Is Atheism Fundamentally Evil?

[Hermit]

The false presumptions of Atheism as stated by religious Atheists, that religion is inherently harmful, especially to children, and therefore should be eliminated from society, is a demonstration of the inability of religious Atheists to see beyond their own prejudices and dogmas.

Again, speaking just for myself, I prefer to avoid the issue of inherency, but I do argue that religious people who go by the book, so to speak, tend to do a lot of social damage. Have a look what the Bible and the Qur'an say about women, for instance. Yes, they admonish men to be nice and respectful to them, but both unequivocally make just over half the human population subservient to men. Surely, I need not quote chapter and verse, but if you ask me, I will oblige. Other religions are as bad or worse.

Then there's the underlying fatalism of the Hindu religion, and in so far as Buddhism is a religion, of that too. It gives rise to callousness that is both massive and pervasive.

Any Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, other, who do not subscribe to those thoroughly objectionable doctrines are actually disobedient to their respective religions. Those doctrines are writ right there in their holy scriptures. They are not real Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, or whatever. Now we could reasonably argue that religions are detrimental to the freedom and happiness of a vast number of human beings. Adherents of the religions I listed above make up three quarters of the world's population. Note, that I only used one example. I have not mentioned issues of homosexuality or the internal as well as external strife that both the Bible and the Qur'an create by claiming to be the exclusive purveyors of truth.

My aversion to religions is somewhat tempered because they manage to be so contradictory. A socialist, for instance, could easily be a Christian simply by ignoring the nasty biblical bits and concentrating on the socialist leaning verses instead. The one about camels, wealthy men and eyes of needles is just one of many. Then there's the golden rule, the exhortation to love thy neighbour as yourself (but don't get caught), throwing the first stone...

I say "somewhat" precisely because of the contradictoriness. Adherents can find verses for just about any view they fancy, even for slavery or genocide. Of course they'll be promptly accused of misinterpreting the text, but that in turn leads immediately to internecine fights about who is the bearer of The Truth.

In the end I am inclined to throw all religion into the rubbish bin. The writings do contain too much stuff that I find thoroughly objectionable, and the good stuff can be found and taught without resorting to religion. I go for secular humanism. It's a superior human construct to the gods we have made in our image in the past.

[Hermit]

The reason to prefer religion over irreligion generally is that for the vast majority of people finding a moral compass in a church is both easier and more reliable than seeking it out elsewhere. Too often people in search of a moral compass who don't participate in a religion fail to find a good one and they fall into evil behavior as a result.

If that is so one would expect to find a greater percentage of all atheists in prison than of all theists. Can you find any statistics that confirm your assertion?

[Animavore]

Surely you don't search for a moral compass. A compass is an instrument you use to search and find your way with. In which case it should already be within you. No religion or anything else needed.

[pErvinalia]

Too often people in search of a moral compass who don't participate in a religion fail to find a good one and they fall into evil behavior as a result.

Blind anus watery assertion.

religious Atheists,

Made up bullshit fallacy.

[Brian Peacock]

Yes, atheists reject religioys claims and assertion made on behalf of supernatural entities, but atheists don't lack moral capacity or reasoning as a consequence of that simply because morality isn't the preserve of religion or the religious.

True, and I didn't suggest that it was. I merely point out that religion is the dominant source of moral instruction in human society and always has been, by an extremely large margin. There is a very good reason that this is true and why it's remained true throughout human history.

That's right, you didn't say the thing which you say you didn't say, but that's not actually what you said.

Now, if you think that morality is the preserve of religion then you're likely to assume that atheists are going to be lacking some necessary moral component that only religion can provide, and as a result you may feel that atheism is open to the charge of immorality.

I don't, so we can dispense with this argument.

OK. So you don't think atheism is open to the charge of immorality. Good, we agree on that. Oh hang on...

It's mostly useful and beneficial to human society to have religion within the community. This is not of course invariably true, but more often than not, by a substantial margin, religion is beneficial.

Atheism is not. A "lack of belief in god or gods" provides no intrinsic benefits at all and it leaves in its wake nothing but emptiness that is all too easily and frequently filled up with ignorance, bias, intolerance, bigotry, hate and immorality.

...but you also declare religion (and here one presumes that means any and all religions regardless of content) is beneficial to society 'by a substantial margin' because rejecting religious claims and assertions leads to a position which is 'filled up with ignorance, bias, intolerance, bigotry, hate and immorality.'

