^^^^ YEAH RIGHT!
Many Modern Atheists are Pompous White horse Riding ‘Moralists’!
They are Religious Zealot’s on a Righteous Crusade, fighting the ‘Evils’ of Religion, and vigously propagating and defending their Faith.
They often get extremely vicious against declarations of Faith in the Christian God, which led one Blogger to inquire…
” I mean, if you truly believe there is no God, why get all worked up over what a bunch of delusional Christians think?”… Valley Girl Appologist.
Pondering upon a post on Richard Goode’s Face book page discussing this Atheist Mentality in respect to why many of them are so militantly Anti-Christ, and so strongly desire to deny God’s existence… I made the following comment…
“There is a psychological reason Richard, They Hide from God in the Dark so as to delude themselves they can do as they please, and yet Pesky Christians keep reminding them that there is a God, and that He sets the Moral Laws… not them, and that one day they will stand before him and answer for their sins. *This is a message they HATE* … to the very pit of their self deluded souls! They simply don’t want to know about God *End of story*
Which Solicited the following response from ‘Atheist Greg’
……… “GARBAGE!”
^^^ Now Greg has expressed an opinion, not a counter argument.
It is no doubt a very common ‘opinion’ among Atheists, yet I don’t think my position as stated above can be so easily dismissed.
😀
Atheist Greg has actually provided me with further opportunity to discourse the arguments for the Theistic vindication for Objective Morality vs Atheist Nihilism, and the origin of Mans innate sense of Good and evil.
Here I employ the basic argument used by the Late great C S Lewis.
My Reply…
If You Greg, and your kin, are nothing more than ‘Space Algae’, well *then* my arguement would be ‘Garbage’, yet you are a Conscious Moral being with a sence of Good and Evil, and you appeal to the ‘Moral law’ governing human actions every day… eg when you get a bill in the mail which overcharges you, you immediately feel a pang of ‘injustice’… and experience emotions of sorrow, and anger…. And begin to make self righteous determinations to see justice is restored. Now this sense of injustice at ‘wrong’ is more than simply being upset that an agreement was broken (social compact)…ie that a mere human convention was violated, It is a sense that *A Real Moral absolute… binding on all humanity has been broken* and that you are within your right to seek justice for your injury.
You are in fact appealing to an objective Moral absolute… a ‘higher Law’ which you implicitly believe underpins all ‘conventional’ human agreements as moral duties/ obligations to fulfil.
Thus I say that You Greg do not/ cannot live as a human being consistently with your claim that the universe is nihilistic/ A moral, or that Mankind is merely ‘Space Algae’.
To do so you would have to loose all sense of moral duty. You would have say to yourself that a person steeling your car… was not doing anything wrong… that even saying the car is ‘mine’ is a moral irrelevance… the universe caring nothing for your claims to ownership.
And you certainly have no basis to think that when a school bus full of children plunges over a cliff that any ‘cosmic injustice’ has occurred… no basis to shake your fist at heaven… the only reason you would do that is if deep within you believe in Moral absolutes, and know that Children *don’t deserve* to die, and that you are angry at God for allowing this sort of thing to happen.
The people who come the closest to the embodiment of Atheism are the Tyrants, Mass murderers, and Serial killers…The Hitler’s, the Ted Bundies… the Hannibal Lecters… The Sociopaths and Megalomaniacs who… like Wild beasts devour and enslave their fellow human beings *as if they are mere Space Algae* .
These are the Atheist ‘Realists’, who live under the conviction that all Morality and Law’s of society are merely Human conventions…and that there is no Real ‘Higher moral Law’ than their own Will.
They are God’s unto themselves.
Thus unless you (Atheist Greg) are prepared to accept that these Killers are absolutely right, and are prepared to drop any sense of Moral consciousness you have, I say
‘Garbage!’… to you!
I say deep within you know there is a real Higher Moral Law… you know that you are a Moral being… and these things all point to the notion of *Universal Justice*… God will judge!
…and as I was saying Atheists hate this Knowledge and seek to hide themselves from it.
