It’s called fear. Self righteousness is a poor defense against a bunch of people with badges and guns. So, they restrict themselves to things like beating up gays when the cops aren’t around, or terrorizing their own children, or supporting wars and torture against unbelievers.
It’s a miracle you’ve survived.
No, it’s the rule of law. If it was a “miracle” I’d be dead because there’s no such thing.
It’s interesting how when theists obey the law, it’s contrary to their bestial nature and done merely out of fear, and when Communists do bad stuff, has nothing to do with the fact that they’re atheists. How hard is it for you to sift through all the possible explanations and zero in on the explanation that fits the best with your prejudices? I expect it’s pretty automatic by now.
I’m going home now. I’ll try to resist the urge to kill everyone who gets in my way.
How hard is it for you to completely distort what I say ? Not to mention ignore reality. You want to blame Communist behavior on one, rather minor quality, that of atheism ? Then bring up atheists who AREN’T Communists who act that way.
And explain how atheism can motivate bad, or any other kind of behavior given that it doesn’t call for any action or make any moral judgements. Unlike Christianity AND Communism.
As for Christian’s “bestial” nature; we only have to look at the history of Christianity to see what happens when it has the power to do what it wants. Tyranny, the killing of anyone who disagrees with dogma, ignoring reality in favor of dogma, constant wars, conversion by the sword, and so on. In fact, it acts pretty much like Communism; the two are quite similar.
A major component of the progress of civilized behavior in the the West has been the crippling of Christianity. It is the State, not the Church which dominates now. And for all it’s flaws, the State is both more capable and generally more ethical than the Church.
Why not? Well, you might start with why an athiest would in the first place.
Warning: This may be all, “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is…”
To me, all of reality is just a bunch of tenuous conventions we may or may not all be sharing (that is, if you people actually exist). When I take the hypothesis that you all exist and run with it, things seem to work out in a consistent manner, so I have to ask: what is our purpose? I don’t know. Maybe to produce an epistemological masterpiece. Maybe to make a strip of metal with holes drilled in it. Maybe we don’t have one at all. But I’m curious. In my estimation, I should do my part in keeping this game going until we figure it out.
And it occurs to me that the best way to do this is to live in and contribute to humanity’s ultimate product, which (by a very complex process) results in a fairly utilitarian mindset, which leads me to decide to engage in a set of behaviors. Coincidentally, some of these behaviors are consistent with behaviors that are promoted by some of the major religions.
So, I have personally decided that in my universe, society must be healthy, promote education and do things that are consistent with keeping humans and the human race alive for a long time. So we can figure out what our product is and make it. The “keeping it alive” part motivates me to recognize that concepts that other people have described, such as “friendliness” and “respect” and “hot sex” are good things. Some conventions in this society I believe in seem to be well suited to promoting the friendliness, respect and hot sex parts, so I leverage off the work of previous thinkers on the subject and participate when I can.
Incidentally: the “leveraging off of previous thinkers” part is important to me because I long ago discarded the hypothesis that I’m omniscient because it just didn’t prove itself out. For all I know, despite my efforts to move us forward, I could be wrong and actually be holding us back. So when new ideas are presented to me, I try to see if they help explain more things than they obfuscate. Thus far, I’m impressed and awestruck at the evidence that there are so many intelligent people out there.
Ultimately, as other have mentioned, I don’t rape and pillage because I’ve thought about it for some time, and arrived at the conclusion that it doesn’t help me further my aims. If people think that external commands from some deity must be followed without working through the issues and deciding that these commands make sense even in the absence of a deity, I don’t think their “morality” is a deeply held set of values. Thus I think that people who refrain from raping and pillaging for the incredibly trivial threat of eternal damnation are dangerous, because they’re ruled by fear.
“… Caterpillar sheds its skin
to find the butterfly within …”
Besides, it’s not like there are a lot of old airplane cranks lying around these days.
Whatever. But then you go and make these generalizations that seem to indicate that you think all Christians are misogynistic bestial assholes. My point is that whatever the data is, you will explain it in a way that fits your world-view.
