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I'm starting this thread rather than comment on the following assertions in the thread in the main Religion forum on archaeology and the Bible so as not to carry that thread further onto an off-topic tangent.
Quote:
Originally Posted by clickstack
Why would you expect me to put your writer's honesty and integrity above mine? Especially considering an atheist vs a believer in the ten commandments and consiquences.
Quote:
Originally Posted by clickstack
What is your credential that anything you state on this forum isn't an outright lie? You don't believe in any type of consiquences for it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by clickstack
I'll try again.
If I compare two writings by two different authors , one an athiest and one a Bible believing Christian .
Which of the two would have a better credential for being truthful? The one that believes in consiquences or the one that doesn't?
Quote:
Originally Posted by clickstack
Let me ask you a question. If you do not believe in consequences after death what keeps you from commiting crimes? I understand some crimes need a twisted mind to commit, even an atheist knows that but what keeps you in check?
Here we have an occurrence that is hardly new. In waltzes a poster with dogmatic assumptions around which questions are posed. Said poster apparently thinks this is something atheists have never considered, and springs a question meant to utterly confound non-believers. In reality, all that are served up are some very-familiar sophomorisms.
In this case, we have the absurd notion that atheists perceive no consequences. This is, of course, nonsense. Life is full of consequences. A very simple one is empathy and its effects. Another is a wish to live in a world in which people we care about are treated decently by others: when we treat others decently we advance this as a standard of behavior, and when we treat others contrarily we hinder this as a standard of behavior. The list goes on and on.
Aside from that, the poster is essentially asserting that the only thing restraining him from committing fraud, theft, assault, rape, murder - really, anything - is the belief in divine consequence. We have a term for such people: high-functioning sociopaths. Personally, I suspect the poster is selling himself short. But such is the nature of a common strain of religion, which holds that all people are miserable sinners and that the only thing that restrains their bestial behavior is the constant threat of punishment from some all-powerful entity.
Yet the real problem with the poster's assertions that is that they are dogma in a vacuum. They ignore the real world, this vast laboratory in which we can observe reality and see if it jibes with what we've been told. Admittedly, fundamentalists are masters at ignoring reality, which is their kryptonite. But let's look at how the real world operates. If the assertion that atheists perceive no divine consequences to their actions and that this makes them more inclined to do bad things (lying is the apparent fixation of the poster here), then we should see such bad behavior varying in the real world with rates of religious belief.
Let's start with the United States. The most religious of the four major sub-divisions of the country is the South (the others, by the way, are the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West). We can measure this by rates of church attendance as well as by rates of professed belief.
Now let's have a glance at an easily-measured rate of bad behavior - the violent crime rate. Surely, peddlers of the consequences argument agree that assault, rape, murder, and the like are precisely the sorts of things that the Ten Commandments forbid, and which atheists are thus more likely to do (you know, when we get bored with merely telling lies). If the consequences argument holds any water, we can expect to see that the South has a relatively low violent crime rate as compared to the rest of the country.
At this point, I'll dispense with the graphics and just post a link to the data, which you can explore at your own pleasure. Here's the FBI data from the most recent year available, 2015: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s...tables/table-4
Well, well - not only is the South not less-violent than the other (less religious, more atheistic) regions of the country, it actually leads the nation in violent crime!
This alignment of religious belief and violent crime is hardly isolated. Between Canada and the United States, the former is less religious. It also has a lower violent crime rate. Look abroad to Europe. The same trend-lines run between Western Europe (less religious, less violent) compared to Eastern Europe, and again if the breakdown is Northern Europe (less religious, less violent) to Southern Europe.
Now, I'm sure that there are examples of more religious places being less violent than certain other less religious places. My point is not to equate religion with violence (though I'm not stating that there is no correlation there, either) but to point out that what we would expect to see if the poster's implicit assertion that atheists are more likely to do bad things 'cause they think they can get away with it simply fails to predict what actually happens in the real world.
And that is one of the key differences between the religious believer and the atheist - the former looks for evidence to support what they've decided must be, while the latter looks for evidence in order to figure out what is.
Note:
Once again, I am struck by the thought-processes of adherents in utopian belief systems and they way those systems function. Religion - mostly that of the heaven-and-hell variety - and communism are both utopian belief systems. Their adherence to dogma in the face of all evidence to the contrary, as well as their authoritarian bents, are similar. Why? Because their natures are very similar.
There is just so much information out there about 'Where atheists get their morals'. Theramin Trees even did a three part video on morality. Matt Dillahunty specializes in talks on why religion is not a guarantee of moral behavious and why the Bible is not a moral book.
My own line has always been that believers generally praise the good stuff in the Bible and explain away the bad - but how do they decide which to praise and which to explain away? If it's in the Bible it should all be good, shouldn't it? The fact is that they are applying human standards of morality to their Holy Book.
It's not PC (or allowable in the forum) but the fact most of us have to tippy-toe around is that many/most religious Conservatives - primarily those who believe in an inerrant holy book - are stupid.
There is...education. But as in all cures, the patient has to be willing to take the treatment.
It seems to be one of the major misconceptions amongst atheists that the believers out there are believers only because they are stupid and "You can't fix stupid". But we know that half of the present atheists used to be believers, and they didn't become smarter - they became unable to resist what was true on evidence rather than believing what was evidently not true on Faith.
If they can do it, so can most of the others, but only if we ignore the various theiopologetic ploys to make us shut up and go away and we keep on patiently presenting the evidence.
