Ah, the sweet, refreshing smell of Atheism in the morning

[Imran Siddiqui]

Jesus's twelve disciples were all likely 17-18 year olds, meaning they probably didn't have wives and children at that time.

[giblets]

Jesus must have had a thing for younger men.

[kentonio]

This thread had followed the standard pattern:

Atheist: Now we see the proof, people are waking up to the fact that they are being irrational/misled/etc. The reason why so many people believe is not because they find it rational, but because they are just going along/don't think/etc. Why is anyone religious? Why are Christians religious? There is no rational reason to be so.

Christian: One of the main reasons I am a Christian is because of the transforming power of Christ, because He has changed my life and many other people's lives.

Atheist: Well, obviously that can't be the reason to be a Christian because look at these terrible people who are Christian, who did terrible things and led people to horror.

Christian: Well, really they didn't follow Christ, if you looked at what Christ said. They were just Christians because everyone was a Christian/because it gave them power over others/etc.

Atheist: No! They are the epitome of being Christian. They definitely understood what Christ wanted as well as anyone possibly can, they definitely weren't going along/not thinking/etc.

JM

Can you actually bother reading the thread before you make generalizations about it please. Although lightblue was the first to mention atrocities, he did so with regards to atrocities by atheist regimes. It was the Elok who played the atrocity card on the opposing team.

Also don't you find it just a teeny bit pathetic to play the 'Oh they weren't a real christians!' get out of jail free card whenever anyone points at the two millenia of deaths caused by Abrahamic religions?

[onodera]

I still do not understand what self-improvement, involvement in the community and a moral code have to do with religion. You can have all of these without supernatural belief. You say that it lends them credence, but what lends credence to it? You either end up with "turtles all the way down", or you try to justify it because it leads to those good things, which is basically circular reasoning that says nothing about the truth of this belief.
If someone started a Flying Spaghetti Monster religion that promoted altruism, community-building, hard work and well-rounded self-improvement, would you immediately believe in Him?

[kentonio]

And that's where we disagree.

Absolutely, I find the idea of someone sacrificing their entire life to others without enjoying any of the joys of the world to be a complete waste, and something that religion is squarely responsible for. Robbing people of happiness with a fake promise of later reward.

Then you don't believe that morals are, in fact, genuine, objective/universal, and utterly imperative.

You can believe something is objective and imperative without the need for the fluffy universal bit.

This is what I was talking about: for the sincere Christian, the good life is a resounding call to self-emptying love, to radical transformation of the self. I kind of suck at it, but this, for me, is a true moral imperative. Take God/the supernatural out of the equation and you wind up with a set of, in essence, suggestions--justified by things like genetic propagation. And if society hasn't adequately incentivized a certain behavior, you really have no reason to play along with it that I can see.

We impose threats such as imprisonment to dissuade people from harming others in society. One of my big dislikes of religion is that it enables oppression. It falsely comforts people with the thought that the evil will receive their punishment in the afterlife and that if a person suffers in their life under an oppressive system, that they will get happiness afterwards. If we cut away that deception then perhaps we can start doing more to deal with opression in THIS life and we'd end up with a lot more people living happy lives.

My point was not that religious people are all good and the irreligious all bad. I was merely countering his claim that being irreligious makes you a kinder, more empathetic person who can see other human beings as equals.

As you correctly pointed out earlier, people are people regardless of their religion or not religious views. Some are great, some are *******s and the vast majority lie somewhere in between.

[lightblue]

The scientific method and logic tells me nothing about the existence of God, what about you?

My point exactly. I guess I am an empiricist; if there is no evidence on the one side and more evidence on the other i would lean towards the one that had the evidence rather than the one that disregards the evidence and assumes what I may have thought initially is correct even in view of opposing evidence. Using things such Occam's Razor points towards the simple explanation rather than the one where a superior being has blessed this particular, backward little speck of dust in the universe with beings created in his image.

I was raised in a religious household but once I approached things rationally the holes in the story become too great. I appreciate the contribution religions have made to human history and can see the need for an explanation for the fact that we exist. I can also appreciate that the idea that ones' life is inherently pointless (except maybe to give future generations with my genes a better chance of surviving) is a tough sell to the human psyche. I also appreciate the comfort and support religions give to people in difficult times, and can even understand that some people are religious for the feeling of belonging to a particular group.

That however doesn't make it any more realistic or likely to be true. As long as people accept that they find comfort etc. in something that is unlikely to be true I can rationalise someone belonging to a religion. Those people that believe that the Bible is 100% the true voice of God are deluded.

[lightblue]

Why do you think that truth does not require a leap of faith?

Truth is the true value of a variable, and we can approximate truth by carrying out well-designed experiments, or if this not possible, collating the evidence and drawing conclusions. As we cannot run a model where one universe has a superior being and one is formed through the laws of physics (to compare which one best fits our universe), I have to look at the existing evidence and conclude from there that there is no superior being.

[Elok]

It was the Elok who played the atrocity card on the opposing team.

