Conversation with a theist, part 4: morality

And here we are.  Failing to win with Kalam, our fearless hero tries a different tactic:

"Does it bother you that if atheism is true, it doesn't matter if you live like Hitler or Mother Theresa because there is no ultimate justice? If you live a horrible life and are happy while you live, you're better than the person who lives a miserable life trying to be good. Does that bother you?"

I'm bothered more by the thought that Hitler could've repented on his death bed and gone to heaven while 6 million of his victims suffer eternal damnation.

I'm bothered more by the fact that you seem to need the threat of eternal damnation to be a decent person. I behave like a decent person because its the way I was raised and I believe that doing so benefits me and society. I also have enlightened self-interest, I would not be stolen from, so I do not steal. I have this wild idea that life is all about the choices you make and if you make good choices good things happen, make bad ones and bad things happen. I don't need an invisible magic man to use the threat of eternal suffering to frighten me into doing good.

"Seriously? You think so little of us?"

Not all of you. There are people who choose to do good and people who choose to do bad in every group.

"Do you need the threat of going to jail to be a decent person?"

Obviously you think I do. After all, it was you who said that according to my POV,

 "If you live a horrible life and are happy while you live, you're better than the person who lives a miserable life trying to be good." When in fact that's nowhere near the truth. I don't believe that people who live horrible lives are truly happy...or at least not as happy as they could be. If you live a horrible life and are happy, I consider that either gross ignorance or a mental disorder.

"If not, why do you think we do?"

Why do you assume that if someone is an atheist that makes them a sociopath as well?

"We do good things for the same reasons that you do them."

Good for you then.

"We don't do good things to avoid hell."

But the fear of hell is at least part of why you came into the faith. You can't have a religion based on saving people from the crime of being a human if there's no "big bad" out there to "get 'em" if they don't come around.

"I can fit the number of times I have thought about hell in my life into a bottle. It was by no means instrumental to my belief."

But you do believe that a hell exists. And if you believe that this hell is the christian version of it, meaning that this hell is where non-believers go when they die, then it is instrumental to your belief. It may not have been instrumental in getting you to believe, but it is an integral part of your belief system.

"So, you're giving me a psychological assessment of myself? I think I'll pass, thanks, and just stay on topic. I just hope you do not think that of Christians in general since I can find no basis in reality for it. Perhaps, I should ask why you believe so?"

So you don't believe that a hell exists? Then what was all that ultimate justice stuff you were just talking about? You either believe that a hell exists to serve as a sort of anti-heaven where bad people go post-mortem or you are really gonna have to explain your ultimate judgement idea to me. If salvation is a part of this whole deal then there has to be something to "salvate" people from.

"Your idea that I remain a Christian because I somehow subconsciously fear hell"

You are putting words in my mouth. I don't think you fear hell at all because you believe that you've been saved from it. If I believe i'm bulletproof i'll fear no bullets. But in order to believe that I am bulletproof, bullets have to be an integral part of that belief system. If there were no hell to fear, being "hell-proof" would have no meaning. Without the perception of a hell to fear, christianity would not have the perception of salvation to offer. If hell is not an integral part of the christian belief system, why do christians refer to themselves as "saved"? "Saved" from what?

"If that were so, I would also believe in Islam too just because I'm scared it might be true and I don't want to go to hell."

Not necessarily. By accepting the validity of christianity, you reject the validity of all other religions....I mean, I do know enough about christianity to know that rejecting other POVs is sort of a "gotta do" thing when joining. If you reject islam as invalid, then you would have no fear of its version of hell. You can't fear something that you don't believe exists.

And that brings me to this point: I'm sure you have reasons for rejecting other faiths besides :well, christianity is just the right one." When you understand _those_ reasons why you reject those faiths, you will better understand my point of view.

"I'm rejecting those religions because the pieces of the puzzle do not fit them. They do not sufficiently explain the evidence."

What evidence, and how do they not sufficiently explain it?

"I reject atheism for the same reason. If that is the reason, you reject Christianity, we can have a good conversation"

I reject christianity because its claims, like the claims of most religions, are unverifiable, subjective, open to interpretation, and depend solely on "revealed" knowledge from a god that pretty much wants it all to be taken on faith. I will say that in defense of christianity, you guys don't charge people a couple of house mortgages before telling them what you really believe like the scientologists do....so that definitely weakens their credibility in my mind.

"it doesn't matter if you live like Hitler or Mother Theresa because there is no ultimate justice?"

How did Hitler live and die? He lived always looking over his shoulder for enemies and assassins. He lived in perpetual fear. He died cowering like the gutless coward he was in the basement ruins of the empire he built while the combined might of the civilized world (and even some of the uncivilized world when you thrown Stalin into that mix) was relentlessly hunting him. He is remembered by most of the civilized world as one of the worst human beings to ever live

"You think looking over his shoulder and dying in isolation is punishment enough for Hitler's atrocities."

You forgot being hunted by the combined might of the civilized world and remembered as one of the worst people to ever live. To answer your question, no. But nothing done to him would ever atone for the Holocaust. It'd have been nice to have seen him hanged in Jerusalem, but we didn't get to have that. So we hunt down the people who helped it, educate future generations about it, show them that if this could happen in Germany, it could happen anywhere, and to guard against allowing assumptions made in fear, frustration and ignorance to become policy.

How did Mother Teresa live and die? She lived a life of doing good for others. She died. surrounded by people who loved her and whom she loved with most of the civilized world remembering her as an icon of charity and everything good about humanity. She is even revered as a Saint in the Catholic Church.