You can't have it both ways here; one one hand agreeing that disbelieving god-claims is nothing to do with morality while on the other berate those who disbelieve god-claims for their 'ignorance, bias, intolerance, bigotry, hate and immorality'. Atheism isn't a replacement for religion--as if religiosity is the default state of humanity--it's merely a response to religious claims, assertions and insistences.

Why you think that atheism should entail a specific moral code, and that that code should essentially follow a religious model, is, frankly, as ludicrous as it is rationally incoherent. If religiosity acts as some kind of moral compass or brake then ask yourself why some religious people do bad things in the name of their religion and why most atheists don't do bad things in no-name of nothing.

It's a compass, not an autopilot. It gives guidance but it doesn't control the steering. It's like a GPS. It'll tell you the correct way to go, and it'll try to correct you if you go off course, but ultimately you're in charge of your route and destination. Therefore, religious people doing bad things doesn't impeach religion or its moral compass at all. It provides the guidance, but you can choose to ignore it.

While you continue to talk up the virtues of religion in the round and of how religion provides a moral compass or brake then you continue to affirm that religiosity consists within a state of default rectitude. You make no reference to which religion has a valid claim to moral truth of course, you just go on as if being religious is enough and that being non-religious just isn't good enough. You also affirm the notion that religiosity embodies some default state of moral rectitude whenever you insist that religious people who do bad things no longer qualify as properly religious. Hence, it would seem, that being good and doing good things is all about religion and being religious.

Atheism, on the other hand, is like staring at a GPS that's turned off and trying to use it for navigating. Doesn't work. So, instead maybe you look out the window to the side and see the verge and focus on it for keeping your path straight only to run into a wall because you're looking in the wrong place for navigational advice. Now, maybe instead of the GPS of religion you have a map, and you try to focus on following the map, but you still run off the road because the map is old and the information out of date. Or maybe it's written in Farsi and you can't understand the directions and labels. Not much help. Or perhaps you ask a pedestrian for directions to your home, but he directs you to a brothel full of trafficked children instead where you succumb to evil.

Again, you are criticising an absence of belief because you assume it should entail a replacement for (any and/or all) religion; that an atheistic perspective should, at the very least, comprise a specific moral alternative to (any and/or all) religion. You're certainly not happy with the fact that atheists are free to come to their own moral conclusions about things - what atheism must entail, you imply, is some blind spot or lack of understanding as to the proper bounds of good and bad because religion isn't there to point one in the right direction. Now, every religion cannot be morally equal or equivalent to every other religion can it(?) - so again this clearly implies that merely counting yourself among the religious acts as some sort of pre-condition to moral rectitude and, therefore, being non-religious predisposes one to moral laxity or turpitude. Whichever way you try and dress it up you continue to assume that being religious is a more morally beneficial, benign or superior position to being non-religious

As for what Atheists do in the name of Atheism, there are plenty of examples of Atheists acting exactly like the religious zealots many of them actually are and using Atheism as a weapon against their enemies. That happens here on an almost daily basis. Of course not all atheists are Atheists, and some Atheists are more religiously zealous than others.

The thing is mate, if you going to declare by fiat that religious people who do bad things in the name of their religion are not really, truly, actually, properly religious then I can just as easily dismiss the atheists who do bad things in the name of atheism as not really, truly, actually, properly atheist. If an atheist does a bad thing then the responsibility for that lies with them, just as it does when a religious person does a bad thing. Yes, some atheists have done some very, very bad things, but then again so have some religious people - the main difference here is that the non-religious don't have the opportunity to justify or excuse extreme turpitude on the basis that it was the bidding of the figurehead of their mythology, nor indeed do the non-religious get to argue that the really bad thing they actually did was really a good thing because it was religiously inspired, endorsed, or authorised.

In other words, you're effectively saying that good can only be verified and validated in terms of religion and that atheists must therefore be bad for rejecting religion.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. And that is why the rest of your argument is essentially a strawman, but I'll address it anyway.

You have, you are, and you continue to do so. The evidence of which is in your own words below when you assert that one's moral outlook should be enhanced by understanding religion and choosing which "religion's beliefs and moral guidance are likely to be useful to you." This clearly implies that morality is best verified and validated in terms of religion.

This is the same sort of doctrinal nonsense as highlighted in the OP, but when one considers the plethora of religions and their subordinate denominations, all of which lay a claim to moral truth, how are you to alight upon the proper authority capable of determining the bounds of good and evil, right and wrong, by which all should live (including true believers, different believers, indifferent believers, and non-believers), and from where or what is that authority drawn?

