Hey, Atheists...

[Akita Suggagaki]

Perhaps what you'd actually like to know is how you might go about "changing someone's moral values".

No.

I would like to know what their basis of moral values is if not some religious belief.

 

[Injeun]

...... Well, the truth is, today's atheists DON'T share the same moral set that Christians do. In fact, like some Christians, they can vary in their moral opinions, as well as on which Ethical Position should trump all others. So no, they are not "essentially the same" since so much of today's secular morality invokes Marxist and Nietzschean moral ideology, neither of which are copacetic with the New Testament morality (or Ethos).

Moreover, you actually ARE advancing your Mormon ideology here since you come in with "guns blazing" against Traditional Christianity. It's a fallacy to assume that if Traditional Christians are to blame for various hypocrisies that this then makes your own view automatically valid. It could be that neither view is valid and both have to be critically analyzed, or it could be the Traditional View of morality we find in the New Testament is valid, but your Mormon predilections, emanating from the Book of Mormon, are invalid as criteria by which to evaluate traditional Christianity.

Not all of us simply default to lazy, uneducated means of the sort of 'suckage' you're referring to here, however. Some of us are critical thinkers who apply rational deliberation and qualification to every claim that is sent their way.


And from my perspective, there is absolutely nothing superior about either any of various Secular, Atheistic senses of morality, or the Mormon sense of morality. So, you can save everyone the trouble of having to sift through your parody of Christians and their moral failures and thereby implying that Traditional Christians couldn't possibly be any nearer to the Lord than anyone else.

Furthermore, biblically speaking, HUMAN CONSCIENCE isn't the moral standard, even if it is absolutely true than any and all of us can always to better morally than we so often do.

I was fortunate to be born into a non religious family. We didn't pray or go to Church. So I was spared indoctrination into any organized religious belief. I didn't know anything about Christianity or Atheism. We simply lived our lives according to conscience, and took people as they were and the days as they unfolded. Since then I've come to be acquainted with both. In my estimation, bible based religion which parades as Christianity is simply Atheism with an attitude. It's all cosplay. There is no God, spirit, or authority in it. In that respect, Atheists are more honorable because they don't pretend to serve God. There are good and bad among Atheists and Christians. America's Forefathers didn't establish religious liberty out of a fear of professed Atheists. It was professed Christians from whom they escaped, declared their independence and held a healthy mistrust. So they made certain that the first amendment to the Constitution secured our religious liberty. They were well versed in the knowledge that the first false church of man and all of its Daughters after Gods original Church had fallen into apostasy, which was formed and allied with powerful governments with an eye towards conquering the world in Gods name, was a thing not to be trusted or allowed to rule. Our liberty and equality originate in God, not from any particular religion or image worship. You may call this a segue to my Church and religion, as if it were somehow deceptive. But it's simply the truth.

 

[Ana the Ist]

No.

I would like to know what their basis of moral values is if not some religious belief.

Uh....broadly speaking, if they're from an English first nation, they're almost certainly deriving their morals from the larger moral norms of their societies...

If you go back far enough, that almost certainly means a judeo-christian moral foundation.

Hope that helps.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Uh....broadly speaking, if they're from an English first nation, they're almost certainly deriving their morals from the larger moral norms of their societies...

If you go back far enough, that almost certainly means a judeo-christian moral foundation.

Hope that helps.

I was hoping to hear Aristotle and Plato.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I was fortunate to be born into a non religious family. We didn't pray or go to Church. So I was spared indoctrination into any organized religious belief. I didn't know anything about Christianity or Atheism. We simply lived our lives according to conscience, and took people as they were and the days as they unfolded. Since then I've come to be acquainted with both. In my estimation, bible based religion which parades as Christianity is simply Atheism with an attitude. It's all cosplay. There is no God, spirit, or authority in it. In that respect, Atheists are more honorable because they don't pretend to serve God. There are good and bad among Atheists and Christians. America's Forefathers didn't establish religious liberty out of a fear of professed Atheists. It was professed Christians from whom they escaped, declared their independence and held a healthy mistrust. So they made certain that the first amendment to the Constitution secured our religious liberty. They were well versed in the knowledge that the first false church of man and all of its Daughters after Gods original Church had fallen into apostasy, which was formed and allied with powerful governments with an eye towards conquering the world in Gods name, was a thing not to be trusted or allowed to rule. Our liberty and equality originate in God, not from any particular religion or image worship. You may call this a segue to my Church and religion, as if it were somehow deceptive. But it's simply the truth.

