Ethics: Continued

Hey Joe,

Sorry about getting back to you so late. Busy Busy Busy. I guess I have one question coming out of your last post. This may seem oversimplified but I think it is one I'd like to know your stand on.

Do you feel that there is nothing good we can get from the Bible?

I think that you raised good points about our ethics evolving, but you also must base your ethics on someone else who also raises good points or claims authority. We all do, especially when we are younger as we are now. We make decisions and choices daily based on others who have come before us. What do you think?

Quick comment about the long term discussions post

Jennings said:
"I would encourage you to seek a way to also empathize with Christians as to why they would believe in God. A quick look at society shows that there are many intellectual and extremely smart people who believe in God. These people have reached this world view not through blind faith but have spent years in doubt and discussion and then concluded to follow Christ."

I can empathize with them, remember my deconversion was a long slow process. I know exactly what is going on in their heads, it's simply ignoring cognitive dissonance. This isn't a logical pathway, its simply compartmentalization of belief, and we do it all the time. Let me give you an example. I can tell you "I am holding a green box." I can also tell you "I am holding a red box." Neither of these mental images are difficult for you to hold on to, but you must do so separately; one is an image with me with a red box in my hands, the second one of me with a green one. But you can't picture me only 1 box that is both solid red and solid green, so you ignore that one. This is the process that many scientists use to reconcile the understanding that we CAN'T know the things that religion says it does know and still let them function as good scientists. And I daresay that when functioning as good scientists they do it with a purely atheistic world view, or they wouldn't be good scientists.

Ethics

You sort of went back and forth during that post, let me see if I can summarize what I got:
Point 1: It takes time for ethics to develop.
Point 2: It is impossible to develop ethics in a single lifetime.
Point 3: We should base our ethics off what people did before, somewhat insinuating the bible here.

Ok, to address these, Point 1, I agree. Ethics are a human concern and something that adjusts with the changing zeitgeist (German for spirit of the times, great word for this type of discussion). We learn from the mistakes that came before and we derive our ethics and morality in the hopes of making the world better.

Point 2: Erm? I'm going to come back to the changing zeitgeist here. We do form our morality and ethics within our lives, we kind of have to. Will these be the ethics of societys forever? I certainly hope not, we punish non-violent offenders, oppress minoritys (both racial and financial) and execute our criminals. Our prison system is a nightmare. I could go on for a while, but you get my point; our system leaves much to be desired. This doesn't mean we're not ethical, it means that (hopefully) we're trying to find a better system of rules. This brings me to...

Point 3: No. Ish. We base our ethics on things that came before, but we do it by 1. going with our evolved sense of empathy and 2. by learning from example and experience. We most certainly do not take our ethics from the bible. Now I'm trying to avoid strawmaning you here, so feel free to correct me if that last sentence is not what you were trying to say.

I agree with your last statement "Our generation feeds off the previous generations and pours into the next generation" fully. That is exactly what we do, and exactly why the ethics of the bible no longer apply. The we learn and we get better. The spread of information technology has done amazing things for the acceleration of this process, and acting like some teaching from 2000 years ago where a guy repeated some wisdom that had already been long formulated (I can't remember if I've mentioned Jainism to you before, but...check it out, they scooped most of Jesus' moral teachings by a few thousand years) is still groundbreakingly relevant today is...shortsighted to say the least.
A discussion of ethics begins with considering who benefits. I believe that it must be grounded in the desire to increase the sum total of human happiness (I'm not a strict utilitarian, but they got some stuff right). I know that if it is set up to "honor god" or to "do what god wants us to" that it is a system ripe for exploitation by someone who will tell you they know the mind of something that is unknowable. If religion is not evil for anything else, it is for setting up this doorway to the exploitation of it's adherents.

It's late so I'll stop here and let you reply. I'll probably put something up to briefly address your other post as well.

Goal of our On Going Long Term Discussions

I thought it might be good here to talk about the goal of all of this Hot Air or Hot Circuit Boards we are having between each other.
I think the goal of our discussions on Atheism and Christianity/religions should push us to a greater understanding of the other's point of view as opposed to a dividing to the extremes of our own camps of thought. I think at the end we should be closer through understanding and empathy of the others points and world view, than completely dogmatic in our own belief system that we can't even talk anymore.


Timothy Keller talks about the goal of a relationship between Skeptics and Believers in his book The Reason for God. In the introduction he talks about the goal of both. Here is an excerpt...
"At the end of the process(discussing doubts to faith and such), even if you remain the skeptic or believer you have been, you will hold your own position with both greater clarity and greater humility. Then there will be an understanding, sympathy, and respect for the other side that did not exist before. Believers and nonbelievers will rise to the level of disagreement rather than denouncing one another. This happens when each side has learned to represent the other's argument in its strongest and most positive form. Only then is it safe and fair to disagree with it. That achieves civility in a pluralistic society, which is no small thing."

My hope Joe is that you and I can reason through this cloud of doubt together and really get at what the other is believing and after. I don't want this discussion to sink to the level of bickering or bashing the other persons point of view just because you have a different point of view. We will always have pluralistic societies and the only way for us to find peace is when we can get away from ignorance of other belief systems and people groups. When we really study and learn about someone's contradictory point of view our hate and rejection for them decreases greatly and at the end of the day we are friends. I would love to see this happen in our discussions.

