Comments on: A note to the “God squad” on slandering atheists

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 20:36:17 +0000

In response to Kevin,

In fact, Christians do not ‘claim high moral ground’, we are in fact supposed to consider ourselves less than those around us.

Just so you know…

By: aldahlia

aldahlia — Thu, 26 May 2005 19:47:32 +0000

Thank you so much for that Natalie Angier link!!

By: Trevor

Trevor — Wed, 25 May 2005 16:14:28 +0000

Upper right corner. Think I can find that. Will check it out.

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 23 May 2005 02:37:30 +0000

What is it you’re hoping to accomplish with this sight? I’m just curious… — The upper-right corner of the main page gives the goals of the site. Enjoy, and tell all your friends.

By: Trevor

Trevor — Sun, 22 May 2005 23:43:32 +0000

What is it you’re hoping to accomplish with this sight? I’m just curious…

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 22 May 2005 23:18:26 +0000

It always amuses me when the xians claim the high moral ground based on their beliefs. “I’m a better person because I believe that I’ll be rewarded for all the good things I do and punished for all the bad things I do.” Morality has to come from a desire to be a moral person, in spite of the costs or rewards associated with that. Simply calculating your best long term self-interest doesn’t have anything to do with morality. As for those social engineers who think that instilling everyone with the fear of sky-daddies wrath is the best way to keep people on best behavior, I challenge them to come up with any statistics that put non-religious or less observant types at higher risk for becoming criminal. Mostly I find that religion acts as moral blinders- people of faith come to believe that their faith is enough for them to be moral, so they never think about moral issues. This not only causes them to do immoral things in the name of religion, it also makes them useless for making moral decisions on issues that aren’t specifically covered by their indoctrination, because they don’t have any practice. I would bet that if you really did a comprehensive study of morality and religion, you would find that strong religious belief was a negative factor in predicting moral behavior.

By: vjack

vjack — Sun, 22 May 2005 20:14:05 +0000

Rather than bother to respond to the God Squad, I’d just ignore them. They get their power from stirring up controversy. Maybe if they are allowed to sink into irrelevance, they’ll go away.

By: Ron

Ron — Sun, 22 May 2005 10:16:53 +0000

Don’t think so, Badger. The contrast case given is “(put here for) just themselves”. Since the “put here for” is on both sides of the contrast, it’s backgrounded as merely the speaker/writer’s presupposition. The contrast offered is then clearly between the other-regarding and other-valuing life on the one hand, and the “just” or “merely” self-regarding life on the other. If it had said “that they have been put here to serve others, but instead learn that no one PUT them here for anything, and that they have to make their own purpose in life”, THEN it would have been true. But the offered contrast case makes all the difference.

It’s clear what they intend and what they in fact say: Kids without religion are far less likely to become other-regarding and other-valuing than kids raised atheist.