Dear David,

I like your last reply to Peter, it's excellent.

The sentence "You are nothing but your body" is circular nonsense, coming down to "This body is nothing but its body". Whose body? well, the body's body. Whose body's body? well, the body's body's body - turtles all the way down.

I am what I am, this is the most obvious and self-evident thing anyone can say. The question whether I exist or not may appeal to some, but I don't consider it that important. In case I don't exist, then I am non-existent - that's a big deal only to those who are emotionally attached to existing.

Sells – I am not really sure what you are saying in your last comment. For myself, it seems that there are only two possible explanations for our existence – either the universe unintentionally and for no purpose spontaneously happened into existence or it was deliberately brought into being by something greater than human beings.

All I have been trying to show is that if the former explanation should be correct then nothing would have intrinsic value and no behaviour would be intrinsically right or wrong. That flies in the face of almost everyone’s actual lived experience though. Very few people seem comfortable saying that there really is nothing wrong with torturing children for fun – that it is only a matter of personal preference as to whether someone chooses to say it is wrong or not. Yet that would be the reality in a purely material universe.

Should we find such conclusions discomforting and in contradiction to the way we live we then may consider the only alternative explanation for our existence – that we are beings created by someone greater than ourselves. That is as far as my comments have tried to take things. It is another further discussion as to who that someone greater than us may be.

I think that before many atheists will consider that question they must come to appreciate just where their own worldview necessarily leads.

Dear JP,

I think our worldview should be determined by what best fits the evidence not where others think such a worldview leads. Whether it might be comforting or satisfying to think there is a God I cannot accept that there is one. I have believed in such an entity in the past. I can no longer do so.

My goodness! I agree with davidf. Why would we need the whole Christian tradition if it was as simple as believing in a creator god? In the sixties there was the "death of god" movement. Part of it was that the god of or projections was indeed dead to us. The whole point of the Trinity was that God could be found in history as a human being present to us in the Spirit. No mumbo jumbo here. Thus then idea of god was radically changed from being a distant deity to a God who is close at hand.

davidf – a few comments in relation to your Obama quote. Firstly, democracy does not necessarily demand any particular thing - just whatever the majority of the people happen to want at a particular time, be it slavery of a minority or whatever.

Secondly, as already pointed out, in a purely material universe there are no such things as “universal values”. The most there can be are values that many individuals may have chosen and for whatever reason have decided to promote together. That does not make such values anything special – they are still nothing more than just what a group of individuals have decided to adopt. Any opposing values are no less and no more valid than those adopted by the majority. All values in a purely material universe lack intrinsic worth.

Thus, if it is the case that this universe has unintentionally arisen by spontaneous processes for no purpose then there is nothing that humanity as a whole or that any individual needs to aim for. Indeed, any claims that we ought to do this and should not allow that are simply false. It may be in some people’s personal interests to require or prohibit certain things but they would be just bluffing, lying, or victims of delusion if they claim that others actually do wrong if they act in a contrary way. Nothing is intrinsically right or wrong in a purely material universe.

That is a crucially significant point that Obama either fails to understand or simply chooses to gloss over.

However, I am not an advocate for a theocracy and I do agree that in a pluralist society religious believers should not use the force of government to compel others to abide by their religion’s values. When it comes to abortion the Christian can point out that in a purely material universe that no human life, be it before or after birth, has intrinsic value. That may not sound such a big deal but given that it means that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with the Holocaust then it becomes rather harder to stomach.

JP,

I can understand your position (I am in principle on your side), I can understand David’s position although I cannot understand Sell’s dichotomy between the biblical concept of YHWH and God as understood by theist philosophers who certainly do not see Him as part of, or identical with, nature.

Where we might differ is in the term “greater than” (human beings), where I would rather use “beyond” lest the concept of God be open to all that silly criticism by philosophically unsophisticated zealots. I know, that we sing of God’s greatness because the distinction is rather subtle. Something like between the pseudo-mathematical word zillion and the concept of infinity that became a mathematically treatable concept only 130 years ago (Cantor). You might also recall that Thomists talk about God as ipsum esse (“the sheer act of being itself") rather than ens summum (highest being) to avoid comparing Him with other beings.

I also think that one should be very careful with stating what atheists think or have to think (although it has become fashionable by the New Atheists to claim they know how an educated believer thinks, and if incomprehensible to them call it e.g. mumbo jumbo). I can know what a person who claims to be an atheist said or did (sometimes even try to understand him/her) but I can at most speculate - and better not - on how an atheist thinks on matters of his/her world view, or what were his/her motivations for saying or doing this or that.