That being said, I know that I have a lot more homework and learning to do on your world view than you do on Christianity. Thank you for the books you have loaned me and I will work on trying to get through those and give you questions I have from them. I think here and now it would be helpful if you let me ask a lot of questions so as to understand your perspective on things. I would encourage you to seek a way to also empathize with Christians as to why they would believe in God. A quick look at society shows that there are many intellectual and extremely smart people who believe in God. These people have reached this world view not through blind faith but have spent years in doubt and discussion and then concluded to follow Christ. I hope you will apply your empathy to these people and understand why and how they could believe in God. There are many who have gone before us who have struggled with these concepts and my prayer for us is that we too can struggle with these concepts in a smarter way instead of the dismissive way the extremist in each of our camps of skepticism and religion usually handle this discussion. I think we must listen completely and fully to the others perspective and not fight for own position in fear that our own position will loose. I think both Christians and Atheist should not react out of fear that their camp will some how be defeated but we should act with civility in conversation where when we disagree with each other we are still at peace.

If it is Truth we both seek I believe that and I think you also believe that we will find it. Let me quote one more thing of ancient wisdom from my own tradition by the Jewish leader and teacher of Paul, Gamaliel talking about how to handle the new Christians...
"Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God."

If you believe that Truth will be discovered then let us journey together to find that Truth by taking a honest look into each others world views and let us both strive to believe that if a man truly pursues Truth is attainable. At the end of all this I would like to see us reach peace even if we reach disagreement.

From Happiness to Ethics

Why can't you find ethics from an ancient world? It seems to me the development of Ethics and morality would take more than one life time to Debate, Talk about, Get Confused, Debate some more, Write some books, get the books read by the world, then have the world accept said beliefs, and then Ethics would be transmitted to all cultures and people groups. For this to happen in one life time would be impossible. Also those having the time to debate the ethics and morality that the rest of the population should adhere to would have a lot of control over the population in their one generation. It seems you have to base as I do your ethics and morality on a people that have come before, at least as a jumping point as to what should be discussed. Our generation feeds off the previous generations and pours into the next generation. What do you think?

re: Happiness?

I don't know if you realize it, but you moved into a bit of materialist philosophy there. I actually agree that those are all very important issues to discuss with considering the question "what is love?" (baby don't hurt me....don't hurt me...no more... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpwK3vFGJp0 Sorry.) I'll address that in another post, because it deserves a bit longer of an answer than I have time for just this second. Come to think, answer isn't really the right word, philosophy isn't as interested in answers as finding the right question to ask, so I'll see what I can do as far as questioning your questions.

Now as for your last paragraph, those I can answer.
Faith cannot make calls on ethical demands because ethics are a human consideration. They don't stand on faith, they stand on human understanding and a common belief in what is good. Ethics are not a question of believing in the unbelieved, they are a study of the 'why?' of morality, so basing them in faith is like basing them on ocean currents...it has nothing to do with the ideas being discussed.
As to your second question, no I wouldn't say that personal happiness is the goal of ethical consideration, I would say human happiness is. I'm not a 100% utilitarian in these matters, but I think we should approach ethics and morality in as utilitarian a mode as possible. This means asking tough questions and looking at why the answers are right, not just accepting handed down ethos as holding some sort of divine warrant. This means looking at things you hold dear and trying to figure out why you should, or why you shouldn't. Ethics and morality are not easy questions, they are painful fields to move into, but rewarding none the less.
Know why your answers are your answers, and make sure they are YOUR answers, not simply parrotings of the ancient world. If something is ethical it shouldn't need to be cited in a bible verse or a shifting of the burden of proof heavenward to explain why. The answers are out there, and to use a phrase we were raised on, seek and ye shall find.

Happiness?

By personal happiness i was referring to my own happiness over Anna's happiness. Is that what you were thinking about in personal happiness?

I don't think Christians have a hold on the love definition, but I do think that we have something to say about love. I think true love is especially seen when someone sacrifices their own happiness for someone else. Love is very sacrificial in nature. The act of committing to someone for the rest of your life requires sacrifice. There are a lot of things you are not going to be able to do and a lot of dreams that you are going to have to give up because of the love you have for someone else. And that is in an ideal relationship. What if the person you love goes crazy or becomes suicidal or depressive and makes your life miserable? Is that no longer love, because your personal happiness is no longer present? I think you can not have love between two people without some sort of loss of personal/individual happiness.

Why can't a faith system speak to ethics? Would you say personal happiness is the goal of ethics?

Love and Happiness

I'm admittedly no student of the history of love, but I will venture this guess: It'd didn't come from Paul. A lot of things that christianity claims as it's own inventions are evident in the religions that preceded it. Scratch the "a lot," I have yet to find one thing that it didn't crib from something else, but back to the question at hand.
This transposition of love and self sacrifice has always struck me as somewhat odd. Christianity seems to be wanting to broaden the meaning of love until it is synonymous with any positive emotion, which is...kind of dumb. Love, when the word is used in a conversation, means the amount you would care about a family member or romantic attraction. To seek to spread it to friendship or the civic mindedness or any of the other points that a lot of Paul's theology did was pretty pointless.
From the stance of self sacrifice, look up Jainism sometime, it's an ancient Indian religion revolving around the ideas of wisdom, non-violence and self control. It has all the aspects of the best parts of christian teaching without trying to redefine our relationships as love.
When we were talking the other day I stated flat out that humans are incapable of loving others, especially strangers, as they love themselves, and I meant it. That isn't some sort of nihilistic idea, it's a simple statement of fact. When was the last time you decided that you could use a day off to just relax? When was the last time you stopped by a random office building and informed someone inside that they needed a day off so they could relax and then worked for them? No one behaves this way, and the pretense that you do is simply a lie.
We care for those who we have a relationship with, and there is nothing wrong with that. It's what lets us build up society into something worth being a part of. Personal sacrifice is part of every relationship, but that doesn't mean it's separate from personal happiness.
We find happiness in many things...actually on this, scroll down and watch the video from my last post back before we restarted the conversation, that is exactly the sort of thing that I'm talking about when I say we do not need to base our idea of love on a concept of God. If you start out assuming you have the answer at the outset, for instance "God is where love comes from," you will be wrong more often than not and unhappy because of it more often than that.

