Atheism, a dangerous idea?

Humans evolved as a social species and to be able to cooperate and thrive there must be some sort of "rules of engagement" that are understood. Call it the golden rule or whatever, atheists and theists both share the same genes.Just for the record have you ever observed other animals interactions and social structures? Canines have a "top dog" and underlings of various rank, some birds (turkey buzzards here in FLA) have a very complex "pecking order". Where do their morals/rules come from. What about chimpanzees, where did they get their morals? And if your god didn't set them down in the good book for them, why would he have to do it for us?Edited by kjsimons, : spelling

The fact is that by definition, a Christian has a moral foundation, hypothetically and officially. So a bad example of a Christian only shows a failure in the specific individual, NOT in the morals of the Christian moral foundations, formally.X's have a moral foundation in the scriptures(Y)
B claims to be an X, but was a murdering, racist witch burner, therefore X's have worse morals.That's fallacious because nothing can be concluded about the major term, unless all adherents of the term are guilty. (X)/Google "illicit process of the major term".So giving bad examples of christians in this thread, won't undermine/affect RiverRat's actual claim.From what I've read, he has only claimed that atheists don't have an objective moral foundation, generally speaking. Isn't that a mere fact, without assuming he's an evil freak fundy of some sort? Afterall, the claim won't affect the benevolence of a specific atheist/s individuals.Shraff for example, saying RR is offensive, generally, or some such words to that effect. I saw no reason for that conclusion from his posts generally. Shraff also said she was "shocked and saddened" by mike the wiz's beliefs in another topic and that mike the wiz sees himself and humanity as "wretched". Is Shraff trying to cull her good posts in favour of Audiatur et altera pars, pertaining to peoples' characters? Edited by mike the wiz, : A mistakeEdited by mike the wiz, : I NEED perfect posts!

Mikey says: and then: Note the switch Mikey. In one you mention a moral foundation and in the other you make it objective moral foundation.So far no one has been able to show the Objective Moral Foundation of Christianity, so why should that be a requirement of atheists? If Christians can claim that they have some code laid out in the Bible or in Scripture why cannot an atheist simply point to the vast body of literature as their foundation?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

The answer is actually in this question. "Christians", "atheist". The answer is in the plural.One atheist could point to literature. That's totally fine. But there is another atheist who doesn't read from the vast body of literature. So what does every unit of the set "atheist" share?The definitions make it clear. That the criterion for "atheist" is only, disbelief in God/s in every individual unit in the set "atheists". (elemental)For Christians, there are obvious implications regarding the teachings of Jesus Christ. Each unit of the set follows the Christ and what he was about. Otherwise the set "Christian" could refer to "pink unicorn believers", because the P.U would be the equivalent meaningless term.I doubt very much that the Christ-morals RR is talking about would be adequately represented in the failure of adhering to them, in claimant Christians.(absurd)

Do you know how often when I talk to Christians I find they have not even read the western Bible, much less scripture.Every unit of "atheist" shares the same set of social mores as a coexistent Christian.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I don't think we are in grave danger, because we are educated enough to know the difference now. But maybe not all people are?Also we just don't know for sure if God will do something to us if we aren't following His ways, and not believing in Him, even though we all have the capacity too. I think that is what fundementalists are afraid of.But I agree with you, I think they should be more fearful of their own actions, and fake faiths.

I honestly don't know what to believe at this point in life. The quotes you provided are from the OT, something that which is not completely useful as a moral guide since Jesus came, and fulfilled the law.Jesus says, turn the other cheek, and love your enemy. So it puzzles me how someone like Bush can instigate so much war. Maybe if we started acting like the Christians we claimed to be, then more people in this world would see the light, and there would be more peace.But then again if Bush did that, he would be blurring the lines of church and state I guess.In my own personal life, I made a vow to forgive everyone who I thought was my enemy (a very small amount of people) and now they are my friends. I forgive people as they do stuff to me, and allow God to handle it for me, and it is one of the miracles of faith that I can see work everyday in my life, that confirms God lives up to His promises.

That is what separates us from the animals. We are but one species with many different pecking orders. It would seem that God wants us to resist this natural (possibly sinful) pecking order, when he says love your enemy, and love others.

You've totally missed the point. The point being if other animals have devised/evolved moral codes/rules of engagement, why can't man have received his the same way? Why would we have to have some god(s) hand us down a bunch of rules and threatening us to get us to behave? The answer is we don't!

