Why I'm an Atheist

[l0ckp1ck]

you hear about people being murdered, tortured, raped, beaten ect. and i just want to ask the people who think there is no god, what causes you not to just kill anyone you see fit? Any decent person couldn't honestly bring themselves to do such acts, even if they have severe hatred for someone when it comes to the crunch you just can't do it, something stops you, but what is it that stops you from acting out these things? it may be a deep down knowing it is totally wrong, but how do we know as humans what is right or wrong? where did that knowlegde come from? was it just made up along the way or could it possibly be true someone made those rules and they r within us. Think about this, you buy a tv it comes with a manual, you buy an ipod it comes with a manual, so you may ask why doesn't life come with a manual? perhaps it did and the bible is real and that is our manual

[Tubby]

you hear about people being murdered, tortured, raped, beaten ect. and i just want to ask the people who think there is no god, what causes you not to just kill anyone you see fit? Any decent person couldn't honestly bring themselves to do such acts, even if they have severe hatred for someone when it comes to the crunch you just can't do it, something stops you, but what is it that stops you from acting out these things? it may be a deep down knowing it is totally wrong, but how do we know as humans what is right or wrong? where did that knowlegde come from? was it just made up along the way or could it possibly be true someone made those rules and they r within us. Think about this, you buy a tv it comes with a manual, you buy an ipod it comes with a manual, so you may ask why doesn't life come with a manual? perhaps it did and the bible is real and that is our manual

Awesome question Alpha.

But I think that no human being should need a 'manual' to tell them what's right and what's wrong. You should know what's right & wrong by instinct & intuition.

If you need a 'manual' (the bible) to tell you right from wrong, then you're obviously morally deficient in the first place. Normal human beings should have an inherent sense of what's right and wrong without needing to refer to any such 'manual'.

If you haven't been born with that knowledge - or at least been raised in that knowledge - then you're probably a psychopath / sociopath in the clinical sense of the term...

[l0ckp1ck]

my question went deeper than that. where did this knowledge come from in the first place? u say instinct or intuition, that may be but where did it come from and how did it develop?

[|iR|Focalor]

I came from the Jesus, bada bing.

[Tubby]

my question went deeper than that. where did this knowledge come from in the first place? u say instinct or intuition, that may be but where did it come from and how did it develop?

I guess it simply developed as a part of our overall evolution.

That would make sense, since being kind to each other (at least to those of our own species) will encourage our overall survival and development..

At least one would hope so, but for those religious folks who insist on putting a damper on any sort of human development for the sake of their own unyeilding doctrine and dogma... 

[Arm0r]

unyeilding doctrine and dogma... 

speaking of unyeilding doctrine and dogma....nice thread. 

[|iR|Focalor]

my question went deeper than that. where did this knowledge come from in the first place? u say instinct or intuition, that may be but where did it come from and how did it develop?

I guess it simply developed as a part of our overall evolution.

That would make sense, since being kind to each other (at least to those of our own species) will encourage our overall survival and development..

At least one would hope so, but for those religious folks who insist on putting a damper on any sort of human development for the sake of their own unyeilding doctrine and dogma... 

Haha! See, you're a moron. You have no idea what you believe. You're as much of a sheep as the next guy blindly following along with the herd without knowing why you're doing it. You "GUESS" it developed as a part of our overall evolution? Wow. So you're gonna sit here and tell me in one breath that Christianity and the Holy Bible is bullshit because it uses supernatural cop-out explanations for everything rather than factual reality, and then in the next breath you're going state that you simply have "faith" that morals/ethics are just "developed as a part of our overall evolution." That's fucking retarded. That statement has no presentation of factual scientific evidence whatsoever. If you're going to attempt to debate a topic, have a fucking clue about your own point of view before you present it.

If you really want to be spoonfed what you're supposed to think about the subject of morality apart from religion in order not to look like a total feeb next time you want to debate the subject, I'd suggest reading Beyond Good And Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche.

[reaper]

It's spelled 'righteous', reaper.  Tongue

But anyway I guess you're right. That's what a modern christian would say in order to appear more acceptable in an increasingly secular world. Well, the bible doesn't say it, but what the hey? Religion is all about spin and PR these days....

