Posted on 11/15/2008 7:00:17 AM PST by Alex Murphy
Many Americans doubt the morality of atheists. According to a 2007 Gallup poll, a majority of Americans say that they would not vote for an otherwise qualified atheist as president, meaning a nonbeliever would have a harder time getting elected than a Muslim, a homosexual, or a Jew. Many would go further and agree with conservative commentator Laura Schlessinger that morality requires a belief in God—otherwise, all we have is our selfish desires. In The Ten Commandments, she approvingly quotes Dostoyevsky: "Where there is no God, all is permitted." The opposing view, held by a small minority of secularists, such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens, is that belief in God makes us worse. As Hitchens puts it, "Religion poisons everything".....
....In a review published in Science last month, psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff discuss several experiments that lean pro-Schlessinger. In one of their own studies, they primed half the participants with a spirituality-themed word jumble (including the words divine and God) and gave the other half the same task with nonspiritual words. Then, they gave all the participants $10 each and told them that they could either keep it or share their cash reward with another (anonymous) subject. Ultimately, the spiritual-jumble group parted with more than twice as much money as the control. Norenzayan and Shariff suggest that this lopsided outcome is the result of an evolutionary imperative to care about one's reputation. If you think about God, you believe someone is watching. This argument is bolstered by other research that they review showing that people are more generous and less likely to cheat when others are around. More surprisingly, people also behave better when exposed to posters with eyes on them.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
as a Christian I am well aware there are much ‘nicer’ atheists out there than me. Niceness isn't an issue.
I have to agree. The ones I have dealt with on USENET are always negative, angry, intolerant of other views (ESPECIALLY any Christian views, which they deem ‘radical’).
To me it is very obvious they are traveling through life with heavy scales on their eyes, yet they choose to remain unhappy in their disbelief of God.
I pray for them a lot, but then again, you’ve got to ‘shake the sand from your sandals’ when you find yourself beating your head against a brick wall time and again!
There are PRO-LIFE CONSERVATIVE atheist on Free Republic. I’m a devout Christian, but these are really nice people.
In The Ten Commandments, she approvingly quotes Dostoyevsky: “Where there is no God, all is permitted.”
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However in Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky punishes the student for murdering the old woman...
he thinks he has license to kill, but he does repent in the end..
I’m an atheist. I figure I have built in morality. Most people follow the golden rule, right?
And in the final measure, I believe in one fewer gods than Christians do.
Notice I did not say nice. I said no joy and angry.
Trying to define “nice” and “mean” behavior with an atheist can be a fools game. “It was nice of you to give that lady a ride to the abortion clinic” versus “It was mean of you to try to talk her out of it.” As one poster here has said, niceness isn’t the issue. There are principled atheists, but one always has to wonder about the authority and integrity of their principles and when they might change.
The Freepers that I know are not sad and angry.
I know several atheists who are among the nicest people you could ever hope to meet—warm, kind, generous, happy, honorable. The question arises: how much better would they be if they knew and served God? What wonderful things could they accomplish?
By the same token, I know a number of Christians who are absolutely the pits. We have all met people like this.
This discussion does not give enough weight to innate temperament and to life experience. Perhaps the sunny atheist had a delightful childhood and was born with a disposition inclined away from depression. Perhaps the miserable, outwardly nasty Christian really does believe, but he has chronic pain, or has suffered a scarring life with heartbreak you can’t imagine, or was born with a genetic predisposition to depression. We can’t know, which is why we are told not to judge such things; only God can know them.
As my father said, it is the bad people who need faith the most. Otherwise, imagine how much worse they would be.
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What's the origin of the Golden Rule?
“What’s the origin of the Golden Rule?”
Isn’t it all religions except for one?
I know an atheist who is very nice - and he voted for McCain, despite being very liberal thinking. Marxism and Michelle 0bama were his deciding factors (this from a guy who NEVER talks about anyone badly).
Back in the 1950s when I was in grade school, I remember that we read a lot of Aesop’s fables from Greek times - the children’s literature also had the aim of making us into good people. No Bible teaching was ever done in the classroom. The morals to the Aesop stories were an important part of my early awareness of right and wrong because I rarely was taken to church or Sunday school. No Bible reading went on in my house. My father was a strict authoritarian, however, so there was no doubt as to what behavior was unacceptable.
Today, children, and for that matter, all of us, are being pulverized with the idea that there is no right and wrong way - you decide for yourself based on nothing but the opinions and feelings of the moment. These “lessons” can be heard from both the Liberal Christian and Unitarian wings of religion as well as the Dawkins/Hitchens atheists. There are miserable Christians, true enough, because they have lost their way, but they are not the norm. I am not sure what the norm is for atheists — their public representatives may be aberrations, too — Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, William Ayres, Richard Dawkins are not people I would want to hang out with, but they may be the atheists’ sad and vocal exceptions, too. The Point is, you have to be taught - it doesn’t come naturally to everyone to be civilized, kind, generous, charitable. Some adults, even after knowing all this, still choose to be stingy, mean bastards, caring only about how everything affects them only — little tiny poisonous universes with everything revolving around them.
If a person spends his weekdays searching for articles to slam another religion I guess that would indicate he or she might be mean among other things.
From the Gospel according to Saint Luke:
31 And as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them in like manner.
From the Gospel according to Saint Matthew:
12 All things therefore whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do you also to them. For this is the law and the prophets.
While many Americans say that, they voted for B. Hussein Obama, who’s mother and father were both atheists and whose statement about clinging to their God is something an atheist, not a Christian, would say.
Believers are not inherently better than atheists.
However, IMO, without a belief in a superior power a person’s morality is sort of “free-standing.” It doesn’t mean it won’t be firmly believed, it’s just that the belief isn’t really based on much of anything.
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