(June 9, 2014 at 9:33 pm)Beccs Wrote: Welcome.

We're always happy to encounter new atheists.

DOn't worry about rambling, we all do it and it's better than remaining silent about the issues you've encountered.

We have our local theists. Some good, some bad, some that should be caged.

Thanks Beccs, I am so used to having my "crazy beliefs" dismissed by the clan of theists that surround me.

Welcome,

I am glad you are doing good work and helping others.
As a theist, I am quite curious as to how you determine right and wrong? For example if I had 4 friends and we loved each other so much and wanted to be in a polygamous marriage, would you fight the good fight and fight for our right to be married to those we love?

If it was legal and willingly entered into by all parties, sure, why not? If my (our) opinions on your domestic arrangements was necessary for them to attain equal status with already established marital conventions, I don't see any problems. I also don't see where the question of determining right and wrong fits in - could you clarify?

(June 11, 2014 at 7:15 pm)Stimbo Wrote: If it was legal and willingly entered into by all parties, sure, why not? If my (our) opinions on your domestic arrangements was necessary for them to attain equal status with already established marital conventions, I don't see any problems. I also don't see where the question of determining right and wrong fits in - could you clarify?

You say if it was legal, are you suggesting that your countries governance guides your morality? Let me take this a step further and suggest that if me and my sister wanted to have intercourse and be married, would you support this? Or would you think it wrong? We are both consenting and promise we will wear condoms to prevent a defective child. Incest in all Western countries is illegal.

(June 11, 2014 at 5:52 pm)YaAli21 Wrote: As a theist, I am quite curious as to how you determine right and wrong?

The same way every fucking person does.

If you get your morality from a book then it's you who people should be concerned about.

(June 11, 2014 at 9:19 pm)Napoléon Wrote: The same way every fucking person does.

If you get your morality from a book then it's you who people should be concerned about.

Can you elaborate on how every fucking person does that? What scientific evidence do you have that guide us what is good and what is bad. For example we have evidence about certain foods that could lead to diabetes or heart disease etc... However at what point do you decide what is morally good behaviour and what is morally wrong behaviour.

(June 11, 2014 at 9:29 pm)YaAli21 Wrote:

(June 11, 2014 at 9:19 pm)Napoléon Wrote: The same way every fucking person does.

If you get your morality from a book then it's you who people should be concerned about.

Can you elaborate on how every fucking person does that? What scientific evidence do you have that guide us what is good and what is bad. For example we have evidence about certain foods that could lead to diabetes or heart disease etc... However at what point do you decide what is morally good behaviour and what is morally wrong behaviour.

It might serve you well to pick up a book on Sociobiology and form your own opinion. Scores of animals that are much lower on the evolutionary tree than humans MUST adhere to social "rules" because it is key to their very survival. It's not a big leap to see how, over hundreds of millions of years the course of evolution has resulted in a hardwired code of morality that is crucial to our survival. If you are of the school of thought of "nature vs. nurture" then you would probably give alot of credit to one's upbringing. It's pretty simple, don't overthink the problem.

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(June 11, 2014 at 5:52 pm)YaAli21 Wrote: Welcome,

I am glad you are doing good work and helping others.
As a theist, I am quite curious as to how you determine right and wrong? For example if I had 4 friends and we loved each other so much and wanted to be in a polygamous marriage, would you fight the good fight and fight for our right to be married to those we love?

Whatever floats your boat as long as you are all of legal age, sound mind, and agree to enter into the bond without coercion.

(June 12, 2014 at 1:30 am)naturestubbs1 Wrote: It might serve you well to pick up a book on Sociobiology and form your own opinion. Scores of animals that are much lower on the evolutionary tree than humans MUST adhere to social "rules" because it is key to their very survival. It's not a big leap to see how, over hundreds of millions of years the course of evolution has resulted in a hardwired code of morality that is crucial to our survival. If you are of the school of thought of "nature vs. nurture" then you would probably give alot of credit to one's upbringing. It's pretty simple, don't overthink the problem.

