We had thought that the new atheist churches would sink under the weight of parish council squabbles over paving the parking lot (or not).
It turns out that the Sunday Assembly had a gift for schism:
In October, three former members of Sunday Assembly NYC announced the formation of a breakaway group called Godless Revival.
“The Sunday Assembly,” wrote Godless Revival founder Lee Moore in a scathing blog post, “has a problem with atheism.”
Moore alleges that, among other things, Jones advised the NYC group to “boycott the word atheism” and “not to have speakers from the atheist community.” It also wanted the New York branch to host Assembly services in a churchlike setting, instead of the Manhattan dive bar where it was launched.
Jones denies ordering the NYC chapter to do away with the word “atheism,” but acknowledges telling the group “not to cater solely to atheists.” He also said he advised them to leave the dive bar “where women wore bikinis,” in favor of a more family-friendly venue.
The squabbles led to a tiff and finally a schism …
So now they have everything a church has except God?
Oh, and at the Sunday Assemblies, they DON’T have a dive bar.
Just checkin’ in here. 😉
A debate on morality in an atheistic church? Can the irony be anymore biting?
Linda Ronstadt – Desperado Lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxgmToq5tq8
Morality is how people interact. As social animals humans are intrinsically moral.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality
@LP #2
Morality is how people interact? Please explain?
I love listening to the the evolution of morality debate, because it demonstrates why the theory of evolution is worthless. There is literally no conceivable human behavior that couldn’t be explained by sociobiology. Humans are selfish? Well, evolution predicts selfishness. Humans care about their relatives? Well, kin selection predicts that. Humans are altruistic to non-relatives? Well, reciprocal altruism predicts that. Humans are altruistic to people that couldn’t possibly reciprocate? Well, that’s just a spandrel of mental modules that evolved for other reasons.
Belief in the evolution of behavior and society together with a mechanistic world view eventually and logically leads you to Behaviorism (B.F. Skinner).
Everything becomes stimulus-response, behavioral objectives in education, conditioning, acquiring skills, crowd control, redundant population, burden on society, re-education camps, and so on. And why shouldn’t it?
However, it apparently important to sugar-coat the words with euphemisms—especially when you get ready to knock off granny—together with pronouncements by recognized expert ethicists that it’s for the greater common good.
-Q
Sorry, it should have been, “However, it’s . . .”
lol sorry i love when people define terms that people already obviously know as their “clever” way of insulting them.. but using a wikipedia article for your definition? that’s too obvious
Lincoln Phipps Most people, with common sense, hold objective morality, apart from social convention, to be self evidently true:
And as the preceding article, in concise fashion, shows, refusing to acknowledge that objective morality is self evidently true results in logical absurdities. Yet to make the case for objective morality even more watertight, since, as a Christian Theist, I hold that God continuously sustains the universe in the infinite power of His being, and since I also hold that God created our ‘inmost being’, i.e. our souls, then I also hold that morality is a real, objective, tangible, part of reality that we should be able to ‘scientifically’ detect in some way. In taht regards, I think this quote from Martin Luther King is very fitting as to elucidating what the Theist’s starting presupposition should be as to finding objective morality to be a ‘real, tangible, objective’ part of reality:
And, contrary to what the materialist/atheist would presuppose, we find much evidence to back up Dr. King’s assertion that “there are moral laws of the universe just as abiding as the physical laws”. For instance, we find that babies have an innate moral sense thus directly contradicting the notion that morals are learned as we grow older. In fact it is found that a caring, loving, touch from the baby towards the mother’s uterine wall is found very early on in a baby’s development:
This ‘caring touch’ is also displayed in twins:
Even toddlers display a highly developed sense of ‘moral justice’:
Please note the highly developed moral sense of justice that was detected in toddlers in the preceding study when even the bad actors enforced moral justice!,, The following study goes even further in establishing the objective reality of morality by showing that ‘Moral evaluations of harm are instant and emotional’:
Of course, despite the inherent wonder of the preceding study, which is inexplicable on atheistic materialism, some atheists will, for whatever severely misguided reason reason, insist that this instantaneous moral compass which humans have, completely contrary to the ‘survival of the fittest, dog eat dog’ mantra, ‘just so happened’ to evolve to be an instant moral reaction to violent actions (despite the fact that Darwinists cannot even explain how a single neuron of the brain arose in the first place). But the following study, completely contrary to what atheists/materialists would presuppose beforehand, shows that morality is embedded on a much deeper ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, quantum level.
