Learned traits can most certainly evolve and progress. Look at language.
Just a break to point out two statements made by our new resident crank.
Milum
Right back atcha.
By the way, to get back to the OP, my morals were taught to me by my parents. I agree with those morals, even if I don’t agree with my parents on religion. I see no contradiction in being an atheist and being moral. One is merely a religious position and the other is a way of acting toward other people.
As I said, sickboy, I think your answer hit it on the head, and since no one who actually believes atheism is immoral has seen fit to come along and explain the reasoning, I guess our speculations are going to have to suffice. Folks can continue the hijack if they want or open another thread. I agree that lots of interesting questions have been spawned. I know Apos said “it’s been done,” but, hey, we weren’t all here!
First of all, atheism is NOT without religion.Buddhists are often atheists for example.Atheism is without theism…without a belief in (supernatural)gods and/or willingly worshiping (natural)gods.
Allow me to explain that last bit which is borrowed from Charles Fiterman over at the Belief.net forums:
Words shift meaning with context.Atheism is, in the context of supernatural gods(that is gods who routinely and systematically violate logic and physics) a lack of assent in the existential claims themselves.In the context of gods that are natural(such as the sun or divine emporers such as Caligula), atheists do not willingly worship gods.
Theists who claim that atheists cannot be moral without belief in supernatural gods are usually arguing from the presupposition that morality is OBJECTIVE.There are many problems with this.First of all, if morality is objective in the way that gravity is objective then we should have no choice in the matter.One cannot simply chose to not be bound by the physical laws of gravity or inertia.Temporary defiance of such laws via technology or actions such as jumping does noy invalidate their objectivity.
Therefore, even if someone such as Osama Bin Laden is able to temporarily defy God’s morality by killing nearly three thousand people, he should still “fall back down” to earth so to speak, and most of the time be bound by God’s objective morality and therefore be just as moral a person as any of the admittedly imperfect and sinful-by-nature christians.
Atheists even more so because our “immoral acts” are comparitively petty.We are guilty of using the rational faculties God had allegedly granted us to come to the conclusion that we do not believe he exists.This is worse than God giving us mouths and commanding us to not speak.It is more akin to god giving us faulty immune systems and commanding us to not ever cough or otherwise react to viruses.
Learning is an integral part of evolution. Morals evolve only as Man ‘learns’ his place in society (can be called a breeding group).
Atoms ‘learn’ to be molecules. Cells ‘learn’ to form life forms. And similarly Humans ‘learn’ to be a part of society. During this process we form rules of enagement with other individuals in the group. These rules if shared and understood by the group form Morals. It is immoral to steal, only so because people came together and defined ownership. It is immoral to kill, only so because we formulated the right to live.
Well we didnt elect her… she kinda elected herself, we didnt have much of a choice there. As for the TV licenses, if ever there is a coup in this country and the monarchy is over thrown it will be coz of the stupid TV licenses.
“IF we accept that morality is solely learned…”
Do you see, I made no assertion whatsoever on whether morality is learned or not.
IF you had read the post in context you would have seen that Milum was suggesting that
a) Morality is learned
b) Atheists “claimed that they invented their own morality”
The point being, I guess, that there is some imagined inconsistency. However, if learning “evolves and progresses” new information has to be brought into the system, hence there is no contradiction.
Uh? So many assertions, so little evidence.
If you want to define morality as “shared values” then that’s fine, I think the conversation gets very boring, very fast.
The suffragettes did not accept some “shared values” of the society, we they immoral?
I prefer to think of morals as pertaining to virtuous behaviour and not just blind acceptance of social mores and expectation (in fact I would say wholesale, unquestioning concordance with societal values is, at best, amoral, if not out-and-out immoral).
PS: Many people accept that Television Licensing in the UK is a good thing that gives us strong public television free from the negative consequences of wholly commercial interests. IMO as commercial interests have diluted the public-service aspect of the BBC it seems there has been a corresponding drop in the quality of its output.
sickboy51 sorry for the late response. You raise the point
I think I agree with you here, and given your original statement of persecution under the flag of “No God” you are probably correct in your reply. I also think that we would both agree that the label “Atheist” does not make one a political monster, but the application of monstrous politics using a moral system that fails to recognize human rights of those that don’t toe the party line makes one a monster.
Well, I don´t think I was deffednidg communist´s prosecutions in Tibet or christian prosecutions or whatever. I just wanted to made this point clear: those prosecutions were most of all a political issue even if they were dressed (perhaps) as a religious question.
No, I can´t agree with anybody who doesn´t respect human rights (by name or by actions) and prosecute others for their belifs or their lack of beliefs. I can´t support any party which denies human right to disagree. Communism has many good things if you ask me, but the reason why I´m not communist is because communism itself tends to uniform people´s thinking. Under a communsit regime, common people are not allowed to think by themselves. that´s how it works, and that´s why I don´t agree completely with it.
Being an atheist doesn´t makes you a monster in no ways. When you think you can saly somebody in the name of God or in the name of No-God, you croos a line, and tht is what makes you if not a monster, still an immoral person (if you´re seen it under my personal morality, that is).
Again, I must point this: I´ve never heard of truly atheists slaughtering people because they didn´t share tehr beliefs.
I guess the reason is, if you´re a religious fanatic, you may come to think that killling those who don´t share your beliefs may give you some reward or at least, you´re in a sacred crussade.
But if there is no God that will reward you, or if you´re not under a sacred crussade why would you do that? Yes, there has been some nihilists that killed people (for political resons, most of times) like, uh, say, that Unabomber (please, correct me if I´m wrong). But never has happened that a pretty neat, well organized and numerous natheists fanatics started a crussade to erradicate theism.
I think that most (if not all) people on this thread would agree that having human rights in mind when stating a morality is a good starting point.
I was not under the impression that you were defending communist persecutions, I was agreeing, poorly I see now, with you about the unlikelyhood of a band of Atheists under an atheist plan trying to wipe out theism. I also agree with your assessment that any such organized attempt to wipe out theism or other religions is, for the most part (this clause is here for backdoor purposes only), politically motivated.