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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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I'd say it's worked pretty well. I'd be curious to hear why you think it hasn't. From what I've read, war, death and violence are lower now than they have ever been in history. Hunger is on the decline even though population is on the rise. Rights of people like racial minorities, women, disabled people and queer people are better on average that they've ever been. That sounds like roaring success to me (though we obviously still have lots of work to do).
There's no rule for how this morality evolves. That's part of what we've been figuring out as a society. Morality is messy and we're always working together to work out the best way to handle issues that come up in our society. We used to say that it was a dictatorship (like with Pharaohs, kings, Gods, etc.) but as time has gone on, more and more people are in on the conversation. I'd like to think that it's a sort of conversation, both rational and emotional, where we work together to find what's best for all of us. These conversations can get heated, but that's where you get things like the Civil Rights Movement, which was a difficult and incredibly necessary conflict that completely changed our moral fabric. It makes sense that the majority view would form the community's accepted moral code, but as we see throughout history, that continues to morph.
Jade, thumbs up. :)
Jade, so if the majority agree that killing Jews in death camps is moral like the nazis does that make it a morally correct action.
No, it just means that's the moral opinion of the majority at the time. I don't think our current majority-accepted moral code is perfect either (also, I don't think "perfectly moral" is an actual thing, but rather an ideal that we strive for). This is the point of our moral evolution. At any point in history, there have been moral ideas held firmly that we now look back on with horror. For instance, in Biblical times, it was believed that the following sins should be punished by death: adultery, worshiping other gods, homosexual sex, cursing a parent, a woman found to not be a virgin on her wedding night. The current majority in the US would say that these are barbaric, cruel and immoral ideas. Anyone who still holds these moral standards would be viewed as a monster, and anyone who carried them out would be imprisoned.
I'm sure that future humanity will look back at our current time and see plenty that is immoral - perhaps things that we aren't even aware of right now. And I think that's great. The aim is that each generation's world becomes a little better.
"Jade, so if the majority agree that killing Jews in death camps is moral like the nazis does that make it a morally correct action."
Why in your opinion is it immoral?
You might want to bear in mind that only theists were allowed into the SS, and in Germany that mean christians, and Hitlers antisemitism was based on centuries of virulent European Christianity's antisemitism. So citing religion here might be difficult.
AJ777,
"who gets to decide what best serves humanity?"
Maybe we can let the magic rock in Mecca make the decisions? Some people think that it has special powers.
Works better than when religion told us what to do.
AJ777: "Stone Jade, who gets to decide what best serves humanity? The majority? The government? That hasn’t worked so well so far."
And religion has? At least secular human values have proven to be more moral than any religion has offered. The happiest nations on Earth are those that are secular by a great majoritive margin. You seriously need to get of your mom's basement and do some research. Those books of lies ain't done any society any good.
rmfr
Ever been to China arakish? Who has decided that happiness is a good to be pursued. In your relativistic world there can be no such thing as good or bad. How do you know what progress towards better morality looks like if there is no objective standard by which to judge? You don’t.
@ AJ777
“
Ever been to China arakish?
”
Yes I have. Five times. What the fuck does that have to with the price of tea in Boston?
“
Who has decided that happiness is a good to be pursued. In your relativistic world there can be no such thing as good or bad. How do you know what progress towards better morality looks like if there is no objective standard by which to judge? You don’t.
”
Since there is no objective morality, which we have proven beyond shadow of a doubt...
Why are you still being a dodging weasel and a liar?
======================================================================
Have you returned to stop using avoidance and muddying the waters? Have you returned to stop skipping over our questions or shifting our questions with a question of your own? Have you returned to stop squirimg away from questions for which you have no answer and ready to admit “I do not know” when you do not have answer? Have you returned to stop dancing around by spewing presupposed assumtive assertion with no evidence after presupposed assumtive assertion with no evidence after presupposed assumtive assertion with no evidence? Have you returned to act like a human being and to treat others like a human being?
If your only purpose here is to play your stupid “merry-go-around” games with doing nothing more than asking your questions, but not answering anybody else's questions, then the best I could give you is to volutarily, “Leave now. Never come back.”
======================================================================
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And do not forgot to address the questions directly posed and implied in this short essay...
There is no philosophical ideology more divisive than religion. Religion does nothing but pervert, demoralize, subvert, and bribe all persons with the belief that it alone possesses the one and only truth. And, the worst part of ANY religion is that it is an ideology that is implicitly and explicitly protected from any and all criticism from both within and without. Why should any ideology, especially religion, be so privileged? Can you not see how disastrous this way of thinking can be, and is?
