Athiests - Who cares

I find the atheist moniker convenient for distribution lists, as don't get approaches by evangelists.

kneemos wrote: »

If my belief causes me to do a good deed or not have sex with my neighbours wife then my belief becomes a fact .

That you have that belief is a fact. But the belief itself is not a fact.

AudreyHepburn wrote: »

That you have that belief is a fact. But the belief itself is not a fact.

It's my actions that make my belief a fact,otherwise I wouldn't bother with the good deed and I'd have sex with the neighbour...ie God has an effect so must be real.

kneemos wrote: »

It's my actions that make my belief a fact,otherwise I wouldn't bother with the good deed and I'd have sex with the neighbour...ie God has an effect so must be real.

I think that you have a very different definition of the word "real" to literally everybody else in the world. Fact because I believe it. And wrote this post.

Maximus Alexander wrote: »

Are you suggesting that, if you found out for a fact tomorrow that God didn't exist, you'd cast away all your morals and do whatever you felt like at everyone else's expense? That the only reason you show respect or altruism to your fellow man is because you're afraid that you'll be punished by a wizard in the sky?

Maybe I'm taking you up wrong somehow, but otherwise f*ck me that's depressing.

No,just an example.
If I'm motivated to commit good deeds by my belief in God then to me God is real and has an effect and to have an effect it has to exist.

kneemos wrote: »

No,just an example.
If I'm motivated to commit good deeds by my belief in God then to me God is real and has an effect and to have an effect it has to exist.

This is going to sound abstract and a bit too platonic but religion doesn't matter that much. the fact is that people all around the world know what "good" is and what "bad" is. It doesn't matter what their religion is or even if they don't have one. Religion did for many years provide a framework for it. In the middle ages for example in many European countries a sin was a crime and vice versa.

This did of course lead to muddling. You ended up with kings saying that since God had placed them in a position of power it was both a sin and a crime not to do what they said. Vincent De Paul set up poorhouses which were actually more like asylums because poverty was considered a sin and was bad for the soul.
In some Muslim countries you can be stoned for being an adulterer (especially if you are a woman). Although lets face it, muslim countries like that are a reflection of the worst times in Christianity's past.

laws generally are there to restrict the worst of humanity. And I mean not just individuals but in us all. They are they to help stop us from doing bad acts and enable us to perform good ones. The problem with religion or any extreme ideology is that it removes personal morals from the equation. people end up doing stuff because they say God is against it. And as we know there can be huge differences between what different people think God wants. We normally end up with a tyranny of the majority situation where minorities who disagree are persecuted. Which is why a secular government run on utilitarian principles is generally better for the populace. It allows people to live their lives whilst at the same time safe guarding them against the religion of others.

Anyway to get back on point, people generally know what good and bad are in general. Religion can actually cloud the innate humanity that we all possess.

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Well, we see a debate, with contributions from various people, including religious people, and a consensus is agreed. It may be different in different countries. Nobody goes up a mountain with a stone tablet.

I see no reason to suppose it was any different in the past.

Interesting point. It's sort of oddly amusing to consider a time when, instead discussing the morality of things like stem cell research, people were getting together to debate things like "Is it okay to kill?"

Eventually, they concluded that it wasn't.

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Sometimes they have to figure it out. For example - is it OK to transplant cloned stem cells from lines which originated form aborted fetuses to treat Parkinsons?

I don't want to discuss the issue itself, but where do answers to new moral questions like that come from?

Well, we see a debate, with contributions from various people, including religious people, and a consensus is agreed. It may be different in different countries. Nobody goes up a mountain with a stone tablet.

I see no reason to suppose it was any different in the past.

It's not like the answers to that question are in the bible either. And when you consider the sh1t that any fundamentalist believes, it's not really compatible with a secular society. We can work out the tricky ones but we shouldn't be deciding what is right and wrong for a society based on a book written two thousand years ago.

take murder for example. It might be a sin in the bible but that's not why it's illegal. It's wrong. It's bad for both individuals and society. We'd still have it as being illegal with or without any religious texts.
What was different in the past was that we burned people at the stake for being gay, jewish etc... All because of the churches teachings. Debate when it occurred never involved what was best for the people but rather what they thought God would want.
Western democracies, starting with France and the US, decided to ditch that. they looked for a separation of church and state. That was a huge leap forward.
Laws in these societies, and indeed all western democracies, are worked out on the same basic principles. They are generally based on utilitarianism and are rule based. That's how we figure out if something is right or wrong. Not based on an old religious text.

