Atheists: What reason do you have to believe our conscience came from nothing?

Question

strawman argument? lol.

smirk, why did our conscience then tell us we should kill people, torture people, and rape them? Also, why does our conscience tell us we should care about surviving, if our lives are "meaningless?"

...but our brain came from, nothing, supposedly.

laws of physics came from nothing?

Atheists don't have to say it, they imply it through their belief in the Big Bang Theory... why should I even have to explain this?

Shawna: "Our conscience is just our thoughts........."

Wow. So what reason do you have to believe our thoughts came from nothing....

Rance: Of course they are processes. What reason do you have to believe these processes came from nothing?

Jeff, no one is asking you to know anything, you obviously believe they came from nothing though, as there is no creator.

Answer 1

our conscience is a combination of nature and nuture. By nature I mean evolution and by nurture I mean the way we are brought up and the morals and values our sociey has

I find it worrying that your belief in a god is the only thing stopping you from stealing, raping and murdering.

edit: if you have to add *that* many edits then perhaps your question made little sense in the first place.

Answer 2

Conscience is the evolution of reason. Since most Christians don't believe in evolution they cannot possibly understand that concept. Because we have brains large enough to have abstract thought, to question and to reason. Human beings have evolved into the creatures of conscience we are now. Oddly the very things that give us distinction above the lower animals is the one great weakness we use against each other. It is our ability to think, to reason and to creatively deduce, that has created both Christians and Atheist alike. It is just a matter of blind faith verses an inability to accept things on those terms. Neither is right, and neither is wrong, but they are both definitely human.

Answer 3

Well, for one, I don't believe it came from nothing. The conscience is completely based off the morals of society usually. The morals of society came from the urge for peace and order. Because what is 'morally wrong' generally caused chaos and disorder within society. It is to keep the Balance in a way.

Likewise, the conscience comes from what you believe or choose to believe. A person who believes piracy is only wrong if you don't get caught won't feel bad about illegally downloading overpriced software. A person who believes that they are helping society by killing somebody, a vigilante if you will, doesn't feel bad, because he deeply believes he's helping society.

Just because one does not believe in a God doesn't mean people cannot rationalize WHERE the conscience came from.

Answer 4

Short answer: because at some point, everything must either have came from nothing, or always been here.

Long answer: you appear to be presupposing a need for a god to exist in order to define right and wrong. I put it to you that that is not the case; and the rightness or wrongness of an action depends on its effects and nothing else.

In the case of predatory animals which live and hunt in packs, the most viable behaviour pattern for members of a pack is basically altruistic, with any transgressions punished swiftly and forgiveness offered as soon as "good" behaviour is resumed. Populations where many individuals exhibit selfish behaviour tend to die out rapidly. That is just mathematics; you can model it for yourself if you care, and you will find out that selfishness in individuals is fatal to populations.

Natural Selection, then, favours a particular behaviour pattern in pack-dwelling predatory animals -- by whatever mechanism it may be implemented. (All means to the same end are equally valid).

Since human beings *are* predatory animals who live and hunt in packs, it is unsurprising that we are biologically programmed to behave altruistically -- which manifests itself as conscience.

If there is some part of the above that you dispute, please explain and I will come back and edit my response.

Answer 5

Why are you dumb enough to think that atheists believe conscience comes from nothing? Who said that? No one.

No, conscience is societal driven. Human beings have NO natural defenses against predators so its in our best interest to survive as a race by cooperating with one another (for the most part. A little competition is never bad because it forces us to improve ourselves).

Thats NOT nothing, it just isn't a god.

Atheists don't "believe in nothing". They believe in many things. They just don't believe in came from a god.

Answer 6

It didn't come from nothing. It came from living in groups. Group protection help develop a conscience. A conscience helps us from harming the group in which we live and thus helps improve our own survival chances. Altruism and conscience are advantagous to our survival.

Answer 7

My conscience (i.e. morality) came from living in a society with other people. Firstly, being selfish, I want to be happy. I want to live a happy life. In order for my happiness, it was clear to me that other people would have to be nice to me (or, at least not cause me harm).

So- it's a pretty easy formation of morality to not cause harm to others. If we all live by this, it will be a better world for all of us.

nothing? I don't understand how 'nothing' comes into play here. Or, perhaps in your world some supernatural deity fills in the blanks for everything that you don't understand.

Answer 8

Another straw man argument......our conscience came from our brain.

edit: "Atheists don't have to say it, they imply it through their belief in the Big Bang Theory... why should I even have to explain this?"

LOL, your illogical claims made me laugh....thanks

First of all, believing or understanding the Big Bang is not a necessity of atheism, there is no particular belief where all atheist believe about the origins of the universe. In fact, there are more theists(in numbers, not in %),catholics in particular, that believes in the Big bang theory.

And secondly, the big bang theory doesn't claim that the universe came from nothing, but rather from something called the singularity(the pre-existing state of everything before time/space was created).

Please for the sake of not humiliating your fellow theists, understand more about atheism AND the Big bang.

Answer 9

You have obviously made up your mind already about this...so why ask? Well, I beg to differ with you...I believe you are talking about morals and not conscience. Morals are human concepts to preserve and propagate the species. Conscience is individual and driven by empathy -- and I know of many people who believe they are moral, but have no conscience -- no empathy.

Answer 10

Our conscience is just our thoughts. Sort of a debate between right and wrong. A person's sense of what's right and wrong comes from their individual life experiences, not from a god. BTW, I'm an agnostic, not an atheist but, I thought I'd answer anyway.