vertiaset: James F. Campbell

My favorite atheist. A man who was not an ideologue. Not a hater. A man who knew both religion and science. A man who realized one could be a skeptic and a believer. A true seeker after the "Truth" ... yes with a capital "T".


Most people don't know that Azimov's sideburns were actually aliens that had grafted themselves onto his skull. These extended as tentacles and could each operate typewriters on their own, accounting for his prodigious output.

G.

letrole: You think murder is murder, theft is theft, whatever, only because you were brought up in a Judeo Christian society.

When the Roman's crucified Jesus next to that murderer and thief, it was because they lived in a Judeo-Christian society...or something.

You're stupid.

MorganFreeman: morality is actually completely subjective

Morality is biological. It has evolved.

letrole: Absolutely. This is where your high-horse ride ends. The supposed basis for morality that New Atheism attempts to concoct is bunk.

You think murder is murder, theft is theft, whatever, only because you were brought up in a Judeo Christian society. Try as you might, you can only find ways of "scientifically" explaining the things that you were already taught.

I disagree that it has much at all to do with religion. Primitive Hebrew societies stoned young girls who weren't virgins. Modern Christian societies torture and kill children who are accused of witchcraft.

That murder is murder and theft is theft in this country has far more to do with the thoughts of the Enlightenment and the rights of man (which were in direct contradiction to the church at that time) than with Christianity.

whatshisname: True that. All my Hindu friends have no concept of murder or theft.

They practise infanticide. It's cultural. Forget all that hoo-raw about viability out of the womb, they kill baby girls up to two weeks after being born.

So yes, in your desire to toss out a sarcastic remark, you did speak the truth.

vertiaset: Don't be silly. Ants are social animals as are bees. There is no morality in nature beyond man and you know it.

This is patently false, and comparing ants and bees to higher mammals is silly.
There are a number of mammals, including chimps, bonobos, baboons, and dolphins that exhibit altruistic behavior such as sharing food or aiding the old/lame/injured without any expectation of reward. Some wolves and birds will raise the young of other family/group members, or even sometimes of other species.

These individual behaviors by themselves may not constitute morality to the degree that we define it (although it is certainly arguable in some cases), but whether a wolf is a moral creature or not isn't the point. The point is that the behaviors and tendencies that form the basis of moral behavior can be an inherited characteristic of a species.

whatshisname: MorganFreeman: morality is actually completely subjective

Morality is biological. It has evolved.

I know. You took my quote out of context.

letrole: Either that, or it's each man deciding for himself if murder is murder.

My grandfather was a soldier in WWII. He fought in the Italian campaign. He's said all of eight words to me my entire life about the war. (I was playing a combat flight simulator game and dropped a cluster bomb. He said "The Germans used cluster bombs on us once." I didn't play that game much after that.)

If humans were such cold-blooded killers, soldiers wouldn't come back from war traumatized: They'd have a natural resistance to the sort of bloodshed that's required. Killing other humans isn't natural for people to do. Not feeling remorse afterward is even less natural.

If we were such savages at heart, why would we almost universally feel remorse or trauma?

vertiaset: I personally like this billboard. It is less a advertisement for atheism than an appeal to atheists to adhere to a moral system. I think this is a good idea.

One of my main problems with atheists is that all too often in abandoning their faith they also abandon any sense of morality. Many, certainly not all, become moral relativists or, even worse, amoral. After all, if man is the measure of all things and there is no right or wrong, just "things people do", then there is no evil and, conversely, no good.

What a strange ... and dangerous ... world view.

If you require a religion to make you "good" and give you "morals", you're not a good person.

Do something because it is right, not because you're scared of your deity.

The Icelander: If we were such savages at heart, why would we almost universally feel remorse or trauma?

Because Jesus loves us all.

Gawdzila: This is patently false, and comparing ants and bees to higher mammals is silly.

Social insects are often to referred to as superorganisms. They don't make decisions to do something any more than our cells make decisions.

letrole: whatshisname: True that. All my Hindu friends have no concept of murder or theft.

They practise infanticide. It's cultural. Forget all that hoo-raw about viability out of the womb, they kill baby girls up to two weeks after being born.

So yes, in your desire to toss out a sarcastic remark, you did speak the truth.

