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-   -   Why Atheism Is Morally Bankrupt - A thought since we are celebrating Christs birth... (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=145878)

Aramike 12-24-08 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Task Force
Ya know, the more y'all post in this thread, the more happier your making subman.

Does it really matter? I disagree with him, but I'm happy for the discussion. If I wasn't interested, I'd just not post. :know:

Task Force 12-24-08 01:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Letum
Quote:

Originally Posted by Task Force
Ya know, the more y'all post in this thread, the more happier your making subman.

pfft! I'ts true. He seams to see every post as confirmation of his beliefs, regardless of the content. :rotfl:

:rotfl:you seem to be right.:rotfl:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aramike
Quote:

Originally Posted by Task Force
Ya know, the more y'all post in this thread, the more happier your making subman.

Does it really matter? I disagree with him, but I'm happy for the discussion. If I wasn't interested, I'd just not post. :know:

no, you can post in this thread all you want. Im just saying.

Letum 12-24-08 01:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aramike
Quote:

Originally Posted by Task Force
Ya know, the more y'all post in this thread, the more happier your making subman.

Does it really matter? I disagree with him, but I'm happy for the discussion. If I wasn't interested, I'd just not post. :know:

Quite right; to come to a forum with any other motive is a little odd.

Skybird 12-24-08 01:54 AM

The claim "I believe in a deity, thus I am a moral person" makes no logical sense in itself. It makes you an ideologically obedient person - not more. Ideologies, political as well as religious ones, can be moral, or immoral.

Thus the quotes from something that Subman seems to have linked or written, are obvious nonstarters, not logical arguments, but just this: claims, since they all seem to base on this basic mistake of mistaking ideological obedience with moral behaviour.

Religious zealots often accuse atheism to be a.) intolerant and b.) immoral, but both accusations are pointless. The real debate always is a more or less hidden attack on atheists for not believing in what you tell them to believe in: your own set of theistic ideas for which you cannot give logical reason to believe in, and that take uncheckable imagination as checked fact. Conformity is what is wanted here, and some zealots are willing to bring it upon us by even totalitarian means. Attacks of this kind of course make a hoax of any accusation about atheism being intolerant and immoral: the other is accused of what one is practicing oneself.

A random find only, but I found this essay by somebody unknown making much more sense. At least making enough sense so that I kept the link since I found it earlier this year.

http://decoy.iki.fi/atheist/no-ghost-c-02

nikimcbee 12-24-08 01:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skybird
The claim "I believe in a deity, thus I am a moral person" makes no logical sense in itself. It makes you an ideologically obedient person - not more. Ideologies, political as well as religious ones, can be moral, or immoral.

Thus the quotes from something that Subman seems to have linked or written, are obvious nonstarters, not logical arguments, but just this: claims, since they all seem to base on this basic mistake of mistaking ideological obedience with moral behaviour.

Religious zealots often accuse atheism to be a.) intolerant and b.) immoral, but both accusations are pointless. The real debate always is a more or less hidden attack on atheists for not believing in what you tell them to believe in: your own set of theistic ideas for which you cannot give logical reason to believe in, and that take uncheckable imagination as checked fact. Conformity is what is wanted here, and some zealots are willing to bring it upon us by even totalitarian means. Attacks of this kind of course make a hoax of any accusation about atheism being intolerant and immoral: the other is accused of what one is practicing oneself.

A random find only, but I found this essay by somebody unknown making much more sense. At least making enough sense so that I kept the link since I found it earlier this year.

http://decoy.iki.fi/atheist/no-ghost-c-02

I thought you were on vacation?

Skybird 12-24-08 02:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikimcbee
I thought you were on vacation?

Says who?

porphy 12-24-08 03:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter
Quote:

Originally Posted by Letum
Quote:

Originally Posted by Stealth Hunter
Quote:

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1
If you took Biology in school, you know that Darwin was never able to answer many questions based around human nature.

