D’Souza: Atheism is the Opiate of the Morally Corrupt

[AgnosTheist]

the fact that unlike modernism, it affirms the dignity and worth of every human life by asserting that the basis of the universe is love, not just atoms.

but thats a modern idea. for hundreds of years christianity had been persecuting and murdering people who disagreed with its traditional views. in the past what heretic, jew, witch & atheist felt dignity among protestant and catholic majority?

 

[iamrefreshed]

perhaps what d’souza is getting at is that there’s something self-indulgent and self-centered about atheism, whereas religious people tend to frame their lives around something fundamental that exists outside of their individual selves.

I believe you hit the nail on the head.

The removing the judge comment by D’Souza is what may rankle most atheists.

 

[tomarin]

but thats a modern idea. for hundreds of years christianity had been persecuting and murdering people who disagreed with its traditional views. in the past what heretic, jew, witch & atheist felt dignity among protestant and catholic majority?

you’re conflating acts committed by unscrupulous christians (whether king or mob) during the middle ages with christianity as a creed.

it’s not a modern idea that human life is precious and sacred. (by taking sacred out of the equation, they’ve made saying such a thing impossible.)

modernism, which i understand to be comprised of all the -isms of the late 19th and early 20th century such as communism, capitalism, fascism, vegetarianism, pacifism, freudianism, feminism, existentialism, etc., reduces human life to something less than what it actually is: so humans are just labor statistics, consumers, comrades, test subjects, and so forth.

chesterton said “christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and barely tried at all”.

 

[Mirdath]

i would feel on more solid ground showing that christianity is more moral than what preceded it, greek and roman paganism, and what followed it, modernism.

Except that that isn’t what’s being questioned. lukewarm got it right: you have to show that Christians as a group are ‘more moral’ than atheists. And that’s a Gordian Knot you can’t cut through.

perhaps what d’souza is getting at is that there’s something self-indulgent and self-centered about atheism, whereas religious people tend to frame their lives around something fundamental that exists outside of their individual selves.

If so, he’s wrong – again. That’s a common assumption believers make about atheists without bothering to look into the targets’ heads at all. You and D’Souza do not speak for all atheists, or even perhaps any; to so recklessly call them all self-indulgent and self-centered is far overstepping your bounds.

Atheists can be self-indulgent and self-centered, certainly; so can theists! In neither case is this the fault of their belief or lack of belief. An atheist may say ‘there is no God, no afterlife’ and indulge the self; a theist may say ‘there is a God and an afterlife’ and indulge the self by pursuing only his or her own admittance into that afterlife with little or no thought for others. Beliefs honestly don’t have much to do with humanity’s natural tendency toward jerkdom.

One doesn’t have to be about God to avoid being about ‘me first’. There’re more than two options.

 

[JimG]

While religious people have been responsible for some atrocities throughout history, I would venture to say that 20th century atheists have been responsible for a great deal more.

But begin before the 20th century. Look at the history of the Enlightenment in France, which resulted in the Reign of Terror, with its killing of innocents. Then consider the millions of deaths perpetrated by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others, all in the name of their particular atheist ideology. Even the religious wars pale in comparison, and in the determined manner in which these exterminations were carried out. Even Castro, after gaining power, made a determined and continued effort to eliminate anyone in the bourgeoisie, including businessmen, clerics, and the middle class. His supposed enemies were lined up against the wall and shot. Also read the history of the revolution in Mexico, which attempted to suppress or eliminate not only the Church, but all opposition. Many ordinary people died because they refused to go along.

Atheism has not shown itself to be a benevolent ideology.

 

[AgnosTheist]

you’re conflating acts committed by unscrupulous christians (whether king or mob) during the middle ages with christianity as a creed.

what did the clergy do to promote an alleged witch’s rights during the inquisition?

what did the clergy do to oppose slavery?

what did the clergy do to promote gender equality?

what did the clergy do to end forced conversions into christianity?

what did the clergy do to end anti-semitism?

i would only be conflating acts if the religious authorities actually did their best to straighten the ways of those 'unscrupulous christians".

it’s not a modern idea that human life is precious and sacred. (by taking sacred out of the equation, they’ve made saying such a thing impossible.)

the idea that human life is precious (and/or sacred) is older than both christianity & modernism. but its adopted by both.