They despise Christians for their ‘Pesky declarations’ which puts a tourch light on them…reminding them of their flight from Reality and their knowledge of the Truth.
Thus We witness the Ironic spectacle of Atheists who insist they are Moral, yet deny all Moral Obligation! They are ‘moral’ in their own eyes, and ‘holy’/without sin according to their own standards.
*How Convenient!* 🙂
What Basis is left for Morality if God… the Divine Lawgiver is Obliterated?
Atheist Materialists in the 1800s admitted that Materialism was the end for objective morality, yet the Modern atheist is not so bold, nor so rigorous as to where their premises ultimately lead, and instead pretend that their Atheism makes them *more moral than theists!* and they attempt to utilize Historic atrocities committed in God’s name as evidence that ‘religion is evil’… forgetting they have no ‘higher ground’ upon which to stand to make any such moral judgments, and that in doing so they are applying standards which are not theirs to use!
Such a one eyed approach which only looks at particular negative historic events does not succeed in knocking all religion off it’s perch, or by default add one ounce of objective moral reality to Atheism.
While defending God’s Divine right to execute judgments upon Mankind, Christians themselves are just as rigorous as any atheist in their condemnation of atrocities like 911, or the Salem witch trials…committed in God’s name.
I attended a Debate in Auckland a Few years ago between Matthew Flannagan and Prof Bradley on the topic ‘Is God the source of morality’ in which Dr Flannagan presented the God Command Moral theory, and the atheist Prof Bradley made the statement that he believed that because God does not exist that therefore he cant be the source of morality.
Instead he argued morality can only be founded upon ‘sentiment’!!!
Now ‘sentiment’ is an absolutely pathetic, subjective, and culturally relative foundation without any authority to impose Moral obligations! (and I criticised him for it at question time!)
This is really the subject fit for another Blog post, yet what is interesting about the modern Atheist is that they cannot bear the reality that their belief system is definitively Amoral and De-humanising.
To avoid this they attempt to change the game as to what morality really is.
See this debate Here:
Important End Note:
The Genesis story of the Fall of Mankind into sin declares that we were transformed from a child-like innocence into a ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil’, and It is this inner knowledge of Good and Evil which makes all mankind, in all times and places, accountable and Guilty before God and deserving of Judgment because they all have a knowledge of their own moral responsibilities. Thus I am saying that the Savage whom tortures his neighbor to death *knows he is committing Evil*… even if he has never herd of Jesus Christ. And God will Judge him for it. So too with the Atheist who does not believe Jesus Rose from the dead. This denial does not negate the Atheists own knowledge of sin, and guilt for his immoral actions for which God will hold him accountable.
Thus contrary to what Many atheists assert: The Bible does not deny Atheists cant have any sense of Morality… it insists that everyone does!
What We Christians say is that the Atheist position cannot justify their morality…. That Atheism itself is Amoral, and that it leads to mere cultural relativism, and social arbitrary law.
When Atheists claim to be moral, they a contradicting themselves.
Tim Wikiriwhi
King James Bible Believer, Dispensationalist, Libertarian, Christian.
Read More…
The Valley Girl Apologist…The Illogically Hostile Side of Atheism.
“Keep things in the shallow end… because I just didn’t want to know…”
Atheists are Religious fanatics
Hell is for the Self Righteous, Heaven is for Sinners.
Materialism renders Man Nought. Meaning-less, Value-less, Right-less
Sir Bob Jones. Prophet of Nihilism. Advocate of Jackboot Civilisation. Pillar of Savage Society.
I revised this post and added this End note: 11am Sat 8-6-13
Important End Note:
The Genesis story of the Fall of Mankind into sin declares that we were transformed from a child-like innocence into a ‘Knowledge of Good and Evil’, and It is this inner knowledge of Good and Evil which makes all mankind, in all times and places, accountable and Guilty before God and deserving of Judgment because they all have a knowledge of their own moral responsibilities. Thus I am saying that the Savage whom tortures his neighbor to death *knows he is committing Evil*… even if he has never herd of Jesus Christ. And God will Judge him for it. So too with the Atheist who does not believe Jesus Rose from the dead. This denial does not negate the Atheists own knowledge of sin, and guilt for his immoral actions for which God will hold him accountable.