If you took world history in high school, you know that Darwin formulated his hypothesis about evolution in the 1850s, long before psychology or even basic brain studies began. How could he answer them? Louis Pasteur hadn't even discovered bacteria yet! The questions were decades ahead of their time.

Even if these discoveries pre-dated Darwin I doubt he would have commented all that
much on them. He didn't answer them because he didn't attempt to as 'human nature' wasn't his area of study.

Agreed. Still, it would have been interesting to see what he thought.

I don't bother with the original post, but the history of biology is in my interest though.

Darwin didn't even use the term "survival of the fittest" until the second or third edition of Origin of Species. It's not mentioned at all in the original edition. As other already noted, philosopher and journalist Herbert Spencer was the one that came up with the expression from the start. It was then part of his mastodon project for a Synthetic Philosophy based on the general principles of integration and differentiation, where for example his Principles of Biology is but one of many very big books. Darwin was not fully satisfied with the term survival of the fittest, but by the time of the later editions of Origin, the expression was already in general use, and Darwin thought it could be used in his book as well.

Darwin addressed most of the questions about evolution and human morality, culture and reason in his book Descent of Man from 1871. Read this book if you are interested in Darwins view, or recommend it to people who says this or that about Charles Darwin and human evolution.

Altruism and evolution was well documented in zoology and discussed at the end of the nineteenth century, both when it came to animals and in connection to humans. Most famous was perhaps Russian zoologist and later anarchist Peter Kropotkin with his series of articles republished in 1902 and called Mutual Aid. based on the years as a field zoologist in Sibira and elsewhere, he criticized an overly competitive view of Darwinian evolution and the struggle for existence by showing how altruism and mutual aid was common in nature.

cheers Porphy

Aramike 12-24-08 03:33 AM

Skybird, good post, but I do have a disagreement...
Quote:

Religious zealots often accuse atheism to be a.) intolerant and b.) immoral, but both accusations are pointless.
This could be semantic because, had you said "atheists", I would have agreed.

However, atheism is of itself a specific belief. One can no more disprove the existance of a deity than prove one - thus is the very nature of the debate, as it were. Atheism, by its very nature is not tolerant of any other belief system. It quite simply postulates that it is the correct system, thereby clearly implying that all others are wrong. This argument holds similarly true for most religions.

Quite franky, I find atheism to have more in common with religion than agnostisicm does.

However, the ATHEIST, in very much the same way as a deist, can have varying levels of tolerence for another system of belief. That being said, I personally find the actions of the more zealous atheists to be consistant with the actions of the more zealous deists. In other words, atheism seems to be becoming a religion unto itself.

The bottom line is this: if you're an atheist who holds the belief that there is nothing to believe regarding a deity, then you truly have nothing to proclaim. There is no god, that's the way it is, so why talk about nothing?

But, when you begin peddling your atheism, you become exactly what you are supposedly opposing - a belief system. At least in the popular terms.

Either way, modern "atheism" has seemed to lock itself in a struggle between God, Allah, Buddha, Shiva, Brahma, etc. I find it ironic that so-called atheism would choose to "lock horns" with things atheism itself believes doesn't exist.

As for me? I'll remain agnostic until I find proof one way or the other.

Mikhayl 12-24-08 05:40 AM

Isn't an agnostic just an atheist waiting for some evidence ? Like if an atheist wouldn't aknowledge that there's a god if the man showed up ?
I fail to see how atheism could be a religion although I do agree of course that some atheists sound much like religious freaks and I find the adds campaign here and there really ridiculous and paradoxal. For me "atheist" is just a vague notion, but if it has to be some precise thing much like a religion then count me as "non believer" and that will do :)
And god=allah :know:

Aramike 12-24-08 05:54 AM

Quote:

Isn't an agnostic just an atheist waiting for some evidence ? Like if an atheist wouldn't aknowledge that there's a god if the man showed up ?
No. An agnostic is someone who, by definition, simply doesn't believe there is evidence one way or the other.

