Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a declaration. Which apart from mentioning a supreme being (not the Christian god) has its roots in other concepts. However, the article is typical Christian propaganda insinuating that atheists are amoral and you need the benevolent guidance of a supernatural being (and its church) to behave like a decent human being.
> you need the benevolent guidance of a supernatural being… to behave like a decent human being. which is precisely why an atheist's morals are superior: they thought it through and convinced themselves that human rights is the better path. Religious people by definition only do it [their words] because their deity says so. Which is precisely why its so simple for the same benevolent guidance of a supernatural being…
We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
41–50 of 85 posts
Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
#42Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
#43Like the idea that good and evil are one dimensional opposite things that you can sort of add up to decide if your life is ok.
Or the idea that there's a point where you can stop looking for evidence and faith without sufficient evidence is a virtue.
Or that there's some ideal of bodily health since we are made in Gods image and deviations from that ideal are evil.
Or the idea that you can do evil without doing harm, or you can do good by doing plenty of harm.
Or a huge number of other false reasoning patterns that we are almost slaved to because we allow millenia old myths to pollute our thinking.
Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
#44Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you need the benevolent guidance of a supernatural being… to behave like a decent human being. which is precisely why an atheist's morals are superior: they thought it through and convinced themselves that human rights is the better path. Religious people by definition only do it [their words] because their deity says so. Which is precisely why its so simple for the same benevolent guidance of a supernatural being…
In the context of the human rights record of several atheist societies like the USSR, where religious expression was forcibly curtailed, I find it hard to believe that an atheist's morals are inherently superior.
Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a declaration. Which apart from mentioning a supreme being (not the Christian god) has its roots in other concepts. However, the article is typical Christian propaganda insinuating that atheists are amoral and you need the benevolent guidance of a supernatural being (and its church) to behave like a decent human being.
The stronger form of this argument is made by Nietzsche, not by Christian propagandists. Without God, there is no objective moral foundation. Obviously, people remain 'moral' regardless of their religious orientation, because morality is a social phenomenon, it's the 'herd instinct in the individual'. But this morality shifts and changes with times and cultures. You have no perch from which to stand and declare yours…
There has never been a universal, objective Christian morality. The Bible says slaves should obey their masters, that women are as far beneath men as men are beneath God, and that homosexuality is an abomination worthy of death. Christian morality used to allow killing pagans, Jews and Protestants as heretics. Christians from a century ago would see modern Christians as weak-willed apostates (you don't even read the Bible in Latin, but gutteral English you swine!) and Christians from a thousand years ago might not even recognize the religion as theirs.
Atheists reject the premise that morality presupposes God not because they reject morality but because they recognize that all moral systems are relative, and yet still have value. And yes, being a "decent human being" does simply mean "conforming to societal expectations," even when that society's expectations are based on the current generation's fashion in interpreting Biblical teaching. But it's enough for me to believe in the value of human life because I believe it, not because my society tells me a man in the sky will send me to hell if I don't.
And from an atheist point of view it's obviously possible to accept a moral framework in a morally relative universe because that is what everyone, including religious people, are actually doing. Accepting the truth of the matter isn't going to cause society to collapse into barbarism and hedonism.
Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
The stronger form of this argument is made by Nietzsche, not by Christian propagandists. Without God, there is no objective moral foundation. Obviously, people remain 'moral' regardless of their religious orientation, because morality is a social phenomenon, it's the 'herd instinct in the individual'. But this morality shifts and changes with times and cultures. You have no perch from which to stand and declare yours…
Except Christian morality also shifts and changes with time and culture, because religious practice is a social phenomenon. There has never been a universal, objective Christian morality. The Bible says slaves should obey their masters, that women are as far beneath men as men are beneath God, and that homosexuality is an abomination worthy of death. Christian morality used to allow killing pagans, Jews and Protestan…
> Accepting the truth of the matter isn't going to cause society to collapse into barbarism and hedonism.
Unmooring social norms and mores from traditional foundations has indeed historically resulted in extremely violent periods. I am not assigning a moral value to this violence, but I am glad I didn't live through it.
