Does Atheism Lead to Immoral Behavior?

[George-ananda]

Can you connect the dots? In other words, how did you go from:

- if I was an atheist

- then I might be more self centered?

Because in my experience, atheists tend to be MORE moral than theists. I'm suspicious of theists who are moral because they fear their god(s).

I thought I connected the dots when I said I would be more susceptible to the ‘nothing really matters anyway’ temporary mindset.

 

[SkepticThinker]

When did 'The Church' run most, or indeed any, of the world?

The Middle Ages.

Have you not heard of the Crusades? The Inquisition?

 

[SkepticThinker]

I thought I connected the dots when I said I would be more susceptible to the ‘nothing really matters anyway’ temporary mindset.

I'm curious as to why someone would think that without god(s) that "nothing really matters anyway."
In other words, why do things only matter if there's some god in the picture?

 

[George-ananda]

I'm curious as to why someone would think that without god(s) that "nothing really matters anyway."
In other words, why do things only matter if there's some god in the picture?

For me it’s not so much God as the sense that we are more than this life and have an afterlife (that is the usual combination with God/Brahman belief).

 

[RestlessSoul]

The Middle Ages.

Have you not heard of the Crusades? The Inquisition?

The landowning classes ran the world in the Middle Ages, imposing their rule by the sword. Much like now, really. Popes and Bishops had very little tangible power in comparison to warrior Kings and Barons.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

​

I'd suppose this depends on what you view as moral behavior but I thought I'd ask the question to see what people would say.

It is easy to justify one's personal morals but I'd like you to consider the world at large. Is the world becoming more moral or less moral?

And, does this have anything to do with the decline of religious belief?

No, not caring about others leads to immoral behaviour.

And I'm afraid that (in my opinion) far too many religious people care more about the deity they believe in than the people around them, and this can and does lead to some deeply immoral behaviours. I don't believe I need to supply a representative list of such behaviours -- they're well-enough known.

 

[Father Heathen]

Devoid of purity, good conduct and truth, and having no faith in God or a higher Reality beyond this visible world, man degenerates into a two-legged beast of ugly character and cruel actions, and sinks into darkness. Such a person becomes his own enemy and the destroyer of the happiness of others as well as his own.

Then why do atheists only make up 0.1% of the U.S. prison population? Why are the vast majority of hate groups and terrorist organizations religious? Why is it mostly religious people who try to deny rights, freedom, and equality for others? Why do so many religious institutions pursue wealth, commit fraud, sexually abuse children, attempt to cover it up, etc?

What you're doing is bearing false witness, which is a sin. Drop to your knees, boy, and pray for forgiveness.

 

[SkepticThinker]

The landowning classes ran the world in the Middle Ages, imposing their rule by the sword. Much like now, really. Popes and Bishops had very little tangible power in comparison to warrior Kings and Barons.

They were intertwined, with The Church holding massive amounts of wealth, power and influence.

Medieval Religion
5 Reasons Why the Medieval Church Was So Powerful
Sutori
1.1 Christianity in Europe: The Clergy of the Catholic Church

 

[Father Heathen]

there are no real theocratic societies in the world. the closest the world got to sanity was king david and the kings that succeeded him but all that disintegrated and we're still, today, stuck with the aftermath.

You certainly like to make arbitrary assertions without substantiating them. Without offering any sort of logic or evidence to support your goofy narrative, it falls apart and disintegrates.

 

[Father Heathen]

The landowning classes ran the world in the Middle Ages, imposing their rule by the sword. Much like now, really. Popes and Bishops had very little tangible power in comparison to warrior Kings and Barons.

Papal deposing power - Wikipedia.

 

[RestlessSoul]

They were intertwined, with The Church holding massive amounts of wealth, power and influence.

Medieval Religion
5 Reasons Why the Medieval Church Was So Powerful
Sutori
1.1 Christianity in Europe: The Clergy of the Catholic Church

So the church didn’t run the world - ecclesiastical institutions exercised some influence over the militarised elite who did. When religious authority collided directly with royal authority, as was the case with Henry II and Thomas a Becket, there was usually only one winner.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Papal deposing power - Wikipedia.

A self declared authority not many Popes were able to exercise in practice. Although the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV was forced to take the knee on one occasion to Pope Gregory VII, this was a rare exception. It was far more common for Kings and emperors to depose Popes, than the other way round.

 

[chris baron]

If you want to discuss science, fine. The fact is that many humans have neanderthal genes showing that there was a lot of sex between homo sapiens and neanderthals for one thing. It's important to stay up with the science:

Neanderthal extinction not caused by brutal wipe out

"We are now able to demonstrate that Homo sapiens arrived 12,000 years before we expected, and this population was then replaced after that by other Neanderthal populations. And this literally rewrites all our books of history."
...
But the new discovery suggests that our species arrived much earlier and that the two species could have coexisted in Europe for more than 10,000 years before the Neanderthals went extinct.

