What I am seeing in NJ is that most of the Catholics are turning into “cultural Catholics” meaning they don’t go to weekly Mass, but still give their envelops so that the kids and grandkids can get baptized, first communion, and confirmation. And most importantly, grandpa and grandma can have a Catholic Funeral. Also a big trend is the lack of church weddings -pretty much gone as a Church wedding venue has been replaced by grand secular wedding venues. Also cremation has replaced burials here due to cost. Note that NJ is a predominately Catholic state with a large Jewish population. So very little discussion regarding origins. YEC is no where to be found. Most of the Nones are former Catholics or present Catholics who are just doing it until the kids get confirmed.
That would be a category error. An argument is invalid if it is based on a double standard, but not all invalid arguments are based on double standards.
I consider it a character flaw because it is an example of bias leading to a bad argument. Am I not allowed to judge for myself what is and isn’t a character flaw?
The fact that they’re not going to the mass weekly doesn’t mean they don’t believe in God Patrick.
I have no idea what it even means to say that an argument is based on a double standard. I do however know what it means to say that an argument is either valid or invalid. I’d be happy to share that with you if you are interested. Then we could apply that to the argument that you made so that you would understand what I meant by saying your argument was not a valid argument. But I don’t think that warrants calling you a hypocrite.
Example:
Vanilla ice cream is terrible because it is served at a cold temperature. However, chocolate ice cream is wonderful.
It is argued that vanilla ice cream is terrible because it is too cold, yet chocolate ice cream is said to be wonderful even though it is served at the same temperature. This is an invalid argument.
I don’t think that this is a good example, actually… Certain flavors, for instance, could be better or worse at certain temperatures. This particular example does not seem to be invalid to me, but only because the double standard is not what we would truly consider to be a double standard (in which the standard itself is hypocritical.)
Ice cream is good when it is cold. Chicken soup is bad when it is cold. There’s no injustice in the way that the standard is applied to one vs. the other.
I’ve been thinking of an example that would be so. Let’s say that you have twins and they are in high school. One twin is told that they will be put on restriction if they bring home a report card with marks below 3.0. The other twin is told that they will be put on restriction if they have marks below 2.0. So, if 2.1 is good for one, and 2.1 is bad for the other, is that invalid? It could be. But maybe not. Maybe one twin is learning impaired, so that a 2.1 is adequate / expected, whereas it would be a failure for the other. Maybe one is taking AP classes and the other remedial. The double standard causing an argument to be invalid may only be so in certain instances…
Well, rainbow sherbet at Ark Encounter is terrible. 
Oh, man… that may have been the funniest thing I have ever read here!!
Kudos.
Do you understand why atheists feel a bit insulted by question #8?
Sure. I’ve already set out what I think earlier in the thread. It’s not because they think it’s a bad argument. Bad arguments take place all the time without any atheists getting upset about them. I’ve seen Patrick make an argument where his conclusion didn’t follow. It’s known as a non-sequitur. No atheists were harmed by it or in the making of it.
All hail the mighty non-sequitur! And thanks, Josh, for buying us all a beer. Still searching for the Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda, to round out my trip. If I find it in time, I’m buying the round!
Hi everyone,
Having read the article in Rawstory, I’d like to say something about questions 1 and 2.
I happen to know that atheists are fully capable of behaving morally and of finding some sort of meaning in life. I also happen to think that if atheists thought about the big issues a little more deeply, they would realize that their worldview doesn’t provide a fully satisfactory grounding for morality, and that if they find meaning in life, it can only be by blocking out unwanted thoughts.
To see where I’m coming from, I would urge readers to have a look at the following article by blogger Jennifer Fulwiler, titled, How the Search for Truth Led Me from Atheism to Catholicism. Allow me to quote an excerpt:
One thing I could never get on the same page with my fellow atheists about was the idea of meaning. The other atheists I knew seemed to feel like life was full of purpose despite the fact that we’re all nothing more than chemical reactions. I could never get there. In fact, I thought that whole line of thinking was unscientific, and more than a little intellectually dishonest. If everything that we call heroism and glory, and all the significance of all great human achievements, can be reduced to some neurons firing in the human brain, then it’s all destined to be extinguished at death. And considering that the entire span of homo sapiens’ existence on earth wouldn’t even amount to a blip on the radar screen of a 5-billion-year-old universe, it seemed silly to pretend like the 60-odd-year life of some random organism on one of trillions of planets was something special. (I was a blast at parties.)