Now to answer the two questions you brought up:
Yes, personal happiness is the goal in love, just as it is in life. Or as it should be. That isn't selfish that is realistic, and that is where ethics come from. Not from the idea of pleasing a judgmental parent figure in the sky, but from HUMAN happiness.
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Side note: I hate the fact that the formatting here doesn't let me tab in paragraphs. It annoys my sense of style.

Love & Happiness

So it seems that you can't learn to love from God? It seems the idea of Agape/Unconditional Love from Christian Teaching was revolutionary when Paul first talked about it in the Bible. This love was not a love that most people tried to live up to until the example of Christ. So basically this type of Love is based on God (in Christian thought). Is this Love possible? What is your ultimate goal by loving someone? Personal Happiness? I'll tell you from my own experience personal sacrifice is more conducive to a loving relationship being successful with someone than personal happiness. What do you think?

Love

Well first off I'm going to have to make a clarification, since that question is a little misleading as it is stated. Love is a real emotion, in our discussion yesterday I was explaining how a lot of people base their idea that love is somehow a gift from God and then cite it as evidence that God exists.
Love, as in the initial attraction between two people that drives them to mate...and consequentially put up with each others crap, is chemical. So is every other emotion we experience. I don't say that from a point of random speculation, we can watch the signaling pathways firing, we can see the parts of our brain lighting up in an MRI that show these things.
What I was discussing yesterday is that people using love as a proof of God or using some sort of idealized love as their goal is wrongheaded in the extreme. If you are basing an idea on something that you can't even prove exists, especially something as important as love, and then you speculate on how this unknown creature wants you to...you hobble yourself and you cripple your chances for happiness.

Question for Joe- Love

Hey could you go into more about what you meant by Love is not a real emotion?

Do Atheist Pray

Great Response Joe! I enjoyed reading your view, because I was just joking. But thanks for your comments on prayer. Your view of prayer was very limiting though. I do not pray simply to get things. I actually pray to form a relationship with my creator. I think that praying just to get things and solve problems is okay, but that is what you do early in a faith. A relationship is really the goal. I have had prayer answered in my life with out any effort on my own or others. I've seen situations that should not have worked themselves out actually work out. I've also had prayer answered in my life that I had to work at. Just cause I had to work at something does not mean a prayer was not answered. I don't believe in praying and sitting and waiting. Prayer does not limit my actions but actually gives me courage to take on the action. If the church is God community then maybe prayer is answered sometimes by means of the community in action. We in the church pray yes! But we also act! It is the Hands and feet idea that you have prob heard about from your upbringing in Church.

My prayer is not simply a childhood act toward a parent. I would never have shared the things that I share with God with my parents. My deep inner sins, my personal conflicts, my desire to know them intimately. None of these would I have talked about with Dad or Mom. I would have been afraid they would ground me! :-)

Prayer is essential to the life of a believer, but misunderstood by those outside of the faith. It is a discipline that takes time to develop and you don't get instant response always but sometimes you do get a response and when it comes you have no doubt that it was the hand of God.

Do atheists pray...

Well that's an interesting question. If you define atheist how I do, meaning someone that doesn't believe in the supernatural, I'd have to say no. No we do not.
I remember the first time I was in a bit of a crisis after I really started to not believe and felt that old reflex to whisper quietly to myself and hope that things would get better. I also remember the amusement and regret I instantly felt once that urge came up as I realized that speaking to something that doesn't exist wouldn't really help my problem, and instead did the same thing that I'd always done before: I started working to correct the situation and resolved it.
Prayer is a bit of a crutch, and a little...for lack of a better word, immature. It is the remnant in adulthood of that feeling we had as children that a parent would make everything ok.
When we pray we feel a sense of consolation because we think someone is working to fix the issue, but stop and think about your answered prayers. Think about when they were resolved and how. Was it something that would have worked itself out with some hard work from you anyway? Was it solved by the intervention of another person? Was it solved at all? If you apply these questions, and if you're really diligent about it and keep a log of them, you'll quickly realize that your "answered" prayers were resolved by something that could be explained within the laws of nature.
So no, atheists don't pray. We may hope for a resolution of our problems, but we do not foist them off on an imaginary friend and believe they have somehow been resolved.

Restart baby

Here we go again Joe likes to blog so I am going to ask a questions and he is going to answer: first question... Do atheist pray when they get kidney stones?

It's taking Jennings a bit...

