Immoral atheists

[paulpablo]

I still think it's strange, the original question says


Then you changed it to her being on her death bed.
What commitment is she being released from if she is on her death bed? If she were uncommitted at this stage would she feel the urge to be getting randy with the nearest passer by while the cancer is eating away at her, or whatever the cause of death is?

No, I altered the example to try and extract the relevant moral intuition.

First, the example was supposed to show that truth isn't the only thing that matters and that we regularly recognise that it would sometimes be immoral to tell someone the truth. Often this is when telling someone the truth would cause the person great suffering without preventing any greater quantity.

Second, in one of my examples her (false) belief has led her to have other false beliefs that are dangerous to her (and perhaps to others). Here the point was that it would be immoral and imprudent to challenge her original false belief. All one needs to do is challenge the worrying false beliefs, not all of her false beliefs.

Most - many - atheists have problems with the religious primarily because the religious often have rather worrying moral views combined with a greater motivation to behave morally. But rather than challenge that such moral views are correct, the tendency is to challenge the entire world view instead. This is imprudent and unnecessary.

I personally try and avoid arguing with people about religion if I know it will upset them, people with lost loved ones who obviously converted just for the reason they want to see them again, but realistically have probably never read a bible or quran or torah before.
I've had a terminally ill guy try to convert me in my city center before and I basically just nodded and agreed but said I didn't want to join the club thanks.
And I don't argue with the mormon girls on buses when they try and convert me but that's just because they are ridiculously good looking, I might even convert to mormonism if it means I can marry 5 girls of that caliber, it might be worth it.