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[Thecard]

Er, we may need to watch the conversation.

I kinda agree with the eldritch abomination. This wasn't supposed to spark a religious debate, it was just a sadrant.

You wanna debate, fine. Just do it in the correct thread.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

"Everyone reads this book differently.  Some say it isn't worth reading, and cast it to the fire.  Therefore the book isn't real."

You can show me a book. Perhaps you can show me your god, but given the track record of people trying to show me their god I'm not holding my breath.

First of all, the bolded are your words, not mine.

Once again, what you have said makes no sense without the assumption. If nothing else, I hope you at least think you yourself believe something correct/correct-esq.

Second all, the fact that I don't need to be threatened with smiting or blessed with a payout doesn't make my belief less of a belief.

It's not even the reward/punishment of it, it's the nothingness you are ascribing to your deity. If it believes nothing, does nothing, and wants nothing, then I would venture to guess that it is, in fact, nothing.

Do you love someone in order to extract something from them?

Yes. And it's silly to say that I don't. Society is about giving and getting from other people to be where you want to be, and that includes love. I express love for my family to receive love in return, to share in my life in them, and even to get resources.

Unconditional love is a pretty bad thing to believe in. It's like the romantic "true love at first sight". It may sound good, but it's dysfunctional if the other parties don't believe it in exactly the same way you do, the odds of which are low. And even then, it remains dishonest. There is nobody in this world whom I love or hate without condition.

I don't.  My love needs no aim or purpose; it does not need to be acted on.  All that is necessary is the fact that I love.

I question the point of it. It sounds solipsistic to me.

My faith doesn't need to be rewarded.  I don't need to be blessed.  What matters is the fact of my being faithful.

Why?

Er, we may need to watch the conversation.

I kinda agree with the eldritch abomination. This wasn't supposed to spark a religious debate, it was just a sadrant.

You wanna debate, fine. Just do it in the correct thread.

We often have debates and discussions in the emotion threads. They're the "general" of general discussion. A new thread will bud off if it is needed.

[scrdest]

I've got a bit of a mishmash philosophy but it all boils down to "Do what you want if it doesn't hurt anybody nonconsensually", "Actions that lead to a net-gain in preference fulfillment are 'good', with a weighting towards those less well off*," "Ends do justify the means, but the means are part of the end**," "The universe is knowable," "Empirical evidence doped with rational logic are the way to know the universe," and "Nothing is 'moral', there are only 'good' actions and 'bad' actions.***"

Everything I do and believe in stems from those points. Some of them are points that are extensions of other points, but I figured I'd lay them out as separate pieces to be clearer.

*Meaning that if you give a beggar a hundred dollars, that is more 'good' than giving a CEO a hundred dollars, even though they are the same action and both would prefer having more money.

**Meaning if you kill a thousand people to get a utopia, the 'end' is a utopia that has been garnered from mass murder. You can't wash your hands of destroying people, even if you didn't actually do it with your own hands.

***Morality leads to doing things that are "moral" rather than things that are "good", as a signalling method. The priests who are against contraception and condom use are so very "moral" and "pious" that they can back a horrible idea that leads to unwanted pregnancies and death-by-STDs on a continent-wide scale, because contraceptives are "immoral" and thus blocking their use is on a higher level than mere "good" actions.

 Moral vs. Good - reducing it to 'good' and 'bad' also creates a problem - you won't have people who are good but made a wrong decision, because if the result is bad (fulfilment of negative-preference in your terms), he did a bad thing, therefore he is bad. I know it's not how it works, but neither is 'moral' working as it is used. People will abuse words to further their own ends no matter what.

Plus, 'immoral' is sometimes more fitting than 'bad' - to use an example from '1984', 'Big Brother is bad' sounds much weaker and more childish than 'Big Brother is immoral' or 'is evil'.

 Net-preference utilitarianism also has pretty bad implications, but you'd need to define 'well-off' a bit better.

No, I'm saying that I was under tremendous external pressure to be an atheist, I had been calling myself an atheist for at least five years, and I was actively being emotionally manipulated into not questioning atheism and told I was effectively "of an inferior race" for even considering it (amongst other things), and in the middle of all that I came to believe in God anyway.

This was not some "lord and savior succoring us and leading us into a state of grace and letting me know I'm totes a prophet" situation, this was "great, there's a God!  Please kill me."

That... doesn't really make a lot of sense, with the informations you gave? Why the reaction?

