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Atheism and theism are not mutually exclusive.

Antiprosynthesis said:
Spinoza, a great philosoper from amsterdam in if Im not mistaken the 17th century wrote about pantheism which an atheistic theism...
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Yep, he was from Amsterdam (which was the only place liberal enough to let him publish his stuff even if for security reasons he talked about "God " here and there) died in 1677 and was excommunicated by his fellow Jews, who performed his funeral when he was still alive ( and it seems that they also tried t have him killed a number of times). He s one of the "classic" atheist- non religious - critics of christianity I enjoy dealing with along with Hume , differently from Nietzsche which was a great writer-polemicist but as a philosopher makes my cat look like Plato....
 
skipjames said:
Yep, he was from Amsterdam (which was the only place liberal enough to let him publish his stuff even if for security reasons he talked about "God " here and there) died in 1677 and was excommunicated by his fellow Jews, who performed his funeral when he was still alive ( and it seems that they also tried t have him killed a number of times). He s one of the "classic" atheist- non religious - critics of christianity I enjoy dealing with along with Hume , differently from Nietzsche which was a great writer-polemicist but as a philosopher makes my cat look like Plato....
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Actually it is like this, spinoza got a ban curse which in those days meant worldwide you had to leave the country and never come back but spinoza was allowed to stay in amsterdam and since then up until today still amsterdam is officialy the most progressive city in the world...
 
skipjames said:
Hi, thanks for your reply, loyts of food for thought. I m not assuming that all humans believe that preservation of the specie is a good thing ( there are flat earthers and people convinced that the theory of evolution is a satanic lie, imagine if there can be a general consensus on ethical issues ). I m just saying that the account of humans= rational and political (social) animal amf of morality= human phenomenon aimed at human flourishing are pretty sound and convincing, one can always come up with a better account but so far and in the last ...2300 years the alternatives were and are way less convincing. If we agree on the account of humanity and of morality I have sketched supra than some actions are objectively wrong, even if they are widespread. Of course this is really roughly put and presupposes a number of metaphysical commitments ( personally I m convinced that....everything in philosophy presupposes a certain metaphysic, implicitly or explicitly) but metaphysics ethics etc can and should be the result of rational inquiry not of a more or less arbitrary choice ( i.e. is not my choice that humans have cognitive abilities that make them different from other animals or that they are social beings etc). Does it make any sense?
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How can morality be the pursuit of human flourishing when you have just agreed with me that not everyone wants the species to flourish? Are they subhuman in your eyes?
 
In my opinion we should look, as Nietszche stated it, beyond good and evil and realize that beyond that they dont mean anything...
 
ovenbakedskittles said:
How can morality be the pursuit of human flourishing when you have just agreed with me that not everyone wants the species to flourish? Are they subhuman in your eyes?
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Not subhuman but if they agree with me that humans = rational and political animals and that morality = human phenomenon aimed at living a proper human life they are being contradictory-irrational, which is no biggie as we all are at some point ( we are rational but also animal)- and if they don t agree with my account of humanity and morality I ld like to hear of a better proposal. Anyway knowing that that x is good- wanting x- being able to carry out x are all different things, take your humble here, I know that drugs are gonna kill me, I m not sure whether I really wanna stop doing them and I sure as fuck am unable to stop using them....
 
Antiprosynthesis said:
In my opinion we should look, as Nietszche stated it, beyond good and evil and realize that beyond that they dont mean anything...
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In my opinion Nietzsche should have read some Aristotle rather than obsessing over Aeschylus Sophocles the Pre Socratics and Plato and even better should have stuck to philology cos Philosophy was not really his thing ....
 
Antiprosynthesis said:
Actually it is like this, spinoza got a ban curse which in those days meant worldwide you had to leave the country and never come back but spinoza was allowed to stay in amsterdam and since then up until today still amsterdam is officialy the most progressive city in the world...
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Itb s funny cos afaik one of gthe rationale behind their liberality was their hardcore Calvinism ( God has decided who will be saved and who will not) so pragmatically they decided "these people are going to Hell anyway, let s make some money out of them while we are at it 🤪 🤪 🤪
 
skipjames said:
Not subhuman but if they agree with me that humans = rational and political animals and that morality = human phenomenon aimed at living a proper human life they are being contradictory-irrational, which is no biggie as we all are at some point ( we are rational but also animal)- and if they don t agree with my account of humanity and morality I ld like to hear of a better proposal. Anyway knowing that that x is good- wanting x- being able to carry out x are all different things, take your humble here, I know that drugs are gonna kill me, I m not sure whether I really wanna stop doing them and I sure as fuck am unable to stop using them....
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There is a fundamental disagreement among the human species about what is moral and what is not. For instance some people might say that killing is immoral. But then you have to consider the self defense factor or killing someone who can potentially cause harm to other people.

Likewise, you can say on one hand that morality is fundamentally based on assuring human survival. But if there is a group of people or community who believes otherwise, then who is to say what is moral and what is not? It just comes down to the split in human consciousness.