Nobody said religious faith was easy...

I certainly didn't say that.

... The place to start, I suppose, is by carefully educating yourself in the fine points of various religions so you can intelligently decide whether or not any particular religion's beliefs and moral guidance are likely to be useful to you. Willful ignorance of religions of the world using the specious excuse that you don't want to be polluted by religiosity is the last refuge of the inferior mind.

As I prove, it is possible to know and understand a religion quite well without, as Aristotle put it "accepting the idea."

The OP proceeds upon this very point. Again, to assume that the rejection of religious authority and doctrine entails an abandonment of moral reasoning, because the non-religious 'don't want to be polluted by religiosity', is to assume that a conclusion about a specific species of claim does, should, or must entails a particular moral outlook or code. All one can say about an atheists values is that they are not defined or authorised by this-or-that religion.

But the one thing that Atheists are notorious for is their gross and deliberate willful ignorance of the religions and people they attack and claim moral and intellectual superiority over. And nowhere is that more true than here.

What you ignoring of course is that great many atheists are not ignorant of religion, having previously been fully paid up, educated members of religious groups and communities. For my part I was brought up and educated as a Catholic, others here were active members of evangelical communities, etc, and some were never true believers in the first place of course. Nonetheless, it is far too easy, far too simple, and far too self serving to discount and discredit what atheists might have to say about religion on the basis that atheists are wilfully ignorant of religion, religions, religious practices, or the nature of religious obligations. In effect it is exactly like saying that one must first be religious in order to legitimately critique, challenge, discuss, or object to religious claims and assertions.

[Feck]

" It's mostly useful and beneficial to human society to have religion within the community. This is not of course invariably true, but more often than not, by a substantial margin, religion is beneficial. "
OMG what a fucking dishonest bastard you truly are !
Seriously ? I could not laugh more unless you talked about "manifest destiny " .

[Feck]

PS(the rest of you ) Can I crowd surf some cash and if I promise to video Seeth getting an enema with his own cheap guns ?

[Seth]

The false presumptions of Atheism as stated by religious Atheists, that religion is inherently harmful, especially to children, and therefore should be eliminated from society, is a demonstration of the inability of religious Atheists to see beyond their own prejudices and dogmas.

Again, speaking just for myself, I prefer to avoid the issue of inherency, but I do argue that religious people who go by the book, so to speak, tend to do a lot of social damage. Have a look what the Bible and the Qur'an say about women, for instance. Yes, they admonish men to be nice and respectful to them, but both unequivocally make just over half the human population subservient to men. Surely, I need not quote chapter and verse, but if you ask me, I will oblige. Other religions are as bad or worse.

This is typical overgeneralization. It suggests that because there are "by the book" religionists that do things that you consider to be socially damaging (though for the moment I'm going to set aside an analysis of that argument) this means that all religionists and/or all religions are bad. It also suggests by implication that somehow atheism is the panacea to this alleged problem, but there is zero evidence that atheism causes "by the book" atheists to do any less social damage than those they revile. I would argue in fact that atheism is provably the direct cause of much, much more suffering and death than religion ever has been. You know who I'm talking about.

Then there's the underlying fatalism of the Hindu religion, and in so far as Buddhism is a religion, of that too. It gives rise to callousness that is both massive and pervasive.

Does it? I would like to see evidence of this callousness. Do you have any?

Any Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, other, who do not subscribe to those thoroughly objectionable doctrines are actually disobedient to their respective religions.

And who are you to judge obedience to anybody else's religion?

Those doctrines are writ right there in their holy scriptures.

Sometimes they are, yes.

They are not real Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, or whatever.

Again, when were you put in charge of determining whether another person's religious beliefs or practices are "real."

Now we could reasonably argue that religions are detrimental to the freedom and happiness of a vast number of human beings.

And we could reasonably argue that atheism is detrimental to the freedom and happiness of a vast number of human beings.

Adherents of the religions I listed above make up three quarters of the world's population.

Actually it's more like 80 percent. Which in and of itself says something about the quality of your argument.

Note, that I only used one example. I have not mentioned issues of homosexuality or the internal as well as external strife that both the Bible and the Qur'an create by claiming to be the exclusive purveyors of truth.

You focus only on the negative and not at all on the positive, which is a typical atheist conceit. But you studiously ignore the negatives of atheism and completely fail to provide a single positive reason why anyone ought to be an atheist. As I said, atheism is a nihilistic philosophical negative. So why should anyone subscribe to atheism when it offers nothing helpful or positive?