"It's all cosplay," you say.

...........ok then. Are are you inferring here that ALL of the academic and scholarly sources which have informed me of my own understanding of both Christianity and Atheism (and science) are corrupt and erroneous and therefore useless and unreal?????????????

 

[Ana the Ist]

I was hoping to hear Aristotle and Plato.

Why?

Aristotle has influenced quite enough thought throughout history....I don't think we should be disappointed in his contributions to morality or lack thereof.

Plato was basically just a virtue ethicist....right?

I don't recall his explanation well....but I do think it was tied to specific virtues that he thought (wrongly) everyone strove for.

I'll give them credit for starting where they must have had little to go off before them....but no. I don't think they did a very good job at describing morals. They fell prey to the common philosophical problem of trying to describe morality without any serious understanding of "how" and "why"...they only have a real consideration of "what" morals are....and that's a problem for many philosophers. It's the worst place to start.

After all, I think we want to think of ourselves as basically good...not evil. We also want to think or morals rationally justified...so our moral judgements aren't arbitrary or purely emotional.

The problem is that you end up with purely abstract morals or virtues....widely open to interpretation and unsurprisingly, no way to rationally prove one's position.

Better to consider the "how" and "why" first....what they are becomes apparent, if unsatisfactory.

 

[Hans Blaster]

"It's all cosplay," you say.

...........ok then. Are are you inferring here that ALL of the academic and scholarly sources which have informed me of my own understanding of both Christianity and Atheism (and science) are corrupt and erroneous and therefore useless and unreal?????????????

Who knows about your understanding of Christianity, but your sources (probably not ALL of them) have failed you if you think "Atheism" is a thing. There is no such doctrine or philosophy.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Who knows about your understanding of Christianity, but your sources (probably not ALL of them) have failed you if you think "Atheism" is a thing. There is no such doctrine or philosophy.

Atheism????????????? The guy I was responding to is a Mormon and I was primarily targeting his beliefs, not atheism. From ALL of the books and sources I have on atheism, I'm already quite aware of the epistemic claim among atheists that atheism isn't a worldview. I get that, so you can save some time in trying to educate me about the obvious. We've talked about this hash before, and there's no need for either of us to repeat the same slog, Hans.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Why?

Aristotle has influenced quite enough thought throughout history....I don't think we should be disappointed in his contributions to morality or lack thereof.

Plato was basically just a virtue ethicist....right?

I don't recall his explanation well....but I do think it was tied to specific virtues that he thought (wrongly) everyone strove for.

I'll give them credit for starting where they must have had little to go off before them....but no. I don't think they did a very good job at describing morals. They fell prey to the common philosophical problem of trying to describe morality without any serious understanding of "how" and "why"...they only have a real consideration of "what" morals are....and that's a problem for many philosophers. It's the worst place to start.

After all, I think we want to think of ourselves as basically good...not evil. We also want to think or morals rationally justified...so our moral judgements aren't arbitrary or purely emotional.

The problem is that you end up with purely abstract morals or virtues....widely open to interpretation and unsurprisingly, no way to rationally prove one's position.

Better to consider the "how" and "why" first....what they are becomes apparent, if unsatisfactory.

I agree. And this is why some of us actually take Ethics and Epistemology classes at the university..... so we can find out that none of this stuff is as easy to come by as our intuitions tell us it should be. Of course, various power brokers won't like the fact that their political stance lies upon shifting ground. They've been discovered and their power as morality overseers is sorely lacking in its justification.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Atheism????????????? The guy I was responding to is a Mormon and I was primarily targeting his beliefs, not atheism.

And mormon beliefs have nothing to do with this thread, on the otherhand your apparent confusion about "Atheism" is relevant to the topic. You can have your theological fights elsewhere.

From ALL of the books and sources I have on atheism, I'm already quite aware of the epistemic claim among atheists that atheism isn't a worldview. I get that, so you can save some time in trying to educate me about the obvious. We've talked about this hash before, and there's no need for either of us to repeat the same slog, Hans.