If it is as you say, nobody would get the same message from it, which makes it sound suspiciously like it isn't real.

"Everyone reads this book differently.  Some say it isn't worth reading, and cast it to the fire.  Therefore the book isn't real."

Except the book is invisible, gives off no sound, heat, is immeasurable, is unaffected by gravity, and the letters may or may not be readable under very specific conditions, and no-one who claims to have read them can agree what exactly those conditions are with another.

If not though, I question why you call your (apparently) doctrineless, subjective, unconcerned, ethereal deity a god at all, or why you need to do anything with it.

Second all, the fact that I don't need to be threatened with smiting or blessed with a payout doesn't make my belief less of a belief.  Do you love someone in order to extract something from them?  I don't.  My love needs no aim or purpose; it does not need to be acted on.  All that is necessary is the fact that I love.

My faith doesn't need to be rewarded.  I don't need to be blessed.  What matters is the fact of my being faithful.

That's not the point MSH was making. The point was that, if the God you believe in doesn't have any tangible effect on reality outside of what you feel about him, would the world be any different if he didn't exist? Imagine two realities, one in which he exists and one in which he doesn't - is there any difference?

Hell (no pun intended), in the bizarro-reality (let's say that in our reality, the god exists, in the other one he doesn't), there might be a bizarro-Vector sitting in front of a computer, trying to formulate her feelings about God that doesn't exist in this reality, and bizarro-me (who, in this absurd alternate reality that would never be, is somehow right ) and bizarro-MSH disagreeing with you.

[Vector]

To me, demanding that your love being repaid seems just as absurd as I imagine my lack of demands seems to you.

If I expect something in return for love, it is not love.  It is an emotional transaction.  If you can thrive on transactions, and feel somehow satisfied with yourself, then more power to you.  But I cannot.  It is my responsibility to care for, tend for, and protect myself.  It is my responsibility to function in society, befriend others, and add to the human condition.  These things are necessary for the continued physical existence of humanity, and our emotional good.

But as for my love, there is no price on it.  There is no price that can purchase it, and no threat which can make me cease loving.  It cannot be bought, bargained, paid for, stolen, forced, coerced, or stopped.  It's the mark I leave on the world.  It's my ferocious counter to the fact of my mortality.  It's the strength that keeps me getting up in the morning and the clarion call that demands I continue growing--when I'm tired, when I'm sick, when I'm hurt.

Agape!  Doesn't anyone care for this anymore?  You talk about the impact on other people and my relationships as though that were somehow even in question!


The fact that my god is not externally verifiable to you, just as the exact content of my thoughts are not verifiable, just as you cannot verify if my love endures at all costs without, in fact, torturing me to death, is not sufficient proof of its non-existence.

Not everything needs to be verifiable.  "Trust but verify" is a fundamental contradiction in terms.

That... doesn't really make a lot of sense, with the informations you gave? Why the reaction?

I was being abused, and I knew I had the strength to carry on--and that I would carry on, as agonizing as every single moment of existing was--but I didn't want to.  What I wanted was to die.

[Descan]

I've got a bit of a mishmash philosophy but it all boils down to "Do what you want if it doesn't hurt anybody nonconsensually", "Actions that lead to a net-gain in preference fulfillment are 'good', with a weighting towards those less well off*," "Ends do justify the means, but the means are part of the end**," "The universe is knowable," "Empirical evidence doped with rational logic are the way to know the universe," and "Nothing is 'moral', there are only 'good' actions and 'bad' actions.***"

Everything I do and believe in stems from those points. Some of them are points that are extensions of other points, but I figured I'd lay them out as separate pieces to be clearer.

*Meaning that if you give a beggar a hundred dollars, that is more 'good' than giving a CEO a hundred dollars, even though they are the same action and both would prefer having more money.

**Meaning if you kill a thousand people to get a utopia, the 'end' is a utopia that has been garnered from mass murder. You can't wash your hands of destroying people, even if you didn't actually do it with your own hands.

***Morality leads to doing things that are "moral" rather than things that are "good", as a signalling method. The priests who are against contraception and condom use are so very "moral" and "pious" that they can back a horrible idea that leads to unwanted pregnancies and death-by-STDs on a continent-wide scale, because contraceptives are "immoral" and thus blocking their use is on a higher level than mere "good" actions.

 Moral vs. Good - reducing it to 'good' and 'bad' also creates a problem - you won't have people who are good but made a wrong decision, because if the result is bad (fulfilment of negative-preference in your terms), he did a bad thing, therefore he is bad. I know it's not how it works, but neither is 'moral' working as it is used. People will abuse words to further their own ends no matter what.

