Turning it around. (Atheism and evil)

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Needle exchange is prevention. Using a condom is prevention. No sane person is going to go out and say, 'I'm going to start shooting heroin today because the needle exchange program makes shooting heroin slightly less likely to kill me.'

Sane people can and do succumb to their reptilian brains in response to a sexually available partner all the time, though, and when they do they're more likely to use a condom if they've been properly educated about STDs and condom use, and have condoms available.

The numbers simply do not support your position.

marriage doesnt mean anything when you get down to the meat and bones of life, in the end we nothing but animals

do animals marry? NO! you place an animal of the same species of an age thats able to carry children they will have sex its what animals do(ever heard the expression breeding like rabbits? i used to own rabbits i KNOW that expression is true) and humans are animals its in our nature

Humans are indeed animals, but we have a little bit more sense than rabbits. I've never heard of a rabbit wearing a condom, and I suspect that they would not even with education and access.
Probably more importantly, rabbits do not form pair bonds, and humans do.

That is not prevention that is just encouraging the behavior and claiming there is no consequences and/or danger.

Does anyone know of the concept of self-control anymore?

Needle exchange and sex ed both reduce the rates of HIV transmission more than moralizing by priests or those living in a mental dark age. I could spend five minutes and find a dozen scientific studies showing that either program works better than moralizing, but you have never respected evidence in the past - so why bother?

@Natty_Boh

1) to better understand the phrase, "kill them all and let god sort 'em out," it would help to read up on it's origin. it comes from a comment by a catholic papal legate and inquisitor, Arnaud Amalric, during the Albigensian Crusade, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade) when asked by an albigensian soldier how he should determine the faithful catholics from the heretical cathars. he said something like "kill them all and the lord will know his own."

2) if you were to graph how much you value this life compared to how much you value (what you believe will be) your next life, what percentage of the graph would be "this life?" if i were to ask lkl the same question, what percentage do you think she would place on "this life?" a difference of perception, indeed.

Thanks - there's also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism, which gives a bit more background to the Crusade. And the page on Arnaud himself, which also has his own account of the particular incident. It of course differs, and was written long before anyone recalled him saying the more famous version - take it or leave it. Either way, that phrase and the bloodthirst behind it are not dogma. (Wherein lay my quibble - I'm well aware that Church history is not all Butler's Lives of the Saints.) Dogma refers to those teachings of the Church which have been determined (by a council or a pope) to be essential to the Catholic faith. The Trinity, for example. The Eucharist. Things like that. To call something dogma is to say that it is the highest kind of official teaching, something that every "good Catholic" must believe in and act in accord with. That quote is repulsive, and assuredly not dogma.



LKL believes - and I presume you agree - that placing value on "the next life" necessarily devalues this life. All I can say is - it doesn't do that, there's not some limited quantity of value which must be divided up. Thoroughly "valuing" Christmas dinner doesn't "devalue" coffee and pie later. ('91' did a good job, a few pages back, of laying out the reasoning without resort to analogy.) Life here is good, whatever comes later on.

Query, since it seems there's been a slide in the discussion towards this question: Is life always of value? Can there be a life without value, or with less value than another?

Not exactly. I believe that, given a dichotomous choice (ie, mutually exclusive) between happiness in this life and happiness in the next, a true believer will always, logically, choose the latter. Placed in a position where that true believer has power over the life of someone else, that true believer will logically choose that other person's eternal life as well.
If one believes in an eternal afterlife, it is *logical* to count it as more important than this one.

Alright. In theory. I don't think that the dichotomy happens in reality - an assertion which brings with it any number of secondary questions.



Again, alright. With the caveat that true believer must bear in mind that it is not possible to make the final choice for eternal life for the other person. No killing to send someone to heaven, in other words.

Many people, it seems, don't know the concept of self-control anymore. The philosophy is too simple to understand. This plus this equals this. All kinds of people avoid sexual interactions for any number of reasons, which can include a desire to avoid disease or pregnancy. Those people know the concept of self-control. Avoidance is prevention. Religious people don't hold the entire room on advising avoidance. Many people advise avoidance. Taking care of oneself and looking out for oneself isn't a moral issue, it just makes sense. Condoms are an attempt at prevention when self-control fails. Your statements speak of the obvious: don't do something and you won't open yourself to trouble because of it. But it's too hard for many people to operate on what is obvious. They are told if they slap a condom on it, they'll "probably" be fine. The possibility of skin-to-skin contact isn't discussed, I guess, which may not relate to some diseases but does relate to others. While I don't fully agree that needle exchange and condoms are just "encouraging' the behavior, I do believe to some extent an implication is made as to no consequences and/or no danger, or that consequences and danger can be shrugged off. A few years ago in a town near me, some teenagers were tubing in a river with floodwaters. No safety devices, no floaters, no nothing. They lost their tube. Were found very scared and clinging to rocks in the middle of a rushing river. Serious danger. E.M.S., law enforcement, everybody in the county showed up. One rescuer died - drowned as the currents took him away - young married father of two. All for a little bit of fun. But many people don't think in terms of consequences. But, sometimes those people are ones that other people really care about, so when a teenager goes out for a tube ride down the river, a friend or parent may try to suit him into a floater rather than try to talk him out of tubing; that's the loving one placing more value on the loved one's life and safety than the loved one is. Teh loved one is just thinking about the tubing.

