Atheists; what do you base your morals on?

[jstrodel]

I think Strodel just doesn't like humanism because it's poised to destroy the one thing Christians have claimed to have a monopoly on for so long; care towards other human beings. Christian missions have always been about charity but humanism threatens to make it not an exception for recruiting to a cause but a rule that should always be followed and it scares the shit out of him as it does all other Christians. They can't bear the thought that people can be good without god, especially with a valid reason behind it. They especially don't like that it glorifies human beings, to be expected from those who follow a religion that essentially states that humans are flawed hopelessly and are sin-sucking vile creations that must prostrate to grovel for their perceived shortcomings. All this "human life is valuable and not to be casually discarded, wasted, or harmed" stuff we humanists proclaim must sound anathema to him.

No I think it is fine to have humanist charities but they should do it with their own money just like Christians do, they can get 501C3 like Christians can (and they do). Having a charity is different from using the government to force your ideology on other people through funding certain programs and disadvantaging others.

If you can't see that state funded programs are different from private charities, you are blind.

That said, I think some government programs and subsidies are important.

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I think Strodel just doesn't like humanism because it's poised to destroy the one thing Christians have claimed to have a monopoly on for so long; care towards other human beings.

Also, like many other fundies, he seems to want to lump everything that's not part of his religious worldview together, no matter how unrelated they may be to one another. Reading fundy propaganda, you often come across alleged alliances of groups wholly hostile or incompatible with one another (such as New Agers and atheists, or Catholics and Muslims, etc.) against their pure brand of True Christianity ™.

It works better if you think Satan is behind it all.

You are not really arguing anything or presenting examples of this in what I have written.

I don't think it is foolish to group atheism with liberalism. The demographics bear out what I am saying, it is not controversial. Someone posted statistics on voting demographics between left and right. Atheism is a left wing movement, and has been since the French revolution (where the term comes from). I find it ironic that the worldview that has such as small claim to moral authority would be so preoccupied with statecraft depends on some sense of non-subjective ethics by which to govern.

I would not consider myself to be a fundamentalist Christian, though I know many who are and respect them.

You can see alliances between New Agers and atheists on this forum in the discussion of DMT as well as interest in Buddhism. I've known people that were new age and atheist.