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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP again.  Just want to be sure I am clear in my understanding of the unbelievers' position on justice:

There is no true justice, just as there is no God.  Some people make out well during their one shot at life, and some do not.  It is what it is.  The best we can do is try to help people live life well, freely, and with happiness, but fact is, it may not work out that way.  At least they got their one chance.

Is that right?[/quote]

Oh, jeez.  This better be crazy-good.[/quote]

Yikes, now I am bound to disappoint ;)

The nonbelievers have rejected the argument below as the "wishful thinking" argument:

God is just.

Therefore his dealings with us must be just.

But there is great injustice in this life.  (Evil does well and good suffers.)

Therefore, this life cannot be all that there is.

Certainly sounds like wishful thinking to me.  I agree with the nonbelievers.  So let's start over.

Humans seek justice (through the legal system, through their own work making the world a better place).

But there is great injustice in this life.  (Despite our best efforts, evil does well and good suffers.)

So justice cannot be found in this life.

Either justice is found in something beyond this life, or justice is simply not met by reality.

One or the other, not both.

So perhaps our demand for justice is just a subjective quirk of the human psyche.  There is no foundation in reality for our instinct to seek justice.  No justification for that drive.  Seeking justice is a subjective wish we may have, a personal preference, but not an objective reality.

So we may feel slavery is unjust, but there is no reality to match that feeling.  There is a price to pay for denying the existence of justice.  How can we take justice seriously when we know it is just a feeling, not real?

So these ideas are all connected, inextricably.  If this is all there is, we are left bereft of things most human beings find essential.  If there is more than what we have right here, we need to know about it.

So then we should readdress materialism.  That this is all there is.

Think of the human brain as a computer.  A computer that has been programmed by chance, like throwing things blindfolded at the motherboard, could not be trusted.  The human brain, too, could not be trusted if it were tossed together like a salad of chance.  If materialism is true, the chance couplings of heredity and environment, of genes and social conditioning, have thrown together a brain that is a compilation of physical causes only.  So then it destroys its own credentials.  If the brain is blind random chances of atoms come together, we have no reason to trust it when it tells us about what it perceives.  There is no reason for believing it to be true, because all judgments would be equally and totally the result of nonrational forces.  "If thought is [a brain] motion, how should anyone think more truly than the wind blows?"

If materialism is not true, there could be an immaterial reality.  Decay and change and mortality are found in material things.  Immaterial things do not need to be subject to those rules.  One such immaterial thing could be the soul.

This soul is not limited to this life, the physical life.  It is beyond this life.  The soul could experience justice beyond this life.  And that justice could be perfect.

But it has to be one or the other.  If materialism, so be it.  But the price to pay for that is high.  Much higher than the PPs have considered, I think.

[/quote]

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