As well, the following experiment, from Princeton, is very interesting in that it was found that ‘perturbed randomness’ precedes a worldwide ‘moral crisis’:
There is simply no coherent explanation that a materialist/atheist can give as to why morally troubling situations are detected prior to our becoming fully aware of them or before they even happen. The materialist/atheist simply has no beyond space and time cause to appeal to to explain why the phenomena should happen! Whereas as a Theist, especially as a Christian Theist who believes that the Lord Jesus Christ died and rose again to pay for our sins, I fully expect morality would have such a deep, ‘spooky’, beyond space and time, effect since, of course, I hold that God, who is morally perfect, upholds the universe in its continued existence. Moreover, I also hold that we have ‘transcendent souls’, not limited by time and space, which were created by God, in His image, that are able to sense and interact with the perfect objective morality of God.
This following study, is sort of the cherry on the cake, and shows that objective morality is even built/designed into the way our bodies respond to different kinds of ‘moral’ happiness:
To believe that Darwinian evolution could produce such a ‘morally nuanced’ genetic mechanism, a mechanism which discerns between morally noble causes and morally self gratifying causes, moral causes which are below our immediate feelings of satisfaction, is not a parsimonious belief to believe in to put it mildly. Especially given the fact that Darwinian evolution has yet to demonstrate the origination of a single gene and/or protein in the first place!
Supporting Notes:
A little known fact, a fact that is very antagonistic to the genetic reductionism model of neo-Darwinism, is that, besides environmental factors, even our thoughts and feelings can ‘epigenetically’ control the gene expression of our bodies:
That a transcendent, beyond space and time, cause is needed to explain the continued existence of the universe is noted here:
That a transcendent, beyond space and time, component is present within humans is noted here:
Verses and Music
Related note
News:
They have a god alright. They are dirt worshipers. Christians say, “God did it: but atheists say, “dirt did it”.
Seriously? What do they discuss about? The Bible serves as the basis to teach core values and serves as guide to the “way of life” in churches. Without any book to guide them , how do they agree about the code of conduct? No wonder they are already splintering.
Moreover, most pastors spend years in seminaries studying the word of God, what rigor do atheists church speakers go through? Even if they invite professors of philosophies or scientist to come speak to them, why would someone go a ‘atheist church’ to listen to them?
One verse comes to mind at the thought of an atheist church:
Romans 1:22
Or another one, Jeremiah 2:13 (NASB)
-Q
I see canned responses. bornagain77 sprinkling “quantum” like it is magic pixie dust. What bornagain77 forgets is that quantum scales are still nature. Then again it’s a gap in our knowledge so it is useful to shove in whatever bornagain77 is promoting and they are not the only one to do this. Quantum woo is a lucrative field.
Objective morality is what is mind-independent. As an example of this is how using a game theory strategy of tit-for-tat. “Tit-for-tat” is in itself mind independent and it even works for software agents too. Ultimately it is mathematics. Whilst theists think that God is required for numbers to exist to be able to count them, theists have not yet proven god is necessary for abstracts to be possible.
What is ironic is how many theists are naysayers to the point of hatred. This is nothing new. bornagain77 quotes Conservapedia (which is funny in its own right as made up nonsense that has a systemic hatred of non-Christians) but what it highlights is that as social animals then humans have a spectrum of gregariousness which feeds back to the wellbeing of the social animal. This is nothing new (and it applies to other social animals too) and equally the strategy of restricting association is a well worn path of established churches and the self-appointed authorities in insular society alike.
