Atheists must appeal to an absolute moral standard when complaining about wrongs.

Phat writes: Despite lack of evidence, (the only basic sound argument) Belief is determined by a body of society (currently still the majority) by experiencing, discussing, deciding, and slowly changing what belief is today.

HUH?

What belief is held by what majority?

What belief is held by what majority?

quote:

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In recent years, the share of American adults who do not affiliate with a religious group has risen dramatically. In spite of this trend, the overwhelming majority of Americans, including a majority of the religiously unaffiliated – those who describe themselves, religiously, as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” – say they believe in God or a higher power, according to a new Pew Research Center survey conducted in December of 2017. At the same time, only a slim majority of Americans now believe in the God of the Bible and roughly one-in-ten U.S. adults don’t believe in any higher power or spiritual force.

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Pew research Center Stats for 2017

The difference being one deals with the reality of life and the other deals with a fantasy.

Unproven

LOL

Sorry Phat, read your source. First it is "Americans" and the sole common factor is "some higher power". That includes the FSM and the Tooth Fairy.

Evidenced.

jar writes: But again that is simply far too subjective; there is no standard based on loving. The Inquisitors loved their victims enough to torture then until the victims reached a state of grace where they recanted their transgressions and so were saved and died.

Of course it is subjective. As humans we can't know if the perpetrators actually did care about the victims or if they were, which is far more likely, simply sadists.
It is also easy to cherry pick an obvious example like that where the claim is made that they are doing something positive when it is obvious that they aren't.

Edited by GDR, : terrible typos. Should have taken the time to read it

Tangle writes: Benefit or harm. That's it.

Not really. I might interact with a pan handler on the street and give him cash. That generally speaking would seem like a moral and loving thing to do. However if that money is used to buy drugs that result in death from an overdose it was obviously not a benefit and was harmful.

So it wasn't the loving thing to do either. Unloving to the max.

But, at the time you could not foresee this.

Tangle's view is equally as unforeseeable. It would have been beneficial except for the unforeseen.

Your objection is not reasonable.

The difference being one deals with the reality of life and the other deals with a fantasy.

Not at all, the difference is between physicality or materiality and spirituality and according to C S Lewis the spiritiual is the real reality.

It is actually possible to see this for yourself if you pay attention to the sequences of events in your own life. Good deeds get rewarded in unexpected ways, bad deeds are followed by various kinds of thwartings and disappointments. It can be pretty subtle and you will not notice the connection unless you are tuned to it but I notice it pretty frequently in my own life.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

AZPaul3 writes: So it wasn't the loving thing to do either. Unloving to the max. But, at the time you could not foresee this. Tangle's view is equally as unforeseeable. It would have been beneficial except for the unforeseen. Your objection is not reasonable.

Tangle's claim is that morality boils down to harm or benefit. I think that it is clear that it is a moral thing to do to reach out to help others even at our own expense. However sometimes doing a moral thing can have negative consequences so therefore it isn't as simple as harm or benefit.

The point, GDR, is that doing a moral thing can have negative consequences so therefore it isn't as simple as loving and unloving.

In your view you do a moral thing out of love. Tangle does the same thing out of benefit. You try to negate Tangle's good because of an unseen future negative, yet your good suffers the same consequence.

Does this negate the moral reasonings behind the initial action?

Tangle's claim is that morality boils down to harm or benefit.

He can correct me if I'm wrong but I think Tangle, as you do, assigns the morality to the reason for the initial action.

In neither of your cases would either of you perform the initial action knowing of the negative outcome.

So you're back to square one. Tangle's morality comes down to the benefit expected from an action. Immorality comes down to the harm expected to be done by an action.

If the intention is to give benefit then it is a moral good. If the intent is to do harm then it is a moral bad.

GDR writes: Not really.

Yes really. Morality is about intent.

If the person gave the cash wanting/expecting to improve the guy's life it was a good moral act. If he gave the cash wanting/expecting him to buy drugs and kill himself it was an immoral act.

according to C S Lewis the spiritiual is the real reality.

Not even. But we already know religious types have the entire world bass-akwards.

