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josie_L
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Sorry, I don’t carry an encyclopedia for a brain.
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DavidHume
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josie_L
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What do you mean by real atheists, this makes no sense?
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josie_L
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aileron
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Yes, I’ve seen this apologetic time and again. If they merely tolerated it, then why explicitly tell slaves to obey their masters? Why not request nicely for all Christian converts to free all their slaves instead? Paul did so even as he returned a slave to his master, which according to the law he should not have done. Would you excuse non-Judeo-Christian sacred texts for overlooking slavery and when they did mention it telling the slaves to obey their masters? Of course, none of this even comes close to the OT, where slavery is permitted by the law in explicit detail.
Yes of course, so that the rationalizations are in place well before the faithful read the plain language of the text. For instance, when the Bible goes into detail about how much a master can beat a slave, it’s out of context and really doesn’t have anything to do with slavery at all. Most of all, that behavior was acceptable for a different time, place, and culture, but that has nothing to do with moral relativism
Actually, the passages I provided are complete in their context. The sections before and after them were different topics, so the context was complete. If you’re going to claim that “love thy neighbor” and “do unto others” is part of the context, then the problem is how to reconcile the two. (Don’t bother… I’ve seen the apologetics.)
I’m no longer interested in dredging up the unsavory moral outlooks in the past that have been changed (most would say improved upon) by the modern RC outlook. I’ve seen the excuses. None of them happened. OK, they did, but they didn’t qualify because…
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humble_in_doubt
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there are as many as 85% atheists or agnostics in Sweden, 80% in Denmark, 72% in Norway,
Several studies have found Sweden to be one of the most secular countries in the world. According to Davie (1999), 80% of Swedes do not believe in God (see link here).
You will find a similar picture in several other European countries outside of Scandinavia (in Britain up to half of the population report they “do not believe in a god” while in France up to 32% identify themselves as atheist and an equal percentage – totaling 64% of French citizens – report being agnostic). *
*the numbers in both France and England vary depending on the survey.
1997, Federal Bureau of Prisons, 0.21% of inmates were atheist (link here).
The largest three groups in prison are Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim (in that order):
Catholic 29267 39.164%
Protestant 26162 35.008%
Muslim 5435 7.273%
Of course none of this is really relevant to the question – does god exist? Is the bible true?
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DavidHume
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Yes it is. While the Church has a collection of moral principles and teachings, the only thing this body of knowledge does is to help form and train an individual’s conscience. The individual is the moral actor and the only standard which actually affects their decisions is their own conscience.
The final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praise-worthy or blameable; that which stamps on them the mark of honour or infamy, approbation or censure; that which renders morality an active principle and constitutes virtue our happiness, and vice our misery; it is probable, I say, that this final sentence depends on some internal sense or feeling, which nature has made universal in the whole species. – David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
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DavidHume
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I meant that the atheists that comport themselves in a moral fashion are the true atheists – the people you mentioned are self-worshippers and are therefore theists, not atheists.
Either that or they were sociopaths, and their professed religion would then be utterly irrelevant.
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aileron
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I’ve reverse-engineered the process used to determine if a person in history was a True Christian. Both of the following must be answered in the affirmative to be a True Christian.
- Taken as a whole, is the person generally regarded in high esteem today?
- Is the person’s religion confirmed to be Christian – confirmation can take the form of self-profession; parents had the person baptized as a child; person attended church at some point in life; or person once touched the Christian Bible.
- Taken as a whole, is the person generally regarded in low esteem today?
- Did the person ever clearly renounce Christianity – examples include failure to attend church for weeks or months on end; adherence to a denomination other than your own; or disagreeing with anything you believe about Christianity.
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happilycatholic
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God decides who are the “true Christians” and that won’t happen until death. Atheists and the like, on the other hand, make the decision as to their confirmation for themselves.
What is the point of this?
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aileron
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I’ve seen lots of Christians on the net making that determination when it comes to historical figures they do or don’t want on their team.
I’m not saying atheists are not just as guilty. Pretty much everyone from history they don’t want on their team is claimed to be Christian or some other religion, whereas anyone they do want on their team they’ll find a way to make as close to atheist as the truth can be stretched.
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happilycatholic
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Yeah, unfortunately you are right about that. We profess to be Christ followers, but we fall short. Atheists, tend to lump a whole lot into Atheism.
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happilycatholic
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Look, the devil’s in the details. You can’t not believe in Christianity and then say, well the Popes didn’t act like Christians so the Church must not be guided by God.
