Ed

Dont worry I know you are a human being even though I cant empirically observe you, unlike the hyperskeptical atheists on this board. Since you were raised in the US your morality is probably very similar to Christian morality because of the judeo-christian influence of living in America.


[b] Very interesting, it was just the opposite experiences for me. Why is not being selfish and doing the best for your family and mankind, good? Why is cheating, lying, deceiving, and robbing bad?

Starboy

Ed, are you so vacuous that the answers to these questions are not obvious? Do you not have any family or friends? Do you not belong to a community that you care about? Do you have no love of your country? What is wrong with you Ed? Has Christianity so screwed up your brain that you have no connection to life and reality and no longer care about anyone but yourself?

Starboy

Ed

Hello scumble. How was it a disaster? He only lost the war because he attacked Russia and ran out of manpower. What if he had won or the US made peace with him after he had taken over Europe. If he had won the war probably the German people would have thought he had done the right thing with the jews.

[b] But that is just emotion for your own species, why is it wrong to kill the humans but not rats and cockroaches? If it is just based on emotion then it is irrational to allow killing of other species, humans are not any more valuable than other species if Evolution is true. The Soviet Union was almost entirely built on lies and yet it lasted 70 years. And why should people get on well together? What if someone doesnt want to get on well together? Why are your emotions to want us to get along together better than someone's emotions that he doesnt want to get along better?

Ed

Of course as a Christian, I know why these things are wrong. But I have met many atheists that think that these things are not wrong depending on the situation. What would you say to someone like that? I want to learn about atheists and what they believe about morality and how they decide what is right and wrong and why. And I especially want to hear why you think that these things are right or wrong because you seem to be a little different from most of the atheists on this board.

Mark_Chid

Ed - this is the only sane definition of right and wrong that I know.


Right - that which moves the world closer to my personal ideal.

Wrong - that which moves the further further from my personal ideal

This is a 100% watertight definition, and no other makes the slightest sense to me. To take your morality from what OTHERS tell you is good and bad seems to me to be masochistic and quite possibly insane.

It just so happens that if someone is happy, well-adjusted and healthy then that 'ideal world' will be based on empathy and the desire to see other happy people.

We alwats share what we have to much of - if we are very happy, we spread happiness, the miserable spread misery - the religious call this 'evil', but there's no such thing, its just a value judgement, not an empirical measurable 'thing'.

Starboy

My morals are based around good and bad. That which is good is of benefit to the group I associate with. That which is bad is detrimental to the group. Because I am a member of the group, something that benefits me will benefit the group and visa versa. I can do things that benefit the group but have no benefit to me at all. I can associate with many groups at one time. As a minimum for a particular group, if I can not do good I try to avoid doing bad. The groups I associate with change as my life has changed. When I was a child it was only my family. As I grew it became my circle of friends, my school, my community, my state, my country and my species, my planet and so forth. I seek good for the group because I identify with the group. Because I am a social animal it is natural for me to wish to identify with a group and natural for me to seek good for the group. People who cannot do this are broken. Evolution has a way of sorting that sort of thing out. This is a very simplistic explanation of morals. It takes a life time of experience and observation to become good at it. Some people never get it.

Starboy

NOGO

Right! This means that if we do as Yahweh does we are sure to me morally right.

Let's take an example.


1 Samuel 15:2-3
"Thus says the LORD of hosts, 'I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt. 'Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.'"

The attack referred to is in Ex17:8-16
I quote here the last verse.
"The LORD has sworn; the LORD will have war against Amalek from generation to generation."

The key words here are
"I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt".

The massacre described in 1 Samuel 15 is therefore a punishment for the attack which took place 400 years earlier.

Ed, since you like to talk about morality all the time, I will say this.

The idea that it was fair game to kill children for something that their ancesters did was the MORALITY of the time. It is called a feud. Yahweh sees no problem with this.


Since Yahweh does it then it must be morally right to kill children to avenge something their ancestors did.

Starboy

Ed,

I am assuming that you have not responded to my last post because perhaps you have learned something. It is my hope that you have learned that the absence of theistic belief does not mean the absence of morals. I also hope that you will learn that holding morals and practicing them are two entirely different things. A point I think is lost on Christianity as a whole as evidenced by the many dishonesties and deceits practiced by Christians that visit this board. The time for Christianity has come and gone. We cannot hold beliefs that allow such hate and conflict as we see in the world today. Atrocities performed in the name of god.

Starboy

Ed

So if my group were Nazis and I did everything I could to help and benefit them then I am doing good?

Starboy

That is exactly it. Don't get me wrong, I hate the Nazis. The Nazis did great harm to my family. However, Nazis thought they were doing gods work. You see, they thought they were the chosen people of the earth and could do as they pleased. Sounds a lot like Christianity doesn’t it. It is the morality of the group that allows Christians and Nazis to kill people. As far as I know, this is true for just about every other religion on the planet except perhaps that of the Buddhists. But even then, man has killed man in the name of Buddha. If you truly want to be a moral person in the greatest sense possible, your group would be everyone and everything. You would not see yourself as a Christian, but as a creature of the Universe. As good as that all sounds, it is fatally flawed. The dirty little secret of life, that all of us choose to ignore, is that life eats life. Life kills life. The highest moral standards are only possible for the perfect being; a being that is not alive. Maybe you are not alive, but I am. I will kill living things or have them killed in order to stay alive (I do it all the time); I will not kill other people unless they threaten my life or safety or of the groups I identify with (I will go to war and kill for my country). In all fairness, I must tell you that I have never been faced with the necessity to kill another human, so some of this is hypothetical. I told you Ed, morals are complicated, and there are no simple answers.

Starboy

[ September 01, 2002: Message edited by: Starboy ]</p>