What would convince you?

[TheKeyAuthor]

1 Would he have to appear on Oprah or the like? Which means he has to be a celeb first. How would he become a celeb?
2 Would he have to do tricks like change water into wine? Which means the likes of David Copperfield, Siegfried and Roy etc. are candidates?
3 Would you believe a "miracle" on TV anyway?
4 Are we too sceptical and information overloaded to believe anything any more?
5 Would anything possibly convince anyone in the 21st century anyhow?

Life began by a "concatenation of chemicals"

Which is so amazing and and fantastic in itself that I see no reason to add mysticism to it!

YY seeker.

The Big Bang is far less irrational than believing a Deity created the universe, IMO. Ultimately, which ever you believe it's still amazing that this universe came into being at all.

but he said that scientists first needed to believe in the rational intelligibility of the universe before doing any science at all. atheism undermines that, believing something rational came out of something irrational.

I don't think this means what you think it means, ...

What Einstein is saying here is that unless you believe it to be possible to understand the universe in rational terms, there's very little point indeed in even trying (because if you can't understand it anyway, you're setting yourself up to fail). It's a bit of a truism, actually.

The kind of position that really violates this principle, however, is one that simply says that 'goddidit' - in which case the universe is by definition not intellectually intelligible (unless you claim to be able to read the mind of god).

Along with atheists, the overwhelming majority of theists doesn't actually think along these lines, of course. Notable exceptions would perhaps be people like proponents of creationism (who are thankfully recognized as the nutters they are by most of their fellow believers).

I'd quite like a Bruce Almighty moment personally.

Who knows, though. I have some friends who swear they've had experiences with spirits (ghosts to the rest of us). Where does all that fit in with religion?! I just don't know. I intend to live my life well and the rest is what will be!

Just because science doesn't know exactly down to the last detail how something happens doesn't mean we have to fill the gaps with God. It just means we don't know exactly how things work yet. But we will.

im putting to you the dilemma of basing interactions with other people only on 'do unto to others as they would do to you' basis when those people may not be in a situation to 'do unto to you', either at that moment or after.

Because morals aren't about a particular moment, they are about how you live your entire life and again, though I feel like I am banging my head against a brick wall, are nothing to do with religion. People are nice to each other because they want other people to be nice to them, and are kind to vulnerable members of society because they know that they might one day be a vulnerable member of society. I don't understand why you are struggling to understand this basic concept?

so your daughter would pay back to you what you did for your grandmother.

Ah, it becomes clearer. You think moral behaviour is 'pay back'. Well, I disagree. Moral behaviour is not about pay back or even pay forward, it's about making life pleasant for everyone.

but what if, in caring for you, your daughter cannot lead a life of uninhibited self fulfillment? what if she doesnt want to? what if she sees it as a burden? should she feel guilt at feeling that? should she do it even if she doesnt want to because its expected? part of being a dutiful child? now you make up your own moral position but why should your daughter take it?

I don't expect my daughter to give up her life to care for an elderly mother. It might not be my daughter, it might be someone else's son or daughter doing the care, but I would hope that they were also raised to treat others with kindness and compassion. Again, neither of those things rely on religion, especially not the religion of the God of Abraham.

It would be very easy at this point to find lots of instances of extremely religious people, of all persuasions, carrying out acts of violence and anger against others. Of course, the religious will say "they are not carrying out the rules of their God when they do this", but the person who is carrying out the violence is utterly, utterly convinced that their God's rules allow them to carry out the violence and anger. Who are you or I to say that they are wrong if their God is telling them it is okay to behave in that way?

As I said upthread, I am not an atheist, but have no problem with those who are - I've met some surprisingly spiritual atheists. I suspect we're just built differently, and an omnipotent Divinity should not be limited by human concepts such as existence/non existence. I do have a huge problem with those who think that morals and religion are linked, or who pussy foot around those areas of religious writing which are deeply offensive to non-members of that religion, such as the suggestion that anyone who doesn't accept Jesus as THE saviour is going to hell.

I left the Interfaith Network I was part of when I realised that the two people at opposite me were convinced, to the very core of their smug beings, that everybody else around the table was going to eternal pain and suffering. I found that a very amoralistic viewpoint.

If you haven't caught it, I just wanted to recommend Honest Doubt on Radio 4, daily at 1:45 (and on iplayer). It is very pertinent to the discussions on this thread.

My moral framework is about me and what I consider to be a good life. It's not about future punishment, or future payback, in this world or the next.

As I say to my children "don't let anyone make you behave in a way that you don't feel comfortable with". That applies to deities too!