As for atheism being a religion, think of the meaning you interpretted the last time someone said that another was following something "religiously". That context often has nothing to do with a deity, but rather a description of how something was followed.
Quote:

And god=allah
God = Allah = Shiva = [insert deity here]. I know that Muslims and Christians seemingly consider Allah and God to be the same deity; I was just using different cultural terms for "God".

Skybird 12-24-08 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aramike
Skybird, good post, but I do have a disagreement...
Quote:

Religious zealots often accuse atheism to be a.) intolerant and b.) immoral, but both accusations are pointless.
This could be semantic because, had you said "atheists", I would have agreed.

However, atheism is of itself a specific belief. One can no more disprove the existance of a deity than prove one - thus is the very nature of the debate, as it were. Atheism, by its very nature is not tolerant of any other belief system. It quite simply postulates that it is the correct system, thereby clearly implying that all others are wrong. This argument holds similarly true for most religions.

I disagree.

Usually people – me included – throw two terms together when talking of “atheism”: these two terms are “atheism” and “antitheism”. Some do it because being careless and not thinking about it, others – me included – do it for reasons of verbal comfort, like they – and me - also do not always verbally differ between church and Christianity, and mean the first when using the latter.

But “atheism” and “antitheism” are not exactly the same. The first simply does not care for the question whether or not deities exist. The latter explicitly claims a position of rejecting the possibility of deities existing.

However, the burden of evidence is not on atheism, since atheism does not make any claims about the existence of something for which there is no evidence, no hint, no forcing logical conclusion, nothing that speaks for it and goes beyond the realm of hear-say and man-founded traditions of scripture, thinking and arguing. In the end, “God” is of the same quality as the statement that there are singing pink frogs living under the surface of Neptune. You can believe they live there, you can choose not to believe that, and you can simply not care. But if you choose not to believe, this hardly can be given as a argument to claim that not assuming their existence is a belief itself, by that every wild speculation would be turned into a logical argument with a justified existence by form and content, every fantasy would be upgraded in substantial, real quality, and every position not being in conformity with these wild speculations and fantasies would be stated to be the same kind of fantasy or speculation by nature and essence like these fantasies themselves. Academically, this maybe is fun, but it leads you nowhere than to fruitless hairsplitting. In the end, theistic religions still are expected to produce a self-justification that goes beyond circular self-referring. And not taking circular self-referring as valid you are a free to label as a belief in itself, yes - but the point is that you score no point by doing so.

Morals claiming to be real only when basing on religious commands and obedience to the dogma, are no morals, but obedience to that given dogma. That way, those riding on the moral high horse, have often turned out to be the most immoral and barbaric history knows of. In the end, your obedience to a set of ideological commands not necessarily makes you a morally good man, even less so when the ideology in question is basing on immoral examples itself, like possible political ideologies, or the psychopathic god of the old testament - an evil, bloodthirsty and cruel villain that for the sake of our safety and the well-being of our families we would lock behind iron bars if he would freely walk around on the streets. What you do and what you don’t do, what you decide and why – this is what makes you a good man, or not. That is moral behaviour forming up as a result of experience in life, and it is context-sensitive. It is not engraved in stone like behaviour rules in an old book, but it changes over the time of your life, and grows with your growing insight, and life experience. It thus could be called an “organic” moral behaviour.

Even more, since man has not the skill or ability to intentionally decide to forget knowledge he has gained, but can only see the need to correct his opinion if he finds out his former knowledge was wrong, you cannot escape to act morally on the basis of your knowledge and experience so far. Heaven and hell are states of mind, and nobody sentences you than you yourself. Neither reward nor penalty there is (except social sanctions of the community you live in). Being free to act as you want, the decision is yours, and your deeds can make you a moral man who is a benefit for others as well (an altruist), or not (which makes you an egoist, or even a criminal). This ultimate conflict in our existence we can already see in the fact that we cannot manage to live without taking life of others, whether it be animals, or plants. What forms our moral attitude in this conflict is the attitude in which we take this life, and whether the life we take is aware of the action and is worried, or not. That’s why from a moral position it makes a difference whether you slaughter an animal in great fear, with pain and inside the horror of a slaughtering factory, or do it yourself in a more peaceful environment, without giving the creature much time and opportunity to be worried and to suffer. Although the outcome may be the same, the different approaches are not.

