Questions about an essay on this site

[garza]

I have two questions about an essay I read on another page on this site. The name of the essay was, 'The Power of Atheism to Change Lives'. It is located at:

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/power.html

My questions are, do most christians really believe this about atheists, and, will I be immediately banned for posting the following response?

The article is partly based on what I believe is called the straw-man fallacy. The writer states what he believes about atheism, and argues against that, rather than arguing against what atheists actually believe and practise.

The argument starts with truth about atheists. The writer says, '...most atheists talk about being free to think critically...', and that is correct. Atheists are not likely to accept anything without proof. If you make a statement about how nature works, an atheist will ask you to back up that statement with references.

The writer claims that 'Most atheists believe that Christianity teaches Christians to ignore the facts and base their entire lives upon some sort of touchy-feely kind of "faith."' Again, this is fairly accurate. Through history the christian church has tried to ignore the discoveries of science when those discoveries in some way went against what the church taught. The life of Galileo is a good example.

So far the writer has not strayed too far from a rational dispute with atheism. But then he turns to the subject of morality and goes off the rails. He says, and here I quote at length, 'When it comes to morality, atheists tend to be very quiet about what role atheism plays in shaping their personal morality. You won't find atheists saying that their atheism was influential in getting them off of drugs, stopping their alcoholism and ending their addictions to pornography, gambling, or any other personal moral fault. The fact is that atheism has no power at all to change personal morality (in a positive way).'

Atheism has the power to do all those things, because atheism teaches that we are each responsible for our own actions and that we each have the power within ourselves to shape our lives the way we want them to be. We don't need a make-believe god because deep down in every human is the power to overcome any addiction. At the beginning there will be the need for outside help to get started, but that help can best come from another human who has suffered and has recovered.

Then the writer says, '...atheists are generally not involved in helping the economically and socially disadvantaged. Of course, there are some exceptions, but in general atheists tend to be involved in legal/legislative issues, if any at all, to the exclusion of the needs of the poor and uneducated.'

This is an outright lie. I am one of a group of atheists who work year-round to make life better for people who don't have as much as we have. No, we don't give baskets at Christmas. We try to help year-round. The family that is hungry in December is still going to be hungry in January. And no, we don't make a lot of noise about it.

Sunday I will make my weekly visit to Central Prison to carry extra food and other personal items to the youngsters locked up in the area set aside for young first offenders. They are fed well enough and have all they need, but the little extras tell them they are not forgotten. I let them know that I don't approve of whatever they did to be sent there, and that I agree with the magistrate that they are where they belong for now. I encourage them to take an active part in whatever programmes are offered in education, skills training, and such. Most of these kids come out of homes professing christianity without any kind of moral guidance. They will look you in the eye and tell you how innocent they are, all the while trying to figure how to con you out of something. When the christians go in with their bibles the kids all try to out sing and out pray one another, and when the christians are gone they try to out laugh one another. The prison is operated by a private christian group, and they have made some positive changes in the way the prison is run, so I never say anything in there against christians or christianity. But the kids notice that I go to see them with food, and the christians go to see them with a bible. Makes a difference. They never try to hand me a line of guff because they know I won't buy it.

Around mid-August I will begin my annual text-book drive. We don't have free school books here, and a set of books for a primary school student can run from two hundred to over three hundred dollars. That's not counting pens, pencils, notebooks, and such. Many poor families just don't have the money. I have learned not to bother asking christians. I collect most of the money from atheists, Taoists, and Hindus. They see both the humanitarian and the practical advantage of getting as many kids into school as possible.

The writer of the article claims that, 'There is no atheistic moral dictate that would require or even suggest that atheists should help anyone.' This again is an outright lie. A simple moral code that I have found agreeable to atheists is:
To help someone is good.
To hurt someone is bad.
To be able to help someone and fail to do so is bad.
It has been my experiece in dealing with people in many parts of the world over my 66 years of life that atheists and the followers of certain eastern belief systems live by higher ethical standards than do christians. The christmas basket story is a good example. Giving a poor family a basket of food once a year and claiming you are helping them is absurd. Do you have any idea at all the names they call you behind your back? If you are sincere you will help the kids stay in school. Help the parents to get trainng to get jobs. Teach them how they can turn a few square feet of ground into a garden and grow a lot of their own food. Atheists do that sort of thing, we just don't make a lot of noise about it. We want to help the people, not build up our own egos.