Grayson wrote: »

This is going to sound abstract and a bit too platonic but religion doesn't matter that much. the fact is that people all around the world know what "good" is and what "bad" is. It doesn't matter what their religion is or even if they don't have one. Religion did for many years provide a framework for it. In the middle ages for example in many European countries a sin was a crime and vice versa.

This did of course lead to muddling. You ended up with kings saying that since God had placed them in a position of power it was both a sin and a crime not to do what they said. Vincent De Paul set up poorhouses which were actually more like asylums because poverty was considered a sin and was bad for the soul.
In some Muslim countries you can be stoned for being an adulterer (especially if you are a woman). Although lets face it, muslim countries like that are a reflection of the worst times in Christianity's past.

laws generally are there to restrict the worst of humanity. And I mean not just individuals but in us all. They are they to help stop us from doing bad acts and enable us to perform good ones. The problem with religion or any extreme ideology is that it removes personal morals from the equation. people end up doing stuff because they say God is against it. And as we know there can be huge differences between what different people think God wants. We normally end up with a tyranny of the majority situation where minorities who disagree are persecuted. Which is why a secular government run on utilitarian principles is generally better for the populace. It allows people to live their lives whilst at the same time safe guarding them against the religion of others.

Anyway to get back on point, people generally know what good and bad are in general. Religion can actually cloud the innate humanity that we all possess.

It takes a couple of reads, but it's well worth it to actually understand where you're coming from. I would take it one step further though and say that the problem isn't actually religion at all, the problem is people. People who use ANY ideology to promote their own prejudices and biases, because they are the kind of people who think of themselves as superior to the rest of humanity, and they will corrupt and twist any abstract ideology to hammer home the point.

So, in this case, if we take religion - religion on it's own does nothing. It's an ideology, but it's the person's own inherent prejudices and biases (as you say - their innate humanity), that determines their perception of that abstract ideology. Some people will incorporate religion into their existing ideologies and use it to browbeat and lord it over everyone else that they are morally superior to them, and they will inflict all sorts of harm and pain and torture on other people that are unlike them, and feel completely justified in doing so. They'll be a pain in the ass for everyone else basically.

Then you take atheism - atheism on it's own does nothing. It's an ideology, but it's the person's own inherent prejudices and biases (as you say - their innate humanity), that determines their perception of that abstract ideology. Some people will incorporate atheism into their existing ideologies and use it to browbeat and lord it over everyone else that they are morally superior to them, and they will inflict all sorts of harm and pain and torture on other people that are unlike them, and feel completely justified in doing so. They'll be a pain in the ass for everyone else basically.

The thing is that nowadays, there are all sorts of ideologies to choose from if you want to feel superior to everyone else, and there are all sorts of ways in which an individual can interpret and incorporate those ideologies for themselves, so for example when you mention a utilitarian, secular society as the kind of society we should all aspire to, well, that would be alright if there weren't all sorts of other ideologies that people will use to appear to be morally superior to everyone else. Take for example black atheists in America (a secular, utilitarian society for the most part). They are part of Western atheism you mentioned earlier, but they don't care so much about secularism as they do about social justice and racism. They're actually working with religious organisations to combat racism and poverty as opposed to working against religious organisations. White atheists seem to care more about secularism than they do about racism and poverty. Then you have Atheism Plus, which incorporates social justice issues into their Atheist ideology in order to appear morally righteous.

Even the idea of humanity itself, as Sara pointed out earlier - originally started out as being an inherently religious philosophy (humanitarianism), but has evolved over time to become a secular philosophy, because more and more people started to adopt the ideology of humanitarianism and abandon the religious connotations. This allowed them to feel they were superior to everyone else, morally and ethically more righteous than everyone else, and anyone who has a different perspective of humanity, well, they're just ripe for abuse! You'll witness this in full effect in discussions around issues like abortion, and indeed as the lads mention above - stem cell research. Both sides will invoke the humanity card in order to feel that they're the more morally superior human beings than those who have a difference of opinion to them.

If you take Islam (as you mention Muslims above), you'll have people who identify as feminist, atheist, etc who will pour scorn on Islam, but then they have to tread a fine line as they don't want to appear to be racist either, because that would be morally reprehensible of course, so they can abuse and insult people, but not too much, because insulting Muslims gets you killed by Muslims who believe they are morally justified in killing you for disagreeing with their ideology.



TL:DR, this clip pretty much covers it, and could apply to any ideology, not just left or right wing politics -

Corbin Silly Pan wrote: »

in fact you have no right making accusations like that.

Kill the blasphemer! Nail him up!