Thing is, if we live in the west, whether we like it or not we are products of a long historical process whereby Judeo-Christian religion has shaped our culture to a large degree. So it's all very well saying 'my morals are xyz', yes, great, but if we are honest we need to admit that we don't live in a pristine little bubble, we are deeply shaped by our culture which is deeply shaped by Christianity, so it's hard to isolate ourselves from it altogether.

I terms of art and literature and so on, then I agree with you. But my personal morality diverges from orthodox Christian morality in may ways. And I think the Christian attempt to lay claim to not murdering or stealing- as if it is only Christianity that prevents these things - is, shall we say stretching things a little.

"if we live in the west, whether we like it or not we are products of a long historical process whereby Judeo-Christian religion has shaped our culture to a large degree"

Yeah, well, I'm from a Muslim culture although living in "the West" now, and my morals are totally Western European. So what do you say to that?

Not a single "verifiable (by probability) act of God" example has been tended, plausible or otherwise. Should we expect a creator to converse in the language created? If not, then does it follow that reality has to be decoupled from the debate full stop?

crescentmoon, I can't help but feel that you need to reign back on the Ayn Rand thing because it's starting to make you look ever so slightly foolish. She's really not that important a writer and one of the things about being an atheist is that we are not obliged to live our lives according to the rules set out in one particular book. It's also amusing that you seem to keen to conflate atheism with capitalism whereas in America atheism is often linked to communism. One might almost think there's no real link between atheism and any particular economic structure at all!

It's very easy to point to an extremist view (eg Ayn Rand, the Westboro Baptist Church, Osama Bin Laden) and claim that it's representative. But you'd be wrong to do so.

whereas the religious view is to store up as many good deeds as one can before death because all actions, good or bad, shall be accounted by God.
Fair enough. But that doesn't sound like morality to me, that's just following rules. Morality, for me, is behaving in a particular way because I think that's the right way to behave, not because I fear being twatted with the Almighty Stick of Eternal Justice. My primary motivation for not murdering people is that I think it's a deeply morally bad thing to do, not because of fear of being thrown into jail.

if you believe that the story ends at one's death and that there is no Hereafter then the focus is more on enjoying oneself with the time one has left.

That is, indeed, one way to look at it. Life is infinitely precious because it's the only one we're going to get and it could be cut short at any moment. So we might as well make the most of it while we're here because this isn't the dress rehearsal, it's the real thing.

But we're not people in individual bubbles, we are members of a society. That society brings with it innumerable benefits compared to living entirely alone. From an individual point of view, there is a net benefit to ourselves, the people we care about and society in general if we can strive to make that society better.

im putting to you the dilemma of basing interactions with other people only on 'do unto to others as they would do to you' basis when those people may not be in a situation to 'do unto to you', either at that moment or after.

You have fundamentally misunderstood what the golden rule is about. It is not an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" thing. It's not about storing up favours. It's about seeing your actions through someone else's eyes and thinking about how you would expect to be treated if you were in their shoes.

It's about empathy, not barter.

The 'core' morals, such as not committing murder, not stealing, not cheating on a life-partner etc. are not exclusive to Western society, but are common throughout human society. That is why I believe them to be based on evolutionary and sociological factors - as a species we are succesful because we live together and treat each other (for the most part) pleasantly and as we would wish to be treated.

Such morals go back to pre-God of Abraham days. Spell 125 of the Book of Coming Forth by Day, commonly known as the Egyptian Book of the Dead, reads as follows:

Behold, I have come to thee, and I have brought maat (i.e., truth, integrity) to thee. I have destroyed sin for thee. I have not sinned against men. I have not oppressed [my] kinsfolk. I have done no wrong in the place of truth. I have not known worthless folk. I have not wrought evil. I have not defrauded the oppressed one of his goods. I have not done the things that the gods abominate. I have not vilified a servant to his master. I have not caused pain. I have not let any man hunger. I have made no one to weep. I have not committed murder. I have not commanded any to commit murder for me. I have inflicted pain on no man. I have not defrauded the temples of their oblations. I have not purloined the cakes of the gods. I have not stolen the offerings to the spirits (i.e., the dead). I have not committed fornication. I have not polluted myself in the holy places of the god of my city. I have not diminished from the bushel. I did not take from or add to the acre-measure. I did not encroach on the fields [of others]. I have not added to the weights of the scales. I have not misread the pointer of the scales. I have not taken milk from the mouths of children. I have not driven cattle from their pastures. I have not snared the birds of the gods. I have not caught fish with fish of their kind. I have not stopped water [when it should flow]. I have not cut the dam of a canal. I have not extinguished a fire when it should burn. I have not altered the times of the chosen meat offerings. I have not turned away the cattle [intended for] offerings. I have not repulsed the god at his appearances. I am pure. I am pure. I am pure.

