Difference in moral thought between atheists and believers

[joelr]

I’m not here to prove anything to you or to convince you of anything.

Then why post on "

• 
  Religious Debates "

and are just making claims and evangelizing?

Your salvation means nothing to me.

Again, this isn't about my salvation but rather a debate forum to hash out concepts, provide evidence for your beliefs and such.

Salvation is a Hellenistic concept where through the passion, usually a death and resurrection of a demigod savior figure, followers get salvation (a place in the good afterlife). It's a myth. Do you have evidence it became real just because it was borrowed for the NT?

If you would like to ask me about God and what it’s like to walk with God I am more than happy to spend time talking about it but you obviously have no interest outside of arguing and I have better things to do.

Weird right, it's as if I'm on a debate forum or something?

I don't care what you have talked yourself into, I care about evidence. Hindu walk with Lord Krishna, Muslims walk with Allah. Provide a method to demonstrate your feelings actually show a deity is real outside of your mind.
Odds are, like everyone else who you don't believe you are also using psychology and confirmation bias.
We already have billions of cases of people doing it with deities you don't believe in.


I was Christian. I understand the confirmation bias. There is no information a god can tell you that you couldn't tell yourself.

If you have "better things to do" than why post on a debate forum? Do you care if your beliefs are true?

 

[joelr]

Sounds like what the US did in WW2 doesn’t it?

Um, are you serious right now?

NO. We did not:
1)put to the sword all the men in it.
2)As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves
3) And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies.
4) This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

5) However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
6)Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.


7)Kill anything that breathes.
8) Women, women with unborn children, old people, pets, babies.........that is what your God instructs people to do .


No we did not do that. We stayed in Japan and Germany and did peace works, helped them get back on their feet.
We didn't even come close to the genocide it suggests in Deuteronomy.

In order to justify these Bible passages you have to pretend like we went to war and did the same. We didn't, we stopped when they surrendered and would turn over their military because they attacked us. We did not continue on and then kill the other 97% of Japan, making slaves out of all men and plunder out of women and children. No such thing ever happened, it would be immoral. The OT is immoral in parts.
Although Jesus says turn the other cheek which we don't do, didn't do with ISIS and should not. Because we don't follow morals from an ancient book. We make them up as we learn more about the world. They didn't know that back then because it was just people writing the book.

Does religion warp minds that much?

 

[joelr]

I was referring to the allies use of firebombing cities for the express purpose of killing as many civilians as possible including women, children and yes, even their pets.

Not to mention the nukes that were dropped.

So it seems God doesn’t have a monopoly on killing during war.

No, you can look this up. 3% of the Japanese population had been killed by the end of WW2.

Not EVERY LIVING THING. And we DID NOT take women and children as plunder of war.

We fought until they surrendered and no more.
We did not take the heathen as slaves either, and their children. We helped them rebuild. Do you know anything at all about history and how completely wrong the excuses you are making for this evil set of laws are in the OT?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Morality is neither good or bad it’s the process people use to make decisions based in a large part on the theories of Bentham.

So saying something like, “he is a moral person” is incorrect because everyone is moral.

So no, your explanation was completely wrong.

I have no idea who Bentham is or what you are on about.
But I note that you just dismissed my entire post with but a handwave with no explanation whatsoever.

I want through the trouble to argue my case with examples and reasoning. You on the other hand just throw an assertion out there and handwaved.

As an example we can look at psychopaths who do not use morality to make decisions.
The defining trait of a psychopath is their inability to distinguish between right or wrong yet they function perfectly well in society and in many cases become extremely successful.

"perfectly well"? You don't have much experience with psychopaths and psychopathic behavior, do you?

As for why some of them achieve extreme success, it's because they are unscrupulous and have no sense of guilt or compassion.
They are manipulative and toxic. When they get away with their behavior, they rise to the top or destroy competition. This is how the Italian mafia became so succesful. Many CEO's who build mega multi-nationals have psychopathic tendencies also. Because they care not for other people or feelings. They have no problem at all with walking over proverbial (or real) corpses. And as they have no sense of guilt and are experts at being manipulative, they also tend to be charismatic.