...so I thought I'd just go on and post again anyway. I was recently watching a video on youtube, which I don't know how to embed here so have a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTO_dZUvbJA&feature=channel.
Tedtalks are rather entertaining to watch and also tend to drift to the enlightening side. Some rather notable occurences have happened there, from Bill Gates unleashing mosquitoes on the audience to (more important to me) Richard Dawkins stepping out and calling other atheists to stand up for the first time. The video linked above is less of a headline grabber and more of a thought provoker, which is more in line with the talks at large, and provoke my thinker it did.
The idea, and from here on I'm going to be pretending you watched the video as the 3 people who read this blog, among which I am one, will probably enjoy it through to the end, that boundaries are key to human happiness is, at first brush, somewhat disheartening. We shy away from boundaries, prefering to "keep our options open" or to have a bit of uncertanity in our futures, but the data indicates that boundaries not only make us more satisfied with what is here, but truly do change our opinions of things for the better. But we still prefer boundless opportunity, and why shouldn't we? Now I could expound on the joys of childlike wonder and an evergrowing thirst for the horizion and the unknown, but that isn't what this blog is about, so I'll move on.
Religion is often given as enriching life, bringing hope to the hopless, joy to the miserable, etc etc. But one thing it doesn't do is put a boundary on your life. Not in the sense of mortality...although in almost every other sense of the word it is wonderously good at tossing up boundarys, but I'll come to that in time.
Death is a period, not a comma. Not a new paragraph, not a time to turn the page and find out what comes next. I say this in such an unequiviocal manner because we have no more evidence that we persist after we kick the final bucket than we do that unicorns and fairies are dancing the mexican hat dance below the surface of Pluto, and I have my personal doubts that we ever will (you cannot prove the nonexistance of the nonexistant). Now to many that's probably a pretty dreary statement, and at one time I'd have agreed with them. Who would want to stop existing? Now, granted I certianly don't, and if given the choice this very instant I'd pick immortality over being shot in the face, but...as the speaker showed, we're really bad at picking what is going to make us happy in the long run. (Still wouldn't take the shot in the face option.) The depressing fact is that eventually we're going to stop existing...or I should say the reason it's a depressing thought to some, is because you grow up with this idea that you get to be immortal. Sure you'll die but thats just a fleeting thing, because after that everything gets better. No more pain or unhappiness. No more misery or hunger. No more anything that pushes us to be human.
Do you know what I've learned from living some rather miserable times? Misery is good for us. It drives us and it makes us enjoy life. People voluenteer for the most horrible assignments in the military because that defines the times they aren't on them. The most comfortable nights sleep I've ever had in my life was on a $30 cot, an eighth of an inch of foam padding and tucked into a poorly insulated unzipped sleeping bag all while wearing clothes I'd worn for 3 days straight. It was so amazing because I'd been going on constant mission drills for 72 hours prior. It was freaking miserable, but I still to this day remember how good that cot felt, something that laying on a $2,000 bed couldn't come close to.
To exist is to persevere. Take away the sadness and the joy looses meaning. Hand out olympic gold medals to every first grader who can run 100 meters and suddenly the gold wouldn't matter. If there is an afterlife I desperatly hope it's as full of struggle and heartache as this one, otherwise we'll never meet a poet there, and anyone who wants to live in a world that doesn't produce poets has excused themselves from the human race.
But I digress from the point I was intending to make, and that is that the happiness from religion is worse than false, it's demonstrably false. We are happier when we are able to come to terms with something. We are happier when bounded. And I would daresay I am happier than most religious folk I've ever met, certianly moreso than when I was one.
Religion is the promise of fantastic amusement park just out of sight. Now queue up kids, the line is just a little longer we promise! Just stay in it and right over the horizion is the great reward you're going to get! Atheists step out of that line and take a look around and realise that, unlike what the religious leaders teach us, we aren't standing in some dreary sun parched parking lot waiting to go to the great party, instead we're in a magnificant world full of light and love, joy and sadness, pain and wonder, ten thousand things that make THIS life worth living and ten thousand more than make the first ten thousand pale to insignifiance. I will not stand in that line ever again, not because of a hatred of the horizion, but because I really do want to know what's on the other side of it, and waiting for the kid in front of you to shuffle forward isn't how you explore this world, it's to turn around and look.

A bit of soap boxing

I got a little swept up when writing my response post and decided some of my thoughts should go in a seperate posting as more of a "why are you an atheist?" bit. I'm putting this up because whenever I move into a question of morality I tend to get rather passionate, and I felt it was best to do clearly delineate between what will probably become a bit of a rant, and what was simply a response to your questions.