Thus contrary to what Many atheists assert: The Bible does not deny Atheists cant have any sense of Morality… it insists that everyone does!
What We Christians say is that the Atheist position cannot justify their morality…. That Atheism itself is Amoral, and that it leads to mere cultural relativism, and social arbitrary law.
When Atheist claim to be moral, they a contradicting themselves.
We atheists like to help you Christians so you will know the truth and it will set you free. 🙂
Or perhaps we get a little ticked off when people suggest we are incipient Hitlers. This patronizing psychologising of disagreement – atheists lack belief because they really want to be naughty without consequences, not because they are actually unconvinced by the evidence – is about as credible as it would be for me to claim that theists worship gods because they unable to distinguish right from wrong without Big Daddy in the Sky telling them which is which.
As for the notion that we are nihilists, I would guess that most atheists would utterly reject definition 1a as describing themselves. Definition 2, as it is worded, is true in the same sense that it would be true for weather or electro-magnetism however, insofar as we give meaning to our own existence because we are not just space algae, but sentient space algae living in a variety of social relationships, it is not true.
Definition 1b is true but very vague as to which beliefs are rejected and why. Yes, many atheists see morality as a human artifact rather than something determined by a god or natural law. If that means there is no ‘objective moral absolute’, a term you use without definition or demonstration that it is a realistic non-arbitrary concept, then that is an unavoidable consequence of reality. And it is a false binary to say that the alternative to an objective moral absolute is ‘cultural relativism, and social arbitrary law’.
If our moral intuitions suggest there is some moral law, these intuitions are probably just a reflection of our own reason which tells us that living in moral societies is a whole lot nicer than living in immoral societies; or they are a consequence of our descent from ancestors who flourished by practising socially cooperative behaviour which we have inherited as both genetic capability and elaborated culture.
Very well said, thanx!
Drat – that should be …electro-magnetism;
Re- read what I said Dave, I did not say Atheists were like Hitler…. that’s my point!
Instead they live ‘as if’ Morality is something Real and binding upon everyone including themselves rather than merely ‘sentiment’ or Cultural relativism.
And it may be true to say that you simply don’t believe in God, Yet I would suggest to you that when propositions are put to you which make the existence of God a 50:50 probability or greater…that *other factors* come into play which sway you away from deciding to have faith that God is there… and to maintain your skepticism… even when the probability of God’s existence is 70:30 such things as your negitive perceptions about what ‘Religious obligations’ entail… your pet vises you may assume you must abandon, or Having to explain to your atheist peers that you are now ‘Waka jumping’…etc… the potential for ridecule… loss of friends, etc.
All these sorts of ‘fears’ can cloud our judgement.
You may not even be aware of how powerful these other factors are in swaying you to maintain your doubts about God… they may be strong enough to keep you from admitting God is there even when the evidence is 90:10. Ie you will cling to that 10% doubt and argue that God’s existence is ‘not conclusive’… and convince yourself of the rationality of your position.
The opposite is also true… ie that a person may cling to faith in God even when the evidence as presented to them is 90% against them…. Because of ‘other factors’ they choose to allow to sway their decision ‘not to convert’.
And in both cases I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with holding fast to your beliefs in the face of strong opposition… as long as there is Rational grounds to do so… ie 90% probability is not certainty…(is certainty possible before death?)
What I am saying is that We humans are not absolutely Rational, or objective, and that part of the ‘human factor’ is to let subconscious motives dominate our thinking which we either rationalize, or kid ourselves that they have not had any part in our mental processes… We love to pretend that we are ‘Objectivists’!
This is a great delusion!
It even contaminates our science.
