|
|
|
On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
 Posted - 09/02/2012 : 20:30:02 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by AyameTan
Ever heard of social contracts and game theory? What goes around comes around. Treating people with compassion and kindness makes it more likely that you will be treated in kind.
Run around exploiting everyone and you'll find yourself ostracised and without avenues of aid in short order.
|
Sounds an awful lot like Karma. And kind of oversimplifying things. Giving a donation to a charity that works in Africa doesn't sound an awful lot like it's going to benefit you in the long run, but people still do it. An anonymous act of kindness such as this is only beneficial to you if you believe everything you do/say/think is being logged by some kind of supernatural entity.
Also by this logic you only do something altruistic because it will benefit you eventually. Therefore it's long-term selfishness. Exploiting someone if you know there can be no repercussions is conducive to this. Whereas exploiting someone if you know only God is watching is still bad. |
 |
| Edited by - On fire for Christ on 09/02/2012 20:37:44 |
 |
|
|
On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2012 : 20:45:32 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by the_ignored
[quote]
I did. I pointed out that you religionists don't have any right to the claim of objective morality. We have to work out our own standards based on the welfare of the people in society in general.
Now, your turn.
|
That's be swell if all atheists were concerned about was the welfare of their fellow man. But that is demonstrably false. There is no consensus on good or bad or if those concepts even exist. What if I said that an atheist moral code is utterly subjective therefore meaningless?
As for patriarchy, I think there was a time when it worked but now it's a relic. |
|
|
|
|
Hawks
SFN Regular
Canada
1383 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2012 : 20:51:58 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Hawks
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Atheists claim that they do not need to be religious to be moral, but if you have no absolute morality or doctrine then to whose standards of morality are you conforming to and how is it better or worse than any other? |
One can have absolute morality without religion, so your question needs to be reworded.
|
For example, I could say that genocide is always wrong. Someone who uses the bible as their moral guide could not. |
METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden! |
|
|
|
On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2012 : 22:12:21 [Permalink]
|
| I find it interesting that people are so defensive. Suppose a Christian friend of yours was interested in your system of ethics as an atheist. Would you try to promote your world view by constantly referencing biblical events that in today's world seem cruel and violent? I think you guys would grow your movement more if you made your strategy a little more proactive rather than reactive. |
|
| Edited by - On fire for Christ on 09/02/2012 22:13:29 |
|
|
|
AyameTan
New Member
Japan
36 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2012 : 22:45:45 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Sounds an awful lot like Karma. And kind of oversimplifying things. Giving a donation to a charity that works in Africa doesn't sound an awful lot like it's going to benefit you in the long run, but people still do it. An anonymous act of kindness such as this is only beneficial to you if you believe everything you do/say/think is being logged by some kind of supernatural entity. |
Nonsense. At the very least, it would assuage our guilt at being blessed with so much while billions struggle to collect enough drinking water daily.
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Also by this logic you only do something altruistic because it will benefit you eventually. Therefore it's long-term selfishness. Exploiting someone if you know there can be no repercussions is conducive to this. Whereas exploiting someone if you know only God is watching is still bad.
|
If that's true, then atheists would burn their money before death to avoid others from benefiting.
Christians don't have any reason to be good, especially since they can murder, rape, steal, be forgiven before the cops put them down, and go on to enjoy eternal bliss. |
"Tatti hitori no inochi wo sukuu mono wa zensekai wo sukuu." |
|
|
|
On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2012 : 23:11:16 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by AyameTan
Nonsense. At the very least, it would assuage our guilt at being blessed with so much while billions struggle to collect enough drinking water daily.
|
So you're saying that anonymous acts of kindness do not exist, and humans are selfish to the core. Interesting.
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Also by this logic you only do something altruistic because it will benefit you eventually. Therefore it's long-term selfishness. Exploiting someone if you know there can be no repercussions is conducive to this. Whereas exploiting someone if you know only God is watching is still bad.
|
If that's true, then atheists would burn their money before death to avoid others from benefiting.
|
That's an insane interpretation of what I said. Are you as lamb? Please try to understand simple sentences. I wont elaborate on what I originally said, I think you should make the effort to just re-read it.
