Athiests Want You to Be "Good for Goodness Sake"
The creation of Adam: Is man divinely created in the image of God, or the product of chance and mindless evolutionary impulses?**************************************
Atheistic-humanists are irritating people at their best, because they try to tell me what I know. That's without them trying to be a pain in the glutes. All to often, they are trying. Like the new ads a "humanist" association is putting on buses. The basic premise of humanism is that man is the measure of all things and there is no higher power. There is a picture of a women in a Santa suit with the words "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness sake."
Don Wildmon of the AFA was on the right track when he pointed out in the article that without God as a reference point, there is no objective way to define what "goodness" is. Adolf Hitler believed that what he was doing was the 100% right thing to do. Here is a whimsical but philosophically accurate "interview from Hell" where Hitler makes the point that if naturalistic evolution is true, then wiping out your neighbors is an act of righteousness and letting "inferior peoples" occupy valuable living space is a moral weakness.
Without God as a reference point for morality, Hitler is not "wrong" to think that, because given his base assumptions, he was acting consistently with his beliefs about good and evil. The humanists expect us to be "good for goodness sake", but there is no way to agree on what that might be without God as a reference point for morality. It is even more grating that the humanists smugly and inaccurately present themselves as the "rational" ones while advocating a self-refuting slogan (in an atheist context) in their ads.
They proclaim humanism to be "a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism, affirms our responsibility to lead ethical lives of value to self and humanity". The jokes on them. Without God there is no measure to say what an "ethical life" is and there is no responsibility to treat our neighbor as we ourselves would like to be treated. When the chips are down, those loudest at proclaiming their humanist ethics will do what is in their own self interest regardless of its effects on the next person, and act in accordance with their own prejudices.
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Thursday, November 13, 2008
4 Comments:
Well played sir!
Secularism is taking root across our country for one simple reason: without religion, there are no rules about how we should conduct ourselves, i.e. there's no morality. Hollywood has been preaching this for years, with movies & TV shows with pre-marital & extra-marital sex, white collar crime, violent images, expletive-filled language, cheating & dishonesty. Until people stop forking over their money for such garbage, it will continue, plain and simple.
First of all Hitler was a very devout Catholic supported in his day by the Catholic Church and if you've read anything that he said it would be very clear to you that he thought he was doing God's will. He also used some secular ways of thinking to help him in his arguments, but it is simply silly to say his actions were caused by religion or non-religion. He, along with half of Europe, just hated Jews because they were a race/cultural group that had lots of money. Also, Hitler thought he was doing what God wanted him to do. Try reading one or two of his speeches.
When you say "without God as a reference point, there is no objective way to define what "goodness" is" well, if monkeys, dogs, and lions can get along with their own species well enough to be fine without belief in a god, you must have an extremely cynical and low opinion of humans which I do not share with you.
If you think "goodness" comes from the bible, you must be mistaken. Why is it that we believe slavery is wrong? (although you are from Arkansas) Or why is it wrong to kill someone even if you think God told you to in a dream or something? Well I think it's because the idea of "goodness" has been changing and always is changing. It is obviously not a fixed paradigm or we might believe it is perfectly fine for Jewish people to stone people to death as was done in the Old Testament.
You say, "but there is no way to agree on what that might be without God as a reference point for morality." Really??? You honestly believe that? If I'm your neighbor and our kids are fighting about something, you need a magical god to figure out what is right for you to do? You really can't think for yourself and come to an agreement with someone about what action would benefit everyone the most? Perhaps people of your mentality do need some kind of god, but I don't believe that is true, and I think you use your secular morality thinking skills more than you think.
"Without God there is no measure to say what an "ethical life" is and there is no responsibility to treat our neighbor as we ourselves would like to be treated."
To conclude, if you can't treat people the way you'd want to be treated without believing in a magical god, I honestly feel very bad for you. Just so you know, it actually makes me feel good to be nice to people, help people, and treat people how I want to be treated. If it is not that way for you, I really feel sorry for you.
~A friendly atheist.
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