Steve's point (later refined a bit):
>>If I were convinced that there was no God, the logical thing for me to
to do would be to screw everyone as much as I could (including lying,
stealing and cheating), but all the while pretending to be a nice guy so
they couldn't retaliate. That would maximise my advantage while minimising
my disadvantage.<<
Tom challenged this suggesting that Steve's position:
>>makes a mockery both of orthodox Christianity and of ethics. It may
resemble some sort of Moral Re-armament, but it shares nothing with the
Gospel.<<
Then Burgy, after disagreeing with some of Tom's more personal remarks,
added:
>>But you make a reasonable point, of course, if not about Stephen. How is
one to behave if he is a convinced atheist or agnostic, as, I assume,
Gould, Dawkins, Julian Huxley (was) and Sagan (was)? Since I was one --
once -- myself, I think I can speak to that situation. I did not behave as
Stephen described -- but I did not behave either as a Christian ought to
do. To the extent I avoided lying & cheating and all that stuff it was --
largely -- a pragmatic decision -- at one time I "cleverly" avoided the
payment of sales tax to the State of Ohio and felt no particular guilt or
remorse for so doing -- it was too easy to do and 0 chance of being
caught! (Two years later, having become a Christian, I made restitution --
it was simply not possible to ignore! But that is another story!)
I did not claim that atheists/agnostics are unethical. Just that their
belief system gives them no reason to be. Your attitude in avoiding sales
tax without guilt confirms my point. You were consistently living by the
11th commandment - "Thou shall not get caught"!
But, by and large, I behaved ethically, as I assume the above mentioned
people do. For that seems to be the best (pragmatic) way to go through
life. .... <<
Now to my points, mostly questions:
Q1: Does not the *true* paradigm matter? (Does not God's existence, or
lack of existence, matter in this discussion?)
Q2: Will it not affect the behavior of someone who is convinced that God
does not exist?
Q3: Can one expect such a person to act by pure logic alone, independently
of cultural norms, and independently of whether the Christian
understandings are true or false?
Q4: If Satan exists, and an atheist is prepared, in the main, to accept
and act upon the ethical culture of a (formerly) Judeo-Christian society,
can not Satan be perfectly content to leave him there?
It seems to me that if God and Satan exist, along the lines of Christian
understands, then an atheist is not as free as he might think to act by
logic alone. As a corollary, we make a mistake to assume that "abstract
logic" has anything to do with the behavior of atheists.
Likewise if life is purely mechanistic, and perceived truth is an illusion
(just a product of biological accidents), then, again, logical behavior is
suspect. Still I see no reason to believe that the atheist's behavior
would take the same form as under the previous paradigm.
Finally, I note that there are animistic cultures, that know nothing of
Christianity, for whom Steve's characterization is approximately correct
in that lying and deceit are accepted as virtues.
Gordie