If this spirituality were reality then all spirituality, like the moon, would be the same everywhere. We wouldn't have thousands of conflicting often violent cults all springing from the same spiritual base.

It is the different fantasies of spirituality in the human mind that leads directly to the spiritual conflicts of the cults.

Good deeds get rewarded in unexpected ways, bad deeds are followed by various kinds of thwartings and disappointments.

This is a form of cognitive dissonance. If you feel guilty you will find your punishment *somewhere* whether related or not. All you have to do is wait and something will get you. That is a constant of life in this universe.

You drop your toast butter-side down. That's your punishment for thinking ill of your neighbor. A flower pot falling from a second story window does not hit you, just misses your head. That's your reward for helping that old lady with her heavy boxes.

The fact that both of those instances would have happened to you regardless of any actions you took doesn't even occur to you. You are looking for a connection so you await an instance, any instance that would have happened regardless, to attribute to this spiritual connection.

This is a known human psychological thing. Everyone goes through these things. Even someone as brilliantly un-spiritual and reality-based as myself has to wonder what I did to piss-off the universe that it gave me a flat tire. The damn prick.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

Edited by AZPaul3, : No reason given.

according to C S Lewis the spiritiual is the real reality. Not even. But we already know religious types have the entire world bass-akwards.

What makes me a "religious type" when I didn't believe until I was about 45? Somehow at that point I became somebody else? That does seem to be how unbelievers treated me. Friends tried hard to dissuade me and then disappeared out of my life. A physicist friend I knew as a regular at my favorite café gave me a book about Gnosticism as I was approaching fundamentalist belief, which I read but realized was heretical, yep realized it all by my little self because of the spiritual knowledge I was gaining. But enough of that.

If this spirituality were reality then all spirituality, like the moon, would be the same everywhere. We wouldn't have thousands of conflicting often violent cults all springing from the same spiritual base. It is the different fantasies of spirituality in the human mind that leads directly to the spiritual conflicts of the cults.

First of all there are lots of mostly peaceable religions in the world. If you want to see real violence you have to go to the secular antireligious cults, the Communism and the Fascism and the French Revolution etc. Probably because religions do recognize a fundamental moral dimension in life whereas the secular cults try to dispense with all such irrational foolishness as they see it.

But no you are wrong about the necessary sameness. For the reality of it all you need to accept the Biblical view: our spirituality, like our intellect, is fallen which means distorted. It's going to be distorted in lots of different ways because we lost our connection with God at the Fall and became subject to both our own fleshly misperceptions and the influences of the "gods" who are really demons. God gave us the Bible so we could understand these realities and find the true spirituality. But I see you rolling your eyes and don't want to disturb you too much so enough of that for now.

{To the idea that we get rewarded and punished for good and bad deeds } This is a form of cognitive dissonance. If you feel guilty you will find your punishment *somewhere* whether related or not. All you have to do is wait and something will get you. That is a constant of life in this universe. You drop your toast butter-side down. That's your punishment for thinking ill of your neighbor. A flower pot falling from a second story window does not hit you, just misses your head. That's your reward for helping that old lady with her heavy boxes. The fact that both of those instances would have happened to you regardless of any actions you took doesn't even occur to you. You are looking for a connection so you await an instance, any instance that would have happened regardless, to attribute to this spiritual connection. This is a known human psychological thing. Everyone goes through these things. Even someone as brilliantly un-spiritual and reality-based as myself has to wonder what I did to piss-off the universe that it gave me a flat tire. The damn prick.

That was such a witty and true description of a human foible I had to copy out the whole thing. Very true.

But what about that very fact that we have such a propensity? Why should we impute moral cause and effect to happenings at all? Doesn't that kind of suggest we are moral creatures living in a moral universe as all the religions attest?

But I don't think we usually "look for" such consequenes: being fallen we're spiritually obtuse that way. When they happen THEN is when we may make the connection. King David wasn't expecting all the punishment he got for seducing Bathsheba and getting her husband killed when she got pregnant, but horrible things happened in his family for the rest of his life, starting with the death of the baby he had with her. {But be of good cheer: he knew he would see that son after he died.}

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.