modernism, which i understand to be comprised of all the -isms of the late 19th and early 20th century such as communism, capitalism, fascism, vegetarianism, pacifism, freudianism, feminism, existentialism, etc., reduces human life to something less than what it actually is: so humans are just labor statistics, consumers, comrades, test subjects, and so forth.

its wrong to lump all those things together. except for communism (and probably facism) the rest have their unique ways of treasuring human life.

feminism raises the value of women, who had been discriminated since time immemorial, even under christianity.

vegetarianism tries to improve human life with the belief that vegetables are healthier than meats, and that abstaining from meat practices human compassion on animal livestock.

capitalism promotes the economy, thereby raising the standards of living.

pacifism…is not really a modern idea but it does promote inter social harmony.

 

[AgnosTheist]

Atheism has not shown itself to be a benevolent ideology.

no it hasnt.

 

[JimG]

no it hasnt.

Individuals, on the other hand, especially those not ideologically driven, (and I know some of them) can be both ethical and atheist, just as Christians can be unethical.

 

[tomarin]

Except that that isn’t what’s being questioned. lukewarm got it right: you have to show that Christians as a group are ‘more moral’ than atheists. And that’s a Gordian Knot you can’t cut through.

either way, what you seem to under-appreciate is that there’s a lot more at stake for the believer than for the non-believer in behaving in a morally acceptable way. the non-believer has no faith (he may have a creed such as vegetarianism, or existentialism, but no faith) so when he commits an immoral act, the offended party is limited to the person he has injured. so is whatever attempt he may wish to make to redress the wrong committed.

whereas in the believer’s case he has offended with his actions both another person or people AND god. and that magnifies and strengthens the person’s innate sense of morality which we all inherit as part of our birthright as humans.

furthermore, the believer may encounter situations in which the injured person does not consider the act an injury at all – maybe a spouse who feels it’s okay for her husband to cheat on her once in a while. the believer (assuming he’s reasonably orthodox) knows that even if his fooling around with someone not his wife doesn’t offend his wife, it offends god and that if he truly loves god he won’t commit adultery.

ultimately when you substitute a human for god as the ultimate moral authority, then you make humanity his or her own judge. the fact that we all have a conscience and that christians and other religious people fall prey to their own weaknesses doesn’t change that.

Beliefs honestly don’t have much to do with humanity’s natural tendency toward jerkdom.

One doesn’t have to be about God to avoid being about ‘me first’. There’re more than two options.

i couldn’t disagree with you more about humanity’s “natural tendency towards jerkdom”. i think there’s something essentially hopeful about the human condition.

atheists (both practical and principled) can certainly be selfless in their acts, but that’s not quite the same thing as what i’m describing above. they can also embrace creeds such as vegetarianism, which is to some degree selfless, or at least concerned with the well being of creatures other than oneself, but that’s something less than what i’m describing in that it ultimately comes back to not offending other earthly parties (as well as being a good steward of the earth and eating healthy).

i feel that the spirit of most of these “do-good” creeds – compassion towards one’s fellow creatures and fellow humans – can be found within christianity already.

 

[Keikiolu]

Where do people get the idea that there’s only one kind of atheist, and that that kind is a Communist Manifesto-waving militant hedonist?

Because,… it’s true.

D’Souza is dead wrong. Atheism does not come about because people want to escape judgment. He’s thinking of universalism. Faith is not dependent on morals – if it were, I highly doubt your own escutcheon would have so many blots on it.

Swing and a miss.

Morals (as a set) IS based on faith, though.

And the morals of atheism is “Get mine and do it so that I’m most happy with my environment”.

The fact that quite often the atheist “behaves well with others” is simply his not wanting to get stomped on by others of his kind.

Atheism gives you a “standing war at truce”.

God gives you rules to be good by.

{moderator note: removed uncharitable comments}

 

[Mirdath]

While religious people have been responsible for some atrocities throughout history, I would venture to say that 20th century atheists have been responsible for a great deal more.

But begin before the 20th century. Look at the history of the Enlightenment in France, which resulted in the Reign of Terror, with its killing of innocents. Then consider the millions of deaths perpetrated by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and others, all in the name of their particular atheist ideology. Even the religious wars pale in comparison, and in the determined manner in which these exterminations were carried out. Even Castro, after gaining power, made a determined and continued effort to eliminate anyone in the bourgeoisie, including businessmen, clerics, and the middle class. His supposed enemies were lined up against the wall and shot. Also read the history of the revolution in Mexico, which attempted to suppress or eliminate not only the Church, but all opposition. Many ordinary people died because they refused to go along.

