atheist paradox

[Kidlicious]

You are an agnostic.

This doesn't follow from that statement.

I take my hat off to you if you aren't ashamed of any of your actions, and have no reason to be. I'm frequently ashamed. I use my shame to better myself. I think shame is a healthy emotion, like all of the emotions, if their message is listened to.

If you're ashamed that means that you already believe that your former self was wrong. You should just be ashamed of your present self since your future self is going to be ashamed of you.

[Giancarlo]

If you're ashamed that means that you already believe that your former self was wrong. You should just be ashamed of your present self since your future self is going to be ashamed of you.

You must live in constant shame.

[Dry]

You are an agnostic.

This doesn't follow from that statement.

I take my hat off to you if you aren't ashamed of any of your actions, and have no reason to be. I'm frequently ashamed. I use my shame to better myself. I think shame is a healthy emotion, like all of the emotions, if their message is listened to.

Maybe "any" wasn't indeed the right wording.

I'm done with shame about breaking some deity's law.
I am not done with shame regarding my own ethical rules, or offending other people.
The only people I feel accountable to are other earthly creatures (humans, animals,...), not any spiritual being.

Let me take an example:
I forgot someone's birthday.

In christianity, this is a reminder that I am an imperfect being. I know that is something JC would never have done. This means I am not yet at Jesus level when it comes to be thoughtful of others, I am not a good follower of JC.
Regardless of the feelings of the person who's birthday I forgot, I need to ask JC for forgiveness for this minor sin. Indeed, as Jesus died for my sins, he died for this little one too. And with all the shame of having hurt him once more, I need to ask him for forgiveness.

Without a deity to judge your actions, you are only accountable to people you interact with.
Some years ago, I forgot the birthday of an atheist friend of mine. Instead of being offended and asking/waiting for apologies, she laughed at my distraction and wasn't even offended.
It came as a shock to me that I hadn't to apologize for my forgetfulness. It wasn't offensive to anyone, I had no reason to feel ashamed.

When I am ashamed of some stupid action I did, it doesn't go beyond the realm of this reality. I am no more ashamed of having offended some celestial being because of my humanity.

[Elok]

... the form of Christianity you were raised in told you that naturally and honestly forgetting someone's birthday rises to the level of a sin? You westerners are frigging weird.

[Kidlicious]

... the form of Christianity you were raised in told you that naturally and honestly forgetting someone's birthday rises to the level of a sin? You westerners are frigging weird.

Of course it's a sin. Did you learn to forget people's birthdays? And you are afraid of your daughter marrying a Protestant.

[Kidlicious]

Maybe "any" wasn't indeed the right wording.

I'm done with shame about breaking some deity's law.
I am not done with shame regarding my own ethical rules, or offending other people.
The only people I feel accountable to are other earthly creatures (humans, animals,...), not any spiritual being.

Let me take an example:
I forgot someone's birthday.

In christianity, this is a reminder that I am an imperfect being. I know that is something JC would never have done. This means I am not yet at Jesus level when it comes to be thoughtful of others, I am not a good follower of JC.
Regardless of the feelings of the person who's birthday I forgot, I need to ask JC for forgiveness for this minor sin. Indeed, as Jesus died for my sins, he died for this little one too. And with all the shame of having hurt him once more, I need to ask him for forgiveness.

Without a deity to judge your actions, you are only accountable to people you interact with.
Some years ago, I forgot the birthday of an atheist friend of mine. Instead of being offended and asking/waiting for apologies, she laughed at my distraction and wasn't even offended.
It came as a shock to me that I hadn't to apologize for my forgetfulness. It wasn't offensive to anyone, I had no reason to feel ashamed.

When I am ashamed of some stupid action I did, it doesn't go beyond the realm of this reality. I am no more ashamed of having offended some celestial being because of my humanity.

I assume that you want to remember the birthdays of your friend's just like you don't want to get mad when they offend you and punch them in the face, which I'll assume that you would be ashamed of as they would be less likely not to be offended at. But it's likely that you will make the first "mistake" but not the latter. It basically comes down to the first mistake is easier to not do.

[Giancarlo]

Thank god I'm an atheist. So much language splicing and bull**** in religion. And Christians are the ultimate cherry pickers. The bible is a buffet. They pick out what they like and ignore the rest.

[Elok]

I'm just going to stick to quoting Lori and suchlike here.

I don't agree with onejayhawk's take that "faith" is sufficient criterion for religion, but I don't know that gods are either. The easiest counterexample would be something like Buddhism, or possibly some examples of animism.

My definition of religion is "a system of beliefs and practices centered on unfalsifiable claims about the fundamental nature of the universe." Something like that. I could probably phrase it more carefully to avoid catching hippies talking about "toxins," and Confucianism is hard to catch, but that's because Confucianism is bull****.

Damn Firefox doesn't recognize ANY spelling of "unprovable" or "unfalsifiable." Bugger their little red underline.

[Elok]

In all fairness, I should add that Confucianism is not nearly as bull**** as Daoism. Confucianism at least makes some kind of coherent claims. It may not be logically possible to be less coherent than the Daodejing--I think that's the Pinyin spelling, don't have time to check.

[spambot]

If Confucianism is bull****, that supports the claim that it's a religion!

[Lorizael]

The (Western) Medievals had a definite conception of a natural order acting at God's command but distinct from God. It was understood that God was somewhere behind the primum mobile (sp?), but everything within it progressed according to rules. Those rules, as they understood them, were fanciful to the point of outright silliness, but they were still definitely fixed rules. Earth naturally wanted to sink below water, which sought its place below air, then fire, etc. And everything below the moon is just crap. Whereas the Greeks believed that impersonal nature had spawned the Gods, the same as it had created humans, and those gods lived within it.

Are those both broadly similar to simulation, in your view? I don't see where the distinction lies here. Modern people do tend to have a vague sense of God as sort of hand-flappingly "out there," but I'd say this is more a manifestation of the Enlightenment's attitude towards religion--as a weird opinion that properly has no relevance beyond the individual--than a change in what people really believe. That is, everyone has been trained to tacitly think of religion as intrinsically "unreal," and this manifests in what one Orthodox priest calls "the two-story universe," with us stuck down here and God wandering around a mostly empty upper floor.

From what I can tell, simulation proponents largely believe that our universe is being simulated in a universe that is basically like ours. Someone is using (maybe a slightly deeper understanding of) physics to conjure our reality. There's nothing special about the simulators; they're just somewhere else and controlling the environment we're in. I suppose you can see this mirrored in both the medieval-ish and Greek-ish views, but in different ways.

The idea of generating a new reality in, say, a super advanced computer seems closer to the Christian god idea, because he's free to create any kind of reality he likes. But you run into the problem that this god is somehow the solution to the problem of infinite regress in a way that nothing else logically can be.

If reality is just some game being played, however, then you can imagine a "simulation" that's, well, fighters in a pit or a ball being tossed back in forth in some sports competition. And we're the ball. And that doesn't seem all that different from how Greek gods were portrayed in myth, Homer, etc, but it also doesn't sound exactly like a simulation.

[Elok]

The first one, if I'm following you, isn't describing a simulation at all. It's more conspiracy-theory than anything else, with a set of powerful people behind the scenes controlling everything.

[Lorizael]

Anything can be a simulation. https://xkcd.com/505/