Question for agnostics and/or atheists

by sonnyboy 58 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  DanTheMan

  Rod P, I believe that when Hitler and Stalin died, they ceased being conscious in any form and their bodies rotted away, just the same as the millions of people whose lives they took. This does not bother me, because these men both sought utopia and immortality, but they achieved neither, and in the end they payed the same price for living that everybody else does - death. And certainly Hitler didn't die a sweet death. From what I know he died of suicide, was quite insane, and his dream was crashing in all around him. He died a coward and a broken man, which was what he was all along, but never had to face it until he stuck the gun to his head. At that moment, he knew, I am quite confident of that.

  If the "problem of evil" is what drives many people to belief, then what about natural evils such as the tsunami disaster in Asia, or fatal childhood diseases, etc.. If divine justice is so concerned with human suffering and those who cause it, then who or what gets punished for these things? It doesn't add up.
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  
  hey Rod P,

  But when it comes to being responsible to oneself, I am wondering how you see people who think that it's okay to be bad and selfish at the expense of one's fellow man. For example, some think it's ok to steal, just so long as you don't get caught. The sin is in getting caught. (In fact, in some societies they actually punished you for being caught, not for stealing.)

  there is, of course, no rule book for atheists. but personally i find it disgusting that people, atheist or theist, are selfish at the expense of other people. what can i say? it's not about who holds the view, it's about the view itself.

  So what? Who cares? In the end, nothing matters.....not really!!!

  i care. and i wish i could think that there was a god that would take care of business for all the horrible injustice that takes place in humanity. but since there is no credible evidence for the existence of god, i, as a materialist of sorts, cannot pressume that "true" justice will be served. the alternative, regarding justice, is a sad one. we are african apes, homo sapiens, who do horrible things to each other, always have, and probably always will. some of us get off bloody scott free. does it make it right? no. does it occur? yes, unfortunately.

  I would like to know how you can explain accountability in the face of all this?

  i think that the lack of justice in our world, is exactly why so many people cling to god-belief. they cannot fathom that bad people actually end up getting away with so much, while "good" people suffer at their hands.

  to me, accountability boils down to fighting natural selection, as outlined by charles darwin. what i mean by this is that, while natural selection is a biological fact, it is still cruel and blind, to us. but really, nature is just indifferent. it has no personality. neither good or evil, just indifferent. but since to us it is cruel and blind, we have an obligation to fight it, IMHO. that means the golden rule, and even going beyond that and helping others who need our help. we don't just let handicapped children die because they cannot survive in nature. we help them survive. our strength becomes theirs. be good now, who cares about the future?! that is accountability to me. it is not the most emotionally uplifting position to be in, but it is the simplest explaination for the hell we see around us.
• 

  AllAlongTheWatchtower

  This is a question that I can empathize with; I went through the process myself. From cult organization (not JWs but similar), to agnostic, and eventually to atheist/ existentialist. I was kicked out of the organization that I was in at the age of 13, and from that time until I was about 16 I went through a transition period. At the start, I just knew I was going to hell, having been rejected by the 'one true church'. (Funny, they all seem to say that.) It didn't even occur to me at first to seek other religions, since I "knew" they were all wrong anyway. Eventually though, I started seeking out some other church to attend because I did feel that guilt feeling you mentioned. I had been taught, and believed, in the 'seventh day' doctrine though, so I was rather limited in my choices. Either through personal experience, or book research, I went through all of the religions that had Saturday worship as a tenet of their doctrine, and eliminated them all eventually as viable choices, and began my agnostic phase. I still believed in god, just thought that all the religions had corrupted doctrines.

  The more I thought about it though, and the more I read and searched, the more I came to realize that I simply couldn't reconcile what I knew to be true and ANY kind of belief in a deity. Things like the impossibility of Adam and Eve being the ancestor of every single human being; due to the science of genetics. (Ever ask yourself just where Cain's wife came from? Ever thought about the hypocrisy of Christians, who believing that incest is wrong, never stop to think about the fact that if the story of Adam and Eve is true, the first humans who were their sons and daughters, would have been forced to procreate amongst themselves?) Things like every minister, or preacher, or whatever their title was, dismissing out of hand any questions I asked them about dinosaur fossils as 'evolutionist heresy' or simply admitting they had no answer for me. I have BEEN to the Smithsonian, I have SEEN dinosaur bones...the fact that the bible doesn't mention dinosaurs doesn't make them go away. Ditto for archaeological finds of Cro Magnon, Neanderthal, etc.

  Anyway, due to issues such as that, I finally moved on to becoming atheist by the time I was 16. One of my pet peeves as an atheist is when the subject comes up in polite conversation somehow, and people would look at me and gasp 'Oh my god you're a devil worshipper?! But you seem so nice!" Makes my blood boil...depends on my mood whether I bother to explain to them that not believing in god makes a belief in satan an impossibility, due to satan, the former lucifer, being a creation OF the very god I do not believe in. Though I must admit that for fun and spite I've been known to make goat-signs with my hand and chant beelzebub...beelzebub at folks who have been particularly annoying about the subject, lmao.