Christians don't have any reason to be good, especially since they can murder, rape, steal, be forgiven before the cops put them down, and go on to enjoy eternal bliss.
|
Yes in the straw-man representation of Christianity all you need to do is say "sorry, I love Jesus" and all is forgiven. A child's argument. |
|
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2012 : 23:15:40 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Here's the part I'm having trouble with. For example, how can you have a moral opinion on whether someone on the other side of the world is permitted to have an abortion or not? What personal or social goal drives that, and why is your opinion more correct than the people who are against it. |
See? That's what I'm talking about with the "unthinking" part. We have actual data that shows that access to abortion-on-demand is correlated with more stable, happier societies. Whether that correlation is due to causation is unknown at the moment, but there's good reason to think that the ability for women to control their reproductive status leads to a feeling of greater control in their lives overall, which in turn leads to the happiness and stability, which implies less suffering. So if one of my goals is to decrease human suffering (worldwide), one of my rules will be to oppose the opposition of abortion-on-demand.| Well this is my point, Theists have a certainty that atheists cannot have. Right or wrong, religion is the source of their/our morality. |
Yes, certainty doesn't imply correctness. Recently, my kid had a friend over to visit, and afterwards my kid couldn't find one of his DS games. He was certain that his friend stole it. He later found it under some of his other things, so despite his certainty, he was dead wrong.| I'm trying to uncover the source of yours, and how you can have any degree of certainty that it is correct to practice for yourself and proselytize to others. |
You're confusing the rules for the goals. I cannot possibly have any certainty that "decreasing suffering in the world" is the right goal to have, since the possibility exists that there is a god and he's a complete asshole who punishes those who are nice to each other. But since I think that possibility is of extremely low probability (along with all other sorts of gods), I conclude that this world is all we've got, and my empathy tells me that happy people are happier than sad people (duh). What more motivation do you think I might need to proselytize this view to others?| I think anyone who committed a crime like that would easily argue that they protect innocent life and punish murderers... |
Except that "the sanctity of all life" necessarily includes the lives of those who murder. I was making the example an extreme for a simplicity, but you chose to parenthetically defend the less-extreme murderous nutjobs. Good job.| ...but it's a sidetrack to what I'm trying to learn about. |
Indeed.| So why choose the reduction of human suffering over other goals? |
Why choose to think that purple is your favorite color?| What is the basis of this goal? |
Personal preference, just like yours.| And if goals are simply chosen by human beings, how can you be outraged that other people's goals conflict with your own. |
Indeed, it is my personal preference to keep my belongings in my home, so how could I possibly be outraged that somebody broke in and stole them?! Do you not understand that frustration, anger and outrage always stem from goals being blocked by either random circumstance or the actions of others?| They are simply humans following the path their mammalian brains have wandered down. |
So is my outrage. Why dismiss one and defend the other?| Also to be logically consistent with this you would petition all money going into the NASA budget instead be diverted to foreign aid. As far as I know examining rocks on Mars has done little or nothing to relieve human suffering. |
As far as you know. Again: you fail to think things through. Science, even "pure" science, has the capability to add to our knowledge about how the universe works, and that knowledge can be applied (technology) in sometimes surprising ways to alleviate suffering in real life. These applications of knowledge cannot be predicted beforehand, but if we don't gain the knowledge it certainly cannot be applied, so casting a wide scientific net will be good for us all in the long run.
