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

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ducasse
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26 Dec 2008, 12:03 pm

I hope we can take it as a given that we all here think stealing is immoral. In which case, by saying only the religious can condemn stealing, & that atheists should in fact celebrate it, you are saying that it takes a belief in god to lead a moral life, unless, that is, you think morality is something subjective & relative.

Ragtime wrote:

There is no rational defense of morality within an atheistic framework. Anything deemed "morality" must come from outside atheism, and indeed from outside the physical world itself. For physical survival (which is the only kind atheists believe in), simple expediency is best: morality when it benefits you materially, and immorality when it benefits you materially.

At the very least you're saying that a non-religious person can only be moral by accident, or by aping religious people.

skafather84
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26 Dec 2008, 12:06 pm

Ragtime wrote:

Stealing is survival of the fittest:
It's the smarter and/or more powerful annexing the property of the less intelligent and/or weaker for one's own furtherance.
That's simply the way life works, under the evolutionary model: Attack them before they attack you.

outside of a societal context, maybe. the fox steals from the chickens...but within a society and within the structure of modern human living; it's those who aren't the fittest who end up having to resort to stealing.

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Ragtime
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26 Dec 2008, 12:07 pm

Averick wrote:

Raggy, why do the religious steal?
And when that occurs, why is it different?

It's different only in that it's worse, because thieves who profess a religious belief against stealing
are violating their consciences on the deepest level, thus making themselves the greatest hypocrites.
As to thieves who only profess faith in God, they are the common variety of thieves, different only in that
they are using religion as one of their thieves' tools. These people are, of course, therefore no more religious than
actors playing Santa Clause are really him.
As to your question "Why do the religious steal?", obviously there is not one answer for all cases.
But the religious are never to be assumed righteous. That is folly clearly pointed out in Scripture. (See Romans 7,
in which Paul, a born-again Christian, still struggles with sin on a regular basis.)

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Last edited by Ragtime on 26 Dec 2008, 12:13 pm, edited 3 times in total.

anna-banana
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26 Dec 2008, 12:10 pm

Ragtime wrote:

Actually, most of society does steal, in various monetary and nonmonetary ways. Yet, society goes on.
Corruption is almost universal, and yet the human race thrives.

maybe, but (1).you have no way to prove that those people are atheist (2). you can't prove that they do better in life because of their stealing, in fact breaking the law makes them more susceptible to incarceration, which equals failure.

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skafather84
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26 Dec 2008, 12:11 pm

Ragtime wrote:

anna-banana wrote:

ed wrote:

Ragtime, I deeply resent your concept that it takes a belief in God in order to live a "moral" life. Perhaps that's true for those ignorant souls who never learned to think for themselves, but not for the rest of us. You can keep your "religion" if you choose, but don't think that it makes you a better person than anybody else.

A-men!

Clearly, you're projecting what you think I said onto what I actually said, and then getting all huffy at that strawman.
What I said was that stealing is not comdemnable unless you're religious. And, in fact, stealing is admirable if you believe that life advances only through the stronger overcoming the weak, or survival of the fittest.

you do realize you just restated what ed found abhorrent about your OP, right?

skafather84
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26 Dec 2008, 12:12 pm

anna-banana wrote:

Ragtime wrote:

Actually, most of society does steal, in various monetary and nonmonetary ways. Yet, society goes on.
Corruption is almost universal, and yet the human race thrives.

actually if one looks into the population records of those incarcerated, the majority of them are religious...in fact beyond the ratio of religious to atheist that is found in normal society.

skafather84
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26 Dec 2008, 12:15 pm

Ragtime wrote:

Averick wrote:

Raggy, why do the religious steal?
And when that occurs, why is it different?

cut the poetry, bill.

Last edited by skafather84 on 26 Dec 2008, 12:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ed
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26 Dec 2008, 12:26 pm

Ragtime wrote:

There is no rational defense of morality within an atheistic framework. Anything deemed "morality" must come from outside atheism, and indeed from outside the physical world itself.

