The Threat of Atheism

Húrin

Overblood wrote: »

****.

Is it just to murder children?

If you're appealing to an absolute moral law, then you should explain where it comes from.

Zillah wrote: »

Let's not quibble over the specific brands of Christianity in relation to women. Through Christian history women have had a subservient position and that has yet to change.

If Christianity is a product of the cultures it emerged in, of course women would be subservient. Women were subservient in most if not all cultures then.

If you consider annihilating the tribal cultures of Europe and replacing them with Christian hegemony as "unifying" then yes, Christianity has been a powerful, relentless unifying force. Like the Mongols.

All unification eliminates some differences. Christianity certainly did not homogenise all the peoples who accepted it. The spread of Christianity was also relatively slow and peaceful compared to the spread of Mongol rule. It was not by any means entirely peaceful, but it took over a thousand years to cover Europe, so not exactly "relentless".

I'm struggling to see how you're thinking that Christianity caused more division in an otherwise inherently unified (yet heterogenous) world? Do you think that there would be less war and division if the world was left to tribalism?

It's not my ludicrous claim...it's a simple fact made apparent by the UN Human Development Index. Atheistic societies are more successful. There's less crime, better income levels, higher literacy etc.

Their atheism is a product of their wealth and cultural histories. The countries you are thinking mostly have histories as Protestant cultures. Did Protestantism cause them to become educated, wealth and tolerant?

Galvasean wrote: »

Except atheism never claims to cause people to behave well.

In the post I quoted, Zillah tries to claim exactly that, using Sweden and the Netherlands as evidence. King Mb says the same below:

King Mob wrote: »

The only thing anyone's claiming is that an Atheistic/secular society won't go mad and explode into rioting and mass murders (or be that much different than the one we have now.).

Húrin

Wicknight wrote: »

And I don't know what Christians you have been discussing abortion with but the soul enters at conception argument is very common and used all over the place.

Not only Christians are against abortion. I'm not talking about them. I'm trying to explain that nobody needs to resort to talking about the soul in an abortion debate; some people just choose to.

I also imagine that he "knows" that a foetus is not alive, using a definition of "life" predetermined by the need to justify abortion.

King Mob

Húrin wrote: »

In the post I quoted, Zillah tries to claim exactly that, using Sweden and the Netherlands as evidence. King Mb says the same below:

That's not what I meant at all.

Zillah

Húrin wrote: »

People who are against abortion rely no more upon eternal soul arguments than people who are against murder. Is a foetus a life or not? You don't actually know, do you?

Yes no maybe I don't care. A woman has the right to remove it from her body regardless.

Also, to be pedantic, the notion of life being a binary proposition is really quite naive.

Zombrex

Húrin wrote: »

I'm trying to explain that nobody needs to resort to talking about the soul in an abortion debate; some people just choose to.

Of course they need to.

Life begins at conception?
Why?
Because that is when the soul enters the body.

I've had that discussion so many times I have lost count. :rolleyes:

Húrin wrote: »

I also imagine that he "knows" that a foetus is not alive, using a definition of "life" predetermined by the need to justify abortion.

Why would he need to justify abortion? Less babies mean less babies to eat. :rolleyes:

Your post shows the silliness of discussing this with you guys though. The foetus is alive. So is the bacteria in your belly. That wasn't what you initially said but again I've lost count of the times I've had this discussion with someone who doesn't understand or see a difference between simply being alive and something having the rights that we attribute to some life forms.

This again goes back to what Lego was saying about you guys really not understanding what you are actually arguing about, and more often than not when the going gets tough it all just falls back to nonsense arguments about what the Bible says or when the soul is supposed to appear. As Zillah suggests it is a very complex issue that ultimately comes down to the core of why we value human life. But you guys don't seem to do complex.

Zillah

Húrin wrote: »

If Christianity is a product of the cultures it emerged in, of course women would be subservient. Women were subservient in most if not all cultures then.

I thought Christianity was a product of the infallible word of God, no?

