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Commandments for Atheists?

Belz... said:
Not my mom. She answered that question by telling me that yes, she would kill me if God asked her to, because she knew he would stop her at the last moment.
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Ah yes, "God" would stop her. ;)

Belz... said:
What a rude awakening that would have been.
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Sorry, I don't understand that comment. Do you mean it would have been scary if the Abraham thing had happened to you? If so, **** yeah!
 
Brian-M said:
First of all, it provides no explicit instructions on what type of behaviour is right and wrong. Yes, it can be used to determine what type of behaviour right or wrong, but people have to think it through.
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Fine by me. Explicit instructions can never cover all cases, so in the end we're all responsible for thinking through the morality of our actions. Problems start when people use commandments to try to avoid thinking.

Brian-M said:
Second, it assumes that other people would want you to act how you would want them to act if the situations are reversed. This isn't always true.
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Also true of commandments, or of any other system of morality. We all have to make our own moral choices, based on our own moral systems, and there will always be mismatches to other people's different moral systems. I would want other people to consider this and allow for it where appropriate, so I have to do the same.

Brian-M said:
For example, if you see someone attempting to deliberately set a forest on fire, and you apply the golden rule... you'd conclude that if you were intent on starting a forest fire you wouldn't want anyone to stop you from doing it, and so according to the golden rule you should just let them do it.
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No, I don't feel the need to apply the rule that stupidly. I recognise the harm caused by forest fires, so if I were in the position of wanting to start one then I would be in the wrong, and I would want someone to point that out to me.

Brian-M said:
For example, if you'd like everyone to give you gifts of lots of money, then according to the Golden Rule you should give gifts of lots of money to everybody.
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Which would end up with everybody having the same amount of money they started with, so it's not really worth bothering. Again, I have the responsibility to think it all through. The rule is simple, but its application isn't.

Dave
 
Belz... said:
Right or wrong is arbitrary, so it is kinda determined by a vote, for society anyway.
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If you mean that social customs of right and wrong are decided by society that is pretty much tautological. Maybe you mean something more profound and interesting than that, but I could only guess what that is without more information.
 
Belz... said:
Right or wrong is arbitrary, so it is kinda determined by a vote, for society anyway.



Yes, that's exactly her belief.



Well if she had killed me, and god didn't stop her, I wonder what she would've concluded.
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That you were evil and deserved to die.
 
angrysoba said:
If you mean that social customs of right and wrong are decided by society that is pretty much tautological. Maybe you mean something more profound and interesting than that, but I could only guess what that is without more information.
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Well perhaps I misunderstood your original point/question about morals being decided by vote, then.

tsig said:
That you were evil and deserved to die.
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Possibly. I wager that her status as my biological mother may have hampered her ability to shut her grief away, though.
 
Personally I find it difficult to understand why "not believing in Gods" would need any commandments.

It seems that you need to be religious to need an ancient book to tell you the blindingly obvious.
 
angrysoba said:
For some reason, some people think it is okay to kill some of the time. What do you think of that?
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I think that it illustrates the point that there is no such thing as "absolute" "right" and "wrong"--and that different groups of people adopt, and adhere to (not always the same thing) different standards, different "ethics", different (dare I say it?) "morals"...
 
angrysoba said:
For some reason, some people think it is okay to kill some of the time. What do you think of that?
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Well, for me killing is wrong.

However, I've never been put in a situation where I had to make a choice.

If, for example, I had been conscripted into the British Army during WWII, and been involved in Operation Overlord (also for example) I suspect that I would have been prepared to kill. Possible, as my father did (he spent the whole war in the RAF), given the circumstances that applied back then, I would have volunteered.

But that's me as an atheist - I accept that sometimes I might have to adjust my beliefs - I realise that were I a Quaker, for example, I would likely have a very different viewpoint.

I will also add that in my view stealing is wrong.

The point I was making is that I don't need a verse from the Bible - or any other source - to tell me so.
 
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Rincewind said:
Well, for me killing is wrong.

However, I've never been put in a situation where I had to make a choice.

If, for example, I had been conscripted into the British Army during WWII, and been involved in Operation Overlord (also for example) I suspect that I would have been prepared to kill. Possible, as my father did (he spent the whole war in the RAF), given the circumstances that applied back then, I would have volunteered.

But that's me as an atheist - I accept that sometimes I might have to adjust my beliefs - I realise that were I a Quaker, for example, I would likely have a very different viewpoint.

I will also add that in my view stealing is wrong.

The point I was making is that I don't need a verse from the Bible - or any other source - to tell me so.
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Or if you had been born German then during WWII you would have been herding Jews into gas chambers.
 
Slowvehicle said:
I think that it illustrates the point that there is no such thing as "absolute" "right" and "wrong"--and that different groups of people adopt, and adhere to (not always the same thing) different standards, different "ethics", different (dare I say it?) "morals"...
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tsig said:
Proves there are no absolute morals.
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It "proves" people deem different things moral, but that's hardly an interesting conclusion since that was the premise anyway.
 
I like the Satanic Temple's tenets:

  • One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.
  • The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
  • One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
  • The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo your own.
  • Beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world. We should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs.
  • People are fallible. If we make a mistake, we should do our best to rectify it and resolve any harm that may have been caused.
  • Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
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http://thesatanictemple.com/about-us/35-2/
 
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