(December 6, 2014 at 8:16 am)Aoi Magi Wrote:(December 6, 2014 at 4:11 am)boothj1985 Wrote: I wonder if anyone has looked into the possible problem of the repel-effect in which a person who doesn't want to follow false teachings accidentally becomes contrary to many good teachings that are contained within the religious text of a religion.
What are "good teachings"? How does one determine what is good and bad? Think about it for a bit!
Religion claims ALL of it's teachings are good, but we all know that is not the case. But how do we, or you, know that? All of us, including you, use our own judgement and morality to determine what is good, from our perspective. What this means is, if we have to decide on things by ourselves, even if we are presented with a "good teaching", if we cannot agree with it, we will discard it as bad, and similarly if we can find a bad teaching beneficial, we might end up seeing it as a good teaching.
So what happens when you try to find "good teachings" from a book filled with bad ones? You'll end up eventually mistaking some good teachings as bad and bad ones as good. And since the percentage of bad teachings is much higher than good ones, the probability of mistaking a bad teaching as good is also quite high. So why take that chance, when you don't even need those ideas in the first place? After all, in your everyday life you'd always rely on your own knowledge and moral compass rather than what a religious book might have to say about that situation.
Now, there's another thing you need to understand, atheists are NOT trying to become an authority on morality, nor are they trying to lead the flock. Actually, atheism has nothing to do with morality, it's just a neutral position for a particular type of claim. Atheists also do not hold any responsibility towards teaching religious people how to cherry-pick their own books, or need to compromise on their beliefs just to get along with someone.
Actually morality is a sort of science. A limited science, as is all science since your effect on others could be extended out to possible aliens out in the universe or every insect and even bacteria but just like physics, the idea is to understand what is necessary to accomplish things that help most people, like detecting the path of possible threatening asteroids in space, which doesn't require the complete understanding of dark matter/energy. As far as atheists being a non-factor in the realm of ethics I must disagree because simply existing in the same physical world with other beings who experience pain and joy just like you means you are responsible for the effect your actions have on others. Morality can be foggy but with research and trial/error we can come to greater understanding. What is the end goal? From a humanist perspective, the goal is to decide what is the best way to live to benefit all people. I'm not quite of that view because I feel that all beings(humans and animals) should be considered relative to the capacity to feel they have which is most likely correlated with the number of neurons they have.