I'm the one saying that the various religions are the product of the thinking of men. Did we switch sides?

Without God an atheist can't have morals, they'd go out raping nuns and burninating the countryside. God is the only source of morality, if you don't believe in God you dehumanise humans! Magic magic magic!

Heh, this is fun.

Tim Robbins

smidgy wrote: »

The problem has always been people and not the writings about Christ. You can not blame the goodness in the bible for its being abused, twisted and warped. People will use whatever means necessary to usurp and exercise power, that does not mean the tool itself is inherently destructive or evil.

Have you actually read the Bible?
There are several passages in both the NT and OT which are very biggoted.
If you want a more PC religion go for Jainism or Buddhism.

If you look around at society today it is definitely in need of adopting and believing in some moral code that has withstood the ages. You see the danger to society is not in a group of people that believe that God is love, the danger is in atheists deciding whether love is a principle they wish to live by, whether they rate love as a worthwhile and aspiring ideal. Christianity is a constructive force in society, it binds people. teaches people to love and get along with their neighbour, atheism on the other hand with its enhanced 'moral' freedom is more destructive to society because people will say 'I dont have to love my neighbour, I don’t have to love anyone, and that’s ok'. Can you not see the outcome from a society that adopts that perspective?

Your belief system has already had 2,000 years and never once come even close to the utopia you profess about. Perhaps it's time to try different systems? Or how long more do you want?

The pro-choice movement in society most certainly does not have a Christian backing. It is absurd to deny that the majority of atheists are not backing this position. Also to highlight the atheists weak (self accommodating) morals, they look at an unborn child and have to decide whether the entity is alive or not. It is moral to give the benefit of doubt to the entity assuming that it is alive and to keep it alive than to assume its not alive and then progress to make sure that is the case, but more often than not atheists just decide on their own moral position. (I understand there may be many exceptions but I need to highlight the fragility of people establishing their own moral code)

The Bible does not state when life begins. In fact, it doesn't even define what "life" is.

As for your gross generalisations about atheists, what absolute nonsense.

Atheism by definition defines absolutely nothing w.r.t. morality. You can be a humanist or a sociopath and still be an atheist. you can be pro abortion or against it.

I suggest go to your library and read a few books. Your opinions are indicative of ignorance and nothing else. If you want people in this forum to take your opinions seriously, you'd need to proof you've thought about what you're actually writing.

You are asking people to critically think about their own opinions when it's clear you haven't even done that with your own. Have you any idea how stupid that is?

Soul Winner

bluewolf wrote: »

I love the part where [some] christians try to reassure us they're moral by pointing out that they see nothing wrong whatsoever with murder, rape, etc and would be quite happily indulging in these acts were it not for their holy book. Yes, wolfsbane, that's what he wrote.

It's not that Christians WANT to do these things or not, it is about how ultimately wrong they are in a purely naturalistic universe? If all that exists is nature and natural processes consisting of chemical and biological reactions, then surely rape, murder and the like are just byproducts of these? If they are not then what are they in a purely natural universe?

Don't answer by saying that Christians want to do these things if we found out there was no God because we don't, just answer the question: "Why are they wrong in a universe without God?" If I found out tomorrow that God doesn't exist, I still would not want to do any of these things, but if I did do them then what is ultimately wrong with it? Or rather why is it wrong? Who defines right and wrong? This moral dilemma is what separates us from all other living things. Why do we have it? We obviously evolved it and retained it this long, so will we need it in the future? If not, then why? What are we evolving into?

That is why the moral argument for the existence of God is very strong, because without God then there is no ultimate right or wrong, there are no objective moral values, but this thread proves that there are objective moral values, everyone knows it is not just socially unacceptable to murder and rape, they are moral abominations, to borrow from Bill Craig, so therefore God must exist.

If not then there are only subjective ideas of what is right and what is wrong which vary from society to society. In Nazi Germany for instance is was OK to gas Jews. And in Kosovo it was fine to commit genocide against ethnic Albanians. Who are we to say that what they thought was ok to do was in actual fact wrong?

