Quote from: RC5908 on September 26, 2014, 05:30:14 PM

Quote from: PSU on September 26, 2014, 05:06:42 PM

I'm asking, why should I have to justify anything to anyone other than myself?

You don't have to, but if you're gonna post in threads like this, it'd probably be in your best interest to do so.

I just think its in bad taste to ask someone why they believe in God. Its like asking someone how much they make.

That isn't what I'm asking, though.

This is a pretty loaded question, since the Romans, English, and any other theocratic governments that waged war under the banner of a god clearly didn't base their values on the likes of Jesus. So I could point to Joseph Stalin, or Adolf Hitler, or Vladimir Lenin who each led their followers to do terrible, unspeakable acts, while also fervently hating the church and religion in general.

All three examples you gave, of patently atrocious individuals, don't fill the criteria I'm looking for. The Nazis and the Soviets were evidently worshipful in the nature of their government and society.

Not to mention that a society founded under Jefferson, Paine, Hume, and Russell was the only one to ever use nuclear weapons in the history of warfare, and is currently under political fire for thousands of civilian deaths from bombings. I'm a fan of fair trials, though, so I abide by Augustine's wise words of "Never judge a philosophy by its abuse".
 

Well first and foremost the use of nuclear weapons in the Second World War was, to my mind, justified. Secondly, considering Bertrand Russell was actually an ardent supporter of nuclear disarmament, a rabid opponent of the Vietnam War and, quite generally, something of a pacifist it pains me to see you describe America as a society founded on his liberal principles.

Augustine's words are indeed wise. Muslims commit the immoral acts they do partly because of their beliefs and partly because of their community. I find it disturbing to see Muslims being persecuted for the actions of their radical cellmates. Which is why, as I said in the OP, the question is properly aimed at those who are anti-secular and who aren't humanists.

I doubt you'll see this as a valid answer, but a religious person could bring another individual to faith and ultimately be instrumental in their salvation, which makes any other act petty by comparison. Being in a religious doesn't magically turn you into a moral-superhuman.

"Do what I say and I'll give you salvation, don't and you'll suffer for the rest of your life".

No. I certainly don't find that valid.

I don't really, especially since he was a fairly recent philosopher. All I meant is that America, in politics, tended towards secular, humanistic philosophy

That's a can of worms I'm not going to open >.>

Well I'm not a humanist per-say, but I'm not anti-secular.[/quote]
Then I don't have much quarrel with you. If you generally agree that theocratic, authoritarian and worshipful societies will be/are worse than liberal, secular ones then there's no issue.

I meant valid in the sense that you don't believe in any form of salvation. If the teachings of Jesus are true, it doesn't really matter what your opinion on it is, it would just be the reality of the situation. Though I object to what you said salvation is.

That still doesn't justify how you can consider it a moral undertaking. It's just rhetoric; convincing somebody of a viewpoint. This cannot, in any real, meaningful sense, be considered a moral act. As far as it goes, it is, at best, perfectly amoral.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on September 28, 2014, 10:33:41 AM

It's just rhetoric; convincing somebody of a viewpoint. This cannot, in any real, meaningful sense, be considered a moral act. As far as it goes, it is, at best, perfectly amoral.

Imagine you're walking across the Golden Gate Bridge late at night, and you see someone standing next to rail. You walk to them and ask if anything is wrong. They tell you they are seriously considering killing themselves that night. You explain to them the value in life and the joy of living that outweighs any temporary suffering, and far outweighs immediate death. They turn away from the rail, thank you, and return home to seek counseling in the morning.

Now by your account, this may not be considered a good, moral act. It'd merely be amoral, as it's simply rhetorical. Of course it depends on which of the myriad philosophers you're allowing to define what is a good, moral act for you (which in itself refutes the sovereignty of any one, but I digress).

If you're going to claim that an act is moral or immoral then you have to take the consequence with the propriety. Rhetoric certainly can induce positive consequences, but in the case of religious conversion there is no quantifiable net benefit to the consequences of conversion. Which is why I say that it is, at best, amoral. Rhetoric in itself is perfectly amoral, but its conducive-ness for further action should be the determinant.

Thus, you've failed to answer the question of what a religious person can do, which is moral, which an atheist cannot do. Conversion simply doesn't count because lying to people isn't a moral act.

Again, this goes back to whose philosophy is defining your morality. Kant would wholeheartedly disagree with your statement here.

I think it's a rather menacing proposition that you need some sort of intelligent or "superior" agent to define your morality for you. I'm not interested so much in the pre-scriptive side of morality so much as meta-ethics. I might direct you to the work of Jonathan Haidt who - quite rightly - vindicated David Hume and Adam Smith in their ideas that morality is known chiefly through intuition and reasoning is mainly post hoc.

Of course I've failed. You want me to explain from your moral perspective why my moral perspective justifies something, and that's incredibly difficult without having a very long time to study your views. From my perspective, it's good to educate people on the reality of God, though I assert than in a more general form, many world views would consider it good to educate others on what is right because of the consequence of such actions and its contribution to that person.

