Guys: Would you ever rape and murder a girl?

[God of Mr. Hanky]

It's not all instinct, though. Children are born with a poor sense of empathy, and have to be carefully taught (and sometimes punished for choosing selfishness over others' feelings/safety) in order to develop this sense of moral feeling toward others, to place the worth of others as equal to their own, in the sense of not doing harm. If you were a parent, you'd already know that. Our brains are sponges for social coding, from language to behavior, and continue to develop until into early adulthood (~25 years old), so a person who may naturally be able to feel empathy can still do great harm if they are not taught to be good, social/moral creatures.

This could start a chicken-or-the-egg diversion, but I doubt that empathy and socialization require any teaching, only experience and guidance for the avoidance of disastrous experience. Children aren't born social because they are born without fully-developed brains, but if raised in complete cultural isolation a normal adult would not be violent nor selfish, only unable to communicate in the culture which he then encounters as an adult. Then again, he probably wouldn't be sane from the long-term isolation, and such an experiment would be a cruel atrocity, so can't prove this. Anyway, I suggest that it's culture and etiquette, not empathy which requires teaching.

[Cato]

Go fuck yourself.

It's a valid question no matter how distasteful you might feel it is. And especially so when you actually look at how common domestic violence is.

Give me a fucking break Aractus. You've been around here long enough to know I'm the guy (to the consternation of some I'm sure) constantly directing people to deontology, consequentialism and virtue ethics articles at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to better frame discussions of morality. Despite my contributions here, the fact that you assume my reply was in response to the actual question being posed rather than the disingenuous manner in which it was raised says far more about you than it does me.

If you would like to engage me in a conversation regarding morality as it pertains to rape prohibition, please start a new thread that at least pretends to make a serious inquiry instead of the loaded "I'm atheist, therefore I have no morals, therefore it's okay to rape" bullshit the OP engaged in.

[Brian37]

Fuck you! "Atheist" is not a licence to be lawless nor does it mean we lack morals. Does not believing in Allah or Vishnu make you want to rape or murder? No? Then grow the fuck up! We are not evil for not buying your sky wizard claim.

[Mr Greene]

Blatant Poe is Blatant.

Hale was a brainwashed monotheist parroting the party line.

[SofaKingHigh]

if a fear of God was the only thing stopping you kill, rape, lie or just be a cuntbag of the highest order, I'd suggest that you were a murdering, raping, lying cuntbag in the first place.

We knew all of the above were wrong long before being told by your god, whoever that is.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Man, I could star bottling these bitches and have myself a fresh, empty bottle by the end of the day, along with a full sack of rupees.



So many.

[Alex K]

I'm tired of this thread now. Can it go away?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

It's not all instinct, though. Children are born with a poor sense of empathy, and have to be carefully taught (and sometimes punished for choosing selfishness over others' feelings/safety) in order to develop this sense of moral feeling toward others, to place the worth of others as equal to their own, in the sense of not doing harm. If you were a parent, you'd already know that. Our brains are sponges for social coding, from language to behavior, and continue to develop until into early adulthood (~25 years old), so a person who may naturally be able to feel empathy can still do great harm if they are not taught to be good, social/moral creatures.

This could start a chicken-or-the-egg diversion, but I doubt that empathy and socialization require any teaching, only experience and guidance for the avoidance of disastrous experience. Children aren't born social because they are born without fully-developed brains, but if raised in complete cultural isolation a normal adult would not be violent nor selfish, only unable to communicate in the culture which he then encounters as an adult. Then again, he probably wouldn't be sane from the long-term isolation, and such an experiment would be a cruel atrocity, so can't prove this. Anyway, I suggest that it's culture and etiquette, not empathy which requires teaching.

You mistake me. I think empathy is an instinct (which fails to develop in sociopaths) that develops as our brains develop. On top of that, we overlay social programs that allow for group/herd instincts to keep us functional in the society in which we develop, by the absorbing the written and unwritten rules-- it's why children are such mimics of adult behavior. These are two instincts. Like all other instincts, people have/develop them to various degrees (sociopaths = zero), and when the separate systems come into conflict, it's clear that empathy can be overridden by other programs. It's why it's so important to shape and develop our natural empathy through good social programming, which includes rewarding "good"/empathic behaviors so that becomes a more-dominant program in situations where there is such conflict. 

