Your old pal Frish has been attacked by posters on a completely different blog, where he was explaining his Volunteer status.
Another poster, Chuck A, posted this most marvelous explanation of what is seen by some on that blog (it is of by and for atheists) to be my very own "irrational" or "hypocritical" stance, of living on with my life while denying life to any offspring, and espousing the view that humanity is doomed, regardless of any solution (that has yet to be) offered:
To weigh down a comment Frish made (excerpted below) with even more verbiage...
Humans aren't just individuals, we are highly social animals.
What we choose to define as either good or evil are - primarily, but not exclusively - both the product and the means by which we interact with our fellow humans.
Out of this ever-changing and never-ending struggle to balance our individual needs and desires with our need to remain a functional part of our social milieu(s), we develop ethics, morals, our sense of right and wrong.
Many societies have chosen over the millennia to ascribe their "codes" of right and wrong to the will of some sort of deity or deities. This (it is widely believed) lends greater weight to the value of the social code, and helps to regulate behavior and impose sanctions for violations of the code.
Atheists have - I would assume - realized that all such moral codes are in reality created by humans such as themselves, and no deities need apply for sponsorship of the values of their own as well as any other society on this planet, past, present or future.
To fully realize that WE have created our own codes of ethics and morality is NOT to negate the individual or group need for such codes. It is to realize that the responsibility for all such codes has always and will always be the responsibility of every individual, acting both individually and in concert with others.
In other words, WE all know that we have to act both for our own personal betterment and for the betterment of society. This need and this realization is "built into" us by some 3 million years of natural selection working on us to mould us into highly social, symbol creating/using par excellance, animals.
So it should not surprise anyone that someone who feels that humanity, en masse, is currently making so many behavioral mistakes that it will soon drive itself into extinction, will simultaneously feel the need to modify and control his own behavior so as to cause the least harm to others and to other life forms on the planet. After all, he could be wrong: humanity might survive despite the bad odds our moral individual beholds, and he wants humanity and/or the other earthly life forms to have the best possible chance for success.
Only an amoral person - or more accurately, a sociopath - which nearly all theists believe that all atheists truly are (whatever either group claims to "believe"), would use this pessimistic (or grimly realistic) vision for the future as personal license to do anything he wants to anyone/anything he wants, anytime he wants. Thoughtful atheists know they don't need the imaginary club of eternal damnation to behave in a socially responsible manner.
As someone recently paid to advertise on city buses (in England, I believe), "Just be good for goodness sake."
That's what it really boils down to.
yours,
Chuck A
At 07:58 PM 2/23/2009, frish wrote:
Because, dear Dima, we are moral creatures and almost all of us act morally (within our cultural teachings) almost all of the time. God isn't necessary for that, and I, within what I know to be moral, won't act as you suggest either.(Dima had suggested, that, if I'm right and we're all doomed, why not just ignore our carbon footprint and do whatever we wish. I'm no hermit, but I also know that having no offspring is the best I can do for the rest of life, and it reduces the numbers who will suffer when the biosphere no longer supports our species. That's my moral stance, as Chuck A has so beautifully amplified. Frish)