The trick is to be aware of this reality within ourselves and be capable of introspection… of psychoanalyzing ourselves so as to appreciate our own drives and bias and to some degree keep them in check by keeping a open eye on them, and confessing them to ourselves so that we can actively and purposely resist them … factoring them as ‘real players’ which do shape and effect how we arrive at various choices…
My post here is talking about these sorts of unspoken drives within the Atheist sub conscious mind to greater or lesser degrees.
I am pointing out that Atheist hatred directed towards Christians and their God can evidence deep seated animosity about the idea that our actions are subject to Divine Judgment. This is almost a Natural phobia… who enjoys the Idea that they must face the judgment of God? Who wants to curb their own lusts to comply with a Holy morality? These are things man naturally desires to avoid.
Atheists seek to deny they are under any such Jurisdiction, or have any such moral obligations at all! These are unpleasant propositions …. things we naturally desires to avoid.
One thing is for sure is the atheist who pretends I am not describing anything real in this post is either an ignorant Idiot who thinks they are super humans…100% objective, and are thus incapable of appreciating the truth of what I am saying, or they know what I am saying is true to at least some degree, yet prefer not to admit it, but rather insist that they simply don’t believe in God.
I added this section to my post …
Thus We witness the Ironic spectacle of Atheists who insist they are Moral, yet deny all Moral Obligation! They are ‘moral’ in their own eyes, and ‘holy’/without sin according to their own standards.
*How Convenient!* 🙂
What Basis is left for Morality if God… the Divine Lawgiver is Obliterated?
Atheist Materialists in the 1800s admitted that Materialism was the end for objective morality, yet the Modern atheist is not so bold, nor so rigorous as to where their premises ultimately lead, and instead pretend that their Atheism makes them *more moral than theists!* and they attempt to utilize Historic atrocities committed in God’s name as evidence that ‘religion is evil’… forgetting they have no ‘higher ground’ upon which to stand to make any such moral judgments, and that in doing so they are applying standards which are not theirs to use!
Such a one eyed approach which only looks at particular negative historic events does not succeed in knocking all religion off it’s perch, or by default add one ounce of objective moral reality to Atheism.
While defending God’s Divine right to execute judgments upon Mankind, Christians themselves are just as rigorous as any atheist in their condemnation of atrocities like 911, or the Salem witch trials…committed in God’s name.
I attended a Debate in Auckland a Few years ago between Matthew Flannagan and Prof Bradley on the topic ‘Is God the source of morality’ in which Dr Flannagan presented the God Command Moral theory, and the atheist Prof Bradley made the statement that he believed that because God does not exist that therefore he cant be the source of morality.
Instead he argued morality can only be founded upon ‘sentiment’!!!
Now ‘sentiment’ is an absolutely pathetic, subjective, and culturally relative foundation without any authority to impose Moral obligations! (and I criticised him for it at question time!)
This is really the subject fit for another Blog post, yet what is interesting about the modern Atheist is that they cannot bear the reality that their belief system is definitively Amoral and De-humanising.
To avoid this they attempt to change the game as to what morality really is.
See this debate Here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HIIjOfuJZM
I’ll have a look at the debate when I’ve got time – I’m introducing a number of Chinese friends and acquaintances to some traditional Kiwi cuisine today. In the meanwhile, some brief comments.
I would have thought that ‘…suggest we [atheists] are incipient Hitlers…’ is a reasonable interpretation of ‘…the embodiment of Atheism are the Tyrants…’, but apparently not.
Do atheists actually hate Christians? I certainly don’t, though their god, as portrayed in parts of both the Old and New Testaments, is quite contemptible. And in the US, some Christians have abused their power and the constitution to impose their views on others.
Yes, our conscious decisions are often influenced by our unconscious, but to what extent this is true in general of atheists and theists in their religious decisions neither you nor I know, so while acknowledging the possibility of hidden motives (and my own initial break with religion was certainly influenced by more than the ostensible reasons I persuaded myself with), we still have to take the evidence at face value.
I did not mean to imply when I said that atheists would utterly reject definition 1a that we were entirely rational and objective beings or that morality is entirely rational; rather, that most atheists believe in variations of methodological or metaphysical naturalism, i.e. that there is an empirical reality which we can model more or less accurately.
