I have decided to become an atheist (hypothetical)

Great Debates
201

[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
I also know of no evidence to suggest that my moral reasoning differs meaningfully from someone living in Asia.
[/QUOTE]
Well, contemporary cultures as so jumbled together its difficult to tease out the threads of who learned what from where. But many traditional European ideals, such as the dignity of the individual, evolved from Christian values. A statement like “all men are created equal” is not an overtly Christian statement, but it is the secular offshoot of line of long line of Christian theological reasoning stretching back over a thousand years. There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging the connection any more than there’s anything more with acknowledging the connection between our contemporary American political system and the ancient Greeks or contemporary English and Medieval French.

This is not to say that Asia might not have arrived at many of the same moral positions via a different route. There’s a lot of overlap between the teachings of Confucius and Buddha and the teachings of Moses and Jesus. But the predominant influence in the United States has been European, and the predominant influences in European culture have been Christian and Greek.

202

I wasn’t talking about me.

203

[QUOTE=mswas]
Oh, to all you atheists who are claiming that I am lying when I say I wasn’t talking about all atheists. You are breaking the rules.
[/QUOTE]
Can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t think you’re lying. I just think you’re mistaken.

204

[QUOTE=mswas]
Eye for an eye is old testament. Turn the other cheek is New Testament.
[/quote]

So what? How’s that an answer to my question? Besides, I should give a shit about which text they are in exactly why? Because the Testaments have exactly zilch to do with my life.

Never said you were, read away – OTOH what I thought of you was rather boldy said in the proper forum.

205

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Wait a sec… does this boil down to “every atheist is different” or not?

If so, then if mswas thinks he can be the atheist sociopath… let him.
[/QUOTE]
I think it boils down to the OP having presented perhaps the crudest, dumbest, most rudimentary atheistic morality possible, and ascribing it to his fictional atheist self, with the rather explicit implication that No True Atheist could hold any other position (explicit in that he challenges us to make arguments for non-sociopathic atheism being possible, with the implication that to do so would be challenging).

Suffice to say, if he was genuinely curious as to how atheists develop their higher, better-than-christian moralities, he could hardly have phrased the question in a worse possible way. He seems more interested in defending his strawman than satisfying curiousity, though, so perhaps he’s accomplishing exactly what he intended.

206

[QUOTE=begbert2]
I think it boils down to the OP having presented perhaps the crudest, dumbest, most rudimentary atheistic morality possible, and ascribing it to his fictional atheist self, with the rather explicit implication that No True Atheist could hold any other position (explicit in that he challenges us to make arguments for non-sociopathic atheism being possible, with the implication that to do so would be challenging).
[/QUOTE]

Ah, but if his statement isn’t generalized to all atheists, then individual atheists have no right to be offended, I gather is his claimed position but I may be wrong.

Can you clarify, mswas?

207

mswas, you can’t run away from mental disease any more than you can run away from yourself. Difference being, that just a few decades ago they drilled holes into your brain and turned you into a Rosemary Kennedy, while today we understand quite a bit more about the brain and how to diagnose and treat chemical imbalances.

Nothing Mystical about it, science (men not gods) doing its best. If as it seems to me from your posting style, you’re a rather young man, you may yet live to see exactly what part of the brain releases the chemicals needed to live through an induced religious experience. Will that make us our own gods?

Anyway even if you’re old like me, I still hope you live to see it for living in very interesting times with regards to mapping and comprehending our own CPUs.

Hate to break it to you but the crutch’s not just bending but ever so slowly beginning to crack. Hell, in the EU most have thrown it away.

Heathens!

208

If authority is the only thing that’s keeping you from being utterly immoral, what you are, is a psychopath.

209

[QUOTE=mswas]
I see. So how do you explain the child that has ADHD in one environment but is fine in another?
[/QUOTE]
Which child is that?

Of course, different tasks and different environments place different demands on a child’s resources. That says nothing about the underlying disorder.