By simply living my life, I felt like I was living a lie. I acknowledged the truth that life was meaningless, and yet I kept acting as if my own life had meaning, as if all the hope and love and joy I’d experienced was something real, something more than a mirage produced by the chemicals in my brain. Suicide had crossed my mind – not because I was depressed in the common sense of the word, simply because it seemed like it was nothing more than speeding up the inevitable. A life multiplied by zero yields the same result, no matter when you do it.
If I were an atheist, I’d probably be that kind.
The Rawstory article declares that atheists find meaning in “the same things everyone does,” and that they create their own meaning. But if they think about it, they will have to confront the fact that on their worldview, whatever they create is the end-product of processes in their brains which are, at bottom, amoral - namely, neuronal firings. And if they find anything “meaningful,” it will only be because they are “hardwired” to do so. As the article puts it: “we evolved with some core moral values wired into our brains: caring about fairness, caring about loyalty, caring when others are harmed.”
But what if I decide to change the way I’m hardwired, and design a new brain for myself, by modifying my existing one through surgery or drugs - and maybe give myself a Nietzschean brain which is free from feelings of compassion, and which despises altruistic morality as an ethical system for weaklings? Within the near future, it will surely become possible for humans to reshape their brains, if they so desire, so that they won’t feel empathy. What then? For such people, morality would no longer be hardwired.
If I were an atheist, trying to live a good and moral life, I think the logical kind of ethical philosophy for me to adopt would be some kind of ethical naturalism, founded in an Aristotelian natural law theory of morality. (Utilitarianism is morally repugnant: it totally subordinates the good of the individual to that of society, despite the fact that society isn’t even sentient and cares nothing for you. Margaret Thatcher was right: there is no such thing as society. And Kantianism’s insistence at the outset on moral norms that can be universalized strikes me as putting the cart before the horse: before declaring what’s good for human beings, surely one needs to investigate what makes them tick - in other words, identify what’s conducive to human flourishing.) Although Aristotle believed in an Unmoved Mover, his system of morality works perfectly well without God - which is one reason why atheist Objectivist Ayn Rand was happy to champion it - but it fails to address the question: what if I decide to change my nature into something else? What should I do then?
Greta Christina, the author of the Rawstory article, tries to bully her readers into not asking the Big Morality question of atheists, by acting as if she’s terribly affronted by it:
Why you shouldn’t ask it: This is an unbelievably insulting question. Being moral, caring about others and having compassion for them, is a fundamental part of being human. To question whether atheists can be moral, to express bafflement at how we could possibly manage to care about others without believing in a supernatural creator, is to question whether we’re even fully human.
No, it’s not. Rather, it’s to question whether atheists are fully consistent - which strikes me as a perfectly reasonable question.
What do readers think?
You are assuming that there is a way to fully ground morality and that life has to have meaning outside of the meaning we subjectively decide it should have. The “Truth” does not have to conform to what would make humans fulfilled or happy.
I tend to fall in with Hume who said that what is can not determine what ought to be. Our understanding of nature may help inform us of our basic psychology and neurobiology, but morality is ultimately determined by our subjective emotions and interactions with others. Our morality should be determined by what we find important, no matter its source.
You don’t need a consistent position on morality in order to act morally. What atheists are sometimes faced with is theists arguing that without being told what is or isn’t moral that we humans are incapable of acting morally. I find this insulting to both atheists and theists. Would you go around raping and murdering if you weren’t a christian? Probably not, right?
@vjtorley It is insulting to have people suggest that I cannot be moral, particularly in face of the many easily found examples of Christians being immoral. Religion is only consistent up to a point - and beyond that point becomes hypocritical. To be fair, MOST people of faith make an honest and sincere effort to be consistent and moral, but when religion goes off-the-rails, those same people will say their religion supports this.
It seems to me that you are projecting a particular world view onto atheists. Maybe you ought to ask them, instead of making up a world view that you don’t like and projecting that on them.
As best I can tell, “atheism” is not well defined. In particular, it is not defined by a specific world view.
But does God provide a fully satisfactory grounding for morality? I’d say it’s satisfactory only if you don’t think about it deeply.
Ditto.
What’s fully satisfactory? I have various moral capacities that are part of my nature as an evolved social animal, grounded by a number of intellectual beliefs. You too have the same. We’re in the same boat! Your beliefs in a morality-grounding God don’t have to be adopted by anyone. To me, relatively recent historical experience clearly demonstrates the folly of an over-reliance on such approaches. We need something better.
Indeed. Some of the worst moral outcomes are the result of people ignoring their own moral compass in favor of obedience to an ideology, be it religious or non-religious. We aren’t robots who have to follow instructions. Instead, we are each moral agents who are responsible for our own moral judgments and actions.
That’s a load of crap. My morality is just fine. As well as what I find meaningful in my life. You don’t need a God to live a moral meaningful life.