Despite your disparaging comments about sentiment and the real problems it produces, I think we have little choice but to use sentiment and rational self-interest as the best basis of morality, and that the alternatives of divine command theory or natural law are quite problematic and somewhat arbitrary. In the words of David Hume, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”
“when you get a bill in the mail which overcharges you, you immediately feel a pang of ‘injustice’… and experience emotions of sorrow, and anger…. And begin to make self righteous determinations to see justice is restored.”
Chimpanzees and many other primates also feel this “unfairness” or injustice. This is not uniquely human.
Capuchin monkey fairness experiment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo
Alan
It’s hard to know what you think the implications are of what you said.
Are you suggesting that primates share a common creator and that is why other primates have a sense of fairness?
That is an interesting little video Alan, yet it does not display an awareness of morality or ‘fairness’, but simply animal intelligence and a preference for Grapes over Cucumber.
Such preference, or feeling that you are somehow ‘missing out’ is not the same as sensing an actual *injustice.* It merely means you want what you have not received.
If the apes were completely ‘unrelated’ and the ‘preferred/ lucky ape’ had empathy/ felt sorry for the other one and gave it’s next grape to the other out of pure sympathy, that would be impressive, yet even then such empathy would not necessarily equate to a sense of justice.
Of course there are many intelligent species which have ‘social behaviors/instincts’, and Man no doubt does too
yet still animalistic ‘social behaviors’ are ‘pre-programmed’ and don’t represent any sense of Morality. Yet Human beings don’t merely ‘have feelings’ and urges, but conceptualize *actual moral rules* about how others ought to act… rather than simply how they would simply desire others to act.
Thus Morality is something far deeper than merely a desire to get what you want.
Its spiritual… its about the quality of charater…its about Freewill, not instinct. It’s about Godliness… and living the way God intended… *principles.*
And there is no way these apes have any notion of these sorts of Conscepts… like Children. They are innocent, yet have feelings.
It is also easy to envision that being purely selfish in respect to taking what ever food you can get for yourself irrespective of the plight of your neighbor, would be more conducive to ‘Survival of the fittest’ than ‘Bleeding heart’ sentiments.
Kiwi Dave,
Don’t you appreciate just how subjective and non-binding your foundations for morality are?
You cherry picked them… simply because you think they are the best choice to premise your own subjective notions.
You have no ‘higher ground’ or Authority to condemn a Savage Chief who offers up a counter moral proposal that the world belongs to the greatest Warrior, or to the Samurai who says the most ruthless is Master .
Your preferences represents cultural relativism in that your morality has been shaped by the Judeo-Christian values of Western civilization.
And any moral code you develope from Sentiment is merely a construct of your own interlect… not a absolute moral code binging upon all men at all times and places.
And any moral code you develop from Sentiment is merely a construct of your own intellect… not a absolute moral code binging upon all men at all times and places.
This is the whole problem with Atheism.
If you Kill off God, Objective Morality dies with him, and so do all our Rights, etc.
*Objective* means they are not the invention of, or dependent upon mans opinions.
“If you Kill off God, Objective Morality dies with him, and so do all our Rights, etc.”
The (non)existence of gods is entirely independent of our desired outcomes and no amount of wishing for moral certainty and authority on your part or wishing to escape judgement on my part can change that fact.
You still have to define whatever you mean by an objective moral absolute, and show that this concept is not just a fantasy. About 2400 years ago Plato raised in the Euthyphro dilemma a major difficulty with deriving moral authority from gods and no theist has ever adequately solved it, if the attempts I’ve seen are any guide.
Unless you can demonstrate that 1) a god exists and 2) that moral authority derives from this god, then your higher ground is a fiction.
God is good. If God were different then “good” would be different.
There’s no dilemma.
There is no Dillema.
God is God.
He set’s the Standard.
He made the Animals Amoral, and chose to make man Moral.
You are not merely an Animal, nor are you God.
