Cheerful Charlie

Riverwind:
"Further, it is easy to criticize another's views because no one has completely consistent and unassailable views. In fact, I would challenge "Cheerful Charlie" on being an "atheist who loves humanity". In fact, he has little reason, as an atheist, to love humanity, especially to the detriment of his own wishes and desires, and he shows this quite well to the detriment of Christians. So, expose your own views, Charlie, and lets see just how well they stand up to close scrutiny. "


I will leave this for others atheists to read and make up their own minds as to what you posted.

Yes, again. Atheists are free from morality. No, we are not free from all morality because we don't believe in a bronze age fairly tale god.

Claims like this are empty bigotry. I resent these sorts of oblique attacks on my morality, based solely on being an atheist.

I have thought about the morality problem long and hard over decades. I noticed along the way, that in the USA, Christianity has had a big problem with standing up against US government support for genocide, mass murder and other evils, with only some exceptions.

I can't take my beliefs about mass murder from a religion that I have never seen effectively oppose it en masse, or a God that commands such repeatedly in the Bible.

I got it myself, by watching with horror early TV programs in the 60's exposing the cruelties of Nazi Germany. When the horrors of Vietnam and Nixon's secret bombing in Cambodia, and Laos
were exposed, I did not need a cult to tell me why this was wrong, and the church's did not effectively en masse, oppose it, many were for it. It is not for nothing some people call the Vietnam war Cardinal Spellman's war. These good Christians re-elected the liar Nixon with 63% of the vote. I was horrified. We learned nothing from Nazi Germany?


You have show not understanding here I am afraid, and I will not belabor that point further.

You did reiterate your insinuations atheists have no reasons to be moral.
I still resent that as bigotry.

The Christian religion in America is a moral failure. We have 35 years of hard evidence for that claim, I am more than willing to go into. Start with reading Thomas Nagy, progressive magazine, September 2001 for articles by Nagy showing the US government KNEW its sanctions in Iraq would cause mass deaths. Note that when Nagy got these documents via the FOIA statutes, the killings still went on. The politicians refused to stop these genocidal deaths. Not one was an atheist.
http://www.progressive.org/mag_nagysanctions

We will have an election next year. Many of the GOP and Democratic politicians that supported these sanctions and thus 500,000 dead Iraqi children in the 90's will be running for re-election.

As an Atheist, I know my duty. What about you? Hillary Clinton was silent despite her bully pulpit as the President's wife all this time. No vote for Hillary from me.

When do we as a nation draw the line against this sort of genocide?Since our politicians will not draw the line and our religious leaders will not draw the line, is it time for arising Atheist community to take these people by the hand and give them the moral leadership these people lack?

Moral duties face us here at election time.

What good is a bible or the Christian religion if we as a Christian nation cannot avoid repeat support for genocidal regimes and policies? When does this Christian nation finally learn to be moral with no moral leadership from religion?

Fellow atheists, what say you?

When do we start saying "No more bigotry" of this sort? When do we announce the moral emperor has no clothes and has not had any since Nixon's election in 1972?

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
-- George Santayana, The Life of Reason
Those who cannot learn from the past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.


Cheerful Charlie

Spanky

:boohoo::boohoo::boohoo::boohoo::boohoo::boohoo::b oohoo::boohoo:

Look Toto, an orchestra!


(I learned something new today!!)

Toto

OK - this thread is all split and recombined and now it's going for a ride from BCH to MFP. Check the link in the OP for its history.

Cheerful Charlie

As a youth, I watched the Walter Chronkite 20th century WWII series of programs on TV detailing among other things, the Nazi holocaust,the camps, the ovens. I learned my ethics from Walter Cronkite.

Later in the late 60's I ran across the Stanley Milgram obedience to authority experiments. I was horrified how easy it was to trick people into torturing another human. Then I saw how easily people learned to torture when the Greek junta took over and instituted widespread state torture.

I learned by watching how ammoral the world really was. One did not need a bible to know this was all so very, very wrong. Media was my moral teacher. How can anybody view the scenes at the Nazi camps photographed by American liberators of the camps and not scream "THIS IS WRONG!".?

Unless they have been "Milgramized".

All this made me horribly sensative to noticing these evils. And opposing them. I hated Johnson, Nixon and the war mongerers. Pinochet, the Greek junta, the Argentianian generals, and the Brazilian generals.