Interestingly you appear to be doing the spinning.  Thanks for the spelling tip.

[quadz]

Think about this, you buy a tv it comes with a manual, you buy an ipod it comes with a manual, so you may ask why doesn't life come with a manual? perhaps it did and the bible is real and that is our manual

As a starting point, I hope we can all agree that wherever we do get our morality, it doesn't derive from scripture.  For instance:

The bible advocates genocide, condones slavery, and most contemporary readers should be able to improve on the Ten Commandments with just a few moments reflection.

People advocating the abolition of slavery in past centuries were on the losing side of a theological (biblical) argument.

The graph of contradicting claims between bible chapters & verses
graph of contradicting claims between bible chapters & verses is also quite formdible.

Contemporary readers who search through the bible to highlight what they consider to be moral preachments contained therein--such as "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"--are at the same time using some innate and cultural sense of morality to reject the many preachments in the bible that are now considered reprehensible by modern standards.

So it seems clear we don't obtain our moral sense from scripture, since we use that very sense to reject parts of scripture as immoral, and because our sense of which scriptures we no longer consider moral has changed over time.

As to where any innate moral sense may have originated...

my question went deeper than that. where did this knowledge come from in the first place? u say instinct or intuition, that may be but where did it come from and how did it develop?

I'm currently reading a book which explores these sort of questions from a neurophysiological/philosophical standpoint:

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris.

For an overview, here's a talk the author gave last year on the topics explored in the book:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrA-8rTxXf0


Other authors (sorry, I don't have links handy at the moment) have explored the question of the origin of an innate moral sense from a Darwinian (genetic) + social perspective.


Regards,

quadz

[haunted]

I know why babies die, and why earthquakes, famine, and other natural disasters happen. PM me for more information.

[reaper]

evolution left unchecked does not care about morals, now we dictate the evolution, how convenient.  another strike on the luck card (and yes god is above it).

 

[|iR|Focalor]

(and yes god is above it).

God and gods are above nothing. Gods can be wiped out as easily as humans by humans who are supposedly inferior to them. History shows this to be true in a few instances. During the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), he replaced the traditional egyptian belief in Ra with a similar monotheistic religion revolving around Aten. After his reign, the proceeding Pharaoh denounced Aten, labeled the religion to be utter heresy, and did everything possible to wipe it from the annals of history along with any legacy that Amenhotep IV might have left behind. Any hold out followers of Aten were either converted or killed. It's quite apparent that if you eradicate the followers of a god, you essentially render the god powerless and dead. I suspect that people these days don't really believe that the followers of Yahweh or Allah might ever be wiped out due to the large numbers of practitioners presently, but if you remember what Adolf Hitler's goal was and how close he came to achieving it, it's certainly possible in the right conditions.

Or just ask the Aztecs.

[quadz]

evolution left unchecked does not care about morals, now we dictate the evolution, how convenient.

Ya skipped a few steps there, Skippy.

[reaper]

how so? 

p.s,
generally I consider the statement true

[reaper]

God and gods are above nothing. Gods can be wiped out as easily as humans by humans who are supposedly inferior to them. History shows this to be true in a few instances. During the reign of Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), he replaced the traditional egyptian belief in Ra with a similar monotheistic religion revolving around Aten. After his reign, the proceeding Pharaoh denounced Aten, labeled the religion to be utter heresy, and did everything possible to wipe it from the annals of history along with any legacy that Amenhotep IV might have left behind. Any hold out followers of Aten were either converted or killed. It's quite apparent that if you eradicate the followers of a god, you essentially render the god powerless and dead. I suspect that people these days don't really believe that the followers of Yahweh or Allah might ever be wiped out due to the large numbers of practitioners presently, but if you remember what Adolf Hitler's goal was and how close he came to achieving it, it's certainly possible in the right conditions.

Or just ask the Aztecs.

If god created the test, how is he not above the people taking it, or how is he powerless?  If you had a god of hate, and a god of love, maybe you could alter their influence, but if gods are on the same page, or there's "one god" I don't see how we'd make him powerless or useless.