Nice straw man you are building there.
How does that answer my question :rollseyes
And what makes "sociopath's" not elligeable to be athiests?
It is a code of behaviour. Whether they are "moral values" is in the eye of the beholder. There are many islamic "values" that other cultures find deplorable (and vice versa I am sure).
You're missing the point, call it what you want, Islam has a constant and consistent code of behaviour, athiest's don't.
As far as you're own statements are concerned, Societal values contradict the idea of "making the most of
your life", why should societal values be the cause of you not making the most of your life physically or in any other aspect?
Religion may not be present but there are other social forces that are just as strong. Hence my asking you if you really believe religion to be the only source of societal values. Apparently you do. That is unfortunate.
Ofcourse it isn't, but by your own saying you admit that athiests should make the most of their lives, societal values can be an obstacle to that happening (infact, when enough people start to see certain values becoming obstacles, the societal values themselves change)
So for someone who's rational, why let societal valuse (which sometimes are purely subjective and have no personal benefit) be the casue of not allowing you to make the most of your life?
Only if they are sociopaths, as I stated above.
And i dare say, Athiests have a greater incentive to become sociopath's (or atleast, split personality athiests) compared to people who believe in accountability for their actions.
Um this is rather a dense and offensive view.
Well it sure agrees with simple economic laws.
Just because we don't codify a social code and attribute it to an imaginary 'higher power' you think we feel its ok to rape and steal and kill each other? You don't figure we come about that that isn't so good to do, independently of this religious dogma stuff?
Let's look at emperics, the cities where hurricane catrina struck had very good security measures in place which served as the 'higher power' which deterred people from stealing and wreaking havoc for their own personal benefit..... When it did strike, it's not hard to read the many reports of theft and robbery and all sorts of anti societal value stuff that happened. Why? Because that higher power no longer exists, and obviously there's no other deterrant (obviously they don't have much belief in hereafter accountability)...
So your theory of 'making the most of life' would dictate (and strongly encourage) that they do such things to make maximum personal gain. You think they're sociopaths? well whatever you think they are, they are rational innit :X
Do you yourself have no moral values, independent of your religious belif? No sense of empathy? No drive to do right over wrong absent a primitive punishment/reward dynamic? No non-religious moral compass at all?
Well give me a single piece of evidence that suggests that societal values can be upheld without their being some form of higher overseeing authority? Even in this modern era we see that society
will definately crumble if people arent' aware of someething overseeing their actions.
It's unfortunate that you think we believe in imagintive powers.... for someone who pretended to have some sort of scientific understanding to come to odd conclusions in that 'no god exist thread'... it's a lil too above your level to discuss whether accountability is something real or unreal if you hold outrageous views like 'anything can happen given infinite time...'
Maybe its burried deep beneath years of religious dogmatism, but if you look for it I'm sure its there.
If not, then I truly hope you never lose your faith, for you'd be a danger to society.
I'm not here to try prove that you're a thief when no one's looking (that's not piont of this thread), but what i am saying is that you're
absolutely wrong when you said:
"
This dovetails nicely with the frequent theist claim against atheists that atheists have "nothing to live for" because they believe in no afterlife.But the reverse is actually true. To us atheists this life is all you get, so you'd better make the most of it."
You seem to be pushing that atheists are prone to be more selfish and less empathetic and caring for their fellow human beings. Is that your claim? You may want to consider that people do all sorts of nasty things in the NAME of religion, sometimes believing themselves to be directed by it, sometimes using it to rationalize bad things they've done.
I'm not pushing anything... i'm just stating the obvious
"Humans are goverend by the cost-benefit principle, they will do what is in their personal interest in every situation"
Taking the theft scenario for example, assuming there was absoltuely no one watching and no way of getting caught,
This is a very possible situation: For an athiest, benefit of stealing 5kg of gold could possibly outweigh the cost of such an act. There's no accountabilty of cost in first place... so why not?
In case of a Muslim, the cost of stealing could be many years in hell fire :| By the cost-benefit principle, a rational Muslim would not steal, an athiest could.
As far as your other thign about peopel doing bad things in name of religion, that's why im talking only as far as Islam is concerned coz i dunno much about hwo other religions see this.
What we're talking about here is the psychology of the end of time and the concept of accountability, as far as that is concerned, i think we've made the point that it is indeed a very strong motive for Muslims to behave themselves in this world in order to be successful in this life and hereafter.
And in order to further give us incentive to be concientous pepole, Allah set down a legal system which drives those with lack of faith away from doing illegal acts (such as the laws regarding theft, adultery, rape, financial misconduct etc...) which acts as a deterrant for those who don't think straight when it comes to remembering the hereafter.
You can't make judgemetns about people (Muslims or otherwise) in an environment where the legal system isn't applied as a complete package otherwise the society just wont' function properly (it's like banning alchohol and advertising it 24/7, just doesn't work)
If this is your rather bold claim, maybe you should start a thread on it. It would be interesting to see you try to substantiate it. Meanwhile, this thread has an entirely different purpose.
Substantiate what? That rational human beigns do what's in their personal interset? Pickup any micro economics book it's usually discussed in the first chapter or so... My main point was to prove your claim that athiests take teh higher ground when it comes to making the most of indivudal's life is baseless.
all the best
