Of course there is.
Without such strictures, society breaks down.
Without society, we are little better than animals.
We know from experience that when civilization breaks down horrific things happen.
Therefore, from experience, we know that it is preferable, practically speaking, to live in a civilized manner.
No God necessary, and more importantly, no moral judgments attach to the presence or lack of faith in same.
Really? You’re the first one I’ve heard say that. I don’t think the Unitarians I’ve met would think that way.
Ahem. Cite? Please name a war started in the name of nonbelief (and no, WWII doesn’t count).
I’m curious, Shodan… if the bible didn’t forbid you from murdering, would you go on a killing spree? I suspect you’ll try to dodge the question, or say something along the lines of “God wouldn’t want me to do it, even if the bible didn’t say I can’t do it.”
Please, just answer the question- do you derive your morality strictly from your religion?
False analogy, and another example of Christian hatred; trying to lump those who dislike them in with racists. People are born hispanic; they do not choose it, and cannot change it; neither is true of being Christian. Nor does being hispanic tell me a thing about your belief system, your attitudes, your desires; your religion does. Race is meaningless; religion is not.
OK, if you want a more appropriate analogy…anyone who believes that all Christians are evil by virtue of their Christianity is no different than someone who believes that all athiests are evil by virtue of their atheism.
I do not find this to be an accurate observation. Two posters and one drive-by do not constitute “as usual” in my vocabulary and in the last couple of weeks I have seen a fair amount of hatred mouthed by a couple of “Christian” posters toward “unbelievers.”
I don’t really see any pile-on, here.
Der Trihs is a fundy atheist who makes broad declarations of what he believes to be the truth, (generally with neither supporting evidence nor coherent logic).
badchad believes that he has found some wonderful “truth” in the fact that scriptures tend to contain contradictory statements and puts himself forth as “fighting ignorance” by perfoming the cherry-picking game to show that religion (particularly Christianity), is a BAD THING.
If you play by their rules, they are going to win their little contests.
Given the large number of atheist, agnostic, skeptic, and related views among the Teeming Millions, there is no basis for a claim that Christians are (in this thread) being piled on or that they will be piled on, generally. The number of non-believers participating, here, is miniscule compared to the numbers available to perform a pile-on. In fact, the numbers on the two “sides” look fairly equal in this thread.
Given that Christianity has a fairly strong tradition of claiming love, charity, and turning the other cheek, it is pretty natural that Christians expressing hatred are going to get jabbed, here, (often by other Christians), when they demonstrate venomous attitudes. Since there are Christians who have argued that non-believers have no moral compass, (a fairly silly claim that has even been weakly advanced in this thread), the Christians simply do not have the same arrow of “hypocrisy” to launch at venomous non-believers. That, however, is not the fault of the non-believers.
Zealots tend to be an unpleasant lot, but we tolerate them, anyway. There are zealots, on this board, who champion nearly all perspectives of ideology. Such is life on the internet. There are also one-trick-pony posters, here. As long as they do not violate the rules or cause problems by flooding any Forum with their monomaniacal threads, they get to post just like anyone else.
No one is compelled to respond to a poster whom they find irritating. If you find the claims made by some posters to be silly or rude, ignore them and concentrate on responding to the arguments of posters who are actually engaging in the discussion, such as that in post #60 advanced by Princhester.
Thank you.
DT, don’t take my lack of ability to clearly state what I mean as “another example of christian hate”.
BEAUCARNEA –
Well, FWIW, it’s not my understanding that that’s it – i.e., that there is some widespread belief that atheists are motivated to do evil, and reject God to pursue that goal. It’s more that for people who believe their morals come from God, it’s hard to understand where an atheist’s morals come from, and why they could not be easily abandoned when inconvenient. As I said, this ignores the theory that God gives a moral compass to all (or most), independent from our own individual struggles with, or conclusions about, faith, because without them we’d annihilate each other.
I think you are misunderstood, to some extent. Many Christians don’t “get” where atheist morality comes from. Less true, IMO, is the conclusion that because they don’t understand where your morals come from, they must assume you don’t have any. This may be true in some cases, but certainly not in all.
