Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
Well, I personally believe that every person is born with the light of Christ in them. It doesn't matter where they're born or how they're raised; that light is there. I suppose it is roughly equivalent to "conscience." It's because of this belief that I feel that a person does not need to be a theist in order to commit a sin. As Christians, we think of a sin as being an intentional violation of a religious law.
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That's precisely what a sin is ... murder is also a sin because it violates religious law, but the reason why all societies have laws against murder isn't because everyone believes in the same religion or worships the same god, right?
I know you want to believe it is the light of Christ because that's who you worship. Others would say it is the light of Allah, the light of Shiva, etc. etc.
And yet, despite thousands of years of varying cultures, varying religions, varying moral standards, no society has ever NOT had strict laws against murder. Because being anti-murder is one of those evolved traits that benefits our survival as human beings. We know that if we allow rampant murder to take place, the odds of getting murdered ourselves is pretty damn good, thus in order to coexist as a gregarious species, it would be necessary to evolve such traits.
After all, animals don't generally murder each other either though it does occasionally happen in fights over mates and territory -- just like with humans. I doubt they all have the light of a god within them, too.
There are three kinds of laws:
Moral laws -- these are the laws that directly affect the well-being of other human beings. Murder, rape, theft, embezzling, coercion, terrorism, pedophilia, domestic violence, etc. These are all empathy-based laws which say, "I don't want these things happening to me, so I'm not going to commit them on other people." Without these laws, society and civilization would be impossible.
Civil laws -- these are laws focused on the governance of a city, county, state/province/shire, and nation. They include such things as tax laws, property laws, inheritance laws, speed limits, building permits, licenses of every description, permits, and loads of other things. Not everyone sees breaking some of these laws as immoral or sinful, but breaking them often does hurt society.
Religious laws -- these are the laws that exist only due to religious faith. Fortunately, MOST of these laws only apply to particular religions and MOST of them are not *real* laws in an actionable sense. For instance, no one is going to arrest or fine you if you cheat on your spouse, have sex before marriage, use a condom, have sex with the same gender, work on Sunday, pray or don't pray, go to church or not, pay the proper tithe, etc. etc.
The first and last category are considered "sins" by religion -- but only the first category, the moral laws, would still exist if religion were to disappear or never existed in the first place. While religion just adores taking credit for those rules, the fact is that even the most secular nations have the same laws against those things. Also in fact, religious nations quite often have far more lax moral laws than secular nations.
For instance, America, the most religious nation in the Western world, is the ONLY First World nation that still has the death penalty -- even though murder is supposed to be a sin -- along with other religious nations like Iran and North Korea (yes, North Korea IS a religious nation; just because they worship the Kim family as gods on earth doesn't make them any less religious than the mainstream religions).
Because religion tends to be authoritarian and highly intolerant of other beliefs as well as criticism, moral laws are often broken as religion makes exceptions for itself. Entire legal systems are often based on the "special pleading" fallacy as religious governments make laws that essentially say, "We can do this or that, but YOU, the people, cannot ... because it's a sin!" The hypocrisy is overwhelming to say the least.
There are also certain "throw-backs" in this country -- and many others -- that really have no business being illegal but are anyway because religion got involved in some distant point in our history. Laws against prostitution, for example, is more a religious law than anything else -- a prohibition against fornication and adultery. Our brush with Prohibition was the result of religious law being turned into a moral law, orchestrated by the Christian Temperance League who saw alcohol as somehow demonic. Fortunately that only lasted for 20 or so years. There even was a time when teaching evolution in our public schools was illegal -- and therein is no better an example of a religious law being turned into a civil law, a place where religion has no business being.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
But nobody needs to have read the Bible or gone to Sunday School to know that murder is wrong.
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Yep, because of empathy. It doesn't have anything to do with magic or gods. If empathy comes from God, then so, too, does hatred, jealousy, greed, envy, jealousy, avarice, selfishness, etc.
