[Toki]

Originally Posted by Vertex

Toki: My response would be that "reasonable" is different from "logical." People can feel that things are "reasonable" on a moral scale. Science does not pertain to morality. The kind of "reason" or "logic" an atheist would use has nothing to do with emotion or the impact of "reasonable thinking," even if it happens to be associated with people who took a dark path. People can bring up Stalin and Hitler all day, but they didn't do the bad things they did BECAUSE they were atheist. Most people seem to misunderstand what "logical" or "rational" really mean.

Well, okay... taking your view point, its can still be logical to do a great many hurtful things to society. It would be logical if China decided to throw a couple of nukes our way, to respond with equal or greater force. Yet, it wouldn't make the situation better... more than likely it would kill us all. I'm not trying to use scare tactics, it's probably a bad example, but you get my point.

I think "Science doesn't pertain to morality" is perhaps a dubious statement. I'm not stupid, I know that Atheism doesn't mean you'll go off and sodomize goats and then cleave off the skull of your neighbor because he seems to have taken a creepy shining to your daughter. Rather, its a fallacy within religion to think that the religious are morally superior; since morality is something that is deeply tied into us on a biological level. I'm not sure a study could be conducted to tell us whether institutions such as the Church lead to less crime than someone who relies on institutions such as a School Counselor, but it would be interesting to see what the results of that would be. However there are always free radicals, most of them criminals, but some of them have certainly changed how we view the world, I dread to think how poorly we would be off without Einstein (of whose views I mostly correspond to), Stephen Hawking, or Martin Luther King Junior.

I suppose I invoked somewhat of a Godwin-esque approach with the Hitler/Stalin dialogue, but it wasn't intended. Although it would be short sighted to say the the Crusades would have never happened if somebody else besides Pope Clement the II had risen to power in his place. It may be a Chaos Theory approach, but I'm pretty sure given the nature of the situation, the Holocaust would have happened sooner or later, Hitler or not. Oddly enough, I'm not sure which I find more disturbing, the Holocaust itself or Christianity's silent approval.

[Vertex]

Originally Posted by Toki

Well, okay... taking your view point, its can still be logical to do a great many hurtful things to society. It would be logical if China decided to throw a couple of nukes our way, to respond with equal or greater force. Yet, it wouldn't make the situation better... more than likely it would kill us all. I'm not trying to use scare tactics, it's probably a bad example, but you get my point.

I would argue that this is not an example of a "logical" retaliation. What says we absolutely have to retaliate with greater force? We do that because we want to survive and uphold some degree of power, and so that in itself might be a "logical" or "reasonable" response when looking at it from a human's survival standpoint. However, there is nothing objectively logical that says we have to do anything. When it comes to irrefutable logic, that's where math and science step in. The answers to such questions will always be the same. The same cannot be said for a "moral" situation that can be said to be the result of a "logical or reasonable" action.

Originally Posted by Toki

I think "Science doesn't pertain to morality" is perhaps a dubious statement. I'm not stupid, I know that Atheism doesn't mean you'll go off and sodomize goats and then cleave off the skull of your neighbor because he seems to have taken a creepy shining to your daughter. Rather, its a fallacy within religion to think that the religious are morally superior; since morality is something that is deeply tied into us on a biological level. I'm not sure a study could be conducted to tell us whether institutions such as the Church lead to less crime than someone who relies on institutions such as a School Counselor, but it would be interesting to see what the results of that would be. However there are always free radicals, most of them criminals, but some of them have certainly changed how we view the world, I dread to think how poorly we would be off without Einstein (of whose views I mostly correspond to), Stephen Hawking, or Martin Luther King Junior.

Absolutely, but my point is that an atheist shouldn't factor emotion or morality at all into his belief system for the universe. A scientific explanation is stone-cold regardless of how we feel. For example, we cannot "wish" the afterlife into existence. We may base a religion around the notion of an afterlife, or may even find the idea comforting. Doesn't make it true. Same thing with a moral decision. Morality is a system we've come up with as humans in order to maintain certain stable, utility-maximizing optima. That's ALL morality is. And none of it has anything to do with scientific explanation or logic.

[Toki]

Originally Posted by Vertex

Absolutely, but my point is that an atheist shouldn't factor emotion or morality at all into his belief system for the universe. A scientific explanation is stone-cold regardless of how we feel. For example, we cannot "wish" the afterlife into existence. We may base a religion around the notion of an afterlife, or may even find the idea comforting. Doesn't make it true. Same thing with a moral decision. Morality is a system we've come up with as humans in order to maintain certain stable, utility-maximizing optima. That's ALL morality is. And none of it has anything to do with scientific explanation or logic.

You can be moral and logical, but I'm not sure its such a great idea to be logical without morality, or moral without logic... any way you look at it, you're right that it has very little to do with science itself.

Science has very little to do with religion, none, in fact. So I fail to see the need to express one's views so bluntly without it having been a moral conundrum and not a scientific one... just to put that out there...