Atheists must face the fact that their faith precludes any such thing as absolute morality. That morality, in all its forms, is simply man-made and has no ultimate bearing on anything. You can be a Hitler or a Stalin and it will not matter. You can be a Ted Bundy, a Pol Pot, a southern slave owner, or a mad priest during the Spanish Inquisition. You can abuse a little boy or girl, rape, pillage, steal, maim, torture, and kill all you want with no ultimate consequences because nothing is really right or wrong. All morals are man-made concepts and mean nothing and the picking and chosing of which morals you will adhere to is, at its base, a useless and empty exercise that signifies nothing.
As I believe it has been touched on, for evangelical Christians all Hitler, or Stalin or Ted Bundy has to do is say, "I accept the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior" some seconds before human death and all that sin is washed away. I see no morality in this, no higher ethos beyond feed my ego and be my servant. Just ask Jack Chick
Gun Slinger wonder what the ratio is for bad/good childhood: athiest
wonder if its higher than say bad/good childhood: religious person
how ones early life experiences color their perception of a divine
my guess would be a higher percentage of non-believers had a traumatic experience early on which pointed them on their belief system path
Eagler, is it possible for you to comprehend that some people, when asked to believe in something out of blind faith, look at what they're asked to believe in, weigh the facts (or lack there of), and say: "Sorry, you would have had me from biblical times through the middle ages, but after the renaissance I need something more." Perhaps some of us didn't have the indoctrination that others had, or didn't find some gaping hole in our lives that needed filling by the sense of acceptance and community organized religion can provide. Perhaps some of us just ask more questions. For you, your beliefs make natural sense. Speaking for myself, as an agnostic, they don’t. It’s a decision I arrived at naturally, and without any childhood trauma to steer me from your vision of the right path, in a world filled with competing visions of the right path to god.
Maybe there is a god (or a demigod), maybe not. I would like to know who created god, and what god did in the timeless years before he created Earth. Maybe it's even a Christian god, though the biblical tales don't strike me with any more believability than Zeus or Odin. Maybe there is a purely scientific origin. Unfortunately, my ability to grasp things like infinity is a bit limited right now, perhaps after several million years of evolution when I grow one of those big sci-fi brains you see in the b-movies.
Until then, I was born, which makes me one of the ultimate lottery winners. The odds against my individual birth - egg and specific sperm, right month etc. are astronomical. My parents could have had another child certainly, at a different time and place, but it wouldn't have been me. And, to be born into a prosperous society instead of some 3rd world toejamhole - another major score. To be healthy - wow, pretty cool. Great friends, great family, wonderful wife, kids on the horizon - hard to complain or ask for much more. Death is a great bummer (and it’s bugged me since I first started pondering mortality in about second grade), but, it's part of the deal. No one gets out alive
Weighed against all the positives the lack of an afterlife can be looked at as just part of the program, and becomes more acceptable.
Charon