Can't give God/Christ credit for the good things without also blaming them for the bad.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
If I were to ask pretty much any atheist I've ever known whether he'd consider killing someone he disliked, provided he was 100% sure he'd never be caught, I think every last one would say, "No."
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Yes, that is very true.
Unless you're a Christian apologist like Ken Ham or the Hovind duo who Lied for Jesus! about that very question, doctoring a video to make it appear as if two young atheists would murder someone as long as they were guaranteed they'd never be caught. The *original* question had so many carrots dangling from it that eventually the two atheists said they *would* commit the deed -- but only after the lying apologists added incentives like ... the person you're going to murder is beating his wife every night and she'll die if something isn't done ... and the police aren't doing anything ... and she won't go to a shelter out of fear ... and you'll get paid $10 million if you do it ... and he's also a pedophile ... and he kicks puppies ...
But in the doctored video played to an auditorium full of people the two atheists were presented like this:
"If you could murder someone with a guarantee of never getting caught, would you do it?"
"Oh yes, absolutely. Uh huh. How could anyone NOT want to murder in that situation?!"
All of the carrots and incentives were magically missing from the final video. Hmm.
So, I wish I could say the same about most believers regarding whether they would say "no" to that question -- especially when it comes to gays, atheists, and liberals. I'm no longer sure they would. Meaning that, while they may not actually commit the murder, the *desire* to kill would be very real and very genuine.
Even just 5 years or so ago, I wouldn't be having these doubts. However, considering the number of threats of violence I've had thrown at me online over those ensuing years -- from people who proudly proclaim themselves Christian -- I'm confident that at least 30% of believers* asked about murder would happily claim they would kill if they could providing the victim was an atheist, Muslim, gay, or liberal/Democrat.
I've seen it with my own eyes -- and I'm a very minor player in the world of atheism. I can't even imagine the kind of horrible threats people like Dawkins, Hitchens, Hawking, AronRa, Seth Andrews, Matt Dillahunty, Laurence Kraus, Niel DeGrasse-Tyson and other openly atheistic activists receive.
Considering that, quite often whenever atheists hold one of their Free Thought Conventions, one side of the street is filled with Christian protestors waving signs filled with Hellthreat ... while the other side of the street is filled with Muslims saying the same but adding that we should be beheaded in the name of Islam.
Do atheists have large protests at religious events with signs claiming how all believers should be murdered or tortured forever?
Well, no.
*Believers -- which mostly applies to Muslims in this day and age rather than Christians. However, Christians are rapidly approaching the same degree of right-wing religious extremism as the Muslim terrorists, so give it a few years and who is to say what might happen to our freedom to exist.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katzpur
And if pressed to give a reason, it would somehow be a variant of "It's wrong." It may not be "wrong" to him because of the biblical commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," but it would be a clear violation of his conscience.
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No, most atheists wouldn't give a trite answer like "It's wrong." I'm almost positive they would explain themselves better than that -- especially since, as I've said above, a lot of people have a lot of wrong ideas about who atheists are and what we believe ... and why.
Rather, we would attribute it to empathy, as I've said above, and would then explain, as I have, how empathy is a beneficial evolutionary trait -- those who felt empathy and demonstrated it toward others were more likely to survive to pass that trait onto their offspring. Those who were aggressive, violent, and dangerous often died young hence there were fewer offspring to carry on those violent and aggressive traits into succeeding generations.
In addition, "Thou shalt not kill" as it appears in the 10 Commandments was not the first command not to kill.
The first codified version was, of course, attributed to Hammurabi of Sumeria some 4,000 years before the Bible was written. Considering there is no written record -- anywhere by anyone -- of Yahweh, Jesus, Hebrews, Judaism, or anything at all regarding anything Biblical during those 4,000 years, it would seem rather crazy to attribute Hammurabi's codes as somehow being inspired by a Hebrew god that would not make an appearance on the world stage for another four millenia.
Rather, Hammurabi understood that in order to maintain a civilization -- and Sumeria is the first civilization with actual written records -- laws against such things as murder were paramount.
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