Secularism Teaches Selfishness

This is a more follow up to yesterday's post.

- Charles Martin Cosgriff

I basically agree with most of what you say, honestly, but to call something intelligent is also to imply that there is standard out there by which we can know we're intelligent. If there was nothing we could compare our thoughts to, we wouldn't know them to be intelligent. We would only be what we are with no concept that our thoughts had value.

As to 'when we're gone, we're gone', I stand by what I have said many times before. If we simply go out of existence, if we are an entirely secular species, then what we do here doesn't matter. Why not rape, rob, and pillage? Why waste what little existence we have doing good (whatever that means; for when you remove any possible eternal and objective truth out of our actions you essentially take out any possible meaning our actions may have, because there would be no real consequences) when we can simply satisfy our animal desires? We won't be punished if we simply cease to exist. Why be good? We won't know any reward if we cease to be. What possible meaning is there in being 'good' if we're little more than scientific accidents of time, a mass of atoms which happen to form 'me' for a bit, and then go on and form something else at their, shall we say, whim?

Yes, we might be remembered well, and what we do may help (and we must ask similarly as with good: whatever 'help' means, because that too would be left to the interpretation of the individual) the people still here when we're gone. But why should we care? It wouldn't be as though it would matter to us when we're no more, and arguably only matters to us when we're here because it would make us feel good...not exactly an altruistic motive, and altruism (once more, a useful standard only if based upon a certain objectivity) seems to be what you base your secular religion upon. And why then should I care about anyone while I'm still here? They'll just go out of existence one day and not remember a bit of whatever good or evil I do to them anyway. Any good will not aid them in the end, nor will any evil truly harm them. Even should I kill them, they won't be around to know or care.

I hope you don't think that I'm browbeating you with this, my friend. We certainly are above the lower animals and can certainly do better for others and ourselves in this world. But religion didn't create evil: people by free will do evil. Quite sincerely, I think the fact that you believe in creating rather than destroying is because you're a better man than the beliefs you express.

So you've chosen to be good because it suits you. Fine. But how do you tell others they are wrong to hurt people if their personal experience teaches them that hurting those insignificant in their eyes is all right? If there's only the individual's personal human experience to fall back on, and another individual's personal experience is that they like to do harm, there's no moral, wholly secular way you can tell them they can't. You've based your life on your experiences and claim what you do valid because on that. Their life is justified in the exact same way as yours is. In your worldview, good and bad are thus equal.

Everything you say is a value judgment based on a standard. But if it's only 'your' standard, I don't have to accept it, because I'm just as likely to be right as you. That is in fact the attitude which starts wars.