A question for all Atheists

If only things were ever so easy, the world would be a simple place. Probably a boring one, too.

The Bible's morality (even the parts which are actually good and applicable like financial responsiblity) are pretty tribal and simplistic compared to later philosophers anyway.

It was written by a very ancient, tribal culture - why it's thought to be the "be all end all" is beyond me - it's closer to a horseless carriage than a Ferrari.

A thousand years ago the mass of the population was uneducated so it wasn't too difficult to make them believe there's a bearded man in the sky watching their every move to keep them in line. They used to think that the sun revolves around the Earth so it's not so surprising that they believed the bible to be the word of god.
It had a lot of time to become ingrained in our culture and society. Most people are indoctrinated since they are born and they never question it because that's what they teach you... just believe and don't question it. Then they do the same with their children and so on.

You know, people say that (about it being a lack of education), but it really doesn't make sense if you think about it.

Ignorance is not the same thing as gullibility. And what crucial piece of information were they lacking, anyway? They knew people didn't come back from the dead. They knew virgins didn't give birth. They knew you couldn't turn water into wine, or walk on it. In fact, they specifically regarded the works of God as miracles, and you can't regard something as a miracle unless you first realize that it's outside of the scientific norm. So they understood full well that these things weren't supposed to happen.

Dismissing dozens of generations of human begins as uneducated rubes is too glib an answer. And it happens to be one that lets people today feel smart and savvy, which I suspect is the real reason it's advanced.

I haven't read it, but I'm guessing "entertaining" is probably the best word for it, yes. There is, unfortunately, a massive gap between classical atheists like Bertrand Russell and modern ones like Dawkins: they're more about entertaining and polemics than serious arguments or philosophy. They specialize in pithy one-liners, ad hominem attacks, and other distinctly modern fallacies. When they go up against an actual philosopher it doesn't tend to go very well.

That said, if I didn't care about logic or philosophical rigor and was just looking for someone to say scathing things about believers, I'd go with Hitchens. He was at least wittier than the others.

No worries.

I think there are some legitimate (but very hard to answer) questions about the long-term effects of a society that abandons religion, since all the attempts to found a Godless state via revolution have ended in mass death. What we don't know is what happens (if anything) when a society is founded on theistic ideals, and then slowly loses those beliefs. Does the moral code stay, unaffected by the removal of its foundation? Or does it slowly degrade and become more susceptible to certain things? We don't know.

I think there's a decent argument to be made that something like religion is the only thing strong enough, and motivating enough, to punch through and achieve major social justice upheavals, which is why both the Civil Rights movement and abolition were explicitly and thoroughly religious. It's hard to fight to the death, or in the face of rampant injustice, for the abstract notion of a social contract.

Perhaps I've been too tactful in answering your question again and again although, as I said before, taken with the position I've repeated ad nauseam regarding holy books I find it odd you've found it unclear. To resolve any misapprehension let me formally state I don't believe what I said, that, while psychologically understandable, any keirkegaardian leap of faith is fanciful, wishful thinking. You've also conflated my olive branch statement with my academic position of ignorance taken to demonstrate the lack of substance in an argument from incredulity.

On another note, I wonder about the following: If I were walking along a beach and saw a tidal wave coming that many children playing by the water could not, many would accuse me of being immoral if I didn't act to ensure those children's safety. But isn't this precisely what a god/s have done for millennia with regard to tsunamis, other natural disasters, diseases, etc? Is god/s, therefore, immoral or is walking past those children in silence like walking in the footsteps of god/s?

Less education in general leads to less critical thought, and people being too eager to just accept what they've been told without bothering to question it.

That reminds of of a famous quote

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

About things you don't know anything about, perhaps. Not about things everyone knows are impossible. People 2,000 years ago were no less aware of how miraculous these claims were.

Point I was making is that I think there's a link between education and overall IQ and critical thinking ability.

For example women by average statistics have lower IQs than men, however since women started going to college and being educated, their average IQ has risen significantly from what it was back in the days when they were expected to only be homemakers - it's currently rising at a faster rate than men's are.

I think not enough education leads to a lack of stimulation in the brain.

Though I agree with you - in that I don't picture the 'average' religious person (even 2,000 years ago) as some foaming at the mouth extremist - on the same note though a lot of moral ideas perpetuated by religions seemed to be repeated by the masses, even when they were clearly pretty bad (e.x. the Bible was used in part, to justify slavery back in the pre-emancipation era).