More importantly, though, morality is a "both/and" situation, not an "either/or" like you present it, above. We all have goalS that we wish to reach, and having a laser-like focus on one to the exclusion of others is generally a bad idea. So I don't need to make a choice of either NASA budget or foreign aid, but instead need to decide what percentage of my tax dollars should be applied to both of them (along with welfare, education, housing, etc). We all prioritize our goals, and sometimes have crises of indecision when the priorities we choose set two or more of our goals in conflict.| How is this any different to someone who believes life to be sacred shooting a Doctor at an abortion clinic? |
Someone who prioritizes life (the sacredness of all life) shouldn't kill anyone, no matter how many other lives it might save. But someone who prioritizes the sanctity of the most lives (or "innocent" lives) could kill a mass murderer without moral qualms.| I don't see how selfishness is a requirement of Christianity. |
The goal of Christianity is Heaven. There are no rewards for helping others get there, it's an entirely personal and thus selfish endeavor. Buddhists, on the other hand, revere bodhisatvas, who are people who forgo entering Nirvana in order to help others attain it.| See the story of the good Samaritan for example. |
Can good works get one closer to salvation? Protestant Christians say "never," and so that parable should have no bearing on how they act.| Other monotheistic religions also have built-in altruism, such as the Zakat in Islam. |
I specifically mentioned Christianity, didn't I?| Atheists often say that it takes religion to make bad people do good things. |
No, that's completely backwards. The oft-repeated quote from Steven Weinberg is as follows:Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion. It's the bolded part that is most quoted, and that you are misremembering.| But conversely, without religion, there's nothing to motivate bad people to do good things. |
So you seriously think that because I am not religious, I shouldn't feel any motivation to raise my child to be a gentleman and a scholar, and should instead leave him to do whatever the hell his animal passions dictate? That one sentence of yours tells me that you only have whatever empathy and compassion that the Bible instructs you to have, and none of your own. Did you perhaps find Jesus after seeking therapy for sociopathic tendencies?
You also said:| What if I said that an atheist moral code is utterly subjective therefore meaningless? |
I'd say that that would mean that it's obvious that your definition of "meaningful" requires some external agent to provide that meaning for you, and that you aren't imaginative or empathic enough to come up with meaning for yourself. Bill scott has tried this gambit several times in these forums, and it pretty much comes off as saying that I can't (for example) place any importance on my kid getting an A on his report card unless that event has some divine or cosmological gravitas. It's ludicrous. These sorts of things have meaning to me even if that meaning will be lost in the noise of random and contingent events in 100 trillion years. "Subjective meaning" is not synonymous with "no meaning whatsoever." |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/02/2012 : 23:18:30 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Yes in the straw-man representation of Christianity all you need to do is say "sorry, I love Jesus" and all is forgiven. A child's argument. |
I'd like to hear the real thing, then. Because what you claim to be a straw-man appears to be what the Protestants actually say. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2012 : 00:02:44 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dave W.
See? That's what I'm talking about with the "unthinking" part. We have actual data that shows that access to abortion-on-demand is correlated with more stable, happier societies. Whether that correlation is due to causation is unknown at the moment, but there's good reason to think that the ability for women to control their reproductive status leads to a feeling of greater control in their lives overall, which in turn leads to the happiness and stability, which implies less suffering. So if one of my goals is to decrease human suffering (worldwide), one of my rules will be to oppose the opposition of abortion-on-demand.
|
No I didn't "see" anything until you actually gave a comprehensive explanation of what you were talking about rather than solitary glib sentences.
If that is your case for abortion then where do you draw the line? Is infanticide preferable to a slightly unhappier society? It has been practiced in many societies worldwide, usually due to lack of resources and the greater good. At what stage during pregnancy does it become morally unacceptable to abort?
Since you do not consider abortion to be immoral (maybe this is based on circumstance I don't know), do you consider it amoral? (I don't want to patronize but that means neither moral nor immoral, (patronize means to talk down to someone)). Are there more moral ways to control your birth cycle?
| Yes, certainty doesn't imply correctness. Recently, my kid had a friend over to visit, and afterwards my kid couldn't find one of his DS games. He was certain that his friend stole it. He later found it under some of his other things, so despite his certainty, he was dead wrong. |
Indeed, it was never the intention of this topic to assert that my morality is true. Merely that I am certain of it.
