Can Atheists/Non-religious Lead Completely Moral Lives?

[firedragon]

Circular argument

You should google "circular argument".

 

[PureX]

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 can scrutinize it all you like, using whatever biased criteria you choose. But I’m not going to play that role for you. Sorry.

And to answer your question, PLEASE ignore my obviously irrational opinions. PLEASE stop caring about whatever I think or say. Save us all a big waste of time and energy.

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.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You can scrutinize it all you like, using whatever biased criteria you choose. But I’m not going to play that role for you.

You don't really have much control over how people respond to your posting unless they violate the sites Terms of Service. By posting here, you give implicit consent to have your words evaluated. All you can do is stop posting or stop reading the responses when you do.

PLEASE ignore my obviously irrational opinions.

Why would I? That's in large part why I participate here. This is something I posted last month:

"This what draws me to RF more than anything out - observing how other minds process information. Creationists are the richest but not the only source material. The anti-vaxxers, MAGA's defending Trump, climate deniers, and people trying to reconcile contradictory scripture are interesting to observe.​

​

"People have asked why bother - you're never going to change any of those minds - and I tell them that I know that and that that is not my purpose. I have referred to it as "tapping the glass" as with an aquarium to see the reaction. ​

​

"For whatever reason, I have never gotten tired of this activity. I find that kind of thinking endlessly fascinating and wonder why some people are that way (the groups I just named) while others are very different in their approach to processing information, trusting reason and empiricism to find answers and gain knowledge."​

Your posting has been a rich source of material to analyze. You refuse to cooperate when I ask you to discuss what makes you so hostile to atheists and why you continually change "I neither claim that gods do or don't exist" to "You believes God doesn't exist". I asked you several times each whether you were aware of any of these things to try to decide whether it was due to a cognitive defect - some kind of blindness - which would elicit empathy, or a form of trolling, which would do the opposite, or a third option if there was one, but you declines to answer or acknowledge seeing the questions, which helps me decide what the correct answer is.

I shared those tentative conclusions with you for any corrections or objections you might have, but your response was the same - crickets. Since you elect to have no input there, you've had none, and I've stopped asking you - until now. I will ask again below.

This is the kind of thing that I called endlessly fascinating to me. I really can't explain that behavior. When I imagine myself on the other end of such questions, I can't imagine ignoring it. My responses would express concern for why anybody thought such things about and an effort to explain myself. Even if the answer were something I wanted to conceal, I would still respond with something like, "I prefer to not discuss that." I can't imagine any scenario in which I would do what you've done.

But you're far from alone. I've been through this with about a dozen other RF posters with questions like, "What are you hoping to accomplish here with creationist apologetics? Are you hoping to convince the scientifically literate of anything? Are you performing for an imagined audience of one to martyr yourself and curry favor?"

But nobody responds. Never. Not even once. How mysterious that is to me,

I just left this about two hours ago on another thread. I don't expect an answer there, either:

"Why do you keep writing posts like this? Why do any of you MAGA bring your echo chamber talking points to a forum like this? Who is your intended audience and what is your goal? If it's other MAGA, are you virtue signaling? They already agree with you, so what else could it be?If it's the non-MAGA contingent, do you think that you can garner some sympathy for Trump or change such minds depicting him as the victim? If so, you really don't understand them, which is suggested when you call them deranged."​

So why keep asking? Because I think that there are other people with enough in common with me that some will find this phenomenon as intriguing as I do once they are aware of it. And maybe - just maybe - somebody asked will have the courage to acknowledge seeing the comment.

How about you? Does reading this change anything for you?

********

And completely unrelated, my wife and I were at a restaurant Tuesday night when a cover of a familiar song came on at a very low volume - just enough to make out some of the melody, but none of the words. All I could make out was "uh huh huh huh huh" in the opening of the song and in the choruses, which I Googled: "uh huh huh huh song" and got these as hits, none of them the song I meant.

Julia Michaels - Uh Huh​

Tinashe - Uh Huh (Official Video)​

​

Uh Huh Uh Huh TikTok Song​

What song is 'That's the way uh huh uh huh, I like it uh ...​

​

I had a very vague recollection of the name of the band - two words, maybe one foreign - but with no lyrics and no band name, I was stuck.

Apparently, there's an app Shazam that can identify a song if you can hum the melody, and I could, but I didn't want to download the app.

Then a word came to me: Spandau. And I remembered Spandau Ballet.

So, I searched that (they're Brits, not German), didn't recognize any of the titles, but the first one I clicked on was it - a song called True. Maybe some of you figured that out already. I thought that I would never find this song.

Anyway, here it is. It should sound familiar to anybody old enough to know 80's pop music. By the eighties, I wasn't listening to new bands - music had changed more than I liked beginning with disco, so this one, Thomson Twins, Duran Duran, and similar bands are largely unknown to me except maybe one song each:

 

[1213]

Yes.

So, you are against freedom, why? Sounds like something slave owner could be.

 

[1213]

I disagree. I think a death penalty option does society more bad then good.

But you support abortions, which are essentially death penalties for kids.

Then you think such a penalty is wrong. You can't have your cake and eat it also.

