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| Rouge77 wrote: |
Probably because some of those values have deep roots in human history and because those values play a part in keeping cultures stable and helping them to survive in the long term. Values that work against this get removed in the process of cultural evolution.
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Not all of them. Most, if not all, cultures that I'm aware of consider rape to be a heinous act, but it brings about reproduction. If morality is only a 'herd instinct', we wouldn't care two lumps of sugar about it.
| Rouge77 wrote: |
No, why would it? What we are when it comes to our bodies is inherited, so why wouldn't some of the basic building blocks of our mind, our behaviour be too? It's after all the same with other animals. |
My emphasis was on the latter of your statement, about how atheists just shrug off morality as 'unanswerable and move on to easier things.
| Rouge77 wrote: |
I suggest you don't do that, because if I am right, this brief existence is all that we have. Beyond the biological purpose of life, to survive and to continue it, there are of course other purposes. Some of them our society tries to instill in us, like acting in ways that help to prolong it's existence beyond our own lifetime. We can always choose to be part of something bigger, to work for the benefit of our fellow human beings and rest of the living world in various ways, perhaps just making the happiness of some special human being the main purpose of our own life. |
No worries. I ain't ever gonna kill myself, because I believe in God, Purpose, Fate and all that good stuff.  I find it amusing when atheists say they can still live meaningfull lives by prolonging the survuval of their species. I'm sorry, but if what you're saying is true we're all going to be swallowed by blackholes and there will be Nothing for eternity. I really don't see the point of prolonging the inevitable. Similarly, how can you purposefully give people happiness if all happiness is is a chemical reaction. If atheists are true, life has no meaning.
| Rouge77 wrote: |
If one would assume that to be the truth, I wouldn't still follow such a god, because the price paid for free will - for giving us the chance to perfect ourselves - would have been paid in human suffering and it has been too great a price to be paid. A god would then just be yet another sentient who beliefs that the good end result justifies the means, however awful they might be. |
So it would've been better if God had never created life? God hasn't caused the crap in the world, we have. It's our fault. That said, I'm still gratefull I was given life and a free will, even if it means there's some suffering along the way.
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Where sky and water meet,
Where the waves grow sweet,
Doubt not, Reepicheep,
To find all you seek,
There is the utter east.
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I don't think that most religious believers really stop from doing bad things because they would fear divine punishment or would be afraid of losing heavenly rewards, but because they too, like rest of us, have grown up, been brought up, in societies whose values we have gotten in that process to differing extent, and often accept them still with little questioning of them, and whose disapproval and very earthly punishments we might fear. The most potent punishment a society has is to push those who break it's rules - good or bad - outside it. A terrible punishment for a human being, as we humans are very social animals.