When we die we become as we were before we were conceived. We have only these few brief years of light between two eternities of darkness. Only by helping those around me have a better life can I give meaning to my own life. This is the atheists' concept of morality.

[Canuckster1127]

No you won't be banned for posting your thoughts and making a response.

Check the Discussion Guidelines above if you wish to participate and abide by them and there will be no issue.

Frankly I don't see that you've added much to the conversation.

Your personal experiences and the circle you work with are anecdotal and you do not offer any reference to any statistics that demonstrate that your actions are typical of all Atheists, anymore than your observations are typical of all Christians.

I believe Atheists can do good things in the sense that they can adapt an ethical code and seek to do good to others and receive a sense of well-being for doing it.

I believe Christians miss opportunities to do good and are not perfect.

I think the primary point Rich is making is that there is not a sense of corporate and collective effort on the part of Atheists overall in the sense of a group with common goals and values to accomplish much beyond the type of individual effort you cite.

I can point to many orphanages, hospitals, etc. that are the result of Christian organizations and people banding together to accomplish it outside the auspices of Government etc.

Other organizations and religions do this too so I'm certainly not claiming it is exclusive.

I've never seen Atheists band together to do this in the name or in the principle of any collective sense of identity or argreement to promote Atheism or demonstrate its values.

Nothing you state changes that.

In the end however these are all corallaries. The primary issue I dispute is your sense that life is effectively a meaningless interlude between two eternal darknesses.

If that is the case, then why even bother caring about any sense of kindness? What basis or value can you defend such an arbitrary establishment of values and are you sure you wish to present that as representative of atheism in general?

Welcome to our board and I pray you'll feel free to interact and most importantly to consider the person and claims of Christ and see if perhaps there is more there than you may have seen in the past.

[BGoodForGoodSake]

To begin with I applaud your sence of morality.

Now to be fair to both sides, I think the perceptions arise because we tend to generalize based on the people who surround us and the people we encounter in the streets.

These perceptions may arise because many people are not enlightened, whether Christian or athiest. By this I mean they don't have a strong moral sence. When one is enlightened themselves they tend to be surrounded by like thinking individuals, this leads to the perception that the masses around them are not at the same level, which is true. And since we are Christian/Athiest/Buddhist they must be the others.

In short there are moral people regardless of their beleifs, and there are those who live life without giving this issue a second thought.

[August]

Hi Garza,

Maybe you can answer this for me....why be moral?

[garza]

Thanks for your kind response.

One point I would argue. I do not by any means intend to say that life is meaningless, but, rather, that we each give life a meaning depending on how we live. The person who grabs only for wealth makes his life worth only what wealth he can accumulate while he lives. Then when he dies all that he worked for will be lost. The person who grabs only for power makes his life worth only what power he can accumulate while he lives. Then when he dies that power will be gone. So too all those who work only for fame, or physical pleasure, or some other such temporary gain. At death it's all gone.

But when we work for others, we create a meaning for life that can outlast us. We can set an example that will be remembered when we are gone.

Your are right that atheists are not organised. What work we do, we mostly do as individuals or very small groups. And even if we tried to organise and get community support, what newspaper would run a story about a bunch of atheists running gardening classes to teach poor families to help feed themselves?

As for the Christmas basket deal, that irritates me every year. Some of the same families that get baskets are families that I've tried to help, or friends of mine have worked with, throughout the year, but it's the Christmas basket that gets the attention, not the textbooks I bought back in September, or the hospital bill I helped raise money to pay, or the vo-tech training I helped get for the oldest kid so he could support his mother and younger brothers and sisters. All of that gets ignored, which is okay, really, until Santa comes around making a lot of noise about a basket with a few dollars worth of groceries that will be gone in a couple of days. We have a saying here, 'Wan deh belliful nevah fatten maga dahg'. A starving dog won't get fat on one good meal. You hear that quoted often around Christmas time.

I'm not trying to stop the Christmas baskets, just asking that those who sponsor them keep the good work going all year.

I shouldn't feel that way, but I am human, and can't help it. Some churches here do very good work year-round, but interestingly enough they are the ones we seem to hear the least about. But let a foreign missionary come in with a container of out-of-date text books, out-of-date medicine, and some broken down diagnostic gear they bought by the pound at the Army-Navy store and their grinning pictures will be all over the papers.

I only meant a quick 'thank you' and look at what I've done. Sorry.

[Canuckster1127]

It's not a problem Garza. I am sincerely glad you have dropped by and interacted. You are welcome to do so. We exist to discuss and interact with anyone who is seeking to understand better.

