A friend sent this: Dawkins asks for help for “openly secular” families

_{Denyse O'Leary

May 14, 2015

Academic Freedom, Atheism, News}

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Every so often, we get to the bottom of the In Bin. It’s how we know Earth has a centre, for sure. Anyway…

Openly secular? Which means what, exactly? Chopping down the municipal Christmas tree? All the trouble today comes to people who just want to follow their faith in peace, but can’t.

Meanwhile, she makes people who don’t go to church sound like the Nepal earthquake. No wonder our friend said, do these people know how they come off?

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Comments

Another clue that morals are not reducible to a material basis is the fact that when someone does something that they don't feel right about, they don't say 'my morals are bothering me' but they always say that 'my consciousness is bothering me'. And as we all know, or as we all should know, consciousness refuses to be reduced to a material basis: https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/anti-science-news-further-on-an-attack-on-stoppards-new-play/#comment-564790bornagain77_{May 14, 2015
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daveS
If I understand the scenario correctly, I certainly wouldn’t press the button.
What keeps you from not pressing it?JimFit_{May 14, 2015
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So daveS, you say that it is no big deal that an abortionist would dismember babies but you find it inconceivable that someone who turned their back on God could end up doing the same? How convenient! Consistency in logic is not your strong suit!bornagain77_{May 14, 2015
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Hi JimFit,
Yes, if his life depending on it and someone said to him that if he want to save his life all he had to do is to press a button that would kill babies with 1% chance to survive from terminal illness in some abandoned third world country he and other atheists would do it, a true Christian wouldn’t do it, he would prefer to die than to kill someone else.
If I understand the scenario correctly, I certainly wouldn't press the button.daveS_{May 14, 2015
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daveS
If OldArmy94 lost his faith, does anyone think he would decide that squashing babies is no big deal?
Yes, if his life depending on it and someone said to him that if he want to save his life all he had to do is to press a button that would kill babies with 1% chance to survive from terminal illness in some abandoned third world country he and other atheists would do it, a true Christian wouldn't do it, he would prefer to die than to kill someone else. There is always a reason behind evil either it is a murder or stealing, someone that has only one life probably he will justify some reason prior to an evil act because for him there is no afterlife judgment and this life must come first, that means that he will sustain his life as long as he can. goodusername
People are actually puzzled that anyone would actually help others unless told to do so by an all-powerful Being with the power to send them to Hell.
That would be true if we were separated entities, we are not, we are the images of God, our actions reflect God's Nature which is love, either you go with life and you are good or you go with death and you are evil. Only unconditional love is aimless and God created us out of unconditional love.JimFit_{May 14, 2015
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BA77,
So daveS, where do you get your morals and why are they better than the abortionist down the street who is dismembering unborn babies?
If I answer your question, will you answer my question about OldArmy94? I get/got my morals through parental teaching, culture, personal life experience, discussions with others, and so forth. I don't claim that mine are better than anyone else's. I'm nowhere near the baby-squashing stage, however. My question, again:
If OldArmy94 lost his faith, does anyone think he would decide that squashing babies is no big deal?
daveS_{May 14, 2015
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So daveS, where do you get your morals and why are they better than the abortionist down the street who is dismembering unborn babies?bornagain77_{May 14, 2015
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BA77,
daveS, and why do you, as an atheist, think that ‘squashing babies’ is a big deal for someone to do but that dismemberment of a baby in a womb (i.e. abortion) is not really that big of a deal for a person to do?
Well, I don't think that. I do think that when someone such as OldArmy94 loses his/her faith, they quickly realize that there are reasons separate from God for why we don't go around randomly killing each other. And in fact, most theists realize this already.daveS_{May 14, 2015
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daveS, and why do you, as an atheist, think that 'squashing babies' is a big deal for someone to do but that dismemberment of a baby in a womb (i.e. abortion) is not really that big of a deal for a person to do?
