(September 16, 2011 at 4:10 pm)frankiej Wrote:

(September 16, 2011 at 4:06 pm)StatCrux Wrote: I honestly cannot inderstand why no-one has tried to deal with the question logically, preferring instead to condemn Christianity (never once mentioned by myself) accuse me of preaching (again faith of any particular religion never mentiond) told me to "fuck off" or othersie generally taken an agressive atheist vs christian standpoint.

Because, condemning Christianity seems to be logical...

That may or may not be true, it still remains irrelevant to the thread though...

(September 10, 2011 at 9:01 am)StatCrux Wrote: If I were to meet an atheist who presents as a happy, confident, solvent individual, beautiful family, good friends etc (you get the picture) who went on to tell me the secret of his success in life was to lie, cheat, steal and stab others in the back at every opportunity, take no prisoners and give no quarter, be ruthless with strangers and only protect family and loved ones. How could I tell him that his behavior was "wrong" or "evil" using an atheistic worldview? "The tears of strangers are only water" would be an apt motto for this individual.

Believing in God has nothing to do with the morals you set yourself in life.

I'm an atheist and go out of my way not to upset anyone. It comes naturally.

I don't read books.

As an aside,

"Philosopher Simon Blackburn made a similar criticism,[16] and explains that moral relativism fails as a moral system simply because it cannot arbitrate disagreements." Wikipedia.

Simon Blackburn is a well respected humanist, so this is not an atheist vs Christian problem.

(September 16, 2011 at 4:06 pm)StatCrux Wrote: I honestly cannot inderstand why no-one has tried to deal with the question logically, preferring instead to condemn Christianity (never once mentioned by myself) accuse me of preaching (again faith of any particular religion never mentiond) told me to "fuck off" or othersie generally taken an agressive atheist vs christian standpoint.

Actually, I dealt with it logically and did not condemn Christianity, if I remember correctly. However, you chose to ignore that and me, preferring to pretend you are being persecuted in this thread and that no one has been polite to you. I may have mentioned it before, but it seems you are reveling in the negative posts, ignoring the sincere posts and then acting like everyone's a bad guy. I could be thinking of a different thread, though. We get a lot of this around here.

(September 16, 2011 at 4:52 pm)Shell B Wrote:

(September 16, 2011 at 4:06 pm)StatCrux Wrote: I honestly cannot inderstand why no-one has tried to deal with the question logically, preferring instead to condemn Christianity (never once mentioned by myself) accuse me of preaching (again faith of any particular religion never mentiond) told me to "fuck off" or othersie generally taken an agressive atheist vs christian standpoint.

Actually, I dealt with it logically and did not condemn Christianity, if I remember correctly. However, you chose to ignore that and me, preferring to pretend you are being persecuted in this thread and that no one has been polite to you. I may have mentioned it before, but it seems you are reveling in the negative posts, ignoring the sincere posts and then acting like everyone's a bad guy. I could be thinking of a different thread, though. We get a lot of this around here.

You seem to be the one person who responds in a thoughtful, articulate and logical manner. I can assure you I don't revel in the negative posts, despair might be more apt. Regarding your responses, i'm still not sure how you reconcile the inability of moral relativism to arbitrate in disagreements over morality? (see previous post re Simon Blackburn) Without a common belief in a transcendant lawgiver, what is the common concensus upon which we can even discuss morality?

You're lucky you got a single thoughtful response. The OP is bullshit. We've heard it before, it always come from christians, it's not a thoughtful discussion, and you aren't blowing back the "veil of ignorance" you and your folks must absolutely believe atheists suffer under. We all go about making those moral decisions individually, even when we do believe in faeries (notice the number of christian and muslim inmates). Had you been born a Hindu you'd be arguing that we had no basis for morality because we ate beef. End of.

