Born_in_Crewe
Member
I have started to write a brief essay outlining some of the problems with rationalism and these are my main points so far.
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One of the problems I think there is in Western Christianity, is that defenders of the faith focus solely on doing just that but neglect to attack (in the intellectual sense) the beliefs of the atheists.
For example, and this is perhaps my main point, they say you cannot prove God but if you remove God from the equation, you also cannot prove there is a point to life. This leads to the problem of whether it is rational to go on living a pointless life, especially when you die anyway?
Most of them believe in morality, that there are some things which are ''good'' and some which are ''bad'', but they don't believe in a transcendental creator of that morality but still believe in transcendental morality that applies to all humans. This is illogical for, if there is no ultimate standard of morality, then it becomes one person's opinion versus another person's opinion. As one of my acquaintances put it, ''They behave better than they believe''.
People will make the argument that what is helpful is ''good'' and what is harmful is ''bad'', but what if the person has done something which deserves punishment and hurting them is helpful to me?
The problem with moral relativism is that it can itself become fundamentalism, i.e. if you say anything goes (up to a certain point) then that itself is setting a moral standard by drawing a line.
If nothing is a sin, then saying something is a sin, is itself not sinful because there is no such thing as sin.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
One of the problems I think there is in Western Christianity, is that defenders of the faith focus solely on doing just that but neglect to attack (in the intellectual sense) the beliefs of the atheists.
For example, and this is perhaps my main point, they say you cannot prove God but if you remove God from the equation, you also cannot prove there is a point to life. This leads to the problem of whether it is rational to go on living a pointless life, especially when you die anyway?
Most of them believe in morality, that there are some things which are ''good'' and some which are ''bad'', but they don't believe in a transcendental creator of that morality but still believe in transcendental morality that applies to all humans. This is illogical for, if there is no ultimate standard of morality, then it becomes one person's opinion versus another person's opinion. As one of my acquaintances put it, ''They behave better than they believe''.
People will make the argument that what is helpful is ''good'' and what is harmful is ''bad'', but what if the person has done something which deserves punishment and hurting them is helpful to me?
The problem with moral relativism is that it can itself become fundamentalism, i.e. if you say anything goes (up to a certain point) then that itself is setting a moral standard by drawing a line.
If nothing is a sin, then saying something is a sin, is itself not sinful because there is no such thing as sin.