You're confusing the rules for the goals. I cannot possibly have any certainty that "decreasing suffering in the world" is the right goal to have, since the possibility exists that there is a god and he's a complete asshole who punishes those who are nice to each other. But since I think that possibility is of extremely low probability (along with all other sorts of gods), I conclude that this world is all we've got, and my empathy tells me that happy people are happier than sad people (duh). What more motivation do you think I might need to proselytize this view to others?
| Except that "the sanctity of all life" necessarily includes the lives of those who murder. I was making the example an extreme for a simplicity, but you chose to parenthetically defend the less-extreme murderous nutjobs. Good job. |
|
thanks.
| So is my outrage. Why dismiss one and defend the other? |
Wouldn't it be morally superior to say "forgive them, they know not what they do" and seek to change them, rather than just call them bad people and indulge in rabble raising?
| As far as you know. Again: you fail to think things through. Science, even "pure" science, has the capability to add to our knowledge about how the universe works, and that knowledge can be applied (technology) in sometimes surprising ways to alleviate suffering in real life. These applications of knowledge cannot be predicted beforehand, but if we don't gain the knowledge it certainly cannot be applied, so casting a wide scientific net will be good for us all in the long run. |
I disagree I think you are not thinking things through. You are gambling on people's lives with pipedreams. Put money into clean energy, GM crops virology. Examining rocks on mars is like blowing your children's college fund on lottery tickets. Pretty inexcusable by the reasons given in your own justification. It's like a gamble where you don't even know what the pot is. If your goal is to alleviate human suffering, it's, quite frankly, idiotic.
| More importantly, though, morality is a "both/and" situation, not an "either/or" like you present it, above. We all have goalS that we wish to reach, and having a laser-like focus on one to the exclusion of others is generally a bad idea. So I don't need to make a choice of either NASA budget or foreign aid, but instead need to decide what percentage of my tax dollars should be applied to both of them (along with welfare, education, housing, etc). We all prioritize our goals, and sometimes have crises of indecision when the priorities we choose set two or more of our goals in conflict. |
Well it's convenient that you can so easily rationalize your indulgences.
The goal of Christianity is Heaven. There are no rewards for helping others get there, it's an entirely personal and thus selfish endeavor. Buddhists, on the other hand, revere bodhisatvas, who are people who forgo entering Nirvana in order to help others attain it.
|
But selfless acts help you get into heaven. Also if you want to go that way, Muslims count conversion as a kind of trump card. If they convert someone it's a free pass to heaven. I hear they have rivers made out of milk in Muslim heaven.
Atheists often say that it takes religion to make bad people do good things.
| No, that's completely backwards. |
|
Yes I mistyped it. the same sentence with the actual quote was what I meant to say, it makes more sense that way.
| But conversely, without religion, there's nothing to motivate bad people to do good things. |
So you seriously think that because I am not religious, I shouldn't feel any motivation to raise my child to be a gentleman and a scholar, and should instead leave him to do whatever the hell his animal passions dictate? That one sentence of yours tells me that you only have whatever empathy and compassion that the Bible instructs you to have, and none of your own. Did you perhaps find Jesus after seeking therapy for sociopathic tendencies?
|
Did you wilfully ignore the part where I said "Bad people" or do you just have a blind spot. Of course I don't expect all atheists to act that way.
You also said:
What if I said that an atheist moral code is utterly subjective therefore meaningless?
I'd say that that would mean that it's obvious that your definition of "meaningful" requires some external agent to provide that meaning for you, and that you aren't imaginative or empathic enough to come up with meaning for yourself. Bill scott has tried this gambit several times in these forums, and it pretty much comes off as saying that I can't (for example) place any importance on my kid getting an A on his report card unless that event has some divine or cosmological gravitas. It's ludicrous. These sorts of things have meaning to me even if that meaning will be lost in the noise of random and contingent events in 100 trillion years. "Subjective meaning" is not synonymous with "no meaning whatsoever." |
Ok I accept that answer. Usually if I ask a question in that fashion it's because it's not what I actually think. I just want to know your answer. |
|
| Edited by - On fire for Christ on 09/03/2012 00:19:08 |
|
|
|
On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2012 : 00:04:15 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by Dave W.