Plus, 'immoral' is sometimes more fitting than 'bad' - to use an example from '1984', 'Big Brother is bad' sounds much weaker and more childish than 'Big Brother is immoral' or 'is evil'.

 Net-preference utilitarianism also has pretty bad implications, but you'd need to define 'well-off' a bit better.

Well, first off, this isn't something I'm expecting everyone to follow. This is mostly rules I have for myself. I also have the rule of "Do not accept a criminal punishment that you cannot accept innocent people possibly also receiving."

The "immoral" versus "bad" is a bit of pedantry, isn't it? Who cares if it sounds childish, you can use "this action is qumquat" as long as it means "I am doing this because it will lead to an increase in preference fulfillment, rather than because the general rules tell me to do it even if it'll lead to more suffering."

What implications, by the way? So that I know exactly what you're thinking of. That whole idea of "slavery is good because the slave masters desire to own slaves"? Which I'd answer that, no, the slave-masters desire to own a slave pales in comparison to the slaves desire to be free. And a slave is obviously (Yes, I am using obviously in a philosophy discussion. THE HORROR) less well-off than someone who can afford to own slaves. Not to mention that historically, slaves out-numbered slave-masters in slave-owning economies, I.E. the confederate south.

To answer your question, I would have to think about it more but off the cuff I would say "well-off" means a person has sufficient resources to fulfill their daily requirements with enough left over to expand their horizons in whatever manner they desire (i.e. not stuck in a dead-end job/rut that they can't escape without significant risk) in a reasonable time-frame. I.E. enough to live and eat and some left over to save for university/a business within a decade, or the credit history required to get a reasonable-interest-rate bank loan.

Finally, that point about "if the result is bad (fulfilment of negative-preference in your terms), he did a bad thing, therefore he is bad." I never said (or if I did, I did not mean to say/imply) that a person who does something 'bad' is 'bad'. In fact I don't believe I ever went into whether people can be innately good or bad. This philosophy is almost entirely geared toward deciding whether an ACTION is good or bad.

The goodness or badness of a person is determined elsewhere, specifically in what they WANT to do, or don't care about. If they WANT to do bad, then they can be considered a 'bad' person. If they don't care what their actions result in, then they can be considered a 'bad' person. If they want to do good but cannot or are just plain unlucky, then they are still a 'good' person. Though your dealings with them should take into account their record, your feelings about them as a person should not.

Yes it is hard to tell whether someone is sincere in their desire to do good and are just clumsy/inattentive/unlucky, or whether they are just lying and trying to have their cake and eat it too. No one ever said philosophy is easy.

FINAL NOTES: I say all this about rules, but a rule should be able to be broken if it fits the circumstances. I try to be flexible in these rules but no rule-book will be able to answer every situation. Use your judgement, that's what it's there for.

PERHAPS WE SHOULD TAKE THIS INTO IT'S OWN THREAD, NEH?

[Helgoland]

Skipped a lot - guys, religion is a bad debate topic. Can't we just all go the Roman-Catholic way? Have a religion that is immobile enough to not allow the formation of sects, mobile enough to adapt itself (through the decades and centuries) to changing circumstances and which does not cling to One True Text or some other form of ultimate unquestionable wisdom*, and also one among whose followers it is generally accepted that not all teachings need to be followed?
The perfect religion for agnostics, I tell you.



*The infallability decree does not count - it only concerns matters that are purely spiritual. The pope can go around claiming all elephants are pink all day long, and it still doesn't become Catholic doctrine

[Willfor]

Skipped a lot - guys, religion is a bad debate topic. Can't we just all go the Roman-Catholic way? Have a religion that is immobile enough to not allow the formation of sects, mobile enough to adapt itself (through the decades and centuries) to changing circumstances and which does not cling to One True Text or some other form of ultimate unquestionable wisdom*, and also one among whose followers it is generally accepted that not all teachings need to be followed?
The perfect religion for agnostics, I tell you.



*The infallability decree does not count - it only concerns matters that are purely spiritual. The pope can go around claiming all elephants are pink all day long, and it still doesn't become Catholic doctrine

Not really. It's not that I mind Catholicism -- I'm from more of the Protestant branch -- it's that church politics have burned my family before. I really do prefer a non-denominational approach for my own walk.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

To me, demanding that your love being repaid seems just as absurd as I imagine my lack of demands seems to you.

