Glaurung
Denizen of Niflheim
I'm sorry but I just do not see how it can be any other way. If materialism is true then any questions of right and wrong, yet alone values and meaning are an irrelevance. If 'God' is but an unconscious, inexplicable void then the only meaningful questions left to us are ones of utility. Yeah, it's useful to treat others with consideration but doing so is not inherently meaningful because there is no meaning. There can't be any meaning. The only answer is that the world is inexplicable.This is a non-starter, as the implication isn't true for either side. I have no more reason to accept this is true than 'the only reason people become Christian is out of self-interest.' The desire for immortality or to avoid perceived punishment or to feel more cosmically meaningful. It's a false dilemma.
Now there's certainly in the Christian view of things that aspect of final reward or punishment. It is written in the good book that "fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom". But the end of wisdom is the love of God for his own sake. If I can go out at night and feel awe at the sight of the stars then how much more awe do I owe him who put those stars there in the first place? Accepting the belief in God is actually a deep act of humility. "Thy will, not mine be done". Atheists on the other hand are all too often glued to thrones of their own lives. Even if those thrones are made from the cheapest of plastics. I'm sure you know fully well of the type I'm speaking of.
You don't need a belief in God to be moral. Again referencing the good book. "The law is written onto their hearts". Nor does a mere assent to the idea of God automatically make a person moral. "Depart from me ye workers of iniquity!" But you see, I presuppose God so my view is not that atheists don't have a sense of right and wrong but that they should continue to have a sense of right and wrong is because of the moral nature God created us to have. Now whether or not an atheist's moral nature is in all regards properly ordered is another question. The further one drifts from God the less likely that would be. (But that would be a pointless discussion between us as our axioms are simply too opposed). The important point is not that I deny that atheists have morals, but that moral values in a materialist worldview can be built on nothing more than a combination of personal opinion and utility. A far-right racialist can never be "wrong" in any objective sense in regards to his hateful values.As i said, you don't need a god(s) for altruism, compassion, empathy etc and arguably putting a god in there can make a more selfish person than any non-believer.
Conversely there are people who either do find reason to hurt people or find no reason not to hurt people if it advantages them. Believe it or not there are people who do not give a damn about any notion of benevolence. You're going to tell such a person what? That they're a bad humanist? I at least can tell them that they'll face God the minute their heart stops beating as I believe in a final justice you simply cannot.And if someone can find no reason to not hurt someone other than the threat of punishment, I think that says a lot more about them than people who don't.
That wasn't my point. My point is that there's no such thing as a godless person. In the consumerist society I described, those gods tend to be Asmodeus and Mammon.In any case materialism =/= antitheism or forced atheist governance.
Just as an aside, I'm assuming that by "our own" you mean the U.S.Incidentally are no more well off than many religious nations including our own.
I'm Australian.
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