RE: what are we supposed to say again when christians ask us where we get our morality?
June 26, 2014 at 7:00 am
(May 11, 2014 at 9:39 pm)leodeo Wrote: Someone on another Atheist chat gave me a 'cheat sheet' which had all the answers to what to say when Christians ask stuff long time ago, but i lost it.
but seems frequently christian people tell me that without god we are all douches and if it wasn't for god there would be no good in mankind - so what do we say again for that?
sometimes i feel like 99% of people are pretty mean and it feels pretty spiritual when someone is nice to me, but i dont agree that without Christianity people are bad cus i know lotta nice people who aren't Christians. and seems to me like people on christian forums are the most mean, they don't use bad words but the things they say are much more mean IMO
I'm not sure getting ones morality from an infant killing, slave trade promoting, misogynistic, bloodthirsty, genocidal, jealous, wrathful, vengeful deity is a strong position to argue from for a Christian.
Morality is ones self-censoring mechanism (the clue here is the word 'self'). It is a strategy that is the sum of many conscious and subconscious processes. A conceptual and ultimately behavioural glue that enables us to form social groups or conversely exclude people (including oneself) from those groups. These groups originally prevented humans - who are basically clawless, fangless, soggy bags of lion food - from being 'evolved-out' of their environment. And that applies today as much as it did in the past.
Christians often fail to grasp that morality is self-censorship, to them it is a given set of laws that leads to an afterlife and they often make the mistake of reversing this and suggesting that without an afterlife there is no reason for morality. The simple response to this should be;
'My atheist morality is what is preventing me from smashing your dumb-ass Christian head through that wall'.
If they get angry at this I offer up the wise words of Bill Hicks when faced with a bunch of Christian 'rednecks' who didn't like his comments on Jesus,
'So, forgive me.'
MM
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions" - Leonardo da Vinci
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
"I think I use the term “radical” rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as “atheist,” some people will say, “Don’t you mean ‘agnostic’?” I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one ... etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal, and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously." - Douglas Adams (and I echo the sentiment)
