Atheists, do you agree with this?

[Tank]

Incidentally, why don't any of you guys agree with this? Why not live for yourself?

Because we're not fucking wankers.

That's the best reply so far, in the least amount of words.  I believe that qualifies for extra points.

Why thank you Miss Sandy 

[Stevil]

I'm convinced that animals such as chimps and dolphins feel empathy similar to ours if not the same, I'm just not as much with others. Could be the same sort of empathy we feel, or some different form of empathy, I don't know. I'm basing this claim (though it's speculation on my part) on the differences in brain structure, parts and complexity.

I suspect most, if not all animals, exhibit empathetic qualities.
When I was young, I used to go hunting with my slug gun. My parents own a Kiwifruit orchard, so there were plenty of birds to shoot.
The wax-eyes were plentiful, choosing to live in groups


I would shoot many of them.

One day I noticed, although most flew away after taking a shot, a few stayed around, seemingly concerned for the one I shot.
Not long after I lost interest in killing birds and prefered to shoot at inanimate targets.

[Stevil]

With regards to the concept of the soul and it being the source of things such as consciousness, empathy, personality or memories, there is no evidence to back up this claim.

I think of the soul as a highlevel conceptual model grouping other concepts together. Consciousness, empathy, personality and memories are all just highlevel concepts themselves.
These concepts allow us in our simplistic ways to understand highly complex systems.
To the average person the detailed view is almost meaningless. Firing synapsis, chemical reactions, brain structure, genetics, social, cultural, parental, peer, nutritional, situational influences all combining to influence our soul and its conceptual building blocks.
Nutritionists, Psychologists, Biologists, Sociologists are all make progress in our further understandings of the root cause of certain behavioural traits.

Theologists however continue to adhere to the metaphysical soul and suggest that it is influenced by all of the above but still exists as a seperate entity.
This is the magical thing about theology, as long as they stay in the conceptual realm promoting certain concepts as metaphysical then they can never be proven wrong, they always have an answer for everything. Never a need to research and discover.

[Sandra Craft]

Because we're not fucking wankers.

That's the best reply so far, in the least amount of words.  I believe that qualifies for extra points.

Why thank you Miss Sandy 

I love conciseness.  If I had my way, political speeches would be confined to haiku.

Theologists however continue to adhere to the metaphysical soul and suggest that it is influenced by all of the above but still exists as a seperate entity.
This is the magical thing about theology, as long as they stay in the conceptual realm promoting certain concepts as metaphysical then they can never be proven wrong, they always have an answer for everything. Never a need to research and discover.

I agree with this, and with the part I snipped for the sake of brevity.  I think theologists operate on a need for certainty, and specialness, which I can understand in a way but for me the research and discover are the fun parts.

[xSilverPhinx]

I'm convinced that animals such as chimps and dolphins feel empathy similar to ours if not the same, I'm just not as much with others. Could be the same sort of empathy we feel, or some different form of empathy, I don't know. I'm basing this claim (though it's speculation on my part) on the differences in brain structure, parts and complexity.

I suspect most, if not all animals, exhibit empathetic qualities.
When I was young, I used to go hunting with my slug gun. My parents own a Kiwifruit orchard, so there were plenty of birds to shoot.
The wax-eyes were plentiful, choosing to live in groups


I would shoot many of them.

One day I noticed, although most flew away after taking a shot, a few stayed around, seemingly concerned for the one I shot.
Not long after I lost interest in killing birds and prefered to shoot at inanimate targets.

Firstly let me say that I don't know if other animals have human-like empathy I'm just speculating, but "seemingly concerned for the one I shot" isn't necessarily an indicator of is concerned. But I don't know. Maybe it really is empathy. Or just curiosity, or feelings of protectiveness that made them stick around to check up on the bird. 

In humans, for instance, there are people who can be altruistic, but lack genuine empathy, such as those on the autistic spectrum. Others, such as psychopaths don't have empathy and a weird sort of more selfish "altruism", if they have that at all. Some of the most common causes of this is the lack of mirror neurons in autistics and an under developed or lesioned temporal front lobe in psychopaths.

The temporal frontal lobe is a more sophisticated evolutionary occurence, which is why I'm slightly skeptical as to if animals other than humans, have the same type of empathy. 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Rush makes some great music.  "No one else worth living for" ... perhaps, that's debateable.  But the OP's actual mistake is assuming that this song is addressing faith, or its lack.  The song is addressing the social pressures to altruism, which is an entirely different thing.

Know your place in life is where you want to be
Don't let them tell you that you owe it all to me
Keep on looking forward...no use in looking 'round
Hold your head above the ground and they won't bring you down

[Chorus:]
Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
The wonders of the world, wonders of the world
Wonders of the world they wrought

Live for yourself...there's no one else
More worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more

[Chorus]

Well, I know they've always told you
Selfishness was wrong
Yet it was for me, not you, I came to write this song

[Chorus]

Wrought
Wrought

The equation of altruism with religion is fallacious, anyway. 

[DeterminedJuliet]

Incidentally, why don't any of you guys agree with this? Why not live for yourself?

Because we're not fucking wankers.

This made me lol enough to cause my husband to ask what was so funny.

[Tank]

Incidentally, why don't any of you guys agree with this? Why not live for yourself?

Because we're not fucking wankers.

This made me lol enough to cause my husband to ask what was so funny.

Did it make him giggle to?

[Gawen]

Live for yourself...there's no one else
More worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more

Basically, do you agree with this little snatch of RUSH ANTHEM (rock on). The lyrics of this song
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/rush/anthem.html were written by an Atheist, and portray his Atheist view on things. And you?

No

[DeterminedJuliet]

Incidentally, why don't any of you guys agree with this? Why not live for yourself?