My aversion to religions is somewhat tempered because they manage to be so contradictory.

I think you'll find that humans, as a species, manage to be contradictory with or without religion. Indeed, it is very obvious that religion in many cases helps people NOT to be contradictory because it provides rules and moral instruction to guide them in proper behavior.

A socialist, for instance, could easily be a Christian simply by ignoring the nasty biblical bits and concentrating on the socialist leaning verses instead. The one about camels, wealthy men and eyes of needles is just one of many. Then there's the golden rule, the exhortation to love thy neighbour as yourself (but don't get caught), throwing the first stone...

Well, that depends on what you mean by "nasty biblical bits." I suspect that your next utterance will make reference to Old Testament passages, so I'll take this opportunity to point out that the Old Testament is not a Christian document. Only the New Testament is a Christian document, being written after the coming of Christ and all. And if you've ever actually read the New Testament you would know that it repeals all of the "nasty bits" of the Old Testament and replaces them with Christ's gospels and commandments, which are completely different.

I say "somewhat" precisely because of the contradictoriness. Adherents can find verses for just about any view they fancy, even for slavery or genocide. Of course they'll be promptly accused of misinterpreting the text, but that in turn leads immediately to internecine fights about who is the bearer of The Truth.

Are people not allowed to disagree?

In the end I am inclined to throw all religion into the rubbish bin.

And replace it with what, exactly.

The writings do contain too much stuff that I find thoroughly objectionable,

Then join another club.

and the good stuff can be found and taught without resorting to religion.

Yes, it can...but too often it isn't and therein lies the problem. Religion persists because of how effective it is at teaching moral lessons that help humanity to survive and prosper.

I go for secular humanism. It's a superior human construct to the gods we have made in our image in the past.

It may well be, but I hope you are aware that it's moral principles and foundations are founded in Christian theology. Taking God out of the text doesn't necessarily mean that God is not still there...if God exists.

Secular humanism is not a new and unique philosophy, it's just a mishmash of other philosophies that takes what it thinks are the good bits and discards what it thinks are the bad bits of many different philosophies and religions. Nothing at all wrong with that, but that doesn't make it particularly original or axiomatically any better or worse than any other philosophy.

You see, the reason that there are so many religions in the world is that there are so many people with so many different philosophical and moral needs and there are so many ways of meeting those needs and so many different forms of society that have adopted different cultural practices to create order and harmony.

And quite literally every one of those cultures practices one or more religions...including secular humanists and atheists.

I reiterate at this point that religion is not WHAT you believe, it's how you go about practicing what you believe. So when you say "chuck religion" you are not making much sense because you are chucking your own religious philosophy in the process.

And it is also demonstrably true that some 80 percent of the population of the planet had decided that belief in some sort of theistic system is what provides them with the greatest degree of happiness and social cohesion. It's hard to argue with numbers like that.

The Devil, as they say, is in the details. One may rationally disagree with theistic philosophy or atheistic philosophy or anamalistic philosophy or any other philosophy as to the "truth" of the claims of that philosophy. What is more difficult to deny is that the vast, vast majority of humans practice whatever philosophy they follow in a religious manner, which is to say it adheres to any of the following definitions:

religion
[ri-lij-uh n]
noun
1.
a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
2.
a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects:
the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
3.
the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices:
a world council of religions.
4.
the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.:
to enter religion.
5.
the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.
6.
something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience:
to make a religion of fighting prejudice.

So, it comes down to the individual in the end, and what the individual believes gives him or her the greatest degree of happiness in their life. And that of course is an individual decision that nobody has any right to interfere with, which means that when Atheists demean and insult people who have different religious beliefs they are acting just as immorally and irrationally as they claim people of faith are. Indeed, I'd say more immorally and irrationally by rather a lot, given the fact that Atheists offer nothing useful in place of the religions they deride. If one is going to criticize the moral practices of another one really ought to have a better idea and demonstrate how much better it is by one's behavior. And that's something that religiously zealous Atheists are utterly incompetent at. They dismiss, revile, insult, deride and attack others and leave nothing but a smoking philosophical ruin in their wake. They do far more harm than help and are justifiably ignored and laughed at for their mindless and unreasoning hatred of others.

[Seth]

Now, if you think that morality is the preserve of religion then you're likely to assume that atheists are going to be lacking some necessary moral component that only religion can provide, and as a result you may feel that atheism is open to the charge of immorality.

I don't, so we can dispense with this argument.

