Atheist Morality vs Biblical Morality

[Esquilax]

Why do you think repeating the same shoddy point and ignoring my objections counts as a rebuttal?

First of all, all I do on this forum is repeat myself. I said the above in another thread, how am i supposed to know you read it?

Yeah, no shit. The fact that all you do is repeat yourself is a major problem.

second, I asked a simple question to which you answered with a question, hmmmm.

Your question was a non-sequitur when we consider the full context of the conversation. You want to focus on whatever happy feelgoods you can wring from the scenario, when the conversation was always about the god that engineered it, not the victims of it. I let myself get dragged into your deflections earlier, but I'm not anymore.

I also asked you guys to to provide a instance of what you're talking about from the Bible so we can discuss a specific case, which you also failed to do.

I may have, but then I only jumped in to address something you said that I took issue with. Why would I respond to every last thing you've ever said in this thread, when I only had something to say about one of them?

[Brian37]

There is no single 'atheist morality', nor is there any single 'biblical morality'; making the ethical query in the OP all very confused. As has already happened, bad moral actors (God and Hitler) are immediately invoked in an effort to demonize non-existent moral codes by association.

The ubiquitous references to Hitler in these types of discussions are distractions. Hitler's belief or non-belief in God is immaterial, because Hitler's actions are universally accepted as immoral regardless of someone's religious affiliation; notwithstanding the existence of Mel Gibson and Islamacists.

Charges that Christians are immoral because the OT God was a prick are very superficial. Most Christians don't interpret the Bible literally. I don't have data to support this, but I imagine this is at least partially due to the fact that some believers can't reconcile some Biblical tales with their sense of morality and the idea of a just, loving and merciful God. Claims that someone can't be moral without a universal law giver are equally preposterous. When it comes to ethical debate, I put moral nihilists and literal Biblical apologists on the same psychopathic tendencies watchlist.

I just wish people would quit ignoring that meaningful ethical debate has been raging for thousands of years and that it is far more sophisticated than god/no-god. Virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism don't necessarily require a god, but they also don't prohibit the idea of a god in order to be meaningful and practical systems of moral guidance.

Most Christians do not take the bible literally still does not mean that others read that same book with the same words to justify controlling the reproductive rights of women and justify bans on gay marriage no different than Russian Christians read the same bible to justify their current uptick in homophobic laws.

Most Christians 100 years ago took it more literally. Most Christians during the dark ages even took it more literally. Less literal Christians of today are still using the same book that was used in the past taken more literally. Still the same source.

I argue the same with liberal westernized Muslims and liberal atheists and liberal Christians when they argue "most do not do that". It is not a matter of a majority doing it. It is a matter of just enough that read the same books to justify cruelty. The source of their morality is the same no matter if that source is used to justify compassion or cruelty.

What humans fail to see is that religion itself is not a patent holder on morality. No one religion invented cruelty or compassion. Those acts have always been in or evolution. Our morality is in our behavior, not in the religions we invent or the books we use to justify good or bad actions.

[abaris]

Most Christians 100 years ago took it more literally. Most Christians during the dark ages even took it more literally.

In the Dark ages they took their priest's word for the word of god. They had no other choice, since it was forbidden to translate the bible into the popular language. Besides the fact, that most people couldn't even write their own name if their life depended on it.

[Whateverist]

Sorry guys. It's been proven time and time again. Without god we are bad, very bad. There is no reason not to murder and rape babies, wait, might be better to rape first and then murder. Anything goes. By all rights we should lose the capacity for language and howl at the moon between bouts of screaming. In addition to having no compunction against doing evil, we are actually infused with the will to cause wanton harm. If we had loaded up with the holy spirit that could never have happened. Why just look how happy and kind all religious people are. Just think, that could've been us. Why oh why did god make us so willful. What a sick motherfucker.

[Chad32]

Atheist morality is better because it focuses more on the species as a whole, and the here and now, where theistic morality focuses on pleasing someone they can't prove exists, and an afterlife they can't prove exists. Are there individual christians who are better than individual atheists? Yes. As a whole, christianity has become less extreme over time thanks to secular values.

Ironically one of the last bastions of christianity in the developed world is a country that was founded on secular values.

[abaris]

Atheist morality is better because it focuses more on the species as a whole, and the here and now, where theistic morality focuses on pleasing someone they can't prove exists, and an afterlife they can't prove exists. Are there individual christians who are better than individual atheists? Yes. As a whole, christianity has become less extreme over time thanks to secular values.

Ayn Rand was an atheist and I consider her moral code to be one of the most despicable I ever had the misfortune to explore.

Simply belonging to a group doesn't automatically make you more or less moral. It's still the individual that counts.

[genkaus]

Ayn Rand was an atheist and I consider her moral code to be one of the most despicable I ever had the misfortune to explore.

In my experience, people who say that have no clue about her actual moral code.