I didn't need a bible to know this was all so very,very wrong.
if anybody wants to know why I hate this sort of evil, I am more than willing to explain. The question is, why do so many people accept this sort of evil?


[/quote]

I am more than willing to take this up on a thread in the moral forum. Slowly but surely I am indeed writing a book on this to try to end this acceptance of evil policies in America by our politicians. With a new generation of young atheists in the 18 - 24 year old range, now 19%of that population, it is time to put this "atheists can have no moral;s" and the "Atheism, -Stalin, Mao, Hitler!" nonsense to bed.

These guys did their evil from mostly economic programs, and tot his 18 - 24 age group is long ago and far away. No need to attack them for that then attack todays Christians for the witchhunts.

But logic then draws us to the fact that indeed, the US with no atheist politicians gave the 20th century its last major genocide, 500,000 dead Iraqi children. And more before that.support for Rios Montt, Pinochet and others. For that, Christians lose all rights to claim only Christainity and religion can supply morality, and has a right to attack atheists.

The logic then relentlessly means I must oppose this sort of US policy.
Hence the book.

Hence relentless logic that demands atheists supply the missing moral leadership that the Christians politicians will not.

Once one gets started down these logical and moral roads, its hard morally, to stop.

Cheerful Charlie.

Amaleq13

I have no idea how you managed to misinterpret my comment so badly. I've read enough of your posts to doubt it is an intentional strawman so I'm more inclined to chalk it up to carelessness. By claiming that there are rational reasons to be nice to others besides believing one is being observed/judged/under threat of punishment from God, I am in no way claiming to be "better" than those who do.

I'm simply denying your claim that that is the only rational reason to be nice to others.

After spending 20 years in the field of psychology, I'm not exactly baffled by them, myself.

Again, that you think this somehow argues against or negates my point suggests you haven't been reading my posts very carefully.

Being nice to others because one believes one is subject to judgment/punishment by an eternally vigilant Observer is both rational and selfish (ie done for one's own good).

Being nice to others because it makes me feel good is both rational and selfish.

Being nice to others because it reinforces the social contract and, as a result, tends to make life easier is both rational and selfish.

Being nice to others because they might return the favor is both rational and selfish.

Clearly, you are wrong when you assert there is only one rational reason to be nice to others and observing that people are ultimately selfish doesn't change that one bit.

You appear here to be conceding that this is a rational motivation to be nice to others.

How is this relevant to whether it is a rational motivation?

Again, I have never claimed or even implied moral superiority to anyone but people who choose not to be nice to others do not automatically "win" in an "atheistic/agnostic world" (whatever you mean by that).

If I am home when they make the effort, my shooting them is unlikely to make them happier.

If I am not, then it is possible one of my neighbors that I have been nice to will stop them or call the police or otherwise provide information that leads to their arrest and the return of my belongings.

If they do not, then I guess they "win" but, given that the behavior is likely to continue, that streak becomes more and more likely to end. Prisons aren't full because criminal decide to retire.

I have no idea why or how you think your comment relates to mine.

JamesBannon

"Love" is too strong a word and I don't think Christians love humanity either. I love those that are closest to me, but I am capable of empathising with those who are not. I am also perfectly capable of respecting their rights as humans even though I may hate what they stand for. Is that sufficient do you think?

Iconographix

Charlie:

My friend wrote a paper on the relationship (if you want to call it one) between the Religious Right and the GOP, entitled "Who's Screwing Whom?" If I can get it from him, I'll post it here. Basically, it can be argued that the GOP is manipulating its Evangelical supporters just as many left-wing demagogues manipulate inner-city blacks.

I also have personal experience with this. I am a recent graduate of a Southern Baptist college, and We just celebrated our centennial with an appearance by Daddy-Bush. I cringed when I read our college President saying in a newspaper that Bush is a good representative of our values, especially when Bush has supported and received support from Sun Myung Moon.

As the latest elections have shown, Christians finally seem to be catching on, albeit slowly. Notice also that Al Mohler has said that he would consider supporting Romney if he toes the right political lines. The whole scheme is becoming more obviously partisan back-scratching, and nothing more. Why have Christians been involved in it? My personal conclusion is that it is because they are bad Christians.

Tears In The Rain

Riverwind,
My morals are based on empathy and wanting to be a good person.

If your morals are based on answering to someone you think is watching your every move, does that mean you would lie, cheat, murder and steal otherwise?