I wonder what their own protestant reformation will look like.
Querius,
I have said something similar to this to others too; if you have a belief in a god and this is what stops you from killing your granny then do not stop believing in your god.
This applies to all who hold up their god as the extrinsic control of their morality and urges of murder, or rape or theft or lying or eating bacon (or “knock off granny”); If you don’t have the intrinsic self control to your urges then I beg of you to not discard you god even if you find god to absurd. Negotiate with yourself and go for a non-Personal god. Anything really to trick yourself.
As the statistics show, you don’t need god to be good but if you have been infected by the idea of an extrinsic morality from god then you have not allowed your intrinsic morality to develop.
JGuy,
What would the “reformation () look like” ?
In a word: Bloodless !
I now wait for the trolls to post pages about how the Protestants and Catholics murdering each other is the fault of Darwinism or some such equally inane explanation.
Lincoln Phipps, and what I see from you is basically a science-free rant against God. i.e. Materialistic dogmatism instead of honest inquiry for how such things, as I presented, could possibly be! For instance, I showed you that morality, quite apart from your materialistic expectations, is deeply embedded in the universe to the point of not only eliciting ‘instant and emotional’ moral reactions in humans, but also to the point of eliciting physiological responses in humans to morally troubling situations prior to the situations even being viewed (or even happening). Moreover I showed you that pre-born babies and Toddlers both already have a highly developed sense of morality and even ‘moral justice’ prior to their learning anything whatsoever about morality from other humans (thus directly undermining the materialist’s claim that morals are ‘social’ i.e. Harris – ‘moral landscape’). Moreover, I showed you that a ‘morally nuanced’ genetic mechanism, a mechanism which discerns between morally noble causes and morally self gratifying causes is ‘designed’ into the way are Genes respond ,,,, What should be needless to say to you Mr. Phipps, is that these findings are completely contrary, and inexplicable, given your materialistic presuppositions. But instead of you honestly admitting that your a priori materialistic presuppositions are severely compromised, you quip that ‘quantum scales are still nature’. And like I said before Mr. Phipps when you gave that ‘canned’ response to me before, “I’m glad you finally agree that God is ‘natural’.
As to your quip that morality is based on game theory (i.e. merely mathematics, although you have no clue, whatsoever, as to how to explain mathematics within materialism in the first place), here is another piece of evidence for you to ignore the importance of. In the following video Dr. Hans Halvorson, of Princeton, shows that the infamous ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’ of game theory is resolved within ‘non-local’ quantum mechanics, but is not resolved within the reductive materialism of classical mechanics:
Princeton’s Dr. Hans Halvorson comments further on the implications of quantum mechanics here:
As to your rant about Christianity and conservapedia, I find your rant to be so incoherent that I have to ask you to rewrite it. But as with everything else you write, if you are trying to say what I think you are, then it also will not turn out well for your preferred atheistic/materialistic position!,,, But hey, it is your reputation that is getting trashed so go for it! 🙂
@LP #15
“As the statistics show, you don’t need god to be good but if you have been infected by the idea of an extrinsic morality from god then you have not allowed your intrinsic morality to develop.”
Intrinsic morality? Intrinsic morality only works when humans have intrinsic worth and I am sorry to say LP, there is no intrinsic worth given to humans in naturalism.
LP, it looks like you have feet planted firmly in mid air.
Atheist churches. Best oxymoron since military intelligence and advanced beginner.
Re: morality statistics:
Some interesting stats here which don’t support LP at all:
http://creation.com/atheism
Section 11.
Linclon Phipps @17
Does your god, Lincoln Phipps, stop you from making misrepresentations in your posts?
Do you, Lincoln Phipps, think medical services to the elderly should be capped in favor of providing better services to younger people?
How about state-assisted suicide? If your granny just found out that she has cancer throughout her body,would you, Lincoln Phipps, object to your granny receiving medical assistance to help her pass away peacefully and painlessly?