210

[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
Ah, but if his statement isn’t generalized to all atheists, then individual atheists have no right to be offended, I gather is his claimed position but I may be wrong.

Can you clarify, mswas?
[/QUOTE]
The wording and challenge of his OP strongly imply that his analysis is intended to apply to all atheists, certainly until somebody successfully convinces him to “assimilate it into [his] new personal ethic as an atheist”, since anything he doesn’t assimilate is explicitly stated as being a bad argument. There’s just not much ambiguity about that.

If he truly didn’t want to offend…he could hardly have phrased himself in a worse possible way. His OP poisoned the well pretty badly.

211

[QUOTE=begbert2]
I think it boils down to the OP having presented perhaps the crudest, dumbest, most rudimentary atheistic morality possible, and ascribing it to his fictional atheist self, with the rather explicit implication that No True Atheist could hold any other position (explicit in that he challenges us to make arguments for non-sociopathic atheism being possible, with the implication that to do so would be challenging).

Suffice to say, if he was genuinely curious as to how atheists develop their higher, better-than-christian moralities, he could hardly have phrased the question in a worse possible way. He seems more interested in defending his strawman than satisfying curiousity, though, so perhaps he’s accomplishing exactly what he intended.
[/QUOTE]

That u think that your morality is higher than a Christian by default proves that u do not enter into these arguments in good faith. You start from the “I am going to make this guy apologize for offending me.” place. There is a double standard here, any honest disagreement with atheism is called bigotry, whereas you can hijack any religious discussion with, “well god is imaginary so what difference does it make?” please show me a single thread where the religious have ganged up on you here before you cry foul. I like how I was chided about empathy by people unwilling to be empathic to a person’s faith. This argument is no more offensive than flying spaghetti monster arguments.

212

[QUOTE=begbert2]
The wording and challenge of his OP strongly imply that his analysis is intended to apply to all atheists,
[/QUOTE]

Well, that’s what I thought, too, until:

and

and

and

That last one pretty much sums it up, I guess, but I’d like mswas himself to clarify. If he wants to be an atheist sociopath, let him, if every atheist is free to define himself. If he pierceives a common trait to atheists he wants to question (and actually, that seems kinda pointless to me - like describing objects as “red” and then asking what all “non-red” objects have in common) I ask him to do so in a succint direct manner.

213

[QUOTE=mswas]
I like how I was chided about empathy by people unwilling to be empathic to a person’s faith. This argument is no more offensive than flying spaghetti monster arguments.
[/QUOTE]
And of what faith exactly are you, that we may be empathic towards it?

214

Bryan Ekers, I think he’s just been trying to dodge and deflect well-earned criticism. Note that he doesn’t bother to pretend that his argument isn’t inherently offensive in his last post to me; he goes for the tried-and-true Tu quoque fallacy instead.

Speaking of that post, let’s slice and dice!

[QUOTE=mswas]
That u think that your morality is higher than a Christian by default proves that u do not enter into these arguments in good faith.
[/QUOTE]
Christian morality is “do what I say, because I offer the holy carrot and weild the hellish stick”. It is precisely the morality I expect of the average two-year old; the only difference is that it’s supposed to be impossible to slip one past God unnoticed. It doesn’t take much for a morality to be better than that.

[QUOTE=mswas]
You start from the “I am going to make this guy apologize for offending me.” place.
[/QUOTE]
You have set up a straw man to throw darts at; simple as that. For this, you should be sorry - if your morality was more than holy carrot/hellish stick, anyway. I don’t expect you to apologise, though; that would be unrealistic of me. It’d be nice if you stopped trying to pretend that your deliberately offensive strawman was anything other than it is, though.

[QUOTE=mswas]
There is a double standard here, any honest disagreement with atheism is called bigotry, whereas you can hijack any religious discussion with, “well god is imaginary so what difference does it make?” please show me a single thread where the religious have ganged up on you here before you cry foul.
[/QUOTE]
And show me ANY thread where I said “well god is imaginary so what difference does it make?”. Has that even come up in this thread, from anyone? Or is it just another strawman?

