[nikimcbee]

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?