/rant on

I'm going to start with an explanition as to why I get passionate about my beliefs. There is a wonderful world out there, filled with life, with complexity, with a myriad of beautiful and wonderful things to be seen, enjoyed, loved and expierenced. And understood. That last one is very important to me. Ever since I was young the most important thing underlying any new toy, any new concept was the how, the why. That pursuit is still with me and it is one of the nobelist things I can think of. Truth will always be of paramount import to me, truth in spite of comfort, truth in spite of tradition. Yet, fortunantly, truth brings it's on comfort and traditions along with the joy of real understanding.
A religious person who simply wants to live a good life and by the way, praise Jesus, only bothers me in the abstract. It bothers me in the same way that a child thanking the stoplight for the new bike they got for christmas would bother me. Give credit where credit is due, not where you were told it was.
Santa didn't give me my first bike, despite what I was led to believe at the time, and I do remember thanking mom and dad for all the christmas presents they had ever given me when I finally did learn the truth on that one. I lost a little magic, but gained appreciation for something that was real.
The same point applys to reality, I don't worship anything because there isn't anything TO worship. I marvel at the complexity of the interplay of matter, at the diversity of life by such simple and elegant construction of billions upon billions of assembled mutations, at the inherent structer of mathmatics and how so many things can be so simply calculated. Yet in all of that there is no god. There is no reason to suspect the existance of one, and we wouldn't save tradition.
Many people claim a personal expierence, or many, to explain their belief. Well I can't tell you what it was, it may very well have been a god talking to you, but here is what I can say about it. It most certianly was not any of the various Jesus figures I have been told exist over the years. We are not designed. We are not some pinnacle of creation placed here to say "holy crap you are so freaking awesome" to someone who wanted a bunch of pinnacles of creation going "holy crap you are so freaking awesome" for the entire span of their lives and then let them come hang out with him if they did so. The logic of it is all wrong.
You may say my theology is incorrect but...frankly how do you know?! How can you prove it! You have told me before, "God cannot exist with sin, so he had his son (really him) come down and die for us to take on the sin (he said it was sin in the first place) and therefore we were forgiven." Two problems, 1. God died to forgive something that he had decided was wrong but didn't really offer an explaination other than, "no seriously, don't do it." and 2. How did his death forgive it?
If I make a rule, say no sitting in my chair, and find out someone is sitting in my chair, I am not duty bound to punish them for eternity. I can simply say "please get out of my chair, I don't like you sitting in it" or I could just let the matter go. At no point do I have to die to make sitting in my chair ok. The same goes for morality drawn from the principal of the bible. It's almost sadomasochistic if it were taken literally, I mean god died to impress himself enough to forgive something. It doesn't make sense, yet I know (we have had this discussion and I can remember your explanations) that by some convoluted explanation of hebrew law at the time, it makes sense, but THAT GOES WITH WHAT I'M SAYING. Of COURSE it makes sense under hebrew law, they were the ones making it up! What kind of divine creator is subject to contract law for pete's sake? The whole idea of "divinity" sorta rules that out. If he decides something is forgiven then it damn well is and if you have a problem with that well...make your own universe. And that's just the christian god. We move into hindu text and things get really wierd...move into older myth and then it gets laughable that people belived this tripe.
We make up our gods, or we follow the ones that have been made up for us. Humans have an innate desire to understand our world and we will keep looking for answers untill there aren't any more of us around to look, but that doesn't mean the answers we've found are legitimate. Religion belittles that search by pretending to put payed to the spaces and margins between our understanding by writing over them in all capital bold text GOD DID THIS, but that is worse than misleading. Those gaps shouldn't be written over by fiat, but by knowledge. They should sit blank and invitingly empty, as a peice of canvas to a painter, waiting for the art of scientific discovery to paint us a new masterpeice. To me...religion is just so much graffiti.

Joe's response about authority.

First off, let me apologise in advance if I slip out of the one topic at a time rule. The point of faith vs belief is inherent to many of my arguments on these topics, so it will come up outside of it's own individual Q&A.
Now I'll start with what I meant by allegory. Religion claims it's authority, but there is little substance, other than testimonial, to back it up, therefore we have the stories. Allegory and myth, tales that are designed to evoke a feeling of why something is dictated by religion without actually setting up a factual basis, a grounding in a system of logical principal.
On the subject of authority, you spoke about imperal vs veracious. Now I'll start off saying I completely agree with you on imperal authority. It is a taken thing, not given, but I don't think it is quite as simple as you portrayed. The situations you raised in your post are a combination of the two. The government assumes imperal authority (polices forces, military, court systems, etc.), however this is based, at least partially, on veracious authority. Now historically the veracious only tends to be a small amount, otherwise revolution would be more common. A law unenforced or unenforcable is a law best left unwritten, and if you are founded simply on popular opinion you will be overthrown the first time you have to make a hard decision for the betterment of your society.
Now to turn back to the religious point, it is also both imperial and veracious. If it were truly pure veracious, the concept of hell/cut off from God/punishment in any form wouldn't exist. The veracious authority I yield to Richard Dawkins, Dan Denett or any other scholar is based on their ability to poist a well reasoned argument, based on evidence. I may disagree with points they raise, but there is no punishment, only more debate as two differing viewpoints are exaimined.
This brings me to my second point, veracious authority and from where is it drawn? As I said, the authority I give is reasoned. It is based on evidence, argument, debate and rational principal. The authority you grant to religious ideas is faith based. Taking a system of morality as a guiding principals and endevoring to live by them is fine, but they should be REASONED principals and not...well, assumed imperal authority. There is a punishment system involved in religion and the avoidance of said punishment is, at least partially, underlying the belief structure.
I followed christian principals while I still considered myself to be a chrsitian, and I still continue to follow many of them despite casting aside faith. I give vericaous authority to those principals (some would say I give it to christ, but they would be in error) yet I live by them because it is my choice. I see the vaule to myself and to society and based on that value I adher to them. There is 0% imperial authority in my moral code, or in that of many ahteists. We stand upon the idea that our society is biult on principals that result in a better life for everyone, ourselves included.
I submit that atheist morality is more truly veracious, that our beliefs are not founded on fear, even an infintesimal amount of it, but a true desire to live in a better and more moral world. A desire to live in a world where everyone can have a fufilling existance withouth harming others and that morality is based on these principals and note on a foreign authority that must simply be belived in to validate anything that can be claimed in its name.

