Does your so called Utopian soceity that spits in God's face:
Misrepresentation again.
You're the one falsely calling it a utopian society. Look to the log in yer own eye. As for 'spitting in God's eye' - by that token, Christians are 'spitting in Vishnu's eye'. God is simply irrelevant to most atheists, not part of their everyday lives or thoughts.
#1. Watch porn?
#2. Treat women as sexual objects?
#3. Hate others?
#4. Steal?
#5. Fight amongst each other?
#6. Listen to satanic music or satanic bands?
#7. Gets drunk?
#8. Gets drunk and then drives?
#9. Swears profanities?
#10. Smokes pot or does drugs?
Are you living in a monastery? In the real world, you'll find most of those are done by many people of all belief systems (btw you left out pedophilia, a favourite among priests), although some would rather not admit it. Some on the list are more generally shunned than others (although blasphemous swearing is a Christian speciality) - but what are 'satanic music' or 'satanic bands' supposed to be? can you give examples?
I know they do not define morality. I never said they did.
OK, my mistake - so perhaps you could explain what you meant by, "the morals of what is defined in the news media"?
I am just trying to figure out where you are getting your standard of morality from in a belief system where morals are subjective to the individual.
I already explained that; they're not subjective to the individual except in as much as they're the internalised mores of the individual's social group.
In the world of Evolution: Morals are only to temporary get what a person wants and morals are not a natural outflow of doing good as a part of having a changed heart by God.
Nope; morals are social constructs built on basic traits that promote group cooperation, and consequently, survival.
If Evolution was this awesome and good thing, we would see all of humanity evolving to do good only and not evil. So your concept of evolution is flawed. It doesn't work well.
I'm afraid it's your concept of evolution that's flawed. Evolution is neither a 'good thing' nor a 'bad thing', it's just a natural process. Those better adapted to their environment tend to produce more viable offspring than those less well adapted, so over time, the population as a whole becomes better adapted for that environment. There's no goal, and no intrinsic concept of morality, beyond what we project onto it. The underlying basis on which the morals of societies are built can be demonstrated by game theory which can put numbers to the benefits to groups of cooperation, fairness, sharing, punishing transgressions, altruism, etc. These basic 'moral' traits can be observed in many animals.
You have to take into account that your precious Evolution allows for evil. Then again, in the Evolution universe, there really is no such thing. It's survival of the fittest.
That's right. Higher vertebrates may have simple moral concepts, but only humans have created the mythos of Good and Evil and the supernatural entities that represent them; fortunately only a few are so consumed with them that they must view everything through that polarising filter, but they can be the most dangerous of all - they're
extremists.
Sin can go unreported by the law and the country itself is in support of various sins.
That's true - if you define normative behaviours as sinful, the world will seem like a sinful place.
In reality, Sweden is the rape capital of the world.
No, that's South Africa.
Sweden is 2nd, and the good old USA third. But you picked the exception; in other criminal figures (see the links I posted earlier), the USA is way ahead of Sweden, near the top of the list, and Sweden is way down the list of countries.
You are living in a dream world if you think that.
Check the links I posted earlier - you can find detailed figures for all major Western European countries.
The US is one of the most prosperous nations because we recognize God.
That's fine for wealthy God-botherers, but does God not approve of equitable income distribution?
the bottom 50% take home less than 12% of national income and the top 1% take home over 20%.
It's possible, but we cannot know for sure what was in his heart.
In either case, I am sure it would not change your mind either way what he believed.
If we cannot know, then that's pointless speculation. If we had some objective way to measure sincerity, I'd accept the outcome of that measure, but since this person was a gruesome serial killer and diagnosed psychopath, and the common social traits of a psychopath are:
(the first 5 of Cleckley's original list of 16 symptoms of a psychopath)
1. Considerable superficial charm and average or above average intelligence.
2. Absence of delusions and other signs of irrational thinking
3. Absence of anxiety or other "neurotic" symptoms considerable poise, calmness, and verbal facility.
4. Unreliability, disregard for obligations no sense of responsibility, in matters of little and great import.
5. Untruthfulness and insincerity
I'm inclined to take his emotional conversion stories with a large pinch of salt, however sincere they may have sounded. However, he probably had episodes of depression (see
The Personality of J Dahmer), so it's possible that he was sincere in wishing to convert -
at that time; but severe psychopathy is not a disorder that just goes away when you promise to be good - its basis is abnormal or under-development of the paralimbic area of the brain, where social emotions are processed, leaving them, to varying extents, without empathy, sympathy, compassion, conscience, or regret for their actions.
