How does an atheist determine what is evil and what is not evil?

[Henry]

• 

Hating your parents for giving you life is one way live. It's not the best way but we are free to choose what we think and many do have that view. Many don't!

[macuser]

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If humanity itself was created by a god that loved us and Earth created solely for our benefit, why would he make us water-drinking creatures (quite inefficient ones at that) on a planet where over 99% of all water is useless for us to drink? That is a real number, not hyperbole.  If you were an omniscient, omnipotent creator god, would it be moral to design your creations with deadly weaknesses and put them in situations where you KNOW that they will suffer for it?

I don't see how the question is faulty. I didn't say anything about why your god would have created humanity.

I see 


Megalomania is a condition of man and it is a sin against God.

He gave Adam only one command to obtain eternal life. It was simple, don't eat from that tree. He has give you one simple command that you have to do to obtain eternal life, believe and ask.

God tells us up front that few will believe and He seems to be OK with that and so am I.

"For many are called, but few are chosen."

God is up front with these facts and does not disguise Himself as some fuzzy Disney land character.

Ron 9:20 On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? 21 Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? 22 What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

Mac

[JB Horn]

• 

Here's my return question that I don't expect you to answer:

If humanity itself was created by a god that loved us and Earth created solely for our benefit, why would he make us water-drinking creatures (quite inefficient ones at that) on a planet where over 99% of all water is useless for us to drink? That is a real number, not hyperbole.  If you were an omniscient, omnipotent creator god, would it be moral to design your creations with deadly weaknesses and put them in situations where you KNOW that they will suffer for it?

The water gives life and death. I didn't think you would catch that but you did not seem to understand it and it was not part of the moral question. But sense you're heading that way, God created a Man that could have chosen to live forever. He also created a man with free will to choose death. Man chose death and what man sees as suffering here on earth is nothing to what he is going to suffer after his physical death. 

You did not have to answer my question, and you didn't, but I thank you for your interest. The only reason you would even be concerned about the question of creation, is if you felt you did not have the answer. Many atheist have started out to prove the Bible wrong and have stumbled onto the truth. 

You believe you are a collection of cosmic dust and I believe you are a work of God, only one of us is right.

JB

[JB Horn]

• 

Hating your parents for giving you life is one way live. It's not the best way but we are free to choose what we think and many do have that view. Many don't!

Great analogy.

[Box-o-Tribbles]

• 

Hating your parents for giving you life is one way live. It's not the best way but we are free to choose what we think and many do have that view. Many don't!

Great analogy.

First of all, I don't hate your god. Lots of people think atheists hate god. No. I reject the premise of his very existence as being unproven. But we can talk about him, in the same way I can talk about Luke Skywalker even while being confident that he is fiction. (more relevantly, we could talk Emperor Palpatine).

Secondly there's several reasons why your parents are not like gods and why this analogy is terrible. Your parents can be shown to exist or have existed in the past. Gods cannot. Most people's parents do everything they can to protect them from disease and injury. Your faith says disease and injury are the will of god. Most parents educate their children, show mercy, and show love. God keeps a little black book of everything we do wrong without ever stepping in to help us, and gives us an eternal judgement after it's too late to learn anything from what he decides. A parent that tells a young child not to do something, once, with no explanation, and then leaves them ample opportunity to do it anyway would be a complete idiot and a failure as a parent if they expected the child to obey their command forever without oversight or reinforcement.

I see 

Don't be disingenuous by misreading the flow of conversation.

Megalomania is a condition of man and it is a sin against God.

Well that clears up an earlier question that somebody asked, "is there such a thing as absolute morality?".  Clearly you think there is not, with one rule for man and another for god. Something else that separates us from this supposed entity, we believe that justice must be blind and apply to all equally in order to be true justice.

You believe you are a collection of cosmic dust and I believe you are a work of God, only one of us is right.

You might want to take a look at Genesis 2:7.