Jennings' Response to Joe's Reply on January 20th

Hey Joe,
Sorry about getting back to you so late. The ministry has been very busy lately! I think I have a bit of a breather right now. I'm thinking maybe we should focus on one point at a time so that we don't have long responses and so we can focus on one issue at a time and give more concise answers. (A tentative list at bottom of this post)

Let's start with your last point of Authority!

First, if you could explain what you mean by "authority with allegory"

Just to define Authority real quick, Authority has two dimensions, one is Imperial Authority and the other is Veracious Authority. Imperial Authority is some one who holds authority over you based on the position that they have. for example a dictator has Imperial Authority. A person in society must listen to them because of their position. The person knows that if they do not listen then they could be put to death. When we drive down the road we let police have authority over how fast we drive only when we see a police car. At all other times we ignore their authority. Imperial Authority only works when the enforcement is in place. Our government really only exercises Imperial Authority. For the most part people only give the government authority when there is a chance of being caught, so this authority is extremely limited. And at the end of the day is not authority at all.

For a Christian we believe Christ/God/HS have Veracious Authority over us. This means that it is not the position that we respect, but the character of God that holds authority over us. We saw that that Christ humbled himself for death on the cross the ultimate self-sacrifice and display of love. For God so loved(-agape-unconditionally loved) the World that He gave His Only Son! When a Christian sees this character of God then we give God Authority over our lives! This is really the best type of Authority you can have! We realize that the Authority is not limited to when we feel God is present. We follow His authority voluntarily! This goes back to God's free will that he has given us. He does not want us to live under a dictator. This is why in the OT God allowed for generations and generations and even more generations of his chosen people who had made a covenant with him and were bound to death by the covenant to continue to break the covenant before calling them on covenant lawsuit. He wanted them to follow Him not because of His position, but because they wanted to, after realizing His power!! This is called Grace and Mercy.

You may give Authority to the government, but if you were completely honest it is not an Authority that is full of integrity. By this i mean you would go against the governments authority if you felt it was misguided or even if you were late for work and needed to speed. However, with Richard Dawkins you give him Veracious Authority over your life and education and purchasing power because you like his character. Even when he is not around you still see his authority over your life.

The most important part of Authority given to someone is the by product of Influence. How does the Government's authority effect you? How does Dawkins authority effect you? (rhetorical)

As a Christian, after learning and studying the Character of God, I give Him authority out of free choice, not out of being forced to do so. Anyone giving God Authority simply because of His position, has very misguided theology of who God is and how He wants us to follow Him. God does not seek Imperial Authority, but Veracious Authority over our lives. This influences me in every walk of life. Because of my love for God, I TRY to live life in a way that would be pleasing to Him. This influence of His Authority cause me to listen to his Laws, his proverbs, his prophecies, His gospels, parables, teachings, His letters, and his revelation. I listen because I know God wants what is best for me and in following and looking back at my life, when i follow God life is better, the Kingdom of Heaven is Here, when i don't, I see Hell show up on earth. In other words when I follow God there is a point to life, there is purpose, when I don't it is random and pointless. I don't arbitrarily give God this authority, I love him and this love allows for Authority.

Please explain what you mean by "religion just claims authority and then stomps on the questions of those authority with allegory" That may a good place for you to jump off to next on the issue of Authority.

Here is a good comment from Dad about Authority...

Hmmm...Interesting thought about authority, but... Why is any authority IN authority? It is, in some measure, from self-proclaimed authority. Adults, parents, teachers, etc. Even elected authority is based on the collective authority of the people doing the election. Why is it legal for some people to vote, but not others? Did something about that truth suddenly change when the voting age dropped 3 years to age 18?

Based on your reasoning, religion has at least as much authority as anything else--or nothing has authority. If there is no God, all authority is self-defined--something you criticize religion of doing. Perhaps religious thought, and the thoughts you share, are closer than they might appear at first viewing.

Here are some Points for later discussions after we finish up Authority...

Points to follow(if okay with you, please add into the points so it's not all me)
0.5)Authority
1)Jesus is God and more than a great teacher
2)The God of the Old Testament
-->Don't forget Context!
3)Evidence vs. Faith
--> You have to put faith in the Evidence you Recieve
4)Altruism vs. Religious Motivation
5)Canon

Joe's reply

Ok, well I can't get my camera working so I'm gonna have to keep posting text responses. Since I'm snowed in I figured I'd finish up the outline I've been working on.

First off I'll deal with the argument that its disrespectful for atheists to take out the bus advertising. Well yes it is, but its disrespectful to gods, not to people. I mean the exact wording is "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Thats not really disrespectful. The problem here is that religous people have enjoyed a bizzare protected status for a long long time, so that no one can say they are wrong. Simply because something is your particular religous belief does not mean that no one can tell you you're incorrect, and when someone comes in and doesn't instantly "respect" your beliefs, they aren't wrong for doing it.

The next point...well question you raised was rational thought. Basically it boils down to the argument of faith vs evidence. I can't believe something simply because someone else is really really sure its real. I just can't.
I can't believe in god because someone has told me they felt him any more than I can believe in fariys, unicorns, or genies. For me to accept something as real there has to be basis. There has to be a logical argument, supported by evidence and capable of withstanding critisism and still being valid. Religion is none of these things.