Atheism has not shown itself to be a benevolent ideology.

Why, would you say, are theist regimes just as capable of atrocities? Francisco Franco, Arnaud Amaury, Hirohito, Joshua son of Nun, the Taliban, the Roman Empire, Sparta – it’s a long list (and let us continue to ignore the elephant in the room; that won’t do anything but set us off on a tangent).

Maybe atheism is not to blame for human evil? Look again at all your examples: they’re all totalitarians, every single one. In a totalitarian society, anything the government cannot control is perceived as a threat; and who can control an existing religion? Unless religion is totally ingrained into the government, as it was in Franco’s Spain and in Afghanistan under the Taliban, it’s an enemy of the state. People are not killed and ‘reeducated’ for being religious, per se; they’re killed and conditioned because there is something about them the government cannot control. That that thing happens to be faith is entirely incidental.

 

[AgnosTheist]

Individuals, on the other hand, especially those not ideologically driven, (and I know some of them) can be both ethical and atheist, just as Christians can be unethical.

Indeed. What conclusions can we draw from these realizations?

 

[Keikiolu]

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomarin forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cad/viewpost.gif
i would feel on more solid ground showing that christianity is more moral than what preceded it, greek and roman paganism, and what followed it, modernism.

Except that that isn’t what’s being questioned. lukewarm got it right: you have to show that Christians as a group are ‘more moral’ than atheists. And that’s a Gordian Knot you can’t cut through.

No one needs to show that Christians are “more moral” than atheists to show that the “goals” of Christianity are superior to those of atheists.

Since atheists HAVE NO GOALS, as atheists, they have nothing to even compare to the goals of Christians.

Quote:
perhaps what d’souza is getting at is that there’s something self-indulgent and self-centered about atheism, whereas religious people tend to frame their lives around something fundamental that exists outside of their individual selves.

If so, he’s wrong – again. That’s a common assumption believers make about atheists without bothering to look into the targets’ heads at all. You and D’Souza do not speak for all atheists, or even perhaps any; to so recklessly call them all self-indulgent and self-centered is far overstepping your bounds.

…and they (atheists) are, of course, but carry on…

Atheists can be self-indulgent and self-centered, certainly; so can theists! In neither case is this the fault of their belief or lack of belief. An atheist may say ‘there is no God, no afterlife’ and indulge the self; a theist may say ‘there is a God and an afterlife’ and indulge the self by pursuing only his or her own admittance into that afterlife with little or no thought for others. Beliefs honestly don’t have much to do with humanity’s natural tendency toward jerkdom.

One doesn’t have to be about God to avoid being about ‘me first’. There’re more than two options.

Atheists have either nothing, themselves, or some aspect of themselves AS their “higher power”.

The results of this are obvious.

The atheist can usually rattle off huge amounts of rationale as to why they do what they do,… but it’s always based on either a disconnected set of “wants”, or on the goals of Christianity.

When an atheist talks, it’s always a justification of their wants, or an exposition of their apparently self-hidden beliefs which originated in their “personal Christian/natural-law history”.

 

[Mirdath]

either way, what you seem to under-appreciate is that there’s a lot more at stake for the believer than for the non-believer in behaving in a morally acceptable way. the non-believer has no faith (he may have a creed such as vegetarianism, or existentialism, but no faith) so when he commits an immoral act, the offended party is limited to the person he has injured. so is whatever attempt he may wish to make to redress the wrong committed.

One would hope that theists would still behave morally if they did not believe in God. Saying you have an extra incentive to be moral as if you might not be so without a second carrot and stick doesn’t exactly look good on you.

i couldn’t disagree with you more about humanity’s “natural tendency towards jerkdom”. i think there’s something essentially hopeful about the human condition.

I wasn’t being entirely serious – I do think there’s a lot of good in us, and that bettering ourselves is the highest goal we can hope for. But we do tend to stumble a lot

atheists (both practical and principled) can certainly be selfless in their acts, but that’s not quite the same thing as what i’m describing above. they can also embrace creeds such as vegetarianism, which is to some degree selfless, or at least concerned with the well being of creatures other than oneself, but that’s something less than what i’m describing in that it ultimately comes back to not offending other earthly parties (as well as being a good steward of the earth and eating healthy).

