternal care at Church-run mission hospitals was of the same or better quality than at public facilities, but that Church hospitals were also more likely to offer services accessible to the poor.

Looking at education, although it is well established that Catholic schools perform exceptionally well on standard academic criteria …"
read full article

https://www.johnbradburne.com/leprosy/[/QUOTE]

 

[RJM]

Can you give examples?
That would be helpful.

That's to say nothing of the role of religion in saving drug addicts and alcholics, in consoling the broken hearted and of places like the Salvation Army hostels for the destitute and broken

Of course it does some good in the world

 

[Aupmanyav]

Sadly, we only receive Nietzsche through his sister, who destroyed some of his writings and had rather proto-faschist leanings. She loved passages like the one you quoted. So it is always good to keep in mind that we have a distorted version of his work, when reading him.

I did not know that and read it today in Wikipedia. However, I have not read anything by Neitzsche. He is not relevant to India. Basically, I have read hardly anything of Western philosophers, even the atheists, except just one book of small essays by Bertrand Russell - and that did help to form my views.

..and yet major civilisations developed as a consequence of people believing otherwise.
You might feel that this world exists due to coincidence, but many find that hard to believe.

In Allah's magic wand? Can't understand how educated people can believe in that.