[betaporter]

I could not disagree with these points more. I cannot speak to other faiths, but having been raised as a Christian (and having read the Bible in its entirety at one point), this form of Christian apologism neatly steps over the logical incongruities and moral failings fundamental to Christianity.

It's the absence of belief in a deity - and therefore the recognition that the starting conditions of our lives was random chance, out of our control - that provides the foundation that all humans are equal and of equal value. That after 14 billion years of my atoms circling the universe I sprung forth, child of middle-class but reasonably well-educated parents in the United States, and not the child of struggling farmers in Australia, or drug addicts in Eastern Europe, was complete chance. To me this means that I am of no more importance than people born to those situations, irrespective of what they eventually managed to accomplish.

It's the absence of belief in a deity - and therefore the realization that life is finite, precious, non-transferable, and fair in so far as much is the product of chance - that means we should prefer human life over sentient robots. The consciousness of a one-day sentient robot will likely be transferrable, and therefore durable mostly indefinitely. Mine consciousness is, as of yet, not.

It's the absence of belief in a deity that neatly solves the problem of evil in the world. And so on, and so forth.

I'm happy for people to be comforted by religion, as they hurtle through a probabilistic universe, trying to fill the time between their birth and their death with meaning and enjoyment. When we die, it's unlikely that even a single lifetime later people then alive will even know or think about how we ever existed. So do what you must to be comfortable now. It'll all be over soon.

[svieira]

> It's the absence of belief in a deity - and therefore the recognition that the starting conditions of our lives was random chance, out of our control - that provides the foundation that all humans are equal and of equal value.

This is absolutely false if by "equal value" you mean anything other than "of no more value than any other product of randomness". But I doubt you believe that you and the drug addict in Eastern Europe are equally worthless (and equivalent to the return value of `head -c 100 /dev/urandom`). In fact, you say "the realization that life is ... precious". "Precious" to who, precisely?

> It's the absence of belief in a deity that neatly solves the problem of evil in the world

This is the same failing as above - it solves the problem of evil by removing evil as a category. There is only the actions of random chance, which cannot be evil. But you clearly still believe in evil. Where comes the good that evil opposes?

[cynicalpeace]

Bravo, very good questions in the socratic method.

Christianity has so deeply penetrated our society that we don't even notice it's precepts anymore. It's like the air we breathe. It's so prevalent, it's become invisible to our eyes.

[cynicalpeace]

I appreciate the discussion :)

1. > It's the absence of belief in a deity... that provides the foundation that all humans are equal and of equal value.

Historically, this is not true. A couple Greco-Roman philosophers entertained the idea, and surely other cultures here and there did too, but until Christianity, societies in the West believed might makes right. Which makes sense, because this is how the natural world works. Evolution is, at it's core, survival of the fittest. What lasts is what is most fit to reproduce.

Humans being of equal value as conceived in the West is derived straight from Christian philosophy. The Gospels, Paul, St Augustine, Erasmus, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, etc. This is a widely accepted point, and don't expect to argue this point further, since you can research it extensively.

Perhaps for you, personally, an atheistic belief provides this foundation, and that's perfectly fine, but this is not how it played out.

2. > It's the absence of belief in a deity - and therefore the realization that life is finite, precious, non-transferable, and fair in so far as much is the product of chance - that means we should prefer human life over sentient robots. The consciousness of a one-day sentient robot will likely be transferrable, and therefore durable mostly indefinitely. Mine consciousness is, as of yet, not.

This is without any solid foundation. Why does the transferability of human conciousness matter in terms of its sanctity? You can't poop out what I just pooped, but you don't consider it sacred? And this mentality is restricted purely by technology. Who's to say we couldn't transfer consciousness in the future?

It is also entirely non-falsifiable to say that we came about purely by chance. This athiestic view is actually just as fantastical as a Christian view. You might as well say you believe in Fortuna, rather than God, since the two views are equally dogmatic.

3. > It's the absence of belief in a deity that neatly solves the problem of evil in the world.

How? How do you determine what is right and wrong? If it's purely subjective, then there actually isn't right and wrong. They don't exist.

Christianity answers the problem of evil easily in the book of Job. You can't possibly understand everything God does, therefore you gotta make-do with what you're taught, and if something seems out of place in the world, it's God doing his divine plan. You can't understand it all.

4. > When we die, it's unlikely that even a single lifetime later people then alive will even know or think about how we ever existed. So do what you must to be comfortable now. It'll all be over soon.

This is another dogmatic view that is just as non-falsifiable as any view about the Christian afterlife. To say "nothing happens after we die" is just as rigid as to say "we go to heaven after we die". At least one is frank that it's dogma, and like you say, more comforting and useful in terms of providing moral guidance.