Sounds like ultimate justice to me.

"The reward is not lasting so it has little meaning." 

It was meaningful to her and the people who loved her....why do you need to feel meaning from it? And what good has come of her example? How much work is being done because of what her life accomplished?

"If everyone has committed a moral crime and everyone deserves to be punished and the only person who accepts help is the one who least deserves it," 

If everyone has committed a moral crime then everyone is equally guilty then there is no such thing as "one who least deserves it." You are basically saying that Hitler's victims were no less guilty than he was. Remind me: which one of us believes that if you live a horrible life and you're happy then you are better off than someone who lives a miserable life trying to be good....because if we're all guilty of the same crime then that's basically what you're saying. 

Everybody, regardless of their persuasion, picks and chooses their morality. They do so based on a number of factors. Cost/Reward, socialization, the situation they're in, level of knowledge, level of enlightened self-interest, etc. You've found a moral code that works for you and fits your perception of reality. I've found what works for me. The difference is: my morality is terrestrial where yours is allegedly not.

"Hitler picked his own morality."

Yes. Yes he did. And he was a product of the prevailing morality in Europe in the early 20th century...which was that non-christians, non-europeans, and other "deviants" were not human. Hitler took that prevailing morality to its inevitable conclusion....if they're not human and represent a threat to "humans" then they should be eliminated. Had he lived in a culture that prized knowledge and common humanity over centuries-old religious, racial and ethnic bigotry, he'd have never had the opportunity to do what he did. Hitler accomplished the holocaust with a whole lot of help.

"We must not judge him" He was being sarcastic here...but isn't that kind of a fundamental Christian moral? Who's picking and choosing now?

Certainly not without judging ourselves. Hitler was not a monster that erupted from the mouth of some mystical hell dimension to torture us humans, he was one of us. Any one of us, given the opportunity and the right conditions, is capable of doing what he did. The minute we forget that, the minute we strip him and the other nazis of their humanity, we start down the path that they blazed.

"Morality exists regardless of what people think."

Morality exists because people think.

"People can pick and choose, but their choice is either right or wrong."

And whether or not its right or wrong depends on who's judging it right or wrong, and the context of that choice.

"Either I am right and you are wrong or you are right and I am wrong."

Or there are degrees of truth in both sides.

 
"If such a being above and beyond me exists, I must not be greater than it. It must share my rationality, creativity, dignity, sense of justice and and ability to love."

Ah, and once again, man has created god in his own image.

"My words are not an attempt to craft a god of my liking."

Oh, but they are. You want your god to be like you. To have your sense of justice, mercy and love. Said so yourself.

"I cannot be greater than God." 

Exactly! Crafting a god that is your equal or that you are better than would be like making a comic book super hero with no super powers or special abilities and who you could easily beat up. You want your god to be like you...only better.

   

Right about here, he starts getting pissy...

"To be an atheist ... I must realize that my sense of morality is mere stupidity,"

Nope. Just relative.

"Relative morality is what I deem stupidity, no offense"

None taken. Absolute morality is what I consider a reaction to the inability to comprehend complexity.

"my consciousness is an illusion,"

Nope. Just something we don't fully understand.

"and most importantly, that I cannot even trust the reasoning faculty by which I came to this knowledge."

If "Catch-22" taught us anything, it taught us that mistrust of your own faculties is a sign of mental health. It's also why we have peer review.

"The software on my laptop did not originate from the hardware but from an intelligent being. Give it a couple million years and it won't happen."

Oh. So I was manufactured somewhere and my consciousness was downloaded into me by some programmer. Interesting. I saw a movie that had that plot once. Keanu Reeves was in it. Pretty good flick. In that version, Keanu learned how to get kung fu downloaded into him. I liked it better than your version.

"evil does not really exist,"

"evil" is a intangible concept...a descriptive, not a tangible thing....and it's also relative

"So, some people don't like hurricanes, earthquakes, murder, rape and torture in the same way I do not like cheese and ketchup? Those things are not really evil?"

Hurricanes and earthquakes happen. They are neither evil nor good. If they were "evil" (by your definition), they'd only hurt "good" things and people...if they were "good" (by your definition) they'd only hurt "evil" things and people. Hurricanes and earthquakes (like all natural phenomena) are indifferent.

"murder, rape and torture"

These things are dependent upon your definitions and relative to your situations. If they weren't, there would not be any "degrees" or murder...killing a perfect stranger in a fit of drug-induced psychosis would be just the same as killing a spouse for insurance money which would be just the same as accidentally shooting someone which would be just the same as killing in self-defense.

Same with rape. A grown adult male marrying and (consummating said marriage) with an pubescent girl was perfectly acceptable back in the Old Testament times [in our initial conversation, he was defending the fact that the OT did not ban child molestation on the grounds that it was relative to the time period in question]....nowadays it is considered statutory rape. If rape is not relative, there should be no difference between assault rape, and statutory rape. And clearly there is. A stranger attacking and raping a woman on the street is not the same as an 18 year old guy having consentual relations with his 17 year old girlfriend....but according to your morality, they would be.

Torture's another one. Circumcising an infant with no anesthesia is considered cruel by some, but a holy rite of passage among jews. Should we contact the Geneva Convention next time someone holds a bris?

"You're still not getting my point. Let's pick one example. Intentionally killing a person who has done nothing to deserve it."

Good job of moving the goalposts. It depends on who gets to determine whether or not the person "has done nothing to deserve it".