Let’s go to humanism. Cannot that be adhered to out of a sincere desire for the betterment of humanity? You make it sound as if those who do not believe are incapable of love.

i feel that the spirit of most of these “do-good” creeds – compassion towards one’s fellow creatures and fellow humans – can be found within christianity already.

Sure they can. You don’t have a monopoly on them though.

EDIT: Keikiolu, you can stop now. I’m not going to talk if you’re just going to mindlessly put me down and argue from your ridiculous assumptions about people you don’t care enough about to ask what they believe and think.

 

[AgnosTheist]

there’s a lot more at stake for the believer than for the non-believer in behaving in a morally acceptable way.

thats true. the problem however is when is when a religion promotes a harmful & intrusive practice as morally acceptable, or even as a moral obligation.

 

[nichjake]

Atheists have blamed religion for killing millions of people in the name of Christianity. Isn’t it a fact that atheist have been the most murderous of all?

“Well, Henry Kamen’s study of the Spanish Inquisiton which is the most authoritative one found that the Inquisition killed around 2,000 people over a period of 350 years. That’s 2,000 too many. But compare that death toll to the number of people killed by atheist regimes in the past century. Pol Pot alone killed a couple of million, and he was a very junior tyrant by atheist standards. The regimes of Mao, Hitler and Stalin together killed more than 100 million people in the space of four decades. Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the mass murders of history.”

I’m sorry…but as soon as someone pulls the Hilter card I lose all respect for their argument against atheists…if they had done any research at all on Hitler they would have seen that he was NOT an Atheist. All he’s doing is perpetuating much of society’s misconceptions about atheists. If he flubbed on such a simple fact then I don’t trust any of his more complex “facts”.

You accept the so-called ‘big bang’ theory as the method God used to create the universe. What evidence is there to prove that contention which most atheists deny?

“Today the evidence for a big bang or moment of creation is so strong that there are hardly any reputable scientists who do not believe it. Several lines of evidence have converged to make the big bang the closest thing we have to a scientific fact.”

And what is this? Is he saying that Atheists deny the big bang? Or that god was behind it? The way he worded the question makes it sound like there is irrefutable evidence that god was behind the big bang…and D’Souza answered the question as if it asked “What makes the Big Bang a repuatable idea?” which by the question made it sound like scientists generally believe that god did do it…but how would that be when over 75% of scientists don’t believe in god? Talk about twisting words Not a single atheist I know denys the big bang…but over half the theists I’ve discussed it with do.

 

[RebeccaJ]

I’m sorry…but as soon as someone pulls the Hilter card I lose all respect for their argument against atheists…if they had done any research at all on Hitler they would have seen that he was NOT an Atheist. All he’s doing is perpetuating much of society’s misconceptions about atheists. If he flubbed on such a simple fact then I don’t trust any of his more complex “facts”.

And what is this? Is he saying that Atheists deny the big bang? Or that god was behind it? The way he worded the question makes it sound like there is irrefutable evidence that god was behind the big bang…and D’Souza answered the question as if it asked “What makes the Big Bang a repuatable idea?” which by the question made it sound like scientists generally believe that god did do it…but how would that be when over 75% of scientists don’t believe in god? Talk about twisting words Not a single atheist I know denys the big bang…but over half the theists I’ve discussed it with do.

Hitler was not an atheist and neither was he a Christian. He was a human that committed seriously heinous acts with morally deficient justifications behind them.

Science and religion are not at opposition.

 

[Keikiolu]

…{snip}…

EDIT: Keikiolu, you can stop now. I’m not going to talk if you’re just going to mindlessly put me down and argue from your ridiculous assumptions about people you don’t care enough about to ask what they believe and think.

So you give up, then…!?

That’s cool. Atheists are notorious for giving up. It’s one of those “It’s about ME or I’m not playing” things.

That’s cool. And expected.

I’d love to hear your rationalizations as to what you believe, as I don’t think you’ve EVER actually stated what you believe, but rather stated that you’re continually “misunderstood” and not allowed to state them.

Please,… do tell.

