Re: Deconversion

Ken Down wrote:

[me:]
I most certainly will not conclude that they are mad, and
I most certainly would not be justified in so concluding.
They might be practicing for some upcoming encounter where
it will be tremendously important for them to appear
nonchalant and happy, and terribly difficult for them
to do so. They might be doing some sort of impromptu
scientific experiment. They might have mistaken some
trick of the light for someone they know. They might
even be having an encounter with some incorporeal being
visible to them alone.

[Ken:]
I believe that in an earlier post you showed a preference for the easy
explanation? Of course, seeing a well-dressed person behaving in an odd way
may predispose towards these more complicated explanations whereas seeing an
unshaven scarecrow would predispose towards the "mad" explanation.

I see no grounds for regarding "he's mad" as a better explanation
than at least some of the ones I list above.

Twaddle. He was a saint, or something of the sort, whether or not
there is a God, because he put other people's well-being before
his own and did an enormous amount to help those other people.
It might turn out that he unwittingly did more harm than good
on account of overpopulation, of course, but that applies equally
whether there's a God or not.

Er - why is putting other people before one's self a Good Thing? At the very
most an atheist like you can claim that putting one's close relatives first
is good (selfish gene and all that), but complete strangers?

(Well, actually I think I'd want to say that the ideal is
regarding other people as *equally* important with oneself,
and that in fact even the saintliest people seldom get
that far. I doubt Schweitzer did. But he put other people's
welfare above his own more often than most people.)

Anyway: why is it a good thing? Because everyone matters,
not just oneself, and because the natural tendency is to
value oneself most highly, one's kin and those in a position
to reciprocate next, and others rather little, so it's both
difficult and valuable to work against that.

As to why everyone matters, I've given some reasons in another
article in this thread. I doubt they'll satisfy you. I'd be
interested to know -- as I said in that other article -- if
you have any better reasons for the ethical principles *you*
take as fundamental. I very much doubt it.

[I claimed that people matter. Ken:]
Do they? In what way are *you* worse off because the Mongols massacred the
entire population of Samarkhand? In what way are *you* the better because
Carey went as a missionary to India? Feel free to substitute "the universe"
for "you".

Yes, they do. I have no idea what relevance your questions
about the Mongols and Carey have to the matter under discussion,
and I have no desire to change places with the universe.

If - perish the thought - Emma were to be run over by the proverbial bus
today, you would doubtless grieve because she matters to you, but the world
would carry on with only the very slightest of hiccups, because Emma does
not matter in the least. (I need hardly say that the same applies to you or
me or anyone else; I'm not just picking on your wife.) Someone else would
come along to fill her job, given a suitable length of time someone else
would come along to fill her place in your heart.

Quite possibly. So?

Why do you think councils feel free to dig up graveyards after a century or
so? It is because once the relatives of the deceased are no longer around to
object, the people in those graveyards no longer matter.

Very likely so. What has that to do with whether they mattered
back when they were alive? Or with whether people who are alive
now matter now?

People are considerably more than ants or amoebae, because we
are capable of much more in the way of joy and sorrow and pleasure
and pain; and (I think, though perhaps it's controversial) also
because we are capable of other valuable things such as knowledge
and understanding and artistic creation and compassion. (But I'd
say that even ants and amoebae have *some* value.)

Bah. We are simply clever ants. Your claim is about as sensible as me
claiming that bats are more valuable than humans because they can use
echo-location.

Proof by repeated assertion. Boring.

Nope. But I shall insist, um, sternly on my right not to have *you*
tell me what the rigorous conclusions of atheism are, since it
appears that what you like to call the rigorous conclusions of
atheism are in fact a set of straw men erected with the sole
purpose of making atheists and atheism look bad.

I don't know about "look bad", but certainly "look bleak".

I would have difficulty doing or saying anything to make
atheism look as bleak as you have been making Christianity
look in this thread. I am glad that I know Christians whose
attitude to other people is less -- hmm, what was that
word you used about me the other day? ah yes. Less autistic.

Please defend the assertion, using nothing but logic and materialism,
that people matter in any sense other than the emotional and economic.

What other sense, exactly, would you like me to give it? If you're
going to restrict my options so severely, then I think you ought
to make the question you're asking crystal clear; logic as such
is ill-suited to dealing with vagueness.

(Your demand is preposterous, of course, just as it would be
preposterous to demand that a Christian defend, "using nothing
but the Bible", the assertion that it is permissible for a
Christian to use mobile phones.)

--
Gareth McCaughan
..sig under construc
.

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