I know religion is, and has always been, tremendously harmful to Humanity. I know that religions, and their way of thinking, and their theological disagreements, have created the greatest violence, destruction, injury, death, bigotry, harm, immorality, intolerance, wickedness, and abuse to the human species than any other cause. The main problem is not religious fundamentalism, but the fundamentals of religion. Religion’s loose version of “morality,” has NO place in a civilized society.
Sure. You can argue that it is the extremists, not the doctrine. All this says to me is that you have never truly read the various doctrines. It is both. Extremists might be using it as an excuse, but it is an excuse that the religious texts readily provide. I firmly believe, and shall take this belief to my grave, that the human species would have been much better off had there NEVER been ANY form of religion. EVER!
I see NO evidence of ANY gods, but plenty of evidence of religion’s harm.
And I am a lot more concerned with the welfare of my fellow human beings than I am about “offending” or “hurting the feelings” of a bunch of barbarians who choose to believe in the faerie tales of an obsolete, irrelevant, savage, offensive, and unsubstantiated, immoral Bronze and Iron Age religious text about a make-believe imaginative Sky Faerie and Magic Lich Virgin.
Offended? So the fuck what!
Ultimately, it is Religion that is Humankind’s worst enemy.
rmfr
Well you can't even say why it is immoral to torture children, so you must see why you constantly making this accusation seems absurd?
"How do you know what progress towards better morality looks like if there is no objective standard by which to judge? You don’t."
How do you know religious rules are moral? If you can assess what is moral then why do you need divine diktat, if you can't then you may be following rules that are entirely immoral and you wouldn't know. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. At least with secular morals we can use the only tools we have, our intellect and reason. Without those we're just amoral automatons.
Going based on whether a state considers itself secular or not is no reliable guide of whether it actually is secular:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_state#List_of_self-described_secul...
Similar to countries that claim to be democracies or otherwise ruled by the consent of their population, e.g. the People's Republic of China or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Your reasoning is nonsense.
@ AJ777
Still being the deceitful, evasive, misleading, alternating the discussion lying squirmy eel.
I am just going to come out say the truth. You, kind sir, are a fucking liar. Cannot be ad hominem when it is truth.
You only say, "Your reasoning is nonsense," because you cannot refute my reasoning and logic. The epitome of a fucking liar.
Sorry Admins/Mods. I am through with dealing with this fucking liar.
rmfr
If objective morality exists and it comes from the Bible (or the Quran), then we'd still be talking about how to treat slaves 'morally', instead of condemning slavery as something that's completely immoral.
What group of people do you think ended new world slavery? It wasn’t atheists. How could slavery be immoral if morality is whatever you want it to be?
Whoever ended slavery, certainly didin’t do it in accordance with the teachings of any holy book. That’s for sure.
"What group of people do you think ended new world slavery? It wasn’t atheists. How could slavery be immoral if morality is whatever you want it to be?"
What a shameless lie. Are you seriously saying the slave traders from the UK, and the plantation owners in the southern states weren't christians? And of course there were atheists and secularists among the abolitionist, nearly everyone was religious then so the fact a small minority went against the teachings of the bible and Jesus himself to denounce slavery hardly justifies this shameful lie.
"How could slavery be immoral if morality is whatever you want it to be?"
It's condoned again and again in your bible, even by Jesus, so wtf are you talking about, according to your beliefs it's not immoral at all, that's the point.
Could you give some statistics about the percentage of atheists in the general population whenever and wherever slavery was banned?
For example, according to one study in "World Christian Encyclopedia", the percentage of atheists worldwide in 1900 was 0.014%.
Could you also mention instances where slavery was ended where atheists in society were not persecuted or otherwise discriminated against? e.g. in the United Kingdom, it was a criminal offense for politicians to be atheists until 1888, more than 50 years after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
Christianity is centrally founded on enslavement: Christians are told in their dogma to obey their masters on earth like they would obey their master in heaven.
Sapporo: "Christianity is centrally founded on enslavement: Christians are told in their dogma to obey their masters on earth like they would obey their master in heaven."
And adding...
And this is just one of my propositions that makes religion Pure Evil. “If truly read properly, the Bible is the greatest tool for atheism.” — paraphrased from Isaac Asimov.
If you were to truly read the Bible properly, you would see it is nothing but a form of enslaving oneself to a human created sky faerie. How can anyone say enslaving oneself to a make believe collection of plagiarized and re-written myths and legends from thousands of years prior to the Bible becoming written?
No thanks. I like my FREEDOM! Paraphrasing Patrick Henry, “Give me freedom from religion, or just kill me now.” I would rather be dead than to knowingly enslave myself to a make-believe totalitarian tyrant.
rmfr
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