Because we're not fucking wankers.

This made me lol enough to cause my husband to ask what was so funny.

Did it make him giggle to?

Haha, it did. And then he said "I love how British this forum of yours, is."

[Sandra Craft]

Did it make him giggle to?

Haha, it did. And then he said "I love how British this forum of yours, is."

It does classy up the place.

[The Magic Pudding]

Stop fawning on the Brits, don't you know they're all so, so, so, oh I'll let Otto tell you.

Otto: You know your problem? You don't like winners.
Archie: Winners?
Otto: Yeah. Winners.
Archie: Winners, like North Vietnam?
Otto: Shut up. We didn't lose Vietnam. It was a tie!
Archie: [going into a cowboy-like drawl] I'm tellin' ya baby, they kicked your little ass there. Boy, they whooped yer hide REAL GOOD.

Otto: You pompous, stuck-up, snot-nosed, English, giant, twerp, scumbag, fuck-face, dickhead, asshole.
Archie: How very interesting. You're a true vulgarian, aren't you?
Otto: You are the vulgarian, you fuck.

Otto: I'm here because I'm bored. Bored hanging around this God-awful city. Shoving George's ugly pic... Talking to a lot of snotty, stuck up, intellectual British faggots. Jesus they're uptight they get rigor mortis in the prime of life in this country, standing there with their hair clenched.
Otto: [finds a letter from Archie to Wanda] Just, counting the seconds to the weekends so they can all dress up like ballerinas and whip themselves into a frenzy at the flat at 4. 2B St.
Otto: [recovering] To be honest I hate them. I mean pretending they're so fucking lawyer.
Otto: [recovering again] superior, so fucking superior with those phony accents.

[Pharaoh Cat]

I seriously considered becoming evil - which is where an undeluded (and undiluted) ethic of egoism leads - but I couldn't bring myself to do it for three reasons:

1. My daughters, sister and cousin/best friend would turn against me.
2. I'm too compassionate to be ruthless.
3. I hate bullies too much to take up their methods.

You'll notice there aren't any moral principles cited.  I don't have any moral principles in the normal sense.  But the above would be enough, under extreme conditions, to launch me into the deeds of a hero, albeit an inept one. 

The flaw in Ayn Rand's rhetoric (not really her thought, just the way she presented it sometimes) was that she liked to say her philosophy was as follows:

Metaphysics: Reality
Epistemology: Reason
Ethics: Self-Interest
Politics: Capitalism

The above is misleading.  Her idea of an ethic of self-interest was to uphold not only her own self-interest but yours too.  Thus the principles of justice and liberty were always counter-weights against ruthlessness.  (Justice and liberty are what you end up promoting if you uphold the self-interest of any and every rational being, rather than merely your own.)

Where she went truly off course was her belief that she could derive self-interest using reason alone; I.e., objectively.  This was nonsense and is always nonsense whenever anyone attempts it.  Objectivity can derive needs from the perspective of suvival - but needs aren't the sum total of self-interest.  There are also wants, hopes, fears, preferences - in a word, "values," and values cannot be derived objectively, for they arise out of nothing other than subjectivity.  She eventually did what is always done by people who attempt what she was attempting - she began trying to defend rationally, objectively, her purely subjective wants, hopes, fears, and preferences.  Psychologists call this "rationalizing."  It leads to making nonsensical excuses for ruthless or self-sabotaging behavior, when the real reason you're doing the thing is because you want to, or you fear the alternative.  Rand's notion of a moral obligation to smoke cigarettes is a classic example.

[DeterminedJuliet]

There was a poster who used to frequent here named Medusa. She considered herself a Satanist and your "code" sounds somewhat similiar to hers.

[Pharaoh Cat]

There was a poster who used to frequent here named Medusa. She considered herself a Satanist and your "code" sounds somewhat similiar to hers.

Yes!  I noticed her on a few threads.  I hope she comes back.  She and I would likely be compatible on a number of fronts.

It's actually the goody-goody aspects of the Church of Satan that turn me off, odd as that may sound - or at least their goody-goody public face.  For example, they tend to present themselves as passionately (instead of merely prudently) law-abiding.  They tend to speak of children in worshipful tones, whereas many children are brats and many others would become brats if their parents allowed them to.  On the other hand, they staunchly defend animal rights, and there I agree with them whole-heartedly, because I want animals to be happy.

Also, their elitism and misanthropy are ridiculous, when you consider that none of the public ones are anywhere near the top of the politico-economic food chain, nor are any of the public ones Olympic athletes or winners of the Nobel Prize.  If you're going to act like you're better than the rest of us then you need to actually be better than the rest of us.  But if we probe, we discover their elitism and misanthropy are centered largely on their conviction that atheists (which all of the public ones profess to be) are the cream of the crop of humanity while theists are so putrid as to be inferior to any gibbon or orangutan in the vicinity.

Finally, their insistence that a human is "just another animal" is only to be taken seriously if we agree likewise that Michael Jordan is "just another basketball player."  I agree the difference between humans and other creatures is one of degree rather than kind, but that difference of degree is so extreme in some instances that any phrase like "just another" is ridiculous.  Again, the difference is one of degree rather than kind.  Nevertheless, I don't see any gibbons building rockets to the moon nor any orangutans tracking the speed of neutrinos, nor can either creature drive a car, read a book or learn arithmetic.  We have powers that never existed before we brought them forth unto the universe.  Taken collectively we are like gods compared to all else that frequents jungle or sea.  I say this knowing full well that taken individually and dropped all alone into the Amazon River some morning, many of us would be dead before nightfall, a meal for reptiles and insects.  This is another reason why elitism and misanthropy are ridiculous.  Alone most humans can accomplish almost nothing.  It is in the collective that we find our supremacy among the beasts.