Bettina wrote:If you live your life decently and pass those traits on to your children, then your life had MEANING.
Sorry, I wasn't questioning if your life had meaning. You seem to be a good person at heart. I think your life has meaning because you DO believe in ethics. I was questioning if ETHICS have meaning if there is no absolute yardstick to measure them by. I think the only logical conclusion is that they don't. BUT, that doesn't stop a large percentage of humanity from believing in them anyway, and thank goodness for that!
Bettina wrote:I said in my post that right and wrong is ultimately determined by the people. When I say society, I mean the world society which already knows that genocide, killing people in the name of religion, theft, rape, etc, etc, are wrong.
Treating ethics as a "majority vote" thing is dangerous. The majority approved of slavery for most of earths history. If hitler had won WWII, the majority would approve of all kinds of terrible things right now.
So you see, I AGREE with you that most of humanity knows right from wrong. It's just that if they don't have an external source for that knowledge, it is meaningless and subject to the winds of opinion. Note that this external source does not HAVE to be "the God of the Bible". Your "Higher Power" will do just fine. But the knowledge must come from without if saying "Murder is wrong" is going to have any more meaning then saying "I don't like spinach"
Bettina wrote:What I need to know from you is this....are atheists/agnostics bad people for their beliefs?
Do I disagree with them, obviously.
Do I think that the philosophy is DANGEROUS if taken to it's logical conclusion, yes.
Do I think that all atheists and agnostics are bad people? of course not. I know too many who are good people. The sense of "right and wrong", "natural law", the "tao", whatever you want to call it, is built deeply within us. We do not abandon it easily.
Bettina wrote:Edit: would you let me go out with your son?
Would I let him be your friend? Certainly!
Would I approve of a marriage? (assuming we aged my son by 10 or 11 years to catch him up to you, and then aged BOTH of you a few more years to get to a decent marrying age...)
No.
Now please don't take that as an insult.
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: is a command that protects BOTH sides. Think about your relationship with your father. You feel that you have to hide your disbelief in order not to hurt him. It is not fair, to EITHER party, when one is a serious believer and the other is not. I come from a family that was somewhat split on religious issues. My parents have stuck together and made it work for over 40 years now, but it was a serious problem, and still is. It CAN be made to work, but it's much harder. He wants to have family worship, reading the Bible makes you want to vomit. He wants to teach the kids to love God, but you keep telling them that God doesn't exist, or is a villan. God is THE most important thing in his life, MORE important then you; and you want nothing to do with God. He wants to spend eternity with you, so he can't HELP but keep trying to convert you, and it makes you want to convert him with a monkey wrench.
Really why saddle yourself with that if you don't have to? Families work best when both parties are agreed on the central issues of religion.
Jeff250 wrote:Ethics is about doing what is right because of the overall happiness that results with everyone. An ethical system that is not beneficial to us is pointless to follow. You have to admit it too.
Nope.
Ok, first WHY should I care about anyone elses happiness? ESPECIALLY, why should I sacrifice my own happiness for someone elses? If you say "Making everyone happy is just the right thing to do", you are already ASSUMING the ethical system who's basis we are discussing. If you say, "Because only thinking about your own happiness is selfish", again, you are already assuming that we OUGHT to be unselfish. You can't use ethics to defend ethics.
Of course, the argument is often made that if I make others happy, it increases the chance that they will make ME happy. But that can't explain ethics adequately.
Lets look at a hypothetical example:
Villain is about to shoot a little girl. The only possible action you have at the time is to jump in front of her and take the bullet yourself. And for the arguments sake, lets just assume that the shot will be fatal to which ever one of you gets hit. (We could go through contortions to make this so, but why bother? It's a hypothetical!)
It's not in your self-interest to give your life for another because there is no possible way you could benefit from it afterwards.
You might say, "If I do this, then someone else might protect MY children" But that assumes that you have a self-interest in your progeny's survival after your death. Which CAN be argued, but lets just avoid it by twisting our hypothetical further and say you are sterile and have no children or close relatives.
Which leaves, "It's for the good of humanity", but why is that in your self-interest if you are dead? Giving up your life for "humanity" is no different then giving up your life for just the girl. It can't be in your self-interest if you are dead.
No carrot, stick, or self-interest, just a little girl who is going to be dead in a few seconds... unless you trade your life for hers. Selflessly. For no reason other than that's what you OUGHT to do.
And this goes way beyond hoping for a reward in heaven. A Christian SHOULD reach the point where the reward is not the issue. Where they would do what was right, even if the only possible result was punishment instead of reward. Have you read Huckleberry Finn? Huck, due to the bizzare ethical code that was often taught to children in the south back then, thought that if he didn't turn in Jim, he would be guilty of theft and would burn for eternity in Hell. He struggles with this, and eventually decides that he just cant do it and says:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell"
Ethics, despite any personal cost, just because it is RIGHT.