Dear JP,

I get your point. However, there is no way to define what is good or right in a world where everyone believes in God because the different Gods that people believe don’t have the same rules. The Jewish God prescribes various dietary laws that Christians don’t follow. The Muslim God is not a Trinity like the Christian God. All the Gods are creations of the imagination in different cultures.

There is no one God who all people who believe in God believe in. The God of the Jewish Bible has different rules from the Christian God. One example is the Sabbath. Jews believe the Sabbath is from Friday at sundown until Saturday at sundown. The Christian God has the Sabbath on Sunday.

Which God should people follow? Your standards are not universal standards since there isn’t a universal God. Your God is the probably the God of your parents, and that is probably the God of most people in the society you were born into.

The way I see it right and wrong is determined by my society modified by my cultural background and personal preferences, and right and wrong is determined by the God you believe in which is determined by chance – the chance that you were born in a particular society of particular parents.

It is wrong to torture a baby or anybody else. That is in my moral code, and I don’t know why any God has to be involved in that belief. I don’t have to believe in a God to give meaning to right and wrong.

From https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=belief+in+god+by+country

10.2 Percent of Swedes said they were certain of God's existence. From what I know of Sweden it is a caring society. It does not logically follow that it is necessary to believe in God to have a decent society. In fact considering religious wars and persecution of people believing in one God by people believing in another God it is better to live in a society where fewer people believe in God.

Dear David F., JP and Ipso Fatso,

I am yet to contribute on this great and vast topic and I hope to find the time to do it the justice it deserves. For now, however, I will limit myself to your particular sub-discussion on good and evil.

My position is that goodness is not just an opinion - goodness exists.

Goodness permeates creation in like fashion as the North direction permeates the cosmos (or at least this planet and its vicinity).

But unlike the North, goodness is too subtle to be measured objectively - it can only be discerned subjectively with different degrees of accuracy.

Regardless whether one is a believer or an atheist, one's level of discernment of goodness does not depend on beliefs, ideas or other mental gymnastics - only on the degree of purity of their heart.

This means that an atheist can potentially be as good as a believer and a believer can potentially be as bad as an atheist.

Also, goodness is not a competition but an individual pursuit to excel: claiming that "I am more good than Hitler" has no substance outside social conventions - you have no way to tell what would you be doing had you found yourself in Hitler's exact circumstances (including having his exact mind, his exact intellect and his exact memories).

I agree with JP that morality makes no sense without God, that morality is derived from God.
I agree with David that you don’t have to believe in a deity to be good; also that the fact there is no objective right and wrong does not mean there is no right and wrong.

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Dear David F.,

«There is no one God who all people who believe in God believe in.»

Please consider this: the actual God which different people believe in is one and the same, independently of what people ascribe to Him - what people differ about are just the attributes they assign to God: perhaps God ordained the Sabbath on Friday/Saturday, perhaps on Sunday, perhaps God exists, perhaps He doesn't: all these are merely attributes!

Dear Yuyutsu and JP,

The God you believe in has no existence outside of the human mind. When our species becomes extinct so do the deities that our species have invented. As we enjoy the beautiful and entertaining myths created by the Norse, Greeks, Romans and other ancient peoples future generations may enjoy the myths of the Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and other peoples of our era. They may create and believe in their own myths. Perhaps another species will arise that will also create Gods.

However, there is not a scintilla of evidence for the existence of a God. Belief is not evidence.

Dear David F.,

Have I ever claimed that God existed?

We corresponded about this issue for years over these pages, but it seems that I still must state it again, perhaps I should do so three times:
God does not exist - neither in the human mind nor anywhere else.
God does not exist - neither in the human mind nor anywhere else.
God does not exist - neither in the human mind nor anywhere else.

Go ahead and search the human mind as much as you like - all you will ever find there are thoughts and ideas, not gods!

For some reason you then turn the conversation and speak instead about man-made deities - why is it that almost whenever I discuss God, you instead reply about deities?

While some people may believe (rightly or wrongly) in deities, God is not and cannot be a deity. In fact, that ridiculous notion as if God were a deity leads into every possible logical contradiction. I have made that clear too in our past conversations and I bear no responsibility over the ideas of others, theists or atheists, who make such a beginner's mistake of considering God to be a deity.

Yes, as you say, once humans become extinct, man-made deities would become extinct as well, but what in hell has this to do with God?

Now shall we get back to the topic of morality, good and bad?

Dear Yuyutsu,

It would be better if you forgot all your God crap and looked at the real world.

Dear Davif F.,

When one looks at the world, one can either see it as the crap it seems to be, for it all is helplessly bound to decay, none of it is going to remain; or one can instead see it for the manifestation of God it is: the worldly forms, the particular manifestations, will keep changing, they all come and go according to the laws of nature, but the essential, eternal, unchanging truth of what they are remains: this Truth I refer to as 'God' - the true reality of the world, of which it is made.