OK. So you don't think atheism is open to the charge of immorality. Good, we agree on that. Oh hang on...

No, I don't think morality is the preserve of religion, which is the strawman premise upon which you base the rest of your argument.

...but you also declare religion (and here one presumes that means any and all religions regardless of content) is beneficial to society 'by a substantial margin' because rejecting religious claims and assertions leads to a position which is 'filled up with ignorance, bias, intolerance, bigotry, hate and immorality

One presumes incorrectly and therefore your second strawman premise is fallacious.

You can't have it both ways here; one one hand agreeing that disbelieving god-claims is nothing to do with morality while on the other berate those who disbelieve god-claims for their 'ignorance, bias, intolerance, bigotry, hate and immorality'.

Your argument is a fallacious conclusion based upon two fallacious strawman premises and is therefore non sequitur.

Atheism isn't a replacement for religion

On this we agree wholeheartedly. Atheism isn't a replacement for religion, it is a religion, at least as far as self-professed and vocal Atheists who wield it like the Sword of Justice are concerned.

--as if religiosity is the default state of humanity--it's merely a response to religious claims, assertions and insistences.

Well, religiosity is pretty much the default state of humanity. So sayeth at least 80 percent of the planetary population, and I would argue that number is actually quite close to 100 percent of adults. However, what you just wrote proves my thesis that Atheism is a religion. It is the religion of denial of theism, not merely "a lack of belief in god or gods." In other words, self-professed atheism is what is known as "explicit atheism", which is defined as "the absence of theistic belief due to a conscious rejection of it."

While you continue to talk up the virtues of religion in the round and of how religion provides a moral compass or brake then you continue to affirm that religiosity consists within a state of default rectitude.

And why should I not do so?

You make no reference to which religion has a valid claim to moral truth of course, you just go on as if being religious is enough and that being non-religious just isn't good enough. You also affirm the notion that religiosity embodies some default state of moral rectitude whenever you insist that religious people who do bad things no longer qualify as properly religious. Hence, it would seem, that being good and doing good things is all about religion and being religious.

No, you've erected yet another strawman argument. I'm saying that being religious is the most frequently used and most effective source of guidance for those who wish to be good and do good things. Yes, it is a generalization and we can obviously see that there are differences in the definition of "good" and "morality" among different forms of religion, but it is hard to deny that religion is a pervasive influence in human culture and society and has been since the beginning of mankind. There is no reason to believe that something that has persisted for so many millennia in so many different forms is inherently "bad" for humanity. Simple evolutionary logic would seem to destroy any such presumption.

The real question you seem to be intimating at is whether "religion" means "one universal set of beliefs that is always beneficial, never harmful and never harmfully distorted." It doesn't. Part of the problem of arguing religion with atheists is that they persist in misunderstanding and misusing the relevant terms. I've pointed this out innumerable times here, but I'll do it again: Religion is not what you believe, it is how you go about practicing what you believe in your life.

Atheists almost always lump every sort of belief other than their own (whatever those may be) into the false definition that holds that "religion" means "belief in god or gods." Doing so is intellectual sloth and weakness precisely because there are so many different kinds of religion and sets of beliefs and practices that comprise "religion" as religion is defined.

But Atheists don't want to be selective and argue specifics. They don't want to, for example, criticize only Catholic opposition to abortion and leave out the Catholic church's dedication to charitable works worldwide, they just want to bash Catholicism and Catholics wholesale because they deride the fundamental premise of Catholicism, which is that God exists. Atheists consistently throw out the baby with the bathwater, so to speak.

Contrary to your false claim "you just go on as if being religious is enough and that being non-religious just isn't good enough," which is not at all true, I have never argued that religion (by which you almost certainly mean "theism") has a lock on moral truth. What I DO claim is that atheism provides NO moral guidance or truth at all.

Again, you are criticising an absence of belief because you assume it should entail a replacement for (any and/or all) religion; that an atheistic perspective should, at the very least, comprise a specific moral alternative to (any and/or all) religion.

It should provide some alternative for moral guidance if it proposes to deconstruct the moral guidance structure that has existed and functioned reasonably well for many thousands of years, yes.

You're certainly not happy with the fact that atheists are free to come to their own moral conclusions about things - what atheism must entail, you imply, is some blind spot or lack of understanding as to the proper bounds of good and bad because religion isn't there to point one in the right direction.