You obviously should talk about such personal matters only when and if you feel comfortable doing so. But many moderate to liberal Western Christians believe we are called to witness by living a good life and being an example of Christianity in action – not by assailing people on the street, making them uncomfortable, and telling them they’re going to burn in hell. (I’m not saying we succeed in being living examples, only that it’s our understanding we are to try.) I am happy to discuss my faith with anyone who is interested – adding only the caveat, made necessary by this Board, that they be minimally respectful in the discussion. But I don’t talk about my Christianity on a daily basis, either. I think most people know I’m a Christian because I wear a small cross around my neck most days, but I doubt many could even tell you what flavor of Christian I am.
DtC –
Well, I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say people are “gratuitously hostile,” but more that two people certainly don’t mind being intentionally offensive – magical sky pixie, God = Santa, and all that. The rationale, in so far as I understand it, is that a lack of respect for another’s beliefs means we can dispense with respecting the other’s right to hold them, and also with being minimally respectful in how we discuss the beliefs, because our contempt for the beliefs outweighs our regard for the feelings of the other person. I don’t talk about religion much around here anymore because IME people simply cannot be minimally respectful in the discussions, even if their disrespect is less obvious than BADCHAD’s “Jesus was a cunt,” aren’t-I-an outrageous-naughty-boy pronouncements. And it’s a minefield, no question. Some Christians think atheists are amoral because they don’t believe in God. And some atheists think Christians are “retarded” (if only “just a little bit” so) for believing in God. When the truthful, honest opinion of the other side is that hard to choke down, it is very difficult to have constructive conversations in which feelings don’t get hurt. That said, I am happy to discuss – though not attack – atheistic morals because I’ve never been entirely sure how they are arrived at.
CERVAISE –
Doesn’t this ignore “the tragedy of the commons”? People will theoretically acknowledge the greater good of society, but when push comes to shove they very frequently act out of individualized self-interest anyway. It is easy to justify bending or breaking one societal stricture because surely if you alone do it, just this one time, nothing bad will happen. IOW, it is possible to both acknowledge the societal detriment of wide-spread theivery while being a thief yourself (so long as you can rationalize that your theivery is not “wide-spread”). Even if a societal wide detriment is perceived, so what? Why should I as an individual uphold societal values at the expense of my own comfort? Why should I care if society breaks down and “horrific things happen”? I’ll be dead by then anyway. So as an explanation for morality, I’m not sure I buy this.
I think we don’t do wrong because we are taught not to do wrong, and because as cooperative beings we are (or ought to be) made uncomfortable by the discomfort of others. But perhaps that’s just a different way of saying basically the same thing? Anyway, I don’t really care whether people believe that impulse comes from biology or God, so long as they have it and exercise it.
In light of T&D’s post, I should add, speaking only for myself, that I certainly don’t feel piled-on generally on these Boards, and I don’t feel disrespected in this thread particularly – y’know, leaving out the yelpers who obviously should be left out.
You are welcome. But please don’t take my post to mean that I thought your post was unfair. The argument Der Trihs is making that somehow he is exempt from being called prejudiced because his hatred is based on religion and not based on skin color or ethnicity is a spurious one at best. Religions are made up of people. People are good and people are evil, and most are a little bit of both. There are some ideologies that are inherently evil, but I don’t see the evidence of this in any of the major world religions. Because some people interpret religious strictures to their own evil ends does not make the religion itself or the worship of God inherently evil.
I would agree with this paragraph in general. True, there are only a few who will freely call religious people evil, but the condescension and flippant attitude towards others’ beliefs is pretty damn rude, and is common on the board. As a member of a religion, I would not in a million years speak so rudely and dismissively of another person’s religion that might be different from mine, or of an athiest’s beliefs, for that matter. Certainly, the SDMB is not responsible for these rather obnoxious posts, but I am quite sure that the vast majority of religious people who see these posts have been offended by them.
Jodi-
I am in no way bashing you or your beliefs, I am going to try to help you understand one possible way for an atheist to come by their morals.
I assume you believe slavery is wrong, correct? How did you come by this belief? Certainly not from the Bible. I am familiar with all the apologist arguments about biblical slavery and I don’t want to get into those here, so to hopefully avoid that argument I’m not going to claim that the bible advocates slavery, only that the Bible does not disapprove of it.