What you seem to be stuck on, Crux, is that despite not swallowing the koolaid you so readily guzzled down, we manage to be decent people. It's unsettling isn't it, when sinners just aren't as evil as you want them to be. Atheists are as moral (or immoral) as anyone else, they base those morals on the same thing as everyone else (think really really hard about that and it might come to you). The idea that people were wandering around raping their sisters and killing their brothers at the drop of a dime is not something that we have any evidence for whatsoever. We have been social animals for hundreds of thousands of years, decended from animals that were highly social for millions of years, and all of our current relatives are still social, even though they went a different route in most other ways. I understand that you (and the rest of the faithful) cannot abide by the thought, but by and large human beings are decent creatures. Our worst nature gets the best of us at times, but if it were the dominant force in our minds, as you folks are so fond of insisting, it's unlikely that we would even be here to have this conversation right now. Be honest with yourself (and us), if you had never heard of a "transcendent lawgiver" would you really be raping and pillaging your way across the country? Doubtful.

We actually know a great deal about past societies hopes, fears, cultural taboos. In every case one cares to look the god of BF Wherever was a whole hell of a lot like the people who believed in it. These little territorial grabs into morality fall flat on their face from the outset, because it isn't just the concept of morality, but even that of a lawgiver that is a subjective one. That's how we do it, there isn't anything else to it. You get enough people together and they work out terms. Thousands of years later you end up with statutes, cultural norms, etc. None of this is remotely mystical, and none of it has anything to do with whether or not the man in the sky told these people what was right or wrong. The people themselves, in every case, put words into a non-existent beings mouth to give them greater authority than "I said so", because long long ago we learned that no one gave a shit what any single one of us had to say. "I said so" doesn't even work on toddlers.

Your post, and the implications of your position, are insulting to the entire human race.

(September 16, 2011 at 5:12 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You're lucky you got a single thoughtful response. The OP is bullshit. We've heard it before, it always come from christians, it's not a thoughtful discussion, and you aren't blowing back the "veil of ignorance" you and your folks must absolutely believe atheists suffer under. We all go about making those moral decisions individually, even when we do believe in faeries (notice the number of christian and muslim inmates). Had you been born a Hindu you'd be arguing that we had no basis for morality because we ate beef. End of.

What you seem to be stuck on, Crux, is that despite not swallowing the koolaid you so readily guzzled down, we manage to be decent people. It's unsettling isn't it, when sinners just aren't as evil as you want them to be. Atheists are as moral (or immoral) as anyone else, they base those morals on the same thing as everyone else (think really really hard about that and it might come to you). The idea that people were wandering around raping their sisters and killing their brothers at the drop of a dime is not something that we have any evidence for whatsoever. We have been social animals for hundreds of thousands of years, decended from animals that were highly social for millions of years, and all of our current relatives are still social, even though they went a different route in most other ways. I understand that you (and the rest of the faithful) cannot abide by the thought, but by and large human beings are decent creatures. Our worst nature gets the best of us at times, but if it were the dominant force in our minds, as you folks are so fond of insisting, it's unlikely that we would even be here to have this conversation right now.

My apologies, i'm obviously not explaining myself very well, as you're not understanding the question under discussion. It has nothing to do with any particular religion of faith, or the bahavior of any group of individuals. The discussion is about finding a basis for moral concensus, the actions of atheists or people of faith have no relevance to the discussion. Many people have never questioned the basis of their moral beliefs, "it comes naturally" or "its just common sense" are commonly used terms by such people. It doesn't! humans can be brutal uncaring and ruthless with no moral conditioning.

Humans can be many things with no conditioning whatsoever. Kind is one of them. It is in our nature. I'm not misunderstanding anything here, I'm calling you out on a desperate attempt to assert the superiority of what you just so happen to believe. It's empty, absurd, and for whatever reason you seem to absolutely require for this to be true. It's bullshit, start to finish, and you probably know that. If you want to blather on about how the faithful (of any stripe) are superior in any way to the unwashed, just go back to your church. They serve bigotry warm, on tap, and on demand. That you named your thread "Evil Atheists" and continue to stumble around searching for ways to explain that we have no basis for morality, all the while claiming that the thread isn't about faith of any stripe is pathetic. You're a liar.

