The 31 Questions

Just so you can find these 31 questions for atheists, here is a link.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessmom/2018/03/31-questions-for-atheists/

It is much important to know what we believe than what we do not believe. Many atheist get stuck at this point. They stop believing what were traditional beliefs, and get hung up there. That is not part of the 31, but is necessary. So here is some additional questions, supplemental (s).

s1. What do I/You believe? Well that has been changing, ratcheting better, or at least changing, cleaning out stuff that is not right. More work is required.

s2. Where do beliefs come from? Traditionally from the previous generation, who often clam divine source, or mystics;  that but the only logical place is reason, derived from what society is or should be. But beware of the 20% or so psychopaths and 20% or so extreme altruistic, both of which will take everything from you. So healthy society is not much of a majority, if it even is a majority when we consider the recluses and similar... so we are left with our own reasoning, and/or our assent to others reasoning. More work is required.

s3. So what do I/You believe now? Within the circle of what might be lies a small circle of that which is. That is necessary and sufficient for life. It must be true, and there must be evidence for and no evidence against. The evidence must be admissible in court, that is physical, first person witness, science opinion, or the lowest form, expert witness. Hearsay, and old books are not admissible. More work is required.

s4. So what metaphysical do I/You believe? Well if it is a physical object, it is real. Consciousness, that skill or ability to understand, to reason, to assent or reject concepts is real, but has no physical existence, hence cannot survive end of life. Consciousness is dependent on life, as is reasoning. Life is therefore the prime value, and those things that support life follow closely as the good, those things that oppose are bad. That is the foundation for morality, along with the concept of equality. Neither be nor make a slave of anyone. More work is required.

s5. So what is your/our epistemology? I think therefore I am. Identity, consciousness, logic/reason, Identification, existence. We have complete control over the power to assent to a concept. Little else. Nothing else, do we have complete control over. Our conscious can generate concepts, or fails to generate, our memory can recall them, or perhaps not, but we have the complete power to assent or reject. More work is required.

s6. So what are your/our ethical foundation? Neither be nor make a slave of anyone, on a foundation of truth, prudence, knowledge, wisdom, production, justice, a virtue based ethics, based on political equality. More work is required.

s7. So what does your/our value hierarchy look like? Well my life is the number one, and it goes on from there. More work is required.

s8. So what do I/You call this belief system?  The working name is realism, but whatever will work.

 

Existentism

Warning: Streak of consciousness, not ordered.

I exist therefore existentism, what a concept! Well not really, but perhaps existentialism. But there is a problem with that word, as it is being used for various different philosophies, some of which are not very logical or very real. Ayn Rand wanted to use the word for what eventually became known as objectivism, but all these are just handles for concepts. I think therefore I am. Identity, consciousness, logic, identity again, existence. So life become our most valuable attribute, and the effect on our live is what all my decisions could be based on. Could, not should nor are. It is just a concept.    

Overeating. What act, though, chemical, transforms what is voluntary in most people into compulsively involuntary act/behavior? Serotonin, Dopamine, Endorphins. So perhaps I need to avoid eating any of those or their precursors. What would that look like? Fasting. Not going to happen. 

space.

Within the great circle of all that might be lies the smaller circle of that which is. There is where we need to reside, in reality.

space. 

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616. 

To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?

To be means doing, without the doing, there is no being. That is our first choice, and having made that choice, we are responsible. Cool. Yet only some things are up to us, others are not. What a knot! To realize that the only thing we have complete control over our is our thoughts, and that this I is only consciousness, and yet thoughts just come, or not, and that is not in our control, it is easy to see that control is just a illusion... We, the consciousness,... only have influence over our self, not real control. We do seem to have control over the power of assent, that is to agree with or reject the agreement with the thought... well some of the time only. At other times the assent just happens, not by choice, but by failure to reject and replace the unwanted thought with a action that prevents the what the mind says is the desired action. I am talking about eating. One solution is to keep on doing something, but the body gets tired. and hence to sleep, and perchance dream of food...likely dream of food.  

Living and thinking within the small circle of that which is, within knowledge and evidence, within necessary and sufficient, without any contraindicating evidence is not simple. We live in a sea of evil people, of psychopaths, and altruistics changing the rules. Do gooders, collecting, helping those who do not want to do anything productive, and expecting us to support them. I pay taxes, that meets any perceived obligation to help others. In fact there is no obligation.  Somehow, to live this way, we must make our way through this mass of humanity without running over any, and not crashing into any or as few as possible. Are the rewards worth the battle? Why should I care how many I just run over? Aristotle stated that virtue, the correct choice lies between the extremes, but provides no guides to how to make the choice. This could be taken that any choice between the extremes id virtue, even oscillating. We are individuals, brought to life by others, without regard to our desires. It is up to us to take advantage of this opportunity or not, nobody cares after a while. It does not matter.

There are people who live there life's without knowing the dividing line between that which is and that which might be. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway. It does not matter.    