The evidence of history shows that Atheists cannot be trusted to concoct their own independent moral code and that doing so leads to death and destruction. At least one hundred million people in the last century alone were killed by Atheists and their self-made moral codes. Now, you are certainly going to argue that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and the other Atheists of Marxism didn't kill all those people "in the name of atheism," but you'd be wrong up front because that's exactly what they did, and you'd be wrong all the rest of the way through because it was their atheism, their rejection of existing religiously-based morality, that allowed them to create their own moral code that they used to justify the slaughter of a hundred million people and counting. Venezuelans are starving to death today because of Marxist Atheist moral depravity.

So, demonstrably Atheism is not an acceptable substitute for pretty much ANY religion on the face of the earth now or which ever has been because Atheism has provably killed more people in the last century that every religion on earth has killed in all of history.

So yeah, I'm not satisfied to let Atheists do whatever the hell they please and make up any moral code that suits them, in large part because one of the problems with Atheists is that they have one principle religious tenet: attack and destroy the religious beliefs of others. They have no tenets or constraints on their philosophy or actions that keeps them from doing what Stalin did and I see whispers of that sort of terror in this and other Atheist fora all the time.

At least the secular humanists have a philosophy and tenets that they try to adhere to and that they announce to the world. Atheists make stuff up as they go, individually, and then try to morally justify their morally reprehensible actions by claiming that they are entitled to do such things because some religionist did something similar a thousand, or two thousand years ago.

Atheism, as a philosophy, is as I have said, an empty vessel that any Atheist can fill with whatever bile...or morally acceptable...behavior it suits him to fill it with, without any sort of constraint or moral guidance. As I've also said, even the secular humanists who announce a theme of moral guidance draw DIRECTLY from Christian theology in doing so. But not Atheists, and therefore, having demonstrated how untrustworthy they are, are not to be trusted.

Now, every religion cannot be morally equal or equivalent to every other religion can it(?) - so again this clearly implies that merely counting yourself among the religious acts as some sort of pre-condition to moral rectitude and, therefore, being non-religious predisposes one to moral laxity or turpitude. Whichever way you try and dress it up you continue to assume that being religious is a more morally beneficial, benign or superior position to being non-religious

Religion is only a 'pre-condition" to moral rectitude insofar as the existence of religions, and their belief/practice sets, has been of proven social value for many thousands of years. Some particular belief/practice sets, such as Christianity and yes, even Islam, have longer records of social value (yes, even Islam is socially beneficial to Muslims, though not so much to non-Muslims) than others, which is why they have dominant positions in the spectrum of belief/practice sets of religion.

One is not inherently immoral because one does not believe in god or gods, but history proves that those who do not subscribe to some sort of time-tested belief/practice set that provides a generally acceptable moral structure are highly likely to violate the norms of human morality because they have not been so guided or because they have consciously rejected that guidance. Such people are extremely dangerous and are generally defined as being sociopathic. Humanity prefers that individuals are provided moral guidance early on in order to reduce the potential for antisocial behavior and religion is the very best way to provide both the moral guidance and the "carrot" that induces proper moral behavior.

If you believe that God will be disappointed, or that you will lose out on a heavenly afterlife, or will be punished by God if you violate the societal moral code you are much more likely to adhere to moral strictures and thus not be a danger to society than if you believe that your own autonomy and decisions are supreme and superior to any others and that nobody can tell you what you can or cannot do. And societies have a perfect right to do everything they can to prevent members of the community from acting on those narcissistic presumptions. Religion is generally speaking both a good way to induce proper social behavior and a good way to educate on what that proper social behavior is. That's why it persists in human society.

You would not argue that children should not be taught science and mathematics because doing so interferes with their free will to be ignorant would you?

As for what Atheists do in the name of Atheism, there are plenty of examples of Atheists acting exactly like the religious zealots many of them actually are and using Atheism as a weapon against their enemies. That happens here on an almost daily basis. Of course not all atheists are Atheists, and some Atheists are more religiously zealous than others.

The thing is mate, if you going to declare by fiat that religious people who do bad things in the name of their religion are not really, truly, actually, properly religious then I can just as easily dismiss the atheists who do bad things in the name of atheism as not really, truly, actually, properly atheist.