If you can’t handle conversation with adults, another typical trait of the atheist, though non-atheists take WAY too many cues in this department from atheists because of a misunderstanding of the concept of charity, then I’ll just comment, without your rebuttal, on your comments.

I’m trying to give you a view of atheists that you may not like, but which is an actual view of atheists.

I don’t hate atheists, I hate atheism,… and I will use all the weaponry available against it while loving the person “holding” it more than ever for his weakness.

I would very much appreciate you hating my sins and “battling” them to help me see my errors. If you can’t do that, because it’s “rude”, then you prove only that atheists battle not out of love, but out of “probability of winability”.

 

[nichjake]

So you give up, then…!?

That’s cool. Atheists are notorious for giving up. It’s one of those “It’s about ME or I’m not playing” things.

That’s cool. And expected.

I’d love to hear your rationalizations as to what you believe, as I don’t think you’ve EVER actually stated what you believe, but rather stated that you’re continually “misunderstood” and not allowed to state them.

Please,… do tell.

If you can’t handle conversation with adults, another typical trait of the atheist, though non-atheists take WAY too many cues in this department from atheists because of a misunderstanding of the concept of charity, then I’ll just comment, without your rebuttal, on your comments.

I’m trying to give you a view of atheists that you may not like, but which is an actual view of atheists.

I don’t hate atheists, I hate atheism,… and I will use all the weaponry available against it while loving the person “holding” it more than ever for his weakness.

I would very much appreciate you hating my sins and “battling” them to help me see my errors. If you can’t do that, because it’s “rude”, then you prove only that atheists battle not out of love, but out of “probability of winability”.

…riiiiiighhhhtttttt. Atheists don’t like to beat their heads against a brick wall with circular theistic arguments…thats probably what you’re calling “giving up”. As for your views of atheists, they are obviously skewed in the highest degree, do you even know any atheists or anything about them that doesn’t come from a christian propoganda site? And I thought (correct me if I’m wrong Mirdath) that Mirdath has stated several times in other threads that she’s agnostic, not atheist.

But I’ll take your bait…as for what I believe: I believe that there is no god, plain and simple. I believe that evolution holds the answers for the origin of life as science has all but proved beyond a doubt. I also subscribe to the philosophy of Secular humanism. Look it up on wikipedia if you need an explaination of those tenets.

By the standard of your accusations I could call all Christians mindless hippocrits that consistantly condemn everyone who isn’t like them and that they absolutely refuse to recognize scientific evidence that doesn’t support their beliefs not matter how irrefutible that scientific evidence is. But I am an adult and am mature enough to know this isn’t true…perhaps you’re the one that should try and engage in adult conversation

 

[tomarin]

what did the clergy do to promote an alleged witch’s rights during the inquisition?

what did the clergy do to oppose slavery?

what did the clergy do to promote gender equality?

what did the clergy do to end forced conversions into christianity?

what did the clergy do to end anti-semitism?

i would only be conflating acts if the religious authorities actually did their best to straighten the ways of those 'unscrupulous christians".

i’m sorry that christianity doesn’t live up to your modernist notions of human rights and gender equality.

all i can say in response is, from my vantage point, it is all those modern doctrines that don’t live up to the life-affirming message of christianity.

they haven’t been tested by time, and as i said before they reduce the miraculous quality of human life to one narrow dimension: gender, race, etc. plus they are so fashionable that they probably won’t be around in twenty years or at least not in the same form, whereas christianity has endured for 2,000 years and is still more revolutionary than any of the creeds you mentioned.

do me (and yourself) a favor and read “orthodoxy” by g.k. chesterton. then come back and we’ll debate where he’s got the christian versus modernist opposition wrong.

the idea that human life is precious (and/or sacred) is older than both christianity & modernism. but its adopted by both.

a creed that believed all human life was sacred wouldn’t endorse abortion as modern thinking does. do you see how christianity somehow miraculously trumps human rights as modernists understand it by being even fuller and more true than the modern understanding? it’s ironic that the most complete version of “human rights” is found in christianity, modernism’s nemesis.

its wrong to lump all those things together. except for communism (and probably facism) the rest have their unique ways of treasuring human life.

i would dispute the contention that any of these things, especially capitalism, appreciates human life for what it is in its fullest sense, but suffice it to say that any one of these things taken to its logical extreme quickly becomes absurd and oppressive. think French Revolution.