The Atheist 22 Question Challenge

Over a year ago, there was a slight meme on YouTube with a 22 question challenge aimed at atheists. Since I’m all about not caring about the currency of my posts, I filed it away until today. I’m not even going to link to it since I’m not sure where the original video is.

Either way, this is a personal challenge for me in terms of terseness. Would love to know responses of others even if it’s just to 1 question that struck thy fancy.

1. Where do you get your morality from? Please explain your morality – I believe I get my morality same way as everyone else: from biological drives (various empathy instincts, a social brain, the ability to do some reasoning) combined with social drives. I generally lean towards some form of utilitarianism whilst recognising that this is very flawed and hence trying to improve my positions.
2. Why do you accept evolution? Explain how you came to your conclusions – Overwhelming consensus amongst relevant experts. I know a little bit about the theory, have done enough reading to see its consistency and the strength of the evidence, eg. geographic location of species, DNA evidence/cladistics, strata ordering of specimens etc.
3. What is the meaning & purpose of your life? – Nothing, to me the question is as ill-formed as “what is the maternal mortality rate of your life?” What I consider to be meaningful and purposeful for my life now is different to what I thought at 5 and will probably change as well. At the moment, enjoying life, learning new things, having a rich experience, making a positive difference and engaging in interesting projects are high priorities. But I could always become a warlord, who knows?
4. What is the greatest thing you have ever done for others? – Even though I haven’t yet donated that much to charity, the amount I’ve given over the years still far outweighs the fairly trivial things I’ve had the opportunity to do for people in person. Perhaps in all that time the money’s made a difference to saving one life, but I can’t vouch for this.
5. Would you KILL for atheism? – Only if ordered to do so in an official communication from RichardDawkins.net.
6. Why are you an atheist & consider your position valid? – I’ve never been convinced of any reason that any gods are more likely to exist than not.
7. If you died & discovered a God exist what would you say to he/she/it? – Fuck you. Couldn’t have told people to wash their hands a little sooner?
8. What religion is the most dangerous in your eyes today & in the past? – Islam. Christianity. Judaism. Hinduism. Sikhism. Buddhism. Today and in the past, but that was a list in roughly descending order, although in my mind all of these are not too far apart, especially the first 4.
9. Name 3 peaceful religions you have no issue with – I must follow the stereotype and say that have some issue with all of them. However, if most of the world converted to Jainism, Wicca or being a Quaker things will probably improve.
10. What would it take to believe in a God? – First, a coherent conception of what a god is. Then, evidence for this conception.
11. Would the world be a better place without religion? – Not enough information. If someone got rid of religion by murdering every believer then no. If religion faded out in a new era of compassion, reason and transhumanism then why even ask?!
12. How do you feel about government/politics – They’re generally pretty incompetent.
13. If you could go back in time & kill Hitler/Stalin as babies so they never kill the millions in the future, would you do it if time travel was possible? – I really find the answer that “you don’t know what will happen otherwise so you shouldn’t do it” ridiculous. Of course I’d try to stop it but I would try my hardest to do it without killing anyone. As per the Simpson’s episode, “can’t we just do something to his voicebox?”
14. Why is stem cell research so important? – Because degenerative diseases are disease.
15. Is abortion evil? – No, certainly not in the way this seemingly innocuous 3 word question frames it!
16. What would the circumstances need to be for you to approve of torture? – I doubt there are any practical ones. I could state something about the fate of the world provably hanging in the balance between torturing and not torturing someone but even talking about such a scenario unfairly places torture on the table as a real option?
17. Should we try to save animals from going extinct? – Depends on how hard it is and what the potential consequences are. Although we have a right as a species to decide we like biodiversity for the sake of aesthetics, I don’t see that as an absolute principle and some people take it way too far.
18. Do you approve of capital punishment?….explain – No, it’s almost certainly applied barbarously and unjustly not to mention being a huge drain on resources.
19. Do you believe in aliens, ghosts, spirits, Souls…any supernatural forces? – Nope.
20. Would you sacrifice yourself for a loved one….with the chance you may end up in hell for being atheist? – This question is really bizarre. What chance of ending up in hell? If I was already convinced there was a significant chance I would no longer be an atheist. I see what the attempt is but to answer the question properly requires amazing powers of double-think.
21. Explain in detail the process of death – Don’t know much about the biology of it. Best I can do is that the metabolism of the cells changes to the point where they can no longer maintain homeostasis and keep out entropy.
22. [Tricky one] Have you ever been dead? – Oh, I see what you did here! Very cl–actually, no, don’t see the point. I could pull out the Twain quote about being dead for millions of years but won’t. I’ll say to a certain extent yes: if you’ve been under general anesthetic that’s probably very close to death at least in terms of a total lack of conscious experience.

    The end!