Except you can't, because whereas religious belief/practice sets have rules about proper social behavior (moral codes) and those who violate the strictures of a particular belief/practice set can easily be characterized as "apostates" or non-believers as a result of the rejection of those teachings, Atheists have no moral code to begin with because atheism provides no moral code or anything else at all. Therefore, an Atheist cannot violate atheistic moral strictures because Atheism has no moral strictures to begin with. And therein lies the problem with Atheists and their religion. They get to do whatever they want and still be Atheists. That being the case, then it's perfectly logical and rational to point out that Atheist religious zealots (zealous explicit atheists) can and do do evil things in the name of their religion and are therefore representatives of that religion...to the same degree that you would argue that a KKK member who lynches a black person isn't not a KKK member just because the KKK has no actual written commandment telling members to go out and lynch blacks. Or, to put it a different way, the argument used by Atheists like pErvin and others when they attack and disparage Catholics because a thousand years ago some deviant Catholic priests in Spain tortured people during the Inquisition is doing exactly the same thing that you accuse me of doing: using a broad-brush generalization applied to large groups of people based on the behavior of a few deviants.

If an atheist does a bad thing then the responsibility for that lies with them, just as it does when a religious person does a bad thing. Yes, some atheists have done some very, very bad things, but then again so have some religious people

That's not an argument, that is the fallacy of "Two wrongs make a right."

- the main difference here is that the non-religious don't have the opportunity to justify or excuse extreme turpitude on the basis that it was the bidding of the figurehead of their mythology, nor indeed do the non-religious get to argue that the really bad thing they actually did was really a good thing because it was religiously inspired, endorsed, or authorised.

Or, as I say above, they argue that the really bad thing they did, like killing a hundred million people, was a really good thing because it wasn't religiously inhibited and they were free to make up whatever moral code suited their deviant objectives...and did. Stalin didn't try to justify his genocide using religion, he justified it using atheism.

In other words, you're effectively saying that good can only be verified and validated in terms of religion and that atheists must therefore be bad for rejecting religion.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. And that is why the rest of your argument is essentially a strawman, but I'll address it anyway.

You have, you are, and you continue to do so.

No, I do not.

The evidence of which is in your own words below when you assert that one's moral outlook should be enhanced by understanding religion and choosing which "religion's beliefs and moral guidance are likely to be useful to you." This clearly implies that morality is best verified and validated in terms of religion.

Er, saying that morality is best verified and validated in terms of religion is entirely different from saying "can only be verified and validated in terms of religion and that atheists must therefore be bad for rejecting religion." That I have NEVER said. That is a concoction of yours which you have repeatedly falsely attributed to me in the form of a strawman argument.

Nobody said religious faith was easy...

I certainly didn't say that.

I know, I said "nobody said..." The point however is that the canon of moral teachings provided by all the world's religions throughout all of humanity's history is not something that wise people simply reject out of hand because they dispute the existence of the putative deity who either authored it or upon whom it is based. But this is exactly what Atheists do, they reject all moral teachings based in theology simply and only because they don't believe in the root-proposition of the existence of deity. They reject it all and castigate and demean those who obey those moral strictures merely because those people believe in the deity. They don't look at any of the good that such belief/practice sets provide, or the good that the individuals who believe do, or the benefits to society that such beliefs provide as a result of what may be a false, but still useful and beneficial belief. They ridicule believers and would deny those people the solace and comfort they obtain from those beliefs, and that is the cruelest and most evil thing of all that Atheists do to other people they don't even know. They wish to extirpate theistic practices from society, regardless of the emotional and social costs of doing so for no better reason than they think that believers are "delusional" and they don't want to have to look at or hear any expressions of religious faith anywhere. I see it all the time here where the intolerant bigots of Atheism demand that religious practice be restricted to one's private home and that ANY public display of religion ought to be outlawed. And those are the arguments of Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot, three of the most brutal, murderous and evil human beings in human history. That's the company that such Atheists associate with and I find that to be despicable and abhorrent behavior whenever it rears its ugly head. And that sort of rhetoric is proof absolute of everything I claim about the absence of moral rectitude Atheism supports and justifies.

... The place to start, I suppose, is by carefully educating yourself in the fine points of various religions so you can intelligently decide whether or not any particular religion's beliefs and moral guidance are likely to be useful to you. Willful ignorance of religions of the world using the specious excuse that you don't want to be polluted by religiosity is the last refuge of the inferior mind.

As I prove, it is possible to know and understand a religion quite well without, as Aristotle put it "accepting the idea."

Again, to assume that the rejection of religious authority and doctrine entails an abandonment of moral reasoning, because the non-religious 'don't want to be polluted by religiosity', is to assume that a conclusion about a specific species of claim does, should, or must entails a particular moral outlook or code. All one can say about an atheists values is that they are not defined or authorised by this-or-that religion.

