mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Do you mean evidence for a god?
Or do you mean evidence for rights?
As far as I can tell neither have any evidence.
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Can Atheists/Non-religious Lead Completely Moral Lives?
- Thread starter Nakosis
- Start date
Do you mean evidence for a god?
Or do you mean evidence for rights?
As far as I can tell neither have any evidence.
McBell
Admiral Obvious
And yet you have post #146...
Is this to say you think Jesus gave you the authority to determine who is and who is not a Christian?
Or perhaps just the who is not part?
Unless you are claiming to be Jesus, we are not talking about Jesus making the determination.
We are talking about YOU making that determination in post #146
PureX
Veteran Member
The evidence for faith is the results of engaging in it. But when someone rejects faith as a possibility, they reject that body of evidence. They become blind to it.
But it’s still there, and it’s still evidence. Even if the ‘kangaroo judges’ can’t see it.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Please provide details of your claimed evidence.
Meaning hard, verifiable evidence, not "i believe".
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Evidence that your meaning for evidence has evidence independent of your meaning of evidence.
Evidence is a subjective norm without evidence.
PureX
Veteran Member
I have no reason or desire to visit your kangaroo courtroom.
No evidence then, thanks for your honesty.
mikkel_the_dane
My own religion
Evidence that your subjective concept of evidence is the correct justified version of evidence.
Nobody is completely moral all of the time, so let's rephrase that as usually moral.
That depends on where your morals come from and thus what values you esteem as moral. Mine come from my conscience, and I am satisfied that they direct me to lead an upright life of personal integrity and kindness and justice for others.
But if they come from the Christian Bible, for example, then no, an atheist cannot be moral, which I recently covered in a similarly titled thread here in response to a Christian who asserted that atheists are selfish hedonists.
Maybe you've already seen this from Penn Jillette:
"The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine. I don't want to do that. Right now, without any god, I don't want to jump across this table and strangle you. I have no desire to strangle you. I have no desire to flip you over and rape you."
Actually, they're telling you how they want to be treated by you, or at least giving you cause to treat them just as badly.
Humanism actually embodies the Golden Rule in its best form, which is more like treat people as they want to be treated rather than as you want them to treat you. Humanism is about developing human potential and maximizing dignity and opportunity for all. It is egalitarian, and that is what love is - action that promotes the well-being of others, not words or feelings.
The church gives lip service to that but look at what we're seeing in this thread. Look at all of the misogyny, atheophobia, and homophobia coming from that church. It represents itself as a source of virtue promoting love, moral behavior, goodness, and charity, but we look at what they do, not what they say, and too often, see something else.
If you don't care, why should she or anybody else? You're expecting others to believe that you can read a report like that, understand it, and faithfully report what it said. Your report contradicted @ChristineM's opinion as well as mine. Which do you think we'll do - hunt down the report and survey it to see if you got it right, or just assume that since you don't really care to try to support your claims, that you probably didn't understand what you read?
Same answer as @Kathryn got. If you won't subject an evidenced argument to critical scrutiny, it's not worth thinking about again. It looks like the experience has been negative for you in the past and you don't want to deal with a reasoned rebuttal, but here comes one anyway:
The critical thinker rejects faith as a path to knowledge. I tried it once, remember? Early in my Christian walk - first year, actually, while in the Army - I was sitting on the barracks steps one evening with my girlfriend, the Christian who brought me to Jesus, where I witnessed crepuscular rays piercing through the clouds, felt a frisson travel my spine, and thought that the Holy Spirit was guiding me to ask this woman to be my wife. So, I asked her, and we got married. Big mistake. It was a loveless marriage for me, and I really hated disappointing her, but I had to once I discovered who I had married. You really don't want to be making decisions based in such notions. Well, I don't, anyway, and never have again.
That's my evidence - experience.
I tried marriage again, this time as an atheistic humanist. After a time evaluating her values and habits, I married another atheistic humanist, and we've been happy for almost 34 years now. That's the proper way to acquire beliefs and make decisions.
Yet another mind shaped by that church and its atheophobic bigotry. I suppose you think your opinion is ethical. I consider it bigotry. But we get our values from different sources.
Incidentally, I call myself an antitheist, by which I mean not that I am against theists, but rather, their religion when it teaches them to be bigots, in part because it churns out so many of what I consider immoral people. But not just that. It also has infected the American government and begun imposing its puritanical values on those uninterested in them, and now it's invading the classrooms like kudzu. It is also often anti-intellectual, and teaches that faith is a virtue, and that reason is the enemy of faith. All of that degrades life.