Quick rehash of your argument that christians are either A) more prone to self sacrifice or B) self sacrificing for a different reason. As to A) I addressed that in my earlier post and, no they aren't. Now for B) again, its not correct. You can tell yourself that you're willing to sacrifice your time/money/effort for god, but...well we were talking about this in the car yesterday, the tendancy for humans to be altruistic to individuals that we don't know is not a religous thing, but an evolutionary adapatation to tribal culture. If you want me to go into the details on the blog I can, but I'm going to skip that for just now, as this is me responding to points you are raising and not an ethology lecture.

Now we move to your point about what are my problems with christianity. Ok thats kinda broad and slightly misleading. I have very few problems with christianity, other than the obvious "its based on myth." In his article "Atheists for Jesus," Richard Dawkins spoke to this issue and I've put in a link for it off to the right. Basically, Jesus was largely tilted to going against the grain. He didn't accept things because they had always been that way and he came up with a wonderfully better system of ethics than had been handed down to him by the religious orthodoxy. Would that everyone could be so bold. My problems with christianity are the same
as my problems with paganism or Gaia worship: You're not basing it on facts. You're basing it on feel good tradition and hoping for messages from god. Well god's not there and he's not talking, so what you get is messages from man, and boy is man failable. Find your ethics in moral philosophy, find your ethics in emulating someone who you wish to be like, find them in something rational. To pharaphrase Plato, Is tourting babies wrong because god says it is or does god say tourting babies is wrong because its wrong? My ethics are not grounded in something that I have to prove exists, they are grounded in social structer and an understanding of what is good for society and my fellow man is also good for me as an individual. Altruisim helps the altruist as much as the one recieving the aid over the long term and this is a wonderful basis for an ethical society.

As for my problems with Christianity...well its a good idea. Jesus was a pretty good guy as he is protrayed in the bible. Now the old testament god...woah. Yeah, not tolerating that as a basis for morality. Its pretty horrible by anyones standards, and the length that I can go into on those issues, I'll save for a later post, I'm going to use this one for answering most of your other questions.

Now the question of authority, no I do not have a problem with authority, when the authority is legitimately based on something. The government doesn't declare things good or bad by arbitrary declaration, it does it by debate and understanding different sides of an issue (or it does in a proper system) whereas religion just claims authority and then stomps on the questions of those authority with allegory.

Ok, I'll wrap up for now, back to you bro.

Just for FUN while awaiting Joe's response...

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Richard Dawkins

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Jennings' Response to Last two Posts...

You worry me.

Also: was that thing talking out of its eyes? And seriously, Xenon? Your alien is a gas! (whee bad puns)

Alien Speaks for Jennings

Quick follow up

I realized that I forgot to respond to your question:
"...what are your problems as an Atheist with Organized Religion

Now that is one statement that could lead to hours of speaking on my part. Or paragraphs, as this is more text than dialogue. Literally entire books have been written by people who I hold in the highest regard doing nothing but addressing that selfsame question, so forgive me if I approach this with a bit of trepidation, I doubt highly that I'll be able to give you a simple and concise answer.
My problems with organized religion, specifically the cases where large gatherings of people will come together to listen to one person speaking with authority, specifically god given authority, and take the words of this person as an absolute truth is...well frightening. Now I will concede that in the vast majority of instances of this occurring (for examples, go to any church in America) its benign. The preacher will speak out to his congregation to be good, the congregation will think "yes I should be good" and everyone goes home to a nice lunch. The problem arises when you grant someone authority over your personal mores with no good reason.
It is here that you will think I'm picking on the fanatics. The extreme right wingers who stand on street corners and hold up the "Thank God for 9/11" signs, but they are exactly the ones I'm trying to pick on. They are the ones who have given up the rational sides of their thought processes in order to believe what someone who claimed authority on no more basis than "I'm claiming this authority," and will let these self proclaimed teachers feed them whatever bull they want.
Organized religion, even in its friendly social gathering type of organization is setting up a groundwork that can be exploited by outsiders for malevolent purposes. If you tell someone from the time they are an infant that religious authorities draw their authority from God, and tell them that you have to believe the authority you have created an exploitable network of thought processes that can be undermined at the first opportunity, and in many cases will be.
Ok, new point: Organized religion as an ingroup/outgroup dynamic labeling setup. Humans tend to cluster into "us vs them" dichotomy's along any lines we can jump to. Xenophobia is in our genes, and there are some very good evoultionary models explaining why. This doesn't make them right, it just shows that xenophobia is not only likely to evolve, it's going to remain stable and will be very difficult for a different system to arise once it takes hold. I won't go into the whole argument here, but you can find the papers on it with a simple google or wikipeda search. Ok, sorry had a slight digression there but it was ncessary for what I'm going to bring up now.
Religion is an incredibly easy system for forming outgroups where none exist. Case in point, Northern Ireland. Iraq, Iran, and any arabic nation where the sunni vs shi'a insanity takes place. These are people that are indistinguishable, save a SLIGHT disagreement on what some jerk said 600 years ago. And for that jerks words they kill one another. Now the Irish aren't killing someone with the thought "oh look, this guy believes in trans-substantion of the communion, oooh I hate that!" Of course not! They are killing a catholic because a catholic killed their protestant friend who was killed because some catholic was taking revenge for a protestant that had killed one of his catholic friends. Its outgroup labeling, pure and simple and it needs to stop. Now I don't for a minute think that if we take away religious labels that suddenly world peace will fly into existance...of course not, people will find some other reason to label the outgroup and we will turn our aim to that and fight it as strongly as we do religion, racisim or nationalism, but I will not, nor will many others, sit by and accept it as a fact of life.
Well thats 2 proplems with Organized religion, I'll stop before I drift into my problems with religion as a whole.