The universe and all its rules being created by a god and proceeding from its own machinations to the present point where we may ask questions of it, is not mutually exclusive with the view that we are made of cosmic dust. One describes composition, the other describes process.   However, it's equally likely that our universe was engineered by an alien species from another dimension, or that it is being simulated by a fantastically complex computer.  It's easy to play "what if", but that just leaves us with a great collection of stories. We only accept something as true if it holds up under testing and observation. When somebody tells you they have a tree that grows money, you aren't going to accept this as your working model of reality unless you can examine it.

[Moss]

• 

What you describe is called megalomania.

I had to look that up.

megalomania |ˌmegəlōˈmānēə|
noun
obsession with the exercise of power, esp. in the domination of others.
• delusion about one's own power or importance (typically as a symptom of manic or paranoid disorder).
DERIVATIVES
megalomanic |-ˈmanik| adjective


Do you think the creator of all that exist has a delusion of His self importance or His power? WOW.

[JB Horn]

• 

The universe and all its rules being created by a god and proceeding from its own machinations to the present point where we may ask questions of it, is not mutually exclusive with the view that we are made of cosmic dust. One describes composition, the other describes process.   However, it's equally likely that our universe was engineered by an alien species from another dimension, or that it is being simulated by a fantastically complex computer.  It's easy to play "what if", but that just leaves us with a great collection of stories. We only accept something as true if it holds up under testing and observation. When somebody tells you they have a tree that grows money, you aren't going to accept this as your working model of reality unless you can examine it.

Faith was defined by Paul as:
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

If you have faith in how you became to be as certain I won't try to change your mind, but only point out that there is one thing for sure, you did not create yourself. If you want to go for alien species from another dimension, go for it.

I subscribe to the Calvinist theology that all men are depraved and that only with Gods help can you ever have that faith Paul speaks of. John describe that help in quoting Christ,   He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him." 

Some will believe but many will not.

You stated: We only accept something as true if it holds up under testing and observation. If that is the case you have no foundation what so ever to show any believe in why or how you exist or your claim to the origin of morality.

JB

[Box-o-Tribbles]

• 

Do you think the creator of all that exist has a delusion of His self importance or His power? WOW.

No. I think that creating an entire species of sentient life with the sole purpose of having it worship you, which is what macuser gave as the reason god created humanity, is pretty clearly "obsession with the exercise of power, esp. in the domination of others" as your definition put it.

If you have faith in how you became to be

No faith required. Rather: I know that I am made of atoms. This can be demonstrated by nuclear spectroscopy. I know that the atoms I am made of most likely came from the process of nucleosynthesis in extinct stars. We can demonstrate how fusion works, and see the signatures of things we are made of in the spectrums of other stars.  I know that evolution works. We can find countless specimens of things that no longer live, and compare them morphologically (and now even genetically in some cases) to extant species.  The source of life (abiogenesis), I don't know much about. The experiments by Miller and Urey are certainly interesting but I'm not completely convinced. Nor do I know the mechanism of the start of the universe. Honestly that discussion is way over my head and best left to quantum physicists for now.  But you know what? I'm okay with not knowing. For now.

It strikes me that this is a key difference between a lot of atheists and a lot of religious persons.  Being able to say "I don't know", and realize that this is only a resting place rather than a destination. You want faith? I have faith that the universe is enormous and complex and wondrous, and that the more we reject intellectual dead-ends (a result of filling in the blanks with unsupportable guesses), the more wondrous it will become.

Yes your book has something about The End Times and how people would call ignorance wisdom or something like that. You don't need to quote it at me, I've heard it before. What your book doesn't do is give us any insight into the technologies and paradigms that people who are willfully ignorant of god have provided to make everybody's life easier and longer and healthier than ever before.

you have no foundation what so ever to show any believe in why or how you exist

Why are we here? Zygotes, man. Didn't your parents explain this to you? If you want a purpose for your life that doesn't involve magic, the best one I have come across is "to serve as a way for the universe to know itself". It's wonderfully romantic to think of the entire universe as a thing which is alive and evolving.

