The way I see it, we’ve got at least three different groups of people sharing several different points of view talking at cross purposes to one another on matters ethical / moral / spiritual / theological / religious,
Most of the time, they’re all in agreement on the same thing, but don’t want to admit this. Call it fear / pride / sheer ol’ stupidity, they generate heat and smoke while carefully obscuring their light.
The truth is everybody, including -- no, especially -- the most cynical / jaded evangelical materialist atheist possesses a religious belief.
Here is the religious belief of the current crop of evangelical atheists:
- Biological life arose from inorganic matter.
- Consciousness arose from biological life.
- Different conscious entities (call them minds, beings, humans, whatever) can compare notes on what they have observed happening around them.
- These notes, when compared and evaluated, present an objective view of reality.
You see the huge leap of faith expressed there, don’t you?
No?
Hardly surprised. This is another one of those “fish in water” moments where the folks possessing a certain mindset are completely obvious to the mindset they possess and so make assumptions based on presumptions that they can not objectively prove, and thus fail to realize: “Hey! We’re wet!!!”
Let’s stipulate for the purpose of this argument that yes indeedy, conscious independent entities we refer to as “human minds” exist; and that these human minds reflect back an accurate view of what they know of the world around them.
Well, these minds have observed and documented on numerous occasions that it is possible for a human mind to be deluded, psychotic, and hallucinating to the point where it can not distinguish between what the brain imagines and what is real.
There exists a very real possibility -- certainly too real to ignore -- that everything you experience is simply to product of your imagination and not a reflection of reality.
I don’t care how many rocks you pound with your walking stick; you still could be imagining it. And as to the logic of asking why you would imagine something that would harm you, psychotic and paranoid people fantasize things harming them all the time.
A maniac’s logic is logical to the maniac.
You materialists out there are taking, out of necessity, the biggest leap of faith imaginable, the leap that you can with any degree of certainty believe other conscious entities (i.e., minds, i.e., human beings) exist, much less interact with you in a way that represents reality. I’m not saying you’re wrong… I’m just pointing out it’s impossible to prove…
…and if you live your life as if it is true, that’s no different than any other religious belief.
art by R. Crumb