39
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Line 97:
Line 97: + + + + + + + + + + + +
→The effects of Atheism
: I think the problem is that perhaps the article didn't make the connection very well, having divided atheism from evolution. The part that you removed from the evolution section points out that evolution provides no basis for morals, which supports (and perhaps this wasn't clear) that atheism has no basis for morals. And what the atheism section (still) says is that "atheism itself provides no moral boundaries to constrain the actions of people". So atheism may not have ''caused'' those despots to murder millions, but atheism ''allows'' that (if there is, for example, political "justification"), whereas Christianity does not. That, in a sense, is the ''theory'', and the "effects" section shows that theory working out in practice. It is therefore appropriate to have it, and I will also be reinstating the text you removed from the evolution section.
: I think the problem is that perhaps the article didn't make the connection very well, having divided atheism from evolution. The part that you removed from the evolution section points out that evolution provides no basis for morals, which supports (and perhaps this wasn't clear) that atheism has no basis for morals. And what the atheism section (still) says is that "atheism itself provides no moral boundaries to constrain the actions of people". So atheism may not have ''caused'' those despots to murder millions, but atheism ''allows'' that (if there is, for example, political "justification"), whereas Christianity does not. That, in a sense, is the ''theory'', and the "effects" section shows that theory working out in practice. It is therefore appropriate to have it, and I will also be reinstating the text you removed from the evolution section.
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 02:10, 5 June 2008 (EDT)
: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 02:10, 5 June 2008 (EDT)
:: You're correct that atheism doesn't provide a moral code, but I still fail to see why that would give justification or place blame. I don't see why it's even worth mentioning atheism in this article at all.
:: It's a function of society to provide morality. That society can be religion, government, clubs (for example, Rotary International provides strong philanthropical morals) or even a local community. These morals are passed on to children via family, friends and various leaders. Atheism does not provide morals because it's not a society. Unlike a religion, there is no organization. There are no laws or a belief structure. But just because one doesn't have religion doesn't mean they don't have morals. There are millions of atheists in the world who we would consider to be moral people. The other layers of society, family and friends provides just as it does to people with religion. Their lack of theism hasn't prevented them from living moral lives because they live in societies which provided them with morals similar to yours and similar to mine.
:: In regard to morality, being an atheist is like being someone plays baseball. It's not a problem that baseball doesn't provide morals because baseball players get their morality from other sources. In all of the examples given, the men who committed the heinous acts lived in a society in which those actions were considered immoral. It wasn't a lack of belief that they would be punished after death that allowed them to perform the horrors they inflicted, it was a '''personal''' failure of morality. The same could be said of theistic men and women who either ignored their morals or even used them as a justification (such as Adolph Hitler, Osama bin Laden, or Kind Ferdinand II, Queen Isabella and Pope Sixtus IV). It's no more logical to blame atheism for what Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong did than it is to blame the fact that they weren't Boy Scouts.
:: It's worth noting that I don't think any intentional attacks on atheists are meant by this article. I simply see no reason at all to even mention atheism. Evolution has a place since there are fairly sound theories for its role in morality. Hopefully I've made my point better than I did the first time! :)
:: My edit to the Evolution section is unrelated to this. I made that modification because the information presented was neither well-sourced, encyclopedic or relevant to the topic. Scientific experiments provide a strong theory for the origin of morals via evolution, that much is factual. Arguing that the theory doesn't matter because Evolution is debatable is ''completely'' beside the point.
::--[[User:Rspeed|Rspeed]] 21:06, 6 June 2008 (EDT)