– Penn Jillette kicks ass. I kinda don’t even care how much I disagree with him on some stuff, which is actually less than you’d think when you really get down to it.
– If you’re in the UK, the British Humanist Association want you to email your MP to try to ensure that good science gets taught in schools. It looks like “faith schools” might be given even more of a chance to teach kids whatever reality-ignoring crap they like, which is worrying, and letting your MP know where you stand could make a difference. You can do this through the BHA’s site on that link, and don’t forget places like WriteToThem and TheyWorkForYou.
– Orac continues to knock it out of the park on the subject of liars who claim they can cure cancer.
– And finally. If anyone ever tries to claim that atheists are immoral, or that “you can’t be good without God,” or that regular church-going folk are any better than the rest of us, or that there is any positive causal correlation between being religious and being a decent human being… remind them that a guy was killed by his wife and children because he changed the channel from a gospel show.
That’s it. That calls bullshit forever on any religious claims to the moral high ground. Anyone of any religion can be just as fucked up as anyone else. This is the kind of thing that some believers insist atheists should be doing, because we have no moral basis without God. Well, believers are out there killing their families and raping children too, so pardon me for not feeling too ethically insecure by comparison.
I know an atheist who killed an entirely innocent man. The atheist’s name was Stalin. What does that prove, o great intellect?
Atheists might help themselves by demonstrating the source of their sense of moral obligation. And the answer isn’t evolved altruism because evolution can’t create obligation.
Those two isolated facts on their own prove very little. If the point you’re driving at is that atheists or the non-religious can also do fucked-up things, then I totally agree. You don’t have to be religious to commit immoral acts. But sometimes it helps.
The only point I was getting at is that some religious people think that all atheists must be immoral by definition, and use descriptors like “church-going” and “god-fearing” as if they meant “moral”. Well, these deeply religious and god-fearing people killed their husband and father. Where was their source of moral obligation?
Again, not all, but some religious people honestly seem to think that atheists have no reason not to go on violent rampages whenever the mood strikes them. I’ve always been a bit worried by this, because it implies that religious people regularly do find themselves in a mood to go on a violent rampage, but are only prevented from doing so by the fear of punishment after they die.
Would you murder your own father if he annoyed you by switching over the TV station? If you’d say “No, of course not, that’d be morally wrong,” how do you know it’s morally wrong? Did you really need God to tell you that? I suspect you’re smart enough to figure some of this stuff out for yourself.
Also, please define “obligation” in such a way that it can in no way arise from evolution.
Don’t bother, Peter. The writer hasn’t got enough brain to study what it is he’s insulting. But, typically of these milk and water atheists, he doesn’t even realise that. Come back Bertrand Russell — at least you knew what you were attacking.
So, you have nothing to add except to call me stupid. Well, thanks for that. Feel free to try again whenever you have an actual argument.
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