Limit our Exposure

It is practical and necessary for each of us to limit our involvement in life to those things that we value and consider important. Each of us do these things, but some people do not seem to be able to mind only there own affairs. Those who keep sticking there nose in where it does not belong can find that there time goes, and they miss out on other things because they were minding others affairs, not there own. It is a bad habit of some people, and a bad ethical concept for others. They seem to think it is a virtue to be concerned with others, and what is going on in the lives of others, all while ignoring there own life. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.

[Aside.  "Sticking your nose in where it does not belong" was/is a archery fault, a bit of bad form, of struggling to aim, where one is using arrow aiming methods. The archers head is turned into the string, and the result is a the string brushes the nose. The expression has found other uses elsewhere in the modern lexicon.] 

In the Christian Mythology there is a "ethical principal" that says something like "Do not judge lest you be judged." That is likely bullshit or out of context, for judging is an essential of rational thinking and or rational living. Every action, though, contemplated action, and concept need to be evaluated and judged. Some thing are wrong but necessary to do, as defense of our country, jailing people for bad or unsocial behavior, but there is little choice. The world is overpopulated when we look at the Co2 curve as a measurement of the earth's carrying capacity, but such judgement are necessary in a rational life. If you wish to live and die "as the lilies of field", that is another matter. Judging is one of the cardinal virtues, and deserves much more attention as a skill than it typically gets.

[ Aside: I use the term bullshit in its formal definition here, the author does not know or even care it the fact expressed is true of false, fact or fiction.]

Altruism is another bullshit christian principal. We have no duty or obligation toward support of others in this mixed society. We have a duty to allow others to work and do legal things to support themselves within our planned society, and not harm or abuse them, but if they choose to not work, they have the right to starve or to be shot, if they choose to rob. We have a duty to help support our family, and to help them along, provided they are trying. We have no duty to help along an alcoholic, drug addict, gambler, the abusive or those of other deviant or foolish behaviors. They are on there own, but we may have a duty to provide guidance, if they wish to change.

[ Aside: without the right to protect the property that we have obtained by our efforts, our human rights, our individual right to our property is undermined. Without identity, we have no human rights. I think the Canadian government is not correct in this matter. ]

Growing up in a christian community is not a good thing, if you wish to live in a ethical atheist community as an adult. Sound atheist ethics requires a lot of study to develop, much more that the sloppy christian concepts that one is to "just take on faith". Christians are not much for explaining, likely because there is not logic to support many of there claims. Atheist ethics requires that we understand that "truth must have evidence, logic and reason", not just be written in some old book. Knowledge and truth requires evidence, and religions are judged to be short on evidence and truth. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.  

Philosophy of Life

We all have a philosophy of life whether we know it or not. It can be conscious or unconscious, subconscious. Parts may have been conscious when we learned them, and go quickly into the subconscious. Either way, we are still responsible for what we believe. If we have any free will at all, it must include the decision to accept what we are told to believe, at least once we are financially free of those who forced wrong concepts into our minds in our youth. Yes, some of what we were taught was wrong.

Bringing our philosophy of life to the conscious is really what developing a philosophy is really all about. 

So the foundation or metaphysics and epistemology of the philosophy, include our identity, existence, existence of what we see and assumed reliability of our physical perceptions, our conscious, reason and reasoning. My physiology does not include anything from the mystics, or religion anymore.

Our ethics can be based on anything from the mystics, religion, parents or reason and logic. Cleaning of my ethics of all some non-logical bullshit has been and is an process, which may still be ongoing. It is the process of identifying an underlying premise, and applying reason, one line at a time. It is an ongoing process. Often it is seeing something that is not right, and applying a rational look at the situation. Some acts are not illegal, but are just foolish. Sexting, drinking, drugs, sex in any form outside of a committed relationship, hitchhiking, and the like are just plain foolish, hoping nothing bad happens. This places a whole bunch of things on the do not do list.

What do we base our ethics on? Justice. Do not make a slave out of anyone, nor allow yourself to become a slave. I escaped from being raised a agricultural family slave in my youth. I escaped from the religious slavery of altruism like thinking, where I allowed others to take advantage of me, without proper compensation, and I used junk equipment that requires a floating ax+b calibration factor, that is not much better than estimating from experience. We did testing as directed by the client, not necessarily as it should be done. Not something that is good ethically, but we got paid, it generated revenue, that was the only reason to keep on doing it. For the money. There was much of the engineering done for that reason, little more, according to the client. Some understood the value of what we did, and looked for values provided. To others, it was just necessary. Oh well, I survived and retired.

Justice is the act of fairness in all our trading, buying and or selling. It is the foundation of our ethics, along with our hierarchy of values. We need to place ourselves higher on the list than others, self-interest above altruism. Objectives makes this point, but Ayn grew up under Stalin, but religions also have this others first view, that is often taken to far, and self-interest must come before altruism to avoid self-sacrifice. Doing for others after we are taken care of, and without risk to ourselves is proper to do, but do not let others take advantage of us is important, essential for self esteem and confidence necessary for the good life. Oh well.       

Reality vs Objectivism

As with any developed philosophy of life, until one has made the error often, one does not see the error. Ayn Rand plagiarized the core, built on it but failed to live it completely. In the end she took social assistance, she took legal speed for thirty years, smoked and died of lung cancer. If our life is the highest ideal, and one should not do anything that damages that, like drugs, what was she doing? Preaching, but not living the philosophy. Her ability to stay on a high horse is less than ideal.

