Your opinion is wrong, and the rest is just word games.
Yes it does; ignorant or irrational. Reality is what it is. And “subjective evidence” is worthless for anything that isn’t totally subjective.
No. She is being irrational, there is no such thing as a soul, and her son is simply gone. And yes it’s destructive for her and everyone; her actions and beliefs don’t exist in isolation. The other destructive effects of belief in the soul still occur regardless of how she is comforted. Her son may well have died in the first place because of them.
So the belief that black people are subhuman doesn’t lead to immoral behavior? The belief that your god has ordained that your people shall rule over the world doesn’t lead to immoral behavior? Most evil has a strong component of people believing falsehoods.
Actually I was using my brother-in-law as an example and he died of a stroke. My mother-in-law only started to believe in souls the night he passed away. But you are free to believe in whatever story you want.
If a person has ethics and morals, they know how to distinguish which beliefs lead to destruction, hate and the things you have described. When one choses to follow an ethical life they chose to follow beliefs which are constructive, productive and that respect others.
And it’s not hard to distinguish which is which, when you take away people’s ignorance on the matter. To destructive, harmful actions, you get a destructive harmful reaction. To every benevolent, respectful, charitable action, you get respectful charitable reaction.
My point is, one can think of horrible things regardless of belief. Would you like an example?
“Jeffrey Dahmer, an infamous serial killer and atheist sentenced to 900 years in prison, said “if a person doesn’t think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?”. He brutally killed seventeen men and boys, dismembering them, storing their parts and indulging in cannibalism and necrophilia. In 1991, he was caught by the police after one of his would-be victims escaped. Despite pleading not guilty on the basis on insanity, the court found him sane and fully accountable. He later expressed remorse.”
I’m not condemning atheism. I’m married to an atheist, my sister is an atheist, I very much respect that. But if a madman believes in Atheist he will use it as an excuse to do horrible things. That is true to any belief. Do you get my point?
“Believe in Atheist”?? Why don’t you give us your definition of atheism, because I see a bit of a gap between what you think it is and what it really is.
Except when you base your worldview on a falsehood like souls, you are going to be using an equally false standard of what is harmful and what is benevolent. Religious beliefs like souls are fundamentally incompatible with ethical behavior, because regardless of how well meaning they are people who believe in such religious delusions are acting according to a fantasy, not reality. People who believe in souls will torture and massacre people by the millions with the absolute conviction that they are doing good, because they are basing their definition of 'good" on something that doesn’t exist. Someone who believes in souls might well start a nuclear war with the goal of destroying humanity out of benevolence - after all no one is really dying, they are just going to the afterlife.
It’s a wrong belief. “Believe in atheist” doesn’t even mean anything, not all beliefs are equally prone to produce evil behavior, and atheism can’t motivate anyone to do anything.
It is very evident, by your line of thinking, that you are very passionate and proud of your belief. You believe that any acceptance of the soul is cause of bitterness and harm and ignorance and since most of mankind believes in souls then that means that most of mankind is evil and ignorant. I would feel very afraid of any form of human contact if I adopted your line of belief.
Your point is that an insane person will use whatever beliefs he has to justify his doing horrible things? Sure, I can go with that, but I have to say that I’d rather a madman have actual, true beliefs, rather than fantasy ones.
Dahmer’s father was an evangelical and creationist. After Jeffrey was in prison, his father sent him creationist/evangelical materials, and Jeffrey became an evangelical himself. At this time, he very conveniently chose to place the blame for his behavior on his earlier acceptance of evolution.
I’m not sure why Christians are so eager to prop up their beliefs with the rationalizations of a serial-killing madman.
He claimed that he did not feel accountable to anyone but himself, which is in no way a common trait among atheists.
He never claimed that he was doing it to further his belief as an atheist.
It is convenient to ignore the religious individuals who were serial killers like Albert Fish, David Berkowitz or Elias Abuelazam.
Harvey Carignan claimed to be “An instrument of God, one who was acting under His personal instructions. Murder, rape and mutilation are all part of a Grand Plan. God is a figure with a large hood and you can’t see his face.”
I am sure that all 49 of Gary Ridgway’s victims would have preferred he not have had staunch religious beliefs.
But really using serial killers to indicate anything is improper, their numbers are so tiny that there really isn’t any useful data to infer from them that can be applied to the general population.
The reality is that the majority of people are not violent irrespective of their world view.
No, he didn’t. You’d already said people should believe what they want, and he talks about believing in what you find personally comforting. I’ve been asking you what we should do about beliefs without evidence, and how we figure out what to believe when there’s no evidence.
Are you refering to me? I’m not exactly Christian and I can name men from various beliefs that have killed people. I’m not defending one belief by showing the faults in others, if that was your interpretation, you missed my point.
No, I said people DO believe what they want. Everyone DOES believe in what they think is personally comforting. Those who live in free societies at least do. I was raised in a Christian society. I did not feel comfortable with it’s belief so I don’t follow Christian dogmas. I am telling plainly that evidence, in my opinion, does not apply to beliefs.
If I believe in Love, there is no evidence that supports love. The belief in Love (or anything else) doesn’t define intelligence and doesn’t define character. People kill other people because of love and people do a great many things too because of love.
If your set of beliefs requires evidence, than that is your opinion, you should be the one to decide what to do if you can’t find it.
My opinion - if we are talking about religion - is that there are those who never look at evidence, they believe in what is taught without skepticism (not something I am comfortable with). There are those who believe in things with subjective evidence (which would be my case). And there are those who believe in things with scientific evidence, which would be your case (am I right?) and my sister’s case too. You chose to believe in things that are based on evidence because you feel you would be a fool in believing something without it, it would make you uncomfortable. In your case, if you do not have evidence, you dismiss it, am I right? And you have all the right to do so.