[JB Horn]

• 

    No faith required. Rather: I know that I am made of atoms. This can be demonstrated by nuclear spectroscopy. I know that the atoms I am made of most likely came from the process of nucleosynthesis in extinct stars. We can demonstrate how fusion works, and see the signatures of things we are made of in the spectrums of other stars.  I know that evolution works. We can find countless specimens of things that no longer live, and compare them morphologically (and now even genetically in some cases) to extant species.  The source of life (abiogenesis), I don't know much about. The experiments by Miller and Urey are certainly interesting but I'm not completely convinced. Nor do I know the mechanism of the start of the universe. Honestly that discussion is way over my head and best left to quantum physicists for now.  But you know what? I'm okay with not knowing. For now.

Yes you are made of atoms and I have a house that is made of bricks. My house is not an accident and did not grow itself out of a pile of mud, or morph into a brick house from a grass hut. I've heard discussed many times that atheists have more faith than religious people, you seem to prop up that theory.

It's amazing that you tell me that I don't know and that my faith is wrong, and then turn around and say that you don't know but your faith must be right.

  It strikes me that this is a key difference between a lot of atheists and a lot of religious persons.  Being able to say "I don't know", and realize that this is only a resting place rather than a destination. You want faith? I have faith that the universe is enormous and complex and wondrous, and that the more we reject intellectual dead-ends (a result of filling in the blanks with unsupportable guesses), the more wondrous it will become.

    We only accept something as true if it holds up under testing and observation.

You put those two statements together and I guess you have the theology of an atheist.

Yes your book has something about The End Times and how people would call ignorance wisdom or something like that. You don't need to quote it at me, I've heard it before. What your book doesn't do is give us any insight into the technologies and paradigms that people who are willfully ignorant of god have provided to make everybody's life easier and longer and healthier than ever before.   

Of course you have heard the quotes and you know that God did not intend everybody's life to be easy and that has been discussed earlier in this thread. If you value your time here on earth so dearly, I for one will wish you the best easiest, healthiest, longest life possible. But I have a feeling that you fill you're missing something in this life, and that too bad.

Why are we here? Zygotes, man. Didn't your parents explain this to you?  If you want a purpose for your life that doesn't involve magic, the best one I have come across is "to serve as a way for the universe to know itself". It's wonderfully romantic to think of the entire universe as a thing which is alive and evolving.

We only accept something as true if it holds up under testing and observation.
JB

[Moss]

• 

We only accept something as true if it holds up under testing and observation.

You want something that holds up to your test you might want to look at the prophecies in the Bible. When I was a child there was no Israel and the religious community had not seen Israel in almost 2000 years. Many of the weaker Christians begin to believe that there would never be in Israel, to the point they actually change their theology into what we call replacement theology. In 1948 Israel appeared in the driving force was mainly the Jewish Holocaust. In one day as prophesied in the Bible, Israel came into existence.
Most everything that is happening now in the Middle East was prophesied to be, that is something you can see and it doesn't take any faith to do that.

Moss

[Box-o-Tribbles]

• 

Yes you are made of atoms and I have a house that is made of bricks. My house is not an accident and did not grow itself out of a pile of mud, or morph into a brick house from a grass hut.

Analogy is bad.

Bricks don't grow, replicate, mutate, or attach to eachother in any way. Your house isn't an accident because its elements have absolutely no way to organize themselves.  Very unlike living things. Also, nobody who understands evolution would call what we have now an accident.  It's not like you can just throw a bunch of amino acids in a jar and- oops!- pull out a mouse. The "accidents" are tiny and most result in the death of the organism. What you see now is the accumulation of 3 billion years of good luck on the part of organic molecules forming combinations that yield increasingly efficient ways to make more of themselves. It doesn't require faith, it requires a trivial understanding of chemistry, information theory, and a deep appreciation for the scope of time and space.

It's amazing that you tell me that I don't know and that my faith is wrong, and then turn around and say that you don't know but your faith must be right.

No, I say "Here is a thing I don't understand for now, but may eventually".  You say "Here is a thing I don't understand, therefore, god."

<sarcasm>We only accept something as true if it holds up under testing and observation.</sarcasm>

Dictionary search defines "romantic" as:
(2.) fanciful; impractical; unrealistic
and
(9.) imaginary, fictitious, or fabulous.


Now, please re-read what I wrote.


