Atheists are having it too easy.

[fionnmccool]

It is typical of many religious posters to generalise atheists in the same unthinking superstitious way they generalise the universe.
Atheism is not a belief or a condition in the same way that not having cancer is not a condition worthy of note. Nobody will point at you when you walk into a room and whisper in hushed tones '' he doesnt have cancer.'' It's the healthy normal natural state of someone who's mind has not become infected by religious brainwashing, pressure and ridicule from an early age. It's the natural state of someone who is allowed to think for himself from childhood. Nobody would expect a child to believe the words of an adult stranger offering candy yet this is exactly what many theists have done from childhood when they swallowed all their religious dogma and based their whole lives around twisting logic to fit this dogma rather than letting logic rule and admitting they actually do not know anything for a fact. Its' the fact that theists are so insignificant to atheists which seems to bother a lot of theists. This insecurity of being insignificant means they are constantly looking for feedback and support in some guise and are looking for reassurance that holding unproven beliefs somehow means they are superior and inside a club of elite people which takes care of its own.
The burden of proof is always on the deluded religious people who put forth their superstitious claims. If you cant prove it then theres a concept called credibility which would involve manning up and keeping your mouth shut until such time as you can.
I can introduce any fact you are unaware of . For example how many freckles I have on my butt. Meanwhile the billions of people in this world are blissfully unaware of my butts existance. I can therefore accuse these billions of people of being butt freckle deniers and generalise from this one thing they do not know to condemn their whole personalities, culture and lifestyles.... Well it makes about as much sense as theists stereoptyping atheists. This stereoptyping is just another attempt by religion to control the world and identify an enemy to pick on. It's all about power and control.

[Gadjodilo]

It is typical of many religious posters to generalise atheists in the same unthinking superstitious way they generalise the universe.
Atheism is not a belief or a condition in the same way that not having cancer is not a condition worthy of note. Nobody will point at you when you walk into a room and whisper in hushed tones '' he doesnt have cancer.'' It's the healthy normal natural state of someone who's mind has not become infected by religious brainwashing, pressure and ridicule from an early age. It's the natural state of someone who is allowed to think for himself from childhood. Nobody would expect a child to believe the words of an adult stranger offering candy yet this is exactly what many theists have done from childhood when they swallowed all their religious dogma and based their whole lives around twisting logic to fit this dogma rather than letting logic rule and admitting they actually do not know anything for a fact. Its' the fact that theists are so insignificant to atheists which seems to bother a lot of theists. This insecurity of being insignificant means they are constantly looking for feedback and support in some guise and are looking for reassurance that holding unproven beliefs somehow means they are superior and inside a club of elite people which takes care of its own.
The burden of proof is always on the deluded religious people who put forth their superstitious claims. If you cant prove it then theres a concept called credibility which would involve manning up and keeping your mouth shut until such time as you can.
I can introduce any fact you are unaware of . For example how many freckles I have on my butt. Meanwhile the billions of people in this world are blissfully unaware of my butts existance. I can therefore accuse these billions of people of being butt freckle deniers and generalise from this one thing they do not know to condemn their whole personalities, culture and lifestyles.... Well it makes about as much sense as theists stereoptyping atheists. This stereoptyping is just another attempt by religion to control the world and identify an enemy to pick on. It's all about power and control.

Fabulous. Now that you've got your atheism-is-so-f**king-superior rant out of the way, could you address the points in the original post, please? Or did you even notice it in your headlong rush to establish for the rest of us your empiricist credentials?

[Gadjodilo]

I'm pretty certain I haven't suggested they don't. [i.e. draw on more than one value system]]

Well, then what did you mean by the following comment?
"it's very rare for a religious person to publicly take a moral stance that isn't "god-backed" according to that person"

Well, congratulations on your use of the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy. All you actually mean is that you disagree with Pat Robinson.

