How Intellectual is Atheism?

Israel said:

I wonder if one is an atheist because he does not believe in God, or does not believe in God because he is an atheist?

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Ronnie T said:

The message has been delivered. Do with it as you wish.

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Diogenes said:

Ah, but we have a problem. Morality is one thing, and ‘Christian Morality’ is another. Quoting someone who cherry-picks quotes from another, and ascribes a position to that other on that basis, is one of the oddest third-hand straw-man attempts I’ve seen in quite some time. Philosophers, unlike evangelists, deal in the exact meanings of words and phrases. So, in context, remove the phrase ‘Christian Morality,’ and insert the phrase ‘Arabic Morality,’ and you will see that it is only the qualifier that makes the point. It might also be enlightening, though more difficult, to read the entirety of the argument Nietzsche made rather than to try to excerpt bits of it out of that context (second hand, even, which should be intellectually humiliating . . . ) in the vain, vague, and futile attempt to find some sort of a condescending ‘Gotcha!’

Nietzsche was disdainful of bad thinking, and his criticism of Eliot, in context, was an argument against a poorly constructed and incomplete argument. Not, as is suggested, a vindication of the evangelical Christian view. One will need to do much better if the argument, as it appears here again and again, is solely that morality sprang fully formed from the bosom of the Christian God, and has no other basis. Nietzsche held that it was the will of men to have power over other men that was the chief motivating factor both of the individual and of society. He held that ‘God’ was invented for this purpose, and that that invention has been particularly powerful, pervasive, effective, and equally destructive when poorly implemented, as it has usually been. In all cases, he boiled that invention, whether well employed for good ends or cited as a cause to persecutions, down to the uses men make of their own thoughts.

In order to even begin to lay a foundation upon which to rest the contention that morality is invested solely in the Christian God, and far from being an exhaustive list of the problems involved, one must first demonstrate four basic things which are not possible to demonstrate: First, that there even exists within the words ascribed to this idea of a God a singular, consistent moral voice. Next, one would need to demonstrate that these consistent and unambiguous words are, in fact, the words of some sort of Supreme Being. Third, one would need to demonstrate that human morality, as the collective need to codify collective behavior for the benefit of the group, does not pre-date the ‘Word’ of this Supreme Being. Then, having overcome those problems, one would be compelled to demonstrate that this morality, being by assertion an exclusively ‘Christian’ concept, not only is not shared by non-believers in that particular dogma but has also never changed. (The idea of a ‘morality’ handed down as an absolute has only one conclusion – it is absolute, and cannot have changed, ever.) None of these things can be substantiated, and three of them can be easily disproven.

It is anti-intellectual and self-defeating to fall back time and again upon Scripture as the proof of itself, and completely avoids the questions and the problems involved. Faith, I have observed before, is the antithesis of proof, and while it has a place in this world that no person here has tried to deny or remove, there is not a single straw of evidence other than that same often quoted Faith that supports a view that there is only one light in all of this darkness, and that it happens to be your own. There is, to an intellectual view of the subject, a preponderance of evidence that says otherwise, in fact, and clinging to personal superstitions rather than asking of them is rather the definition of a lack of manifest, substantiated intellect.

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Diogenes said:

Ronnie T : I understand the point you try to make with the 'man in the mall' thought, but even allegorically it serves only a single point, and honestly, everyone from the Shiites to the Democrats can trot out exactly the same story, with few variations, to try to prove that they are right, and all others are blind.

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Ronnie T said:

I only wanted you to understand my position.

No one will listen. And they will die for the refusal.
That doesn't bring me satisfaction.
It might mean that I have failed.

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Israel said:

I wonder if one is an atheist because he does not believe in God, or does not believe in God because he is an atheist?
Nietsche is correct about the motivation of man. He just stops short of the remedy.
But even if one were to eradicate all the "defective" theists, you're still left with that underlying base motivation for power.
I always admired his better work as a linebacker, though.

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It aint' faith, fellas. It is factual and proven history....WTM45

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Nietzsche held that it was the will of men to have power over other men that was the chief motivating factor both of the individual and of society. He held that ‘God’ was invented for this purpose, and that that invention has been particularly powerful, pervasive, effective, and equally destructive when poorly implemented, as it has usually been....diogenes

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