Question for Atheists (page 4)

cellomould

oh, and lollollollol Runningman! nice!

"In other words, your God is the warden of a prison where the only prisoner is your God." Jose Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

larc

RWC,

My three children never went to church. They never were "inculcated" with moral dictates. All three of them are good, loving adults now. How do you think they got their moral compass?

julien

Wow 3% of JWs are single and living together??

I was genuinely curious as to where those who do not believe in God or the Bible get their moral compass.

I don't need a vengeful war God to tell me what is right and what is wrong.. If I did I might be strapping my kid to an altar to ceremonially murder him every time I get insecure about his faith in me. This attitude of Christians really irks me. I was once told I 'left God' just so I could do what I want without answering to anyone. I don't need the threat of hellfire or "eternal cutting off" to scare me into doing the right thing. In fact I would much rather do the right thing because it is right, not for fear of punishment.

Particuarly in our time when morals seem to be in such a downward spiral.

morals meaning 'adherance to ancient (IMHO obsolete) religious laws' may be going down, but true morals are the same or better as far as I am concerned.

Abaddon

RWC; As you correctly point out, 9% of people in that survey are divorced or seperated, compared to 59% who are married.

That 9& is people who are CURRENTLY divorced or single. The 59% includes people who have re-married. That's why the figures don't seem to make sense.

All the best

peacefulpete

I'm new to this forum and perhaps am repeating others comments.Probably so as I have read some very insightful stuff here,better worded than I could muster.
It seems the issue is the normal desire for absoloutes.There is comfort and security in certainty.Most people find the tentative nature of science as a sign of weakness.My father for one still derides scientists for the mistakes they made in the 1950s. The errors loom large as proof of their untrustworthiness.This enables him to keep it simple, so now to him it is a no-brainer choice of the Bible's unchangableness vs. the shifting sands of human thinking.With this disposition any real discussion about science today is threatening and stirs anger.I'm robbing his house. In the other thread I state the position of most humanists that at the core of major religions is a commendable code of ethics. This code has evolved with us.It has addaptations to local environment just as our bodes do.It hasbeen demonstrated that polygamous cultures survived better in their particular circustances.Likewise matriarcal clans in their's.Age of sexual activity etc.A broad view of existant tribal and cultral standards as often enforced by religion, will prevent us from drawing the knee-jerk reaction of calling these ethics savage or uncivilized.It works for them and as long as those involved are not forced by threat of violence to comply,we must respect it.
Yet your remarks about change in morality being an unstabilizing force is correct. The strenth of any code is in it's PERCEPTION of permanance. We all contemn civil laws that appear to change arbitrarily.The fishing regulations for one example, each year the limits or min. size rules change on area lakes, now few fisherman even read the book.Much less feel that the DNR knows what it's doing.Fear of penalty is not an adequate deterant.There needs to be a familiar certainty to the rules for the r&f to feel the need to comlpy.
Change however is inevitable,as we grow in understanding of or world.If a religion bears little resemblance to the reality around us, a crisis of faith ensues.So change it must and change it has.Usually the change has been imperceptibly slow, generations of time pass and the heritage appears unbroken.Our society is changing too fast for this to continue.What is now critical is a world view and keen sense of human rights.Humanists struggle with the old world view,the masses hunger for absolutes.Yet they can not command only exhort. There is no inspired text to quote from only reason and observation.This does not of course prevent a rule of law from enforcing a civil code basd on these premises.Consenses has aways driven legislation.
We are not faced with a choice the present anarchy of the soul is real and traditional religion is not up to the task.I say traditional relgion because as Stephen Jay Gould said religion does not require theism,Budhism for example.No I'm not a Budhist,Nor will it's present amalgam of mysticism endear itself to the modern mind.Of course statistics might reveal a revival of interest,but this is only a brief reactionary blip,resulting from this anarchy of the soul millions are experiencing.Despite all it's obvious waknesses humanism supported by international civil authority is our only earl option.