I think that extremists were always the minority - the problem is that people have been too weak to stand up for them, and let them stay in positions of power where they can enforce their will on the masses. I doubt the average Afgani is a die-hard fundamentalist who wants to slay the infidels, but they allowed people like that to get into positions of control over them.

What about the Crusades, the Inquisition, the current insurgency by ISIS in the Middle East?

And why was 'revolution' such as the French revolution necessary to begin with?

What moral code are you referring to? There's not some 'universal theistic moral code', and there have been plenty of barbaric 'morals' promoted by theistic religions.

People also used religion to justify slavery to begin with.

You could just replace religion with 'unified belief system' that doesn't require a theistic God, and there'd be little difference in the 'positive benefits' you mention.

What about them? They pose no issue for what I've said, and their enumeration here is (as it usually is) the argumentative equivalent of a kneejerk atheistic macro that gets Ctrl-V'd every time someone mentions violence.

All societies go wrong, and all ideologies are abused. But religious societies are the only ones that have shown the ability to self-correct over time, which is why they are the ones--with literally zero exceptions--that have produced the liberal Western values we now enjoy. Societies made up of largely religious people have a conscience that can be appealed to. Cultures founded on an explicit rejection of God have never managed this. Pol Pot's Cambodia did not learn from its mistakes and emerge into a tolerant, thriving state. It simply destroyed itself.

Read the paragraph again, guy. The "moral code" in question is whatever the moral standard of the society is, even after religion has been abandoned.

I'm getting the distinct impression you fire these responses off without really pausing to make sure you've understood what's being said.

People used everything to justify slavery. But it took religion to actually end it.

List one historical example of this happening.

You're showing a double standard - in the case of dictators like Stalin or Mao you attribute it to atheism - but when religious violence is pointed out you just brush it off as "all societies make mistakes".

But according to a literal interpretation of the Bible, liberal Western values wouldn't be 'religious' at all - they'd be heretical - the type of govt that God established in the Bible was a totalitarian theocracy.

That's just an association fallacy - you could replace 'religious people' with 'white people' if you wanted to regarding the abolition of slavery, or liberal Western values, and therefore suggest that being of a 'superior race' is the reason.

Why would a Saudi want their 'moral code' to adhere? Abandoning it altogether would be better and would be more 'moral'.

That's quite a stretch - there's nothing in the Bible itself that directly condemns slavery, and God himself did not have a problem with people owning slaves.

Just because people said "it's religious" in a day and age where it was socially unaccepted to be anything else, doesn't mean it primarily came from Christianity.

The Founders' ideals were based mainly off of the Enlightenment, rather than "religion" - and were definitely unique and not a part of any established religions of the time. They were also primarily diestic rather than theistic.

If your standard simply boils down to "they believed in a God" and it's therefore "religious" - then you could just apply the same to any ideology, regardless of what it is - if you just append "God" to it.

E.X. Stalin's ideology and practice could've been identical to what it was, if he just somehow referenced "God" as motivating it - it would be "religious".

Stop giving me predictable responses from the Atheistic Playbook for a moment and actually read what I'm saying: I'm talking about the viability of societies that explicitly reject religion. That has literally nothing to do with whether or not you blame religion or atheism for the misdeeds that occur under its name.

This is positively littered with holes.

First, you don't have to interpret the Bible literally, and most people don't, so "according to a literal interpretation of the Bible" doesn't actually have any argumentative relevance, because I didn't offer anything based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.

Second, this has literally nothing to do with what I just said, which is that only religious societies have produced these values. You obviously can't argue with this, so you've simply changed the subject.

Third, there is absolutely nothing remarkable about the idea that a "government" run by God would and should be dramatically different than a government run by frail, fallible human beings.

It'd be an association fallacy if there was no other evidence, but religion was instrumental in the ideology that destroyed it, and the rejection of religion was a key component in each of the societies that imploded.

I have no freakin' clue what you're trying to say here. Seriously, read the quote again.

This is literally wrong in a variety of ways, and I've expounded on why earlier in the thread. But that doesn't even matter, because once again you're skipping over the claim you can't argue with to just talk about something else. No sale.

Abolitionists largely spoke in explicitly Christian terms, appealing to Christian values. And it worked because religious societies, though still made up of imperfect people, can be appealed to in that way. They have a cultural conscience that makes this kind of reform possible.

See, this is what I'm talking about: you're basically equivalent to a bot that scans the post for keywords and then spits out some rote response based on what it thinks I must be arguing.

