Evil Atheist or?

[Rastelin]

Hi I am new here at the forum. I thought this little story would serve as a good introduction as any.

Let's start with a quick draft of my life up until my twenties. I grew up in a strict Baptist home. Here the blue print for my future self was being drawn. When I got 17, I meet Jehovah's Witness and conducted 4 years of hard bible study with them when something happened. I discovered science. In short. Being very angry at my parents for wasting my childhood on nonsense and re-directing my life towards knowledge through science and evidence I became an atheist.

Now this is all well and good. Up until about 2 month ago. We had a discussion on the subject of child molestation and net predators. I was sharing my views and telling them about a group I used to belong to who hunted pedophiles on the net, then it came like lightning from a blue sky.

Why do you care? Being a little uncertain what the point was I said excuse me?
Hey come on. Why would you as an atheist care. (My stand on religion is well known) You don't get your morals from nowhere. Why would it matter to you if some people are doing evil things. I mean, Hitler was an atheist. (Footnote... He was not)

The silence that follow is the kind you can hear. Fury and bafflement is words I could come up with to describe my mind at that exact moment. I know this guy to be a Christian and not a great thinker so he continued. Where is your preference for judging these men that find kids sexual attractive? Look at me. I live my life by the guidelines god gave us and know it to be a bad thing to do.

(We will not get in to how many skeletons religion has in it's closet concerning this very issue.)

I controlled my anger and asked! So I as an atheist should not know that molesting children is a bad thing to do. Is this your point? He replied! Well, who told you right from wrong? On what basis do you define the difference. You are just human. How do you know?
At this point I am asking the readers to reason with me.

How do I know without the guidance from a manual of a divining origin?

By reason alone that children shall not be prayed upon.
By my knowledge what the result will be if they are.
By my utter wish through compassion that this evil didn't exist.
By my sense of justice that the human crud that is responsible will pay.

Reason, knowledge, compassion, sense of justice. Can an atheist possess these things. Not according to the guy above. And here is the red light people. What would this Christian turn in to where it not for his fear of hell? Would he steal, rape, murder knowing there is no hell to pay in? Has he proven his worth as a human being because some celestial bully threatens with eternal torture does he not comply to it's laws. We don't know do we. Then how did I turn in to a decent human without the penalty of eternal damnation? Trough my eyes this is not a mystery, and it explains a lot that it is to the guy in question.

I got really upset over this. Not so much what he said to me, but how unsoiled stupidity can not just affect once life, but completely rule it. A note in the end. I do not regard other Christians on the same level has him. If I did that I would be him.

Greetings from a somewhat annoyed Rastelin

[rlrose328]

Regardless the belief system, community standards dictate that we not harm the young that will grow up to take our own places in the world.  It's propagation of the species.  We are not animals.  We can reason.  We know that to hurt someone would not be right, period.  

We are all confronted with situations that force us to take a stand, one way or the other, if we cannot compromise.  Our ability to think it through is what separates us from animals, who act on instinct alone.  With an instinct for self-preservation (of the species if nothing else) along with an ability to reason, we can come to the conclusion that hurting others, especially those who are incapable of helping themselves, will not help our species to survive.

In some people, this instinct is broken or the desire to harm and overpower is greater, thus the molestation takes place.  But it doesn't take a god=person to know it's wrong.

[Kyuuketsuki]

Greetings from a somewhat annoyed Rastelin

And justifiably so ... it's interesting that you mention this chap's intelligence because my experience is it isn't a stupid theists POV (Titan here is a Christian, smart guy and he was basically arguing the same thing). Personally I'm with you and think of it as a rather stupid idea because it inherently relies on the assumption that morality has a formula when there is much evidence it doesn't, that it varies by culture and across time.

Interesting post though.

Kyu

[Rastelin]

It still baffles me how utterly dependent they make them selves on the formula as you describe it Kyuuketsuki, and in the process loose so much faith in the ability humanity have to figure this out for them selves. We have done it since we became a tribe like society. We stumble on our way to get better at it, and we will get better at it when religion in a hopeful future is recognized as mythology and reason is the pilot.

[Tanker]

The bible is a really poor match for morality in th modern age. Many, many of the events described in the bible are moraly reprehesable by todays standards. Genocide is described and backed and endorsed by god. Slavery, the prices to pay, proper punishments, and who to buy are recorded in the Bible. Disrespecting your parents is to be punished with torture and death. Human and animal sacrifices to god, who, what, when, where, and why are all described in the Bible. And to top it off there are quite a few young brides and grooms the Jewish age of resposability is 13. I could go on but you get the point the Bible is NOT the gauge for morality. Coulture, contience, and logic are the only things that detemine morality. A good question to ask back is " So if the bible didn't say not to, you would find kids attractive and rape and harm them?" their answer will probably still be somthing like "no of couse not!" then they have to come up for a reason why it's morally wrong without using the bible.

[curiosityandthecat]

Children shouldn't be preyed on, that's obvious. They have a much more pragmatic use.

 

[oldschooldoc]

This is such a bullshit issue. I don't understand where religious types get off accusing us of being immoral. Is the story of Sodom and Gamorrah relevant here? I believe so, and will share why.

Long story short, 'god' sent two angels to the city of Sodom to find the righteous inhabitants. It turns out there was only one righteous family, Abraham's nephew Lot's. The angels went to Lot to warn him of the impending doom so he and his family could leave. When the Sodomites found out about the angels, they demanded Lot hand them over so "they could know them" (interpretation of the word know is disputed). Lot refused, and instead offered his two young daughters to the Sodomites.

Now tell me, how is it that a 'righteous' person such as Lot could offer his two daughters, in the place of 'angels', to be victimized by the Sodomites and still be called moral? This is a person 'god' wanted to save from the fire and brimstone he would bring down upon Sodom?