If a society would be populated with psychopaths, it would not function.

Many business leaders, doctors and other high profile people lack morality so it is not required in a group of people.

Yes, see above.

My definition that decisions are based on fear is the correct one; people make rules to protect themselves, the don’t kill me and I won’t kill you mindset.

It's not so much about fear as it is about social cohesion and cooperation. Which in a social species like humans goes hand in hand with self-preservation.

What you define as morality are merely social contracts.

No.

There is no such thing as natural law stating what is right or wrong,

I didn't say there was.

it’s ultimately based on utilitarianism which states that what is best for the majority is the correct choice.

If morality isn't about maximizing the well-being of the group / humans (or about minimizing suffering), then I don't know what you mean by "morality".

 

[joelr]

No, invasion was an alternative but not the only one.

Blockading Japan until they surrendered was another option.

The majority didn't have a say. If the military wanted to hold off they would be the last to feel the pressure while millions of people ate less and less food. After that it gets really bad, like what happened in Russia. Mass suffering and starvation.

 

[Tinkerpeach]

The majority didn't have a say. If the military wanted to hold off they would be the last to feel the pressure while millions of people ate less and less food. After that it gets really bad, like what happened in Russia. Mass suffering and starvation.

They are an island nation, they know how to fish.

Starvation would have been minimal and compared to being nuked I am pretty sure that they would have preferred to have a chance.

And what was Japans military going to do but sit around and wait?

Maybe swim out to an aircraft carrier and spit on it or something?

 

[Tinkerpeach]

No, you can look this up. 3% of the Japanese population had been killed by the end of WW2.

Not EVERY LIVING THING. And we DID NOT take women and children as plunder of war.

We fought until they surrendered and no more.
We did not take the heathen as slaves either, and their children. We helped them rebuild. Do you know anything at all about history and how completely wrong the excuses you are making for this evil set of laws are in the OT?

We purposely killed civilians.

 

[Tinkerpeach]

Um, are you serious right now?

NO. We did not:
1)put to the sword all the men in it.
2)As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves
3) And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies.
4) This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.

5) However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.
6)Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you.


7)Kill anything that breathes.
8) Women, women with unborn children, old people, pets, babies.........that is what your God instructs people to do .


No we did not do that. We stayed in Japan and Germany and did peace works, helped them get back on their feet.
We didn't even come close to the genocide it suggests in Deuteronomy.

In order to justify these Bible passages you have to pretend like we went to war and did the same. We didn't, we stopped when they surrendered and would turn over their military because they attacked us. We did not continue on and then kill the other 97% of Japan, making slaves out of all men and plunder out of women and children. No such thing ever happened, it would be immoral. The OT is immoral in parts.
Although Jesus says turn the other cheek which we don't do, didn't do with ISIS and should not. Because we don't follow morals from an ancient book. We make them up as we learn more about the world. They didn't know that back then because it was just people writing the book.

Does religion warp minds that much?

So we were only a little bit immoral is your argument?

 

[joelr]

They are an island nation, they know how to fish.

After WW2 Japan was lacking rice and flour and their industry relied on our oil, steel and iron. We also could not give them time to build up an army, which would also make others suffer resources.

Starvation would have been minimal and compared to being nuked I am pretty sure that they would have preferred to have a chance.

Both are horrible, not an argument at all. The average person would have preferred the military didn't start a war. Invasion was next and would have killed far more than the nuke. They were arming elementary kids with bamboo sticks. Millions of Japanese would have died. Up to 1 million U.S.

And what was Japans military going to do but sit around and wait?

The longer we took they would try to regroup and fortify, taking away more lives from the allies in an invasion.

Maybe swim out to an aircraft carrier and spit on it or something?

Maybe build another cement wall inland, which ends up killing 1000 more 18 y.o. soldiers if we invaded.

 

[joelr]

We purposely killed civilians.

Only religion can make someone pretend they don't know the difference between killing every living thing in a city vs having to target some cities to reach a surrender. Had they surrendered early there would be no killing. The Bible calls for either killing every living thing, no matter what. Or talking women and children as plunder of war.