  And finally, I found out about existentialism, which had the answer for me. For any who don't know, existentialists believe that you yourself must hold yourself to be personally accountable for whatever you believe to be your "sins" or what have you. Some deride this approach, saying that you can just say that anything you do is ok, and therefore you absolve yourself of any wrongdoing. Perhaps there's adherants of this philosophy who do go easy on themselves, but speaking for myself and all of the people I have talked to, we take it pretty seriously. It's sorta like having your own code of knightly conduct or whatever-and sticking to it, and berating yourself when you fail, as opposed to going to confession and getting a pennance or having some JW committee chastise you. I've had Christians I've discussed this with be shocked and apalled by my views, saying that is heresy, and that I'm playing god to myself. I suppose in a way that is technically correct, but I certainly don't have aspirations to godhood or a "god complex" or anything like that. One such person who said this was somebody I knew while I was in the military, and my answer to him was "Who is the better person: one who believes that prostitution's wrong on personal reasons and therefore does not use their services, or one who believes prostitution is wrong for religious reasons, but uses their services anyway because his church says all he has to do to be clean again is come confess?" Heh...that shut him up, since we were stationed overseas in Japan, and I happened to know he was married, and away from his wife, and that he had indeed done just that.
• 

  JAVA

  AllAlongTheWatchtower (that's a lot to type) -- WELCOME to the Forum! Enjoyed reading your post, too.
• 

  Check_Your_Premises

  I did exercise due dilligence in seeking him out for nearly 20 years

  I never meant to imply that you didn't. I just said I think it is necessary that one exercise such diligence if they ever expect to stand before the Creator.

  Have you ever considered that you were misled and abused for a long time by some people seeking their own glory. So much so that maybe you are turned off on the idea, not because of God, but because of those who claimed to represent him? I am sure you have. I just had to mention it.
• 

  hooberus

  The more I thought about it though, and the more I read and searched, the more I came to realize that I simply couldn't reconcile what I knew to be true and ANY kind of belief in a deity. Things like the impossibility of Adam and Eve being the ancestor of every single human being; due to the science of genetics.

  What in the science of genetics makes Adam and Eve being the ancestors of every single human being an impossibility?
• 

  funkyderek

  hooberus:

  What in the science of genetics makes Adam and Eve being the ancestors of every single human being an impossibility?

  The mutation rate necessary to explain the genetic differences between humans would have to be at least 20 times that which is actually observed in order to support the "theory" that the most recent common human ancestors lived 6,000 years ago. Of course, strictly speaking, this doesn't make it an impossibility. The gods could easily have manipulated the genomes of early man in order to make it appear that humanity is far older than 6,000 years. Similarly, they could have independently created chimpanzees with nearly identical DNA to humans - right down to the junk DNA in order to make it appear - for their own reasons - that humans and chimpanzees have a common ancestor. With this in mind, we might have to go to the evidence provided by other sciences.

  But then, the gods could just as easily have interfered with the half-lives of isotopes to make human artifacts appear older than 6,000 years, or created artificial fossils of hominids that never existed in order to make it appear that humans evolved from apelike ancestors. They could have - in the blink of an eye - laid down layers of ice in the Arctic to give a false history of our planet. They could have filled the planet with dinosaur bones and meteor craters and layers of different kinds of rock, with different kinds of fossils in each layer, all on some divine whim.

  So you're right, hooberus. Your beliefs can never be conclusively proven false, unless we set aside the possibility of deceptive deities. Of course, once we do this, you will accuse us of having a naturalistic bias, of a priori dismissing the idea of divine intervention.

  So there we have it. We can never ever know anything for sure. Evidence is unimportant because any omnipotent entities we care to postulate could have manipulated it for their own ends. So, hooberus, where do we go from here?
• 

  GetBusyLiving

  Excellent post Funky. A conversation I had with a dub recently went somewhat along these lines. He actually stated that "Satan could have planted all of those bones there." What do you say to that? What do you SAY TO THAT?

  GBL
• 

  tetrapod.sapien

  
  
  hooberus:

  What in the science of genetics makes Adam and Eve being the ancestors of every single human being an impossibility?

  if you want "proof" that would make it an "impossibility", then don't worry about reading on. like funkyderek says, god can do anything he wants, right? for those of you wondering about evidence that tips the scales in the evolution vs. creation debate over genetics and common ancestry, then one thing you could look to is "genetic errors".

  you see, normally we would just be able to show that chimpanzees and humans share 98% of the same genetic data, and very similar internal organs and physiological functions (Goodman et al., J Molec Evolution 30:260,1990). this shows that we come from a common ancestor about 5 - 10 million years ago. but the deadlock arises because creationist's toes are stepped on by this concept. so they create the deadlock by saying that god could have just made chimps and humans with 98% similarities for fun.

  however, the genetic "errors" that chimps and humans share (including junk DNA) show that credulity has its limits. DNA technology has allowed us to determine the nucleotide sequence of segments for many species. this is a huge amount of genetic information that helps us understand how genes work. but it also highlights shared genetic errors between species. if our genetic material was designed by a creator, why would he make the error in the first place? and why would he duplicate the error in more than one species?

  so adam and eve were created with junk DNA then? the same genetic errors that chimps and other old world apes have? why would a designer copy the good and the bad over to different species, unless "he/she/it" was blind?

  at this point you are not only stretching the imagination, but also the rule of parsimony.
• 

  seattleniceguy

  Hey GBL,

  Excellent post Funky. A conversation I had with a dub recently went somewhat along these lines. He actually stated that "Satan could have planted all of those bones there." What do you say to that? What do you SAY TO THAT?

  Actually, it can be quite rewarding if you get a fundamentalist to come to this, because on reflection, it may spur them to see the backflips they are doing to maintain an untenable belief system.

  I think my response would be something like this:

  Sure, it's possible that Satan planted fossil evidence. It's also possible that Satan wrote the Bible as a part of a master plan to trick humans. The problem is that once we accept that invisible forces can alter reality as we know it, it becomes impossible to prove anything at all, because no matter what the evidence seems to indicate, and no matter how clearly it seems to do so, it's always possible to say that an invisible force maliciously manufactured the evidence. In such a world, it would be impossible to make any rational decisions or deductions at all. Therefore, I prefer to start by accepting that the natural world has not been tampered with by external forces, and that the state of the natural world reflects what has actually happened in it. If you cannot start from this basic assumption, then there is truly nowhere else our discussion can go.

  SNG