Atheist Can't Ground Human ights in Godless Beleif

 On carm on 4/2/14 follow up to the floury of threads about rights that were started by the thread I discussed last time. In this one I will look at one guy's statement, he says everything I suspected. He tries to have it both ways, atheists can support human rights, but human rights are relative and can given away after the next election, but they are still just as good as if they were written in the fabric of reality by a creator, even though they are not real and they imagined by people. These comments are not unrepresentative. My question kicked off a firestorm of controversy and led to about eight threads over a week's time. The Ferment of all of that form the atheist camp is basically reflected here with a few exceptions.

Originally Posted by Largereminder

The concept of human rights, or rights in general, mean nothing outside the context of civilization. They do not pervade the universe like some kind of background radiation, and claims of such seem on all counts to stem from some combination of fiat, assumption and a broad misunderstanding of human nature and the human mind.

Meta:

that is nothing more than frank statement that human rights dont' exist and it's not a loss if atheism takes them away. atheism is not blameworthy becuase nothing unaheist is of value. only the atheist party line matters.

Atheism, atheism Über Alles

the future belongs to us.

they don't have to comparable to background radiation to be real and important. It's on a par with Justice. is justice made up?


Largereminder

This is not to say, however, that human rights are just arbitrary products of the whims of a given time and people. The rights themselves, and the need to claim such rights, are a direct product of our biology and the social dynamics of our species, which - if you're looking for universals - are pretty uniform features across humanity. 

 Yes sure he seems to be denying that they have a relativist view but it really must means he wants it both ways. He says human right are just we agree upon, then turns aound and says "this is not to say they are not real." he did say they are not real.

Meta

Yes it is because you have don't a middle ground. you have either scientific data for had tangible stuff or it doesn't exist. tha'ts the principle you use to get rid of god so it has to be applied consistently to all. Atheism will not allow justice, freedom, or human rights.

Largereminder

And this is the case for many aspects of our nature that people like to project onto the cosmos at large, such as morality. The real formula at work is pretty straightforward - local brains, uniformly constructed, produce global effects when functioning in concert. In other words, human nature produces behavior subjectively, yet there is wide consensus for this behavior and its internal causes given our identical neurological architecture, and this creates the appearance of something objective/external at work. 

Meta

exactly, atheism destroys everything that is not hard tangle and quantifiable. so all the values and ideas and ideals that like worth living atheism will mangle and desultory.

atheists will rationalize it and say "it's worth it get rid of God." a society where murder is legitimate and there are no rights, no freedom, you can torture people with impunity, that's all worth is so long as some God figure is telling me I can't screw.


Largereminder

If you watch a swirling "flight flock" in action, you would think that some grand outside force directed its fluid and graceful movement. And yet no such force is at work, and it is simply the product of many individual avian brains subjectively (and unconsciously) working together in a kind of feedback loop. There is no good reason to search for any more complex explanation than this for analogous human behaviors, except for wanting another explanation to be the truth (i.e., wishful thinking).

Meta:

that is argument from analgoy. its' not a disproof of the validity of ideas. moreover it doesn't apply it's a totally different thing.

Largereminder

Jefferson declared Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to be unalienable human rights. And yet, despite such declarations, and despite the thoughts of Locke and his contemporaries from whom Jefferson borrowed, the world at large deprives people of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness at such a regular pace that it's kind of a banality to point it out. So much for a reality that vouchsafes these rights on our behalf. When our rights are infringed upon, the cosmos neither weeps nor demands satisfaction; human nature does, and that tells us all we need to know about the "source" of such rights.

 His argument here is totally invalid. he's arguing "they can be negated and people can take advantage so therefore they are not real. That's like saying money in a bank isn't real because it can be robbed. If someone negates our rights in a Godful wrold we have recourse to say "this is a sin" and God will punish them, in the atheist world they can be congratulated if the next government that comes in erases the right.

Um, didn't he just tell us that rihts are real, that not being tangible doesnt' mean they are not unreal? now he says they are an illusion only appears to be something we mistake the way it looks. Isn't he saying they are unreal becasue they can be violated?

Meta
just what I said, freedom, justice, human rights all must go so I can screw.

Largereminder

A psychopath could barge in as I type this and splatter my brains across the wall of my office, for no better reason than the thrill, and while this has tremendous implications for my loved ones, my colleagues, and to a smaller degree our ethical principles and society at large, at the level of the cosmos it would mean absolutely nothing. Cosmically, it would be a morally indistinguishable event from a fly hitting a windshield or a neutrino passing through a nebula. My vanity may find little comfort in this framing of the issue, but what does existence as a whole care about my or anyone's vanity or comfort? 

Meta

that statement is insane. that means you also imagine that you can do this other people and it would not mater either. so you are just projecting your need to lash out at people who wont obey your whims. Furthermore, I refuse to live in a society dominated by psychopaths and cave men. I don't think very many will support that. We tried that before it was called Barbarism.

you have done nothing but prove my point that atheism is barbarism. you have done nothing else but that. you just say here and justified a society where murder is legitimate, I was already saying as a rhetorical device you come along and prove I'm right.


Largereminder

By all appearances, human history stands as a glaring testament to our living in an indifferent universe, and not all the bald assertions or claimed revelations or confirmation bias or wishful thinking in the world can change that. This is why the theist's general hypothesis appears so petty to me. Believers more or less think that the universe itself is in some way outraged on their behalf when they - fleeting, shabby mammals that they are - are wronged. It's just emotional pornography for narcissists.

 above he says they are real now he says tehy make us narcisistic and shabby it's just emotional pornography.

Meta

that's obviously false otherwise we would not have these ideas that tell it does make a difference. We know in our hearts it's wrong to kill it's hurt people. you want to be able to dot hat to other I bet you would not accept it being done to you.


Largereminder

As for rejection of the concept of a soul leading to barbarism, let's ask victims of the Inquisition how well those concerned about their eternal souls provided for their well-being. Let's ask people today with painful diseases and disfigurements what good is done for the research that could ease their suffering by the soul-minded crowd rendering these conscious, suffering people to be moral equivalents with a sphere of 100 or so undifferentiated cells. Let's ask our mammalian kin what good the idea of souls being exclusive to humans has brought them. It's nonsense to say that losing the concept of a soul makes you lose any sense of ethical obligation to your fellow humans, because there are already far better and more durable reasons for those ethical obligations than just vague intuitions about an internal essence. And on the flip side, when you sacrifice reason and parsimony to invented notions of a soul, you set a stage where good reasons for a belief don't matter and therefore any foolishness can step in and call the shots. History is rife with psychotic opportunists who've done exactly that.

Meta

People victimized in the inquisition sure as hell cared about the soul. you think you waltz in there and take the soul away can the chruch wouldn't torture them and you just admitted that your world view takes away the prohibition on torture. you are doing nothing more than contradicting yourself.

you just got through saying there's no transcendent value then you turn and condemn torture on what basis?

Perhaps belief in the soul didn't stop people from abusing religious power, but it clearly stops other people from abusing their tiny portion of power. It gives us a justification for speaking truth to power. you would take that away. you would make power absolute by justifying their treatment of the power and powerless on the basis that there are no transcendent values.