And lets say for a moment that God uses a standard which is ‘outside’ himself …which is absurd because God is not subject to anything ‘higher’…
Well he still ‘obeys’ that Standard by remaining Holy, yet what about you?
Would you be any less Guilty of sin under such a Law?
No! You are still guilty of Lies, and thefts, and violence, sexual perversions etc… Thus the Idea that if goodness was a thing ‘outside God’ that that would somehow be a ‘game changer’ is false, because you *still sin* and your God… your Creator still exists and has , the right, and the authority, and power to hold you accountible for your sins.
Without God as judge, morality is meaningless because the Devil could just run amok inspite of this ‘dis embodied moral Law’… and there would be ‘no one to enforce it.
Yes, Reed, that’s the problem. This notion of good is quite arbitrary and as a justification of absolute objective morality, entirely circular.
Hmm… if the physical foundations were different then physics would be different.
Does that mean that there is no objective physicality?
Physical laws are descriptive, moral laws are prescriptive.
You and Tim are making three claims in this argument: a god exists; this god prescribes moral laws; these moral laws are good.
You appear to have assumed in the third claim without giving any justification by way of factual evidence or sound moral principles that God is good. Biblical evidence, if accurate, depicts God, in part, as genocidal and sadistic, not behaviour usually associated with goodness. But even without such negative evidence, it would still be reasonable to ask, ‘Is this particular God a good god, and how do we know?” I.e. you need to make a positive case for God’s goodness.
My contention is that the Euthyphro Dilemma assumes that goodness is independent of God – without this assumption it is not a dilemma.
The “dilemma” looks good to Atheists because they can accept the assumption. It shouldn’t look like a dilemma to theists.
When I said “God is good” I meant it definitively not descriptively.
You may wish to define God as good (is this the correct understanding of ‘definitively’?) but you still need to show this definition is factually accurate, rather than just assume it. Since ‘good’ is a morally evaluative term, you need not only evidence of goodness but also a moral framework to evaluate the evidence.
Where does your moral framework come from? If it comes God, you have a circular argument which you have yet to justify – so far all you have is a subjective, unverified assumption, yet you make claims to an objective morality.
If your assumption is correct, then God could next month reverse the prohibition against stealing and that would be equally ‘good’. This seems strongly counter-intuitive, and inconsistent with claims of objective moral absolutes, as I understand the phrase, but then that is not a phrase that makes much sense to me.
It would be helpful if you were to define what you mean by ‘objective morality’ and why you consider such a moral system a good thing. I’m also mildly curious to know how you reconcile divine genocide in the Old Testament and mass torture in the New Testament.
God’s nature is what good is – it’s God’s nature/will that defines morality. You’re asking for a moral framework independent of God to measure God against – but that is impossible. You’re asking for a contradiction to avoid circularity (I don’t mind circularity – I am what I am).
Treat it as a conditional assertion in the context of the Euthyphro dilemma. The Euthyphro dilemma is aimed at Theists but it relies on a predominantly Atheistic assumption so it fails as a dilemma for Theists.
The Euthyphro dilemma is a dilemma only if morality is independent of God.
http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/an-atheist-explains-the-real-consequences-of-adopting-an-atheistic-worldview/
I am an ethical nihilist. There is absolutely no empirical evidence for “God.” Ethical Nihilism is easily defined.
Don’t murder, torture, rape.
Do Help Others:
When feasible. When practical. When sensible. When fun.
“In other words Stephen, you are a God unto yourself…. “Ethical Nihilist” is an Oxymoron.
Ethical nihilists? These people blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish.
To any degree that you *dont murder, rape, kill*, You are actually *following* the precepts of theism Steve… not atheism.
You are subconsciously endorsing the 10 commandments.
And you are doing so *because you are going with the flow… ie you were born into a Culture of predominantly Jewish/Christian values.
Now Hannibal Lector is consciously choosing to reject those values ‘as illusory’.
Reversing reality fallacy.
10 commandments are just an inferior collection of basic rules EVERY society has developed, and Hammurabi had SUPERIOR commandments centuries earlier.
Just asserting things are Christian does not prove they are.