I'm not talking about theocracies, or societies explicitly founded on a religion. I'm talking about societies made up of largely religious people. Seriously, go back and re-read the initial post you replied to.

There's been nothing to suggest that societies 'rejecting religion' relates to their viability, especially since communist countries like North Korea and Soviet Russia are closer to religious nations like Saudi Arabia than they are to Western secular democracies. The main reason these nations collapsed is due to failed economic and social policies anyway - not 'due to rejection of religion'.

And prior to the advent of democracies, only monarchial societies in Europe had produced any lasting values, art, science, etc If you'd been born in the Revolutionary Era you'd probably have been a Tory.

No, it would either be run 'frail, fallible human beings', or 'frail, fallible human beings' claiming to speak for God.

I'd say a lack of unified values and sense of community is the problem - the idea that it has to be "religious" per se is wrong.

It sounded like you weren't arguing for any specific ideology, just that the ideology be based on "religion" (regardless of what the ideology actually is).

Again, you assert that it's specifically because they're "religious" - I think that it has more to do with having a stronger sense of community rather than "religion" having to be that community.

You could just as well argue that we've never seen a society based on Enlightenment values like those of the post-American revolutionary West turn into a totalitarian state, but we have seen this occur many times in religious societies.

I wasn't saying that you were arguing for a theocratic government at all.

Er, yes there has: the fact that none of them have been viable suggests it.

I assume what you mean to say (I think you overstate things out of pure habit, without even realizing it most of the time) is that this doesn't prove correlation, not that it doesn't even suggest it. Which is technically true, but strains credulity given that rejection of religion has been at the core of all these revolutions. It's ridiculous to pretend this is some incidental detail that may or may not have contributed to their failure.

You're still trying to shoehorn this point into some tired old argument about religion and violence/authoritarianism. The argument is not that religious societies cannot devolve into authoritarianism. It's that only religious societies have the capacity to emerge from it. It's a statement about what they can do, not what they can avoid doing.

This is the kind of analogy so obviously inapplicable that you'd never have posted it if you weren't just throwing out kneejerk responses.

In your example democracies hadn't even been tried. In mine the alternative has been tried several times, and failed miserably each time. It would indeed be silly to say "monarchy is great because it's produced all the world's best art!" if there weren't any modern societies that weren't monarchies. But if there were a handful that were, and they were all too busy starving to produce any art, then it wouldn't be quite so silly.

This is vague to the point of meaninglessness. It's not clear if the "government" you're referring to is Eden, some Biblical monarchy, or what.

Speculation about counterfactuals is not a fact, or an argument.

No, they assert that it's specifically because they're religious. You are free to merely guess as to the "real" reason, but no serious person would put your self-serving guess ahead of the explicit testimony of the people themselves as to what their motives were.

Er, you mean other than the very first one?

Do me a favor: before you reply next time, read your response again. See if there are any really obvious problems with the analogies or arguments. If I can think of a glaring flaw in the first five seconds, and you posted it anyway, then it suggests to me that you're basically handing me the First Draft of your thoughts and asking me to intellectually proofread it for you. Which I'm not super interested in doing.

Secular democracies have been viable, despite not being 'religious govts'.

If your argument isn't about the govt itself but rather the religious demographic - well the majority of people in the Soviet union didn't turn into militant atheists the second Lenin took over - religion was just surprised as official policy but still existed culturally.

That seems like reverse logic to me. A religious person would have much less incentive to emerge from authoritarianism if he blindly accepts it as God's will, and refuses to question his authority.

This is also why Saudis haven't revolted against their rulers - because rebelling against goverment is the same as rebelling against God himself. There's a much stronger correlation between religion and totalitarianism than the other way around.

It was Americans and French who rejected authoritarianism (and religion, at least in the sense that they rejected the popular religious values of the time) by rebelling against their God-appointed monarchs. Europe lived under religious authoritarianism for centuries until the secular Enlightenment inspired them to do otherwise.

It's also nations like North Korea which view their leaders as infallible, while free nations view their leaders as 'frail human beings'.

What was tried was communist economic policies - and again these nations are more comparable to Saudi Arabia than they are to Western secular democracy. You attribute 'religion' to something which is much better explained by economic policies.

They're incorrect and don't understand the basic mechanisms of how humans work. It boils down to strong social 'mirroring'.

I suppose if you throw out religion totally, but don't replace it with something then you might leave a void which leads to less unification - but again there's no reason why these values specifically have to be "religious".

