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1. Atheism is defined as lack of belief in God, in the same way people lack belief in fairies, elves and dragons.
2. No. Some simply don't subscribe to religion, some wish to put religion to an end.
3. Well, there are bad and good atheists, and I'm not a commie.
4. An ''agnostic atheist'' might land on the ''leaning towards atheism'' part of Richard Dawkin's spectrum of theistic probability.
5. We have developed an innate sense of morality because it has had an evolutionary advantage to a social species like us. Most other social species exhibit moral behaviors as well--and many of them do it way better than us.
Morality, My Take
ALL morality is entirely subjective, regardless of what any beliefs system you may have. It is subjective to each individual.
My ultimate moral sense: Will this action cause harm to another living person?
rmfr
@Kaustubh Kasture:
Hitler, Stalin and Mao were self-proclaimed gods, not atheists.
Religion is the weakness that allows men like these to take control of people's minds and drive them to do evil. Throughout history, religions have driven people to start wars and commit atrocities. As the scientist Steven Weinberg said, "With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
If God invented morals then that proves moals are arbitrary not absolute.
Especially if he breaks his own rules all the time.
Mr.Squid i am not defending Christianity
Where did I say you were?
well i'll be damned.....
1. Atheism is lack of belief in gods. That's the definition of the word.
2. No, but many atheists see the harm religion does in the modern world and are aware of the various things various religions have done historically.
3. Presumably the same way you aren't the same as them merely because you have something in common with them that has nothing to do with their atrocities, and Hitler wasn't an atheist, nor was Nazi Germany atheistic, it was Christian.
4. Agnostic and atheist are not mutually exclusive ideas as they do not ask the same question. Whether you believe in god (atheist if "no") or whether you know if one exists (agnostic if "no") means that almost all atheists are 'agnostic atheists'. You would be hard pressed to find an atheist that says they know gods do not exist, but there are probably some out there.
5. If you lack morals it's not because you lack religion, it's because you lack empathy and you're a sociopath, and whether or not it's for altruistic reasons or not it is not in our benefit for people to behaves as sociopaths would as we would have killed each other off a long time ago.
5.But blinknight where does that empathy come from?
Why do you keep asking the same STUPID question over an over and over? Human beings must form groups to survive. Bonding is a human survival mechanism. The very reason the other four species of humans were not as successful as us was due to their lack of ability to bond. BONDING includes empathy. When you see another human being that is hungry you remember being hungry yourself. THIS IS EMPATHY. This is how it works. Empathy is not a mandate or dictate from a magical flying sky daddy. If it were - IT WOULD NOT BE EMPATHETIC AT ALL. It would just be an order.
Either you didn't understand my answer or you can't be honest enough to admit I answered this. Let's find out by trying this again.
It comes from the fact that we're a social species and without it we'd have gone extinct a long time ago. Empathy is intrinsically beneficial to our species as it is with most mammals.
A video from years gone by that I can't seem to find anymore basically put it like this.
These are all behaviors animals exhibit.
If you're a human being then you understand that if we don't treat each other responsibly that we would never have survived, we would never have made it out of Africa, but even if you're just a mammal you still have the ability to feel emotions and help members of your own species or even other species, and below that we have reptiles/amphibians who lack emotional capacity you can still recognize when another member of your own species is distressed or inconvenienced and help them, and below that you have insects like bees who will sacrifice their own lives to sting a threat to their hive but they do not sting each other just because they can.
If however you can think of no reason to be good to anyone or anything even at the level of an insect and will only be good because you are being threatened with with the wrath of an all powerful being if you don't... Then you're religious.
By the way, one of the reasons some atheists have a problem with religion is because we have empathy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qTiGlCxrIA
@Kaustubh Kasture
5.If we agree that there is no god then where do our morals come from?
Jainism rejects the idea of a Creator deities responsible for the manifestation,
creation or maintenance of this universe. All the constituents and actions are governed by
universal natural laws and perfect soul and immaterial entity cannot create or affect a material
entity like the universe.
I think you're opposing your own religions (Jain) teaching
I do not think this contradicts my statement of morality.
Jainism rejects any creator of Universe, but as you said that immaterial entity cannot affect material entity then i say morality is still not proven to be biological.
You might notice you have now set the bar so high, it can never be passed (true or false). Perhaps some self-reflection is in order, to examine why you have done this thing.
OPEN YOUR FRIGGING EYES, What evidence has been given to you for the biological and evolutionary origins of morality. You are a Jain. You accept Jain morality;/ WERE YOU FRIGGING BORN WITH IT? N O! If you were a Muslim you would have Muslim morality. If you were Shinto you would have Shinto morality. If you were a murdering piece of crap you would have a murdering piece of crap's morality. Biological morality and the evolution of morality as a social institution is completely defensible through selective mutation. Just read the frigging posts. Asserting that morality comes from an magical flying sky being is complete nonsense. A morality that is DICTATED TO YOU is not moral. It can not be moral. Blind obedience is blind obedience and not morality. An external source of morality is not moral. It is someone telling you what to do.
From this post you made: http://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/jain-trying-understand-atheism#comment-109917
And this is from this post I made: http://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/transgender-deulusion?page=4#comment-110014
And you ask: In short where does ABSOLUTE MORALITY came from?
Absolute Morality does not come from anywhere. As above, there are no absolute or objective mores. They are all SUBJECTIVE.
If you believe otherwise, then you are sadly deluded. As I am always thinking, and finally stating, ALL Absolutists need one really good DiNozzo smack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZwYmlR9Lh8
rmfr
@Kaustubh Kasture empathy comes from recognizing that others experience pain. It does not require a god for an individual to believe that causing harm is harmful. And belief in god has not stopped individuals from causing harm - indeed, often they believe god causes harm and expects followers to cause harm to others.
The French Catholics invented the word "atheist" as a curse word to describe the French Protestants during one of their religious wars in the 1570s. Although they both worshiped the same set of deities and used the same religious book neither side considered the other to be real Christians so they tried their best to exterminate each other.
The reality of the matter is that not one single deity of any kind has ever done anything godly in the history of mankind. So it doesn't matter if they all exist. They are all worthless in regard to our existence. Remember how God (Jesus) supposedly died for three days? Everything continued on just as nothing had happened. So does it matter if Yahweh exists? Nope, it doesn't.
As it says in Isaiah 41:23 (CEV) = "Prove that you are gods by making your predictions come true. Do something good or evil, so we can be amazed and terrified."
It'll never happen.
I heard it was the ancient Romans using it on the Christians for their non-belief. I found a good article "1. the Roman period when the Christians were called atheoi by the pagans and vice versa. " (2) the Hellenistic period which started to label earlier thinkers as atheists and developed a ‘soft’ atheism that tried to save the existence of the gods, and, finally,
It also talks about the French period.
This is probably worth a read for all of us.
https://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/9789340/Bremmer-Atheism.pdf
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