More available here

I don't think there is much doubt that the Judeo/Christian/Islamic religions have their deep roots in the religion of Ancient Egypt, which itself has roots in the religion of Babylon. The myth of a virgin mother giving birth to a sacrificial god did not start 2000 years ago.

Going back right to the beginning of the conversation can I point out that the first creation story does not include Adam and Eve, they don't show up until Genesis II. Genesis I actually reads as follows:

26 And God (interestingly the actual word is Elohim which means Gods plural) said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Adam and Eve turn up in Genesis II after the 7 days of creation have already finished.

Lots more interesting stuff available over at sacred-texts.com Texts are available from all world religions, though be warned, it's easy to spend hours and hours browsing through all the stuff they have.

I really have found this thread enlightening and interesting. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to contribute.

oops - meant to add, that such core morals probably go back much further but we hadn't invented writing at that point, so we have no physical record or proof.

Thing is, if we live in the west, whether we like it or not we are products of a long historical process whereby Judeo-Christian religion has shaped our culture to a large degree

You're right. Our culture is influenced from all sorts of different places but, courtesy of the political and military might of the Roman Catholic Church, a lot of English cultural practises do have their roots in the Christian religion, just as the Christian religion has its roots in Judaism, and Judaism has its roots in the Canaanite/Zoroastrian religions and so on.

So what? Why is this significant? Are you trying to imply that, as a result of England's pagan ancestry being beaten out of the population centuries ago in favour of Roman Catholicism we should therefore believe in a Christian god? Or that if it hadn't happened we'd have no moral structure at all?

Maybe 3,000 years ago, or 2,000 years ago, or 1,400 years ago, people needed to have their moral lessons wrapped up with a side-order of religion to get the point across. I think we as a species have moved on quite a long way from then.

And where is the link between Christianity and morality anyway? Apparently we receive god's grace regardless of how crappily we may have behaved. We could spend our entire life murdering, raping and pillaging but provided we decide on our deathbed that, actually, we do accept that Jesus was the saviour of mankind and accept god's love into our hearts then ka-ching! All that bad stuff is instantly forgiven and our eternal life in the presence of god is assured. Yay!

Where's the morality in that? This is a serious question - what lesson do we learn from this cosmic "get out of jail free" card?

Could we do the murder/rape/pillage bit while simultaneously believing that Jesus is the way to god and so still get the big prize without having to alter our behaviour one jot?

thats fine but imagine 6 billion people all saying the same thing "my moral framework is about me and what i consider to be a good life".

I would wager that 99% of those 6 billion people are saying "my moral framework is about me". That's why we don't have societal breakdown, that's why we live mostly in harmony.

Even those that commit crimes are often entirely sure that their moral framework is within their religious beliefs and that what they have done is okay by their god.

but what stops them being overcome by people who believe that what furthers their own life is good and whatever hinders their desires is bad? and two fingers to whatever anyone else thinks?

Societal morals and ethics.

crescent do you truly believe that the reason mankind lives together fairly reasonably is only to do with those that have a religion, and that the religious are keeping the atheists' behaviour in check will not mention crimes commited in the name of religion?

I am really struggling to understand how any rational and intelligent person could possibly hold that viewpoint.

crescentmoon, everyone's moral framework is about them and what they consider to be a good life. Yours included.

Are there any moral guidelines in your preferred flavour of Islam that you disagree with but follow nonetheless because your god expects it of you?

If you decided that the moral framework of the particular variety of Islam you follow didn't sit well with you then you could decide to follow a different variety that fits you better. There are, after all, lots to choose from. Or you could change religion entirely. There are thousands of those to choose from. Or you could drop religion altogether and realise that your moral framework can stand on its own whether there's god's Big Stick Of Justice to back it up or not.

but what stops them being overcome by people who believe that what furthers their own life is good and whatever hinders their desires is bad? and two fingers to whatever anyone else thinks?

What stops you?

(And I could still really do with a hint from you about what you mean by "restraint of evil".)

Crescentmoon- I have a more optimistic view of human nature than you do.

Science itself doesn't lend credence to religion as science is not only about observation but also the creation of hypotheses and then the use of experimentation to test those hypotheses. You see the world and you see god's hand in it. But you cannot test that hypothesis as god is apparently quite shy of scientists and experiments. I wonder why?

(And I still would really appreciate understanding what you mean by "restraint of evil".)