RE: My former Pastor: "You're not accountable to anyone."...
September 15, 2010 at 2:33 pm
(September 15, 2010 at 2:02 pm)dave4shmups Wrote: Ok, so we just talked on the phone, but he said that why not just look at porn magazines
Indeed...why not? There isn't any harm in looking at porn. I mean, some people suffer "porn addiction", but it is a rarity.
Quote:why not just "live it up", because you're not accountable to anyone??
Well you are accountable to people; mainly your family, friends, people who you work for, or who work for you, etc. You are accountable to society to keep certain standards because otherwise society will look down on you and may not help you in the future. You can "live it up" to some degree; just don't overdo it. Being an atheist doesn't mean you no longer have any self-control.
Quote:he also said, where are you going to go when "your hear melts down", ie, hard times hit?
When hard times hit, instead of going to a corrupt organisation such as a church, or spending time on the useless activity of prayer, atheists do things in the real world that can help. If you are hit with troubles; you think about things and sort yourself out, or you get together with friends and help each other. Everyone has been through hard times before; and religion doesn't do anything to help you out of them...people do.
Quote:Finally, he said that morals come from somewhere, and that we are getting worse rather then better, as human beings-presumably without Christianity.
Morals come from society, and they are ever-changing. We are only getting "worse" in his eyes because he uses a strict set of moral laws that were derived millennia ago. Nowadays, things like freedom and equality are considered to be the highest moral and ethical stances, and so our society is gradually moving towards them, step by step. If you use an archaic, anti-freedom and anti-equality based moral code, then society as it is today does appear to be getting worse. If you use a modern, pro-freedom and pro-equality moral code, then society is getting better.