CerebralCortex

Soul Winner how many times are we going to have to answer those questions before you're satisfied? There are numerous natural explanations for the way people behave, and why we have concepts of right and wrong and believe or not none of them require the supernatural.

robindch

Soul Winner wrote: »

That is why the moral argument for the existence of God is very strong, because without God then there is no ultimate right or wrong, there are no objective moral values, but this thread proves that there are objective moral values, everyone knows it is not just socially unacceptable to murder and rape, they are moral abominations, to borrow from Bill Craig, so therefore God must exist.

Your logic is as enjoyably screwy as ever.

Go read up on The Euthyphro dilemma and when you've managed to reconcile your notion of "objective moral values" with the existence of your deity come back to us

Dave!

Soul Winner wrote: »

It's not that Christians WANT to do these things or not, it is about how ultimately wrong they are in a purely naturalistic universe? If all that exists is nature and natural processes consisting of chemical and biological reactions, then surely rape, murder and the like are just byproducts of these? If they are not then what are they in a purely natural universe?

Don't answer by saying that Christians want to do these things if we found out there was no God because we don't, just answer the question: "Why are they wrong in a universe without God?" If I found out tomorrow that God doesn't exist, I still would not want to do any of these things, but if I did do them then what is ultimately wrong with it? Or rather why is it wrong? Who defines right and wrong? This moral dilemma is what separates us from all other living things. Why do we have it? We obviously evolved it and retained it this long, so will we need it in the future? If not, then why? What are we evolving into?

That is why the moral argument for the existence of God is very strong, because without God then there is no ultimate right or wrong, there are no objective moral values, but this thread proves that there are objective moral values, everyone knows it is not just socially unacceptable to murder and rape, they are moral abominations, to borrow from Bill Craig, so therefore God must exist.

If not then there are only subjective ideas of what is right and what is wrong which vary from society to society. In Nazi Germany for instance is was OK to gas Jews. And in Kosovo it was fine to commit genocide against ethnic Albanians. Who are we to say that what they thought was ok to do was in actual fact wrong?

What about all the moral judgements that are NOT universal?

For example, in Saudi Arabia women aren't exactly held in high regard, are forced to wear the abaya, etc. But in other countries, they're afforded the same rights as men.

Sodomy is a crime punishable by death in Iran, yet in the USA a load of states have recently legalised gay marriage.

The age of consent is vastly different in different parts of the world. If I'm not mistaken, in eg. Kosovo, and Albania, the age of consent is 14 years old. I gather most Irish people would be appalled at an adult shagging a 14 year old.

Why are these things not universal? You pick certain moral issues that are shared, but neglect the fact that there are others that are NOT.

Might it perchance be the case that in different countries and different cultures, there are different moral beliefs, and they overlap in certain places, but not in others? And it has nothing to do with god?

edit:

Oh yeah, abortion is another one

X AcT X EviL

May I just ask any posting Christians in this thread, how do they even know what is in the bible is factual? And if you say you don't know if it is factual and you just have to believe in it, I have another question. How does believing in something make it correct? Im sure for instance, that a lot of Leeds United supporters believe that Leeds are the best team in the world, but that doesn't neccesarily make them the best team. Switch the team for a book called the bible and what have you got? Christianity!

CerebralCortex

X AcT X EviL wrote: »

May I just ask any posting Christians in this thread, how do they even know what is in the bible is factual? And if you say you don't know if it is factual and you just have to believe in it, I have another question. How does believing in something make it correct? Im sure for instance, that a lot of Leeds United supporters believe that Leeds are the best team in the world, but that doesn't neccesarily make them the best team. Switch the team for a book called the bible and what have you got? Christianity!

Some will claim that some of the events in the New testament can be backed up by historical accounts apparently sufficiently enough for them to both believe and have faith in it and to consider it fact.

