Quote:Whoa, whoa: hold up, there. Free to do whatever we want? No, and I think you knew that before you typed the sentence. Atheism has a very detailed explanation for why we have morality and the uses thereof on a personal and sociological level (well, evolution and sociology does, but this atheist will patiently explain it if asked.). It is you theists that believe that people need to be taught what's right and wrong, and then constantly threatened or wheedled into behaving correctly. And that stuff about carnality... what's the real world harm of that, when done with care?
No it doesn't. Atheism gives people a lot of competing theories which disagree with each other about morality. Many atheists will flat out say that there is no objective morality. Other atheists will claim that there is but develop different systems. The reality is that atheists have different opinions about what is moral. You can see an example of this on this forum, where you see a post about a guy who "doesn't see what the big deal is with his dad being a cocaine addict"[/. Another person questioned "whether child molesting was wrong". You see, atheists disagree about the nature of ethics. Atheists are in agreement that atheists are ethical people. This is not the hardest thing in the world to agree on. What they do not agree on is what makes a person ethical.
Your use of the term atheism is inconsistent with other theists who insist that atheism is only the absence of belief and not a specific cultural movement related to secular political advocacy. I agree with you that atheism is not merely the absence of belief it is a specific culture.
Quote:I think the problem here is that, when you think of the atheist position, you don't go far enough. You're still considering atheism through the lens of your religious beliefs; you can't see a way by which one can reach a moral setup without god, and therefore you don't think atheists can. But from an atheist setup, we can and have.
"We can and have". You mean, after considering ethics you have come to contradictory views that are essentially irreconcilable and that leave the person with the views with absolutely no way of comparing one view against another view or discerning which are correct. I would call this a process of forming opinions.
Quote:You think carnality is bad becase your god says so, but from an atheist position that god doesn't exist, and therefore the inherent immorality of sex is nonexistent.
No, I think that carnality is bad because of a set of reasons that God has observed in deciding the action is wrong. Sexual immorality is wrong because it produces unwanted children, it leaves mothers with children they cannot take care of, sometimes devastating the rest of the womens life, the children cannot support themselves, there is substantial risk for transmitting disease, it leads to a society in which marriage is not valued, women are devalued and not taken care of, children are raised in environments which parents are split, there is much higher divorce and the social organization of the family is severely undermined which leads to many other social and economic consequences (because much is tied to the organization of the family). I think of sexuality as being a metaphor for life, and it is an extremely deep and complicated thing.
Condoms are not effective to the degree that would be necessary to effectively prevent pregnancies over a long time. I have personally had condoms break. When you add in the typical factors of alchohol, rushed decision making and other crazy life factors that surround the use of contraception, in real world factors, the only foolproof way to stop pregnancy is abstinence. You might say, if use a condom every single time, there is only a 1% chance that the condom may break or you are too drunk to stop yourself from using a condom or something crazy happens . Well, that means if you have sex 100 times that is as likely as happening as not happening.
Look around you. How many people do you know that have unwanted kids? Probably a decent number. You can quote me this statistic and that statistic about these hypothetical situations in which if you do this that and the other thing you won't get pregnant. The reality is that there are still people all around that did this that and the other thing and something else happened and now they are pregnant, and they brought a life into the world and can't take care of it.
When you consider the fact that people nowadays are so wicked and perverse in their hearts that they will think it is ok to kill their own children to enable them to have fun and get away with it. That is where your atheist ethics take you. Abortion - "well, that is something atheists disagree about". Sex before marriage? No problem. A responsible thing to do would be, since you are creating the possibility of life when you are about to have sex, you should see the act of sex as placing a certain risk on your potential child. If you are a moral person, this will significantly affect your decision making. If you are a twisted, psuedo-philosophical atheist, what you will do is just accommodate your ethics to your lifestyle preferences, say it is ok to have sex and ok to have abortions. You can do that, but it is despicable, and God will judge you for it.
Quote:If you are going to attempt a representation of atheism, at least be accurate in doing so.
Where was I inaccurate?
