Alonzo Fyfe

I believe that theism is greatly hindered by its ability to do good by the barriers it places in a believer's capacity to determine what is and is not good.

Theism incorporates the prejudices of, basically, ignorant savages 2000+ years ago. It locks in this barbaric mentality and prohibits deviation from it.

Non-theist ethics, on the other hand, like science, allow for the possibility of debate and correction. Atheists have far more freedom to say, "I guess that people shouldn't really do X and I was wrong to think that they should."

Because of its impediment to moral progress, I hold that theism is responsible for more moral harm than atheism.

HelenM

I think these are good points; I also think that Christians often deal with what happened 2000+ years ago by throwing it into a big black box labelled "God cannot be wrong" and then they have a mental disconnect between that and 2002 - which at least means they don't say it's ok to go around doing what the Israelites did to other nations, or having their same laws about conduct (I am referring to what is according to the Bible).

So you could have a discussion with them about 2002 and probably agree but if you try to move to 'then why was this ok in the Bible?' they will move to "God can't be wrong" - end of discussion.

But at least they aren't trying to carry over a lot of what's in the Bible, to today, as if it's valid behavior for today.

Still, though, I prefer having the freedom to look at any event - or text - and discuss it without having to rush to 'God can't be wrong' and then the discussion is over. I was at a reform Jewish Bible study once and appreciated the freedom with which they discussed their passage. I think that Jews of old probably had more freedom of discussion about their texts than is considered 'acceptable' today among conservative Christians. Not that I would know for sure, but it seems that way given the midrashes etc.

love
Helen

Mike Rosoft

In my opinion, the question is phrased incorrectly. The proper question is: "Which is responsible for the most evil: freethought or ideology?" And the answer is obvious...


Mike Rosoft

theophilus

For the purpose of this discussion, I deny that any non-theistic definition has any validity at all and challenge you to prove otherwise.

DMB

Catholicism is heavily tainted by nazism, although, of course, there were individual catholics who heroically resisted nazism.

The church was largely responsible for the terrible anti-semitism that washed through Europe for many centuries before the advent of nazism. Many nazis were catholic and quite a lot of the church hierarchy were so anti-semitic and blindly protective of fellow catholics that they condoned nazism and protected war criminals after the collapse of nazi Germany.

Samhain

You make the assumption that the Bible always existed. Remember, the Bible was written by fallible men and the NT is only 2000yrs old. Trivial in regard to the rest of the world/universe. Was it not possible for man to be moral at all without evidence through the Bible. Did all men at some point before the Bibles existence simply know of the existence of God and therefore were able to discern what was evil without the written definition? Your argument fails because you do not recognize that the Bible is not timeless and that it is subject to man's interpretation. What may be true to you through the Bible may not be true to someone else, etc. So how is this any different then just throwing the Bible out of the window, so to speak?

Unadulterated assumptions. You assume that these things must be taken from the bible and only that. How do you know that these things were not taken from another book, written by an author not familiar with the bible? The bible contradicts what it says about morality, and I very much doubt that it was the first source EVER of morality. Did Socrates or Plato or Artistotle know of the Bible? No, but each had their own set of moral rules and in which there were basics that coincided with one another to give a basic moral base to contruct on top of.

Wouldn't the validity be determined by those viewing the definition? If all agree that the definition is true, then is it not valid?

theophilus

Popularity is not truth. The universality of the moral sense did not arise from taking a public opinion poll.

Samhain

Begging the question on a faulty authority. IF the Bible was an objective history instead of a book of folklore, mythology, and poetry, I would have a harder time disagreeing with you. The fact is that little in the Bible shows any truth to anything which we already KNOW to be true, it's a book full of contradictions, fallacies in logic, and overall confusion (Have you read it, by the way?). Not only that, the book was written thousands of years ago by many different authors (all men, and all fallible), from a standpoint which is biased and unreliable at best, at worst devoid of all reason.

*Sigh* Begging the question once again. PROVE that atheists "deny" anything instead of just rejecting falsehoods and dismissing your god as something comparable to Santa Claus, and then we'll talk. Also prove to me why it is YOUR god specifically, and let me know why you are sure of this without any of this cryptic mumbo-jumbo you seem so fond of.

Begging the question, begging the question, all on a faulty authority with no support besides the authority itself. Stop telling me what you've read in an ambiguous book, or were told, or believe; start telling me what you KNOW.

What about social concensus? Perhaps we may not know what is truly moral, but so many things we've found over the past 100 years that were "true" then are now false. That's what science is about, proving that which we "know" may not always be the truth. We can still come up with a universal set of morals just by the simple fact of doing "good" to others, regardless of what one might get in return. This can be proved through social interaction. It is always more profitable, socially speaking, to do good to others than to cause them harm. And thus, from there we can start to establish a set of morals based off of doing good to others, since it is generally accepted that people want good done to them.

Once again, prove this. I'm growing tired of question begging and your card stacking arguments. You must first tell me why your god is the unquestionably right way before I will take any of your arguments as anything remotely serious or reasonable.

HRG

Theophilus,

I wonder what your definition of an "objective standard" is; it seems to differ from the usual one. "Subjective" doesn't mean "defined by humans".

Most people would call the definition of the second in terms of an extremely narrow spectral line of Krypton "objective", since there is a communicable and effective procedure to check whether a clock conforms to that standard; and everyone can in principle perform it and will get the same result. It is irrelevant that there was a human consensus to choose exactly that line.

From this example, we see that "objective" means "determinable by a procedure whose result does not depend on who performs it".

OTOH, a standard which depends on the opinion of any specific being can hardly be called objective - especially when there is no effective procedure to elicit unambigously the opinion öf said being.

Thus I wonder why you keep insisting that theists have an objective standard of morality. "It conforms to the commands/opinion/nature of God X" is not at all more objective than "it conforms to the Categorical Imperative.

HRG.

fromtheright

This was the original question. Now if you guys want to water down the evils that atheists have done by defining it away by the motive that's fine, but why don't we stick to the question.

As noted earlier the balance sheet should start out with the millions of deaths under Communism, an atheist system, period. Also, since you defined Communism correctly as Marxism-Leninism, Marx opposed religion as the "opiate of the masses", not as a competitor to the Communist state, which it did turn out to be, simply because it taught there is a higher authority than the State. Again, you can define it away if you want to change the original question, I suppose. I would refer the reader to The Black Book of Communism for the numbers of deaths. If you want to go to motive, though, you might consider the fact that with no religious (or other, for that matter) system of morality other than "what is just is what serves 'the revolution'", the state was supreme, and individual lives were meaningless.

I would also wonder if it is not valid in this balance sheet to consider the good done by theists because of religion and the commandments of religion. Now, you guys will love to bring up "horrors of the Bible" (and yes, I admit there are some things there that have long troubled me that I don't have the answers for, but then there are lots of things in this world I don't have the answers for), but you might also honestly look at the fact that tremendous good has been done in the name of theism in general and Christianity in particular. While you're cataloging medieval superstition you might consider that early hospitals were set up and run by monks, not to mention the numerous hospitals set up in the modern era by churches, and efforts to alleviate suffering in other countries by Christians. Ditto charities in the Roman Empire (and since) by Christians in a society which did not look kindly on treating the weak or sick with dignity.

And as part of that balance sheet, are you looking at the evils done to theists by atheists (and yes, to be fair, vice versa)? Christians were no strangers to the Gulag nor currently to the Chinese laogai.

[ March 21, 2002: Message edited by: fromtheright ]</p>