Reply to Why don't you believe in God?

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "Why don't you believe in God?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here.  I'll brush up on my Blind Watchmaker and my Ken Miller Biology 101, but in the meantime, does anyone care to address the discussion of justice?  [/quote]

What exactly is the topic?  The last few posts seemed to argue that God has to exist because if not, then the universe is not just.  But clearly our need for justice does not make justice exist.  Ergo, our need for justice does not prove the existence of God.[/quote]

OP here.  If you go back a few posts, I offered a version of your argument as unbelievers' "God is wishful thinking" position.  I wanted to grant that, and put it aside for a moment.

Rather, I asked if I had my understanding of nonbelievers' position as materialists correct, and it seemed everyone agreed that I did.  Which makes sense, because this is the dictionary definition:

"Materialism is a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter."

That being defined, I offered this problem:

"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."

Materialism says the universe is material objects with natural properties.  Justice is none of these things.  Therefore, it does not exist as objective reality.

And yet, good and evil, fair and unfair, right and wrong, are inescapably part of our human experience.  Even the most cold-hearted materialist will yell "Hey!  You cut me off!  That's not right!" on the Beltway.  So it is impossible to say that we have no sense of justice.

The last refuge is to say justice is something we create, something subjective, a personal preference, a feeling.  But then it is still actually not real.  It is a delusion.  There is no supreme, objective standard.  There just is what is.  So any human act cannot really be evil.  We may not like it, but there is no authoritative standard hovering out there.

Either this materialism is true, or it is false.  If it is false, then it is a profound falsehood, a complete misunderstanding of what it means to be human.  If there is more to a human being than his material, physical form, something immaterial, something which cannot be quantified by the material universe, then that is significant.  Viktor Frankl, a famous Jewish psychologist, put it this way:

"If we present man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him.  When we present him as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind machine, as a bundle of instincts, as a pawn of drive and reactions, as a mere project of heredity and environment, we see the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone...the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment--or..."of blood and soil."[/quote]

Wait, justice is not just a feeling.  It is an outcome that societies strive to provide.  And many non-theistic philosophies explore justice.  Justice is very intertwined with liberty, which is part and parcel of our philosophical underpinnings as a country.  Sure, justice cannot be guaranteed without an omnipotent being, but that does not mean that it does not exist at all.

Read for example Rawls, a Theory of Justice.  That might help you get a handle on thinking about Justice outside of God.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics