Religion Religion, Secularism, and Morality

[ShieldWife]

I am creating this thread to avoid a tangent on another thread. I will quote some relevant posts below:

It is an error to read that passage as saying that hate is the opposite of love, or to apply the command to love your enemies outside the brotherhoood of Christ. Love the Body of Christ, hate the enemies of Christ. It is also an error to read 'Judge not' as an instruction never to judge anyone for anything.

19Did Moses not give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? 20Why seek you to kill me? The multitude answered, and said: Thou hast a devil; who seeketh to kill thee? 21Jesus answered, and said to them: One work I have done; and you all wonder: 22Therefore, Moses gave you circumcision (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers) and on the sabbath day you circumcise a man. 23If a man receive circumcision on the sabbath day, that the law of Moses may not be broken; are you angry at me because I have healed the whole man on the sabbath day? 24Judge not according to the appearance, but judge just judgment.

Problem with that play is that removing said foundation ... leaves the whole idea of natural rights hanging in the air unsupported. If man is just another animal, you can do whatsoever you please to him. Literally nothing is forbidden.

Except that isn't true, it only a conceit assumed by many religions to give them a means exercise control on people's thoughts and try to pretend the natural world is separate from the human world.

The fact pack animals exist completely blows the conceit out of the water, because they don't need a religion to keep packs together or survive long term. We are just another pack animal, if a very fucking clever and resourceful one that harnessed fire, something no other animal can really claim.

We've also been very lucky.
I'm not an atheist, more an agnostic who looks for the divine in nature, not in scripture.

I am convinced there is a divine, but I'm not anywhere near feeling any religion represents the totality of it.

Which is why if feel secular laws are safer for societies as a whole, particularly ones where multiple faiths live together.

I think Christianity is great, but has too little focus on humanities place in the larger natural world. I also think Shintoism and Buddhism have great qualities for their more...naturalistic views on humanities' relationship with our world. I like the Sikh self/community defense ethics, and their kickass turbans/beards.

See, why don't we just go the old Roman way that led to them having such a period of well...a golden age?

We need our own Augutus, and may Amrs choose him wisely

ah, yes we should seek to emulate pack hunters like orcas, dolphins and chimps, elephants and crows.

You know baby eating, corpse raping, genocidal maniacs?

Highly intelligent pack animals have some of the most violently dysfunctional societies on the planet.

Without religion and even then only certain religions we'd be walking around thinking necrophilia and cannibalism is totally A okay.

That...that's the most unique way I've ever heard anyone describe the fall of the Roman Empire.

But it ain't wrong.



One should note how, in comparison to more primitive cultures, Islam is downright civilised. Providing a wide moral framework for a society is a good thing,

RE: bolded part, that is largely how humans have come to be a dominant species on the planet... in fact, when you look at dolphin behaviour and the "natural state" human behaviour, there is basically no difference. Where difference does lie is that we are simply too powerful and also have the capacity of being afraid of ourselves. Hence the culture, civilization, laws, borders... all of that exists in order to allow humans to coexist without wiping themselves out.

That would only be the nihilistic viewpoint. You are not going to win anyone over to your religion by making this argument, so you may as well not make it.

It's nihilistic to point out that secularists are morons who are too old to be mad at dad and that without certain world religions we'd be a disaster?


Maybe now would be an inconvenient time to note that Troons working for Nick Jr put out blatant pedophilic content and went full Groomer and even included satanic imagery in a recent cartoon because y'all drove the religious right out of power and have no one to gate keep the animals any more?

That's certainly an interesting PoV. What I'm referring to is the idea that without religion, man is just an animal and you can just do whatever. A lot of people, both religious and antitheist, seem to have it in their had that not believing in religion and having an afterlife somehow cheapens human life. My view is that it actually makes it that much more precious, because once someone is dead, that's it, there's no afterlife for them and they're gone. To me that makes it all the more tragic when people die.

"Live.for the moment because there's no point in anything else"

Long term thinking vanishes when you walk down that road. As evidence by the total collapse and degeneration of our society.

We are dying as a people because of that.

Just because atheists and secularists don't like being reminded of the logical consequences of their ideology, does not mean that what they are being told is not true.

Atheism has no foundation for morality. It has personal preferences, but in the end it teaches that we're nothing more or less than biological machines, and there is no inherent worth or value to that, nothing transcendant, just what a given atheist prefers to personally impute.

The effects of atheism in the 20th and 21st century are a testament to the horrors that this brings. Among other world ideologies, only Islam can come close to causing as much sheer human misery and suffering as has come about through atheism.

I was going to make a comment, but I believe we've gone off topic.

Oh shut up. You are literally casting stones when you live in a glass house. For instance we just found piles of corpses of children next to a residential school- you know one run by the Catholic and Anglican schools. And apparently there are more. Also we cannot forget that mass grave found in Ireland. Or how King Leopold II who turned the Congo red... was a Christian, I mean if you toss blame at us for what you are blaming us for, we can do the same. Remember, in all the examples that I have provided say Leopold they have done these atrocities in service of their religion. And speaking of atrocities in service of religion, "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.".

See, there's a difference. When you point to those things, I can say that they were morally wrong, as they violate God's Law, and anyone who claims to have done so in God's name is clearly a liar.

An Atheist?

All you can really say is 'I don't like it.' Because you have no higher moral law. You can say that your preferences are moral law, but in the end, they're still only your personal preferences.

Murder is wrong. Theft is wrong. Rape is wrong. Genocide is wrong. I can make these as moral statements, and that is logically consistent with my worldview. That some people violate these demonstrates that the heart of man is prone to sin and wickedness, which is also logically consistent with my worldview. It's ugly, and it should be resisted at all turns, but it's observably true.

To an atheistic worldview, what is it but one biological machine interacting with other biological machines in a way that results in the machine being damaged or broken?

Note that in nations with dominant, or even strong remnants of Christian culture, these offenses needed to be hidden. Because they are known to be unacceptable.

In aggressively atheistic regimes? These things are done openly, as warnings, or just because someone in power is on an ego trip. Even publicly claimed to be right and moral by those who do them. See, USSR, Khmer Rouge, Maoist China, etc.

Evil happened in both cases. But the scale of the offense and how it was treated were drastically different.


I'll be happy to continue this argument if you want, but yes, it should move to a new thread if it's to keep going on.

(As an addendum, yes atheistic people are capable of being moral. I'm not claiming otherwise. It's just not logically consistent with their worldview to believe in morality.)

And there is a problem there, because that means that whatever God says is law is law. Whatever he says is Good is Good. Which is all well and good if you believe in Intellectualism, because God has rules, and sticks to them. Voluntarism...not so much. I honestly don't think divine command is a valid system of morality, because it very much allows people to substitute their own will for their god, or presuming the existence of god means morality is entirely contingent (well at least in Voluntarism)

And that assumes that we don't subscribe to the fact that there isn't a higher moral law. I actually lean to the belief that there is, a transcendent law to the universe, 'Divine' Reason- the Logos or the Tao. Or I'd rather believe it to be the case. The very law of the cosmos. Or I want to believe in it, that there is some transcendent law, independent of man, or of any supposed god or gods.

And I don't think the Communists are Atheistic, even Religious Atheistic like certain Asiatic religions and sects. They have a god, which is Communism itself or the State, and varying prophets and even their own theology. Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live. History is on their side, and will end in universal communism. And so on.

You probably should on both counts. Even if I don't want to continue this scrap much longer, it should be continued.

It is perfectly consistent with my worldview. I believe in listening to Reason, Reason tells me what is moral, what is just, what is truth, what is not-truth and so on. And what Reason cannot provide me I listen to my fellow man and heed what he or she has to say and look to the words of the teachers both ancient and moderate.

We can continue the above conversation here and soon I will reply with my thoughts on the topic.

 

[LordSunhawk]

One thing I will note as a constant teaching of the Catholic Church.

We are all sinners. We have all failed to do what we should and not do what we should not do. We are all fallen.

And God loves us anyways. God's infinite and perfect saving Grace is upon us regardless. All we have to do is accept His Grace in our flawed hearts and strive to be better, knowing the whole time that we will never truly deserve the Grace that our Lord and Savior has gifted us.

Yes, evil has been done by those professing to be God's servants on Earth. Dark deeds have been done by those who turn around and profess to be Christian, even Catholic. But crucially, those dark deeds are done in the dark, by those ashamed and afraid of them coming to light, because they know that they are doing grave evils, and are afraid of the condemnation of the rest of the Faith. But even in that darkness, there is light. The evils of Leopold in Belgium were not exposed by the atheist, but by the missionary priest.

You speak of the words uttered in the Cathar crusade, knowing nothing of the situation, and of how the Cathar's had, repeatedly, concealed themselves from detection and destruction by pretending conversion, only to continue to prey upon the poorest in their grasp. Perhaps you do not understand just what was being fought against, a Gnostic creed that had, at it's deepest and darkest root, pure greed. The nobles and priests who ascribed to Catharism did so in order to justify thoroughly looting and pillaging all within their power, even unto forcing the lay poor to starve to death amidst plentiful crops so that the nobles and priests could chisel a few more groats, a bit more luxury, for themselves. Then when called to account for their crimes, including the deliberate mass starvation of the peasantry, would make a great show of repentance, declaring themselves good honest Christians now, honest! Then as soon as they were no longer held at swordpoint returning to their old ways.

The Merovingians finally had enough, and thoroughly purged them, killed them all, even those professing to be true to the Faith, because God would know his own.

Was this a crime? Perhaps yes, but the Cathar's were broken, and their poisonous creed nearly extirpated, although it has reawoken in the modern era under the banner of Socialism.

Note that the wiki article thoroughly elides the crimes and actual beliefs of the Cathars. To the Cathars, at least so they preached, everything of the world and of the flesh was inherently satanic and sinful, and must be completely cast off. All worldly possessions, to the point that they would force their congregations to starve to death in order to become 'perfect'. Of course, all of those worldly goods and possessions had to go somewhere, and the priests and nobles who supported them were happy to take on the burden of all of that sin, by taking all of said worldly goods for themselves. They would slaughter infants, on the grounds that bringing children into the sinful and satanic world was an act of grave sin, and killing them released their souls. Of course, this only applied to those who were not of the nobility and priesthood, the Cathar priests did not practice anything of what they preached, and were well known for their licentious behavior. Likewise the nobility in the Cathar territories were incredibly abusive of women, on the grounds that as nobles they were 'purer' than ordinary people, and thus them raping a woman was a great privilege for the woman, to be in congress with a 'pure' and 'perfect' noble. The woman would then be killed, of course, because it was sinful for the impure and imperfect to have sex, and sin was punished with death and the seizure of all worldly goods...

 

[Captain X]

K - here's my hot take: You may view morality as being derived from a deity, but the fact remains that you are still being taught morality by your parents and other authority figures as you are growing up, which is all that really needs to happen anyway, hence no need to involve religion of any kind. I view the argument of needing to be derived from some high er power to be asinine to say the least, because as it pertains to the here and now, no deity is going to come down from the heavens and enforce any of this or punish anyone who violates it - the many atrocities over the course of history speak to that, including no shortage of which were committed in the name of deities. In reality, whether you believe in a higher power or not, morality is and always has been decided upon and enforced by men and the societies they belong to. This is why what is and is not considered to be moral tends to shift constantly as people decide that for themselves and get others to agree with them, which is true even among Christians. I know it's an old meme to bring up stuff like the Salem witch trials and the Spanish Inquisition and the like, but the fact remains that it was seen as perfectly moral by Christians to kill people they decided were witches, or even just who they thought didn't adhere to their religious tenants enough, or even just people who didn't share their faith (pagans and people of other religions). Hell, a pastor led one of the most disgusting massacres of Native Americans this country saw, which didn't just stop at killing literally everyone they saw, but included these good Christian folk carving off bits of the people they killed as trophies, which included sex organs. It's true that there were people at the time who condemned it, but the fact remains that the men who did it obviously felt comfortable enough within their own communities to do so (with one of them being a church leader), and none of them were ever punished for doing so.

The Merovingians finally had enough, and thoroughly purged them, killed them all, even those professing to be true to the Faith, because God would know his own.

Was this a crime? Perhaps yes, but the Cathar's were broken, and their poisonous creed nearly extirpated, although it has reawoken in the modern era under the banner of Socialism.

Yeah, I'd say it was crime against those who actually were innocent of anything they were accused of. I see you as basically making excuses for this, but what really perplexes me is that the rational for it never should have gotten to the point that just slaughtering people en mass was a-okay to begin with. You're basically saying these people committed crimes, but were let off the hook because they claimed to have repented. Why? Do we let prisoners out of jail now simply because they have converted/repented? Even if they're being entirely honest and not just lying through their teeth? I agree that the Cathars were bad people who needed to be dealt with, but this hardly justifies a massacre, which, IMO, is made all the worse by the "God will know his own" quote.

 

[DocSolarisReich]

“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.”

Error has no rights. We did nothing wrong.

 

[Bacle]

K - here's my hot take: You may view morality as being derived from a deity, but the fact remains that you are still being taught morality by your parents and other authority figures as you are growing up, which is all that really needs to happen anyway, hence no need to involve religion of any kind. I view the argument of needing to be derived from some high er power to be asinine to say the least, because as it pertains to the here and now, no deity is going to come down from the heavens and enforce any of this or punish anyone who violates it - the many atrocities over the course of history speak to that, including no shortage of which were committed in the name of deities. In reality, whether you believe in a higher power or not, morality is and always has been decided upon and enforced by men and the societies they belong to. This is why what is and is not considered to be moral tends to shift constantly as people decide that for themselves and get others to agree with them, which is true even among Christians. I know it's an old meme to bring up stuff like the Salem witch trials and the Spanish Inquisition and the like, but the fact remains that it was seen as perfectly moral by Christians to kill people they decided were witches, or even just who they thought didn't adhere to their religious tenants enough, or even just people who didn't share their faith (pagans and people of other religions). Hell, a pastor led one of the most disgusting massacres of Native Americans this country saw, which didn't just stop at killing literally everyone they saw, but included these good Christian folk carving off bits of the people they killed as trophies, which included sex organs. It's true that there were people at the time who condemned it, but the fact remains that the men who did it obviously felt comfortable enough within their own communities to do so (with one of them being a church leader), and none of them were ever punished for doing so.


Yeah, I'd say it was crime against those who actually were innocent of anything they were accused of. I see you as basically making excuses for this, but what really perplexes me is that the rational for it never should have gotten to the point that just slaughtering people en mass was a-okay to begin with. You're basically saying these people committed crimes, but were let off the hook because they claimed to have repented. Why? Do we let prisoners out of jail now simply because they have converted/repented? Even if they're being entirely honest and not just lying through their teeth? I agree that the Cathars were bad people who needed to be dealt with, but this hardly justifies a massacre, which, IMO, is made all the worse by the "God will know his own" quote.

To be fair, most religions have bloody and dark histories to them that the clerics and priests prefer not to teach to thier flocks.

Which is why I think a lot of religious folk do not get how the history of bloodshed for religious/psuedo-religious reasons turns people off to organized religion. They see thier religion as a central part of thier life, and look more to it's...'lessons', than its history.

Crosby, Stills, and Nash has a good song about this:

 

[FriedCFour]

Basically all systems that try and make some kind of moral system that doesn’t involve religion at all fail miserably or end up with vastly worse results. Also, it all ends up pretty much pseudo religion anyways. The secularization of society is a disaster, and it’s insane that you can say, push LGBT ideology, critical race theory, all the rest in education or in government and all of that’s totally fine, but Christianity? No that’s beyond the pale.

It’s built into our nature to seek God and to have God, and so we will always inevitably include that in some capacity.

 

[Captain X]

It's not like it's an either/or prospect - that's just a false dichotomy.

 

[Bacle]

It's not like it's an either/or prospect - that's just a false dichotomy.

A lot of religious tenets seem to rely on false assumptions or false reasoning for why humans are the way we are.

The conceit that religion is needed for there to be morals, and that humanity is greater than other animals and the natural world in some mystical way, seems to be central to a lot of religious thought, or at least among the Abrahamatic groups.

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.”

Error has no rights. We did nothing wrong.

I am pretty sure that with what I have heard from your arguments with other Christians that would mean you have no rights in that regard. According to them, you are plenty in error. And what I am getting at was the needless slaughter of innocent people, regardless of their professed faith.

 

[LordsFire]

To be fair, most religions have bloody and dark histories to them that the clerics and priests prefer not to teach to thier flocks.

If Religion has such a dark and bloody history that it repulses people, then Atheism even more so.

Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, all avowed atheists. All explicitly pushing an ideology based upon atheism.

It is curious how people will criticize the sins of religious people, but act as though atheism has some kind of clean slate, when it by far exceeds any other religion in world history in the scale of the offenses its adherents have committed.

A lot of religious tenets seem to rely on false assumptions or false reasoning for why humans are the way we are.

The conceit that religion is needed for there to be morals, and that humanity is greater than other animals and the natural world in some mystical way, seems to be central to a lot of religious thought, or at least among the Abrahamatic groups.

Okay, so what are these false assumptions?

And what is it that morality is based upon then, without a moral lawgiver?

Famed historical philosophers have tried and failed to find a purely rational basis for morality. If you've come up with something, I'd certainly like to hear it.

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

If Religion has such a dark and bloody history that it repulses people, then Atheism even more so.

Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, all avowed atheists. All explicitly pushing an ideology based upon atheism.

It is curious how people will criticize the sins of religious people, but act as though atheism has some kind of clean slate, when it by far exceeds any other religion in world history in the scale of the offenses its adherents have committed.



Okay, so what are these false assumptions?

And what is it that morality is based upon then, without a moral lawgiver?

Famed historical philosophers have tried and failed to find a purely rational basis for morality. If you've come up with something, I'd certainly like to hear it.

No it hasn't. Communism is not an ideology, it is a religion in ideological clothing. I have already covered this. And really Atheism is a broad category that covers many things including religions like Theravada Buddhism, Communism, etc. And I don't think you can actually adhere to a negative, unless you active make a point about it and that actually varies from Atheist to Atheist. So I think your logic is rather suspect.

 

[LordsFire]

No it hasn't. Communism is not an ideology, it is a religion in ideological clothing. I have already covered this. And really Atheism is a broad category that covers many things including religions like Theravada Buddhism, Communism, etc. And I don't think you can actually adhere to a negative, unless you active make a point about it and that actually varies from Atheist to Atheist. So I think your logic is rather suspect.

They based their various forms of socialism on atheist ideology. Explicitly so.

If you can just say 'those Atheists don't count because they flavored it with X,' then I can just say 'those christians don't count because they flavored it with Y.'

Except the difference is Christianity does actually have clear moral teachings that are violated when 'christians' commit atrocities. Stalin didn't violate a single moral principle of atheism with what he did, because atheism has no moral principles.

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

They based their various forms of socialism on atheist ideology. Explicitly so.

If you can just say 'those Atheists don't count because they flavored it with X,' then I can just say 'those christians don't count because they flavored it with Y.'

Except the difference is Christianity does actually have clear moral teachings that are violated when 'christians' commit atrocities. Stalin didn't violate a single moral principle of atheism with what he did, because atheism has no moral principles.

I am saying they don't count, because no matter how much they stamp their feet and hoot and holler about being atheists, they aren't. They have a god, and one that demands bloody sacrifice.

And I think you are missing the point. Atheism is not a belief system, it is the lack of belief. So, talking about atheism having no moral principles is basically saying water is wet. If you don't believe in something that offers moral principles, then you need to find an alternative to it. And that reminds me, it is actually absurd to lump people together as a meaningful group over a lack of belief and then try to attribute wrongdoing to us as a whole. It is as absurd as attributing the vast majority of wrongdoing to people who don't believe in the FSM.

 

[Terthna]

I debated with myself about taking this topic seriously, but I decided not to. Because at this point? I don't think it merits it.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I debated with myself about taking this topic seriously, but I decided not to. Because at this point? I don't think it merits it.

didn't like that stinger in the end, but...it's truer than I wish to admit. Course the religious people will use this to say "see see when your a fan of somthing that means your worshiping it, which means the only thing you should be a fan of is my god."

 

[LordSunhawk]

I think some people are completely missing the point, or more accurately doing everything they possibly can to argue around the point without actually addressing it.

In the Merovingian Crusade they were dealing with a grave secular evil that repeatedly had cloaked itself in piety to evade the consequences for their actions. The Cathars were objectively evil, they engaged in mass infanticide to begin with. And every time in the past they had been engaged they had abused Christian ethics to evade justice. The final conclusion was that Satan would know his own, and God would know His own.

I already stated it was a sin on the part of the participants in the Crusade, but we are all sinful, for there are none who could stand when our Lord and Savior challenged us to let he without sin cast the first stone. Yet that is not the only thing in regards to grave secular evil He said, for he also cast the moneychangers and merchants from the Temple with a lash.

The Cathars were like unto the moneychangers in the Temple.

But unlike Atheism, unlike Wokeism, unlike Secularism, the Christian Faith has Grace. We accept that we have sinned, we acknowledge it, but we are able to face this truth without it crushing us because, by the Grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, by His death on the Cross, and by His Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven, we can have faith that our sin does not damn us, because He has saved us.

We on Earth are of the Church Militant, with all of our flaws, all of our sins, all of our errors, all of our imperfections, all of our failures, all of our weakness... all of our virtues, all of our acts of mercy, all of our successes, all of our love, all of our greatness. As a Catholic, it is our belief that upon our death, if we are not ourselves Saintly we shall become part of the Church Penitent, facing our faults and sins, and eventually joining the Saints in the Church Triumphant, standing before God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in eternal joy.

And I will note that the Catholic Church is just that, catholic, universal. It is for all people, not some small chosen few. All are called to be saved by the love and mercy of Our Lord. It matters not your ethnicity, your gender, or anything else. Jesus Christ died on the Cross for all of us, not just some of us, not just a few of us. He suffered death and was buried for all of our sins, He in His infinite and perfect mercy took upon Himself the burden of all of our burdens, the lash for all of our failures, the suffering for all of our sin.

I repeat, for all of us.

 

[LordsFire]

And I think you are missing the point. Atheism is not a belief system, it is the lack of belief. So, talking about atheism having no moral principles is basically saying water is wet. If you don't believe in something that offers moral principles, then you need to find an alternative to it. And that reminds me, it is actually absurd to lump people together as a meaningful group over a lack of belief and then try to attribute wrongdoing to us as a whole. It is as absurd as attributing the vast majority of wrongdoing to people who don't believe in the FSM.

The problem here, is that atheism is not a neutral point. Agnosticism is a neutral belief point, 'I don't know whether or not the divine exists.' Atheism is a proactive belief that there is no god, and that has theological, philosophical, and moral consequences.

If it were a lack of belief, that would be very different, but it is not. Atheism is the active rejection of the divine, and when this is carried out to its logical conclusion, totalitarianism is the result.

Yes, not every atheist is Stalin waiting to happen. Yes, atheists are entirely capable of acting in moral ways. That doesn't mean that it is rational for atheists to be moral. The concept of good and evil are alien to a purely materialistic ideology, and enlightened self-interested pragmatism is pretty much the closest you can get.

The major complicating factor, is that Atheism is built on a comprehensive rejection of self-apparent truths. At its root, it requires the denial of things which are obvious, such as complex systems with irreducible complexity requiring intelligent design. It has also failed to actually build a coherent moral system every time an atheist has tried, because it has no firm philosophical footing to stand upon.

This is why we get things like the modern rabid mobs of SJW/Antifa/BLM, actively hurting people, destroying property, and sometimes even killing, all while thinking they're moral. Because these ideologies are the fruit of post-modernism, which is built upon atheism, and in the end the only arbiter of right and wrong that they respect, is power.

Which is where atheistic moral systems always end up.

(This has been regarding western materialistic atheism. There are some schools of thought more eastern in origin that are pseudo-atheistic, and have different philosophy and ethics.)

 

[Morphic Tide]

At its root, it requires the denial of things which are obvious, such as complex systems with irreducible complexity requiring intelligent design.

The entire point of machine learning and evolutionary design is that this provably untrue, and unintelligent procedure can generate solutions wildly beyond available designers in a practical timeframe. They are a legitimate implementation of the "Chimps on Typewriters" hypothetical, where artificially constructed agents just barely capable of the basic kind of behavior you want are repeatedly thrown at the wall and iterated from the best performance until you end up with a solid answer.

We also have Fermi estimates, where blatant guesswork has a startling ability to generate useful answers from far too little information to call it proper reasoning. And the mind-twisting quantum "dice" making a solid case that the universe actually does have literal dumb luck built right into its basic functions.

It has also failed to actually build a coherent moral system every time an atheist has tried, because it has no firm philosophical footing to stand upon.

Yes, axioms are a bitch and a half to get to stick, can you cease to insist that your axiomatic acceptance of a specific form of the supernatural must be valid when it comes with an enormous pile of riders that aren't actually universal to religions? Many Asian faiths and the most famous of pre-Christian polytheism have fuck-all notion that the divine are intrinsically privileged moral actors, they are to be deferred to primarily due to retribution by naked force.

Christianity is an exceptionally logically poor ethics system, because the foundation of the morality requires vast swaths of justifications and elaborations to have legitimacy. An omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient creator being is not logically compatible with a "fallen world" without insane philosophical contortions.

Zoroastrianism resolves the problem by having an equal opponent responsible for the wrongs of the world. Islam resolves the problem by actually saying that pure good is against Allah's wishes because it precludes desired actions. Polytheistic faiths don't have this issue to begin with because they don't have all-encompassing creators, the "first cause" just gets the ball rolling and is otherwise limited in some fashion.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I can't find the scene without running into stupid memes so I will put the quote

"Where was Gondor when the Westfold fell? Where was Gondor when our enemies closed in around us!? "Where was Gon — No, my Lord Aragorn, we are alone."
​

some of us are really sick of hearing about how gondor will save us only for the criers to be proven wrong and make fools of Gondor over and over and over again.

Perhaps these thoughts are blasphimous, but forgive me for finding theodan just a bit relatable.

 

[ShieldWife]

There are so many things I could respond to here. I guess I’ll just start with my own thoughts regarding secular vs religious morality. Without a religion or higher power, how would we come up with our morals? Well, the same way we do now: a mix of humanism, utilitarianism, cultural biases, and preferences. Many religious people would talk about the absolute objective morality that their ideology provides, but in practice this couldn’t be further from the truth. The average American Christian is far closer in moral ideology to modern American atheists than they are to Christians from before the 1900’s. Religion is a Rorschach test, where a Christian can look at the Bible and see what he wants to see while ignoring what he doesn’t want to see. What “True Christianity” is seems to change with the times.

If you ask almost any modern Christian what actual Christian moral values are, they will spout off a bunch of post-Enlightenment or even Marxist ideas about all life having value, human rights, human equality, opposition to racism, slavery, or misogyny. It turns out, Christianity didn’t exist until the 20th century and all of those previous Christians were just pagans pretending. Very rare are the Christians who live the actual life which Christ advocated, Franciscan Mendicants being the notable exception. Rarer still, fortunately, are those Christians who would advocate the orc-like barbarism of the Old Testament with its genocide, slavery, rape, murder, and draconian punishments for bizarre rules: like death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath.

Christians discard the morals of the Bible with casual ease, dismissing living a life of poverty and pacifism with as much casual ease as they reject slavery or genocide, though both are encouraged in different parts of the Bible. Where do modern American Christians get their morality from? The same place that modern American atheists get their morality from: the culture and humanistic considerations.

I don’t mean to single out Christians for criticism here. I only mention Christianity because it is the religion of most of this forum’s theists. On the whole, I quite like Christians and most of my friends at Christians. Hate the sin, love the sinner, and all that

So, for a closer look at secular morality, let me discuss humanism and the way that it influences and might influence morality. By humanism, I mean in the broadest possible sense, that is to say a morality that encourages a code of conduct which benefits humans and is based on human wellbeing and flourishing. Morality isn’t an absolute objective reality that exists independent of humanity, floating around in the ether like some Platonic ideal. Morality is an emergent property of human nature, so it isn’t arbitrary either, any more than a glove having five fingers is arbitrary.

I don’t want to get punched in the face. You don’t want to get punched in the face. We agree that we won’t punch each other. That is the basis for morality. We, because of our innate human nature, are helped or harmed by certain things and so we create codes of conduct which minimize behavior which undermines beneficial cooperation and maximizes behavior which increases that beneficial cooperation. This is why nearly every culture has similar, yet still slightly different, systems of morality. Murder is always prohibited in every civilization, but exceptions for when people can be killed usually exist as well. Those exceptions are what we often disagree upon, not the general principle that people shouldn’t just go around killing each other.

Going back to the punching example. You don’t want to get punched, I don’t want to get punched, so we agree not to punch each other and thus is born morality. What if, you might say, that you want to punch me and you’re reasonably sure that you could get away with it if you did punch me? What would happen then? Well, you could punch me and I’d be punched and you wouldn’t face any consequences and it would suck for me. That is, unfortunately, the reality of human existence. People can do horrible things and possibly get away with it. It’s happened many times in the past and will happen in the future. All that we can do as mere mortals is to work to keep bad people from getting away with doing bad things.

Is such secular morality perfect? Absolutely not, just as humans are imperfect, but I would suggest that humanistic morality is not only better than the alternatives systems of morality, but in fact that most other systems of morality are largely based on humanistic morality and most objections to humanistic morality actually use humanistic morality to ground those objections.

Is atheism responsible for the crimes of the Soviet Union or other Marxist regimes? No, communism/Marxism can be blamed, because they are ideologies. Atheism isn’t an ideology, it’s just the lack of a particular set of beliefs. Most communists are atheists, but putting the blame on atheism for communism would be like blaming all theists for the actions of the Islamic State. I staunchly repudiate Marxism and so saying that I am in any way linked to communists would be as strange as admonishing Christians for Aztec human sacrifices because both Christians and Aztec pagans belief in a deity or deities. Also, I would come at morality from a humanistic position, and Marxists can’t be humanists because they actually don’t believe in humanity. They think that humans are a blank slate, that there are no such things as males or females, that human nature is a social construct that can be brushed away to create the New Socialist Man - so just about the opposite of what an atheist like me believes.