(September 16, 2011 at 5:12 pm)Rhythm Wrote: You're lucky you got a single thoughtful response. The OP is bullshit. We've heard it before, it always come from christians, it's not a thoughtful discussion, and you aren't blowing back the "veil of ignorance" you and your folks must absolutely believe atheists suffer under. We all go about making those moral decisions individually, even when we do believe in faeries (notice the number of christian and muslim inmates). Had you been born a Hindu you'd be arguing that we had no basis for morality because we ate beef. End of.

What you seem to be stuck on, Crux, is that despite not swallowing the koolaid you so readily guzzled down, we manage to be decent people. It's unsettling isn't it, when sinners just aren't as evil as you want them to be. Atheists are as moral (or immoral) as anyone else, they base those morals on the same thing as everyone else (think really really hard about that and it might come to you). The idea that people were wandering around raping their sisters and killing their brothers at the drop of a dime is not something that we have any evidence for whatsoever. We have been social animals for hundreds of thousands of years, decended from animals that were highly social for millions of years, and all of our current relatives are still social, even though they went a different route in most other ways. I understand that you (and the rest of the faithful) cannot abide by the thought, but by and large human beings are decent creatures. Our worst nature gets the best of us at times, but if it were the dominant force in our minds, as you folks are so fond of insisting, it's unlikely that we would even be here to have this conversation right now. Be honest with yourself (and us), if you had never heard of a "transcendent lawgiver" would you really be raping and pillaging your way across the country? Doubtful.

We actually know a great deal about past societies hopes, fears, cultural taboos. In every case one cares to look the god of BF Wherever was a whole hell of a lot like the people who believed in it. These little territorial grabs into morality fall flat on their face from the outset, because it isn't just the concept of morality, but even that of a lawgiver that is a subjective one. That's how we do it, there isn't anything else to it. You get enough people together and they work out terms. Thousands of years later you end up with statutes, cultural norms, etc. None of this is remotely mystical, and none of it has anything to do with whether or not the man in the sky told these people what was right or wrong. The people themselves, in every case, put words into a non-existent beings mouth to give them greater authority than "I said so", because long long ago we learned that no one gave a shit what any single one of us had to say. "I said so" doesn't even work on toddlers.

Your post, and the implications of your position, are insulting to the entire human race.

Your entire post seems to ignore the fact that the societies and our history is derived from a common theistic belief system, where is the evidence for any sucessful groups or societies of atheistic belief systems? Perhaps the success of the human race is based upon the moral systems derived from theistic beliefs, can you point to any historical evidence of successful atheistic based belief communities (acepting that theism is particular to humanity)? We have plenty of evidence that theistic communities survive, is there any evidence for the survival of atheistic communities?

You seem to be ignoring the fact that most societies did not, in fact, survive. Most times, some other "theistic society" had a hand in their demise. Guess it doesn't always work out after all eh? Just how far back do you think religion extends into the record? Guess you don't mind worshiping booby dolls as long as it works right? Satanists are theists too btw (though I'm sure some would disagree). We don't have any evidence of "theistic" systems of morality beyond the neolithic, which leaves us with about 95% of our time here unaccounted for, and in fact we have plenty of evidence for animism in it's place. That's 95% of our time as Homo Sapiens btw, with about 2.5million years where god seemed to lack any sort of representation to our genus. That's an unimpressive 0.5% left to theistic morality, and yet here we are. Haven't even considered the "morality" of social animals, which have existed since at least the Cambrian, half a billion years ago. At this point the space left to theism isn't even worth mention.

"Value of religion
Organized religion emerged as a means of providing social and economic stability to large populations through the following ways:

Organized religion served to Justify the central authority, which in turn possessed the right to collect taxes in return for providing social and security services to the state. The empires of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were theocracies, with chiefs, kings and emperors playing dual roles of political and spiritual leaders.[9] Virtually all state societies and chiefdoms around the world have similar political structures where political authority is justified by divine sanction.

Organized religion emerged as means of maintaining peace between unrelated individuals. Bands and tribes consist of small number of related individuals. However states and nations are composed of thousands or millions of unrelated individuals. Jared Diamond argues that organized religion served to provide a bond between unrelated individuals who would otherwise be more prone to enmity. He argues that the leading cause of death among hunter gatherer societies is murder."

Control, short and sweet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religions