Where does your morals/ethics come from?

[tdh26]

Damn! Those are some good perks! Wasting money, wasting time and being paranoid. As good as that may sound, I don't think so, lol.

Why so hostile? I assume you don't do these things. Why should it bother you someone else does?

[Loffler]

How about answering my question instead, since it follows logically from your statement about atheists. Is everyone who acts like a Christian a Christian?

Let me take a stab at this because I started it anyway. Is everyone who acts like a Christian a Christian? Of course my first response would be NO, but.... if you act like a Christian, why would you not become one? (All the perks you know!) There must be a reason. In the same sense, If a person who claims to be a Christian but acts in complete contradition to that belief, why not become who you are acting as? This of course is just being true to yourself. Something I'm not very good at by the way. This probably isn't a good answer but there it is.

You said you consider someone who acts like an atheist pretty much an atheist. So I wanted to know if you took that in both directions. Furthermore, saying someone who acts like an atheist "might as well becomes what they are acting as" is different from saying people who act like atheists are effectively atheists.

[Loffler]

Damn! Those are some good perks! Wasting money, wasting time and being paranoid. As good as that may sound, I don't think so, lol.

Why so hostile? I assume you don't do these things. Why should it bother you someone else does?

We don't care what unintelligent, extreme believers do. We care what intelligent, marginal believers do, because they have intelligence which could be better used on more meaningful pursuits.

[atheist2308]

Why so hostile? I assume you don't do these things. Why should it bother you someone else does?

Believe me when I say, if I was being "hostile" you would know it, and that was just sarcasm. Yeah, your right. I don't waste my time and money and I don't believe that there is an invisible man always watching me. It doesn't bother me what someone else does, unless it directly involves me. Or if I see someone doing something that does bother me, then I might just have to step in and do something.

[tdh26]

We don't care what unintelligent, extreme believers do. We care what intelligent, marginal believers do, because they have intelligence which could be better used on more meaningful pursuits.

You put yourself on a pretty high pedestal considering atheists comprise a very small portion of the poplulation and through history. I think if you would do a serious study of the advances of mankind, they were done by people who believed in a God. What motivates an atheist to to accomplish great things for his fellow man and when has it happened? You must be able to list them If you think we are so stupid.

[McQ]

tdh26, you have had numerous opportunities to respond directly to questions asked of you (especially by loffler, who has reminded you a few times that you have not responded to him). I suggest if you want to have even the least bit of credibility that you respond to direct questions, especially since you keep bringing up each subject that members here are taking the time to respond to.

You've also been corrected (social contract theory is one example) and just blown it off as if it didn't matter. The whole point of this thread that you started was determining where an ahteist's morals and or ethics come from. Social Contract Theory (which has been pointed out to you by Will Ravel, laetus, et al) is valid. Perhaps you should take the time to learn about it before blowing it off as unimportant. You could then possibly try to answer to the corrections pointed out to you.

You may also want to work on the definition of atheism as you think yours is broad, but is, in fact, narrower than an atheist's.

Lastly, why are you trying to attempt to try throw hard sciences into a talk about philosophy and social science? Related to this question is this suggestion: first learn some of the science you're trying to throw around so willy-nilly, because you come across as glaringly short in knowledge of biology, genetics, evolutionary biology and even the history of evolutionary biology. In other words, don't try to bullshit your way through a subject you have no knowledge of when talking with people who actually do know it. Again, total lack of credibility. Be willing to state that you don't know something, rather than try to bluff your way through it.

Of course, you can ignore all this too. Up to you. But I would just rather see something meaningful come out of this thread aside from you dodging valid points.

[atheist2308]

We don't care what unintelligent, extreme believers do. We care what intelligent, marginal believers do, because they have intelligence which could be better used on more meaningful pursuits.

You put yourself on a pretty high pedestal considering atheists comprise a very small portion of the poplulation and through history. I think if you would do a serious study of the advances of mankind, they were done by people who believed in a God. What motivates an atheist to to accomplish great things for his fellow man and when has it happened? You must be able to list them If you think we are so stupid.

Here's a list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence  <---- Just a little reading to answer your last sentience.

atheists comprise a very small portion of the population

There's more then you may think. Atheist and other non-believers make up around 14% to 15% of the worlds population.

[myleviathan]

We don't care what unintelligent, extreme believers do. We care what intelligent, marginal believers do, because they have intelligence which could be better used on more meaningful pursuits.

You put yourself on a pretty high pedestal considering atheists comprise a very small portion of the poplulation and through history. I think if you would do a serious study of the advances of mankind, they were done by people who believed in a God. What motivates an atheist to to accomplish great things for his fellow man and when has it happened? You must be able to list them If you think we are so stupid.

