In an earlier post, I asked for a response to a quote about the negative aspect of belief in God, [I'm not claiming all theistic belief is negative] that which inspires actions like the Crusades, suicide bombings, etc. In the quote, the implication was clear that since atheists don't have a god, they can't feel "divinely inspired" to murder, or justify fascism using divine fiat or appointment. I received, just this morning, a thoughtful response from an anonymous reader. The reader made two major points: 1) Science was birthed from the Reformation, 2) Morality depends upon God. I will copy the comment, and my response to part (2), below.
Anonymous wrote:
First, I can't find the exact quote, after doing some Google searches. Perhaps you paraphrased?
In reference to your quote about not trusting men because of their evil natures, a google search turned up a few interesting results:
George Peele wrote, Those have all proved fruitless, these times demand novel wiles, uncommon deceptions. And so, if we are to exercise any prudence, you must take this path and store these things in your heart: entrust yourself to no man, invite nobody to share your glory. Let your mind be your only forum and council chamber.
Like your own implication regarding "entrusting men", the problem here is -- how do we get outside of ourselves? If we cannot trust the minds or hearts of others, how can we trust our own? If we cannot trust theirs, or ours, how can we trust anything?
Furthermore, how are we to know who God is, or what God wants, without trusting in other men? That's the problem with a REVEALED religion, now isn't it? Someone says they "got the goods" on God...They are the ones who tell us what [they say] God said. They are the ones who tell us what [they say] God wants, and does, and why.
Many people, throughout time, have claimed to have spoken for God. Some of them have said true things. Some of them have said false things. If we cannot trust in our own ability to filter the false from the true, out of the mishmash of "revelations", what hope do we have of knowing your God?
Unfortunately, man is still the measure we must use, because man is the measure we know and are. If you only do good to gain favor in the eyes of your god, or to glean paradise; if you only shun evil for fear of punishment from your god, or to escape Hades, then you have no virtue. You are only a coward and a servile creature. No God worth worshipping or knowing would want creatures which obeyed it out of sycophantic servility. Furthermore, I can guarantee you, friend, that if you took a long hard look at some of the things your God has commanded [c.f. 1 Sam 15:3, Num 31:17-18, lots of others], you would be hard-pressed to find yourself rationalizing and defending the morality of your God to an atheist like me. In so doing, you would be admitting that your own basis of morality is in serious need of repair--divine command theory was pointed out as a fallacious mode of behavior thousands of years ago, by Plato, in his Euthyprho Dialogue.
The empathy that evolution produce in all social animals (including humans) gives us the ability to place ourselves in the shoes of those we may hurt, steal from, murder, lie to, etc. It is this phenomenon (along with social conditioning, of course) that forms the basis of human morality within societal frameworks. One funny thing to note is that statistical surveys have proven that atheists are no less moral than Christians in terms of divorce rate (21% versus 24% for Xians), imprisonment, (a mere 0.209% versus 75+% Xians) etc. I won't claim (though others have) that there is any correlation between religiosity and intelligence. A recently-published study of Western democracies undermines your claim about belief in God somehow sustaining morality, though, as the most atheistic countries surveyed were those with the lowest homicide rates, teen pregnancies, STDs, abortions, longer life expectancies...etc. Of course, in your eyes, they are still "immoral", since they practice safe sex ["fornicating"].
If you are serious about understanding atheist morality, read this short article, or even this book by Martin, for more depth.
Maybe you should come back with some facts to substantiate your claim about atheism and morality.
One other thing to keep in mind is that, unlike Christianity, atheism carries no defined set of commands for living. Atheists thus comprise all points of cultural and moral spectra. It is silly to compare a set of people whose sole correlating factor is their lack of belief in a God, without stratifying the data for age, education level, income, country, etc.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, and I hope to get more feedback from you.