In the end, morals do not get defined neither by religions, nor atheism, but the simply fact that all creatures have two things in common: they/we all try to evade fear, pain and suffering, and try to find well-being, comfort and happiness. The decisions we make in trying to get there, and the relation between our life quality and the amount to which we adjust the life quality of others, man and creatures alike, for the worse or better, decide on whether we are morally good people, or not. It’s not just the outcome that counts. Even more important is the way in which we achieved it.

That is what morals are about. Religions, or atheism, are not needed for them.

Merry Christmas to you all. ;) For me and my people over here, it means a traditional time of being together with family and friends, Gemütlichkeit, and to be thankful for the memories of a happy childhood my parents allowed (and made possible) to unfold for me.

subchaser12 12-24-08 06:29 AM

If there is a god they sure pick really crappy representatives on earth. The current pope is an ex Hitler youth. Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell etc. I mean why not hot girls to bring god's message? Why is it always some old creepy dudes? What advertising uses old creepy white men to spread their word? Except the quaker oats guy talking about the damn diabetes it's always some hot young girl.

How can marketing be so far ahead of the all knowing all powerful god? If god knew everything I think they would know I'm not paying attention to old white men. Instead I am checking out the girl over there.

Stealth Hunter 12-24-08 06:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikhayl
Isn't an agnostic just an atheist waiting for some evidence ? Like if an atheist wouldn't aknowledge that there's a god if the man showed up ?
I fail to see how atheism could be a religion although I do agree of course that some atheists sound much like religious freaks and I find the adds campaign here and there really ridiculous and paradoxal. For me "atheist" is just a vague notion, but if it has to be some precise thing much like a religion then count me as "non believer" and that will do :)
And god=allah :know:

Yeah, I'd say an agnostic fits it.

Bewolf 12-24-08 06:31 AM

What gives? Christians tried this stuff for the last 2000 years. Luckily they can't burn ppl they don't agree with anymore, the enlightment at last finally got rid of that madness.
I have always considered christians the biggest hypocrits in the world. They love to throw around the morale argument, but I yet have to find a christian that actually lives by jesus teachings, a man, if he really existed as described by the book, I respect for what he attempted. He probably was the worlds first humanist. Can't see subman present his cheek after he was hit on the other, though. Modesty certainly fell out of fashion in christiandom since jesus' death.

Unluckily that can't be said by many (luckily by far not all) of his followers. Ignorant, hating ppl who snipe for everything not fitting their world view. These Christians talking about morality is like fantatic communists or fashists praising freedom and democracy. It's such a contradiction it's laughable.

joegrundman 12-24-08 06:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aramike

Either way, modern "atheism" has seemed to lock itself in a struggle between God, Allah, Buddha, Shiva, Brahma, etc. I find it ironic that so-called atheism would choose to "lock horns" with things atheism itself believes doesn't exist.

These statements do not add up. Atheists are not in a struggle with a divine entity whose existence they doubt. Atheists (some) are in a struggle with religions and religious believers whose existence is not in doubt.

Schroeder 12-24-08 07:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by subchaser12
The current pope is an ex Hitler youth.

