> Atheism.. = Denial of God, or Denial of Religion ???
I was intrigued to hear the answer from my atheist colleague to my argument that, without the morality imposed by God, anything could be justified as "moral", it being then a fluid concept. This is the essence of the leftists' "moral relativism", for those who doubt the logic. Also, does anyone doubt that Hitler's extermination of the Jews or Stalin's purges didn't follow the clear logic of their warped "morality"?
Anyhow, the atheist argued that one didn't need to believe in God to conclude that, for example, murder was "morally wrong."
"Why," I asked.
To make his long-winded answer short, he adopted the "greater good" argument, to the effect that "society's greater good" helped sculpt what would be considered moral. In this way, he justifies the value of abortion to himself, I note. I would also point out that I see these "greater good" arguments as some sort of emotional evolutionism argument.
Of course, his argument is tragically flawed. For example, what if a devastating disease was limited to one genetic subset of the population, but was mutating rapidly, and would likely be able to infect the general population in a matter of time. By his argument, the extermination of the currently infected population subset could be justified for the greater good of the society. Hitler's argument against the Jews was not too far from this point, in that case the disease was "being Jewish" and the mutation was "interbreeding with the so-called Aryans."
Where I was going with this response is that, in the absence of a faith in a transcendent God, the atheist is nonetheless forced to adopt a faith in some transcendent concept (like communism), or else he is forced to accept the law of the jungle as the ultimate morality.
Hey, I'd prefer an atheist like my carpool buddy to a militant Islamist who believes that his god would gladly have him exterminate the infidel. So I'm not partial to generic "deity-based religion" over generic "atheism". What I am partial to is the Judao-Christian God, before whom all men are equal, to whom all men are called to serve, and to whom all men will ultimately answer.
I would expect such a person as him/her to revert to Philosophy as an expedient alternative..
On the other hand, simple Denial of God would / could result in a belief in something like Buddhism..
That's because YOU are the infidel!
Picture yourself as a fellow Muslim and THEN re-think your position in this matter.