That would mean that morality is malleable and interchangeable and not fixed and stable. You can say this thing is morally superior or that thing is morally superior and people will disagree for thousands of years about those things. There is no way of saying what is objectively moral and what is not. We can only make limited assessments based on our own personal experiences and the environment we grew up in.
 
ovenbakedskittles said:
There is a fundamental disagreement among the human species about what is moral and what is not. For instance some people might say that killing is immoral. But then you have to consider the self defense factor or killing someone who can potentially cause harm to other people.
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I m not denying that there is and always will be moral disagreement, also I am convinced that moral disagreement could never be solved on the basis of rationality alone as it involves a number of cultural- emotional commitments . What I am denying is that disagreement alone ends the discussion and implies that "all ethical positions are basically the same" or are based on equally irrational grounds. Moral Theories can and should be evaluated rationally . The one I favour and I have sketched supra, Natural Law Theory, for instance , believes that killing is immoral but has an IMHO reasonable way of dealing with this and similar cases, the Princile of Double Effect https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/ MAybe you are a "Morally particularism kind of guy? But it s a fascinating subject and it it interest you (and there s a way to send files here on BL) I can send you a very good contemporary introduction to contemporary Moral Philosophy https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Theory-Introduction-Elements-Philosophy/dp/0742564924
 
Antiprosynthesis said:
Pantheism is an atheistic theism of which the basics says the divine is in everything and everything is divine...
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Well that's not atheism is it. It's still believing in a form of "higher power". Atheists don't believe in any of that kinda supernatural mythical nonsense (no offence to any theists here, just my opinion)
 
Not gatekeeping atheism btw lol
I think whatever anyone wants to believe is valid, I just don't think you can be one and also not one? @Antiprosynthesis has got me interested now, though, so I'm gonna do some reading on this "atheist theism" stuff.

And again, nothing I have said has been intended to offend anyone, btw, it's just my opinions.
 
skipjames said:
I m not denying that there is and always will be moral disagreement, also I am convinced that moral disagreement could never be solved on the basis of rationality alone as it involves a number of cultural- emotional commitments . What I am denying is that disagreement alone ends the discussion and implies that "all ethical positions are basically the same" or are based on equally irrational grounds. Moral Theories can and should be evaluated rationally . The one I favour and I have sketched supra, Natural Law Theory, for instance , believes that killing is immoral but has an IMHO reasonable way of dealing with this and similar cases, the Princile of Double Effect https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/ MAybe you are a "Morally particularism kind of guy? But it s a fascinating subject and it it interest you (and there s a way to send files here on BL) I can send you a very good contemporary introduction to contemporary Moral Philosophy https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Theory-Introduction-Elements-Philosophy/dp/0742564924
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I’m not saying it ends the argument but I’m merely pointing out that in the eyes of god or in the eyes of the universe, there is no such thing as right or wrong/moral or immoral. These are human ego creations. You especially have to acknowledge that if you are atheist materialist because then there is no preceding metaphysical factor to administer those those kinds of fundamental truths in the first place and it’s probably unlikely that we can acquire the type of evidence necessary to definitively say that morality is this and immorality is that.

But even if you do believe in god or a higher divine power, why would you believe that it chooses sides between humans?? As if one group of people knows what is objectively true and therefore deserves more sovereignty than another group of people. That’s no different than the Christian’s fighting against the Jews or the Muslims. Or any religious war for that matter.
 
So I knew for non-theistic religions and for post-theistic religions and both could work in theory but how the fuck you get theistic atheism!?
 
ovenbakedskittles said:
I’m not saying it ends the argument but I’m merely pointing out that in the eyes of god or in the eyes of the universe, there is no such thing as right or wrong/moral or immoral. These are human ego creations. You especially have to acknowledge that if you are atheist materialist because then there is no preceding metaphysical factor to administer those those kinds of fundamental truths in the first place and it’s probably unlikely that we can acquire the type of evidence necessary to definitively say that morality is this and immorality is that.

But even if you do believe in god or a higher divine power, why would you believe that it chooses sides between humans?? As if one group of people knows what is objectively true and therefore deserves more sovereignty than another group of people. That’s no different than the Christian’s fighting against the Jews or the Muslims. Or any religious war for that matter.
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Hi, sorry for my late reply and thanks for another interesting post, really. I m not anh atheist materialist but even if I was - when I was I considered "hardcore materialism" problematic for a number of reasons, some of which u mention here , another big one is the "mind brain identity" which cannot possibly account for a number of phenomena such as...consciousness, hence I think I would buy something along the lines of Chalmers´s dualism https://mindmatters.ai/2023/01/philosopher-i-accept-dualism-but-dont-believe-in-the-soul/

I m a (shitty) Christian Catholic but you don t have to be one to accept my metaphysical and ethical views, which are a "Christian development" of the works of of a "pagan" philosophers such as Aristotle https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-ethics/

Anyway, setting aside my religious beliefs, God-nature-whatever gave us reason by which we can arrive at some objective ethical truths , which are shared basically by any existing or past culture ( that s why despite our differences no culture allows stuff like "killing randomly the people of your own group- lying systematically to the people of your group) and these truths IMHO would be true whether God existed or not.
 
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