I don't think it's absurd, I think it's socially naive. Westerners are more or less expected to adhere to the principles of unconditional love, but there's nothing to it. It's a Romantic dream. It's one of the few things on I'd say the developing world has a more realistic viewpoint.

If I expect something in return for love, it is not love.  It is an emotional transaction.

[citation needed]
If you don't get anything positive in return for a relationship, it is either empty or abusive. Mutually beneficial relationships between human beings form the backbone of society.

But as for my love, there is no price on it.  There is no price that can purchase it, and no threat which can make me cease loving.  It cannot be bought, bargained, paid for, stolen, forced, coerced, or stopped.  It's the mark I leave on the world.  It's my ferocious counter to the fact of my mortality.  It's the strength that keeps me getting up in the morning and the clarion call that demands I continue growing--when I'm tired, when I'm sick, when I'm hurt.

Is that so? So you'd love someone all the same if they started committing atrocities?

Agape!  Doesn't anyone care for this anymore?

No, and I really doubt they ever did. Agape love is more of a nice-sounding idea than something that actually happens.

The fact that my god is not externally verifiable to you, just as the exact content of my thoughts are not verifiable, just as you cannot verify if my love endures at all costs without, in fact, torturing me to death, is not sufficient proof of its non-existence.

These things are not equal. It's not much of an assumption that you have thoughts of some kind, as we are the same species. While you might be lying to me, I have no reason to believe you are. And the exact extent of your love is not conventionally measurable to begin with, though once again, I have no reason to think you are being knowingly untruthful.

But your deity is a major, major claim that doesn't attach to anything or have any kind of falsifiability. You could reveal that you are lying or don't really care about anybody else in the world, but there's nothing to do which can disprove your deity.

Not everything needs to be verifiable.

No, but all the important things do, unless we want people to suffer unnecessarily.

"Trust but verify" is a fundamental contradiction in terms.

No it is not. Blind trust brings a person to falsehoods. Blind distrust does the same. Only verification results in reliable truth.

[scrdest]

To me, demanding that your love being repaid seems just as absurd as I imagine my lack of demands seems to you.

If I expect something in return for love, it is not love.  It is an emotional transaction.  If you can thrive on transactions, and feel somehow satisfied with yourself, then more power to you.  But I cannot.  It is my responsibility to care for, tend for, and protect myself.  It is my responsibility to function in society, befriend others, and add to the human condition.  These things are necessary for the continued physical existence of humanity, and our emotional good.

But as for my love, there is no price on it.  There is no price that can purchase it, and no threat which can make me cease loving.  It cannot be bought, bargained, paid for, stolen, forced, coerced, or stopped.  It's the mark I leave on the world.  It's my ferocious counter to the fact of my mortality.  It's the strength that keeps me getting up in the morning and the clarion call that demands I continue growing--when I'm tired, when I'm sick, when I'm hurt.

Agape!  Doesn't anyone care for this anymore?  You talk about the impact on other people and my relationships as though that were somehow even in question!


The fact that my god is not externally verifiable to you, just as the exact content of my thoughts are not verifiable, just as you cannot verify if my love endures at all costs without, in fact, torturing me to death, is not sufficient proof of its non-existence.

Not everything needs to be verifiable.  "Trust but verify" is a fundamental contradiction in terms.

If it is, why just trust instead of just verify? The latter is more reliable when it comes to conclusions corresponding to reality. When it comes to deities, we've been trusting what allegedly was their words, and we've got to such marvelous conclusions as the universe being made out of a deity's corpse, Earth laying on the back of a turtle which may or may not be laying on a stack of other turtles, Sun revolving around Earth...

The exact content of your thoughts is verifiable, it just isn't verifiable right now with the tools we have. But we have the technology to determine when you're feeling love, and to distinguish what kind of love it is (romantic vs. familial), for example. Kinda scary IMO.

And... if love really is the only things that makes you go on, you're either using a very broad definition of love, or there is something very unhealthy going on here.

When people use 'loving for [something]' they generally mean something very specific - posessions, status, that kinda thing. If you love someone for giving you expensive gifts, it's not love, it's glorified prostitution. On the other hand, if you use more abstract concepts, like emotional contact, comfort, all the qualities the person you love might have - then you still love them for very specific something, and wouldn't if this certain something was not present.

That... doesn't really make a lot of sense, with the informations you gave? Why the reaction?