You are wrong. My morality comes from within myself. I don't need some ancient stories to tell me that stealing is wrong. Sorry if you do.

b9
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26 Dec 2008, 12:31 pm

ed wrote:

Ragtime, I deeply resent your concept that it takes a belief in God in order to live a "moral" life..

i am so very tired but i will say that you were made by god. god is the fact that nature works so well.

if you do not believe in the ground you stand upon, then it is just like quicksand.

you will be sucked with every effort you make into an ideational "quicksand" that pulls your mind asunder.

that is a torpor from which few have the wit to escape from.
do try to never be lazy of wit.

do excersize your mind in all circumstances,

ed
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26 Dec 2008, 12:37 pm

b9 wrote:

ed wrote:

Ragtime, I deeply resent your concept that it takes a belief in God in order to live a "moral" life..

Yeah, you should try again after you get some sleep :lol:

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26 Dec 2008, 12:40 pm

ducasse wrote:

I hope we can take it as a given that we all here think stealing is immoral.

What? Do you think that's actually likely? Where do you live, Eden?

That's much too shaky of a premise to proceed with the rest of your quote.

And, I presume you mean stealing in all cases is wrong. But if not, please specify when it is okay / not okay to steal.
We must be clear about what we mean, because many people would steal under certain circumstances, and those prerequisites for stealing do vary from person to person.

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Last edited by Ragtime on 26 Dec 2008, 12:54 pm, edited 2 times in total.

skafather84
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26 Dec 2008, 12:44 pm

ed wrote:

skafather84 wrote:

cut the poetry, bill.

You have over 5500 posts so far, and you still haven't learned that you can't say things like that here?

i've generally toned it back but raggy has a certain way of insulting me that bothers me deeply enough to where i feel a swear is warranted. i'll edit right now.

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26 Dec 2008, 12:50 pm

ed wrote:

Ragtime wrote:

There is no rational defense of morality within an atheistic framework. Anything deemed "morality" must come from outside atheism, and indeed from outside the physical world itself.

You are wrong. My morality comes from within myself. I don't need some ancient stories to tell me that stealing is wrong.

So, you decide what's wrong based on your gut feeling? Would you give that pass to everyone else who does the same?
Keep in mind that that group of people includes active practitioners of, respectively, every crime known to man.
So, by your standard, which I'll term "gut-feeling morality", anyone who doesn't feel inside that breaking a law is wrong
is free to break it. Obviously, societal chaos is the natural result of practicing that, and allowing "gut-feeling morality" to be the final word on right and wrong.

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ed
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26 Dec 2008, 1:01 pm

Aren't you confusing "morality" with a system of laws and punishments designed to keep people from damaging society? There might be some things I don't do because I think they are wrong, but there might be other things that I consider moral, but don't do because they are illegal.

ducasse
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26 Dec 2008, 1:06 pm

Ragtime wrote:

ducasse wrote:

I hope we can take it as a given that we all here think stealing is immoral.

By all here, I only mean the people involved in this discussion, & it wasn't a premise, it was a hope. What I say after that doesn't depend on it being true that everyone thinks stealing is wrong, obviously some people in the world don't think it's wrong. I would appreciate it that if you respond to what I say that you try to honestly deal with what the points I've made rather than invent nitpicking objections.

anna-banana
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26 Dec 2008, 1:42 pm

Ragtime wrote:

why do you refuse to acknowledge that altruism is a part of the nature of the higher primates? there's been a lot of research about this, there were a few threads on this board quoting the famous "morality test" which proved that people of different religions and cultures make the same decisions about what's right and what's wrong?

you might call it gut-feeling or you might call it morality or the word of God or whatever, but essentially it's the same thing.

there are a lot of dilemmas that can not be solved if you only have the Bible as the source of your morality (abortion, in-vitro, stem cell research etc). if God were the only source of morality how come he's not sending another son down here to tell us what is the correct solution? all religion is man-made, that's why they all agree on the same basic rules, and that's why they are the same rules the atheists follow.

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