No, I'm not asking you to do that in the slightest. I'm asking you to be empirical about the matter, there is very little evidence that religious belief is conducive to moral behaviour over other variables like empathy or community. If we were to take another example - let's say explaining to an Islamist why stoning women is immoral. In a more benign sense, such an action is a conversion but I'd consider - as would any rational, secular human being - that this is a moral act because the result of your rhetoric is to not have somebody, or several people, get stoned to death.

There are numerous examples in the Bible of non-believers conveying the truth of the scripture.

This right here is a fantastic example of religious people presupposing an objective moral or intellectual standard over atheists or other theists. I'm not definite that you mean non-believers are capable of conveying the truth of your scripture, or whether the scripture itself is merely stating non-believers are capable of conveying what it records as truth, but the point still stands. It isn't to criticse you as a person either, considering your intelligence.

It's a pointless question because it presumes that religious people claim they have access to more good actions than atheists, which isn't true.

That's exactly what some religious people do claim. It's what comes with the claim, as mentioned above, to an objective moral or intellectual standards. Which is why, as I've said, the question is aimed at anti-secularists and non-humanists.

You can't seriously try to tell me that the militants in ISIS aren't claiming to have access to a larger moral capacity than atheists or other theists; you can't tell me the Catholic Church doesn't do the same thing when it claims it is the only path to salvation.

Quote from: Swaggerific on September 27, 2014, 08:06:36 AM

Quote from: challengerX on September 27, 2014, 08:02:48 AM

Quote from: Swaggerific on September 27, 2014, 07:56:21 AM

Quote from: challengerX on September 27, 2014, 07:51:46 AM

Quote from: Swaggerific on September 27, 2014, 07:49:37 AM

Quote from: challengerX on September 27, 2014, 05:32:19 AM

Quote from: Swaggerific on September 26, 2014, 09:19:21 PM

Atheists can be good people too, but on average they're not. I think that's the key distinction.

Most definitely.

Just yesterday I stoned a woman for talking out of turn (I didn't give her permission to talk you see) and then later I blew up a school because girls were attending it. Then I threw acid in the face of a 6 year old girl. Then I hit my dormmate in the head with a hammer because he's a homosexual.

Spoiler

Oh wait. That would be the shit you hear on the news that Theists do.

Muslims are less advanced than Christians so that doesn't really make a difference. On the topic of homosexuality, there seems to be a lot of gay pedophiles, so you really can't blame people for being upset with them over it. Proportional to the gay population, there are far more gay pedophiles than straight. And of course, it's simply God's will that homosexuality one of the deadly sins. We might not know why, but that doesn't make it any less of a sin to commit.

LOL You almost had me there for a minute. The username and Density avatar had me suspicious but all that sin talk gave you away.

Are you trying to say I'm a troll for saying what billions of people believe? Figures, it's so much easier to just say someone's a troll than to actually form a rebuttal. Good luck in college by the way.

There's no rebuttal necessary to superstitious mumbo jumbo. Don't get mad because I don't take your bullshit seriously. All you're doing is pulling. Statistics out of your ass from your limited and close minded perspective of life. Pedophiles are irrelevant, and it was a Crhistian who smashed a mans head in for being homosexual. Let's also not forget the WBC, and the fact that Christian politicians make laws using the bible as a reference.

Funny how you call atheists argumentative, yet here you are trying to argue. If you're so firm in your beliefs, why do you care what I think? I've met real fundamentalists, and they're not the least bit interested in discussing things like this. So yes, you're either a troll or very stupid. You can pick whichever you lets you sleep at night. And I'm not in college. If I were, what religious fundamentalism have to do with anything?

>Dustbin

The opinions of one person in a group of people do not represent the whole, and that's what you're saying entirely throughout your post. What? Christians are evil because one of them committed murder? Well then I guess atheists must be really evil for killing hundreds of millions in the twentieth century.

>Your logic

Well since you brought up the past, then I guess you never heard of the Crusades.

Also, Hitler and Stalin did not kill because they were atheist. They killed people who opposed them. But I guess you're too busy sending me PMs which presumably have shock images.

Around the same number of people died in both the Crusades and the decades that saw the rule of Stalin and Hitler. While it took centuries for millions to die in the Crusades, it took a couple of decades for these relentless people to match and even surpass that body count

Hitler and Stalin wanted to see the end of religion in their nations. Hitler started with the Jews because nobody liked them but his ultimate goal was the eradication of Christianity and the Catholic Church. Stalin on the other hand just went straight forward and persecuted the Russian Orthodox majority that resulted in hundreds of thousands believers and priests to be murdered by the State.