I'd trust the opinions of experts far more than I would someone to self-diagnose themselves - experts on body language and human interaction know more about people than most know about themselves, and the concept of social mirroring is the underlying unifying concept, not 'religion' (this exists in other species as well).

This is for example, why militaries, football teams, etc all 'dress the same' (rather than everyone just 'picking out their outfit) - it creates a sense of unity, this is why it works, whether it's "religious or not" doesn't matter.

Missed this before I replied.

I don't see any problems with my arguments - other than misinterpretations of what I was saying (ex. you apparently thought I was saying you supported a govt founded on religion, which I was not).

This is a reasonable first-blush guess, but the reality shows different. And a little reflection reveals why: because authoritarianism is based on the State being the ultimate authority. But for a religious person, God is the ultimate authority. This is why churches have been places of refuge countless times throughout history. It's why the organization most consistently undermining the GDR was the German clergy.

Any group of people that truly believes "Love God and love your neighbor as yourself" can only be enslaved for so long. Religion can be used to enslave, to be sure, but it is also the ultimate bulwark against that enslavement persisting.

No there isn't, because the correlation between atheistic societies and totalitarianism is 100%. That also happens to be the same percentage that describes how many liberal, western societies were formed by and for largely religious people.

Aye, and from the phrase "God-appointed monarchs," they excised the "-appointed monarchs" part. They kept the "God."

Meanwhile, the French had their own revolution based on the same general values, but without the God part, and it was a disaster.

History never gives us perfectly isolated experiments the way the hard sciences do, but that's basically as close as you'll ever get.

And why have all the anti-religious societies have been Communist ones? Because all societies will worship something. When you rule out God, making the State your new God is the most logical alternative. Secular societies are particularly vulnerable to Statism.

And you do, of course! So much so that you have the authority to say that people didn't do things for the reasons they said they did, even as they risked their lives to do them.

I think I'll let that argument just speak for itself.

Right, how could I forget the famous landmark study that analyzed the body language of 19th century abolitionists?

For a religious person, men claiming to speak for God are their ultimate authority.

This makes churches essentially the 'government' - one form of govt is simply exchanged for another.

Romans 13:1 - "Obey the government, for God is the one who put it there. All governments have been placed in power by God."

It's really not. Unification is the bulwark, religious or not; it allows people to accomplish things in groups that they can't do alone. Resistance to slavery is simply genetic which no one has to be 'taught' - people only accept it if conditioned to out of fear.

Religion if anything just encourages people to submit to it if the enslaver claims, and is blindly accepted to be doing it on behalf of God.

They were also formed largely for and by white people, while we've yet to see a liberal, westernized society in Africa - therefore whites must be racially superior to blacks. Right? The correlation is just as you described.

Not because they lacked the "God part", as much as it was a greater reaction to a greater degree of oppression than what the colonists faced.

On the whole it definitely wasn't a disaster, it just could've been better - in the long run it was a huge improvement over what they had before.

By the same token, a religious person who believes that God commands him to kill infidels is more likely to resist Western democratic values than a non-religious person. So in that scenario, the religious person is more vulnerable to theocratic statism.

So you're failing to prove anything. You're just suggesting that one form of statism is preferred to another. Decrying authoritarianism and statism on one hand while at the same time claiming that people should blindly accept that a set of values invented by man "comes from God" - without question.

They weren't aware of the underlying reason, everything that people do has a biological route and explanation. The most basic biological reasons are pretty "simple" and "universal".

By your standard then, a drug addict is a "better authority" on what causes drug addiction than a person who's devoted their life to studying drug addiction and working with addicts. Sorry but that's just denialism.

Reality speaks for itself. Everything I'm saying is establish scientific fact - you may not 'like it' but that doesn't change it.

The average joe couldn't even define social mirroring, or explain the basic biological functions of human body language - let alone understand how it works on anything but an intuitive level. This is why they falsely believed that 'religion' was the reason - because they were trying to provide an intellectual explanation for something they'd never studied in detail, but rather just learned intuitively.

Body language has been found to be pretty much universal in the human species (as it is in other species) - even cultures completely isolated from other civilizations have pretty much identical means of communication.

Actually democratic forms of govt had arguably been tried in ancient Greece, and arguably "failed" (democratic Athens was conquered by authoritarian Sparta, for example).

The Roman Republic eventually failed and became the Roman Empire (which in turn failed as well, and lead to Europe succumbing to authoritarian monarchies).