And certain Judeo-Christin groups practice genocide of various sorts. Does this mean they have no concept of right or wrong because an imaginary being hasn't told them what's good and what's bad?

The Icelander: letrole: Either that, or it's each man deciding for himself if murder is murder.

My grandfather was a soldier in WWII. He fought in the Italian campaign. He's said all of eight words to me my entire life about the war. (I was playing a combat flight simulator game and dropped a cluster bomb. He said "The Germans used cluster bombs on us once." I didn't play that game much after that.)

If humans were such cold-blooded killers, soldiers wouldn't come back from war traumatized: They'd have a natural resistance to the sort of bloodshed that's required. Killing other humans isn't natural for people to do. Not feeling remorse afterward is even less natural.

If we were such savages at heart, why would we almost universally feel remorse or trauma?

That's a pretty solid point. The only ones who don't seem to feel it are the same people so zealous about religion they kill for it.

I'm going to say this once: Unless you're Jewish even YOU don't believe in the G-d you profess to believe in. Last time I checked G-d didn't bang some 14 year old chick giving birth to a demigod. That's Zeus/Thor/Odin/Jupiter/etc/etc/etc... You've got your pantheons mixed up.

What's more, the Atheists are right. For Jews, we have 613 commandments. For non-Jews there are six and none of them involve worshiping our G-d.

"That which is hateful to you, don't do to anyone else. This is the whole of the Law. The rest is commentary. Go study the commentary." - Hillel.

vertiaset: I get my ethical grounding from a lifetime of study of ethics starting from the pre-Socratics, the words of Christ especially the beatitudes, St. Paul's Hymn to Love, through the teachings of the various sages of the Axial age, the Bahavagad Gita, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zoroaster, Lao Tze, Confucius, Gautama Siddhattha, St. Augustine, the medieval Humanist tradition, in particular Peter Abelard, then Baruch Spinoza, Martin Luther, the Transcendentalists, in particular Thoreau and Emerson, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and finally the many fine thinkers of the New Humanist movement of the 21st century.

And yet primitive societies that have no such knowledge nevertheless figure out that murder is wrong.

As far as atheists abandoning reality - that's just unsubstantiated garbage. They may have values different than yours, but most have a sense of morals in my experience.

The Icelander: That murder is murder and theft is theft in this country has far more to do with the thoughts of the Enlightenment and the rights of man (which were in direct contradiction to the church at that time) than with Christianity.

Yes, we've already established the influence of the Enlightenment, to the degree that you assume its high minded ideas run through the heads of savages. Where do eggs come from?

MorganFreeman: whatshisname: MorganFreeman: morality is actually completely subjective

Morality is biological. It has evolved.

I know. You took my quote out of context.

Sorry.

vertiaset: I get my ethical grounding from a lifetime of study of ethics starting from the pre-Socratics,

But if you need Jesus to have ethics, how could the pre-Socratics have ethics?

\This thinking lead to the destruction of quite a bit of knowledge

Cerebral Ballsy: aselene: This kind of hate speech wouldn't be tolerated if the roles were reversed. The ACLU would already be suing to have it covered over with the Muslim crescent. It just goes to show the double standard between atheist speech and religious speech.

Bullsh*t, you douche.

The old "You're going to hell" boogeyman billboard. These are ALL OVER here in Florida. The one thing atheist billboards don't do is lie and tell you you're going to some made up place after death.

Now with working html goodness and going to hell badness

My response is to people that spout that sh*t is:

Jesus died for somebody's sins not mine. I'll take responsibility thank you. If that means your omnipotent god is going to cast me into perdition for all eternity, then that is what will happen, but I will not join a religion where someone too dumb to hit the floor with a hat is saved. I have standards and, if there is a God (big G here), I hope that he does too. I'd rather burn in Hell than hang around with intellectual inferiors that are incapable of taking responsibility for their own sins without relying on a 2000 year old get out of jail free card.

The real nozzles usually sputter incoherently for a few seconds.

letrole: Yes, we've already established the influence of the Enlightenment, to the degree that you assume its high minded ideas run through the heads of savages.

You're putting words into my mouth.

I'm asserting that all people, regardless of religion or upbringing, and including quite a few social mammals, have innate altruism. They may not know about the universal rights of man, but they know it's not right to hit other people and feel remorse over it.

