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atheist morality

Started by homer, March 01, 2011, 04:32:23 PM

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Will

The institutionalized superstition, from an atheist's perspective, is the association between natural morals and a supernatural creator. We don't believe in the supernatural, so, from our perspective, adding god into the equation is unnecessary and only serves to cloud the truth.
I want bad people to look forward to and celebrate the day I die, because if they don't, I'm not living up to my potential.

AnimatedDirt

Quote from: "Will"The institutionalized superstition, from an atheist's perspective, is the association between natural morals and a supernatural creator. We don't believe in the supernatural, so, from our perspective, adding god into the equation is unnecessary and only serves to cloud the truth.
Whether they are of God or Nature does not cloud the truth that they are NOT superstition.  I am not speaking of all 10 Commandments at all.  I specifically called out a few Commandments that are natural.  Had I mentioned the 4th Commandment, then it could be rightly stated that the Sabbath is from "institutionalized superstition".  These others are not superstitious.  You and I both agree they are natural.

Will

From the atheist perspective, god is superstition. That was the point.
I want bad people to look forward to and celebrate the day I die, because if they don't, I'm not living up to my potential.

Tank

Quote from: "AnimatedDirt"
Quote from: "Tank"
Quote from: "Davin"Minus the influences of institutionalised superstition.
Because "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Honor your father and mother...", "Do not murder", "Do not steal" ...these are superstitious ideas.
If you say so I just thought they were reasonable behaviour by normal people. I was thinking more of the existance of god, heaven, hell, talking snakes, the world only being a few thousand years old, a big wooden boat. All of what you have written here has been done before and since. Morality is institutionalised socially acceptable behaviour and there is no need to mix in institutionalised superstition with it. Unless of course you need an excuse to rape, murder and commit genocide (which is why there is a big wooden boat in the fairy tales of some mythologies).
If religions were TV channels atheism is turning the TV off.
"Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt." ― Richard P. Feynman
'It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life.' - Terry Pratchett
Remember, your inability to grasp science is not a valid argument against it.

The Magic Pudding

Quote from: "Will"
Quote from: "AnimatedDirt"Whether they do or not is really of no consequence as the God that wrote these down (whether you believe in God or not) is the God that claims to have created Man in His own image...and if so, then the basis of these are not of "Man", but innate.

So what we are left with is your belief that they existed prior to the Exodus acct. and my agreement with you.
Concepts like empathy, 'honoring' fellow members of the species, not killing and not stealing actually predate sentience in human evolution and can theoretically be dated back to before we were even primates. Our distant ancestors that first evolved cooperation with other members of the species are actually the root of these things, and that dates back tens of millions of years. Theism itself is really only maybe 20,000 years old, and the concept of Yahweh is only a few thousand years old. Like every religion, Christianity adopted natural human ethics as Christian in a (successful) attempt to appeal to people and spread.

I think it's easier for the morality of Atheists to evolve compared to theists, who have to reconcile their morals with millennia old scribblings.  Passing on the earth with it's beauty and diversity in tact to future generations seems a moral imperative to me, so I'd say birth control is good and huge families are immoral.