I practice all sorts of things to make my family life better. Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?Originally Posted by YesNo
"Name me an ethical statement made or an action performed by a believer that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer." - Hitchens
Religion is useless to me. I don't need sanctions and threats to make me behave decently to other people. If a person thinks they need that, there is something wrong with their thinking.
Yes, I've pretty much done that. You have too if you believe in one or none of them. We're all at least vaguely familiar with the truth claims of most religions. All or most of them are faith-based and therefore empirically equivalent.
Well, when theists say things like "we can't be good without God," they don't mean "we can't be good if we don't believe in God." (Unless they're morons, of course, and we needn't discuss morons.) They mean that if God doesn't exists, then good and evil don't exist either, at least not objectively. And so we can be neither good nor evil. (Maybe they're wrong about this, but that's what they mean.)
The soundness of Hitchens' sentiment, on the other hand, is contingent on whether or not God exists. For if God exists, then there are good actions that atheists cannot perform. In example, if God exists - an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing being - then it is a good thing to reverence him. But if you don't believe in him, you can't do so.
No. I don't agree that it would be a good thing to reverence him. That would be akin to slavery. Is slavery a good thing? A person can decide to be a slave to their god, but even if it is real, they will not convince me that I and my children should be slaves.
If a god created the universe, I would appreciate the enormity of that, but I would wonder at the choices for earthlings to live mortal suffering lives. I would wonder at a deity's complacency to the torture of his "children". I do not agree with sacrificing children. If theists do, there is something wrong with theists.
"If slavery isn't wrong, then nothing is wrong." Abe Lincoln
Way late in responding, sorry, and other people have already weighed in, but here's my thoughts:
I hadn't heard your reason for the marriage ban, but it certainly sounds plausible. I do disagree that priests who were previously normal men become active predators of children because their sex drive is suppressed.
I wonder if the numbers on clerical predation have ever been crunched by anyone without an axe to grind. Are there really proportionally more predators in the priesthood than, say, teachers, coaches, etc.? Or do we simply hear about it more now because 1) decades worth of cases previously suppressed are all coming out at once; 2) people smell money and want some.... Damn, I know I had a 3) when I started, but now it's gone.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
One who doesn't believe in rotary phones.
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Well, I guess theists wouldn't agree that reverence is akin to or synonymous with slavery. They would think it a good thing to reverence the good. And they think that God is supremely good. Here's another way of looking at it. Most cultures throughout history have thought it a good thing to reverence parents. Because, among other things, parents are the source of our being and are - or ought to be - our benefactors. But, if God exists, he's ever so much more our source of being and benefactor. So we should reverence him too. It's a sort of a fortiori argument. Again this is predicated on the conditional, if God exists . . .
If a parent is abusive or neglectful, that parent should no longer be revered. It should be fought. This god "parent" theists revere sits by while his children are mutilated, decapitated, burned, hanged, shot, stabbed, raped, beaten, gorged, eaten by disease, executed, enslaved, starved. For thousands of years there have been genocides and plagues. The horrors of North Korea, AIDS in Africa, starvation in Somalia, the holocaust, the dark ages, hundreds of years of extremely high infant mortality rates. If there is a god, if this is by design, it's evil.
Much better to realize we alone have responsibility for our lives and how we effect others than to leave everything in the hands of a god who, if there, ignores atrocity. If he rewards suffering with another life, he is still sick. It's like a slave holder. There is no gray area here. There is no interpreting torture differently. Torture is torture. Painting a rosy picture of it only further enables it. I would rather enjoy my life and seek genuine truths for the entirety of it than abide torture in the hopes of a paradise reward. Theism is fantasy. It should be kept private and not thrust upon a vulnerable society.
I'll state it more simply. Theists who believe their god should be revered are like abused wives living in denial of what is being done to them. They are afraid of misbehaving for fear of punishment. The abuser buys them a present and it's all good again. That sucks. We should empower people to get out of that mindset. It's false security and the abandonment of freedom.
You are amazing Climacus. I think only you could do that job because in your bizarre book, there is not even 0.000000001% of the staggering number of claims. Actually you are the most credible Protagorian that ever lived, except perhaps Erasmus of Rotterdam and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
You struggle with the problem of evil. I understand that. Don't we all? All I was doing was suggesting a theistic line of thought, a way to understand the theist's point of view. Your analogy doesn't hold for the theist.
What book are you talking about, a religious book? I never said I was religious.
I understand theists quite well. I was raised by theists. I live in the united states. What's to misunderstand? They're very vocal about their causes.
Nice way of putting that. I agree.
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Although this thread is about atheism, it keeps going back to religion and then a criticism or defense of religion. What I am wondering is if atheism has any sort of specific practice that helps the atheist live a good life, specifically, how do atheists avoid fighting within their own families? In other words, I'm trying to find out if atheism has anything positive to offer or if all it has is a critique of what other people want to believe in.
Now I can see the sort of things that some atheists actually practice--at least the vocal ones. Here are two things that I see atheists practice:
(1) They tend to practice self-righteousness when it comes to other people's spirituality.
(2) They tend to refuse to forgive religious people because, I suspect, that would defuse the first practice.
Now, I'm not saying religious people are any better, but neither of these habits or practices seem like something that would make an atheist's family life joyful. When tensions arise in the family, I can see the self-righteousness and unforgiving attitude get directed at a spouse, parent, child or other close relative.
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