It's more than that. The point I'm trying to get across is that using the likes of Pat Robinson to attack Christianity is invalid because his views are not typical. Moreover, trying to imply that Christianity is somehow inferior simply because some of its adherents break or pervert its very extensive moral code is dubious when atheism has no comparable moral code. Humanism now, that's a different matter. At least with humanists, theists can feel they're talking to people on the same level.

A lot of ink and pixels has been wasting making exactly that claim - but because atheism doesn't mandate anything, nor require anything other than non-belief, it's a ridiculous claim - in fact, simply another way of saying that lack of belief makes people bad. Again, let me ask you what effects your atheism in respect of Ptah has had? Or Allah. Or Hanuman. Or...well, the list is so long that there is no numerically significant difference between your atheism and mine. You choose to concentrate on the divisive fact that I don't share your belief in your god, whereas I prefer to emphasise our shared disbelief in thousands upon thousands of other gods. I'm like that, though - ecumenical to a fault.

I didn't say that atheism makes people evil. I said that if atheists use Pat Robinson to attack Christianity, then that makes it fine for theists to use Joe Stalin (or Enver Hoxha or whoever) to attack atheism.

Did you ask me before about Ptah? I recall a post about it but I thought it was directed at someone else. And where did you get the idea that I'm focusing on your lack of belief in a particular god?

[Gadjodilo]

Eh? That doesn't follow at all.

Any society must have a basic social contract, else the society collapses. This is why things like murder and theft are frowned on pretty much everywhere - not because some imaginary dude in the sky said so, but because no society can function without these basic rules of conduct. There's nothing really special about the Ten Commandments, strip out the God stuff and you have:

"Look after the elderly, don't steal lie and kill, respect the fact that everyone else in society has their right to their own property and life just as much as you do, and we'll probably be able to get along just fine."

All it is, is a simple societal contract to prevent complete anarchy.

Some of the greatest civilisations the world has ever seen were extremely brutal. The Romans and Greeks killed new borns with disabilities. They practised female infanticide too. The Aztecs practised human sacrifice. Yet, they all thrived for centuries.

[bormotello]

On the rare occasions when atheists have assumed control of an entire state, the results have not been pretty. But I can't say that Stalin's starvation of the Ukrainian peasantry, the slaughters of Budapest, Prague or Warsaw, the awful legacies of Ceausescu or Hoxha, the eery techniques of societal control operated by the Stasi, the famines induced by Chairman Mao, the genocide of the Khmer Rouge etc. could all be attributed to the atheism of their instigates. I certainly can't accuse them of being inconsistent with their atheistic beliefs and thereby question the value of those beliefs because the above actions are not inconsistent with atheism.

It is just an example when belief into God has been replaced by belief into Marxists ideals. There is not much difference between methods Spanish Inquisition and Stalin’s NKVD.
Ideals always bad, because hypocrites will use them for own good.

[Gnome Chomsky]

Because you see, that would finally make this endless argument more of a level playing field.

You don't understand the argument. It's about the Christian claim that morality comes from God. Atheism doesn't claim to have moral authority, but religions/religious people often do.

All we want is for you guys to admit that we're on a level playing field, with neither side having some sort of moral monopoly. Atheists have already admitted it. Now it's your turn.


After that we can move into the related but separate questions about whether or not Christianity gives good moral instruction or whether Christians are more likely to be moral.

[ibis]

Well, then what did you mean by the following comment?
"it's very rare for a religious person to publicly take a moral stance that isn't "god-backed" according to that person"

Well, what I said - note the 'publicly'. That's why I asked you whether you were the Pope, because I'm not interested in your private and personal opinions such as vegetarianism. Pat Robinson is implicitly claiming to be delivering the judgement of God.

It's more than that. The point I'm trying to get across is that using the likes of Pat Robinson to attack Christianity is invalid because his views are not typical. Moreover, trying to imply that Christianity is somehow inferior simply because some of its adherents break or pervert its very extensive moral code is dubious when atheism has no comparable moral code. Humanism now, that's a different matter. At least with humanists, theists can feel they're talking to people on the same level.

