Atheists: Is stealing wrong? If so, explain why.

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it is better to make a solution of sultanas than a solution of currents.
currents are gritty and stick to the blender blades

What's a sultana?

[quote]What's wrong with the current solution?[/quote]
Our current solution is a waste of tax dollars and the victim usually does not receive just compensation for the theft. This would also cause store owners to be hyper-vigilant when looking for thieves.
Mind you, I am speaking of shoplifting or stealing from an acquaintance at a party and the like, not burglary or breaking and entering. In the latter cases, they should be forced to pay up and be incarcerated for a period of time.

it is like a raisin.
very googlable

haha great derailment

when the opposite happens its called capitalism

I have a very strange dog. This dog ravenously loves to eat. However, inevitably, the food eventually disappears. Presumably, you and I would reason, because the dog has eaten it. However, my dog is far too smart for this. She knows that, in fact, the recycling bin took the food, and with great regularity attacks it to punish its evil-doing. Unfortunately, the recycling bin has a carapace made of hard plastic which a dog is quite incapable of penetrating. Instead, she must make due with the occasional molitov cocktail, biding her time in the hope that some day a canine Guevara will rise up and take back the food from the bourgeois recycling bin and bring equality for all.

Curious question, wasn't the US founded by stealing the land from the natives, did they give it back, and then being called a christian nation?

the us, canada, australia, new zealand, many more i'm sure. stolen land.

You see, THIS is why I'm an athiest. Because Christians make no sense half the time. And I'm grounded in logic. And plus, we as a "Christian nation" adhere to this simple philosophy:

It's not what your country can do for you, but what your country can steal from other countries.

So who's the thief here? Christians or atheists? Churches steal peoples freedom of thought by telling them what to think.

Do Christians consider it "wrong" that this country was stolen from the Indians and Mexicans? Or, do they find some means of considering this not to have been "stealing?" I don't think that American Christians feel that anything bad happened. They still sleep at night, say their evening prayers, and imagine themselves into Heaven.

Yes, they're inconsistent.


The reason why they go to church is because they wish not to think to think. Unless they've gone to church since childhood, then I'd see it as a bit destructive for encouraging them not to think in the first place. But honestly, I'm amazed that most Christians do not find at least one thing incredibly strange about what they believe. That there has to be complete delusion.

An interesting hypothesis. As an atheist and biology graduate I am inclined to subscribe to Darwinian evolution. 'Stealing' could be considered a form of parasitism whereby one organism benefits at the cost of another. Indeed such arrangements are ubiquitous in the natural world (e.g. fleas, tics and certain worm sp. are common parasites) and such traits have enjoyed a selective advantage as evidenced by their existance. In humans however only a small proportion of the population steal and as such these individuals do not have a selective advantage. It would seem that humans (at least at the community level) benefit more through cooperation than explicit competition at the expense of one another. If stealing could be justified then surely the human race would largely consist of remorsless sociopaths. As this is not the case I would assert that stealing cannot be easily justified at least amongst current humans.

Humans are social beings. How could society exist if theft were wide spread and general. No one would create value added assets or improve property if they could not be sure of enjoying the fruits of their efforts. People would live short time from hand to mouth. There would be little or no culture.

Read -Leviathan- by Thomas Hobbes.

If theft and and violence were general then the life of man would indeed by nasty brutish and short.

ruveyn

All good, moral people (religious or not) will not stealing.
Immoral people (religious or not) will steal.

eating what you did not earn is parasitic.
living from what you do not naturally deserve is devolutional.

mosquitos are true thieves. and all true thieves are like mosquitos.