BTW, I’m an atheist, and I don’t think the excesses of Communism have anything to do with atheism. But I also try not to be an asshat.
Don’t relax just yet. Even now, we are gathering in the bowels of our churches and cathedrals. Once we figure out how to get Christians into Congress and the White House, you and all those annoying babies better watch out!
Yeah, especially the Iraqi ones, ha ha! It’s funny how nobody is systemically tortured or killed over religion and DT is just a raving loony.
Can’t we have both?
I think Der Trihs’s problem is with the Christian religion. I haven’t heard him opine much on the Oil religion.
Okay, here’s a rundown of life in that period (actually, this description holds for roughly 1953-1968) for a family I know quite well:
There are six children, who’ve been born within ten years. They’re living in a two bedroom house in a small town. Dad keeps drifting from job to job, always looking for a get-rich-quick-scheme. Dad also keeps drifting between different New Agey paths. Mom is a hardcore Catholic. She’d started out as a concert pianist who was traveling the world and spoke more languages than any of her kids can be sure of, but this changed when she got married at twenty-four. It wouldn’t be proper to do that anymore, so she stayed home and took care of the kids.
The stress of her fourth pregnancy leads to Mom losing all of her teeth at thirty. Dad is the black sheep of a relatively well-off family and feels ashamed of having so many children. He starts beating them and verbally berating them. The house starts falling apart and filth piles up as Mom gets overwhelmed. Finally, Dad abandons the family. Mom ends up in a mental institution briefly. When she gets out she manages to get a job which uses none of her skills, but can just barely support her family. Except now she’s never there to watch the kids. They have to take care of themselves, which doesn’t work out so well. The eldest son gets a girl pregnant–he’s fifteen and she’s thirteen at the time–and they’re forced to get married. Mom keeps saying “someday” she’ll go and travel the world again. That someday never comes.
Now, as “Mom” in that scenario died almost fifteen years ago, I can’t ask her how she felt about it at the time, but from what her children tell me she felt fucking robbed. Her kids were extremely miserable at the time, too, and carry the scars of that time to this day. “Dad” justifies things in his mind and feels that his wife and kids were what was making him unhappy.
I, personally, can see a lot of ways in which modern attitudes could have made some things a bit more bearable for these people.
I have to agree here. My grandparents grew up in the same part of the state, a tiny backwoods school. As youths in the 1920s and 1930s they skiied, boated, fished, and had adventures and solved mysteries in the company of a talking dog.*
She went to the same university as my grandfather, yet she was never allowed to get a job. She was stuck at home while he met all the people, traveled to exotic places (both in the Army and as a geologist), made all the business decisions and purchases, had all the money, got all the credit.
They were married over 50 years and she always harbored resentment against him. He had all the opportunities, she didn’t.
*Okay, not that part.
Just purchased two tickets and can’t wait. Thanks for the heads-up!!
But **CaerieD **and and Fish, you have to admit … everyone was dressed nicely.
Most of the people there are government first and Christian second. And mostly Christians who don’t agree with each other - they refrain from going as far as they’d like ( like ordering the death of “sinners” ), because then the other Christians would be free to do the same. One of the things that has crippled Christianity and therefore allowed civilized behavior to arise in the West is Christianity’s splintering into so many factions.
And still, we see such Christian behavior as banning stem cell research - that’s probably hurt and killed quite a few people. And there’s the Iraq war. And when you get right down to it, Christians are more focused on attacking women and gays and unbelievers and the poor than they care about babies - all of which our Christian government has done.
Oh, please. Christian fundamentalism ( gotta protect Israel for the Apocalypse to happen ! ) had quite a bit to do with our attack on Iraq, as well as the typical American’s support for it. Most Americans are Christian; most Iraqis are Muslim; therefore most Americans have no problem at all with the Iraqis being slaughtered and raped and tortured.
I guess you’ve proved Obama is a Muslim.
I tried that once.
Burned my lips.