Best regards,
Daniel
The Crusaders were Catholics (deemed by many as Papists commanding false doctrines not in the Bible as finally protested in the OPEN against by Europeans during the Reformation) who were going to remove Muslim invaders who they deemed as following a false prophet/Caravan trader that wrote the Koran that was basically plagarized from what he had learned from Jews and Christians, molded into his own dogma which he said came from an angel). Some of the same Catholic leadership and Papists were dogmatic against certain scientists, but scientists and tradesmen within the Protestant movement were the ones that brought almost all of the science and engineering paradigm from which we have piggybacked off of today. Not Catholics. The Puritan group that killed the witches in Salem etc. were a shortlived group following some goofy legalists. Muslims have the potential to annilate infidels, but only a few million of them have the stomach to use mentally disabled suicide bombers(someone gullible enough to believe they will be with beautiful virgins after killing a lot of people, even young babies)to take over the earth. Atheists can do whatever they want as long as they can get away with it, because once they get past man, they have no god to punish them. They can be good or bad depending on what they want. I say "entrust yourself to no man for I know what is within man". Guess who taught that?
First, I can't find the exact quote, after doing some Google searches. Perhaps you paraphrased?
In reference to your quote about not trusting men because of their evil natures, a google search turned up a few interesting results:
George Peele wrote, Those have all proved fruitless, these times demand novel wiles, uncommon deceptions. And so, if we are to exercise any prudence, you must take this path and store these things in your heart: entrust yourself to no man, invite nobody to share your glory. Let your mind be your only forum and council chamber.
Like your own implication regarding "entrusting men", the problem here is -- how do we get outside of ourselves? If we cannot trust the minds or hearts of others, how can we trust our own? If we cannot trust theirs, or ours, how can we trust anything?
Furthermore, how are we to know who God is, or what God wants, without trusting in other men? That's the problem with a REVEALED religion, now isn't it? Someone says they "got the goods" on God...They are the ones who tell us what [they say] God said. They are the ones who tell us what [they say] God wants, and does, and why.
Many people, throughout time, have claimed to have spoken for God. Some of them have said true things. Some of them have said false things. If we cannot trust in our own ability to filter the false from the true, out of the mishmash of "revelations", what hope do we have of knowing your God?
Unfortunately, man is still the measure we must use, because man is the measure we know and are. If you only do good to gain favor in the eyes of your god, or to glean paradise; if you only shun evil for fear of punishment from your god, or to escape Hades, then you have no virtue. You are only a coward and a servile creature. No God worth worshipping or knowing would want creatures which obeyed it out of sycophantic servility. Furthermore, I can guarantee you, friend, that if you took a long hard look at some of the things your God has commanded [c.f. 1 Sam 15:3, Num 31:17-18, lots of others], you would be hard-pressed to find yourself rationalizing and defending the morality of your God to an atheist like me. In so doing, you would be admitting that your own basis of morality is in serious need of repair--divine command theory was pointed out as a fallacious mode of behavior thousands of years ago, by Plato, in his Euthyprho Dialogue.
The empathy that evolution produce in all social animals (including humans) gives us the ability to place ourselves in the shoes of those we may hurt, steal from, murder, lie to, etc. It is this phenomenon (along with social conditioning, of course) that forms the basis of human morality within societal frameworks. One funny thing to note is that statistical surveys have proven that atheists are no less moral than Christians in terms of divorce rate (21% versus 24% for Xians), imprisonment, (a mere 0.209% versus 75+% Xians) etc. I won't claim (though others have) that there is any correlation between religiosity and intelligence. A recently-published study of Western democracies undermines your claim about belief in God somehow sustaining morality, though, as the most atheistic countries surveyed were those with the lowest homicide rates, teen pregnancies, STDs, abortions, longer life expectancies...etc. Of course, in your eyes, they are still "immoral", since they practice safe sex ["fornicating"].
If you are serious about understanding atheist morality, read this short article, or even this book by Martin, for more depth.
Maybe you should come back with some facts to substantiate your claim about atheism and morality.
One other thing to keep in mind is that, unlike Christianity, atheism carries no defined set of commands for living. Atheists thus comprise all points of cultural and moral spectra. It is silly to compare a set of people whose sole correlating factor is their lack of belief in a God, without stratifying the data for age, education level, income, country, etc.
Thanks for the thoughtful response, and I hope to get more feedback from you.
Best regards,
Daniel
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