₦airaland Forum

Myth121:
None of you grapple with the death of God. Not Richard Dawkins, not Sam Harris. As far as I know, no popular atheist has. It's all well and good to say that God doesn't exist. Fine. Now we live in a nihilist and meaningless world.

How do you justify your existence?

As a follow up, how do you justify your morality (what moral framework do you use to make your moral decisions).

Mille:
You can be well assured our framework for morality is not based on a fictitious book which encourages slavery and commands the murder of innocent men, women and children.

Mille:
You can be well assured our framework for morality is not based on a fictitious book which encourages slavery and commands the murder of innocent men, women and children.

johnydon22:
Can you demonstrate how a universe with a God isn't just as meaningless? Pray tell, how?

Pray tell. How do you justify yours with God?

The subject of morality is in fact the best argument a theist can have.

One may argue that God doesn't exist but one cannot argue against the structural premise of a theistic moral derivation because it is actually sound.

However, i on the other hand argue that morality is intersubjective. The basis been on the intersubjective belief on the moral subject other than the action.

adoyi8:
As far as I know, my body was programmed to do three things.
1. look for what to eat.
2. run away from danger
3. try to reproduce
like most other animals. my brain secretes chemicals to force me do this things at the approriate time.

Myth121:
None of you grapple with the death of God.

Myth121:
Now we live in a nihilist and meaningless world.

Myth121:
How do you justify your existence?

Myth121:
how do you justify your morality (what moral framework do you use to make your moral decisions).

XxSabrinaxX:
If stated as a fact/claim and not as a metaphor, fallacy of presuppositionaism in that there was an actual God (a coherent definition/description/identity required) to have died.

XxSabrinaxX:
Life does not have inherent universal or objective meaning; to say that our lives are objectively pointless and our achievements meaningless is to state the obvious. No matter how grand our achievements or how broad their scope, time turns all to dust and death destroys all memory. But that does not mean we cannot ascribe our own local meaning to what we do. It is because nothing has meaning unto itself that we are free to create our own meaning, and in doing so reflect meaning upon ourselves and our world.

XxSabrinaxX:
But your statement does raise a question regarding your personality OP. What level of narcissism must you have in order to support that your life has actual consequential meaning beyond the local environment?

XxSabrinaxX:
The term "justification" implies that there was some sort of ante-hoc purpose to life, to cognitive existence.

Myth121:
It's a reference to Nietzche and society's growing unbelief in the existence of god. Not the literal death of God.


Ok good at least you understood my point. Lets say you do ascribe some sort of local purpose to your life, why continue to exert the effort required to pursue that, if at the end of the day it doesn't matter?




My life has no more consequential meaning than anyone else's but the premises offered by the Bible allow me to justify life.





Obviously as a theist I do believe there's an ante-hoc purpose to life but I'm not attempting to convince you of that. I'm asking how do you deal with the lack of purpose. Or a purpose as meaningless as "my parents had sex".


Regarding your moral framework it seems to essentially boil down to utilitarianism?

XxSabrinaxX:
OP, feel free to present your beliefs/positions. Don't just spew out pejorative vomit whilst JAQ'ing Off.
First, lets look at these questions....
a) OP, how do you justify your morality (what moral framework do you use to make your moral decisions)?
b) What establishes the level of meaning in your life (the level of nihilism)?
c) How do you justify your personal existence? How do you justify the existence of life, in general?

If stated as a fact/claim and not as a metaphor, fallacy of presuppositionaism in that there was an actual God (a coherent definition/description/identity required) to have died.

In metaphorical language, the position and belief of atheism does not say that God died, only that for some atheists, the belief in specific God(s) has "died" (or been reassessed to be an unsupportable claim). And for those ex-theist atheists, the majority of Gods never existent (in belief) and these Gods cannot be said to have "died" as these Gods were never "alive."

Not a very strong way to start your argument OP.


Life does not have inherent universal or objective meaning; to say that our lives are objectively pointless and our achievements meaningless is to state the obvious. No matter how grand our achievements or how broad their scope, time turns all to dust and death destroys all memory. But that does not mean we cannot ascribe our own local meaning to what we do. It is because nothing has meaning unto itself that we are free to create our own meaning, and in doing so reflect meaning upon ourselves and our world.

But your statement does raise a question regarding your personality OP. What level of narcissism must you have in order to support that your life has actual consequential meaning beyond the local environment? What level of inferiority complex drives this narcissism for some sort of objective/existential/universal purpose to your existence?



"your existence" is taken to mean 'life' in general.

The term "justification" implies that there was some sort of ante-hoc purpose to life, to cognitive existence.

