Morality Challenge for Theists.

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That is where the problem lies I think, people need a pre-made structure to tell them how to act morally. Religious people have religion, others have "political correctness". The most simple form of secular morality is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", it's not really religious although several religions have claimed it. But the issue is with these pre-made guide posts, often times they lead people to do morally bad things, or irrational things. And it traps their minds and behaviors into a box. If doing the right thing means venturing outside that box, they stop caring about doing the right thing. I believe some form of morality is necessary for society to run smoothly, I am not a nihilist (did I mention I HATE nihilists with a passion?) secular, reductionist, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" morality is the best, most logical, and fair morality out there. Anything else is sleep walking. Even if they are a religious person, they should not need to fall back on their book to know right from wrong, that is the hallmark of a weak-minded individual (which sadly the world is full of).
See, this form of morality is not short-sited, racist, discriminatory, it does not undercut people for having a different religion, or skin color, or gender. But, it doesn't treat minorities like "teachers pets" that are beyond question and given a PC card above the same laws that white, christian, heterosexual males have to follow either. PC leftist almost make me think theyr gonna call me a racist if I object to being robbed by a black man. I could care less what color they are, I'm not treating them any better or any worse. Same goes for gender or any other such criteria. I prefer to look at such things as non-factors, rather than pet factors that place them beyond equal question.

Lets reverse this...

Name of act of malevolent evil that could ONLY be done by a person of atheist faith?

How many can you name?

1.Extermination of 15 million people by Soviet Bolsheviks 1917-1938,about 3 million religious figures,in the name of Atheism.
2.Extermination of about 30 million people by Germans in the name of Social-Darwinism..(Nazism)
3.Extermination of about 25 million people by Mao Tse Tung during "Cultural revolution" and "Great Leap Forward" in the name of communism.
4.Destruction of Tibetan Buddhist culture,in the name of Marxist ideology,by Chinese Maoists.
5.Extermination of 1/3 of Cambodian population by Khmer Rouge in the name of Communism.
6.Massive opression of east European population by militant atheist regimes.
7.Most opressive country in the world is North Korea- officially an atheist country.
8.About 2 million people were killed in the name of 'reason' during French revolution.
9.Until 1960-es people were sterilized and lobotomized in the name of science in USA.

I'm from former Communist country,and all I know what you Atheists have all in common,regardless of nationality...utmost arrogance.

Inquisition during all its history have burned around 100.000 people from 14-17 century.
Atheists have killed during 90 years of existence of Communism about 70 million people worldwide,in the name of 'reason' and 'progress'.

So who is more moral? Theists or believers of blind nihilism?



Holocaust was not done in the name of Catholicism,but in the name of Nazism.
Nazism was based on Social-Darwinism and Eugenics.
First is based on Evolution theory and 'survival of fittest'.
Second is based on teachings of Francis Galton - Darwin's cousin.

'Scientific Racism' was solely based on evolution theory,and that Negroes are less evolved then whites..

Add little of Nietzsche in all of this,and you have National-Socialism (Nazism).

I think a number of factors play into this, one being our anti-intellectual culture that breeds people to be too lazy to think (and now the corporate establishment is pushing this further with reality TV and Mtv and such crap)........ I also think alot of it is indoctrination, through schools, media, television, religious institutions, social engineering, etc.

Regarding the Nazis, they pretty much wanted to replace religion with worship of the state. Hitler was seen as a messiah to the German people. Hell, they even had prayers to him.

As for Stalin, he was just a power-hungry bastard, and religion just got in the way for him. Atheism had little, if anything to do with his motives (although you did get perks if you were an atheist and the government and the Party's Society of the Godless promoted atheism).

You are assuming that there are only 2 choices: have a religion (which predetermines your perspective and thinking), or be politically correct (which predetermines your perspective and thinking). What of atheist libertarians and conservatives and free-thinkers, who don't fall into the pc box? What of liberal Christians, who believe the parable of the Good Samaritan should be applied to daily life, and they scorn most in their own race or class?

And what are these international issues that believers are able to understand that others cannot?

I don't think the original question can be answered objectively. Even if people agree on what are good deeds and what are evil deeds, there’s no way to presume a secular population wouldn’t find a secular dogma to commit evil deeds in the name of. Religion is used to commit atrocities only when it’s the primary dogma of the time.

In modern times most genocides have been committed in the name of non-religious dogmas, not religion. It’s not fair to say that genocide perpetrated by the Nazis was due to Christianity just because the Nazis endorsed Catholicism. It’s also not fair to say that genocides committed in the name of Marxist ideologies were due to atheism. In these examples the ideologies of Nazism and Marxism trumped any motivation from religion.