[/quote]

Indeed, and therein lies the entirety of the problem with Atheist values. They have none. What values they have they not only either form sua sponte or they draw from other sources, but not from sources defined or authorized by this-or-that religion. In other words, they reject the canon of moral teaching created over millennia by all of the religions of the world and which to one degree or another are the basis of the moral codes of at least 80 percent of the human population of the planet simply because those moral commandments originate in theistic philosophy. A more irrational rejection of tens of thousands of years of human learning and evolution I cannot imagine.

So where do Atheists find their values and morals? Who knows? We know it's not from religion, or so you claim, and therefore we must conclude that their morals have no objection to murder, theft, or any of the other moral wrongs human religious moral codes have deemed morally unacceptable. So what's left? Narcissism, nihilism, anarchism and sociopathy I suppose.

So you see why Atheists are not trusted. They have no stated source of morality that others can examine to see if their moral code is a socially acceptable one. They can just make it up as they go and do whatever it pleases them to do because they reject all religiously-based moral codes and make up their own "secular" moral codes.

And you think anybody else should trust them or grant them political power? Didn't work out so well for Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot's victims now did it?

But the one thing that Atheists are notorious for is their gross and deliberate willful ignorance of the religions and people they attack and claim moral and intellectual superiority over. And nowhere is that more true than here.

What you ignoring of course is that great many atheists are not ignorant of religion, having previously been fully paid up, educated members of religious groups and communities.

My empirical observation is that if this is the case, then the vast majority of them are as intellectually dishonest as it's possible to be because with the very, very rare exception they blatantly and obviously falsify, lie and mischaracterize, in particular, Christian theology. They build armies of strawmen and misquote the bible with abandon. So no, I don't believe you.

For my part I was brought up and educated as a Catholic,

Which doesn't explain your often false statements about Christian theology.

others here were active members of evangelical communities, etc,

There's no one quite so willing to lie about religion than a person who's rejected the faith.

and some were never true believers in the first place of course.

Indeed.

Nonetheless, it is far too easy, far too simple, and far too self serving to discount and discredit what atheists might have to say about religion on the basis that atheists are wilfully ignorant of religion, religions, religious practices, or the nature of religious obligations. In effect it is exactly like saying that one must first be religious in order to legitimately critique, challenge, discuss, or object to religious claims and assertions.

No, one must be educated about a religion in order to rationally, logically and eruditely debate it.

As I believe I clearly said, education about religion is not at all the same thing as being a believer in that religion, and I am the perfect example of that fact. I am not a Catholic, or a Christian for that matter. I'm just much better educated than most of the people in this forum are about Christianity because I chose to educate and inform myself before undertaking debate from that side of the issue.

It is my observation that there are some here who are indeed willfully ignorant about Christianity precisely because I've been debating here so long, and have imparted so much true information only to see the same lies, calumnies, falsities and mischaracterizations repeated time and time and time again that there is simply no other conclusion to draw other than willful ignorance or deliberate lies as provocation (trolling), which I know to be the case with more than a few members of this forum.

This unwillingness to engage in honest debate, and the unadulterated intellectual dishonesty and frankly cruel and irredeemable slurs hurled by Atheists here is proof absolute of my claims of the potential for moral depravity flowing from atheism and they vindicate the position held by many that Atheists should never be allowed anywhere near the seats of power in any society because they cannot be trusted.

[Feck]

" I'm just much better educated than most of the people in this forum are about Christianity "
No, you are not.

[JimC]

Exactly!

After all, the devil can quote scripture...

[Brian Peacock]

I have never argued that religion (by which you almost certainly mean "theism") has a lock on moral truth. What I DO claim is that atheism provides NO moral guidance or truth at all.

And why should it?

I'm just much better educated than most of the people in this forum are about Christianity because I chose to educate and inform myself before undertaking debate from that side of the issue.

And yet you didn't recognise a rather uncontentious, and indeed generous, explanation of the concept of evil in Christianity - instead declaring it a lie. Get thee back to catechism class.

[Feck]

"atheism provides NO moral guidance or truth at all. " DUMBFUCK it never made that claim Atheism is NOT a theism or a philosophy it is merely a statement of non belief .
Atheism merely states " I do not believe in God(s)
Stick your strawman up your ammo-sexual arse

[Feck]

Atheism is not a philosophy Just like Selfish is not a Virtue , something liber- twats should realise .

[pErvinalia]

I have never argued that religion (by which you almost certainly mean "theism") has a lock on moral truth. What I DO claim is that atheism provides NO moral guidance or truth at all.

And why should it?

Because stamp collecting does!