Baby in a womb - picture http://hybridchildrencommunity.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/baby-in-womb.jpg Abortion Methods and Abortion Procedures Used to Kill Unborn Babies - 2013 Excerpt: Suction Aspiration/Suction Curettage ”[t]he abortionist runs the tip of the cannula along the surface of the uterus causing the baby to be dislodged and sucked into the tube – either whole or in pieces.” Salt Poisoning (Saline Injection) After 16 weeks, a needle full of a salt solution is injected through the mother’s abdomen so as to reach the baby’s sac. The baby is not merely poisoned when he swallows the solution; rather, his outer layer of skin is also burned off. The baby will also not die right away, as it usually takes over an hour for him to die.,,, Dilation and Extraction (D&X) D&X partial birthThis form of abortion, now illegal, is also known as the partial-birth abortion. The procedure takes place in five steps, with the abortionist first grabbing the baby’s legs with forceps. Next, the baby’s leg is pulled out of the birth canal. The entire body is then delivered, except for the head. The abortionist then jams scissors into the baby’s skull. The scissors are opened to enlarge the skull. And lastly, after the scissors are removed, a suction catheter is inserted. The baby’s brains are sucked out and the skull collapses. The dead baby is now completely removed. http://www.lifenews.com/2013/01/02/abortion-methods-and-abortion-procedures-used-to-kill-unborn-babies/
bornagain77_{May 14, 2015
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People are actually puzzled that anyone would actually help others unless told to do so by an all-powerful Being with the power to send them to Hell. Or would even think nothing of squashing babies like a bug. Threads like this have me wondering if psychopathy is far more common than I thought. Either that or people are just very bad at understanding the source of their own compassion and morality.goodusername_{May 14, 2015
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BA77,
daveS, atheists become Christians all the time because of the emptiness inherent in atheism. Moreover, it is not that atheists do not live moral lives, no one is arguing that, it is that atheists cannot provide a coherent basis for the objective morality that they live their lives by:
I think that's a separate question. Here is what I'm asking about, more specifically. Quite frequently a theist will say that if they were an atheist, they would behave in such and such a way, as OldArmy94 did. If OldArmy94 lost his faith, does anyone think he would decide that squashing babies is no big deal?daveS_{May 14, 2015
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Moreover, Naturalism/Materialism holds that morality is subjective and illusory. Theism holds that morality is objective and real. Morality is found to be deeply embedded in the genetic responses of humans. As well, morality is found to be deeply embedded in the structure of the universe. Embedded to the point of eliciting physiological responses in humans before humans become aware of the morally troubling situation.
Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional, brain study shows – November 29, 2012 Excerpt: People are able to detect, within a split second, if a hurtful action they are witnessing is intentional or accidental, new research on the brain at the University of Chicago shows. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-moral-instant-emotional-brain.html
This following study shows that objective morality is even built/designed into the way our bodies differentiate between hedonic and ‘noble’ moral happiness:
Human Cells Respond in Healthy, Unhealthy Ways to Different Kinds of Happiness – July 29, 2013 Excerpt: Human bodies recognize at the molecular level that not all happiness is created equal, responding in ways that can help or hinder physical health,,, The sense of well-being derived from “a noble purpose” may provide cellular health benefits, whereas “simple self-gratification” may have negative effects, despite an overall perceived sense of happiness, researchers found.,,, But if all happiness is created equal, and equally opposite to ill-being, then patterns of gene expression should be the same regardless of hedonic or eudaimonic well-being. Not so, found the researchers. Eudaimonic well-being was, indeed, associated with a significant decrease in the stress-related CTRA gene expression profile. In contrast, hedonic well-being was associated with a significant increase in the CTRA profile. Their genomics-based analyses, the authors reported, reveal the hidden costs of purely hedonic well-being.,, “We can make ourselves happy through simple pleasures, but those ‘empty calories’ don’t help us broaden our awareness or build our capacity in ways that benefit us physically,” she said. “At the cellular level, our bodies appear to respond better to a different kind of well-being, one based on a sense of connectedness and purpose.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130729161952.htm
the following studies go one step further and shows that our moral intuition transcends space and time:
Quantum Consciousness – Time Flies Backwards? – Stuart Hameroff MD Excerpt: Dean Radin and Dick Bierman have performed a number of experiments of emotional response in human subjects. The subjects view a computer screen on which appear (at randomly varying intervals) a series of images, some of which are emotionally neutral, and some of which are highly emotional (violent, sexual….). In Radin and Bierman’s early studies, skin conductance of a finger was used to measure physiological response They found that subjects responded strongly to emotional images compared to neutral images, and that the emotional response occurred between a fraction of a second to several seconds BEFORE the image appeared! Recently Professor Bierman (University of Amsterdam) repeated these experiments with subjects in an fMRI brain imager and found emotional responses in brain activity up to 4 seconds before the stimuli. Moreover he looked at raw data from other laboratories and found similar emotional responses before stimuli appeared. http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/TimeFlies.html