And you gang up on atheists in the OP of this thread. So there you go.

[QUOTE=mswas]
I like how I was chided about empathy by people unwilling to be empathic to a person’s faith.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t think that word means what you think it does. It doesn’t mean we can’t think your faith is silly.

[QUOTE=mswas]
This argument is no more offensive than flying spaghetti monster arguments.
[/QUOTE]
So, you think it’s no less offensive to be called a little silly than it is to be called sociopathic and dangerous? Interesting.

As for actually comparing your strawman to the classic FSM/IPU/Santa Claus arguments, they’re presenting the question of why do religious beliefs get more credibility than these other similarly proven options? If you’re seriously asking that question about your OP, the answer is simple: your proposed “morality” is so extreme you’d get your ass kicked. Even my much-tamer, much-more-polite, much-more-realistic example of feral atheism results (and resulted) in negative consequences that are avoidable by constraining onesself to a strictly consistent, more empathic (by its actual definition) morality.

(Of course, there is no such simple answer for the special pleading that religion gets, and which is highlighted by FSM/ipu/santa claus arguments.)

215

[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
And of what faith exactly are you, that we may be empathic towards it?
[/QUOTE]

The “Eye For An Eye” one of course – why you’d almost have to be blind not to see that.

In his his non-response to my preceding question he mentions which Testament it’s in…if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

216

[QUOTE=mswas]
That u think that your morality is higher than a Christian by default proves that u do not enter into these arguments in good faith.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, and forgot to mention, being too busy backing up my point - this is just silly. We’re only allowed to argue for positions we think are false now? Does this mean that you choose to defend theism because you actually think it’s a festering pantload? :stuck_out_tongue:

Or are you just trying to poison the well again? ‘anyone who says I’m wrong is by default arguing in bad faith’. Laughable. Pathetic. Fallacious.

(And it’s spelled “you”.)

217

[QUOTE=begbert2]
(And it’s spelled “you”.)
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps his next post will be “lol atheism ! Christians pwnz u ! 1010101010 zerg rush !”

218

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Perhaps his next post will be “lol atheism ! Christians pwnz u ! 1010101010 zerg rush !”
[/QUOTE]
To be honest, I’m not sure I could rebutt that. So it might not be a bad tactic on his part.

219

[QUOTE=RedFury]
The “Eye For An Eye” one of course – why you’d almost have to be blind not to see that.

In his his non-response to my preceding question he mentions which Testament it’s in…if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
[/QUOTE]

The spiteful, vindictive, win at all costs god, and not the turn the other cheek god? that does explain a lot.

220

[QUOTE=begbert2]
Oh, and forgot to mention, being too busy backing up my point - this is just silly. We’re only allowed to argue for positions we think are false now? Does this mean that you choose to defend theism because you actually think it’s a festering pantload? :stuck_out_tongue:

Or are you just trying to poison the well again? ‘anyone who says I’m wrong is by default arguing in bad faith’. Laughable. Pathetic. Fallacious.

(And it’s spelled “you”.)
[/QUOTE]
I think what he’s trying to do is force a very specific dialogue - one that he feels is fair. Maybe it is, maybe it ain’t. I haven’t triangulated it yet, anyhow. But I do sense that there’s a real bent towards devil’s advocate - leaving some feeling dance-monkey-dance. And that boxing at shadows effect has some feeling he’s not arguing in good faith.

I don’t think any of those impressions are wrong. And I think he’s leaving a sliver of room open for the argument he wants to hear. It’s like he’s trying to get us to give the answer he already knows - just to see if we can.

Thing is, it’s his answer. Not necessarily the answer - not that he’s not open to it… just… this feels manipulated and gamed.

He wants respect when giving little. But he was tweaked by the dogmatic atheist who refuses to give evidence or a citation. Chicken - egg. Someone breaks the cycle…