Hell, my 21 month old daughter knows it's not nice to hit other people, and she's never even been in a church.

inglixthemad: Jesus died for somebody's sins not mine. I'll take responsibility thank you. If that means your omnipotent god is going to cast me into perdition for all eternity, then that is what will happen, but I will not join a religion where someone too dumb to hit the floor with a hat is saved. I have standards and, if there is a God (big G here), I hope that he does too. I'd rather burn in Hell than hang around with intellectual inferiors that are incapable of taking responsibility for their own sins without relying on a 2000 year old get out of jail free card.

You'd like this song ^{(^)}

The Icelander: letrole: Either that, or it's each man deciding for himself if murder is murder.

My grandfather was a soldier in WWII. He fought in the Italian campaign. He's said all of eight words to me my entire life about the war. (I was playing a combat flight simulator game and dropped a cluster bomb. He said "The Germans used cluster bombs on us once." I didn't play that game much after that.)

If humans were such cold-blooded killers, soldiers wouldn't come back from war traumatized: They'd have a natural resistance to the sort of bloodshed that's required. Killing other humans isn't natural for people to do. Not feeling remorse afterward is even less natural.

If we were such savages at heart, why would we almost universally feel remorse or trauma?

Thanks for sharing, seriously.

It reminds me of the many documented stories of WWI, where the soldiers rarely fired on each other (Even when walking above the trenches) for fear of return fire. There was an unspoken 'truce' for many of those men and even spoken for others (One story involves groups apologizing if their artillery got too close!).

It's called Tit for Tat altruism and is well documented both biologically and in software as an evolutionary stable trait.

I think you combine the naturally occurring Tit for Tat with the sentient nature of the brain (The ability to simulate your existence in others shoes)...and morality seems the natural result. It seems to take tribalism in the form of religion, nationalism, gender, race, etc to override.

/I'm sure an evolutionary psychologist can step up and point out my flaws while illuminating it more in depth

letrole: The Icelander: That murder is murder and theft is theft in this country has far more to do with the thoughts of the Enlightenment and the rights of man (which were in direct contradiction to the church at that time) than with Christianity.

Yes, we've already established the influence of the Enlightenment, to the degree that you assume its high minded ideas run through the heads of savages. Where do eggs come from?

Who represents the "savages" you're talking about? All people? Non-Christians? I mean those "high-minded" ideas were a long time coming, and I don't think anyone here is trying to claim that morality hasn't evolved except you.

I hate religious morons.

You can't prove or disprove God, so if they say that God exists for them they are free to do whatever stupid, barbaric, ignorant, and savage things their god tells them to do. And the rest of us are forced to tolerate them.

The Icelander: If we were such savages at heart, why would we almost universally feel remorse or trauma?

That's not universal. Excuse me fullcaps:

STOP ASSIGNING WESTERN THOUGHT TO THE DEFAULT STATE OF MAN.

letrole,

You can't prove that you believe in God.

/checkmate.

letrole: STOP ASSIGNING WESTERN THOUGHT TO THE DEFAULT STATE OF MAN.

Says the guy doing just that.

I'm a misanthrope.

shiat dude, I drive by a billboard saying "JESUS is the only way to God" weekly. You don't see me doing more than rolling my eyes.


"I don't know the reason for putting this sign up," said Big Mama. "It says 'Do not believe in God.' How are we going to make it? Look at our schools, everyday. Everyday there's something going on. Kids are out here killing each other, kids are here using drugs. Who else are they going to believe in?"

I hear Baal used to keep the kids in line and the biremes running on time. Why not give him a second chance?

letrole: The Icelander: If we were such savages at heart, why would we almost universally feel remorse or trauma?

That's not universal. Excuse me fullcaps:

STOP ASSIGNING WESTERN THOUGHT TO THE DEFAULT STATE OF MAN.

Stop assuming there is one "default" state for man, especially in this day and age.

TheAgeOfEgos: It reminds me of the many documented stories of WWI, where the soldiers rarely fired on each other (Even when walking above the trenches) for fear of return fire. There was an unspoken 'truce' for many of those men and even spoken for others (One story involves groups apologizing if their artillery got too close!).

The Christmas Truce ^{(^)} is probably one of my favorite stories about WWI.