So, where did your belief that slavery is wrong come from? Not from the Bible. So where? If you can recognize that just one of your (I assume) deeply held moral beliefs does not come from the Bible, maybe you can understand how an atheist could have morals without the Bible.
In discussions about religion, you have to expect that some specific assertions are going to be dissected. Most of the non-theists here do not have any animosity towards theists but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to take some of their beliefs very seriously. There is a difference between respecting the person and respecting the belief.
Much of the “sky-pixie” kind of stuff is used rhetorically, by the way, often by way of analogy or as a means to call attention to the logical weakness of certain kinds of arguments (when an assertion can be so easily made to appear absurd by substituting “pixies” or “elves” for “God” – then what does that say about the argument?).
It’s reasonable to expect civility and respect in these kinds of debates, it’s not reasonable to expect that everyone will take every specific belief equally seriously.
DCMS, the question isn’t whether my morals come from the Bible, but whether they come from God. Atheists disavow any outsider actor as instilling or activating the urge to do good. My understanding is that they attribute that urge to biology and cultural/social conditioning, and I’m fine with that. I just don’t think at the end of the day that’s any more provable or intellectually defensible than believing they come from God. But then, as a Christian, I don’t live or die by whether something’s provable, so it’s no skin off my nose either way.
And I didn’t at all think you were bashing, but thanks for the disclaimer. 
Wrong again. Christianity is a belief system; atheism is not. Atheism is a single belief, about a single thing, and tells you nothing about the evil or lack thereof of the atheist save that they lack the excuse of a god. Atheism is too simple to tell you much about someone. Besides, every study I’ve heard of says that atheists are more ethical than theists, and that religiousity in a society is correlated with social ills.
Standard apologetics. A religion tells people to believe certain ways, and to believe certain things, which have consequences. When people kill “witchs” because their religion tells them to do so, they are not twisting their religion for their own evil ends; they are the ones being twisted. Religion is a major motivator for evil behavior. The Christians who persecute gays are doing precisely what their religion tells them to; it’s the religion that is at fault at least as much as them, and it is evil.
Defend it how you like, but “rhetorically” minimizing the importance of the concept by belittling it and/or being contemptuous of it doesn’t actually make your arguments any more persuasive, just more offensive. (And perhaps more likely to delight your fellow non-believers, if they are in fact your true audience.) Any assertion can be made to seem absurd by introducing an absurdity into it; it’s a harder trick to treat the subject with minimal respect and still successfully attack it.
If he meant “purifying presence of god”, why didn’t he just say so? He didn’t have to make up new (and completely opposite) meanings for the words he used.
I couldn’t care less what studies show in this regard. A study that tells you that athiests are “more” ethical doesn’t meant that ALL athiests are ethical or that NO theists are ethical.
What religion tells people to kill witches? What religion tells people to persecute gays? By this I mean, what by what religious authority are people told to do these things?
I don’t know what you mean by “minimizing importance,” but what I’m talking about is showing how specific kinds of arguments can be shown to be fallacious by pointing out that the argument works just as well for “pixies” etc. If you can’t show a reason why “God” is a better argument than pixies then what does that say about your argument?
This isn’t exactly true and it isn’t what’s being done in the circumstances I’m talking about. You seem to think that belittling theistic belief by calling God a “sky pixie” is, in itself it’s a tactic used by non-theists to invalidate theism. It is not. What’'s usually going on is that non-theists are using absurd substututions for “God” in order to show that those explanations work logically just as well. It’s not that “God belief is stupid,” but that “this particular argument for God is stupid because it can also be used for pixies.”
Not hard for me at all. I treat the subject with minimal respect and I can evisverate it in my sleep. It’s a paper tiger. As a rule, I try not to step on the toes of people who are only expressing their beliefs or faiths outside of a context where debate is expected, where legislation is involved or where an individual wants to bring the subject into the realm of scentific examination. For instance, if someone says, “I believe that God created the universe,” I’m not going to argue with them or try to belittle them, but if they say can prove it (especially when it involves YEC, Flood beliefs, ID, etc.), then it’s game on.
I think I read a version of that justification somewhere before, oh yeah…
1 Corinthians 6:12
“Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything. (NIV)
1 Corinthians 10:23
“Everything is permissible”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible”—but not everything is constructive. (NIV)