AtomicHorror

Soul Winner wrote: »

That is why the moral argument for the existence of God is very strong, because without God then there is no ultimate right or wrong, there are no objective moral values, but this thread proves that there are objective moral values, everyone knows it is not just socially unacceptable to murder and rape, they are moral abominations, to borrow from Bill Craig, so therefore God must exist.

At a guess, I'd say our moral values fall into normal distributions. Most people valuing human life to roughly the same extent with smaller numbers who value it more than the mean and smaller numbers who value it less. We agree on rules in order to stop one or both of those outlier groups from dictating to the rest of us. But how is that distribution evidence of an abstracted objective morality of which the mean, the peak of the curve, is some sort of reflection?

IQ, head size, shoe size, height, weight. These are all traits of people (albeit more innately measurable traits than emotional valuation of things) which fall into similar distributions. They have a mean which is shared by most people and they have tails which represent deviations from that mean. Is that mean reflective of some objective value? Is there an objective IQ floating around out there? Is the IQ of god 100? Brilliant if it is, since mine is much higher.

These means are defined in complex ways. Evolution, in particular the process of natural selection, has a huge influence of placing constraints on the distribution of traits undergoing selection. In the case of moral values, we can explain the distribution we see, including that totally expected mean value, as a combination of our evolution as social animals and the perpetuation of our culture. There's really no need to invoke some magical moral axis floating about somewhere any more than we should explain any other human trait in this way.

Zombrex

Soul Winner wrote: »

just answer the question: "Why are they wrong in a universe without God?" If I found out tomorrow that God doesn't exist, I still would not want to do any of these things, but if I did do them then what is ultimately wrong with it? Or rather why is it wrong? Who defines right and wrong?

We do. It is wrong because I say it is wrong. The only thing that matters is if you agree or not. If you don't agree then you will think it is ok. And I won't care because I disagree.

It is not necessary to have a universal moral standard. We would use one even if it existed. At the end of the day, even for Christians, it all comes down to what you believe and agree with. If you didn't agree with Christian morality I imagine you wouldn't be a Christian.

Soul Winner wrote: »

That is why the moral argument for the existence of God is very strong, because without God then there is no ultimate right or wrong, there are no objective moral values

There is none of that with God. There is just God's opinion and the weight you put in his authority. See Robin's post.

Soul Winner wrote: »

but this thread proves that there are objective moral values, everyone knows it is not just socially unacceptable to murder and rape, they are moral abominations, to borrow from Bill Craig, so therefore God must exist.

I think you can find people who don't think it immoral to rape and kill. Just look in the Old Testament.

Affable

smidgy wrote: »

I am a Christian and feel threatened by an atheistic society.

The reason for this is that I see atheism as destructive force since it enforces the belief that there is no eternal responsibility for ones actions.

Since an atheist is only binded by his own moral code there is too much responsibility placed on the individual to create a code which is actually moral.

I personally wouldn’t trust any individual from coming up with their own moral code because more often than not they will design it to suit themselves.
.

Believing there's no eternal responsibility for ones actions doesn't mean you feel less sense of responsibility for actions in the present life. Many people use their religion as an insurance, 'forgive me father for I have sinned'. The rule with christianity is not that you act according to your conscience(which would actually give you a stronger moral sense of guilt and right and wrong, not to metnion self respect, than reading specific rules) but that you fear God and do as he prescribes. The terrorists that do awful crimes in the name of Islam believe they are going to the promised land so it's OK. Your ideology is, without being rude, rather typical of religious people and deeply cynical and mean spirited. We cannot trust people to do good unless they live under a dictatorship from God, unless we degrade their rights to free will and individuality and reduce them to servants. And not only that but we have to follow the word of human beings that were arrogant enough to claim to know God and then use that as a tool of control. Your point also implies a real timidity - not being able to face up to moral wrong in the world that is inherent in our nature, instead trying to prescribe to other people and control them because you fear them. The strong person can deal with the world and see the positive in bad and what they can learn from it. Why this babyish need for reassurance, and to control the bad thats within us, why not be honest about it so good can come through? Besides, what value does good have it's not meant but only propogated through fear...that surely is not even an act of good or sincerity? As for people coming up with moral codes that suit themselves, thats precisely what religious people do all the time, religious scriptures are vast and disparate. We have the law, formed democratically to establish codes as best we can. Besides that people's conscience and morality is subjective. no-one would suggest there is a black and white definition of, for example, insanity so why is there black and white definition of morality?
Also you seem to be arguing in favour of religion purely because of the consequences of follwing it's tenets, not whether the prophets or messiahs or other 'human messengers' for God were actually right, or whether it's actually true. This is somewhat of a concern. If you're just saying we should have moral codes reagrdless of the scientific truth of religion, then this is ecaclt why we have developed civilised society and the rule of law, and democracy.