RWC

Larc, I would assume they learned alot of their goodness from you. Where did you learn your moral compass? Another question, would be by whose definition are they moral and loving people? Don't take that as I am questioning that they are, only, by what standard are you making that comment.

Julien, I do not know where you determined that God is a God of war that believes in child sacrifice of humans. That is certainly not the God that I worship, nor is it the God as lived through Jesus Christ. If you are referring to the events in the Old testament, I would think that you received a warped interpretation of them and have completely ignored the teachings of Jesus. And in what way do you say that "true" morals are better today than in the past?

funkyderek

RWC,

Is it possible to conceive of a world (think parallel universes) that is ruled by an evil god? Just try to imagine it. Unlike our own, which you believe is ruled by a just and moral god, this hypothetical one is ruled by a sadistic god who delights in slowly torturing his creation. Is that god, by virtue of being the creator of that universe automatically moral, or is there some outside standard by which he might be judged?

--
"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there. Theologians can persuade themselves of anything." -Robert A. Heinlein

Perry

Yes, let's look at where some Atheists get there morals:

Marxism
Secular Humanism - ethical relativism
Eugenicists - evolutionary human biology

Just as some savvy deists find it useful to pervert religion for political and social agendas, Atheists have and are doing the exact same thing.

What's the difference? Absolutely none. Oh there is one. The deist may be overall slightly more forthright by calling their ideology a religion while their Atheist counterparts often find it politically useful to claim that their non-scientific ideologies are faith-free and not a religion.

Why is OK for the virtuous Atheist to condemn his radical brethren for promoting destructive and non-scientific ideologies, while some start yelling hypocrisy to the virtuous Diest who condemns thier radical factions?

Unless both Atheists and Diests get their heads out of the sand, they will simply fall victim to the most effective spin doctors manipulating their worldview, again and again.

Perry

I was going to leave my last post as it is. However, the over whelming one-sided bias statements extolling the absolute virtuousness by comparing it to extreme Diesm, just kills me to see it swallowed by otherwise intelligent people.

The absolutist Athiest must build his ideology upon the natural processes. His moral judgements are animalistic, self-serving and elitest. The more conservative Athiest must borrow ideas from the Diest to make his ideology more acceptable in a post-modern world. He then faces a delimma that the Diest does not....he must reject the most fundamental tenet of his world view.

Allow me to explain:

The rabid Atheist, sees himself as the product of random events and survival of the fittest. Therefore to preserve a strictly scientific definition of morality, the absolutist Atheist must assume that those who are in power are there because they are the fittest. If some races are down-trodden, or certain cultures simply disappear in the face of more powerful cultures; it is no need to become overly worried....its just natural.

The more compassionate Atheist borrows certain tenets from his Theistic counterparts like, all men are created equal, the MLK "I have a Dream" speech, and "love thy neighbor".

Its easy to see the contridiction in values and the mental acrobats involved for the moderate Atheist. While accepting the ranom happenings, infinite digression of cause and effect events, and survival of the fittest, as having been a good thing in getting us where we are now, those processes must be abandonded in favor of a higher morality. All the while the moderate knows he is violating the very processes that produced him.

The Diest has no such conflict. The Diety is a perfect benevelent standard and he simply strives to display love, justice, wisdom and power how he imagines the Diety would if he were here.

To say that, since Eugenics is an Atheistic value and belief system, so therefore all Athiests are Eugenicists is just about as stupid as some of the comments that said, because Aztec Diests ripped human hearts out, all Diests are savages. This line of reasoning is completely idiotic to such a degree that intellectual shock cannot describe the mind numbing processes that must have taken place to allow someone to actually utter such non-sense.

It is that kind of rhetoric that allows the rabid Atheists ideologies such as Eugenics and Marxism to continue their influence in social policy unnoticed and sometimes unhindered.

The bottom line is that the moderate Atheist must borrow some moral tenets from their Diest counterparts and the moderate Diest must borrow scientific observations from the Atheist.

If either does not, they will simply lose their appeal to logical, reasonable, peace loving people.

peacefulpete

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