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Whatever floats your boat as long as you are all of legal age, sound mind, and agree to enter into the bond without coercion.

I think you need to pick up a book on evolution. I have studied human behaviour and evolution to a great degree. If evolution hard wired morality into humans and not just the capabilities of survival (which our moral choices are based on according to you) why do think societies differ in right and wrong across, history, land, cultures, countries and time? Shouldn't they be the same? I challenge you to find me one gene that encodes some aspect of morality to such a degree that indicates innate morals. Atheists have no moral compass, it's all subjective to them. What is right to one person can be different for another. It's all subjective. Atheists are in no position to judge morality. I would go as far to say, that if I was an atheist I would be a hypocrite if I opposed the Rwanda genocide.

(June 11, 2014 at 4:56 pm)ThePinsir Wrote: Damn, dude! You're 42 and have never met another atheist? I'd wager that you probably met a closet'd atheist :p

Anyway, you're sure to find some like-minded brahs around here.

Welcome aboard!

MANY, MANY closeted atheists. I am not ashamed to say that I am a recovering alchoholic/psycho-med popper who went through rehab last year. I know, I know, AA simply spells BS in my book but I had to pay lip service to my family (sorry to anyone who has had success with AA, I just needed to clear my system and I knew the right course of action). After introducing myself and identifying myself as a Biology Teacher I was STUNNED by the number of people that pulled me aside and whispered their true beliefs in my ear. It is really pathetic that people are so scared to let people know what they believe. And I am being 100 percent honest when I tell you that in all of my 42 years I have never known that being an Atheist was so widely seen as taboo. Either I have been waaaayyyy too fucked up since the age of 14 (though I have never taught kids drunk, maybe pretty hungover) or I have just surrounded myself with everything academia for so long that I have been insulated. I have a shitton of research left to do on brain physiology as it pertains to addicts but I truly think that I spent all of those years in a stupor because I simply couldn't make sense of the world around me (or the people, all of whom were christians). It just made zero sense to me and still does.

(June 11, 2014 at 9:10 pm)YaAli21 Wrote: You say if it was legal, are you suggesting that your countries governance guides your morality? Let me take this a step further and suggest that if me and my sister wanted to have intercourse and be married, would you support this? Or would you think it wrong? We are both consenting and promise we will wear condoms to prevent a defective child. Incest in all Western countries is illegal.

Why are you conflating what is legal with what is moral? In my country, private gun ownership (outside of very specific circumstances) is illegal; in other countries it is not. Even if I were to be born and raised in such a country, I would find the ownership of firearms immoral (at least I hope I'd be the same me who thinks that). At one time, it was perfectly legal to send little children up chimneys, into dangerous factory machinery etc and to sell your wife via public auction, a rope halter about her neck. These things I find immoral.

So no, I don't get my morality from a country's laws. They, in the main, simply happen to agree with my moral perception. The thing is, laws and statutes don't appear out of a vacuum. They are arrived at via a process of discussion and debate by a consensus of people, elected to represent the common individual and ultimately accountable to them. It's by no means a perfect system and is open to abuse (can anyone say USA-PATRIOT?), but it does have the virtue of being subject to revision.

On the other hand, so-called moral laws as presented in that Big Book of Multiple Choice (the bible, for the record) are not. Prohibitions against same-sex relationships and abortions are hopelessly and cherry-pickingly entangled with those against certain dietary practises, the role of women in society, hair and clothing styles, and so on. This plus the fact that everyone who tries to make the case for them has a different interpretation of what they're supposed to mean makes them utterly useless as moral guides. Far better to scrap the lot and go with a system that imbues a person with a mechanism for determing what is moral, rather than a list of pronouncements about morality; as I've often said, what happens when you run across something that's not on the list? Moreover, how can you determine whether the items on the list actually belong there? At some point in all this, we have to defer to an inbuilt sense of morality - why not cut through the crap and start from there?