I was being abused, and I knew I had the strength to carry on--and that I would carry on, as agonizing as every single moment of existing was--but I didn't want to.  What I wanted was to die.

Seems like you hit the jackpot at birth in the 'number of douchebags in your life' lottery. Although it slightly amuses me that you proved that ideological assholes will remain assholes irrelevant to the ideology in question - you basically met the atheist equivalent of a fundie.

Skipped a lot - guys, religion is a bad debate topic. Can't we just all go the Roman-Catholic way? Have a religion that is immobile enough to not allow the formation of sects, mobile enough to adapt itself (through the decades and centuries) to changing circumstances and which does not cling to One True Text or some other form of ultimate unquestionable wisdom*, and also one among whose followers it is generally accepted that not all teachings need to be followed?
The perfect religion for agnostics, I tell you.

As someone who has to try to not look too un-catholicky and has to endure the wacky hijinks of the Church every time I pick up a newspaper (most recently a well-known bishop extending rape-victim-blaming to children molested by priests), I slightly kinda not-really-agree.

That said, yeah, we really need to split it somewhere. Would be the old Philosophilia thread, but the discussion there got both a bit too abstract for someone not following it and some hostileness had been had.

[Bdthemag]

I've had whooping cough for the past two weeks (Showed symptoms long before it, assumed it was something else and never bothered to go into the doctor until it got really bad.) I've been taking pretty strong antibiotics that haven't really been helping much with the cough, but at least I'm not extremely contagious anymore. I'll still have to actually start getting up and returning to my usual schedule though, even though I'm still breaking out into coughing fits which sometimes leave me gasping for air, not able to breathe that well. So yeah, should be a fun week ahead of me.

[BlackFlyme]

Do you love someone in order to extract something from them?  I don't.  My love needs no aim or purpose; it does not need to be acted on.  All that is necessary is the fact that I love.

Does anyone remember that article someone linked a while back about how unconditional love is something that most people don't actually do? Because I feel like it's applicable here.

Somewhat reminded of my psychology teacher "proving" that altruism doesn't exist. After all, if you do a good deed and accept nothing in return, you will still feel good about yourself, which is technically a reward. Alternatively, you do a deed because you feel obligated to do so, in order to avoid feeling guilt. Negative reinforcement, if you will.

So technically, since no matter what you are rewarded in a form, you did not do the deed for nothing, which altruism requires. She was a cynical person.

My experiences with religion are mixed at best. I know that portions of my family are Catholic, having attended funerals and marriages where everyone knew the Lord's Prayer by heart. But I've never had religion brought up while talking with my family, so it's not like I was told to be one religion or another. Not by family, anyways.

I was a target in high-school for not joining in on beating up people of non-Christian religions. Apparently Christianity was the only way, and that accepting Jews, atheists, Muslims, etc. as people was a pathway to Hell.

Similarly, there was a funeral home I had to pass on my way home from school, and I had seen protesters trying to prevent someone's burial because they were religious. I also saw similar protests when atheists were being buried. And foreigners. People are fucked-up.

I remember a group of small children in one protest, maybe grade 1 or 2, screaming at a man playing bagpipes, telling him to "shut the fuck up" and to "get the fuck out of my country"

[Vector]

There's a big difference between social and personal truth.  I don't ask that society act on my beliefs, I just observe that they verifiably make me a better person and seem to do no harm.

Also, I don't have to be in a relationship with someone to love them.  That's the point.  It's not a relationship.  It's just love.  That's why it doesn't have to be reciprocated.  Loving someone doesn't mean I won't chastise them, be angry with them, or even, inadvertently, do them wrong.  What it means, at its fundament, is that I will not pretend their suffering is not suffering, as we so often do.

I don't care if you think I'm naive, honestly.  I've been around the block a few times.

If it is, why just trust instead of just verify? The latter is more reliable when it comes to conclusions corresponding to reality. When it comes to deities, we've been trusting what allegedly was their words, and we've got to such marvelous conclusions as the universe being made out of a deity's corpse, Earth laying on the back of a turtle which may or may not be laying on a stack of other turtles, Sun revolving around Earth...

Because you ask divinity about divinity and materiality about materiality.  You've gone pretty far down the barrel when you're asking dirt who god is.

What I'm trying to say is--trust, in and of itself, has a goodness to it.  The experience of trust is good.  The question is--when?  To what degree?  On the individual level, even though indeed we have quality checkers and things like that--the experience of a human being in community involves a huge amount of trust in the system, in other people, and so on.  You don't follow your lover with a camera everywhere to verify that they aren't cheating on you.