The issue isn’t so much religion as it is blind adherence by large groups of people to a particular ideology that is seen as infallible and a “trump all” to any other ideology. The problem is the inability to question an “authoritative” system of beliefs and a refusal to reason outside the prescribed dogma of the said belief system. Fundamentalist Christianity and Islam definitely have this property, but so do plenty of secular ideologies.

I also think there’s two very different kinds morality. There’s “individual morality” and then there’s “group morality”. It doesn’t really make sense to lump the two together in a single question since they're so different.

The most extreme cases of individual immorality are sociopaths (i.e. rapists, serial killers, etc.). These kinds of people aren’t likely to give any ideological justification for their actions. They’re not likely to be able to get away with their crimes or convince others to join them. The most extreme case of group immorality would be genocide. It is ideologically based, i.e. groups of people genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. Group immorality is like a virus that spreads through society regardless of whether people are moral individuals or not.

Last edited by marshall on 27 Nov 2007, 5:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not saying that at all, the world only has the illusion of falling into truly neat little stacks when your trying to explain a dynamic - pretexting it with all the disclaimers of what you do know to the contrary could take pages and in the end people wouldn't even read it. Your right, there are plenty of atheists and agnostics who aren't thinking in lockstep with what 'seems' to be the general tendency - I wish there were a lot more because they truelly are independent thinkers (just like Rebecca mentioned being out there I also know David Horowitz is, Christopher Hitchens is, Tammy Bruce probably is, heh, in my own opinion - no sarcasm at all - that's a list of winners).

And similarly you will have logical Christians, Muslims, Jews, or others who do well to abstract what they see in their religious codexes to more or less try to meet the realities that they see around them (though it tends to happen I think that many of those later do end up going agnostic or at least embracing a form of spirituality much more their own than dogmatic).




I don't think I really want to say anything on that one, just on the grounds that I don't really feel like starting a brawl over politics. That does come more from my perspective and my own observations of what adds up in the world. While I wouldn't sit there and say I know it all or anything I would go as far to say that I do take more stringent steps to filter my own thinking and biases out when it comes to sizing up the realities of situations - of course if you are in a different place than I am politically you may well come back at me foaming at the mouth about the fact that I'm way too sure that my own view is right, that's what I guess I'm not trying to get into - just because its kinda pointless.

I'll add as a reminder as well, I don't think the believers see it because its 'god guiding them', its a lot more coincidental. The people who who do seem to have it pegged far more often then anyone though are the people who aren't moving in lockstep with more agendified ways of thinking about politics, life, or the world in general.

I added the emphasis, because I think you misunderstood the point. The official justification and the true reason for an act can be very different, as I expect you know, coming from a country where the government used to lie even more than usual. The original question was whether there is a difference in what religious believers can or can't do, not what justification the perpetrators give. Your list of atrocities is also selective, but if you want an equally irrelevant list of atrocities that have been committed in the name of religion or justified by reference to religion, pm me. I don't intend to clutter up the thread with it.

I also doubt that the Bolsheviks killed in the name of atheism. They killed in the name of communism. There is a relevant distinction. Atheism is a part of communist ideology, but not the central part. The core of communist ideology is not derived from atheism. It didn't start with "there is no god" and proceeded from there. It started with ideas about economics, supposedly inevitable sequences of historical development and human nature, most of them wrong. Being as arrogant in their claim to absolute truth as any religion, the Bolsheviks could not tolerate any competing authority. Totalitarian states tend to be either theocratic, or they persecute any religious figure who doesn't toe the line exactly because religion is an alternative source of authority. The central issue is competition over authority, not a religious argument. You can see that already in Henry VIII's establishment of the Church of England, with the monarch as head of the church. This and the subsequent persecution of people with dissenting religious views were power politics, not theological argument.


You really have a thing about Darwin, and I have the impression that you have gone right back to the idea that evolutionary theory is inherently atheistic. Otherwise your emphasis on Darwinism makes no sense in the context of this thread. If you want to claim a link between evolution and Nazi ideology, bring me a Nazi who argues that case, and I am confident I can show up the argument for the plain BS it is. To believe that link, you have to misunderstand evolutionary theory. Your previous arguments in the Darwin vs Genesis thread gave me the impression that your understanding of the theory is very poor (link). You argue against a caricature of evolutionary theory, not against the theory itself.