And until you, or someone else, can make an actual presentation of argument/evidence/knowledge to support an ante-hoc purpose to life, without invoking any of the following fallacies....
* Appeal to emotion (any highly-subjective mind-dependent qualia-experience)
* Argument from ignorance ("We don't know to a high level of confidence and reliability, therefore my imagination stands).
* Argument from incredulity (this thing is so incredible/amazing/ununderstandable/unimaginable, therefore my imagination stands)
* Presuppositionalism
* A claimed irrefutable or coherent logically argument that has not yet been shown to be factually true (to a high level of reliability and confidence) (look up Carl Popper).
* "Existence" is claimed as a property or predicate
... then the requirement of "justification" for life (and for me as a human) is a non-coherent strawman; and one that demonstrated your personal confirmation/cognitive bias.

Now specific to me, the justification for me to exist is that my parents decided to Bleep (and were likely aware of the potential, on an ante-hoc basis, of a child resulting from this activity).





Background:

Evil, good, and neutral, are labels that result from the qualitative assessment of a given action or circumstance (action-circumstance) against
(1) an explicit morality/ethics baseline,
(2) an implicit baseline,
(3) a combination explicit/implicit baseline, or
(4) another action-circumstance.
The assignment of a label of neutral morality resulting from a moral assessment is oft mistakenly designated as "good," as "good" refers to a qualitative assessment higher/better than the baseline, rather than just meeting the baseline requirement ("neutral".

Evil, good, and neutral morality can also be split into two catch-all categories of natural evil/good and cognitive/moral evil/good. Without a cognitive force/basis, especially a cognitive supernatural Deity/God basis, a moral assessment of a natural action-circumstance (e.x., asteroid impact and resultant tsunami) is non-coherent. Somewhere in the causality chain of a given action-circumstance a cognitive basis/framework must be present else the assessment of morality is non-coherent for that action-circumstance. Thus the Problem of Evil/Good for natural action-circumstances not directly influence-able by humans only applies to theistic beliefs/claims where "God" created or has the ability to control natural events.

An explicit moral baseline would be one that is codified and directly available for review. Examples include a claimed Divinely sourced objective morality that is presented in some claimed revealed narratives/revelations, a societal/government authority based objective morality involving codified laws (which typically has a mechanism for authority based change - so a semi-objective morality?), or a set of codified ethics relating to a specific subsection of society (ex., a Doctor's code of conduct).

An implicit moral baseline is one that is (often) more subjective and less codified. For example:

* Cognition of empathy against emotions/feelings/desires with influence from the biological imperative that has resulted from millions of successful generations spread out over a billion'ish number of years

* Local and extended tribalism (proximal tribalism and qualia-experience based tribalism)

* The critical reasoning fuzzy logic precept of 'minimize both actual and potential suffering; maximize both actual and potential happiness'

* An implicit/explicit moral baseline that is mostly extrapolated from a threshold of perceived human suffering

represents the implicit moral baseline that I attempt to follow (with the added provision of: "With the above modified (to some degree) by the codified morals and ethics of the jurisprudence system of the region in which I live" as I am also somewhat a consequentialist).

Discussion:

Evil is a label arrived at via the assessment of a given action-circumstance against some moral baseline or against another action-circumstance (the same applies to the label "good" and "neutral". Evil is not "a lack" of good, rather it is the result of a qualitative assessment between a given action-circumstance and a moral baseline; the same applies to good. Evil is not a deficiency of good.

For "evil" to exist, a given action-circumstance must be evaluated as worse or lower or more negative than another action-circumstance or baseline. If you claim that "evil" can exist independently, then "evil" would be assessed against itself and would result in a neutral label (i.e., the baseline shifts rendering what was labeled "evil," without good, as the new baseline with no positive or negative qualitative validation). The same applies to "good."

The difficulty with designating a moral standard that is a wholly "objective morality" (e.g., a revealed morality as presented in the Torah/Bible/Quran, or another authority source, for an objective morality) is that it is unmovable/unchangeable (else it would not, arguably, meet the condition of "objective" and holds one fast to that specific set of morality, regardless of the source of the morality. The result is a system that does not account for changes by humans for humans in lessening pain and suffering and making the human condition better (through the accumulation and usage of knowledge). The baseline for morality should improve as the human condition improves. Since a claimed objective morality, or an anchored mortality, cannot be challenged/reevaluated as new knowledge becomes available, old harmful standards remain in place. If an objective morality is claimed, for example, from a theistic revelation or decree, depending upon which "God" is being referenced, it is highly likely that the morality decreed by this intervening Deity favors a small select population of peoples from thousands of years ago - a society that faced starvation, disease, high infant mortality, women as property, etc. - and the morals which made sense under these conditions are not applicable where humans have improved the human condition. This is the failure of an objective morality, the inability to improve or shift the baseline morality to the better as conditions improve - to follow such an "objective" morality is, paradoxically, morally reprehensible.

Myth121:
Do you disagree with my assertion that there is no purpose to anything we do?

If so, can you justify that? My reasoning is this. The universe is so incomprehensibly large and old that no action no matter how momentous would matter.

The entire history of humanity wouldn't be a footnotes footnote in the history of the universe.

And that's before we talk about multiverse theory or consider that the big bang has happened billions of times before and will happen billions of times after.