Atheists....

That is simply not what it is about. Take for instance the fact that God created angels, now an angel is a perfect being yet Lucifer rebelled against God. Now from gods point of view you have this new creation Humans, would you want those that did not love you. In fact hated you? Of course not. Thats why humans were given free choice to choose, if they loved god or not. Its not his fault if someone chooses differently, and thus is simply wiped from all existence for that choice.
What someone needs to remember is exactly that. Its a choice, and choices have consequences.
As for the Religion is only a power hungry organization. Religion has nothing to do with personal faith. Just like people who go to church don't nessecarily believe in God, they worship religion, and not God.

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Originally Posted by emily655321

I'm fascinated to learn that Eve isn't singled out in the Q'uran. That one detail has been a big deal in the history of Christianity. In the Western world, the oppression of women has often been justified by the claim that original sin (the belief that all humans are born with sin, because of the sin of Adam and Eve) is mostly Eve's fault, because she tempted Adam just as Satan tempted her. I once heard an analogy that Eve's temptation symbolized/inspired womankind's ongoing temptation of men to do evil things. Medieval monks even taught that the female body was an instrument of the devil. We're just a horrible lot, aren't we? :p

Anyhoo... Water Lily is right on with the main points. Basically, the story starts with God making the Earth, and on each of the six days he makes a different part, and then on the seventh he rests. Adam is lonely, and so God puts him to sleep and removes one of his ribs, and from it he creates Eve. They are happy and ignorant of their nakedness. Then Satan appears in the form of a serpent, and convinces Eve to take the fruit by telling her, "God said to care for Adam, didn't he? Isn't it your duty as a wife to provide for your husband?" So she gives it to Adam, not telling him where she got it. Upon eating it, they notice their nakedness and are ashamed, and so they cover themselves with fig leaves. Then God yells at them, and banishes them from the Garden of Eden to wander the Earth, where they have children, and Cain kills Abel, and so on... As far as I remember, no forgiveness in this story.

It's interesting to me to learn the Islamic version of the story. I think it's much more interesting! I heard once about some of the ancient Hebrew myths that didn't make it into the Old Testament, and I think that story (about angels bowing to Adam, and Lucifer's damnation) was one of them. Another was the one about Lillith, who isn't in the Bible, but "another woman" is mentioned... oh, somewhere in there. :p I'm a little rusty on the finer points.

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Its is some very interesting points that you make about the islamic version. We must remember that the biblical version of Genesis was written by Moses about fourty thousand years after it happened. Noah is mentioned in the tales of Gilgamesh as Nephatshim. Moses was merely writing a summary of what had happened so far, and so didn't go into great detail. Got down into the real nitty gritty of it.
There are however other tales, mythologies, and ancient books that support both the creation, the first murder, the great flood, gods existence, and even Christ crucifixion.
An Interesting thing I read lately from the Wulfistan was the association of the great men, and them being turned into pagan gods. Jupiter, Mercury, so and so forth. Also I read a script on genesis that claimed that when Cain killed Abel the two groups of humans split.
Cains decendants were violent and warred amongst eachother, while Abels, or seths since he took over from his brother were peaceful. Then the fallen bred amongst Cains children, and Cains children bred with Seths, thus creating violence in the world and the warring nations.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

Rachel,

I am building up to my description of you. I want it to be (sniggers evilly) special. ;)

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Xamonas,
i really loved your description of me, you get funnier and funnier with every post. Imagine, a genius(could you please help me with math?) and so very funny. I read it to my family and they were shrieking, okay I thought they laughed a little TOO hard for my enjoyment. But it was great. thank you.
did you read mine? It is how I really do see you, except it is a little hazy since I don't know the depths of you yet. Have to get thru the layers, and don't think I won't. Even if you totally ignore me from this point on I shall study you, you don't have a 'PRAYER'!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

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Originally Posted by Logos

Don't you dare even think about quitting/leaving! you're our voice of reason around here ;) :D

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your cheque is in the mail!!!
I don't know what a skin deep lollipop fruitcake Milquetoast faker can do to h elp this forum, but :
To quote Kevin McAllister at the check out"I'll give it a whirl-for the kids!
thankyou. :lol:

Hehe, I love that movie. Better than the second movie as a whole, excepting the entire last third (the torture chamber scenes...I love the part when Harry blows up the ENTIRE...FIRST...FLOOR).