And yet here you are persisting that it is just a "claim". There is exactly nothing other than not believing in any gods that is required to take the label. Nothing to base a philosophy or worldview around. As you clearly know, there are atheists of all political, philosophical, and moral stripes. They believe in all sorts of supernatural things (though I do not and did not), just not gods. Some of them even participate in theistic religion (as was the case for my friend who told me that they were an atheist and went to church with the spouse and kids each week and triggered my own realization). Realizing that I no longer believed and that "atheist" was the proper label for me had no impact on my life. I did the same things. I didn't reassess all of my philosophical and ethical positions. I didn't go home thinking I had to abandon ABC positions and find replacements like XYZ. Nope, I'm sure I went home and fixed and ate supper and watched TV while browsing the 'net on my laptop, just like the day before. I didn't have any need to seek out "atheist content" or read "atheist literature". I only know approximately when this "event" took place within a few months because of how it fits relative to other things in my life, not because it has some impact. So as to the topic of the thread...

WARNING: On topic material follows

We get our ethics and morals the same way as everyone else. We hear moral and ethical claims and we incorporate them or not based on our prior moral/ethical positions and "gut feelings". If we accept the authority of the propagator of a moral claim we may accept it based on that authority alone, from an adult as a child or from our religion or philosophical school if we choose one. Some people prioritize the moral precept of their religion (obviously not atheists) or philosophy (ancient or modern) over other sources and others (like me) take it in bit by bit.

By the time I began the period of doubt that lead me out of religion I had taken in some to most of a bunch of moral and ethical frameworks.

Basic human morality
Basic Christian morality
Secular American morality/ethics
American civic ethics
Catholic "seamless cloth" (sic?) life morality
Professional scientific ethics

I had also started to reject (or replace) bit by bit much of the Catholic sexual and "life" moralities that I had previously accepted. Losing my religion had no real change in the general process of (re)evaluating moral positions as they came up in my life or the society around me except that I no longer gave any special credence to the one non-parental moral "authority" had once accepted. Not surprisingly, I have come to reject most of those Catholic pro-life and sexual doctrines ironically with largest exception being my general opposition to executions as punishment, which is a Church doctrine that many of the most ardent "pro-life" Catholics reject. Go figure.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

Better to consider the "how" and "why" first....what they are becomes apparent, if unsatisfactory.

But we still need a basis to evaluate those "whys and hows".

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

By the time I began the period of doubt that lead me out of religion I had taken in some to most of a bunch of moral and ethical frameworks.

Basic human morality
Basic Christian morality
Secular American morality/ethics
American civic ethics
Catholic "seamless cloth" (sic?) life morality
Professional scientific ethics

I had also started to reject (or replace) bit by bit much of the Catholic sexual and "life" moralities that I had previously accepted. Losing my religion had no real change in the general process of (re)evaluating moral positions as they came up in my life or the society around me except that I no longer gave any special credence to the one non-parental moral "authority" had once accepted. Not surprisingly, I have come to reject most of those Catholic pro-life and sexual doctrines ironically with largest exception being my general opposition to executions as punishment, which is a Church doctrine that many of the most ardent "pro-life" Catholics reject. Go figure.

Tell us about your current functioning moral framework.

 

[Injeun]

"It's all cosplay," you say.

...........ok then. Are are you inferring here that ALL of the academic and scholarly sources which have informed me of my own understanding of both Christianity and Atheism (and science) are corrupt and erroneous and therefore useless and unreal?????????????

I'm saying that while the bible may be holy. That which is built upon it is not. The bible teaches one gospel, one Christ, and one God. That which is built upon it teaches tens of thousands of different gospels, Christs, and Gods. I don't make it that way. It has made itself that way. I'm just examining it. Is that a sin?

 

[zippy2006]

There is exactly nothing other than not believing in any gods that is required to take the label.

"Atheism" has meant a lot of different things throughout history. One thing it has never meant is, "Lack of belief in gods." This "New Atheist" propaganda was a fad that has now largely died out.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Tell us about your current functioning moral framework.

I kind of did. I won't claim there is any general organizing principle or coherency, nor was there when I went to church. Among other things I value "informed consent", "minimization of harm", and "personal autonomy". None of these is an absolute nor the overriding "foundation". Sometimes one principle clashes with the other and that's when the interesting things occur. The rest of it is all rather boring.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

And mormon beliefs have nothing to do with this thread, on the otherhand your apparent confusion about "Atheism" is relevant to the topic. You can have your theological fights elsewhere.