You can’t use your own argument against religion to set a standard for religious actions. It’s stupid. We can argue all day that these things happened or didn’t happen. They did. Popes did bad things. They are sinful at times. Pope John Paul II went to confession once a week. Does that invalidate the Church’s position? No.
You say that the Church was corrupt and misguided. I say the magistrate was out of touch with it’s responsiblities a bit and overstepped some boundries which caused grave harm both to humanity and to the Church itself.
Don’t you believe that Judas did the same thing? Don’t you believe that there was dissent in the ranks of the disciples of Christ? They were not perfect. And trying to prove that the imperfection of human beings is the proof that the Church is not guided by God is futile. God’s Church has never been perfect. It wasn’t perfect in the OT, hence the reason for Christ’s first coming. Got it?
But again, why use all this if you don’t believe in God in the first place. Just stop using the guidance of the Church as if you don’t believe in the One who Guides it.
Peace Be With You.
You can’t use your own argument against religion to set a standard for religious actions. It’s stupid. We can argue all day that these things happened or didn’t happen. They did. Popes did bad things. They are sinful at times. Pope John Paul II went to confession once a week. Does that invalidate the Church’s position? No.
You say that the Church was corrupt and misguided. I say the magistrate was out of touch with it’s responsiblities a bit and overstepped some boundries which caused grave harm both to humanity and to the Church itself.
Don’t you believe that Judas did the same thing? Don’t you believe that there was dissent in the ranks of the disciples of Christ? They were not perfect. And trying to prove that the imperfection of human beings is the proof that the Church is not guided by God is futile. God’s Church has never been perfect. It wasn’t perfect in the OT, hence the reason for Christ’s first coming. Got it?
But again, why use all this if you don’t believe in God in the first place. Just stop using the guidance of the Church as if you don’t believe in the One who Guides it.
Peace Be With You.
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aileron
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Getting back to the OP…
I picked up my copy at the library yesterday. In the paperback, he has a defense of some of the criticisms people have leveled at his hardcover book. All of his defenses against the accusations seem reasonable.
I’ve gotten through some of it, including the part people found most offensive. Suffice it to say that he did seem to go overboard on one paragraph in an attempt at hyperbole. In it he is describing the God as depicted in the Old Testament. It is not so much that it is offensive to someone who understands he is an atheist, but rather that it is inaccurate. He filters out or ignores anything in the OT that contrasts with his depiction. Otherwise, he is not using any arguments or language not being used here by the more reserved atheists and agnostics.
He does spend a bit of his time defending the title The God Delusion. I had already heard that he claimed to be using the definition that has nothing to do with mental illness, but it seems highly implausible he didn’t know in advance that people would conflate the two definitions. I suppose he was going for shock value and then softening the definition in the book.
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josie_L
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Oh for the love of pete, do you see how he describes morals? It’s based on subjectivity. And if there is a universal natural (moral) law then why do we have such differences of opinions pertaining to key moral issues?
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josie_L
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And that’s what I’ve been trying to say all this time.
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happilycatholic
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I know!
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Eleve
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Having a universal moral law does not mean that this law is always easily distinguishable. Consider the latter part of CCC 2267: “Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm - without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself - the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” Even the Catholic Church’s “universal” moral system leaves situations where it is not clear if, e.g., the death penalty is acceptable.
And part of the reason that we have such differences is because the Christian ethical philosophy is subjectivist. Divine command theory asserts that actions are made moral based on approval from God; naturally, this stance will lead to different conclusions than one that is not based on religious presuppositions.
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jam070406
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It would seem that the atheists that are posting in these threads are former Christians with Christian upbringing so, one can make that case that the Christain upbringing had an influence on the conscience and formed any sort of “goodness” (relative to the mind of the athiest) that the atheist held on to and continues to, after apostatizing completely.
Perhaps you can provide a location with no Christian (or simply theist for that matter) influence where the people were atheist from birth maintaining that belief throughout life in a society with no theistic thought or influence.
These stats mean nothing. For one, we don’t known the number of whom that are apostates. Also, we can’t measure the ammount of Christian influence that was maintained or that influenced these people. You would have to conduct an experiment with zero theist influence.
(Side note, those that turn from God whether it be a mortal sin of sexual nature, crime, murder or apostasy are all in the same boat, cut off from God.)
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DavidHume
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That’s how everyone comes to know anything about anything – subjective experience. Morals are no exception.
By and large, we don’t. It is considered wrong by the vast majority of people to murder, steal, cheat others, cause others to suffer physical or mental harm, etc. Only when the conscience is absent (antisocial personality disorder) or actively subverted (e.g. by Nazi propaganda) do people make habits of doing these things, or do them without remorse.
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