Secularism and Atheism

[Med911]

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.

Why should we need an ultimate arbitrator? Why can good not be done for the sake of good?

What is good and what is bad is not an arbitrary thing, its hard wired into our psyche. Stealing is bad and murder is bad, not because we are told as such by god, but because it is inherent in us to understand these things as being bad.

If arbitration is of value, and i suppose it is at some point, then that is the role of society… Society judges what is or is not permissible.

But even if we assume god is the ultimate source of right and wrong, im reminded of Platos “Euthyphro” in which the question is raised, does god love something because its pious, or is something pious because god loves it? Another words, are morale deeds deemed to be as such by god because they are morale by nature, or are moral deeds such because they were deemed to be as such by god? So citing god doesnt really resolve our dilema. Because if things are morale by nature, then why would we need god to tell us that? It implies there is a moral standard outside of god. And if they are moral only because god says they should be, then god could have easily made something that is moral be immoral and so morality thus is arbitrary…

(Im curious, Muslim philosophers must have wrestled with this back in the day, what is the Islamic resolution to the Euthyphro’s dilemma?)