Secularism and Atheism

[psyah]

Re: Secularism and Atheism

@notthatguy

Where do I start. Atheism takes out any motivation for doing good that does not result in some immediate reward. In fact, there is no obligation or motivation to do any good at all since there is no ultimate reward. In fact, the whole notion of “good” comes into question as who decides what is “good”? The same goes for justice. There is no ultimate justice as an atheist since there is no God to carry such justice out. Therefore, if you are able to do something and get away with you, there is nothing holding you back from doing it. For example, feeding the needy? How would it be any different if you fed the needy or stole their food if you were an atheist? If you are sure you are not going to get caught, go ahead and do it and that’ll be the end of that. An atheist believes everything to be spontaneous, just like the big bang that just happened randomly the universe continues in a random way. I don’t know, everywhere I look I see design and purpose not randomness. In short, the whole concept of “good” “bad” “evil” is alien in terms of atheism since we are all just a collection of random atoms who just happened to come together in such a way as to form our species-this is our existence, nothing more nothing less. There is no room for good or bad or justice in this view.

Okay but some atheists say that since we have become sentient and we have the ability to feel sympathy and we can relate to others then we can through our natural emotional/maternal instincts arrive at values which are considered by religions to be good.

For example the ethic of do as unto others if you want as done unto you … this has replaced the term “good” for “do” … So is it not a rational conclusion to state that people are like us we want to be happy so it follows they want to be happy so if we do things to make them happy they will do for us too. Or if they make us happy then we ought to do the same for them too.