When we go dissecting her philosophy, one line at a time, it contains some good concepts, and some lesser ones. Her take on altruism being lower on the hierarchy of values than self interest is useful and more proper than "doing for others" at considerable personal cost to ourselves is good. It represents the same behavior but without the guilt. After taking care of ourselves we are still free to do for others. The effect is the same but without the guilt. The Churches and Buddhist get around this by providing a join to grave support for the members of their clergy or monks, but not for the people.  

Moving reason, rational process, perception, evidence based decisions and thinking into the foundational layers of the process of a life well lived reorders our thinking a bit. Placing equality in our interactions, and production as the primary virtue modernizes the approach, matching more closely with what I observe as reality.

I struggle with taking the better of short and long term decisions, as short term may be all we have, but that also has drawbacks. Long term is more important, but habit is hard to give up. I would eat the marshmallows. Too many years of being letdown by parents will train that into a person at a young age. The promise would not be fulfilled, when it came time for delivery of the prize, it would be gone. Such is life, oh well, get over it. It was more about lack of trust than putting off reward. Too often the reward never comes, and we end up feeling just used.

But what do I know.  

The Virtue of Selfishness

What a title? Gets the dander of any altruistic person right up. Piques the interest.  Yet the philosophy of Ayn Rand, when we come to understand it, is more truthful and realistic that any other that I have read about. It provides a rational basis for values that they (we) hold. The stoics say that virtue is the highest value, which to Rand is further down the list. Reality, rationality, selfishness, that is the primacy of our existence, come first.

Well, are we not supposed to altruistic, that is doing for others? Well, even when we do something for others, we are doing it for how we feel after, the warm glow of doing something for others, even when they did not want what you did. Well, do not expect to be thanked to much, you were/are forcing the potentially unwanted onto others. That is not just. that is not fair, unless they wanted it. How many of you have old aunts, grandparents, etc. Push food much?

Selfishness actually means, in this case, concern with one's own interests. What else should we be concerned with? We need to learn to mind our own business, rationally know what is in our best interests, our own purpose, which should be, first, take care of ourselves. There is no moral judgement in this statement, it does not state what is in mans interests either, that is for ethics. We humans are equal, and that is the foundation for justice, not privilege of others over us, nor for us to enslave others. That is the danger to both sides. Being both a atheists and into objectivism is difficult; being an objectivist is automatically atheist and supernatural or god shit is not rational. There is nothing in those things to be objective about. So perhaps I have moved from an atheist to being one of the collective.

The collective is what Ayn called here group, or followers, or cult...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFoUeE2iKtA

Ethics... for the good times

Ethics for the good time do not require as many hard decisions. The decisions usually do not hurt much, so as a result, they are easier to make. Problems arise when there are no good choices, as in the case of Saskatchewan Stanley. 

Consider the coming problem of derivative of climate change, the rise in Co2 level. Ultimately the correct answer is that the earth cannot handle more than about 4 billion people, and we are approaching 8 billion. Perhaps that 4 billion can be increased if we start some organic form of carbon capture, shallow unpreserved burial or sky burial, or a mound burial culture, may be one of the many partial solutions. A whole lot less children. Perhaps less active medical care. Perhaps allow the sick to die naturally. Allow natural death, as opposed to do not resuscitate. AND DNR.

So who will have the political will to actively consider such public policy? Consider the Co2 rise problem. We humans and our plants and animals now produce something like 98 percent of all the organic carbon dioxide production, and almost all of the non-organic Co2 production. Our plants also use Co2 some of the time, and that can be increased considerably in some areas. Farm land capture of Co2 may be the most effective means of reducing Co2, but conservation is still required. This will require on land water capture as well.

If equality and justice is taken as the foundation of ethics, then big changes in lifestyle must also occur for the rich, with their big well heated houses with nobody living in it, or one or two people in five or six thousand square feet. This suggests that there should be rationing of carbon products, rationed by need, not our ability to buy.

There is always the possibility of new technology, which must be considered, but that also cannot be counted on.

So when things are going wrong, and we are being violated, what is the right action? Should we shoot in self defense, property defense or let them steal? It is noted that in the original native cultures, it was not wrong to take from others when you were in need.

The philosophers cannot agree on what the foundation of ethics is. It is not the choice of bad verses good, not as MacQuirrie suggests right and wrong, but the shotgun clause. One sets the price, the other chooses buy or sell, usually for share prices of business in dissolution or the value of common assets in divorce. There is nothing better for selecting ethics. It must be agreeable to both sides.

So what am I saying? we must be both willing to do and be done to, and not do and not being done to. The golden law in reverse and in the negative, and all must be enlightened and equal else all is failure.

The Saskatchewan natives are getting uppity, and that will need to be addressed. Europe is being taken over with Muslim hoards, Canada is not far behind. Expect unrest in countries of two diverse cultures. I am glad that I am old, and lived at the peak of civilization. Oh well, in the end we all just die anyway.