You might also want to look into the history. "Social Darwinism" was invented by Spencer, who should take the blame. I think the first person to publish, in 1902, a thorough and scientifically based critique of Social Darwinism was Kropotkin, a libertarian socialist and (as far as I know) atheist, while the ideology was enthusiastically embraced by capitalists who claimed to be Christian. The same sort of people who had previously embraced Calvinism and related doctrines that said material success was a sign of God's favour then co-opted science to justify what they wanted to do. Historically, Social Darwinism is far more closely associated with capitalists who claimed to be Christians, to distinguish themselves from the godless Communists who planned to redistribute their wealth.


That should be a testable personality trait, and you imply a very strong correlation. Can you back up your claim by reproducible data, or is it personal opinion only?

It is possible that what you call arrogance is the authoritarian personality. If that is what you mean, then your impression most likely would be correct for your country, but not for all others. A study of the correlation between authoritarian personality traits and voting patterns showed that authoritarians tended to vote Communist in Russia (probably they are now happy to vote for Putin), but vote Republican in the USA. If I remember correctly, in the USA they also tend to be conservative Christians, but to be sure about that I would have to find the original study. So I suspect your impression is partly correct in your local context, but that you have been misled in your attribution of causation by a locally specific correlation between authoritarian personality and political ideology. I don't like authoritarians any more than you do, so we may actually agree on the important parts.

I would be grateful if you could take any reply over to Darwin vs Genesis or make a new thread, so that this thread can return to its topic.

I have simply reversed argumentation of original poster,just to show how arguments presented by him against theism is can be used against Atheism as well.
If we discuss about Theists and what they can or can't do,it would be fair to include Atheists in same manner.



You are not quite right.
True that Bolsheviks didn't killed just in name of Atheism alone.
Communism was considered as 'Scientific socialism' (at least what they preached to me), with 'dialectical materialism' as its basis.
Now,although people that were considered as 'exploiting class' were either killed,imprisoned or humiliated...people were also killed,imprisoned,persecuted or officially ridiculed (like me) for their Theism.
Not to mention case of Russian philosopher,mathematician and monk Pavel Florensky who was executed by Bolsheviks solely because he tried to saved remains of St.Sergey that communists wanted to burn.
Florensky actually helped Bolsheviks in campaign of electrification of Soviet Union.

Not only this but any form of speculation about possibility of existence of 'God','Higher being' or 'Absolute' was considered as superstition and thus lead to loosing a job or even 're-education'.
Many of monks,priests or religious people hardly belong to 'exploiting classes'.
Militant Atheism was only reason of destruction of religious monuments throughout communist world.



Central part of Communist ideology is philosophical materialism,with Atheism as basic premise- defined by Ludwig Feuerbach.
Marx simply mixed Feuerbach's theory and Hegelian theory of of social determinism.
Not to mention that Marx considered Darwinism as most important factor that supports materialistic worldview.
If you disagree with that,than you are 'obscurant' prone to process of 'enlightenment'.




I have developed personal animosity toward Darwinism (not towards Darwin as such) plainly because Darwinism became as 'evidence' presented by Atheists against existence of 'God','Highest Being' or 'Absolute' (or whatever).
Like today I see strong emotional attachment of Atheists towards Darwinism,and refusal of Darwinist to be self-critical.
For example we have strong changes of paradigms in theoretic Physics,and very self-critical attitude of physicians towards methodological basis of their science.
On other hand we have simply dogmatic repeating of Darwinists how Darwinism is almost 100% true,and that is only possible explanation of origins of life.

I have never heard any chemist,physicist or mathematician who claimed that his theory is accurate or only possible one.
The mere fact that Darwinists refuse to accept even a possibility that Darwinism may be false is evidence that Darwinism is more a belief system the scientific theory.

Personally,I'm not so much annoyed by Atheism (or any other belief system) ,but aggressive and arrogant attitude of Atheists on this and other boards.



Perhaps its BS,however Nazism is based on interpretation of evolution and natural selection,plus Nietzschean philosophy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

A quotation from Darwin:





Great number of scientists believed that white Europeans are more evolved then other races,and that 'lower races' are prone to extinction.
'Natural selection' and 'survival of the fittest' concepts are actually nice excuse for genocide.



Well, i didn't invented this link.
Nazis themselves used evolution as 'rational basis' of their racism.



Ok.
Lets make things simple.My critics of Evolution is based on criticism of David Hume and Immanuel Kant towards causality.

Darwinism claim (in most vulgar form):

That current organisms evolved from previous (mostly simpler) organisms through processes of genetic mutation and natural selection.

In even simpler terms previous organisms are cause of existence of new temporary organisms.

Evidences for this are fossil record,and similarity of traits between various species (homology) that is 'evidence' of their shared ancestry (and others).

