Only if one demands that morality be grounded in some metaphysical absolute.
Your line of argument is the same line of argument used by the hard currency crackpots: Paper money isn’t real money like gold. Paper money is just “fiat money”. It doesn’t have any real worth the way gold does.
Most economists would argue that paper money is just as real as gold. Gold doesn’t have any inherent worth. The only value it possesses is the value that humans assign to it. So if paper money is “fiat money” then gold is as well.
You’re essentially complaining that atheist morality is “fiat morality”. It’s not grounded in an externally imposed “Gold standard” of God-determined right and wrong. It’s the product of men alone and can be changed and molded.
But this atheist would counter that your God-determined morality is “fiat morality” as well. God doesn’t exist so any pronouncements of what God considers good and evil are fictions created by men. Believers and non-believers are both operating under the same sort of moral system.
Any yet, somehow, I’m able to use my “fiat money” to buy a hamburger. And my “fiat morality” prevents me from lunging across the counter and stabbing the clerk. Amazing!
Yes, and it is subordinate to reality. It does not define reality.
Because such behavior is an aberration. If it was the norm, they would long ago have slaughtered themselves down to a collection of scattered tribes.
Someone who manipulates and exploits, and who gives back little or anything. The priesthood of every religion, in other words.
We can’t support our present population without using up finite resources. We are wearing away the topsoil, and use petrochemical based fertilizers, and are changing the climate in a fashion that will damage food supplies. Expect worldwide famines in the future.
Please. America has always been a very religious country - and worse, a Christian country; therefore, it’s not surprising that it’s been an immoral and genocidally violent country. There was and are plenty of religious motivations and excuses for America’s various atrocities and stupidities.
Only if you are convinced that your morals truly come from God and not Society, which is assuming the antecedent. However, if we are right and your morals ultimately come from Society (which invented God as a vehicle for conveying those morals) then you won’t fall into sociopathy. Let’s see you give it a try.
I have this desire to start a thread entitled “I have decided to become a black person (hypothetical)”
Surely when I discuss how I will have to give up camping, move into the city, stop drinking coffee (hey, I’m already on my way there) and learn to talk loudly (especially when I’m at the movies), surely that couldn’t offend anyone, for I am talking about myself.
And if you say that I’m insulting black people by doing so, I’ll point out that I’m just talking about myself, not other black people. And if I was talking about other black people (which I’m certainly not), then they’d have to be a uniform group with no individuality to take offense, right? So which is it?
Sheesh, this thread reminds me of my brother and I growing up with the “I’m not touching you” argument. Sure, kids may think that’s some sort of actual defense, but adults will see right through it. Just like we’re seeing through the OP. :rolleyes:
mswas is a syncretist who believes all religions actually worship the same deity, really. Including the Druids and Egyptians, IIRC. All those differences you think are so huge? Window dressing.
Precisely. The dollar is a social construct. For someone who does not agree to the social construct, there is no way to establish that it is worth more than paper.
It makes you truthful and honest and it also makes you an atheist if you haven’t come to believe God/gods exist. I don’t know if there’s a God either and most atheists on this board will tell you the same thing (and so will many theists). Knowing and not knowing is not what makes one an atheist or theist- belief does.
That’s true. So is one who is without theism. Most atheists as far as I can tell do not assert there is no god.
I’m not arguing this just to quibble word definitions. I bring it up because you said “One doesn’t have to beleve in God nor not believe in God. They are called agnostics, and a position that is very logical if one is unsure.”
First of all, that really made no sense. You are defining an agnostic as one who is unsure, then you go on to say to be an agnostic is a logical position to be in if one is unsure. It’s not a position to be in if you’re unsure; it’s just a label.
If you think it’s a logical position to be in, then you should think the way the majority of us atheists define ourselves as atheists are being logical, as all we’re saying is that we are without belief (usually because of lack of evidence).
And since most of the great mass murderers of the twentieth century took your first step of abandoning religion, and then displayed much worse records of atrocity, your notion that abandoning religion thus leads to a better society is thus refuted.
Except by demonstrating that it can be exchanged for a hamburger.
And for those who did not agree with the social construct that says the Holocaust is wrong … we demonstrated the fact to them by hanging them at Nuremburg.
Social facts are made real through demonstrative acts.
No, they simply exchanged one religion for another. And I see no evidence that they evinced “much worse records of atrocity”.
And your entire argument collapses because I said that giving up or ignoring religion was the first step. Not the only step. Something you conveniently ignored.