"On the opposing team?" My point had nothing to do with atheism/Christianity "causing" evil, or what-have-you. I find such arguments moronic. I was trying to argue a broader point about the meaning of moral imperatives. Whether Leopold, Hitler, Urban II or Genghis Khan were atheists or religious is entirely beside the point.

[Elok]

I still do not understand what self-improvement, involvement in the community and a moral code have to do with religion. You can have all of these without supernatural belief.

Not with any kind of logical consistency, you can't. At least, not as an imperative. You can choose to be a good person, or a terrible one, and there's no clear naturalist reason to say which is "better" without begging the question--saying that you should be a good person because you should be a good person.

You say that it lends them credence, but what lends credence to it? You either end up with "turtles all the way down", or you try to justify it because it leads to those good things, which is basically circular reasoning that says nothing about the truth of this belief.
If someone started a Flying Spaghetti Monster religion that promoted altruism, community-building, hard work and well-rounded self-improvement, would you immediately believe in Him?

You have it backwards. I begin with the axiomatic belief that moral behavior is the correct behavior--to be accurate, I shouldn't say "moral behavior" which gives a limited and incorrect sense, but that's the closest I can get. Anyway, I see belief in some supernatural element as necessary to make truly moral behavior make sense. Orthodox Christianity, and its vision of humanity's purpose, is the most compelling explanation to me for a variety of reasons which I don't want to get into in detail. As for the FSM, the description you've offered sounds like a self-help book, so I don't see the attraction.

[giblets]

If you start with the axiom that moral behavior is correct, aren't you also begging the question?

[Elok]

Absolutely, I find the idea of someone sacrificing their entire life to others without enjoying any of the joys of the world to be a complete waste, and something that religion is squarely responsible for. Robbing people of happiness with a fake promise of later reward.

In Orthodoxy, at least, the reward isn't all later. As for "sacrificing your entire life," have you ever really tried it? Not that I agree with your description of it...

You can believe something is objective and imperative without the need for the fluffy universal bit.

I'm not sure what point you're making here. I edited out the word "objective" from my earlier post because it was the wrong word, honestly. I'm specifically looking for a subjective reason, i.e. one that works from my individual POV. But not just mine, everyone's--I used the word "universal" for that. Not objective, unbound from perspectives, but valid from all however billion separate deeply personal human perspectives there are on earth right now. Poor, rich, weak, strong, young, old, everyone.

We impose threats such as imprisonment to dissuade people from harming others in society. One of my big dislikes of religion is that it enables oppression. It falsely comforts people with the thought that the evil will receive their punishment in the afterlife and that if a person suffers in their life under an oppressive system, that they will get happiness afterwards. If we cut away that deception then perhaps we can start doing more to deal with opression in THIS life and we'd end up with a lot more people living happy lives.

This is also overly simplistic. There have been religious movements for oppressive regimes, and religious movements against them--and given that Gandhi, MLK, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Aung San Suu Kyii were/are all devoutly religious (albeit unconventionally so in Gandhi's case), I don't think you have a good case there. And you can't punish everybody. Even if you restrict "moral" to mean egregiously antisocial behavior like murder, rape and theft, a good number will get away with it in even the best society. More subtle things like everyday honesty and kindness can't be realistically incentivized. The point of being a truly moral person, from my POV, is to be the sort of person who acts morally without incentives. Which can only work if the apparent empirical world where we're all individuals pursuing separate goals is, to some extent, illusory. That is, there's ALWAYS an incentive, intrinsic to moral behavior and not dependent on circumstances.

As you correctly pointed out earlier, people are people regardless of their religion or not religious views. Some are great, some are *******s and the vast majority lie somewhere in between.

Yes, but this doesn't invalidate Christianity or any other religion, any more than diets are invalidated by fat people who cheat on them all the time and still expect them to work.

[Elok]

If you start with the axiom that moral behavior is correct, aren't you also begging the question?

No, because the argument in the end is that morality is correct because it invariably and necessarily benefits me personally. I adopt that argument because it's the only way to make my otherwise bizarre and silly moral compulsion make consistent sense.

[giblets]

No, because the argument in the end is that morality is correct because it invariably and necessarily benefits me personally. I adopt that argument because it's the only way to make my otherwise bizarre and silly moral compulsion make consistent sense.

Isn't that a rejection of the concept of altruism? It seems like you're basically saying "I won't act like a greedy sociopath because I'll be punished for it in the next life." That's not a particularly noble sentiment.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Isn't that a rejection of the concept of altruism? It seems like you're basically saying "I won't act like a greedy sociopath because I'll be punished for it in the next life." That's not a particularly noble sentiment.

But he never said anything about rewards in "the next life". Not all Christians are just pining for a future heaven life and making all their steps because they want to end up there (in fact, I'd say the majority of Christians aren't).

Doing something because we believe that is God's will doesn't mean we are just doing God's will to "get into heaven" (a lot of us don't even believe a seperate sphere of heaven is the end goal anyways), but because in doing the will of our Creator, in loving God and loving others, we fulfill our purpose and in doing so find true joy and freedom.

[rah]

I try to live a moral code because if enough people do the same, civilization is possible. I think that's incentive enough. Best for me, best for others. I don't need to add any imaginary additional purposes.