By any measure, far far worse.

 

[joelr]

So we were only a little bit immoral is your argument?

By Biblical standards of immorality we were ZERO % immoral.

There was no LAW that said kill every living thing. No LAW that said you may take the women and children as plunder? What kind of archaic evil behavior are you defending?
There was also no LAW that said if an offer of peace was made the men shall be put to forced labor?
The Bible is a work of men from 2000 years ago. That is it.

 

[Tinkerpeach]

Only religion can make someone pretend they don't know the difference between killing every living thing in a city vs having to target some cities to reach a surrender. Had they surrendered early there would be no killing. The Bible calls for either killing every living thing, no matter what. Or talking women and children as plunder of war.

By any measure, far far worse.

Fire bombing cities in Germany did not make them surrender.

 

[Tinkerpeach]

By Biblical standards of immorality we were ZERO % immoral.

There was no LAW that said kill every living thing. No LAW that said you may take the women and children as plunder? What kind of archaic evil behavior are you defending?
There was also no LAW that said if an offer of peace was made the men shall be put to forced labor?
The Bible is a work of men from 2000 years ago. That is it.

Ok

 

[osgart]

My thread on this issue of Morality between Atheists and Theists got deleted - quite depressing
I talked about the diff between the REAL world that we live in, the rules we live by
We work, we EARN, we do not beg, we do not live on Charity
Heaven seems to be the opposite - beg our way in, live on Charity for eternity
No one mentions any work being done, no one even asks
But Religious ideas and promises MUST be protected and so my thread got deleted

Charity isn't about letting people crutch off of you. It's about giving people the opportunity to become self sufficient. It's a matter of teaching, or providing resources to people in order for them to help themselves up to contribute. If charity is not deserved then one shouldn't get it.

Charity is for those also who have no opportunity or are disabled. Charity is determining who deserves what for what good reasons. It is not unscrupulous giving. Have you never been charitable before? No one gets anywhere without the help of someone.

This is my atheistic attitude towards charity. A religious person may think differently about it.

 

[viole]

Atheists inherently have nothing to follow until they make it up. This is why we see their morality fluctuate all the time.

You assume that what you follow has not been made up, too. How do you know?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Revoltingest]

Fire bombing cities in Germany did not make them surrender.

Even proper military tactics don't always work.
Firebombing Japanese cities didn't work either.
And those were deadlier than the nuclear bombs.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/07/asia/japan-tokyo-fire-raids-operation-meetinghouse-intl-hnk/index.html

 

[RamaRaksha]

Only religion can make someone pretend they don't know the difference between killing every living thing in a city vs having to target some cities to reach a surrender. Had they surrendered early there would be no killing. The Bible calls for either killing every living thing, no matter what. Or talking women and children as plunder of war.

By any measure, far far worse.

If you see a guy on the street brandishing a knife and screaming the he is going to kill his children because God told him to, you would call him crazy and call the Cops
Religious people would say he is a great guy, obeying the Lord!
Their morals do not come from within
A slave like attitude of blindly doing what they are told, all in the hope of a reward - eternal pleasures of the flesh - at the end of the day all this boils down to the reward
We see yes men, sycophants, prostitutes surround the rich guy, sing his praises and do his bidding
He knows what they are after
God too knows what they are after, why they blindly support their religion

 

[Tinkerpeach]

You assume that what you follow has not been made up, too. How do you know?

Ciao

- viole

God made it up you are correct

 

[joelr]

Fire bombing cities in Germany did not make them surrender.

Yes it did. German military leadership would not surrender until Berlin was taken. Cities standing meant German soldiers would just snipe Allies all day. We did enough to beat them. There were millions of women and children who we helped after the surrender. We did not take them as plunder or kill every living thing.

 

[joelr]

God made it up you are correct

Islam says the Quran is gods word. Mormons say the Mormon Bible is gods word. Hindu say their scripture is gods word.

By what methodology do you use to determine your version is correct and how do you even demonstrate any god exists?