Voice of Reason: Sam Harris - The morality of God

The first instalment of the Voice of Reason-series. This one is based on Sam Harris rebuttal in the God debate with William Lane Craig.

"The God Debate II" - Sam Harris vs William Lane Craig:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfQk8n...

• Category

  Education

[Bruce Galliver]

Atheists don't believe anything. The collective term atheism just denotes non-participation. Somewhere, someone a long time ago invented the concept of god and demanded other people to play the game, atheism is just a rejection of a claim for which unsatisfactory evidence has been presented.

People who consider themselves atheist can have massively differing understandings of how the universe came about, but none of them are specific to being "atheist" itself.

I hope that makes sense :)

[Jammsbro1]

There is no atheist dogma. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in any gods. Each Atheist would have his and her own idea of where anything came from.

Read as many physics books as you can, it will change your world.

[hvacpeter]

Sam, we love you

[nicc8268]

I'm sure he would be the first to admit there is no absolute right and wrong, The majority of humans have a subjective morality that aligns with what most people think of as right and wrong. Religion is not needed for this to occur.

To your second point why does Sam need help?

[Binball]

PS The 500 character limit is a struggle for a proper debate, especially for an Irish man.

[Binball]

"Given the misery that is being imposed on some helpless child at this moment"

I think this is the most interesting quote of the whole thing as it reveals so much. First, Sam Harris is essentially acting as the arbiter of what is right and wrong, so trying to debunk the idea of an absolute but becoming the author himself of a moral absolute truth.

Secondly, he criticises the God who will not help in this situation but he is more worried about knocking others beliefs than helping himself.

[dogmaticCURE]

An atheist is merely a person who investigated a religious claim and found it to be a not convincing description of how the universe works. That's all. Atheists have actually no common belief ground - it just means "not believing in religion". An atheist can reject the big bang and claim that space aliens seeded the earth with life. As an atheist you are free make up your own mind.

But you could make a case that many atheists find the scientific description of the universe appealing.

[thatdevilguy]

I think you missed what I was getting at. Science is the answer to truths or likely truths whereas religion uses presuppositons. And saying atheist make up their own minds is incorrect, they (true sceptics) follow what science understands at the time, which is the best we have. We don't need to make stuff up. It's okay to say, "I don't know."

[dogmaticCURE]

Well, "the best scientific understanding that we have at this moment" is based on evidence, and if the evidence change so dose my understanding of the universe.

What would it take to change your mind about the existance of you God, since your faith is not based on any evidence what so ever? Just curious.

[thatdevilguy]

I don't agree with the point, "Each Atheist would have his and her own idea of where anything came from." Generally speaking atheist are usually sceptical of all things presented without evidence and would go with the best scientific understanding that we have at this moment. Not have there own idea. That is no better that any religious argument.

[mystisme]

love this guy,he raised questions that no one do,it is pure thinking and logic and he does it with only one question mark "why", at young age we countinouly ask the why question, somewhere aroud,growing older. we stop doing it,the cause is the deception of not getting an answer and a lack of support to keep askingthe why question

[koolanator]

Lets look at Atheism and Agnosticism as they're actually defined rather than their most common usage.

Atheism, "A" meaning "without" and "Theism" meaning "belief in a god or gods."

Thus Atheism is "Without a belief in a god" not to be confused with "Belief there is no god"

Similarly: Agnosticism, A = without, Gnosticism = Spirituality.

Side note, Gnostic and Gnosticism are two different things.

Gnostic = possessing knowledge, Agnostic = Without knowledge