Posted on 09/30/2015 11:30:21 AM PDT by Heartlander
Three men walking:One man walks up to me, and I ask him to jump. He does.
A second man walks up to me, but different from the first, as he is walking in the air. I ask him, also, to jump. He tries, but cannot, because he is not grounded.
A third man walks up to me, but different from either of the first two, as he is walking on the ground, but doesn’t believe in the ground. He believes the ground does not exist. I ask him to jump too. He does.
<<<<<<>>>>>> Now, when the theist says [to the atheist] you don’t have morality, like I’m saying, you think we are claiming you are the second guy. But you want to say, “No! You idiot! I can jump just fine.” And you can. But we are not saying you are the second guy at all. Rather, we are saying you are the third guy. You have, in actuality and practicality, the correct moral standards from which you CAN jump, and you KNOW you have them.
But the problem remains, and it really is a problem that is delusional. You have the ground, you use the ground, you run and jump and play all day long. But you deny that which is right under your feet even as you are doing it.
Does being an atheist interfere with being moral?
No. Even though atheists won’t admit it our inherent sense of right and wrong are placed in us by God.
Even a cursory study of Quantum Physics would challenge any
Atheist’s non-God religion.
y’gutt’a first define moral
No it does not.
The big question in my mind regarding atheism and morality is in regard to body counts.
In modern times, it seems atheistic regimes have the biggest mass-murder body counts.
But in history, that’s not true. Islam killed 80 million Indians in its conquest of the subcontinent. I think that tops anything that Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao or Pol Pot did individually (Mao the Leader with 50 million), though not collectively. Collectively you have to give the body count title to the atheists.
However, going forward, as Islam gets more nuclear weapons, they could easily surpass all that’s gone before.
Yes. Eugenics makes perfect sense if there is no God. It is not a coincidence that it became popular right after Nietzsche.
YES being an atheist interferes with being moral, for to him there are NO consequences for immorality! And without the ABSOLUTE goodness of God as a reference point, there is no way to judge good from evil, any more than one can say that red is a “better” or more “moral” color than blue.
I don’t agree with you. We are not inherently good because we have committed the original sin. That’s why many kids are absolutely evil until they learn differently from their parents. This is actually the belief of liberals. That’s why their crime fighting techniques always end in horrific failure.
Also, how do you explain evil such as ISIS? They actually believe that the atrocities they are perpetrating are approved by Allah. Suicide bombing is good. Beating up your wife is good. If everybody innately knows right from wrong, this wouldn’t happen.
And that’s why when God is kicked out of schools and the ten commandments are taken out of the public square, we find more school shootings, more disrespect, more acceptance of lying as normal, etc.
The athiest believes what (s)he says is right or wrong, not anyone else’s standard. The Christian believes that God determines moral values and reads the Bible to find them. The muslim believes Allah determines appropriate actions in life and therefore kills everyone who disagrees with him or her.
The ground of Christian and Jewish morality is found in the 10 Commandments, which describe what it is to love God and love your fellow man. Athiests skip the first half of the commandments—then they tend to follow (more or less) the 2nd half of the commandments. In denying the ground of love of man, which is love of God, it is no wonder that they erode even love of man....justifying murder (in abortion, euthanasia, & etc.) sexual immorality, theft (see Wallstreet), lying, coveteousness, etc.
Without love of God, you cannot have a solid, lasting love for your fellow humans.
“Religion is the opium of the people” — turning this quote around, most of us would say that Communism was the opium of the people. It pacified and subjugated millions of people even to their own deaths as they were being marched off to the re-education caps or being starved to death under Mao.
The seeming dilemma of “inherrently good” can be solved by a correct definition of evil, which is perverted-good.
When something, or someone, is not as good as they could be, that, in itself, is evil, no matter how relatively good compared to others they are.
Evil is always twisted or perverted good.
People are born evil, selfish beings....not guilty of any crimes yet, just with a sin-nature. Through a disciplined, moral childhood, many bad habits can be ironed out of someone, but our fundamental nature is still flawed—and any flaws, are sin.
Only Jesus Christ, the God-Man, was born without sin—and maintained a sinless life all along.
Probably, because there’s no outside check on your behavior and you can invent your own ‘moral code’.
By their own logic, every atheist is directly responsible for every Christ hating chainsaw wielding maniac who ever killed a bunch of people and sliced them into little pieces.
Which actually happens, the trials and convictions are in the newspapers and everything, but the atheists like to pretend that it’s just a fairy tale because they don’t believe in fairy tales and besides it makes them look stupid.
It appears to me that, to the extent atheists follow Judeo-Christian morality, they are being moral parasites. Atheism taken to its natural conclusion will result in sociopaths. Because, for any altruistic action on their part, one must ask “why?” Altruism on their part ultimately is in spite of their worldview, not because of it.
While indeed morality is a religious idea, it can be subdivided into the western morality of Christendom, and the eastern morality of Asian faiths.
Paramount in Christendom is the idea of the individual, and the morality of the individual, based in unchanging principals in scripture. What was moral in Biblical times is more or less moral today, for people as a whole. But individuals can choose to be more or less moral compared to these ideals. Essentially to this is the idea of forgiveness for immorality, accompanied by the offer to at least try to be more moral.
In the Asian faiths, the individual is far less important, and they are thought of in respect to their family, their village, their cast and class. So in past, for example, if an individual offends the emperor, his entire village might be put to the sword. So for them, morality is thought of as a collective thing.
The outgrowth of this eastern morality is difficult for westerners to grasp, but here is a modern example of it.
When Russia was in Afghanistan, it realized that families of the fighters were supporting them. So the Russians decided to put them in internment camps, behind fences, and with armed guards. But the Afghan women and children were still problematic, and took more guards than the Russians wanted to use, so they had an idea.
Dig shallow slit trenches, line them with plastic, and pour in water with weakened blister chemical agent. Then make the women and children walk the length of the trench. It would blister their feet, which would incapacitate them until their skin healed.
Of course, most of the rest of the world was horrified with this idea. But the Russian response was that it was the “humanitarian” thing to do, otherwise “we would have no other choice” but to kill them. A lesson in Russian “humanitarianism”.
Now this is a start point for the huge variation in *religious* based morality. At least in either case, there is at least *consideration* of morality. But what compels any consideration on the part of atheists?
Nothing at all. Like westerners, theirs are lives based in respect for the individual. But they respect no common morality, so their morality is relativistic and whimsical. It is based in their self importance and self pity, both of which can be bottomless pits.
This means that by default, atheists have the morality of “the beasts of the field”. As such they can no more be trusted than can a dachshund be trusted to guard a doughnut on the floor.
Define ‘moral’ BigCinBigD. What is it? Where does it come from? WHO gets to define it? Is it an absolute?
At the end of the day, you can never be sure a random atheist won’t take out a meat clever and chop your head off to steal your bank account. Same for a Muslim.
A Christian or Jew who did that would be considered either insane or evil. An atheist or Muslim would have some excuse.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.