Asha'man

Hello Geo,
I’m glad to hear you are experimenting, but I don’t think you are interpreting your observations clearly.

Let me propose an explanation that fits your observation and allows us to make predictions (i.e. a theory in the scientific sense):

Christianity has nothing to do with being moral. You started as a moral person, so during your experiment you stay a moral person. Being a Christian is irrelevant to your moral character. Morals are not derived from God, but from common sense and the fact that humans live in a society.

Does this sound like it might be a workable hypothesis? How could we verify this?

Psycho Economist

I've been tracking this board for a while off and on, and you were among my favorite Christians to listen to... did someone hijack your account? Because you've never sounded this ranty before.

I don't either. But then, I also stay out of the existence of gods board.

I don't quite follow what you mean here... what does it mean to you for someone to be anti-Christian? I'm an athiest because ultimately I came to a juncture in my life where fundamentalism and atheism were the only beliefs open to me. To believe in "biblical truth" meant I didn't have the moral authority to disregard the parts of the Bible that conflicted with "worldly truth"... and I could go out and verify worldly truths wherever i turned, often to the contradiction of biblical assertions... so Christianity lost one more. Does that make me anti-Christian?

The moral teaching of Christianity have, since Jesus's day, closely tracked the mores of the society at large (as some posters have said, slavery is a great example), this doesn't surprise me in the least.

Biblical morality or contemporary Christian, I dare say contemporary western, morality...

What's my moral code...

• In this order...
• First, don't deliberately hurt (physically, emotionally) others (or their property).
• Second, don't engage in reckless behavior likely to hurt others.
• Uphold the obligations i've placed upon myself... notwithstanding challenges of items (1) and (2).
• Foster the well-being of myself and those close to me.

In what ways do you think that athiests are more likely to go against their consciences than more likely than theists... aside from lack of belief in gods? (This assumes that you believe your conscience tells you to believe in your God.)

I find that remark personally insulting.

Right. My mother, fundie that she is, raised me to be a curious, scientifically-minded, critical thinker. My conscience impelled me to feverishly look over the issue of the existance of God, the existance of gods in general, and the supernatural more generally... my conscience wouldn't let me believe until I tore my belief apart and put it back together first... but no matter how I tried to put it back together, it fell apart.

Why is it that 99.999999999% of natural history was wasted on animals not complex enough to believe in "the one true God"? Didn't need four billion years to develop a human-sustaining ecosystem, two billion maybe.

Why was 99.9% of all humanity ever, condemned by sin as it was, not privy to the revelation of "the one true God"?

I could go on forever

Then don't, please do not, try to become an athiest! You will not be happy. You weren't happy! I would never wish that upon you. I would never want to do that to you. But don't assume that we all have consciences that demand the worship of your God, and that we're running around and spiting those consciences.

They're not rationalizations; there's evidence... Anthropologists and Psychologists have been trying to untangle conscience since before you were born.

I would be willing to bet such is not the case. Backward telescoping is a common problem dealing in interpreting recollections: we look back on our past actions (which we recall clearly enough) and we impose our current worldview upon those actions to reconstruct our intentions. I'm sure the differences would be subtle, and I'll conceed that you've likely always been more conservative than those around you, but not that your moral code has never changed.

That much said...

Hey! Athiests! He's lambasting you for being assholes, and falling right into his trap. You're only making matters worse... what's your problem?

You've mocked him, insulted him... the next time something like Nedow v. California comes up, he'll be able to print out this thread, show it to all of his friends, and say "Why should we respect their rights? They don't respect ours..." Is that what you want?

Yes, that was a harangue worthy of St. Stephen, but in your response, you've made it into a worthy harangue.

Yes, you felt offended. I did too; I said as much. But there's a constructive, mature way to deal with that offense... and neither theists nor atheists have a monopoly on maturity.

Maybe he was being a troll, maybe his post was utter flamebait... but he's been here long enough, just by virtue of showing up, to be given the benefit of the doubt and maturely rebutted... that's why we're here, right?

And if you did join IIDB to be one of a thousand to shoot at the occasional duck in a barrel, you shot at the wrong guy... or didn't you check his posting record first? Didn't you see what else he's had to say. Yeah, he went off on a rant. Yeah, he threw down a few gauntlets... If you don't have anything constructive to add take your rotten cabbage and, go home... or at least go to another thread. Pick on someone your own size.

Psycho Economist

P.S. Don't think I meant everybody who replied was being an ass; you should know who you are on whichever side of the line you sit.

Perchance

Geo,

I'm assuming (giving you the benefit of the doubt, really) that you are honest about having been an atheist for twenty-four hours, or at least trying not to believe in God.

Doesn't the continued existence of your moral code in that timeframe suggest to you that you don't need God to have a moral code?

If you think that morals and God are absolutely and utterly dependent on each other, then:

1) you should have felt immoral as an atheist

or

2) you still believed in God even during those twenty-four hours.

-Perchance.

Debbie T

Warning! Your experiments could be dangerous. You better stop now or you might die in a car crash during that 24 hour experimental period and end up in hell or something. I don't think your god takes kindly to those kinds of experiments.

Did you repent when you were done with your experimenting for not having a belief in god during that 24 hour period?

HelenM

GeoTheo

Do you think it would be possible for an atheist to do what you did, in reverse, i.e. experiment with being a Christian for 24 hours?

I'm afraid, with all due respect, that your experiment rather trivializes the non-belief of people here, just as it would trivialize Christian faith, imo,were a non-Christian here to say "I experimented with being a Christian for 24 hours".

I think it takes more than 24 hours to get over worldview-lag, apart from anything else

To understand how the ex-Christians here feel, you'd have to enter into the sense of betrayal and wasted life, that they feel when they come to the conclusion that they've been taught lies for years and believed them. And then you'd have to be in situations where Christians came to all sorts of wrong conclusions based on your lack of belief. If you could do that, then you could start to see why they are angry...but a 24 hour thought experiment - I don't see how that could show you what life is like for them.

Helen

Garotte

How can one perceive the person until ones walks a mile in their moccasins. True emphathy is the beginning of understanding,

Be well, be wise and search for truth.

Albion

<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

Eudaimonist

Geotheo, try being an atheist for the next five years, then get back to us.

Devilnaut

Does this maybe get at a deeper routed misconception that many theists have about belief in religion? Many of my friends who are theists think that it is very much a "personal choice". I think theists are taught that whatever religion they belong to, whatever "worldview" they subscribe to, is a personal choice, and that in a way it doesn't really matter what other people (or reality!) say, because your belief in it makes it true.

In contrast, I don't think it's a personal choice at all. My beliefs in this area are the same as my beliefs in any other area (for the most part I hope), in that they are dependant on external reality! I don't believe what I want to believe, I believe what is rational to believe. And I think I speak for most, if not all, of the atheists on this board.

[ October 26, 2002: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]</p>