I think there are deeper meanings in churchiness, religiousity, or whatever, meanings that are misunderstood, and A LOT of claims about what's in the Bible and what churches teach. For Biblery, my friend knows that book very well, and if he hears a claim made about what's in there, he'll say if it really is, and will argue the point. If he says it's there, he'll find it and show it. If he says it's not there, he'll argue until someone else can prove it. Haven't seen him be wrong yet. He can tell other people the differences between Presberters and Methodicers and all that. I'm proud of him, I think it's fascinating. And if he thinks someone has misinterpreted a Bible-y saying, he will say so and explain why he thinks that and explain what a verse "really" means.
My PERSONAL (it's just me) atheistic view of the world, just throwing my hat in: this world is awesome and deity is fantasy. This earth is awe-inspiring. This earth is beautiful. Human beings are awesome, awe-inspiring and beautiful, and we are animals of this earth. What we do, what we create, what we build, what we learn, how we learn, our amazing brains, our amazing potential: evolution at its finest so far. Too bad we do crappy things to each other. Too bad crappy things happen to us. We make and build amazing things on this natural earth and have been doing so time immemorial. Sometimes we wipe it off the earth, and sometimes the earth covers it up away from us. We are a part of natural order. We are extensions of existence. What reason do I have to wait all my life for heaven when I can benefit now before I die from doing good deeds and just living, taking of care of myself and those I love? I don't need a master's degree to tell me any of that, just like you don't need one to tell you that God exists and that he loves you. I don't think it's dumb to believe in gods, I don't think it's dumb to not believe in gods and I don't think it's dumb to be agnostic. Spirituality or lack thereof is a part of humanness. We're the only animals (that we know of or understand) that believe in deities. Sometimes I wonder, though, watching animal behavior, if a few might be doing something ritualizing for the benefit of some birdy-god or something.

We are all the offspring of people who failed to control their biological urge to reproduce. Some of our parents happened to be married when they lost control; others were not. We are all hard-wired to not think when the situation comes up, to be swept away in the moment; the higher functions basically turn off. This is not a stain on our parents character, except to the extent that they weren't paying attention or were naiive about getting into the close proximity of their partners in the first place. Advocating for celibacy is all well and good - the program I went through made very clear that abstinence is the best choice - but if you don't provide options for stupid, inexperienced teenagers when they do fall into that mental hole, they are less likely to use protection when it does happen. Abstinence-only programs delay the onset of sexuality in teens by about a year, but they end up with higher rates of STDs and teen pregnancy in the end because they don't know how to protect themselves when the almost-inevitable happens.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8470845/ns/ ... parenting/
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/07/teen-pregnancy/
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster ... nence.html
http://www.newser.com/story/103447/abst ... nancy.html
http://worldofweirdthings.com/2010/05/2 ... y-zealots/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9504871/ns/ ... alth_care/
http://www.suite101.com/content/high-st ... ink-a53691
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/21606.php

my mom was off the pill only a week(couldnt buy more till her next paycheck) when she got pregnant with me and she was still taking the pill a month after she got pregnant because she wasnt aware i was growing

still not sure if thats bad but yeah

The pill basically tricks the body into thinking that it's pregnant when it's not so that the mother doesn't ovulate, so basically it told your mom that she was 'extra pregnant' for that month. She might have had worse-than-average morning sickness (I don't know - just guessing), but it shouldn't have had an effect on the zygote that became you.

lets hope t dd nothing bad lol

Atheism can't be used to justify actions, be they good or bad, since it's not a religion or an ideology. If somebody kill people in the name of atheism, then clearly this person as no understanding of atheism, is insane and needs to be put in a psychiatric hospital for his own sake and the sake of society.

However when atheists do good actions it will very often be motivated by humanism. Also I doubt the sincerity and genuinety of the actions of a theist who claims to give money "because he fears hell" or "because a god asks so."