FunkedUp wrote:
Let me splain it to ya:
Atheists - Have no documentation. When faced with a novel situation, must make up rules arbitrarily and on the spot.
Religious Folks - Have documentation. When faced with a novel situation, can use documentation to quickly find applicable rules.
Now chug a beer as penalty.You got it slightly wrong FunkedUp:
Atheists with a scientific background: Have a phenomenon. Study it and try to create rules that reliably can replicate or simulate or otherwise explain it. Failure = trashing the rule.
Atheists generally: Do not assume there is ONE rule that fits the occurence.
Very Religious Folks: have a preset very limited and narrow set of rules which they try to make fit to a phenomenon.
Religious Folks: Believe there is one predefined rule that will at least to some extent cover the phenomenon.
Lazs wrote:
yep... and ya know... 1,000 athiests will develop 1,000 different moral compass's... each will seem to be "good" by those who hold them. All will find the other 999 athiests to have some extremely unaceptable morals. This is moral relativism taken to an extreme. Atheists of a scientific background will recognize that the human animal is a social one for which the group is of great importance. Like with other social animals, certain rules develop that helps maintain group survivability, integrity and progress. These same rules are described by religious people as 'the Will Of God(s)'. It may be hard to believe, but Jesus wasn't the first individual who realized that running around and killing people left and right would create an unstable group that easily would be stomped out by competing entities.
In most western societies atheists will have the same basic moral values as religious people. The difference is what it is based on - for religious people it is based on faith and for some atheists it's on an iterative and incremental series of judgements based on experience. Religious people have a harder time living what they preach because it is clearly defined whereas atheists will have a harder time creating a moral compass since there are no given answers.
Choirboy: do you believe it is wrong to kill another human needlessly? What?!? So do I! And I bet lazs or ripsnort (representing the religious folks) would agree. So not only do we ahve two atheists (who'd represent different morals), but also an agreement between them and religious people. Truly amazing.
I call
organized religion a tool of control and opression but this must not be confused with individual beliefs. Personal spiritual beliefs are mostly something positive in my experience. I sure would like to be able to believe in an afterlife; however, the criteria for my spiritual life is the same as for the rest of my life. My personal opinion (and take it as that) is that it is the religious who apply different standards; demanding proof that his car is safe, yet not that possibility for life everafter is as certain. Faith is a very mystical thing to me. I do not have faith my my main canopy or even my reserve; I'm betting the odds and hoping for the best. Wish I had faith in many things as it'd make life considerably much easier.
But dudes, when it comes down to it we share the same values and we each think we're smarter than each other. Religion is dominant in many parts of the world and it is only recently that non theists have had an opportunity to speak out without risking severe punishment. I do not find it odd that secularists fight very hard to keep the little gains it has made in the last few hundred years in the western world.
We're the same in another respect, atheists and religious people .I'm smug because I'm the hard science dude with all the nifty science arguments; religious people are smug because they've experienced the divine, and explaining the divine is like telling a colourblind person what a sunset looks like. The atheists (me) best argument is 'PROVE it!' whereas the religious persons is 'explain THIS! you can't, can ya?!?'. Science isn't the sword of the non theist or the enemy of religion; it's a methodology used to explain things which works remarkably well and cuts through bull****e said by an atheist with the same grace at it cuts through ridiculous religious crap.
As long as you keep religion outta laws and other things that directly affect me and my loved ones I have no problem with it as it gives me a reason to feel smug. You religious people should be happy that I exist so you can experience the same smugness. it's nice, ainnit?
Lazs, my lack of faith didn't come from being hip or whatever. I just don't have one. Maybe that makes me boring. I don't believe in anything like you believe in a god. Money isn't my god. Status isn't either. There isn't anything I believe in or experience like that. It's a non issue and my lack of theism doesn't affect me one way or the other in the way I handle people on a daily basis - 90% of those I know know nothing of my lack of faith and I bring it up only if they initiate a discussion, knowing that a) it is tedious to the extreme b) being right or being wrong won't change a thing as there is no being right or wrong or if there is we'll either know or not know depending on the answer (once we die that is) and c) it tends to piss friends off if they're believers.
I'm jsut glad that religion isn't very much of an issue in the country where I live. It's personal here, which is the way I like it. Despite having a state church (which I'd like toget rid of
)
