What is Morality?...

[Rockhopper]

Interesting concept and worth exploring!



Tim.

[Lenzabi]

Good points, sadly he does deliver them with a condescending tone which can be off putting. Many Atheists are from over bearing Christian households, a few from disaffected Jews, and others.

Oddly, thought "God" demanded that the Hebrews go genocidal in the land of Caanan, they looked at that and said in a nutshell, "God is nuts! You can;t just go whole heartedly wipe out a whole group of people."

I think that many rational people see that what is called moral behavior is simply good social behavior for positive reciprocity as opposed to the negative reciprocity that mis-treatment fosters

[Mordae]

Well said Len. The way I look at it, morality is a set of guiding principals that you live by. Those that live by a set of diametrically opposed principals are what we consider evil.

[Rockhopper]

Yep agree with both of you. Morality is a set of guiding principles to live by. It is usually set by our up-bringing and the environment we grow up in.

Basically it's being decent to oneself and to others. Being fair in one's dealings and honest with people. Your word is your bond kind of thing!

Tim.

[Lenzabi]

Yep agree with both of you. Morality is a set of guiding principles to live by. It is usually set by our up-bringing and the environment we grow up in.

Basically it's being decent to oneself and to others. Being fair in one's dealings and honest with people. Your word is your bond kind of thing!

Tim.

Yep, deal honestly and in good manners and usually the same is returned to you. Not always, some people do tend to prefer to take advantage of good natured people, but then wonder after they have abused the other that they no longer can get favors done for them, but are expected to pay up front first.

[Monk (in hiding)]

Atheists meeting in worship?

[Lenzabi]

Atheists meeting in worship?

Hardly. I mean based on Atheistic mindsets in general, I am what they would call a theist of some sort.

[Agartha]

I'll watch after dinner and come back to it.

[Agartha]

I also didn't like the way he based his video mocking the Christian faith. I am not a Christian anymore but  I don't like personal attacks on any belief (or lack of).

But, going back to the topic, I have learned over the years that morality seems to have different meanings in different cultures, this due to the fact that they do not perceive what's right or wrong in the same way.

[Rockhopper]

So I wasn't alone in picking up the the author could be called a "Millitant Atheist" then.

It has some good advice but could have been worded better and more diplomatically.

Tim.

[Monk (in hiding)]

“Seven Deadly Sins

Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Science without humanity
Knowledge without character
Politics without principle
Commerce without morality
Worship without sacrifice.”
Mahatma Gandhi

“The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.”
C.G. Jung

“The seriousness of throwing over hell whilst still clinging to the Atonement is obvious. If there is no punishment for sin there can be no self-forgiveness for it. If Christ paid our score, and if there is no hell and therefore no chance of our getting into trouble by forgetting the obligation, then we can be as wicked as we like with impunity inside the secular law, even from self-reproach, which becomes mere ingratitude to the Savior. On the other hand, if Christ did not pay our score, it still stands against us; and such debts make us extremely uncomfortable. The drive of evolution, which we call conscience and honor, seizes on such slips, and shames us to the dust for being so low in the scale as to be capable of them. The 'saved' thief experiences an ecstatic happiness which can never come to the honest atheist: he is tempted to steal again to repeat the glorious sensation. But if the atheist steals he has no such happiness. He is a thief and knows that he is a thief. Nothing can rub that off him. He may try to sooth his shame by some sort of restitution or equivalent act of benevolence; but that does not alter the fact that he did steal; and his conscience will not be easy until he has conquered his will to steal and changed himself into an honest man...

Now though the state of the believers in the atonement may thus be the happier, it is most certainly not more desirable from the point of view of the community. The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable question; but a nation of Socrateses would be much safer and happier than a nation of Wesleys; and its individuals would be higher in the evolutionary scale. At all events it is in the Socratic man and not in the Wesleyan that our hope lies now.

Consequently, even if it were mentally possible for all of us to believe in the Atonement, we should have to cry off it, as we evidently have a right to do. Every man to whom salvation is offered has an inalienable natural right to say 'No, thank you: I prefer to retain my full moral responsibility: it is not good for me to be able to load a scapegoat with my sins: I should be less careful how I committed them if I knew they would cost me nothing.'”
George Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion

[Rockhopper]

Militant Atheists are not doing us any favours with that attitude and they need to tone it down somewhat. That's why I don't agree with Dawkins or others like him.

I simply don't care about the beliefs of others, they can believe in whatever they wish. I do disagree with others trying to impose their beliefs on me. Beliefs are often deeply personal to the believer and one has to be aware of that.

Morality is not just having a religious belief. It has a much deeper and meaningful way in which people behave in a society.

Tim.

[Lenzabi]

There are Atheists that speak about other religions in a more sensible and non-hostile way, these are born to and brought up Atheists, it is usually I find the Atheists that ripped themselves away from a Christian(3000 sub sects) of some form or another that was over bearing and unforgiving. This makes the people who become Atheists, Pagans, Satanists, or other philosophy likely to also still regard their parental religion as an enemy to be overcome, so I think that is where the Militant Atheist is coming from.

I also have no issues with those that go about their day with their personal faith for themselves and will discuss their faith calmly and rationally when asked.

I do not however enjoy the loud and over bearing "God shouter" the Proselytizer, the Bible Thumpers who apparently have to go and re-inforce their faith via cramming it down the throats of others, as if they need to show that they embrace their religion and are stable in their faith, I usually found them shaky and not stable and easily lead astray.

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