Denny, this is one of the rare times we are in total agreement! But how did this end up in the Hillary Clinton thread??? Oi, the meanderings of online conversations! It seems so unreasonable to me, in fact downright weird, to reject a naturalist explanation for a supernatural. The ancient Greeks reportedly believed Apollo drew the sun across the sky in a chariot each day. Copernicus and Galileo demonstrated that the Earth moves around the Sun, and Newton's laws of motion definitely proved how the Earth revolves around the Sun. No Apollo needed. I prefer Newton to Apollo (even if Newton was one of the personally most unpleasant individuals in history.) If being a nonbeliever means sinning without remorse, look at the prison population. Atheists, agnostics, secular humanist and "spiritual but not religious" are under-represented. Self described Christians over-represented. If you look at the most secular countries (Scandinavia, Netherlands, Canada for example) crime is low, violence is low, standard of living high, inequality relatively low. Look at the most wretched places to live (Somalia, Sudan) and you find very high levels of religious belief. Correlation is not causation; it could be that the traits that lead a person/country to be secular also lead to less criminal behavior. But MarAzul's position, a common one of believers, that atheism/secularism leads to immorality is not only contradicted by facts, it makes no sense! Christians believe that their god can forgive any sin if they believe in him, and reward in heaven. At its most extreme, and some Christians have said this to me in so many words, if Hitler in his last second on earth repented and expressed belief in Christ as savior, his sins are forgiven and he goes to heaven but the Jews, gays, communists, socialists, Roma, etc. he killed are all burning in hell. (The physically/mentally disabled may or may not be in heaven, depending of course on whether they were Christian.) Atheists/secularists believe we have one chance and one chance only to live our lives, death is final, and it is up to us to live in an ethical manner since no god can forgive our lapses. Maybe that's why we don't commit a lot of crime?
We're probably in total agreement more than you admit I appreciate you raising issues from a woman's perspective, even if somewhat aggressive about it. Nothing wrong with it. And I basically agree with most of the issues you raise.
Excuse me, but I think you may have me confused with someone else. I never said a word about where atheism leads. I did ask once in some thread where the atheist code of morality is documented. No one answered, and I suspect the answer is, it is not documented. They just barrow it from the Christians without acknowledgement.
Atheisim isn't an organized thing, we don't get together every sunday to reinforce each others beliefs. We have our own individual moral codes. barfo
MarAzul, you did say "you sin without remorse". You can, of course, if you are curious, do google search for Council on Secular Humanism statement of principles - but as barfo said, there is no single atheist code. Ayn Rand was an aggressive atheist, also anti-feminist (but pro choice on abortion), pro-capitalist. Carl Sagan was an agnostic. Bill Gates an atheist. Denny and I are atheists with different views. We're not all alike. For that matter, do all Christians have the same code? Clearly, not.
My views changed. I have no beef with even chickens of the same gender to get married. It's non of my business frankly.