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Originally Posted by rachel

Xamonas,
i really loved your description of me, you get funnier and funnier with every post. Imagine, a genius(could you please help me with math?) and so very funny. I read it to my family and they were shrieking, okay I thought they laughed a little TOO hard for my enjoyment. But it was great. thank you.
did you read mine? It is how I really do see you, except it is a little hazy since I don't know the depths of you yet. Have to get thru the layers, and don't think I won't. Even if you totally ignore me from this point on I shall study you, you don't have a 'PRAYER'!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:

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Of course I don't have a prayer, I'm an atheist, what would I do with it? Glad you liked the post. Have fun with those layers, I'm all onion!

Inspiration strikes...see the "What is the image you have of..." thread.

My dear atheists, I have another question. In what are your morals based? (I'm not accusing you dear folks of having no morals, because I know you do, I'm just wondering if it has to do with like having a functioning society [ie. I don't steal, because I don't want people to steal from me, and so as a society we've agreed not to steal from each other] or if it has to do with some deeper belief in the goodness of humanity, or whatever other reasons you may have). I was just thinking the other day, that if I gave up Christianity that I would still retain so many Christian values because they've been engrained into me. Let me know your thoughts.

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Originally Posted by water lily

My dear atheists, I have another question. In what are your morals based? (I'm not accusing you dear folks of having no morals, because I know you do, I'm just wondering if it has to do with like having a functioning society [ie. I don't steal, because I don't want people to steal from me, and so as a society we've agreed not to steal from each other] or if it has to do with some deeper belief in the goodness of humanity, or whatever other reasons you may have). I was just thinking the other day, that if I gave up Christianity that I would still retain so many Christian values because they've been engrained into me. Let me know your thoughts.

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An excellent question.

Personally, I believe that unnecessarily causing pain to anyone is wrong. I agree with much of christian doctrine in this respect. Do unto others as you would be done by them is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint. We all have a conflict between the caring, social part of our nature and the selfish part. A balance between the two must be sought.

I am completely against morality and laws that seek to inhibit our freedom to behave as we want provided that that behavoir does not cause pain to, or interfere with the freedom of, others. In this category, I include such things as laws / moralising over sexuality (I do not include rape or paedophilia here - these cause untold misery and are thus unacceptable to me), freedom of speech (not including the freedom to incite hatred, riots, etc.), taking drugs and alcohol (except where those under the influence impose on others). This kind of thing should be left to the individual.

If everyone treated everyone else with respect, the world would be better for all. With that point made, there are times when the rights of the few must be sacrificed for the good of the many. Rapists, murderers, racists and the like should not be tolerated in any sane society (even if they are in power!) Where exactly do we draw the line though? I'm as much in the dark as anyone else, but I have a sneaking suspicion that politicians and lawyers may not be the best people to guide us in this.

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Originally Posted by water lily

I was just thinking the other day, that if I gave up Christianity that I would still retain so many Christian values because they've been engrained into me.

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Water Lily, have you read Of Human Bondage? It deals in some parts with that very issue.

Having been raised Christian, it is entirely possible that much of my outlook is thereby influenced. However, my father was not religious at all (it was my mother who took us to church). He had been raised in an atheistic household, but he taught me just as much in the way of ethics as did my mother. My parents taught me to pay attention to how others felt, but I tend to play the rest by ear. I tend to be a very intuitive and empathetic person, so, in application, my morals come from little more than gut instinct. In a more concrete sense, though, I feel as Xamonas does; I think less of "right vs. wrong" than I do of "society vs. selfishness;" "beneficial vs. harmful." But that's really just an impersonalized way of saying, "I do what I feel is right." The pain of others causes pain in me, and so I try to make the world as painless a place as I can. In the case of so-called "victimless crimes," such as stealing or vandalism—well, for one thing, it's a matter of personal pride; I just don't do that sort of thing. But it's also a matter of respect; I don't do things that take a jab at the respectability or dignity of others. In other words, whoever owns the property, I don't feel that they somehow deserve to have it stolen or mistreated, whether or not they find out about it. I think such reasoning, which I've heard—"sticking it to the Man," you might say,—is petty and undignified in itself.

I think I posted it somewhere on here before...I'll see if I can't seek it out.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

An excellent question.