Here you have two groups of young men, far from home, sitting in the mud and shooting at each other. Then one side hears the sound of the other side singing "Silent Night" drifting over no-man's land. The next day, they climb out of their trenches. They share their meager rations and have a game of soccer. Someone even finds a Christmas tree.

The following Christmas, the order came down from the commanders of both sides that the officers were to shoot anyone who even thought about taking time out from killing the enemy to humanize them. They were going to shoot their own men for not wanting to shoot their enemy.

It seems that if you don't think of your enemy as a faceless other, you have a hard time shooting them. Funny thing for "savages" to have to deal with.

Alright we need a three party system here! Were all the satanist at??? hollar!!!!

FitzShivering: Wenchmaster: genner: What happens to people who don't have kids?


We have more disposable income.

Depends how many pets you have. I'm pretty sure one of our cats has officially cost more than a child this year. :)

I'm pretty sure you're doing something wrong...

The Icelander: Gawdzila: This is patently false, and comparing ants and bees to higher mammals is silly.

Social insects are often to referred to as superorganisms. They don't make decisions to do something any more than our cells make decisions.

Indeed, in fact I saw a demonstration of a swarm of very simple robots that had very simple behavior instructions. When they interact with each other they can collectively perform organized tasks despite the fact that none of them, individually, has any concept of the goal that they are accomplishing, much less how to accomplish it or why.

letrole: That's not universal.

You're right. Religious zealots often feel no remorse or trauma.

If you need a reason for an atheist to want a moral and just society, there's always self-perservation. I'd rather live in a society where the norm was respect and tolerance for others than a society where everyone is a cutthroat backstabber waiting to shaft someone for a quick buck. It's way too much effort to keep looking over one's shoulder, it's better to get others to not want to do harm.

We're not going to escape our own solar system, are we?

sabremkg: Alright we need a three party system here! Were all the satanist at??? hollar!!!!

Could I get some more beer in my baby skull please?
*tap* *tap*

Ahem, where were we?

vertiaset: You and I are not in disagreement. Altruism is the genesis of morality but it is not morality. Only humans, with their ability to see themselves as separate and distinct from the rest of creation and hence with free will, can be moral or immoral. There is no such thing as an immoral chimpanzee or dolphin. That is just plain silly and I cannot believe that anyone of even moderate intelligence would make such a claim.

Argumentum ad yoursilly. Very effective.

cheshirecatsmileyface: As a black person and a Christian, that doesn't bother me in the least. You don't have to believe in God to be a good person. But maybe that's because my faith isn't contingent on everybody else believing the same thing. Or maybe I just know how to mind my own damn business. *finger snap*headshake*

Hey there
/Third black person I seen here besides myself

letrole: MorganFreeman: My point is that apart from God the God I believe in

So substitute whatever deity or religion you choose. You end up with somebody saying "because I said so". Either that, or it's each man deciding for himself if murder is murder.

Reality is ruled by majority.

vertiaset: nmathew01

vertiaset: So, all of you "moral" atheists. Where does your sense of morality come from anyway? Is there "good" and "evil". Are these universal or do they vary from person to person or society to society?

Mind telling me where you get yours? No sarcasm intended.


Well, I guess that is a fair enough question.

I get my ethical grounding from a lifetime of study of ethics starting from the pre-Socratics, the words of Christ especially the beatitudes, St. Paul's Hymn to Love, through the teachings of the various sages of the Axial age, the Bahavagad Gita, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Zoroaster, Lao Tze, Confucius, Gautama Siddhattha, St. Augustine, the medieval Humanist tradition, in particular Peter Abelard, then Baruch Spinoza, Martin Luther, the Transcendentalists, in particular Thoreau and Emerson, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and finally the many fine thinkers of the New Humanist movement of the 21st century.

It is constantly evolving and undergoing refinement as I gain in maturity, insight and wisdom.

I am sure I have a lot yet to learn.

A fine response. Given that you did not simply point to a book claiming specific revelation, and that you're working things out as best you can, do you believe that we need a deity or otherworldly power to help us out, or can we figure things out amongst ourselves?

sorry about the run-on.

Ugg, 14 minutes between your post and mine. Sorry, but it looks like I'm playing get ready for the week too much to actually take part in a discussion.

sabremkg: Alright we need a three party system here! Were all the satanist at??? hollar!!!!

I'm a misanthrope. Does that count?

