Asha'man

As an atheist, I prefer any model of government that does not depend on theistic support. I think that basing a government on a delusion or superstition is a bad idea, and doomed to failure.

To be more specific, I tend to favor the government ideal as specified within the US Constitution: The authority invested in a government comes entirely from the people it governs.

Hobbs

After I left, I thought of another succinct but more serious response to this:

The basis of government is power.

The basis of good government is using that power to benefit everyone, not just the governors.

What specifically that would entail is up for debate, and largely depends on the specific historical, cultural, economic, environmental, etc setting. Which is why an open government, in some way democratically elected or otherwise appointed and constrained by an agreed upon constitution and a balance of that power among competing interests, is likely to be the fairest and more likely to result in more benefits or at least fewer harms for more people.

g-21-lto

I would say no. Atheism as a system of thought is more individual than religions are. There is no central creed or set of beliefs other than a non-belief in deities, which atheists come to for a variety of different reasons and with a variety of strengths of conviction. I don't think atheism is a coherent enough system to provide a gov't based on itself.
If this were to take place, I would suspect that there would be a lot of arguing on this issue. Possibly the laws would be based on
1. utilitarianism
2. greatest possible liberty without infringing on others' rights
But there's no guarantee. I think atheists, if they came from a predominantly theist area, might be more open to creating a free society with all the rights that citizens of most western countries currently enjoy, but no more so than any minority group, simply because they'd been exposed to less-than-ideal conditions.
Mandatory brainwashing!!! :devil3: Kidding. But you know, that's what we're trying to do to the Christians' children through the public schools now.
In due course of time, war would certainly become necessary.
Hopefully just defense. But you never know. I don't think there's anything specifically within atheism to make it more prone to one or the other.
Hopefully not. This has happened over the years to people in nearly every form of government imaginable (theocratic, heretics; communist, anti-revolutionaries; american democracy, Native Americans). Hopefully with a brand new system we can be more humane.

NearNihil Experience

What a giant straw-thingy! Atheism does not in itself give a model for governence, and neither does theism. Both say nothing on laws of society or value of social interactions...let alone econimics, warfare, social services.

Theism =belief in God\gods
Atheism= no belief in God\gods

Neither of these are even related to or a foundation for anything involving developing and stabaling a society or its dictates. All either of these say is that one either believes in a god or dosnot. Belief\ or not in a God doesn't rest as a very good starting block for any sort of societal structure...especially one where people want freedoms and liberty.

The framework imbedded in the questions is most shady and irrelevant to the basis of theism\atheism...theism and governence are necessarily seperated by their differences of context and consumption. Not saying they can't work together, but one should not be the basis for the other.

jdlongmire

Ultimately to get to question 6. Then explore the necessity and inevitability of human death and the sovereignty of God.

Writer@Large

I'm afraid I don't quite follow. Were you trying to catch us in a "atheists can't figure out how to stop people being killed, so they can't critisize God for allowing death" sort of scenario?

--W@L

jdlongmire

"catch" sounds so, so...argumentative.... :angel:

...really trying to direct the discussion toward the idea that the leaders of government have to make decisions that will lead to some deaths for the greater good and that is a direct parallel to the sovereignty of God as it is applied to the Israelites and the destruction of their enemies pertaining to the overall redemptive plan...

...sorry for the run-on...back to work!

Writer@Large

Hey, this is the IIDB ... :devil3:

To what ends? I mean, what were you hoping to accomplish? I can tell you plain that we've seen that argument around here before. And what would the 6 original questions have had to do with it? To try and show that atheists don't have better answers than your god?

--W@L

NearNihil Experience

I would suspect this would be very difficult...seeing as how some atheist sometime, somewhere, invented the idea of God to make money anyway :Cheeky: ... :devil3:

jdlongmire

Universal understanding, peace and love...

...and the rebuttal is?

...seek first to understand...

...again, to show the inevitability of human death and the rational sovereign (executive) decision to make the inevitable have a productive outcome for the course of human events.

JD