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Yes in the straw-man representation of Christianity all you need to do is say "sorry, I love Jesus" and all is forgiven. A child's argument. |
I'd like to hear the real thing, then. Because what you claim to be a straw-man appears to be what the Protestants actually say.
|
Well the trick is you have to really mean it. How many people can do a complete 180 in that kind of time frame without some kind of pre-existing personality disorder in which case they were sick to begin with and not necessarily evil? |
|
|
|
|
AyameTan
New Member
Japan
36 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2012 : 01:10:41 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
So you're saying that anonymous acts of kindness do not exist, and humans are selfish to the core. Interesting. |
Not all humans are selfish, but if selfishness leads to the greater good for the majority of society, then it's worth it.
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
That's an insane interpretation of what I said. Are you as lamb? Please try to understand simple sentences. I wont elaborate on what I originally said, I think you should make the effort to just re-read it. |
No, it's a perfectly reasonable reducto ad absurdum application to your claim that all acts done by atheists are done for selfish motives.
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Yes in the straw-man representation of Christianity all you need to do is say "sorry, I love Jesus" and all is forgiven. A child's argument.
|
It's right there in your bible. If you're going to rewrite the whole thing to make yourself look good and demonise your opposition, then you have abdicated all moral goodness and standing. You have no grounds for criticising atheists. |
"Tatti hitori no inochi wo sukuu mono wa zensekai wo sukuu." |
|
|
|
On fire for Christ
SFN Regular
Norway
1273 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2012 : 01:16:47 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by AyameTan
No, it's a perfectly reasonable reducto ad absurdum application to your claim that all acts done by atheists are done for selfish motives.
|
Burning your money before dying is not selfish as it does not serve yourself in any way. It's simply vindictive. There, I wasted my time after all with your absurd statement. Hope you're happy. |
|
|
|
|
AyameTan
New Member
Japan
36 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2012 : 01:36:08 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
Originally posted by AyameTan
No, it's a perfectly reasonable reducto ad absurdum application to your claim that all acts done by atheists are done for selfish motives.
|
Burning your money before dying is not selfish as it does not serve yourself in any way. It's simply vindictive. There, I wasted my time after all with your absurd statement. Hope you're happy.
|
You don't seem to grasp the meaning of the term "selfishness". Vindictiveness and selfishness are not mutually exclusive. Burning one's cash would be selfish because it denies anyone else the ability to benefit from it. |
"Tatti hitori no inochi wo sukuu mono wa zensekai wo sukuu." |
|
|
|
Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2012 : 06:39:34 [Permalink]
|
Originally posted by On fire for Christ
No I didn't "see" anything until you actually gave a comprehensive explanation of what you were talking about rather than solitary glib sentences. |
I meant that you are capable of coming up with the same arguments. I didn't know you'd need everything spelled out for you.| If that is your case for abortion then where do you draw the line? Is infanticide preferable to a slightly unhappier society? It has been practiced in many societies worldwide, usually due to lack of resources and the greater good. At what stage during pregnancy does it become morally unacceptable to abort? |
This discussion was actually just recently going on in the Rebecca Watson thread.| Since you do not consider abortion to be immoral (maybe this is based on circumstance I don't know), do you consider it amoral? (I don't want to patronize but that means neither moral nor immoral, (patronize means to talk down to someone)). |
Depends on the circumstances. That's also another reason to accept that morality is all about goals and contingencies: the ability to adapt and avoid drawing hard lines like "absolute" morality does.| Are there more moral ways to control your birth cycle? |
If I say that denying abortion-on-demand is immoral, it does not imply that I think abortions are the best way to control reproduction. Denying people access to comprehensive sex-ed is also immoral, as is denying people access to prophylactics and other methods of conception/implantation control. (Anti-abortion advocates who also seek to prevent these other options are actually guaranteeing that more abortions will occur, and thus are objectively acting immorally - contrary to their own goals.)| Indeed, it was never the intention of this topic to assert that my morality is true. Merely that I am certain of it. |