What do you, Lincoln Phipps, think about euthanasia? Is there a point at which the quality of life of your granny has degraded, perhaps due to Alzheimer’s disease, to the point where it would be more merciful to provide her a painless injection rather than allowing her to suffer?
One of my college professors advocated post-partum abortion up to the age of two years old, based on his idea that keeping an unwanted, unloved child resulted in the worst forms of child abuse. Would you, Lincoln Phipps, agree?
-Q
After reviewing the teachings of prominent thinkers throughout the centuries, the Encyclopædia Britannica states that from the time of Greek philosopher Socrates to the 20th century, there have been “repeated debates over just what goodness and the standard of right and wrong might be.”
For example, the Sophists were a prominent group of Greek teachers in the fifth century B.C.E. They taught that standards of right and wrong were determined by popular opinion. Said one such teacher: “Whatever things seem just and fine to each city, are just and fine for that city, so long as it thinks them so.”
But popular opinion is an unreliable guide. For example, if you had lived in a society where the majority believed that child sacrifices were acceptable, as some societies in the past have thought, would that have made the practice right? (2 Kings 16:3) What if you had been born into a society that viewed cannibalism as a virtuous act? Would that have meant that eating human flesh was not really wrong? The popularity of a practice does not make it right. Long ago, the Bible warned against that trap, saying: “You must not follow after the crowd for evil ends.”—Exodus 23:2.
Immanuel Kant, a renowned 18th-century philosopher, expressed a different view. The journal Issues in Ethics says: “Immanuel Kant and others like him . . . focused on the individual’s right to choose for herself or himself.” According to Kant’s philosophy, so long as one does not violate the rights of others, what he does would be entirely up to him. He should not allow the opinion of the majority to determine his standards.
Should each individual, then, decide for himself what is right and what is wrong? The Bible says: “Do not lean upon your own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5) Why not? Because all humans have inherited a fundamental flaw that can warp their judgment. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, they adopted the standards of the selfish traitor Satan and chose him as their spiritual father. They then passed on to their offspring a family trait—a treacherous heart with the ability to recognize what is right but with the tendency to pursue what is wrong.—Genesis 6:5; Romans 5:12; 7:21-24.
The Encyclopædia Britannica, in discussing ethics, observes: “It does not seem surprising if people know what they ought morally to do but then proceed to do what is in their own interests instead. How to provide such people with reasons for doing what is right has been a major problem for Western ethics.” The Bible correctly puts it this way: “The heart is more treacherous than anything else and is desperate. Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) Would you trust someone who is known for being both treacherous and desperate?
Granted, even those who have no belief in God have the ability to behave in a morally upright manner and to develop practical and honorable ethical codes. Often, though, the noble principles embedded in their codes simply mirror the moral standards of the Bible. Although such individuals may deny God’s existence, their ideas demonstrate that they have an inherent potential for reflecting God’s personality. This proves that as the Bible reveals, mankind was originally created “in God’s image.” (Genesis 1:27; Acts 17:26-28) The apostle Paul says: “They are the very ones who demonstrate the matter of the law to be written in their hearts.”—Romans 2:15.
@Lincoln Phipps
“I have said something similar to this to others too; if you have a belief in a god and this is what stops you from killing your granny then do not stop believing in your god.”
Now Lincoln please share with us why killing granny is wrong, not just your opinion, but why is it objectively wrong.
When a Moral relativist such as you argues morality, its akin to me saying there are married bachelors. Can you not see the nonsensical nature of you statement.
In your worldview what Hitler did in the holocaust is the same as some guy eating a peanut butter sandwich on a wednesday afternoon.
Sorry but I feel like banging my head against the wall after your post lol
Correct Barb, this popular opinion thing just doesnt make sense. If it was popular opinion that Rape is perfectly ok Lincoln Phipps would you agree that it is perfectly ok?
I once asked an atheist on some forum why he believes that rape is objectively wrong. You know what his answer was?
“isnt it obvious” lolol
Yes its obvious to us theist and im glad he saw the irony in his statement before leaving that thread.