Almost every German kid was in the Hitler Youth. That doesn't mean you were a believing Nazi. You almost had to join if you didn't want to be treated like dirt. Even my grandfather joined although his father was a communist (from bad to worse, huh?;)) and he himself didn't give a sh!t for the Nazis (he even got dishonored twice by his group-leader).
So please look a bit deeper into the circumstances before accusing someone of belonging to an organisation.
(and no, I don't like the pope much either and are counting myself to the agnostic side with a tendency towards atheism)

UnderseaLcpl 12-24-08 07:38 AM

Oh, what a fun thread and I didn't see it until it reached the fourth page:damn:


As much as I enjoy the discussion, though, I'd recommend a better post to start it.
Beginning with "without God there is no free will", it's full of logical gaps that are only spannable by a person who can make tremendous leaps of faith.
I'm a very religious person, and proud of it, and even I don't buy it.

Well, as long as I'm here, I might as well offer my two cents.

$ 0.01) I honsetly can't understand why atheism and religion are so often the topics of such heated debate, or why science is irreconcileable with religion in so many cases.
I would ask my atheist friends how they can be so convinced that a God does not exsist. If you value science as much as you say you do, you cannot rule out the possibility that there is a God. You revel in the same ignorance that you accuse the religious of embracing. At the very best, all you have is a theory, and it is not wise to grab a theory and pronounce it as scientific law. History, even recent history, is full of examples where people made the same supposedly "commonsense" observations and ended up being wrong. If you really believe that there is no higher power, prove that it does not exsist. Of course, that is a logical trap. As Skybird has pointed out before, on many occassions, it isn't possible to prove that something that does not exsist, does not exsist.
However, science and non-belief fail to explain a great number of things. Naturally, many, if not virtually all of the workings of the universe's mechanics will be discovered in due time. But, there is one fundamental question that science has not, and imo, will not ever be able to answer; "Why?".
It's the paradox of infinity. No matter how many answers you may have, there will always be more questions. Perhaps that illustrates my point to some, but read on if not.


To my fellow believers, whatever your religion or denomination, but especially Christians, it is widely accepted that God is the ultimate power in the universe, is he not? Even polytheistic and "atheistic" religions have the same sort of general concept. The difference between the religous and the atheists is the willingness to accept that some things are unalterably beyond our understanding. Religion is a truncation of infinity.
In Christianity, if God is ultimate power, then, who are you to question his methods? Man has repeatedly proven that he has the ability to decipher the workings of creation, to a limited extent. Imo, what God told us in the Bible is what we needed to know. First to survive, and then to thrive. Look at the differences between the Old testament and the New. Of course, I can't speak for other religions, not having been a member or student of them, except in the most casual sense, but part of the Christian belief is that other beliefs are wrong. Yet we are taught to accept non-believers of all types and to show them God's love. The alternative for them is supposedly damnation.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I see a pattern there. We are told to be forgiving, and to love our neighbors as we would ourselves, and encouraged to convert non-Christians, and promised the infinite mercy of Jesus if only we admit that we are flawed and sinful and accept him as our savior? And by these same beliefs we seek to convert others?
As with the old testament, I see us being told what we need to know. Jews and Muslims still consider eating pork to be a sinful act. That was good advice in 1500 B.C., but it doesn't really apply now. After all, back then, pork was much more likely to be infested with parasites. Now we are told to be merciful and forgiving, as our savior was. That's been good advice since we got it. I doubt there's a person on the planet who thinks that we couldn't do with a little more kindness, generosity and understanding.
I'll get to the main point in a second, but what really irks me is the people who seem to believe that they belong to an exclusive group that has the right to condemn others. Did Jesus do that? Yeah, he threw the merchants out of the temple, but did he condemn them to eternal damnation for their fallacy? What kind of God is that? A God that makes fallible creations and condemns them for being fallible? I think not. If God were that shallow, he'd be a lot easier to understand. He'd be more like us.


$0.02)

Ok, to atheists and the believers both, this is what I see. If you'll remember, I talked about science being unable to solve the paradox of infinity. Admittedly, that may not be correct someday, but given the human mind's inability to comprehend infinity, I think there is another force at work here.

Imo, God, or some higher power that desires order, as most all religions do, is all around us. That bears a bit of explaining. Let us start with the infinity paradox.