No, I think humans are just not good to give it.

 

[1213]

How does that follow?

The one who gives a gift, has the right to decide what kind of gift he gives. The receiver has not done anything for the gift, therefore he can't really complain.

 

[1213]

Even with God there is a subjective foundation of morality. It's always a matter of value, opinion, preference, desire etc.

That is true, everyone still chooses what moral he will have. However, I think the moral God has taught is the objective moral.

 

[1213]

Evidence would be nice.

If it was not needed to accuse God, why would it be needed to defend God?

I have given life to 3 children, after a certain time of pregnancy i do not have any right to take that life away, why should your god be any different?
I wouldn't count the bibl as evidence

No, you have not given life, you have procreated, let life continue, meaning, you have living cells and you gave them possibility to meet their match. In no part of that process you give life.

 

[1213]

Unless you are claiming to be Jesus, we are not talking about Jesus making the determination.

These are not my words:

Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, “If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32

Why do you think Jesus is not the right person to define who are his disciples?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

So, you are against freedom, why? Sounds like something slave owner could be.

That has nothing to do with "freedom", just like it has nothing to do with "freedom" to not allow a cannibal to kill and eat someone who wants to be killed and eaten.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

But you support abortions, which are essentially death penalties for kids.

No. And you don't even know my stance on abortion because I haven't told you.

No, I think humans are just not good to give it.

But your imaginary celestial dictators are.

Over here in reality, it's us humans who are responsible for justice in human society.

 

[1213]

That has nothing to do with "freedom", just like it has nothing to do with "freedom" to not allow a cannibal to kill and eat someone who wants to be killed and eaten.

No allowing a person to be a slave, if he wants to be, has much to do with freedom. It is not the same as allowing cannibal to eat someone else, or allowing someone to decide that someone else must be a slave.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

The one who gives a gift, has the right to decide what kind of gift he gives. The receiver has not done anything for the gift, therefore he can't really complain.

So, if I figure out how to construct a human from scratch putting that person together molecule by molecule... I get to torture and kill it also, no questions asked?


btw: you also just absolved your god from any and every moral responsibility. Essentially turning him into a sociopath / psychopath. Someone who isn't subject to morals whatsoever yet tells people what to do. A celestial Kim Jung Un.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

No allowing a person to be a slave, if he wants to be, has much to do with freedom. It is not the same as allowing cannibal to eat someone else, or allowing someone to decide that someone else must be a slave.

It seems you missed the part where I said that the one being killed and eaten also WANTS to be killed and eaten.

You are more then welcome to "play" slave and act like one. But you wouldn't be an actual slave. Because you'ld be able to change your mind and walk away. An actual slave can't do that.

But more importantly, I think this conversation is taking absurd turns. And this absurdity is entirely on you and the result of you trying to defend the undefendable in terms of morality. You might want to take a step back and reflect on what type of ridiculous argumentation you are forcing yourself into just to maintain your absurd position.

 

[AppieB]

That is true, everyone still chooses what moral he will have. However, I think the moral God has taught is the objective moral.

Which objective moral?

 

[McBell]

These are not my words:

Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, “If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
John 8:31-32

Why do you think Jesus is not the right person to define who are his disciples?

post #146 is your words.

Since you are not interested in honest discourse, I shall stop engaging your dishonesty.

Have A Nice Day.

 

[ChristineM]

If it was not needed to accuse God, why would it be needed to defend God?

No, you have not given life, you have procreated, let life continue, meaning, you have living cells and you gave them possibility to meet their match. In no part of that process you give life.

Blocked for you mysogenic ignorance

 

[Revoltingest]

Which objective moral?

Good question.
Depending upon which sect of Christianity, Islam,
Judaism, etc one considers, they variously....
support or oppose slavery,
support or oppose genocide,
support or oppose religious liberty,
support or oppose murder, etc.
support or oppose bodily autonomy,
support or oppose genital mutilation of babies,
etc, etc, etc.

What's so objective about poetic language
that's been translated, re-translated, interpreted,
& re-interpreted from the pontifications of ignorant
bronze age goatherds from societies of dubious
moralities, eh.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Good question.
Depending upon which sect of Christianity, Islam,
Judaism, etc one considers, they variously....
support or oppose slavery,
support or oppose genocide,
support or oppose religious liberty,
support or oppose murder, etc.
support or oppose bodily autonomy,
support or oppose genital mutilation of babies,
etc, etc, etc.

What's so objective about poetic language
that's been translated, re-translated, interpreted,
& re-interpreted from the pontifications of ignorant
bronze age goatherds from societies of dubious
moralities, eh.

It seems that what these people understand by "objective", is simply to avoid doing their own thinking and reasoning and instead just replace it with mere obedience to a perceived authority.

They consider it "objective" only because they feel that in that case, they can't have their own opinions.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

It seems that what these people understand by "objective", is simply to avoid doing their own thinking and reasoning and instead just replace it with mere obedience to a perceived authority.

They consider it "objective" only because they feel that in that case, they can't have their own opinions.

I have never come across any objective morality regardless of religion or not. So it has not to do with religion as such, but rather it seems that morality is not objective.