What motivates most atheists, and there are all kinds, is the pursuit for truth. Of course believers made all sorts of contributions to science because that was the pervasive belief of the day. However as more scientific discoveries were made, religious beliefs and their influence receded more and more in the scientific community. God cannot be sensed by science, so it makes sense that atheism is the standard in current scientific thinking. Think about this - Christians used to believe that God physically resided in the sky, but when we learned how to look into space, Christians accepted the new way of thinking over time. Christians also believed Satan literally lived in the earth, beneath the ground - but as geology progressed this belief passed away as well. As dinosaurs were discovered by paleontologists, Christians had to readjust their opinion that creation revolved around them, and all animals' sole purpose was to benefit humanity. Now, as evolution has taken the forefront as a scientific theory, slowly but surely more and more Christians are adjusting their view to accomodate evolution into their beliefs. I don't think that religion and science are mutually exclusive - but as scientific pursuit matures, it's naturally going to wax atheist because science tends to dispell religious views. And as far as atheist scientists go:

Ivan Pavlov (1849â€"1936): Nobel Prize winning Russian physiologist, psychologist, and physician, widely known for first describing the phenomenon of classical conditioning

Sigmund Freud (1856â€"1939): Father of psychoanalysis

Julius Axelrod (1912â€"2004): American Nobel Prize winning biochemist, noted for his work on the release and reuptake of catecholamine neurotransmitters and major contributions to the understanding of the pineal gland and how it is regulated during the sleep-wake cycle.

Sir Edward Battersby Bailey FRS (1881â€"1965): British geologist, director of the British Geological Survey

Patrick Blackett OM, CH, FRS (1897â€"1974): Nobel Prize winning English experimental physicist known for his work on cloud chambers, cosmic rays, and paleomagnetism

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910â€"1995): Indian American astrophysicist known for his theoretical work on the structure and evolution of stars. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983

Richard Feynman (1918â€"1988): American theoretical physicist, best known for his work in renormalizing Quantum electrodynamics (QED) and his path integral formulation of quantum mechanics . He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.

Vitaly Ginzburg (1916â€"): Russian theoretical physicist and astrophysicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2003. He was also awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1994/95

Stephen Jay Gould (1941â€"2002): American paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, and historian of science, one of the most influential and widely read writers of popular science of his generation.

Stephen Hawking CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (1942â€"): British theoretical physicist, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes, and his popular works in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general, including A Brief History of Time.

Sir Julian Huxley FRS (1887â€"1975): English evolutionary biologist, a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis, Secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935-1942), the first Director of UNESCO, and a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund

Frédéric Joliot-Curie (1900â€"1958): French physicist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1935

Harold Kroto (1939â€"): 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry

Alfred Kinsey (1894â€"1956): American biologist, sexologist and professor of entomology and zoology

Richard Leakey (1944â€"): Kenyan paleontologist, archaeologist and conservationist

John Maynard Smith (1920â€"2004): British evolutionary biologist and geneticist, instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution, and noted theorizer on the evolution of sex and signalling theory

Jacques Monod (1910â€"1976): French biologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1965 for discoveries concerning genetic control of enzyme and virus synthesis

Norman Pirie FRS (1954â€"): British biochemist and virologist co-discoverer in 1936 of viral crystallization, an important milestone in understanding DNA and RNA

Susan Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield, CBE (1950â€"): British scientist, writer and broadcaster, specialising in the physiology of the brain, who has worked to research and bring attention to Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease

Richard J. Roberts (1943â€"): British biochemist and molecular biologist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993 for the discovery of introns in eukaryotic DNA and the mechanism of gene-splicing

Claude Shannon (1916â€"2001): American electrical engineer and mathematician, has been called "the father of information theory", and was the founder of practical digital circuit design theory

Michael Smith (1932â€"2000): British-born Canadian biochemist and Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1993

Linus Torvalds (1969â€"): Finnish software engineer, creator of the Linux kernel

Steven Weinberg (1933â€"): American theoretical physicist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1979 for the unification of electromagnetism and the weak force into the electroweak force.

[tdh26]

tdh26, you have had numerous opportunities to respond directly to questions asked of you (especially by loffler, who has reminded you a few times that you have not responded to him). I suggest if you want to have even the least bit of credibility that you respond to direct questions, especially since you keep bringing up each subject that members here are taking the time to respond to.

You've also been corrected (social contract theory is one example) and just blown it off as if it didn't matter. The whole point of this thread that you started was determining where an ahteist's morals and or ethics come from. Social Contract Theory (which has been pointed out to you by Will Ravel, laetus, et al) is valid. Perhaps you should take the time to learn about it before blowing it off as unimportant. You could then possibly try to answer to the corrections pointed out to you.

You may also want to work on the definition of atheism as you think yours is broad, but is, in fact, narrower than an atheist's.

Lastly, why are you trying to attempt to try throw hard sciences into a talk about philosophy and social science? Related to this question is this suggestion: first learn some of the science you're trying to throw around so willy-nilly, because you come across as glaringly short in knowledge of biology, genetics, evolutionary biology and even the history of evolutionary biology. In other words, don't try to bullshit your way through a subject you have no knowledge of when talking with people who actually do know it. Again, total lack of credibility. Be willing to state that you don't know something, rather than try to bluff your way through it.