Brainmeat: letrole: MorganFreeman: My point is that apart from God the God I believe in

So substitute whatever deity or religion you choose. You end up with somebody saying "because I said so". Either that, or it's each man deciding for himself if murder is murder.

Reality is ruled by majority.

So, back when mostly everyone believed the earth was flat, the center of the solar system, et al, it was actually so?

drjekel_mrhyde: cheshirecatsmileyface: As a black person and a Christian, that doesn't bother me in the least. You don't have to believe in God to be a good person. But maybe that's because my faith isn't contingent on everybody else believing the same thing. Or maybe I just know how to mind my own damn business. *finger snap*headshake*

Hey there
/Third black person I seen here besides myself

Oh, I'm not black, my Fark handle is.

p.s. Where exactly are the Christians like you hiding out? They're kind of getting overshadowed by the loons these days.

vertiaset: When you read a post do you actually READ it or do you just hear your own voice clamoring in your head? Of course there are other sources of moral grounding than religion. That was the point of my post. I agree with the author of the billboard atheists SHOULD adopt an ethical system to replace the one they have rejected when they rejected faith.

Then why the need for religion? Perhaps believing in unicorns would lead to even greater moral purity than belief in God. Has anyone done a controlled study?

Moral relativism and nihilistic amorality are both strange and dangerous world views.

Perhaps so, perhaps not, but what do they have to do with the price of bread in Moscow? These worldviews are orthogonal to the theism/atheism axis.

Befuddled: If you need a reason for an atheist to want a moral and just society, there's always self-perservation. I'd rather live in a society where the norm was respect and tolerance for others than a society where everyone is a cutthroat backstabber waiting to shaft someone for a quick buck. It's way too much effort to keep looking over one's shoulder, it's better to get others to not want to do harm.

Finally someone said it. There is no benefit to going in and biatching out or otherwise causing harm to the poor kid at the sandwich place nearby or co-workers at the office or in my family (no matter how much i want to). I don't need a magic faerie creature in the sky detailed from a badly written book put together by a committee to teach me these concepts.

letrole: The Icelander: But it's also not as simple as letrole is making it out to be, either. And I think his "The only thing that keeps us from bashing open each other's skulls and feasting on the goo inside is religion" hypothesis is the one that's the furthest from reality.

I never said such a thing. My point is that apart from God, there is no right and wrong, only results. I presented an example of men in the wild state who didn't have a full-blown sense of Western Ethics, as many "modern thinkers" seem to assume they would.

That's not your "point". It's not a "point" at all. That's your opinion, and it is an unsupported, bare assertion. You have failed to demonstrate how the particular social construct we call "religion" is any more efficacious than any other in regulating human behavior - and in fact, you haven't even tried. You seem to expect the rest of us to accept it as axiomatic - which we don't. You have, essentially placed yourself in the same position as the "angry atheist" who insists that religion is somehow unique in providing an excuse for general human intolerance and assholishness - because he says it is.
You keep saying it, but offer no supporting argument or evidence. At this point, I think I'm reasonable to conclude that you have none to offer.
The statement that "apart from God, there is no right or wrong", epistemologically isn't even wrong - it's gibberish. Nonsense. You may as well say "Apart from bowling ball, there is no up or down"
It's an attempt to link two unrelated concepts with... well, nothing but the fact that you insist that they are linked.

crazy_gaijin: So, back when mostly everyone believed the earth was flat, the center of the solar system, et al, it was actually so?

Lets have an experiment. Everyone in the world should believe I'm banging Megan Fox and Sasha Grey.

Please.

G2V: ...I hate when atheists call themselves "Free thinkers," as an implicit differentiation between themselves and the religious. Yeah, that'll win people over.

The term Free Thinkers has been around for ages. It means, "think for yourself" - as in, don't listen to the dude in the big pointy hat; make your own mind up.

The argument "Yeah, that'll win people over" has been played out. Atheists have been bending over backwards for far too long, and it has gotten us nowhere. If calling a spade a spade fails to win anyone over, well - fark 'em.

I'm sick and farking tired of being labeled a "militant" or "fundamentalist" atheist, merely because I do not believe that there's an invisible, omnipotent, omniscient creature around.

A significant portion of vegetarians are assholes. But I've never had one call me a militant meat eater. From this, one can deduce that Christians are, on average, bigger assholes than the worst vegetarian.