SalthillGuy

Oh GOD no......

DTrotter

Let's face it the only threat from atheism is against self righteous piety. People are worried that saying their religous can no longer be a conversation stopper, exemption from criticism or an invite to instant respect. And about bloody time.

Dades

NEW THREAD ON ABORTION STARTED!

No more posts on that here, thanks.

20goto10

Regarding morality and religion. Religion does not set the standard for morality. It is the law which governs morality. Take any law that is in existence and ask yourself these questions: did people abide by them before the law was created? Did that make them bad Christians? And what has religion got to do with it? Those who are without morals are those who do not obey the law, period.

Humans are part of nature and everything we do is natural, including all the bad stuff. Thankfully we have the intelligence to rise above it and have laws in place to prevent those who succumb to our natural instincts. Religion has nothing to do with it.

vibe666

overheard on 98fm they were talking about a survey (possibly in a paper today) that said that something like 92% of people in ireland believe in a god of some description.

having been on boards for quite a while now, i know we probably don't represent a fair slice of the population cake, but that sounds pretty freaking ridiculous to me. 92%??? where did they do the survey, standing outside a church as mass was finishing?

even just saying that it was not in reference to a particular god or faith, just that 92% of people believe in some form of deity, i still don't believe it. do people just say yes out of embarrassment or something?

Dave!

I'd take those things with a pinch of salt unless the research is carried out by some reputable body

It coulda been worded in such a way as to encapsulate every wishy-washy 'life force/energy' kind of 'God'

Húrin

vibe666 wrote: »

even just saying that it was not in reference to a particular god or faith, just that 92% of people believe in some form of deity, i still don't believe it. do people just say yes out of embarrassment or something?

I'd say it's more like "ah well I suppose there must be something behind it all". I think we all know that serious practicing Catholics are a minority in Ireland, and a very small one when you exclude the over-60s.

Dades

vibe666 wrote:

having been on boards for quite a while now, i know we probably don't represent a fair slice of the population cake, but that sounds pretty freaking ridiculous to me. 92%??? where did they do the survey, standing outside a church as mass was finishing?

They certainly didn't poll Boards.ie users - that's for sure!

Dave! wrote: »

I'd take those things with a pinch of salt unless the research is carried out by some reputable body

Considering the survey was called "The Challenge of Indifference: A Need for Religious Revival" and was carried out by a Jesuit priest, I'd be 'sceptical' about the results. :P

Article in Indo:
Despite scandals we still believe in God

Dave!

Oh, well I stand corrected, what's not reputable about that?

thebouldwhacker

Dades wrote: »

They certainly didn't poll Boards.ie users - that's for sure!

I could pass this on to them....:D:D:D

(its not scientific, just a toy:p)

vibe666

Dades wrote: »

They certainly didn't poll Boards.ie users - that's for sure!

Considering the survey was called "The Challenge of Indifference: A Need for Religious Revival" and was carried out by a Jesuit priest, I'd be 'sceptical' about the results. :P

Article in Indo:
Despite scandals we still believe in God

for fecks sake, just about any non-religious Irish person would say yes if a preist asked them, just to get away from him!