First of all...

The fact that two things are similar does not mean that these two share similar origin.
The fact that there are simpler and complex organisms does not mean that firsts are cause of second ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume




Kant altered this notion,that causality may be considered as objective only if its verified by observation.
If we apply causality on something that goes beyond any possible experience,than this leads to fallacy.

Evolution claim causal relation between things in past (that cannot be observed) and apply this causality as 'order of things' in nature.


Here are some (from this thread)...







So are you saying that there are no authoritarian personalities in your country?
Now,thats kinda authoritarian attitude from you.



I have waited for your answers for about day or two,and because of my obligations I was not on this forum for a long time.As I see it there a lot of posts there after our little conversation,and I believe that my critics of Darwinism are explained there and in here.
You may disagree with me,and this is your right (which I fully support).

However online bullying and ridiculing by both Atheist and Religious persons is something that annoys me.



P.S

Yes,I'm theist,although of more pantheistic type.I'm not 'bible boy' or anything similar.
I believe that people have right to believe or not to believe in God.
I don't care if someone is christian ,satanist,atheist or agnostic.
However Wrong Planet is becoming masturbatory pot of very aggressive Atheists,and their spamming of this message board with messages like: how Christians are stupid,how religion is pointless...or 'Christians prove me x' thread is truly annoying.

There are many Atheist forums on internet,and I don't believe that is necessary to spam this forum as well.
I know that few members who are strongly Christian (like Ragtime),but even he is mostly forced to defend his believes against Atheists.
Not that I defend Ragtime as such,since I also dislike dogmatic faith in God.

It would be nice just to be able to discuss theology and the like without having to keep going over the same points and having to put up with all the constant attacks against my faith.

Altruism is a fantasy.

At least during life.

Altruism is a product of evolutionary psychology. It can be proven using the prisoner's dilema.

Don't know why, its really just putting off short term gain at other people's expense in exchange for long term gain by helping others, building them up, building yourself up through that process, and ultimately you're achieving much more for yourself in the end. The fact that its gainful to the altruist by no means debases the fact that its altruism, especially when it seems to take more discipline and patience to travel along that road than most people have (so you kinda have to WANT to do good).

In reading a long with a lot of this I do agree that people tend to ego trip and jump to conclusions off of Darwinian theory a good deal but when it comes to challenging the basis of evolution or the relationship of cause and effect its kind of hard to get my head around. Hume may have been a brilliant guy in some respects but wasn't he also a believer that a person literally projected and made their realities from their own mind and argued almost as if there was no reality or anything you could truly take as fact?

When I do look at evolution a lot of the holes that its seemed to have, particularly everything thst the intelligent design people would try to speak of as 'irreducibly complex', there always seems to be a pretty plausible argument on why they aren't taking the full scope or are missing the go-betweens that make their creation very plausible. Then again I will admit I haven't heard that many other arguments against evolution, aside from just creationism boxed and packaged literally as what it is. When we talk about science, it is true that we can't be 100% certain of anything. However, when X seems to constantly beget Y and when all outside factors are removed, played with, and rearranged X still begets Y, your at least forming pretty solid evidence of a dynamic - you know that you could be looking at a secondary effect of a more primary action if the theory still has exceptions or holes but still when its air-tight and never deviates you really can be pretty confident that X will beget Y- continuing to challenge it just because its only been proven 100,000 out of 100,000 and not 1,000,000,000,000 out of 1,000,000,000,000 times it gets a little confusing and you start to wonder a bit about the intentions of people who need that much proof.

Human behavior's another thing though, while you can't always predict people or their reactions to what you would do - whether its buy someone a beer, walk past em and bump them, say hi, or whatever - if you have knowledge of what kind of person they are, what they've been through, how they think, and what kind of mood they're in it doesn't take that much imagination to gage a reaction; much like it doesn't take much to figure out what will happen if you stand on top of a building and drop a brick on a car windshield. I think that's why it seems, while you can only be sure of things of the physical world 99.999% of the time and people maybe 85-90% just to the degree of complexity we have, the potential for confusion of true cause and consequence seems a bit moot considering the odds to throw away all confidence in ones ability to derive a stable picture from hypotheses and theories, whether scientists or your own, that can be tested over and over and over ad nauseum and yield the same results.

Nope,that was George Berkeley,an Irish philosopher and a Bishop.He was also creator of 'Subjective idealism'.
His philosophy was perhaps most extreme empiricism - "Esse est percipi" ("To be is to be perceived")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley

He influenced in some aspects David Hume,though.