According to Prof Chris Stringer, of the Natural History Museum in London, this challenges the current view, which is that our species quickly overwhelmed the Neanderthals.
...
So, if it wasn't a case of our species wiping them out immediately, what was it that eventually gave us the advantage?

Many ideas have been put forward by scientists: our capacity to produce art, language and possibly a better brain. But Prof Stringer believes it was because we were more organised.

"But Prof Stringer believes" ... So he is merely speculating?


MORE forgeries perpetrated by evolutionists

Earnst Haeckels evolution embryo fraud: He basically faked his diagrams to show how embryos apparently went through all the stages of evolution in utero.
Piltdown man, deliberate evolution fraud

Nebraska Man. False evolutionary model made from a pigs tooth.

Java Man is False! it was 'discovered' by a student of Earnst HAeckel called Dubois, who was exposed in the 1920s...

Neanderthal man, another deliberate fraud by evolutionist scientists.

All of this whole 'neanderthal man' rubbish was based on just ONE skull that was found by a Professor Reiner Protsch, who deliberately falsified the age of his findings (he's a 'carbon dating expert') and was forced to retire in disgrace in 2005.

But the Neanderthal skull was not the only forgery. Protsch also had paraded “Binshof-Speyer” woman before the public, stating that she was 21,300 years old. Yet the new Oxford date puts this woman living at 1,300 B.C. Protsch also claimed that “Paderborn-Sande Man” walked the Earth 27,400 B.C., and yet the corrected figure reveals that he died only a couple hundred years ago—in A.D. 1750!

Lucy the hominid. basically this 'missing link' is just an ape. Plain and simple.

Orce Man. Again, the level of intelligence being displayed by these scientists is abysmal. They basically mistook a 4 month old DONKEY skeleton for a 'missing link' for mankind.

A three-day scientific symposium had been scheduled, so that the experts could examine and discuss the bone which had already been named, Orce Man, for the southern Spanish town near which it had been found. The French caused problems, however. Scientists from Paris showed that Orce Man was a skull fragment of a four-month-old donkey. The embarrassed Spanish officials sent out 500 letters canceling the symposium.

 

[chris baron]

You certainly like to make arbitrary assertions without substantiating them. Without offering any sort of logic or evidence to support your goofy narrative, it falls apart and disintegrates.

"goofy"? that's not very polite. why the hostility and personal attacks, whatever happened to polite conversation?

 

[chris baron]

I would agree with that comment.

Mankind has yet to implement the laws as given by God. Islam did not succeed, though at one time it was better than others at it.

Modern day Islam has totally failed.

Islam became the beast as foretold in the Bible.

Regards Tony

i don't think islam failed, the problem lies with humanity. people seem to prefer to guzzle gasoline rather than dine with angels in heaven.

 

[chris baron]

When did 'The Church' run most, or indeed any, of the world?

christian europe prospered for many centuries but we shouldnt judge success by worldly standards.

 

[TransmutingSoul]

i don't think islam failed, the problem lies with humanity. people seem to prefer to guzzle gasoline rather than dine with angels in heaven.

It goes back to the Shia and Sunni split of the deathbed of Muhammad. The Two Witnesses mentioned in the Bible are Muhammad and Ali. The Shia Line thrpugh Ali would have been the correct path. Thus for 1260 years the faith of Muhammad was like a dead body laying in the street, A faith without the Spirit.

This is a general comment, based on Bible verses, as there are also great aspects that were contributed.

Revelation tells the story of Islam. The Beast with 7 kingdoms and 10 rulers.

Regards Tony

 

[HonestJoe]

I'd suppose this depends on what you view as moral behavior but I thought I'd ask the question to see what people would say.

It is easy to justify one's personal morals but I'd like you to consider the world at large. Is the world becoming more moral or less moral?

And, does this have anything to do with the decline of religious belief?

Atheism doesn't necessarily lead to anything, it's a consequence or conclusion rather than a driving force in itself. I don't think there is very much an individual will do (or not do) purely because of atheism (or theism for that matter), but on the basis of an individual world view and character.

I don't think the world in general is becoming significantly more or less moral overall. There are of course various ups and downs but the fundamental nature of humanity, for good and bad, is pretty much the same.

Similarly, I don't think the extent of religious belief changes that human nature. If anything, it's the other way around, with the nature of the people creating and changing the nature of religions, which is why there are so many different faiths in different times and places.

 

[Curious George]

I see far more immorality in religious societies throughout history than I do in secular ones.

sometimes I wonder whether man created religion to rationalize immoral behavior.

 

[Curious George]

all you need to do is look at expressly atheist societies and see how degenerate they are. nominally religious societies are also degenerate but that is not because of religion but despite it.

there is no such thing as an atheist, whatever is your priority in life, who are whatever you think is the most powerful entity on earth, whatever you get up in the morning for is your "god", even if it is not much of a god and you have nothing in particular to live for.

This view of people having “gods” seems wishful thinking rather than rational thinking.