But why be certain of it? It's based on nothing more than your personal preference to worship a particular deity (among thousands) in a particular way (among thousands).| Wouldn't it be morally superior to say "forgive them, they know not what they do" and seek to change them, rather than just call them bad people and indulge in rabble raising? |
I tend to reserve outrage for people who should know better. I just get frustrated with people who are probably ignorant of the consequences of their actions, and even pity them if they're shooting themselves in the foot morally.| I disagree I think you are not thinking things through. You are gambling on people's lives with pipedreams. Put money into clean energy, GM crops virology. Examining rocks on mars is like blowing your children's college fund on lottery tickets. |
There's nothing guaranteed about future advances in clean energy or GM crops, especially not when faced with the whims of governments regarding implementation of the technologies.| Pretty inexcusable by the reasons given in your own justification. It's like a gamble where you don't even know what the pot is. If your goal is to alleviate human suffering, it's, quite frankly, idiotic. |
NASA's Moon program gave us things like CAT scanners and freeze-dried food.| Well it's convenient that you can so easily rationalize your indulgences. |
Since there are no guarantees, anything I might choose to invest in becomes an indulgence. According to you, I can't do good unless I pick something that isn't a crap-shoot. I suppose that leaves just personally feeding hungry people.| But selfless acts help you get into heaven. |
Actually, Jesus taught that the only way to get into Heaven was to give away all of your money and possessions, so unless you, OFfC, are using a free public computer to access SFN, you're acting against your own certain morality.| Also if you want to go that way, Muslims count conversion as a kind of trump card. If they convert someone it's a free pass to heaven. I hear they have rivers made out of milk in Muslim heaven. |
Goody for them. Note that they aren't Christians.| Did you wilfully ignore the part where I said "Bad people" or do you just have a blind spot. |
Given that you think I'm acting immorally by agreeing to finance basic science, I must be a bad person. Or how about because I've committed the one unforgivable sin?| Of course I don't expect all atheists to act that way. |
How magnanimous. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
|
|
|
Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 09/03/2012 : 12:01:26 [Permalink]
|
OFFC:
Well this is my point, Theists have a certainty that atheists cannot have. Right or wrong, religion is the source of their/our morality. I'm trying to uncover the source of yours, and how you can have any degree of certainty that it is correct to practice for yourself and proselytize to others. |
I can't speak for all atheists. And I have seen atheists who are certain that their conclusion is the only correct one, but they tend to be faith based, just like religious people. Certainty is a stumbling block to learning because once you are certain, that's that. No room for new knowledge to seep in. What most of us have is some degree of confidence, including people who put their faith in the bible. Most of our morality is based on degrees of confidence, and several things are factored in. There is no place for certainty, nor should there be. I see religious leaders arguing among themselves and I conclude that even they get the weakness of certainty as a guiding principal. Mortality based on certainty is foolish.
What I'm saying OFFC is that some atheists as well as people of faith do base their morality on certainty. The statement that atheists can't have the same certainty that people of faith have is not correct.
That means that unless you are not basing your morality (good or bad) on a certainty, than you are basing your morality on the same things most atheists are. The only difference is that you are checking with your book (open to interpretation among your own) to see if it flys, and we are checking with the culture we live in and cultures past to see if it flys. It's my guess that like us, you are also using studies and direct observation, same as we are. So just ask yourself how you came to a moral decision and you will understand how we came to ours. We may be using different sources, but the process is the same. (That doesn't mean the conclusions are equally reasonable, but that's another discussion.) |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
What would you say to this argument about atheists
