Genocide ain’t an “ism”! That makes it okay!
Like Christism and Muslism.
While I agree, IME many theists will disagree because they will say atheists do evil stuff because they have no reason not to unlike (they say) theists who have morals handed down by their deity. Its horseshit of course, but that’s what they will say.
And prism.
The religion of PR agents. Empty, but it gets a lot of ink.
I’m sorry if this has already been asked, but in response to the OP: Why should liberals and Democrats fully embrace atheism?
Good luck, @Velocity has left the building.
They shouldn’t, because there are plenty of liberal Democrats who are religious, and their religion directly influences their politics.
Sorry, I should have checked before posting.
At speed.
You must not know any theists personally.
I have met theists who have made such arguments. But not “many”.
My family is overwhelmingly Catholic, my friends for much of my life have been overwhelmingly Muslim, and I have worked for many years in an office with a very Christian (and VERY clearly protestant) culture, during which time I belonged to the Jewish Community Center (I’m not of Jewish heritage).
I don’t have to discuss religion with these folks to know that they assume that The Moral Code comes from a religion, specifically theirs.
The only group in which religious people did NOT routinely use “pious”, “observant” and “godly” as synonyms for both religious and moral were the Jewish folks.
If I ever discussed this with Muslims, Catholics and Christians, most of them treated this as a foregone conclusion. Of course it is possible for the godless to be good. It’s just a minor miracle when it happens. Like I am the exception that proves the rule. And like some people here, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot find their way into the conversation pretty quickly. And for the “Christian” ones Bernie Madoff as well.
I have discussed this with Catholic priests in our family (there are many). None of them take this position. To them a “good Catholic” is an observant one. They don’t mean it as a synonym for moral, honest, diligent, etc. Maybe because they hear confessions.
I haven’t had this experience myself. Probably because I mostly have hung out with nuns, monks, and liberal Catholics.
I also think “good Catholic” is a very specific term which doesn’t refer to moral character but strictly to observance. There are plenty of other terms which do refer to moral character.
In my experience, the folks that say things like ‘You say you don’t believe in God but really you just don’t want to held accountable for your sins’ will also happily tell you that ‘Catholics are not Christians’.
Firstly I should really have said that “many theists of the type who get into debates like that which Hari_Seldon was discussing will disagree… etc”
I appreciate that most theists don’t get into this sort of discussion at all.
However, the allegation that atheists do evil stuff because they have no reason not to do so is one of the key BS reasons theists give for anti-atheist bigotry.
“Those whom we interviewed view atheists in two different ways. Some people view atheists as problematic because they associate them with illegality, such as drug use and prostitution—that is, with immoral people who threaten respectable community from the lower end of the status hierarchy. Others saw atheists as rampant materialists and cultural elitists that threaten common values from above—the ostentatiously wealthy who make a lifestyle out of consumption or the cultural elites who think they know better than everyone else. Both of these themes rest on a view of atheists as self interested individualists who are not concerned with the common good.”
“To many people in the United States, atheists are seen as unprincipled, immoral or unethical, which is a root cause of the prejudicial attitudes toward atheists”
AND in a given direction!
I used to work with a woman who was…Pentecostal? I think. Super hardcore religious, just a few notches up from snake handling. Hers was a very narrow faith, basically anyone who went to her particular church or was from her village in Ghana were saved, everyone else was at risk. She did once say to me, rather conspiratorially, I thought, “Catholics aren’t Christians, you know. Even they’ll tell you that.”
I’d tend to keep my atheist yap shut on the subject of religion around her. Not that I would have minded mixing it up a bit, but it was at work and I had enough on my plate.
Because it’s polarizing, not falsifiable, unconstitutional and political suicide. Such a position even had difficulty in the Soviet Union. I’d characterize the popular US mind set as more agnostic than atheist. Liberalism being secular does not make it atheist. It’s a big tent.
- Most Democrats believe in god.
- Taking an official stance on it is wrong as a matter of policy
- It would hurt them politically