I understand the frustration and I am not seeking to minimize what you represent you are doing.

It is a strong part of human nature to do what amount to symbolic things and imagine that that equates to what Jesus taught and modelled in terms of caring for the poor and disadvantaged. He taught that as a daily life-style and there unfortunately is a faction even within Christianity who pass that by and presume that since they dropped a pair of old eye glasses in a barrel last month they've met their obligation in the regard for a while.

Let me suggest however that you are on to something.

You indicate that you have a sense of pleasure from doing what is right in helping others.

Allow me to suggest that that finds its roots in something more than your simply arbitrarily choosing to do that based on its own rewards and merits.

Allow me to suggest that as a person created in the image of God that there is an inherent sense of "right and wring" that has been instilled within you by intent and design.

With that thought, let me encourage you to explore the implications of that and determine if perhaps there is more at work than what you think.

Blessings,

Bart

[garza]

Sorry, I spent so long on that last post that two responses to my first post came in behind my back.

BGoodForGoodSake - You are right, and I doubt there ever could be any scientific way of measuring morality. It is perception, and all I can do is report on what I have perceived to be the case.

August - The question 'why be moral' coming from a Christian always frightens me. I see it as meaning that without belief in God, the person would feel set free from any moral constraint and does not recognise an objective moral code that we should be bound by as humans.

The quote from Acts has nothing to do with helping people to rise out of poverty. However, I have been told that the statement attributed to Jesus, 'The poor you will have with you always,' is as much a command as it is a comment, and to to seriously work to eliminate, not alleviate, poverty is to work against the will of God. I don't know if many Christians actually believe this.

[August]

August - The question 'why be moral' coming from a Christian always frightens me. I see it as meaning that without belief in God, the person would feel set free from any moral constraint and does not recognise an objective moral code that we should be bound by as humans.

You did not answer the question. Or is the second sentence your answer?

[Birdie]

August - The question 'why be moral' coming from a Christian always frightens me. I see it as meaning that without belief in God, the person would feel set free from any moral constraint and does not recognise an objective moral code that we should be bound by as humans.

You did not answer the question. Or is the second sentence your answer?

I can understand why it frightens him. That a person would only do good because this book say so. What would happen if the book wasn't there? If suddenly some proof that God's existence is near impossible? Of course your answer to that would be 'No I would still keep my faith' but other Christians might not. Not that I think they would all riot or anything like that. Lol.

Maybe you can answer this for me....why be moral?

I help people because I just like to make peoples life a little easier. They have feelings too.

I can point to many orphanages, hospitals, etc. that are the result of Christian organizations and people banding together to accomplish it outside the auspices of Government etc.

First of all saying that Christians would do more community service than atheists would be true. There are probably more Christians than atheists since it's the major religion. And I agree that some atheists can be really mean sometimes but so can Christians. And also in the papers I never see any “Atheist Homeless Food Collection, Donate Now.” But I see service projects that don't refer to any religion at all. There could be anyone helping there.

A simple moral code that I have found agreeable to atheists is:
To help someone is good.
To hurt someone is bad.
To be able to help someone and fail to do so is bad.

As for the morals of Atheist, I didn't really think they all had rules to live by. I though they just live. Doesn't mean atheist go around murdering people but I don't think an atheist has to have a Bible to know that murder or stealing or anything else like that is wrong.
That's just common sense.

[NeedMoreChipotleTabasco]

Personally, I believe that an objective moral code has come into being as the result of the gradual evolution of human societies. To put it simply, behaviors that are beneficial to the strength and stability of a given society are what we see as morally good behaviors and behaviors that lead to weakness or chaos within a society are regarded as immoral.

For example, theft, murder, or adultery would have led to violent reprisals in a primitive society, ranging from individual killings to blood feuds between families. That, in turn, would have made the afflicted society vulnerable to outside aggression, crop failures, starvation, and self-destruction. Over time, as governments and religious groups became more sophisticated and added law enforcement and religious justifications, these common-sense rules were independently codified by the most advanced people within the region in question. These moral/legal codes were then spread by conquest, absorbtion, and cultural diffusion. Consequently similar objective moral codes can be found as codified law and religions rules throughout the ancient world.

I personally see religion as a bulwark created to supplement the common-sense rules that we all know and understand but don't always follow, as well as a virtually unassailable divine-right explanation to justify the power and privilege of the ruling elite.