In short, the church is not a good neighbor. It produces and releases too many such people. The good Christians I encounter, many of which post on these threads, seem to be the ones least affected by their religion. I call them theistic humanists. They share my values and agenda, the only difference being that they profess a god belief and possibly say grace or attend church services, but they wouldn't be a part of a congregation that taught these hatreds, and I suspect that they go because they enjoy congregating with others to smile, shake hands, and sing hymns.
This is how my antitheism manifests - frequent firebrand posts like this one usually in response to some believer's bad behavior and unkind words. And though I don't respect such people, I don't blame them for what they are except for the occasional, "shame on you!" I blame their religion. The Christians I respect most are the ones who mostly ignore it's hateful, anti-intellectual, and theocratic message.
My apologies to those better Christians for having to read this, and my congratulations on being better than many others who fill those pews and these threads.
Are you unfamiliar with what a conscience is and how it works in people who have one? It does what the carrot and stick of Christianity, for example, do for its adherents. My conscience rewards me with warm feeling when I behave morally and makes me feel shame and regret when I don't. That's authentic morality to me. If your behavior is shaped by external reward and punishment, then you're no more moral than a child or a dog, whose behavior is shaped by treats and rolled up magazines (just kidding; don't hit the dog or the child).
It's not other people that make me want to behave morally. Regarding nobody watching, that actually improves the experience. I used to live in rural Missouri, where turtles would be seen crossing desolate country roads. Some of the local good ol' boys in their pickups liked to swerve to kill them, so I would stop when I saw one and take it to the other side of the road in the direction it was heading. Nobody would have seen this but me. I expected no reward apart from the euphoria I got doing good for goodness sake, which more than enough.
Those were spiritual experiences for me. I felt godlike in a constructive sense - at least for a moment is a small corner of the universe - and I felt a rush or thrill. Somebody driving by and witnessing that would have diminished the experience, as it might appear to be virtue signaling and not an authentic love of nature and this creature's life.
Doing these things for fear of a god disapproving because you didn't do them or to get a reward from such a god is a far shallower experience in my experience.
More of what this beautiful religion teaches and the kind of people it generates. They've taught you to be an atheophobic bigot who receives his beliefs uncritically and believes them by faith, which has bled over into your politics. Now, you're a bigot against another demographic and bring the same irrational path to belief to the effort, and then bemoan the intolerance of atheists. What aspect of your opinion do you think deserves acceptance rather than rebuke?
We need institutions to teach humanistic values: reason and empathy rather that uncritical thought and bigotry.
And more from that religion.
This is another common trope among believers. Your church is promoting itself on the backs of those that don't accept that it has objective moral truths that come from a god. They use the phrase moral relativity as if it were a moral defect rather than something imposed on us like methodological naturalism.
Your moral values are also subjective as are everybody else's. You chose them. You might not think so or remember doing that, but you have agreed to accept Christian values, which are subjective notwithstanding its claims to the contrary.
Circular argument and a touch of No True Scotsman. It presupposes the religious are moral, a mistake. It's also the basis of Christians calling the atrocities their deity commits in scripture moral and then embarking on a lifetime of apologetics to explain why drowning the world, for example, is the act of a supremely moral and loving god. You can see some of the result of that kind of thinking on this thread.
I have indeed -- I rather like him. And his magic.
I always find IANS very informative and i have learned much from his posts.
Kathryn
It was on fire when I laid down on it.
Sorry, but I am a member of a group called I Am Not Reading All That, and I'm not. But knock yourself out if you like!
For some posters i do. For others, not so much
Kathryn
It was on fire when I laid down on it.
I totally get that.
Thanks, and back atcha. You're always accurate, kind, and articulate.
That's fine. It was only three lines addressed to you, but you don't need to read them or reply to them if that's more effort that you're willing to make.
Here's the TLDR version for you, which is about a half a line: "If you don't care, why should she or anybody else?"
The greater point was that it was unlikely that you read a technical report from Pew and accurately paraphrased its content but wanted others to assume you had or else go fact-check you themselves. How do you think your response here affects that judgment?
Kathryn
It was on fire when I laid down on it.
Blah blah blah and I don't know or care. I also don't expect you or anyone else to care.
sew.excited73
Wendy-Anne - I am Dutch/British
Can anyone?
If yes, then I don’t see why non-religious people would be any less ‘good’ and kindhearted and moral.
It depends on your character and how corruptible you are by your environment. If you have developed a bad character, maybe religion might work corrective, but if you already are good at heart and have never been corrupted, then… why would that not be possible? (I must add that I believe everyone is born pure)