First of all, I'm new to this forum and actually this is the only forum I've ever responded to other menbers. I haven't even gotten to much of the other questions in here. I want to respond to a lot of comments but it does take time and I type very slow. My family keeps telling me to get off the internet. We just have dial-up.
Anyway, I've really enjoyed being here so far. It has made me think more than I have in a long time. I'm sure you have formulated your thoughts on this subject for a long time because it's your belief system. Seeing this thread has generated a good number on replies, it must mean a lot to you and I respect that.
As for not responding to some questions, I did just respond to a question from loffler. Sorry I've missed others. Some questions I need a little time to formulate a response. And I am going to read the link I was given. But over the years, I've learned you can't believe every thing you read. There is a lot of garbage out there. As you would put it; the Bible!

first learn some of the science you're trying to throw around so willy-nilly, because you come across as glaringly short in knowledge of biology, genetics, evolutionary biology and even the history of evolutionary biology.

I have not gotten into any great detail in anyone of these sciences, just broad comments of things I have read for years. I don't have a PhD. Do you? If you want specifics I would have to find them again, if your willing, and post maybe in another section.
Just today I read that more than 50,000 physicists acknowledges many members of the scientific community don't believe humans are the primary cause of climate change.
I thought there was a concensus that we are the cause! (If you listen to Al Gore) I think It's nonsense. But we believe what we want.

Darn, another post for me! I'll never catch-up!

[Loffler]

We don't care what unintelligent, extreme believers do. We care what intelligent, marginal believers do, because they have intelligence which could be better used on more meaningful pursuits.

You put yourself on a pretty high pedestal considering atheists comprise a very small portion of the population

Also a small portion of a population: geniuses. Also a small portion of a population: Olympic gold medalists.

and through history.

For most of history there were almost zero admitted atheists, for a very good reason.

I think if you would do a serious study of the advances of mankind, they were done by people who believed in a God.

Curiously few in the days since atheism stopped carrying the death penalty.

What motivates an atheist to to accomplish great things for his fellow man and when has it happened? You must be able to list them If you think we are so stupid.

I didn't say you're stupid. I said that we don't care what unintelligent or extreme believers do. We care what intelligent or marginal believers do, because they have intelligence which could be better used on more meaningful pursuits. In other words,  we don't care what Appalachian snake handlers do with their lives, they wouldn't be winning any Nobel prizes with or without religion.

[Asmodean]

Also a small portion of a population: geniuses. Also a small portion of a population: Olympic gold medalists.

*nods*

The great things in the world were not done by the flock of white sheep. They were done by those who went their own way.

[tdh26]

I didn't say you're stupid. I said that we don't care what unintelligent or extreme believers do.

Sorry, the stupid comment came from someone else.

And as far as atheist scientists go:

24
You listed Sir Julian Huxley. Here's something he wrote: “We all jumped at the Origin of Species because the idea of God, interfered with our sexual mores.”
That speaks volumes. After all, if children fine out they were created by a God that they are accountable to, it will become more difficult to promote the pagan “do what thou wilt. For that is in the mature of man world view.
It comes down to this: Either we are a result of chance random process, or intelligent design.
If we are a result of evolution, then there is no God, there are no rights or wrongs, anything goes, there is no sin. Murder is only wrong because someone may think that it is…not because it is. Moral relativism reigns.
I'm surprised you listed Alfred Kinsey. From what I've read, a most discusting person in how he did his research. Anyway..........

[Asmodean]

If we are a result of evolution, then there is no God, there are no rights or wrongs, anything goes

Evolution alone does not disprove god(s), just the fact that your "creator" is not a creator.

As for rights and wrongs, your statement is hollow as a soap bubble. It is based on the assumption that gods define right and wrong which in turn is based on the assumption that gods exist. Ockham's Razor.

[Loffler]

If we are a result of evolution, then there is no God, there are no rights or wrongs, anything goes, there is no sin. Murder is only wrong because someone may think that it is…not because it is. Moral relativism reigns.

The fact that so many Christians say this leads me to question whether it's such a good idea for atheists to try to convert Christians to atheism. People who say the above are basically admitting they have no internal morality; maybe you people can't be trusted with the truth.

[atheist2308]

If we are a result of evolution, then there is no God, there are no rights or wrongs, anything goes, there is no sin. Murder is only wrong because someone may think that it is…not because it is. Moral relativism reigns.

The fact that so many Christians say this leads me to question whether it's such a good idea for atheists to try to convert Christians to atheism. People who say the above are basically admitting they have no internal morality; maybe you people can't be trusted with the truth.

  to Loffler!!! I couldn't have said it any better. If Christians believe that the only way to know right from wrong is religion, well, Loffler said it best.


But maybe convert is the wrong word and way to go about it. Converting is something religious people like to do. We atheist don't need to do that, all we need to do is just plant the seed of doubt in there brain and hope it grows. Maybe it is a form of converting but I don't like calling it that.