P.s. "Symptoms". Hang on.. yep. needed one of those. Projection is a wonderful diagnostic. it's like someone denying that he has scrofula when he is covered in it. When a Theist polemicist polemicizes, he (or she) is itemizing their own mental symptoms and (without being aware or able to help it) accusing the Other side of it.
P. p. s unforgivable joke of the month
What's the difference between an atheist and a theist?
"P"
Whaddya mean.. "P"?
An atheist presents the evidence, a theist resents the evidence
Hahahahah...Meh..
Whaddya people know from funny?
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 01-23-2017 at 03:45 AM..
There is just so much information out there about 'Where atheists get their morals'. Theramin Trees even did a three part video on morality. Matt Dillahunty specializes in talks on why religion is not a guarantee of moral behavious and why the Bible is not a moral book.
My own line has always been that believers generally praise the good stuff in the Bible and explain away the bad - but how do they decide which to praise and which to explain away? If it's in the Bible it should all be good, shouldn't it? The fact is that they are applying human standards of morality to their Holy Book.
I shall be interested to see a graphic chart of attendance figures in the US in a few years' time.
If morals be God's laws then its a fair question to wonder where atheists find their morals, perhaps you meant ethics.
Matt Dilahunty specializes in talking to fools, when he encounters intelligent educated theists he cuts em loose fast.
It might help atheists to understand what the bible is,
its not just a book, its a library of books.
It documents the arrival of the concept of monotheism.
It contains an attempt to explain our origins.
it also contains the history of a people and their travails through time in connection with their relationship with God.
It records the changing concept of God, from the fire and brimstone God to the Agape God.
So to take one book from in that library and use it to argue against another is intellectually disingenuous.
Content without context is a pretext to a textproof.
Thats the lie dillahunty tells himself and doesn't even notice.
If morals be God's laws then its a fair question to wonder where atheists find their morals, perhaps you meant ethics.
Matt Dilahunty specializes in talking to fools, when he encounters intelligent educated theists he cuts em loose fast.
It might help atheists to understand what the bible is,
its not just a book, its a library of books.
It documents the arrival of the concept of monotheism.
It contains an attempt to explain our origins.
it also contains the history of a people and their travails through time in connection with their relationship with God.
It records the changing concept of God, from the fire and brimstone God to the Agape God.
So to take one book from in that library and use it to argue against another is intellectually disingenuous.
Content without context is a pretext to a textproof.
Thats the lie dillahunty tells himself and doesn't even notice.
I've heard Matt debate some of the smartest. He specializes in the philosophy -side and says he doesn't do evolution, but he knows his stuff, there, too. He is also fully conversant with the Bible. More than I am -and that's my particular area of interest.
As to morals or Ethics, if you prefer, we get them where everyone else does -the concensus -rules of society. The question we ask is -if you were to give up belief in a god, would you then imagine you'd run amok? I doubt it, because you are part of society and what you do impinges on it and the resultant backlash would not be pleasant. It isn't just about fear of what would happen if we didn't behave, but not wanting to hurt other people, because we have an instinct of empathy.
This is just to take the broadest issues, as the discussion can get complicated, but, in general that the basis of answers to all question that arise about morality. We build on basic instincts by learning from our society.
Touching on your point about the Bible being a lot of different books, and taking the argument that we can't use one to critique another - does that mean that you consider them to be the work of different authors with different ideas?
Last edited by TRANSPONDER; 04-06-2017 at 03:00 PM..
I've heard Matt debate some of the smartest. He specializes in the philosophy -side and says he doesn't do evolution, but he knows his stuff, there, too. He is also fully conversant with the Bible. More than I am -and that's my particular area of interest.
As to morals or Ethics, if you prefer, we get them where everyone else does -the concensus -rules of society. The question we ask is -if you were to give up belief in a god, would you then imagine you'd run amok? I doubt it, because you are part of society and what you do impinges on it and the resultant backlash would not be pleasant. It isn't just about fear of what would happen if we didn't behave, but not wanting to hurt other people, because we have an instinct of empathy.
This is just to take the broadest issues, as the discussion can get complicated, but, in general that the basis of answers to all question that arise about morality. We build on basic instincts by learning from our society.
Touching on your point about the Bible being a lot of different books, and taking the argument that we can't use one to critique another - does that mean that you consider them to be the work of different authors with different ideas?
I'm a bad example to use , my life without a concept of God was not great, I ended up in jail 4 times .
I used to think the god idea was just some idealized standard we have and try to live up to.
That only works to a point.
We could say its easy to find Gods will if we are given 1 good choice and one very bad choice.
But what if I give you 2 choices and both are good, which one is Gods will.?
Yes the bible had many many authors, it was compiled over a time period of many lifetimes.
Moses wrote about where he was buried, so it obviously wasn't him doing the writing.
I've heard Matt debate some of the smartest. He specializes in the philosophy -side and says he doesn't do evolution, but he knows his stuff, there, too. He is also fully conversant with the Bible. More than I am -and that's my particular area of interest.
Johanaan Raatz is a philosophy and physics major, going for his masters , he calls Matt and gets the short shrift every time, he has youtube videos of his calls online. Matt is most happy when christian fundies call up and act well...stupid.
Johanaan Raatz is a philosophy and physics major, going for his masters , he calls Matt and gets the short shrift every time, he has youtube videos of his calls online. Matt is most happy when christian fundies call up and act well...stupid.[
Can you post a specific show number. I'd be interested in hearing it for myself.
You mentioned Matt a couple times now. Show number?
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yep. needed one of those. Projection is a wonderful diagnostic. 
