1. The hitch in Hitchens' thinking

Comment #58684 by ColourOutofSpace on July 25, 2007 at 6:53 pm

"Religion is a way we attempt,always imperfectly, to wrestle with the mystery and meaning of existence."

Sure. But it's a rather maladaptive way. We can wrestle with our sense of mystery and awe before the universe without making truth-claims that have no basis in evidence.

"God is that mysterious force that works upon us and through us to seek and achieve truth, beauty and goodness."

Occam's razor, my fine fellow. Why not just say that human beings seek the various things we associate with truth, beauty and goodness because doing so has served the survival of our species?

Most people understand "God" to be a conscious entity, a Creator, an all-powerful being. Trying to redefine the term as some nebulous whatever associated with the profundity of our existence is just confusing.

2. Atheism is the absence of belief

Comment #49278 by ColourOutofSpace on June 11, 2007 at 10:05 am

devolved: Interesting argument from C. S. Lewis you bring up. If I remember correctly, he uses a similar line of thinking early on in his book "Miracles" (a clever, well-written bit of sophistry) as his reason for rejecting Naturalism and embracing Supernaturalism. His point is summed up well in one of the lines you quoted: "I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents." Clearly put, but easily refuted. Stated briefly, natural selection (i.e. brute necessity) ensures that all emergent forms of consciousness must be able to form accurate mental pictures of the outside world if they wish to survive. Why should we expect conscious beings with inaccurate conceptions of their surrounding physical reality to be here anyway, seeing what a liability that would have been for purposes of survial? I'm not sure how much Lewis understood about evolution, but it's clear he was not able to see how natural selection undercuts this argument of his.

3. The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos

Comment #48739 by ColourOutofSpace on June 8, 2007 at 11:06 pm

"Atheism is inherently amoral"

gimlibengloin: Please explain to me how not believing in any God or gods is inconsistent with being able to make moral value-judgements about human behavior.

As Harris has written, questions of morality are ultimately questions of happiness and suffering. We call an action "wrong" if it produces suffering without any overriding justification (such as the prevention of a greater amount of future suffering). We might make an individual endure prison, for example, but would be (hopefully) for the sake of the greater good of society - that is, for the sake of minimizing suffering among people in general. Conversely, we call an action "good" if it produces happiness and/or diminishes the amount of suffering in the world.

Naturally, judgements about what is "good" or "evil" can become awfully confused and subjective - seeing as how actions sometimes produce both suffering and happiness, or are the product of obscure intentions, or lead to unexpected results, etc. etc. But the point here is that I fail to see the necessary connection between the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent being/intelligence/whatever and the ability to call an action "good" or "evil".

"Good" and "evil" are concepts we use to express our emotions towards actions and individuals who have an impact on our well-being and the well-being of those we care for. That doesn't mean good and evil aren't real - it's just that they take their reality from human consciousness (and, it is quite possible, the consciousness of certain other species). I might take a leap here and guess (correct me if I'm wrong) that you believe that for morality to really exist, it must exist "out there" in the mind of God (or whatever). But why couldn't morality take its existence from what we think and feel, rather than from what the mind of an unproven and undisprovable entity thinks or feels ? Why would that be so illogical or impossible?