Athiest Morals (from email)

[HawkerHurricane]

Atheist morals are derived from the same place yours are; namely, the culture around you, your parents, the stored wisdom of the human species, your own thinking and observations, and your experiences. Our morals, like yours, are situational, ad hoc, and relative. The only difference is we don't pretend to have some absolute system we can impose on everyone.

Your system is inhuman, nihilistic, meaningless and incomplete. It is inhuman because it focuses on something other than people. Nihilistic because in the end, nothing humans do matters, only your deity counts. Meaningless because it is incoherent and contradictory. Incomplete because despite being "absolute" there are whole areas of values your system fails to address. For example, what is the proper way to manage a river basin? Should we subsidize infant industries? What type of personal weapons should be legal? What is the proper level of taxation? How should incinerators be sited? What level of individual risk is safe? And so on. Additionally, your Bible is worthless as a guide to proper behavior because of the kind of behavior it produces: intolerant, violent, narrow-minded, evil and ignorant. One need only look at the way Christians behaved for the 1800 years prior to the Enlightenment for
confirmation. Any decent behavior Christians have -- love, tolerance, liberty, democracy -- they brought in from outside Christianity. Christian clerics running death camps. Christians aiding Hitler. Christian clerics acting as dictators. Christians hunting Muslims in Indonesia and Buddhists and Hindus in India. Christians sending in missionaries to places like China and Afghanistan where converts are murdered. Christians fighting democracy in the US. Christians murdering each other in Ireland. Christian clerics planning genocide in Rwanda. Christian clerics supporting Chiang Kai-shek, Franco, Hitler..... The list goes on. And you want to lecture us on what is moral? You people don't know shit about what is moral. Here's one for you: no atheist has ever committed genocide for the purpose of atheism. Communists killed for Communism, not atheism (they executed freethinkers in China, Vietnam and Russia). Meanwhile, Christianity has given us twenty centuries of murder. But you guys are the moral ones.... I get a little tired of the group that argues that the majority of individuals in society -- women, gays, atheists -- should have reduced civil rights telling us that they are morally superior. What is the purpose of this absolute morality of yours? Dominance. Authoritarian power. Control over the minds and bodies of others. God's love is the same as Hitler's: Follow me or die! Is that what you stand for? I feel sorry for you.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

1. The end result is still intolerance

Whether it comes from intolerance of atheism from Christians or intolerance of Christians by atheists, intolerance is intolerance. Several of the lines are not true (Bible teaches hate) and morals learned are learned from outside the Bible from one's parents but if you actually READ the Bible (somethings these Christians that are being referred to don't actually do) many good morals are reinforced in the NT.
I agree that any sort of belief should not be forced on people but all Christians cannot be lumped together no more than all atheists can be lumped together.

[Dookus]

It's not so much about individual

christians as much as the reign of christianity for the last 2000 years.

There's no denying that Western Civilization has been a Christian civilization for two milennia, and the author rightly points out that after all that time, it has failed to provide us a consistent, reasonable, sensible moral position on most issues. Isn't it time to try something else?

[SemiCharmedQuark]

4. Hell yeah

mainly that no religion should ever be incorporated in public law or public business or anything that belongs to all people and is not some private institution like a church.
However I think it borders on the line of encouraging hatred of ALL christians, and there are a lot of good ones. I have seen them here on DU.
Also, no matter what Hitler etc. CLAIMED they were doing in the name of Christianity, they did what they did for the sake of power and control. If they needed to claim that it was for the sake of Buddhism to get the support of the people, they would have done that too. People will do what they have to to get power. Many of those wars were no more about religion than the Iraq war is about Osama. People hate what they are not.

[DrWeird]

5. "Isn't it time to try something else?"

Not really. I mean feel free to try. But I doubt anything better will come of it.

The problem isn't the religion or the ideology. You're fighting human nature.

We're all glorified chimpanzees regardless of whether you believe it or not.

[Dookus]

2. very cool

a bit confrontational, but the underlying premises are spot-on.

[ClintonTyree]

3. Yikes..................

Place heels together, kness slightly apart, bend down and wrap you hand around your shins and place your head between your knees. Now watch out for the shitstorm about to erupt here at DU.

[Goldmund]

6. Whoever wrote this,

tell him/her slavkomae sends a high-five.