Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Thanks. I'm enjoying this opportunity to have a little debate; I'm always worried I come off as too hostile.
Well, of course it wouldn't. But the thing is, the nihilism and hedonism you attribute to the "thinking atheist" do not follow either. Per se, atheism comports precisely one belief: that there is no god, for commonly used definitions of "god". Any other belief, assumption, axiom, or statement has to be added on top of that -- and then you can be Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, or Peter Singer. If your worldview is formed of atheism alone (as opposed to having atheism as a component), then you end up with no beliefs about values and ethics at all, and that is not the same as having the belief "Nothing has value" or "I should act only for my own pleasure" (which, in turn, are not the same as each other). Those are no less additional assumptions than "I should care about other people's wellbeing"; pure atheism does not favor the former two over the last one.
Perhaps so. If you asked me to develop the most motivating belief system I can, I'd come up with some variety of pantheism in which all conscious beings are actually the same, like in that The Egg short story (and actually I'm doing something like that in a scifi setting I've been working on), but then I'm far from an expert in philosophy or psychology. At any rate, as I argued in other posts, I'd be wary of taking up false beliefs because they are expedient. Much like naive hedonism and naive act utilitarianism, it ends up undermining itself.
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