It is entirely possible that there is a limit to the universe. But what lies beyond that? What lies beyond that? And so on ad infinitum. Infinity is an impossibility. Or maybe it isn't. In either case, the human mind cannot comprehend infinity or the lack of it.

I believe that humans, like all life, are biological machines. (I'm happy to elaborate on the nuances of that concept, including the ideas of a "soul" and "human nature" if desired) Their only purpose is to reproduce and, by means of natural selection, develop a better genetic "program" Another incomprehensible infiinity. It's a means without an end, unless it's just random chance, but I'm getting to that.
Of course, some say that natural selection is an inevitability. Indeed, that is the core of the theory. I have often heard academics proclaim that we only exsist because of some fluke chance that allowed us to evolve into our current forms, and I think they are right. However, I feel that they are not looking at the big picture.
From what we know of the universe today, it seems likely that the universe will inevitably collapse, according to a theory called "The Big Crunch". There is an opposing theory, called " The Big Drift", where the entire universe eventually dissolves into subatomic particles, but that theory is infinetly less probable, by virtue of the fact that the "Big Crunch" could thoretically create an infinite number of universes, whereas the "Big Drift" could crete only one, and the theory fails to explain how the universe got there in the first place.

Infinity seems to be a common factor, and is also unfactorable. How odd.

Now, for my atheist friends, imagine, for a moment, the concept of infinity. If fact, solve it. Of course, you can't. Despite the fact that anything other than infinity cannot be comprehended, infinity itself cannot be comprehended either.

For my religious friends, I would ask that you imagine for a moment, that you are a higher power. Which "intelligent design" would you favor; One where you "magic" humanity into existence in seven days, or one where you build an infinitely complex universal machine that sustains itself. For that matter, assuming that as a god, you desire peace, tolerance and order, as we are taught, how beautiful would a machine that will inevitably create order be?
Of course, there is always a probability tha a god exsists who uses the universe as a sandcastle, building it up only to break it down. That seems unlikely to me, for a variety of reasons that I will elaborate upon should that possibility be raised.


To conclude, it seems to me that all lifeforms on this planet, including man, are biological machines. However, there is a limitation on our programming. Infinity is as uncomprehensible to us as sentience is to a computer. We may execute millions of miraculous functions every day, but we're just machines, after all.
It's a system so ingeniously designed that it could only have been made by a "god", as we know it, imo. Machines making better machines making better machines, in an infinite production line. Where it ends, if it does, who can say?


There's more to say regarding how science and religion can be reconciled, but I'll leave you with those thought for the time being.

Frame57 12-24-08 07:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bewolf
What gives? Christians tried this stuff for the last 2000 years. Luckily they can't burn ppl they don't agree with anymore, the enlightment at last finally got rid of that madness.
I have always considered christians the biggest hypocrits in the world. They love to throw around the morale argument, but I yet have to find a christian that actually lives by jesus teachings, a man, if he really existed as described by the book, I respect for what he attempted. He probably was the worlds first humanist. Can't see subman present his cheek after he was hit on the other, though. Modesty certainly fell out of fashion in christiandom since jesus' death.

Unluckily that can't be said by many (luckily by far not all) of his followers. Ignorant, hating ppl who snipe for everything not fitting their world view. These Christians talking about morality is like fantatic communists or fashists praising freedom and democracy. It's such a contradiction it's laughable.

You make a good point, but the reference of the smiting on the cheek deal with what is called an orientalism, being a mid east book written by mid easterners you have to know the culture. This is in reference to an insult and not an actually smiting. To touch someone on the cheek with the left hand is an insult, so the story teaches that one is to not trade insult for insult.

Mikhayl 12-24-08 07:54 AM

So, assuming there's a god who created all that, who created him in the first place ? :smug:

AVGWarhawk 12-24-08 07:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mikhayl
So, assuming there's a god who created all that, who created him in the first place ? :smug:

The big bang of course:know:


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