> And from an atheist point of view it's obviously possible to accept a moral framework in a morally relative universe because that is what everyone, including religious people, are actually doing
I am not arguing that people do not accept moral frameworks (as social animals we do whether we like it or not), but that typically, atheists, like most people, do not acknowledge that moral frameworks are relative, and jump at every chance to sanction people from different cultures for violations of their moral code. Of course, some atheists might avoid making a moral argument for this very reason! We can always acknowledge that things are simply a matter of our preferences and still advocate for them.
But typically, you instead get vague, waffley treatments about how we have made new discoveries in human rights that, for example, require you to permit gay marriage or face the imperial might of the US. At the end of the day, exactly because this sort of morality lacks persuasive force, it relies more on various sanctions. Meanwhile, theists of varying stripes can fall back on the very powerful argument of "God said so", and trust that he will reward you accordingly for disobeying his dictates. Of course, it's not always the case that atheistic moral realists will bomb you into submission, just as it is not always the case that theistic moral realists won't decide they're the scourge of God. But in 2021, that's how it typically plays out. In short, this particular brand of moral realist seems to be the one presenting to the most danger to the rest of us.
> The Bible says slaves should obey their masters, that women are as far beneath men as men are beneath God, and that homosexuality is an abomination worthy of death
I left off this until the end of the post because I don't feel particularly comfortable defending Christian thought, but I think these are misleading characterizations of what they say.
The Bible, including the New Testament, does say that slaves should obey their masters. But the same individual (Paul) writes that there is neither slave nor free among Christians. Men are equal before God, though in the world they are placed in hierarchies - this is a common theme. Paul preaches for servants to obey masters for the same reason that Christians are instructed to bless their enemies and do good to them that hate them and persecute them - because by so doing they show their faith in God. I don't think this is itself morally objectionable even from our perspective. 'Turn the other cheek' is still considered the moral high ground by most people, and this is coming from the same place.
Similarly, although homosexual behavior is definitely treated as an abominable sin, it is not treated as worthy of death moreso than other sins, including heterosexual adultery. Although Christians are instructed to cast out other Christians who continue practicing sinful ways, they are otherwise told not to judge. Indeed there is a specific passage where Jesus stops an execution. Of course, once Christians were in actual power, they did often legally sanction sins beyond those we might consider civically useful, but this rarely occurred in a way worth mentioning - homosexuality and adultery remained common and were rarely carcerally punished for most of their 2000 years in power. They certainly were sometimes, though!
I am not aware of any part of the Bible that takes such an extreme view on women. The most extreme stance I know of is taken in Timothy 1, where Paul claims that women should not teach and that men have authority over women because Adam was created first and was not deceived. But nowhere can I find a statement as extreme as yours. It would not surprise me if it were the case many or most practicing Christians still believed these things, although obviously the first one has become moot.
Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
#48Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hinduism most certainly does not believe in a common set of rights for everyone. Each person is assigned a clear position in the social hierarchy based on the caste of the parents and then the person is obligated to carry out the "dharma" as per that caste - anything outside of that is considered "adharmic" or wrong.
But Buddhism does recognize human rights. I was just reading some days ago how Buddhist emperor Ashoka the Great abolished discriminating policy of a Brahmin never being punished to death irrespective of the nature and severity of the crime while it was allowed for other castes. Buddhism is one of the rare religion that does not recognize divine rights of kings. In Buddhist mythology a king is like everyone else who…
Re: We are desensitized to Christianity’s influence on Western thought
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe in God, but this is historically correct. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights as conceived by the United Nations traces its roots to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen that was a product of the French revolution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of... The preamble of this document directly references God: > In consequence, the National Assembly…
Historically correct but do we need to tell that part of the story going forward? Can we not set the idea of “human rights” on its own pedestal and decide what those are and carry them forward in tradition and song? Why do we have a literal obligation to the asinine part of a dead philosophers opinions on their origin, along with an actual useful concept? Let’s dispense with the all-father bits and see it as we claim…
Yes. Hiding the truth is almost always wrong.