And yet here you are persisting that it is just a "claim". There is exactly nothing other than not believing in any gods that is required to take the label. Nothing to base a philosophy or worldview around. As you clearly know, there are atheists of all political, philosophical, and moral stripes. They believe in all sorts of supernatural things (though I do not and did not), just not gods. Some of them even participate in theistic religion (as was the case for my friend who told me that they were an atheist and went to church with the spouse and kids each week and triggered my own realization). Realizing that I no longer believed and that "atheist" was the proper label for me had no impact on my life. I did the same things. I didn't reassess all of my philosophical and ethical positions. I didn't go home thinking I had to abandon ABC positions and find replacements like XYZ. Nope, I'm sure I went home and fixed and ate supper and watched TV while browsing the 'net on my laptop, just like the day before. I didn't have any need to seek out "atheist content" or read "atheist literature". I only know approximately when this "event" took place within a few months because of how it fits relative to other things in my life, not because it has some impact. So as to the topic of the thread...

WARNING: On topic material follows

We get our ethics and morals the same way as everyone else. We hear moral and ethical claims and we incorporate them or not based on our prior moral/ethical positions and "gut feelings". If we accept the authority of the propagator of a moral claim we may accept it based on that authority alone, from an adult as a child or from our religion or philosophical school if we choose one. Some people prioritize the moral precept of their religion (obviously not atheists) or philosophy (ancient or modern) over other sources and others (like me) take it in bit by bit.

By the time I began the period of doubt that lead me out of religion I had taken in some to most of a bunch of moral and ethical frameworks.

Basic human morality
Basic Christian morality
Secular American morality/ethics
American civic ethics
Catholic "seamless cloth" (sic?) life morality
Professional scientific ethics

I had also started to reject (or replace) bit by bit much of the Catholic sexual and "life" moralities that I had previously accepted. Losing my religion had no real change in the general process of (re)evaluating moral positions as they came up in my life or the society around me except that I no longer gave any special credence to the one non-parental moral "authority" had once accepted. Not surprisingly, I have come to reject most of those Catholic pro-life and sexual doctrines ironically with largest exception being my general opposition to executions as punishment, which is a Church doctrine that many of the most ardent "pro-life" Catholics reject. Go figure.

And if you've noticed from what I've said earlier on and elsewhere, I've indicated I know that atheists are generally moral and can't be said to have "no" morals.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I'm saying that while the bible may be holy. That which is built upon it is not. The bible teaches one gospel, one Christ, and one God. That which is built upon it teaches tens of thousands of different gospels, Christs, and Gods. I don't make it that way. It has made itself that way. I'm just examining it. Is that a sin?

The Bible can be, and will always be, built upon in 9 billion different ways. Why? Because no one can agree on what the 'official' praxis is where hermeneutics and biblical exegesis and the nature of revelation are concerned.

I know one thing----mormonism doesn't have anything to crow about in either scholarly or moral (or spiritual) superiority over any other Christian sect. And neither do athiests.

 

[Hans Blaster]

And if you've noticed from what I've said earlier on and elsewhere, I've indicated I know that atheists are generally moral and can't be said to have "no" morals.

Oh good grief. I didn't claim that you made any such claim. Just that you were still clinging to the notion that "Atheism" might be some sort of worldview (w/ or w/o moral claims, I don't know what you were claiming on that front.), which is nonsense as I clearly stated above.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Oh good grief. I didn't claim that you made any such claim. Just that you were still clinging to the notion that "Atheism" might be some sort of worldview (w/ or w/o moral claims, I don't know what you were claiming on that front.), which is nonsense as I clearly stated above.

No, I didn't say that, and I'm rather tiring of you continuing with that assertion. Please stop. I already know about the history and diversity of thought that can be found among centuries worth [millennias worth, really] of atheists and skeptics.

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

I kind of did. I won't claim there is any general organizing principle or coherency, nor was there when I went to church. Among other things I value "informed consent", "minimization of harm", and "personal autonomy". None of these is an absolute nor the overriding "foundation". Sometimes one principle clashes with the other and that's when the interesting things occur. The rest of it is all rather boring.

"informed consent", "minimization of harm", and "personal autonomy" Well that sounds like a foundation that most people could agree on with the realization that sometimes one principle clashes with the other. Then I guess we need a process to deal with the clashes.