Personally, I believe that unnecessarily causing pain to anyone is wrong. I agree with much of christian doctrine in this respect. Do unto others as you would be done by them is a perfectly reasonable viewpoint. We all have a conflict between the caring, social part of our nature and the selfish part. A balance between the two must be sought.

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Xamonas, that was interesting and well expressed as always (NO irony!). However, I’m feeling a little mischievous and know that you won’t run crying when I ask you awkward questions.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

I am completely against morality and laws that seek to inhibit our freedom to behave as we want provided that that behavoir does not cause pain to, or interfere with the freedom of, others.

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How, in this case, can freedom exist? Your behaviour might be utterly innocuous to you but it might also cause someone somewhere a great deal of pain. Perhaps that is no fault of your own but the result of an action might well be hurtful to someone, somewhere.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

In this category, I include such things as laws / moralising over sexuality (I do not include rape or paedophilia here - these cause untold misery and are thus unacceptable to me),

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This issue is a minefield so I’ll try to tread carefully. In a logical sense, is it not conceivable that, given a sufficiently large change in our systems of values, even these could come to be acceptable? Perhaps the reason they cause ‘untold misery’ is because our perception of them (which must be another construct) is negative. Okay, I’ve probably outraged enough by saying that so I’ll dilute it a little.
Cultural relativity is an interesting thing. Over here sufficient numbers of daughters of very poor rice farmers move to the city to work as prostitutes to maintain a lucrative sex industry. The responses of many of the westerners I’ve seen witness it obviously varies but tends to take two forms. Some embrace it, even to the point of Kurtz-like immersion and some are horrified at what they usually term ‘sexual exploitation’. This is the cry of the West, the same West that had little to say about the economic exploitation of the rice farmers, which leaves their daughters feeling that they would do better to work as prostitutes, which the majority do. We don’t seem to mind these young women breaking their backs in paddy-fields for subsistence ‘wages’ but we are horrified when they earn hundreds of times more in the city. This is also the problem of the fact that many do not feel as exploited as our western values make us assume they should. The argument that this is simply a form of ‘false consciousness’ has to deal with the fact that this is true for the rest of us.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

freedom of speech (not including the freedom to incite hatred, riots, etc.), taking drugs and alcohol (except where those under the influence impose on others). This kind of thing should be left to the individual.

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If you are going to have freedom of speech meaning ‘freedom to do anything except…’ then we don’t have freedom, surely? You can’t simply decide that certain things are prohibited. You will say that it isn’t an arbitrary decision but one based on (choose your discourse). What about Orwell’s "If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."?
I know you go on to say that it’s all a question of where you draw the line but you nevertheless appear to be championing freedom when really it’s only your definition of freedom.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

I'm as much in the dark as anyone else, but I have a sneaking suspicion that politicians and lawyers may not be the best people to guide us in this.

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That leaves us with the interesting question of just who is going to guide us? It looks to me as if democracy is becoming dumbocracy.

Interesting Unnamable (as always).

If you want my exact, personal definition of paedophilia, it is sex with a child that is physically, sexually immature. I am not referring to 'under-age' sex between consenting persons, where one or both are a birthday or 2 below society's idea of when people become emotionally mature enough to have sex. It is the former which I consider repugnant and unacceptable.

Your description of Thai attitudes, and those of Westerners to them, reminds me of Chapter 35 of "The French Lieutenant's Woman", in which John Fowles has some very similar things to say regarding sexuality and morals in the Victorian age:

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What are we faced with in the nineteenth century? An age where woman was sacred; and where you could buy a thirteen-year-old girl for a few pounds—a few shillings, if you wanted her for only an hour or two. Where more churches were built than in the whole previous history of the country; and where one in sixty houses in London was a brothel (the modern ratio would be nearer one in six thousand). Where the sanctity of marriage (and chastity before marriage) was proclaimed from every pulpit, in every newspaper editorial and public utterance; and when never—or hardly ever—have so many great public figures, from the future king down, led scandalous private lives. Where the female body had never been so hidden from view; and where every sculptor was judged by his ability to carve naked women. Where there is not a single novel, play or poem of literary distinction that ever goes beyond the sensuality of a kiss; and where the output of pornography has never been exceeded. Where the excretory functions were never referred to; and where the sanitation remained — the flushing lavatory came late in the age and remained a luxury well up to 1900 — so primitive that there can have been few houses, and few streets, where one was not constantly reminded of them. Where it was universally maintained that women do not have orgasms; and yet every prostitute was taught to simulate them. Where there was an enormous progress and liberation in every other field of human activity; and nothing but tyranny in the most personal and fundamental.