=====================================

You want something that holds up to your test you might want to look at the prophecies in the Bible. When I was a child there was no Israel and the religious community had not seen Israel in almost 2000 years. Many of the weaker Christians begin to believe that there would never be in Israel, to the point they actually change their theology into what we call replacement theology. In 1948 Israel appeared in the driving force was mainly the Jewish Holocaust. In one day as prophesied in the Bible, Israel came into existence.
Most everything that is happening now in the Middle East was prophesied to be, that is something you can see and it doesn't take any faith to do that.

Any prophecies that accurately predicted exact dates and names?

[JB Horn]

• 

Bricks don't grow, replicate, mutate, or attach to eachother in any way. Your house isn't an accident because its elements have absolutely no way to organize themselves.  Very unlike living things. Also, nobody who understands evolution would call what we have now an accident.  It's not like you can just throw a bunch of amino acids in a jar and- oops!- pull out a mouse. The "accidents" are tiny and most result in the death of the organism. What you see now is the accumulation of 3 billion years of good luck on the part of organic molecules forming combinations that yield increasingly efficient ways to make more of themselves. It doesn't require faith, it requires a trivial understanding of chemistry, information theory, and a deep appreciation for the scope of time and space.

The GREAT unthink. Talk about faith.

No, I say "Here is a thing I don't understand for now, but may eventually".  You say "Here is a thing I don't understand, therefore, god."

You Misquote.

Now, please re-read what I wrote.

The universe and all its rules being created by a god and proceeding from its own machinations to the present point where we may ask questions of it, is not mutually exclusive with the view that we are made of cosmic dust. One describes composition, the other describes process.   However, it's equally likely that our universe was engineered by an alien species from another dimension, or that it is being simulated by a fantastically complex computer.  It's easy to play "what if", but that just leaves us with a great collection of stories. We only accept something as true if it holds up under testing and observation. When somebody tells you they have a tree that grows money, you aren't going to accept this as your working model of reality unless you can examine it.

Now are you back tracking on that statement?

[Box-o-Tribbles]

• 

I think we're done here. "The Great Unthink"?  What does that even mean. Can you refute anything I said in that paragraph? Do you even care to try? That and, pretending to be unable to follow the flow of conversation by ripping out small parts of larger points to make them seem absurd is a complete non-starter with me. Here's another word for you guys to look up: Disingenuous.

If you don't want to hear atheist's views on subjects, then don't post videos to the world asking questions of atheists and invite them to your forum.

[Fat]

• 

I think we're done here. "The Great Unthink"?  What does that even mean. Can you refute anything I said in that paragraph? Do you even care to try? That and, pretending to be unable to follow the flow of conversation by ripping out small parts of larger points to make them seem absurd is a complete non-starter with me. Here's another word for you guys to look up: Disingenuous.

If you don't want to hear atheist's views on subjects, then don't post videos to the world asking questions of atheists and invite them to your forum.

What is important is that others see your views, your logic and the contradictions. You spent the time dodging the questions and found yourself in a quagmire that you were warned about.

Many atheists will try to combined these two definitions only finding themselves in a quagmire of contradiction.

How does an atheist determine what is evil and what is not evil? Answer: They can't.

Bye Box-o-Tribbles hope all goes well for you and yours.

[Box-o-Tribbles]

• 

How does an atheist determine what is evil and what is not evil? Answer: They can't.

They can, theists just don't accept their reasoning.  On the bright side this discussion has led me to a book on the subject, so well done!

Before I go, it's only fair to ask: What do you think is the basis of your morality?  We know it's not the bible, which talks about genocide being an acceptable solution to...anything.  Anybody who actually based their sense of morality on the entirety of the bible would be unable to function in modern society. Should we only follow the new testament? I don't remember anywhere that Jesus says "Oh, and all that stuff that was dictated earlier? Forget that. Doesn't apply anymore."  Maybe you know of such a passage, in which case please tell me where it is.

We also know it's not god speaking directly to people, because if that were true everybody who follows god (well, your god) would think exactly the same thing on all moral questions. Unless you'd like to commit the No True Scotsman fallacy, and say that people who don't think the same as you on moral questions are not real christians? In which case, how do you tell the difference between telepathy from on high versus your own thoughts?