Why I think atheists should not reject all religious text.

[boothj1985]

OK, so that's the conclusion of the text quoted.


In German we have word for that: "secondary virtues". Meaning, focussing on things that aren't really important and have next to no impact on society. These secondary virtues are a great tool to keep people towing the line. Don't do this or that and most of all obey.

Small wonder that the article also points out, that atheists as well as liberals don't want to obey authority. They on the other hand, speaking as christians, think obeying to be a virtue. It's literally the line of thinking that led us into two world wars.

That makes a lot of sense. I think that atheists-and some liberal Christians-view certain issues as morally neutral. Looking at photos of consenting adults who want to take sexually suggestive photos or videos is morally neutral to me, for example, but to some Christians it is a black/white moral issue.

Christians-at least here in the southern US- are the ones that reject their own bible. The book is supposed to be their holy text and yet many have not read it or cherry pick which rules to follow. There is no direct rule against abortion, for example but there are multiple verses in both the Old and New Testament about god's anger when the poor are not helped. Yet many Christians want laws against abortion but believe that helping the poor should be voluntary.

The thing is if we know that most believers will rationalize, ignore, etc the bad parts of the bible you can only address them on their terms. Only if they see you acknowledging the good morals of their faith they will be hard pressed to question the assumption that atheists main motivation for not believing is to have no accountability. How is profanity or adult films/images an issue? It's very nuanced and dependent on many factors such as the impressionability of the individual or people who they effect, the state of affairs in their society, etc. but basically what's the danger is that people can be subconsciously driven to engage in riskier behaviors that can involve stds, unplanned pregnancy, or harassment and certain language often involves references to noxious things and can subconsciously drive a person to not be as sanitary or careful in their dealings with others. This is part speculation and part based on information but it is understandable nevertheless. The misuse of religion in supporting bad laws and discrimination are definitely an issue to be addressed but unless their are some people who are "big" enough to overlook the many flaws of the religious doctrines, there can be no progress. The biggest problem are the ones who know it's a sham and are just using it for personal profit, in which case you have to just try and expose them since they likely have no sense of shame.

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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.

Most likely correlated based on what?

Have you even bothered to look at recent behavioral expirements with animals? They're freely available on the internet.

And, quite frankly, I'm starting to have my doubts about you being an agnostic atheist. First you're coming up with an apologist website of the first order to underline some lofty claim about the holy books having some moral values. And now we're down to pseudo science.

I've read many dubious scientific articles that get so caught up in details and technicalities that they seem to miss some obvious logic issues. As far as determining a being's level of consciousness based on what we see, I think the same issue of personification that makes religion have so much weight comes into play. Seeing an insect run for its life doesn't mean it is experiencing the same level of fear a human does when they're running for their life. Think of color-depth for instance. The more colors an image is made up of like 8-bit vs 24-bit has a big impact on how realistic and vivid the image appears. The image may have the same basic appearance and describe the same thing but it's accuracy is based on the quantity of information used to express it.