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Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

My contention is that with freedom, comes responsibility. The absolute consequences of any act can never be fully known. I was generalising to a degree. Unfortunately, there will always be those that, given freedom, will shirk that responsibility. Hence, there must always be curbs put on freedom in order to protect the greater freedoms of others.

As an example, on your point about freedom of speech. American, Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, himself a vociferous advocate of freedom of speech, famously once said, "Freedom of speech does not allow one to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, where no fire exists." I would argue that neither does it give one the right to shout, "Kill the B******!" at an already volatile public demonstration.

There have to be limits on all things. All fundamentalism, even fundamentalist liberality, is extremism and harmful to society.

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

If you want my exact, personal definition of paedophilia, it is sex with a child that is physically, sexually immature. I am not referring to 'under-age' sex between consenting persons, where one or both are a birthday or 2 below society's idea of when people become emotionally mature enough to have sex. It is the former which I consider repugnant and unacceptable.

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The question is not about what you consider repugnant or why you consider it so. I wasn’t asking for a moral justification of your position but trying to point out that, in many ways, atheism is no less an act of faith than is belief in a deity. As an atheist myself, I don’t have a problem with this. I think the main difference between someone who believes and me is that when I consider the meaning, purpose and value of my existence, I choose to do so without recourse to any supernatural being. The comment to which you were referring asked, “In what are your morals based?” There seems to be an assumption there that morals are usually based on something incompatible with atheism. For me, they aren’t. I just don’t have any faith but that doesn’t mean that I can’t subscribe to or help generate a system of moral values.

Near the end of Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, Martin Landau explains his murder story as if it were a film plot. Woody Allen responds, “I would have him turn himself in. Then your movie assumes tragic proportions, because in the absence of a God he is forced to assume that responsibility himself. Then you have tragedy.”

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Originally Posted by Xamonas Chegwe

My contention is that with freedom, comes responsibility. The absolute consequences of any act can never be fully known. I was generalising to a degree. Unfortunately, there will always be those that, given freedom, will shirk that responsibility. Hence, there must always be curbs put on freedom in order to protect the greater freedoms of others.

As an example, on your point about freedom of speech. American, Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, himself a vociferous advocate of freedom of speech, famously once said, "Freedom of speech does not allow one to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, where no fire exists." I would argue that neither does it give one the right to shout, "Kill the B******!" at an already volatile public demonstration.

There have to be limits on all things. All fundamentalism, even fundamentalist liberality, is extremism and harmful to society.

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This is a political rather than a moral stance. Its power lies in the fact that most people will agree with Holmes’s statement. It seems fair and sensible. To be honest though, I’m not sure if I agree with you anyway. I think certain beliefs are irreconcilable and, in the end, violence is necessary. I agree that there have to be limits on all things but I won’t be justifying my rejection of certain views on the grounds of ‘protecting the greater freedom of others’ or the belief that they are harmful to society as a whole. Just as everyone else does, I’ll be advocating them because they help promote the world I want to see.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

...atheism is no less an act of faith than is belief in a deity. As an atheist myself, I don’t have a problem with this. I think the main difference between someone who believes and me is that when I consider the meaning, purpose and value of my existence, I choose to do so without recourse to any supernatural being. The comment to which you were referring asked, “In what are your morals based?” There seems to be an assumption there that morals are usually based on something incompatible with atheism. For me, they aren’t. I just don’t have any faith but that doesn’t mean that I can’t subscribe to or help generate a system of moral values.

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This part is so true, Unnamable.

Atheism is not "against belief," it's "against theism," and theism has to do with gods and divine beings. It isn't "against faith." We can have faith in other things, such as science or justice (though justice is itself a tricky thing to define), and we can have morals without gods. I think that sometimes people don't recognize the actual meaning of the word, and therefore they misconstrue the meaning of atheism as being amoral and against belief. We're just against belief in gods. Some of us might take it a bit further, but that's a personal thing and the actual meaning of atheism stops at no gods.

By the way, thank you water lily for recognizing this and saying that you know atheists do have morals.