RE: What can atheists do / not do?
January 3, 2011 at 7:17 pm
(This post was last modified: January 3, 2011 at 7:21 pm by TheDarkestOfAngels.)
(January 3, 2011 at 6:20 pm)barboft Wrote: No rules at all? How do you expect to lead good lives without at least some rules about your conduct?
There are rules of conduct.
Rules of etiquette, social manners, the rule of law (Indiana, United States in my case), and so on.
I also have my own values.
All this is to say that, for example, I don't murder people
I personally value human life to a certain extent. (My rule)
It is illegal to murder someone. (state and federal law)
The effect of the loss of life on those who personally and intimately knew the victim would be profoundly negative. (Social values/norms/laws).
I empathize with the would-be victim and the connected friends and family (my own values).
My atheism has little to nothing to do with my ability to value human life and my desire to not murder someone, as it has nothing to do with any moral and rule-based decision I make in my life over the course of my existence.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