Or to put it more plainly, people created an objective moral code based on reason and pragmatism. God is not a necessary component.

[Canuckster1127]

Birdie,

Common sense in the sense of moral awareness is something a little more.

It is common grace. The human conscience has an imbedded sense of what is right and wrong that is a residual part of the image of God that we were created in.

I don't dispute that atheists and non-Christians can be very ethical and apparently good people. I know many and respect them on that level.

One does not have to base their morality on the Bible in order to form an ethical code to function by. It misses one important point however. That conscience and common grace is a part of what can lead us to God.

Bart

[garza]

August - Sorry, I guess I buried the answer too far into the post. The answer is that there is an 'objective moral code that we should be bound by as humans'.

First of all, we are pack animals. We share that with the other great apes and with many other mammals. We inherit an instinctive drive to protect other members of the pack against harm. It's a survival mechanism for the species.

We have also inherited a larger brain and greater cognitive reasoning power. This is both good and bad. The good part is that we can recognise this biological urge to help protect the pack and consciously follow through on it. We see the need to protect one another, to help one another, and, biological drive aside, we can see and understand an ethical, moral, standard of behaviour that is right for us to follow. We can also recognise that the pack includes every other member of the species.

The down side to the bigger brain and greater cognitive ability is that we develop cultural biases that are destructive. We are told that Slavs and Africans are sub-human. Hutus are taught that Tutsis are cockroaches and should be killed. Muslim, Jew, and Christian are daily killing one another, each wanting to prove that the way he worships god is the only right way. When we go down this kind of road, when we sell crack to kids, rape a woman, put a knife at someone's throat and demand their goods, we are violating that basic moral code.

Organised religion often gets in the way of following that natural moral code. I have no religion. I believe in humanity. I believe we must all work together, help one another, never harm one another, be pro-active in the defence of our fellows and willing to sacrifice for their good.

[Birdie]

Birdie,

Common sense in the sense of moral awareness is something a little more.

It is common grace. The human conscience has an imbedded sense of what is right and wrong that is a residual part of the image of God that we were created in.

Explain a little more what this idea of right and wrong isn't related to common sense? When there's a little kid let's say he is jumping on the bed falls off hurts him self, cry cry, he probably isn't going to jump on the bed again. Same kid goes to the playground pushes this other kid over for his toy and the mom goes and puts him in time out, wait wait, he probably isn't going to push that kid down again. And what do you mean by common grace? Did God 'grace' us with the knowledge of right and wrong? I though Adam and Eve toke it from that tree.

[Canuckster1127]

August - Sorry, I guess I buried the answer too far into the post. The answer is that there is an 'objective moral code that we should be bound by as humans'.

First of all, we are pack animals. We share that with the other great apes and with many other mammals. We inherit an instinctive drive to protect other members of the pack against harm. It's a survival mechanism for the species.

We have also inherited a larger brain and greater cognitive reasoning power. This is both good and bad. The good part is that we can recognise this biological urge to help protect the pack and consciously follow through on it. We see the need to protect one another, to help one another, and, biological drive aside, we can see and understand an ethical, moral, standard of behaviour that is right for us to follow. We can also recognise that the pack includes every other member of the species.

The down side to the bigger brain and greater cognitive ability is that we develop cultural biases that are destructive. We are told that Slavs and Africans are sub-human. Hutus are taught that Tutsis are cockroaches and should be killed. Muslim, Jew, and Christian are daily killing one another, each wanting to prove that the way he worships god is the only right way. When we go down this kind of road, when we sell crack to kids, rape a woman, put a knife at someone's throat and demand their goods, we are violating that basic moral code.

Organised religion often gets in the way of following that natural moral code. I have no religion. I believe in humanity. I believe we must all work together, help one another, never harm one another, be pro-active in the defence of our fellows and willing to sacrifice for their good.

What natural moral code?

The law of the jungle and natural selection is hardly indicative of anything being valued above survival and reproduction.

I suspect the male preying mantis being devoured after mating is not conceptualizing on the justice or injustice of it all.

[Birdie]

What natural moral code?

The law of the jungle and natural selection is hardly indicative of anything being valued above survival and reproduction.

I suspect the male preying mantis being devoured after mating is not conceptualizing on the justice or injustice of it all.

The mantis isn't a pack creature and I think garza and NeedMoreChipotleTabasco make an interesting point. Also the mantis trys not to get eaten. I think what happens is the male has sex with the female and if the male isn't doing it right then she eats him.