It's really interesting if Hitler and Stalin were actually religious then people would come out in droves saying their acts was on a religious bias but it's not so when they are no religious and promote ideologies that rely on modern science (Nazism)

Theists and atheists both have blood on their hands. That doesn't mean everybody who is one or the other is bad, just those crazy people are

Around the same number of people died in both the Crusades and the decades that saw the rule of Stalin and Hitler. While it took centuries for millions to die in the Crusades, it took a couple of decades for these relentless people to match and even surpass that body count.

I'm actually going to try and verify this, so bear with me for a while and I'll come back to it later.

Hitler and Stalin wanted to see the end of religion in their nations. Hitler started with the Jews because nobody liked them but his ultimate goal was the eradication of Christianity and the Catholic Church. Stalin on the other hand just went straight forward and persecuted the Russian Orthodox majority that resulted in hundreds of thousands believers and priests to be murdered by the State.

Well, first of all, Hitler wasn't solely responsible for the Nazi atrocities. To say Nazism didn't encompass Christianity - simply by the fact that Christianity was part of the German social fabric - is simply to deny fact. Also, there were weird pagan blood rites and rituals among some branches of the Nazi military.

Nonetheless, neither Hitler nor Stalin were secularist or humanists. They sought to establish a religious State in the sense that North Korea or Imperial Japan did - by embroidering society with a Messiah Complex regarding the government.

Theists and atheists both have blood on their hands. That doesn't mean everybody who is one or the other is bad, just those crazy people are

Yes, but you'd be at great pains to find an atheist who killed people because he was an atheist. Hitler and Stalin were both narcissistic psychopaths, for instance.

The point is, I can identify that which is socially undesirable without needing a divine superintendent.

Seems like you're on a bit of a Bertrand Russell kick lately, so I like seeing you post this. Here's an excerpt of a speech from a favorite speaker of mine, Ravi Zacharias:

Let me narrate an interaction I had with a student at the University of Nottingham in England. As soon as I finished one of my lectures, he shot up from his seat and blurted out rather angrily, "There is too much evil in this world; therefore, there cannot be a God." I asked him to remain standing and answer a few questions for me. I said, "If there is such a thing as evil, aren't you assuming there is such a thing as good?" He paused, reflected, and said, "I guess so." "If there is such a thing as good," I countered, you must affirm a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil."

I reminded him of the debate between the philosopher Frederick Copleston and the atheist Bertrand Russell. At one point in the debate, Copleston said, "Mr. Russell, you do believe in good and bad, don't you?" Russell answered, "Yes I do." "How do you differentiate between them?" challenged Copleston. Russell shrugged his shoulders as he was wont to do in philosophical dead ends for him and said, "The same way I differentiate between yellow and blue." Copleston graciously responded and said, "But Mr. Russell, you differentiate between yellow and blue by seeing, don't you? How do you differentiate between good and bad?" Russell, with all of his genius still within reach, gave the most vapid answer he could have given: "On the basis of feeling-what else?" I must confess, Mr. Copleston was a kindlier gentleman than many others. The appropriate "logical kill" for the moment would have been, Mr. Russell, in some cultures they love their neighbors; in others they eat them, both on the basis of feeling. Do you have any preference?"

I'd be interested to know in what cultures they eat their neighbours. Seems like casuistry, to me.

Yeah, it was a punchline, more or less. The overarching point is that feelings aren't a sound basis for a standard of morality because of how non-standard feelings are.

I have a challenge for you, convince me to care about what that means.

Shrekmate Atheists.

Quote

And, name me a moral act which can be committed by a believer which can't be committed by a non-believer.

Is that supposed to disprove religion or something? Oh no you got us atheists! God isn't real because atheists can do the same things religious people can!

I know I just joined here and I'm getting into an argument but this stuff pisses me off.

Welcome to the club, this never ends well because both sides are adamant and have nothing to agree on, making every argument pointless.

Welcome to the club, this never ends well because both sides are adamant and have nothing to agree on, making every argument pointless.

This thread isn't even about the existence of a God. People can believe in that all they want.

Well, I haven't started taking you seriously yet because you've completely failed to take into account the difference in technology between the 13th Century and the 20th.

You said/implied that secular countries never commit atrocities but religious countries do, implying that religion has a negative influence of public policy... even though there are plenty of secular countries in history that have killed tens of millions of people (Mao's China, Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, etc.).

Well, I'm glad to see you agree that I wasn't making a point about the truth of religious claims. However, I also made it patently clear in the OP that secularism isn't the only criteria I'm using. I also addressed, quite clearly, humanism and, less clearly, liberalism. None of the aforementioned societies were either of the latter two. Not to mention, I also, again less clearly, laid the charge of worshipfulness against certain societies, not just religiosity. All of the societies you just named were religious in their attitudes, if not their doctrine, by virtue of being overwhelmingly authoritarian.

Hitler's Germany, by the way, I don't think can be considered secular on account of the Reichskonkordat. That's my own view, the Nazi government didn't stick to the terms of course, but it was still a treaty with the Vatican.