All yours bro.

Joe's Response

Well, that raised 3 different questions to address, so I'll list them real quick:
1. Atheism is becoming a religion.
2. A christian is more likely to self-sacrifice than an atheist.
3. Atheists shouldn't campaign against religion.

On the first point, atheism is not a religion. At all. Period. That's a fallacy that is brought up numerous times...I guess as a point in the favor of religion? It seems that if it can be proven that atheism is religious, then it shows that we all NEED religion and those of us that reject gods are just replacing them with humans.
Wrong. Dead wrong and not even close to right. Religious belief is all about faith, whereas atheism is all about rational observation of the world. If you showed an atheist that there is a god, gods, flying spaghetti monster, etc. ad nauseum, we would spin about on a DIME and be a believer. We do not base our belief on a religious train of thought. Bear in mind that I speak for the atheists that I have talked to, there may be some "fundamental atheists" out there, who I would say are just as wrong. Belief should be based on something rational, and it should NEVER be held sacred for its own sake.

Ok, second point. An atheist is no more or less likely to self sacrifice than a christian or other religious person. Well, short caveat: We won't kill ourselves because our clergy tells us its a good idea. Yes christians don't get into all that(for a few hundered years), at least not mainstream christians...but thats my point. We are both moral, its just that atheists admit that our morality is driven by observation and intelligent thought, just like yours is. Christians just pretend that theirs comes from the bible.
Self preservation and self sacrifice are not broad sweeping ideals that can be given to a group as a whole, they are private decisions that you have to reach on your own. If you'd like an on my own reach for my personal stance on it, I'm going to pull the medic card. On many occasions I have exposed my precious flesh to gunfire in order to reach someone else to render aid. I did this of my own free will and knowing there is no god and no eternal reward for doing so. I did it willingly and unthinkingly in every situation. If I was going on an ideal of "preservation of my genes" or whatever else it is you think science teaches us, it would have made absolutely no sense, and I would have been wrong to do it, but thats just it, science doesn't make ethical claims, that's philosophy's field.
Science doesn't make absoult claims about this world, it makes statments based on observed reality. Genetically speaking I can point you to John Maynard-Smith's and others research on genetic basis of altruism and stastical models that show that a species that is altruistic WILL survive better than one that isn't due to resourse sharing resulting better ability to survive a time when food/water/shelter gets scarce.

Now we come to the part that atheists shouldn't speak out against religion. On that I have to ask...why? If I think that someone is basing their life on a lie, its immoral of me NOT to point that out to them. The idea is not to incite a religious war and then go "Ha, told you so!" the idea is to try to...well for lack of a better word, prosletize. If its wrong to speak to others about their beliefs, why is wrong for atheists and not christians?

Another Example of Atheism becoming an Organized "Religion"

Click Here for Story Atheism Advertising?

I feel like this is wrong and contradictory to what the "New" "Evangelical" Atheist are saying about religion. Why are Atheist who do not believe God, who would say religion is dangerous because of the emotions that it causes and the fighting amongst religion. Why would they launch this kind of advertising campaign in an area that has organized religion? Are they trying to provoke outcry and anger from Religious peoples that read the signs? They are causing the very thing they hate about Religion, which is war and fighting!?!?! This is not tolerance or peace-seeking, instead it seems to me to be very controversial in nature in an attempt to cause fighting. Maybe that is the underlying hope, If religious people get upset about a sign saying God does not exist then the Atheist are proved right i.e. religion cause fighting. If the religious people say nothing about these signs then they are not true to their faith. It is a lose lose situation. This campaign ad makes no sense to me. Why are they doing it? Please explain why. Thanks Joe...

News Report on Rise of Atheism

Own

I don't know about you Joe but it is an Own going discussion for me. I really "own" what we are talking about. j/k I was just trying to be right and I must say you are right about my typo.

As Joe said he will most likely quote biologist, i will push him to think out side of Science as well. I will most likely be quoting logic and reason from other philosophers and theologians that i have found helpful over the years. We'll start up a discussion and see how far it goes very soon...

You can't type

That's "ongoing discussion."

We've tried to keep a written record of some of our discussions, to our ultimate failure, as each time we start writing one of us gets off on a digression for half an hour, and then its just a good debate session with no minutes. As such we decided it was either make a blog to debate on or just hire a transcriptionist and be done with it.

Anyway, as Jennings said, I'm the resident godless liberal. I usually let Jennings start these off with first point as my talking points tend to read like a biology lecture, and that's not what this blog is supposed to be about. That said, expect me to cite quite a few biologists in making counterpoints, as I believe very strongly that a scientific approach will lead us to ultimate truth in this world.

First Post

Joseph and Jennings like to discuss Atheism and Christianity. Joseph being a believer in the former and Jennings being a follower of the later. This Blog will be a reflection of our own going discussion. The ultimate pursuit is Truth and not to prove who is the smartest (we already know Joe wins in this category). We'll see how it goes. May God bless us in this pursuit.