I got one of those behind the scenes e mails also.I just told him to start a new thread.I was spared the preaching though.

wizyllogism:-- Christians and atheists know right and wrong.
-- The Christian ideology disallows wrong.
-- The atheist ideology does not disallow wrong

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Conclusion: Hypothetically, officially valid Christians have more of an impetus to not do wrong.To expound on that conclusion, if an atheist can escape an earthly law then he can potentially do wrong, but a Christian cannot potentially do this if he believes in a just Christ, which by definition, he does, because even if he escapes earthly law he knows he can't escape God.There are only two possibilities left, as far as I can tell, for the Christian evil-doer;1. The Christian engages in severe cognitive dissonance in order to do wrong acts or is mentally ill.
2. He is not what he says he is.I suspect number 2 is very common, in reality, because the scriptures are clear about what qualifies a sheep. You yourself mention the two most important commandments ad nauseum .So what does my argument say? Nothing more than the conclusion. Does it say that NWR can't be a moral and goodly person? Why ofcourse not. Infact my argument doesn't even address atheists. Does it appeal to consequences by saying "therefore we should not be atheist because x Y and B are bad consequences." No, I'm afraid it doesn't do that.And to state, "therefore atheists are wrong doers" would be a non-sequitur.It's very likely that millions of Christians have had an impetus to do good actions because of a genuine hinderance in their own conscience. And ofcourse these acts don't make the news. Why would they?Slothful induction and the consequences:There are 10 atheists. 5 of them are wrong doers.
There are 1000 Christians. 300 of them are wrong doers.So if these figures represent the dark ages, you'll have way way more Christian wrong doers won't you, and thus atheists argue this, because they mention witch burners and evil Christians of that era.But, what about the percentages? According to my statistic, 50% of atheists would be wrong-doers but only 30% of Christians. This is another reason why this type of argumentation is fallacious, because for all you know, many atheists went under the name tag of Christian and/or were so few in number that no record of their deeds was recorded. For all you know it might have been 50%. Now what about peaceful Christians? What kind of record would there be of peaceful Christians/atheists? I don't know about you, but I think it's far more likely that evil acts will make the headline news, rather than Joe the Christian helping his neighbour out with a spare bag of sugar.Christians are only demeaned in "name" Jar. You can only say Christians are the worst kind of people by saying they are Christians no matter what they do. That's not a valid argument. It's different to what the strawman fallacy disallows. There's a difference in the specifics.I'm not getting into the NTSF. So here's what I said long ago;The law of non-contradiction applies here; (forgive the length of this post. I wanted my position fully understood.)Edited by mike the wiz, : No reason given.

And your support for this is?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Yes, but Christians DO use the bible to back racism. They also use it to back opposition against abortion and stem cell research, to fight teaching evolution and preventing vaccination against cervical cancer etc.On the other hand Christians use the bible to fight racism, to support pro-choice, to support stem cell research, to teach science, and to argue for medical breakthroughs.So it seems, by you own admission that we should be scared of Christians since we cannot now what moral standards they follow.The point is, that I am sure that you believe that the moral lessons you learn from the bible are absolutely true, and they set a standard for all Christians, indeed for all of mankind, but the Christian living down the street thinks the same but disagrees with you on many points.For those of us who do not believe that there are any absolute moral standards (and this is not all atheists, nor only atheists who hold this position), there is no difference between atheists morality as a group and theists, or indeed Christians as a group. We ALL differ from each other on minor an major points with regards to moral questions, and we all share many more moral standards./SorenEdited by kongstad, : Bad splleing

quote:

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IT's amazing how you both mis-interpret what I say, then gang up on me.
Way to go.

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Rat, look.You write in simple declarative sentences that leave little room for interpretation.Over and over again you have claimed that you are being misunderstood and misinterpreted, but I find it difficult to believe that all of us could have such incredibly poor reading comprehension.I think you are quite clear, actually, but when we kick the crap out of your arguments, you just whine that you have been misunderstood while not bothering to explain yourself more effectively so that we do understand.I think you are using the "I've been misunderstood" thing as a ruse to not have to address our rebuttals, since you have been known to be as slippery as a greased weasle under a sprinkler.

I agree a good case can be made for the idea that religion as a means of social control and cohesion, reducing inter-group aggression ans promoting altruism. Adopting such behaviours may have been the trigger which allowed early modern humans to move from hunter-gathering to larger, more organised groups and enabled agriculture and even civilisation to develop.