The preceding finding is simply completely inexplicable on materialistic premises. Verses and Music:
Luke 18:18-22 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.” “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said. When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Cranberries – Salvation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KotlCEGNbh8
bornagain77_{May 14, 2015
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daveS, atheists become Christians all the time because of the emptiness inherent in atheism. Moreover, it is not that atheists do not live moral lives, no one is arguing that, it is that atheists cannot provide a coherent basis for the objective morality that they live their lives by:
“The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that, in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well. Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things as war, or abortion, or the violation of certain human rights, are morally wrong, and they imagine that they have said something true and significant. Educated people do not need to be told, however, that questions such as these have never been answered outside of religion. He concludes, Contemporary writers in ethics, who blithely discourse upon moral right and wrong and moral obligation without any reference to religion, are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying that they discourse without meaning.” Richard Taylor “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?” - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity For Its Moral Ideals, Evolutionary Materialism "Freeloads" on Christianity - Nancy Pearcey - May 8, 2015 Excerpt: Westerners pride themselves on holding noble ideals such as equality and universal human rights. Yet the dominant worldview of our day -- evolutionary materialism -- denies the reality of human freedom and gives no basis for moral ideals such as human rights. So where did the idea of equal rights come from? The 19th-century political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville said it came from Christianity. "The most profound geniuses of Rome and Greece" never came up with the idea of equal rights, he wrote. "Jesus Christ had to come to earth to make it understood that all members of the human species are naturally alike and equal." The 19th-century atheist Friedrich Nietzsche agreed: "Another Christian concept ... has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the 'equality of souls before God.' This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights." Contemporary atheist Luc Ferry says the same thing. We tend to take the concept of equality for granted; yet it was Christianity that overthrew ancient social hierarchies between rich and poor, masters and slaves. "According to Christianity, we were all 'brothers,' on the same level as creatures of God," Ferry writes. "Christianity is the first universalist ethos.",,, At the birth of our nation, the American founders deemed it self-evident that human rights must be grounded in God. The Declaration of Independence leads off with those bright, blazing words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident -- that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." In the summer of 2013, a beer company sparked controversy when it released an advertisement for Independence Day that deleted the crucial words "by their Creator." The ad said, "They are endowed with certain unalienable rights." (Endowed by whom?) The advertisement is emblematic of what many secularists do: They borrow ideals like equality and rights from a biblical worldview but cut them off from their source in the Creator. They are freeloaders.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/05/for_its_moral_i095901.html The Heretic -Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? Andrew Ferguson – March 25, 2013 Excerpt: A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/heretic_707692.html?page=3
There are actually studies that show that people who do not believe in a soul are a little bit more anti-social (psychopathic) than people who do believe in a soul:
Anthony Jack, Why Don't Psychopaths Believe in Dualism? – video (14:22 minute mark) http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=UUmmObUi8Fq9g1Zcuzqbt0_g&feature=player_detailpage&v=XRGWe-61zOk#t=862s Why Don't Psychopaths Believe in Dualism? The Role of Opposing Brain Networks Anthony Jack (Case Western Reserve University, Cognitive Science, Cleveland, OH In a theoretical paper linking the attribution of phenomenal consciousness to moral cognition, Robbins and Jack (Philosophical Studies, 2006) predicted that psychopaths would not perceive the problem of consciousness. New experimental evidence is presented which supports this claim: in a group of undergraduates it was found that support for a naturalistic view of the mind is positively correlated with the primary psychopathic trait of callousness. http://www.sonoran-sunsets.com/goinggreen.html
Of related note:
What Happened When the Voluntary Prayer Was Removed From Schools In 1962? David Barton - starting at 5:37 minute mark of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=LiudwVNTUWA#t=338 and continuing through the first few minutes of this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zo5L4f57H4 AMERICA: To Pray Or Not To Pray - David Barton - graphs corrected for population growth http://www.whatyouknowmightnotbeso.com/graphs.html What Happened When the Praying Stopped? April 6, 2008 Excerpt: How did the removal of voluntary prayer from the schools of the United States (in 1963) affect our nation as a whole?,,, http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0124_When_America_stopped.html
If anyone doubts those sobering numbers cited by David Barton, here is the raw data on crime statistics for America from 1960 to 2013:
United States Crime Rates 1960 - 2010 (Please note the skyrocketing crime rate from 1963, the year prayer was removed from school, thru 1980, the year the steep climb in crime rate finally leveled off.) of note: The slight decline in the violent crime rate from the mid 90s until now is attributed in large part to tougher enforcement on minor crimes. http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
bornagain77_{May 14, 2015
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The Atheists Epicurean Philosophers were the true atheists (since there were no Christians at the time to affect their views), they sat down and said "There is no God, lets make our own moral system" and they did, they created a moral system based on nature (Materialism), did they came to a conclusion about morality that matches Christian morality? HELL NO! They supported murder, woman abuse, rape, incest, hedonism, they even prophesiezed Communism, they said that in an atheistic society the head of the State must be worshiped like God, they even mocked the first Christians since they thought mercy as a weakness. Modern Atheists took their morality from their Christian nurture NOT their materialistic philosophy. If you believe that you are a random cosmic mistake that nothingness spewed without free will or purpose there is no reason for morality to exist because it becomes temporal, morality must be transcendent. As for the same motto the Atheists say "Atheism doesn't make claim about morality" it is a self contradiction since if you don't teach morality then you are guildy of irresponsibility, imagine Hitler as a child asking his atheist father (yes he was an atheist) if it is good to wipe out Jews because they own Germany banks, "Sorry kid, atheism doesn't make claims about morality, do as you wish"JimFit_{May 14, 2015
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OldArmy94,
If I were an atheist, I would suck the marrow out of every bit of life that I could. Giving to the needy? NAH. Exploiting anyone for any purpose that suits me? YEAH. If showing “concern” for someone else benefited me, then maybe I would think about it. However, I would just as soon squash a baby like a bug, if it inconvenienced me.
People deconvert from Christianity to atheism all the time, and I'm not aware that the behavior you describe is common. Perhaps if you did lose your faith, your perspective would (quite radically) change?daveS_{May 14, 2015
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If I were an atheist, I would suck the marrow out of every bit of life that I could. Giving to the needy? NAH. Exploiting anyone for any purpose that suits me? YEAH. If showing "concern" for someone else benefited me, then maybe I would think about it. However, I would just as soon squash a baby like a bug, if it inconvenienced me. YET, As has been demonstrated many times over on this page, no atheist can stand-up and acknowledge their willingness to live and die by their philosophy. Instead, they all, to one degree or another, co-opt (STEAL) theistic ethics that don't belong to them. What fools, utter and complete fools...OldArmy94_{May 14, 2015
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Tj , this is why atheists look foolish for trying to argue any point that has to do with objective morality or objective moral values . When they do they just make themselves look like the crazy patient who keeps saying to his doctor "doc, I swear I'm not crazy, it's the rest of the world that is crazy " the shrinks nods his head in agreement as he gives the patient his meds and sends him out the door lolwallstreeter43_{May 14, 2015
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"But why should Dawkins ask for help for any human beings?" Exactly! You could just as easily make a case for taking advantage of them or ignoring their needs, or anything you want to from an evolutionary point of view. Any action/view/conclusion/principle you come up with fits as well as another because there are on "oughts" in that worldview. After all, isn't it Dawkins who wrote the book "Selfish Gene"? This is a case of a worldview that doesn't work in life.tjguy_{May 14, 2015
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But why should Dawkins ask for help for any human beings . In atheism all we are is a piece of meat that happened to come together by blind chance and chemical interactions. There is absolutely nothing special about that . In atheism there is no ultimate value, no ultimate purpose , no ultimate meaning and no ultimate hope. Someone please ask Dawkins again why one pice of meat should seek help from another piece of meat ?wallstreeter43_{May 14, 2015
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