Religion makes the claim that it is the only way to instill the proper social/moral program, and it follows from that belief that without religion, we can not be moral on our own. The problem is that the facts don't really back that up-- religion is one form of social program, yes, but it unfortunately comes with too many riders which state that empathy for others may be discarded, as in the case of certain forms of sin, or heresy, or against nonbelievers, etc. It's also why I'm willing to classify Marxism/Leninist communism as a religion, despite being godless. It has the same sets of artificial rules that can override natural empathy, even that learned as a child.

The fault in the thinking of the religionists, with regard to this question, is that there are numerous social instinct programs we can absorb that have nothing to do with religion, and it's quite possible that (as you assert) a person with natural empathy would develop into a great person even in the absence of any social overlays... we can't really know the answer to that one, as you said. But with atheists, we see that there's a tendency to accept (and thus empathize with) others we don't see as part of our in-group, or rather that our definition of in-group is much broader, because we don't have a program specifically telling us to exclude them from the empathic in-group.

It's the great irony of the moral "conundrum" posed by the OP. Even recently a study showed that atheistic children were more empathic and kind than their religious-upbringing counterparts: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jvchamary/20...-morality/

[paulpablo]

Over the course of this year, I have lost faith that a god exists because of insufficient evidence and applying my skepticism to my religion that I followed for so many years. But I have a problem... I was talking to my two cousins and they were saying how they would rape and murder a girl and dispose of her. (They are atheists as well) I've been thinking a lot recently about this. Since I'm an atheist now, I'm starting to feel like raping and murdering a girl isn't necessarily
"wrong". Fellow atheists: Is this truly "wrong". And if so, how is it wrong?  Atheists, would you do something like this? Why or why not, please explain...

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Is it truly wrong to rape then murder someone?  Yes except maybe in some arguable circumstances.
Say if you rape someone due to them being under the age of consent, you didn't know their true age, then they tried, for whatever reason, to  make your life a living hell in which case maybe you could argue that it would be a murder committed as a crime of passion or some sort of form of self defence but you got convicted of murder.

Why is it wrong?  Because rape and murder are evil, if you had been raised by good parents who instilled a sense of empathy within you then you would know this without having to ask it in a forum or being told it by an ancient book.

Would I rape and murder someone?
There's absolutely no reason for me to rape and murder someone, even if I couldn't get sex via standard attraction and I had no morals I would simply pay a prostitute, if I wanted rough violent rape sex I would pay the prostitute extra for some role play.

So now I have to ask you.... why do say at the start of the post you have a problem?  From your perspective what is your problem now?  You've decided that it's reasonable to kill and rape a girl so why is there a problem if there's nothing wrong with that?  From your perspective there would only be a problem unless you've decided that there is something wrong with doing it.
It's like if I decided that I want to masturbate daily and I've reasoned there's nothing wrong with it.  I wouldn't start a thread claiming that it's a problem if I've already used all my reasoning and rational thought processes to decide that it's not wrong at all.
It's like your saying "hey I've got a big problem, I've decided that there's nothing wrong with doing this certain action and it's completely fine."
Just by the fact you're acknowledging there is a problem, I'm guessing that you know raping and murder is wrong on at least some level. At the very least on the level that it's wrong in a legal sense that you're going against someone else's human rights.

[dyresand]

Over the course of this year, I have lost faith that a god exists because of insufficient evidence and applying my skepticism to my religion that I followed for so many years. But I have a problem... I was talking to my two cousins and they were saying how they would rape and murder a girl and dispose of her. (They are atheists as well) I've been thinking a lot recently about this. Since I'm an atheist now, I'm starting to feel like raping and murdering a girl isn't necessarily
"wrong". Fellow atheists: Is this truly "wrong". And if so, how is it wrong?  Atheists, would you do something like this? Why or why not, please explain...

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WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU. Rape is not okay. Murder really.. depending on the circumstance if people are going to get hurt from someone.