(September 17, 2016 at 12:10 am)ChadWooters Wrote:(September 16, 2016 at 5:41 pm)Stimbo Wrote: Which is why I added the qualifier: "No benefits which cannot be achieved through purely secular means."
Except in my examples they actually were motivated by religion, whereas you are merely speculating that it could have been otherwise. Perhaps you could provide examples of prominent abolishionists that were prominent atheists.
Are you suggesting that Dr King, for example, could not or would not have been motivated by anything other than religious means; and not that he was able to use religion as a motivator to others? Was he a good man only because of his faith, or could he have been good regardless, simply by being a good man? Or is there some other avenue?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