Somebody's morals are fucked up and it's not mine. I do good because I am good. You do good because you think the bogeyman will punish you. People like you scare me. Keep on believing your fairy tales if that's the only thing keeping your evil nature in check.

P.S. Don't say I'm insulting you. You are the one saying your basis for morality is fear of punishment.

Angra Mainyu

People love for different causes, that can be rationalized if you like. But people need feelings, wishes and desires to love someone.

In other words, if John Smith loves humanity, that's not in detriment of his wishes and desires. Rather, that is part of his wishes and desires.

Yes, theists manage to see half of the picture. They fail to see the other half – namely, that you have no “right” (rather, no foundations) to impose your morality on anyone else unless you have a previously established goal (i.e., you act in a way for a reason), and that is the case even if your god exists.

How can you possibly choose to believe in a deity just because you don't like the lack of it?
If I like Zeus's world, that's not going to make me believe in Zeus.
Well, I don't think one needs to be particularly intelligent or having integrity to realize that one doesn't have any foundations for one's morality unless there's an agreement regarding certain objectives one wants to accomplish – objectives that are, in turn, the result of one's genetics and environment, including morality.

What it's not common is to find theists that do realize that the existence of a powerful entity calling itself “god” wouldn't change that a bit. I'm not saying that that's because of any lack of intellectual capacity or integrity. I don't know why theists fail to realize that. But they usually do.

Riverwind

Pending a review of what? Sure, it was off-topic. Usually those threads are moved. I don't care, I'm just baffled.

Ah, hem, yeah... Personally, I take offense at that, as it is way off base. I and my beliefs were insulted and patronized before I spoke out against the bigotry. Otherwise, I would not have spoken out.

And don't think I didn't notice the obvious bias in the fact that my response to the original offense is what the moderators chose to begin this thread with, as if I am the instigator. Well, it just makes it obvious that I'm in an atheist forum.

I've witnessed way more time spent on criticizing religion and cherry-picking verses out of religious texts that they don't believe in, as evidenced by the origin of this thread and part of the reason I spoke out.

I've taken "my concerns" there many, many times in the past. Like many Christians and the difficulties in the Bible they don't wish to face, many atheists turn a blind eye toward the problem of morals, or better, their "freedom from morality". So, I get those who don't want to acknowledge the difficulty. And then I get those who, in my opinion, are more enlightened and actually admit the problem and simply say that they adopt a subjective set of morals and really don't have the right to condemn others except out of personal preference.

As I've mentioned many times before, the "Holy Grail", for me, has been existential philosophy. To me, there is no philosophy so open and honest about the plight of humanity. I have yet to have anyone refute it in as open and honest a way. I am looking for its faults but have not found any. I saw what they saw before I ever read them, so identifying with their philosophy was natural and rational.

I'm willing to consider something other than what I've presented, but it will take someone who can understand the works of the existentialists and present good, in-depth refutations of their ideas.

Oh...sorry...I'll refrain from projecting my own thoughts on Charlie who projected his own thoughts on Christians. I'll refrain from assuming that I can read his mind like he assumed he could read the minds of the evil and immoral Christians. Yeah...ain't the power to warn someone you fundamentally disagree with wonderful?

The golden rule, for Nietzsche and his Uberman would be for weaklings. When you are beyond good and evil, these kings of things mean nothing.

Since I was talking about replies to me, then should I be the one to define whether they were replies or flames? If I didn't see them as flames, then what makes them so. If they were flames, then why the heck are you criticizing me rather than them?

I know few who have read and fewer who have read and understood existentialist philosophy. Aside from that, I have seen no one "refute" it, though I have seen plenty of wishful thinking and handwaving.

Whenever I have confronted an atheist or agnostic friend with existentialist philosophy, then if they are intelligent they've heard of it and read a bit of it, but they have never been able to answer it. In fact, the subject is usually dropped completely. Well, it is keeping me from a full understanding of why anyone would want to be atheist or agnostic, so I hope that someone understands their own beliefs well enough to actually explain it to me one day.

Now this is just plain .... You fill in the word, but it ain't complimentary. You get on to me and talk of my over-generalizations without addressing the actual instigator(s). What friggin' hypo.... And why, exactly, should anyone who happens to have a significantly different worldview take such rules seriously? Have those with whom you happen to agree follow the rules and maybe others will follow the example.