I didn't say that atheism makes people evil. I said that if atheists use Pat Robinson to attack Christianity, then that makes it fine for theists to use Joe Stalin (or Enver Hoxha or whoever) to attack atheism.

I can't see why. You're supposed to have a shared moral code in common with your fellow Christians. No such requirement applies to atheists at all.

Did you ask me before about Ptah? I recall a post about it but I thought it was directed at someone else. And where did you get the idea that I'm focusing on your lack of belief in a particular god?

You don't seem to be willing to answer the question about the impact of your atheism with respect to Ptah or other gods. You seem, instead, to want to discuss mine in respect of the Christian God. As far as I can see, it's the only atheism we don't share.

[Cato]

Much has been written here and elsewhere about Pat Robinson and his comments on Haiti. He was pretty much universally condemned by other Christians and he has been been extensively (and gleefully) quoted on atheist websites as yet another example of Christian hypocrisy. And there's no shortage. From popes to born again US presidents, from Free Presbyterian ministers to Serbian patriarchs, hypocritical Christians are the gift that keep on giving to the non-believers...

...Because you see, that would finally make this endless argument more of a level playing field.

I think that you are being a little unfair. Most of the atheists on this site's main argument against religion is not based on the hypocrisy of believers but rather is based on the total lack of any evidence for the existence of 'god', or for many other religious beliefs. We pick out the instances of hypocrisy as examples of more crazy activities by already deluded people.

It is not up to atheists to prove that there is no 'god', as it is logically impossible to prove a negative. The burden of proof is entirely on the side of the theists and polytheists. There is no evidence for the existence of god. None.

I am completely in favour of toleration and will always the defend the rights of others to hold whatever views they wish. However, toleration implies a certain disrespect; I tolerate your absurd beliefs and your foolish acts, though I know them to be absurd and foolish. Toleration only calls on us to tolerate views we know to be absurd and foolish: the truth requires no such toleration.

There is no common moral of ethical system common to all, or even most, atheists. After discarding the 'god' comfort blanket we atheists then have to find a rational basis for our ethical system. My ethical system is Stoicism, but I doubt that that choice is shared by many. The key word here is choice. There is no one 'final solution' answer to the question "what is the good life?" or to the question "how is society to be organized?" There is a plurality of possible answers which are not harmonious. The danger comes when people deicde that they have found some such final solution; be it in a religious book or in an ideology such as Marxism.

The evil that Stalin, Lenin, or Pol Pot did was not done because of their atheism. Atheism, being content free (beyond the assertion that there is no 'god') mandates no such action. They did that evil because of the teleological elements in their ideologies. Religion also has those similar teleological elements. For me, the belief in a teleology has been the source of much evil in the word, be it religious, fascist, communist etc.

Atheism is on the side of reason and between the forces of religion and reason there can be no leveling of the field: one is either reasonable or one is not. One either looks at the evidence reasonably and dispassionately or one chooses to continue in the pernicious errors of religion.

[Garland Names the Planets]

This moral code thing is a load of nonsense as an argument unless you ask them condition themselves to believe any lie just so it gives them a moral code. There either is a deity or there isn't. All else is masturbation. How palatable humanity might find reality or what they might do because of it is irrelevant. If all atheists were cannibalistic genocidaldist it still wouldn't make a difference. If there is no deity they are still right on that point. Until you sucessfully make the argument against the non-existence of a deity all you are really arguing is that yoiu condition yourself into believing a falsehood to make you behave better

[drkpower]

All we want is for you guys to admit that we're on a level playing field, with neither side having some sort of moral monopoly. Atheists have already admitted it. Now it's your turn.

Precisely. I feel sorry for the OP having put so much effort into his essay only for it to be based on a false premise. Atheism is not about providing a moral code. That is not to say that atheists do not have one, just that their atheism is not the source for it.

Atheism just means that we dont want your moral code being the one that governs over the rest of us. Just like the OP wouldnt want the Scientology moral code being the one that governs over him.