Why just trust?  Because there are events and relationships that cannot both be observed and preserved, and in which the cost of observation is just too high.  Experiences where it is better to, perhaps, be wrong.  Experiences where part of what makes the experience itself is not knowing, and one can decide that the experience is better than the knowledge.

Knowing is not always better than not-knowing.  You have to be discerning in these moments, as well.

On the other hand, if you use more abstract concepts, like emotional contact, comfort, all the qualities the person you love might have - then you still love them for very specific something, and wouldn't if this certain something was not present.

Okay.  I love things and people for existing.

Somewhat reminded of my psychology teacher "proving" that altruism doesn't exist. After all, if you do a good deed and accept nothing in return, you will still feel good about yourself, which is technically a reward. Alternatively, you do a deed because you feel obligated to do so, in order to avoid feeling guilt. Negative reinforcement, if you will.

So technically, since no matter what you are rewarded in a form, you did not do the deed for nothing, which altruism requires. She was a cynical person.

I do not wish the man who abused me ill.  I get angry sometimes--so angry.  I feel like I hate him with every particle of my body.

But if you asked me: "really?"

Well, no, the answer is no.  I wish him well and I hope he humbles himself someday.  Not necessarily that he be happy, because I'm not sure that would be good for the people around him--but that he be well, and contented.  The anger comes from feeling that I must wish joy upon him in order to be moral, and that to love him I must be supportive when he gets what he wants.  But that's not love, that's subordination and petty, unthinking agreement.

Now--do I feel self-righteous about this fact?  Not especially.  I'm only writing out what is, not some sort of action I've strategized.  I wonder if it's wrong of me, pretty much constantly.  I wonder if it makes me party to my own abuse, if it's fruitless, if it's naive.  I've been berated and scolded.  It would be a lot more comfortable to just not love.  I could come in here and say: "I don't love my abuser," and no one would care.  They'd pat me on the back. . . they'd try to make me feel good.

Your teacher's argument requires that the altruist feel some sort of self-righteousness and not be attacked by other people for their naivete.

[BlackFlyme]

Somewhat reminded of my psychology teacher "proving" that altruism doesn't exist. After all, if you do a good deed and accept nothing in return, you will still feel good about yourself, which is technically a reward. Alternatively, you do a deed because you feel obligated to do so, in order to avoid feeling guilt. Negative reinforcement, if you will.

So technically, since no matter what you are rewarded in a form, you did not do the deed for nothing, which altruism requires. She was a cynical person.

Your teacher's argument requires that the altruist feel some sort of self-righteousness and not be attacked by other people for their naivete.

I actually tried arguing this in class, but she maintained that in order for it to be true altruism, you have to feel absolutely nothing after the act of kindness.

Even feeling happy about helping others is a form of reward. In addition, if you would have felt guilty for not helping, then it was not altruistic, it was negative reinforcement making you do it.

She outright admitted that she did not believe in altruism and that there was no such thing as a human that cared for anyone other than themselves.

[Graknorke]

The blister on my toe going down is really itching and I can't sleep.

[Pnx]

Somewhat reminded of my psychology teacher "proving" that altruism doesn't exist. After all, if you do a good deed and accept nothing in return, you will still feel good about yourself, which is technically a reward. Alternatively, you do a deed because you feel obligated to do so, in order to avoid feeling guilt. Negative reinforcement, if you will.

So technically, since no matter what you are rewarded in a form, you did not do the deed for nothing, which altruism requires. She was a cynical person.

Your teacher's argument requires that the altruist feel some sort of self-righteousness and not be attacked by other people for their naivete.

I actually tried arguing this in class, but she maintained that in order for it to be true altruism, you have to feel absolutely nothing after the act of kindness.

Even feeling happy about helping others is a form of reward. In addition, if you would have felt guilty for not helping, then it was not altruistic, it was negative reinforcement making you do it.

She outright admitted that she did not believe in altruism and that there was no such thing as a human that cared for anyone other than themselves.

Most of the time when I engage in altruism I don't feel good about it. I'm wondering why I'm helping this person (either because it's dubious whether they "deserve" the help, or because I'm questioning altruism itself), or thinking that what I'm doing is not really enough, or really helpful in one way or another...

I'm not sure I'd say it really makes me happy, in fact I'd say I would possibly be happier if I were less altruistic, but I do it anyway, because it's sort of a thing I've accepted as being engrained into my nature.