Anonymous #1 3w

?

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Anonymous OP 3w

What

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Anonymous #5 3w

Not a damn thing. Just an observer. I dont believe in indoctrination. Those people need to save themselves

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Anonymous #3 3w

I believe that people who are moral because of religion could still be just as moral without it. In the same manner, people who are amoral with religion (people who commit murder for religious reasons, pastors who touch children, etc) could never be moral without it. In other words, morality does not necessitate religion.

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Anonymous OP 3w

but do you hold this accountable to all religions because for islam they lynched and lit on fire a guy named dipu chandra alive just for saying all gods are equal. many times people are just hateful towards christianity when imo christians would never do something like that. i myself am agnostic btw

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Anonymous #4 3w

Two things can be true at once; That religion does teach good aspects about morality and that heinous acts occur in the world as a direct result of religion. My stance is that morality can be taught without religion and that without religion a lot of the heinous acts i mentioned would not have happened.

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Anonymous #3 3w

Yes. All religions are cancerous coping mechanisms. Their only redeeming quality are things like community and specific moral teachings, but both of those things can already exist without religion.

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Anonymous OP 3w

Following Jesus is just that, not following religion. And what heinous acts? Morality is completely subjective without God. There would be no objective morality

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Anonymous #4 3w

I’m not the OP, but wdym “following Jesus is just that, not following religion”?

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Anonymous #1 3w

Sure, Jesus said in scripture to follow Him. What that means is a relationship and being transformed that way. Religion can get you too focused on traditions without a change in heart

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Anonymous #4 3w

I wouldnt trust God, a genocidal maniac (see the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the conquering of Canaan, the command to destroy the Amalekites etc) as a good judge of morals. For historical examples of heinous acts you can look into the crusades, the european wars of religion, the ordained killing of heretics by the church. We can sit here talking about horrible genocides and massacres where the driving factor is religion all without even touching subjects like…

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Anonymous #4 3w

Christianity is literally a religion wdym

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Anonymous OP 3w

You do recognize how evil those people were…right?

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Anonymous OP 3w

The molestation of children by heads of state in the church, the hatred towards gay people and same-sex marriage, the dehumanization of abortions which have led to deaths because lack of access to better medical care etc

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Anonymous #1 3w

Sure thing, as long as you were willing to recognize all of the innocent people that died in the pursuit of exterminating those “evil” people

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Anonymous OP 3w

I can certainly recognize people died but all people are evil. One group isn’t simply holier then thou. And who are you to be the superior judge of morals? Morality is subjective if you don’t believe in God. That was my argument. And if you’d like to continue this, I need you to rebuttal my argument, not further your point. Also, just because heinous acts have been committed by religion doesn’t make it false

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Anonymous OP 3w

While I wait for your response I thought I’d entertain this too. If all religions are a coping mechanism, then so is atheism. Religion provides hope in God. While atheism is saying nothing matters so who cares. So if you still want to subscribe to that religions are coping mechanisms, you must be accepting of that fact that atheism is too a coping mechanism, just in a different way

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Anonymous #4 3w

at least when a religion believes in a God, they shift their lives to living that way. When someone says it doesn’t matter or there is nothing and no meaning, they suddenly act like there is something of value and contradict themselves.

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Anonymous #4 3w

if I might intrude a bit, OP seems to have said that religions are specifically “cancerous” coping mechanisms, not that they ARE coping mechanisms. Furthermore, atheism I think gives way for people to figure out other coping methods rather than being one in and of itself (in my opinion)

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Anonymous #6 3w

well, it gives people room to find their own meaning, which isn’t always straightforward. What’s the inherent merit in shifting one’s life readily to live one way vs exploring what it means to have a life independent of a god?

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Anonymous #7 3w

The same thing occurs where I am in Christianity. Nobody said that would be easy to do at all, “readily” is the farthest description for it. It takes a lifetime of development and care and experience. At least in my case, I know it’s for something greater than I. People who don’t believe can have those feelings too, but ultimately they are passionately falling into nothing.

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Anonymous #7 3w

Atheism is just narcissism. It disconnects you from history and the community of Man, ultimately resulting in atrocity and genocide.

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Anonymous #6 3w

I guess I meant readily as in a more prescribed path, not so much as to demean your dedication. All respect to you for it. As for falling into nothing, I don’t believe in god, but I know there’s plenty of inherent beauty and satisfaction that comes from living on this planet. I wouldn’t say trying to treat others well and taking in my environment is falling into nothing; I’m just a part of humanity and nature. If there’s no afterlife then I would’ve been grateful to have been here at all.

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Anonymous #7 3w

not saying you’re not grateful, as I’m sure you are. I’m just rolling out my thinking in a way

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Anonymous #7 3w

No no I know what you mean. In fairness, this discussion is dancing around the topics of morality and whether or not the concept of nothing is good or bad, which seems to be implicitly related to one another. If by cancerous the meaning is fast-growing and non-good I could chalk up atheism, defaulting moral value and intrinsic value to the definitions provided by the self in some fashion, as the same thing from my point of view. So who’s right and who’s wrong?

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Anonymous #6 3w

Do you consider yourself materialist, dualist, somewhere in between?

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Anonymous #4 3w

No. You just dont understand what atheism is then. What you’re talking about is closer to nihilism which has nothing to do with atheism. Theism is an assertive position where you posit that something is true. Atheism is simply the contrary to that where we dont believe it’s true unless you can prove it. In this case, the burden of proof is on theist as they’re the ones making the positive assertion of something’s existence

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Anonymous #4 3w

I would actually argue that life and everything you do matters a whole lot more when you know you’ve only got the one chance as evidenced by all of the people who have done horrible things believing they would be redeemed in some way by an afterlife if they repented sufficiently

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Anonymous #5 3w

You must not know what either “atheism” or “narcissism” mean to make such a statement. Religious people famously “disconnect from the community of man” when it comes to anyone who doesnt share their belief, save for the cases where they try to indoctrinate other people into it.

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Anonymous #4 3w

I never claimed that my morals are better than yours. All im saying is that the same morals you already think are good can (and do) exist without the religion you source them from. As a matter of fact, religious people are famously the ones that believe that their morals are superior to everyone else’s often looking down at anyone with different beliefs from different religions.

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Anonymous #4 3w

Also, surely you dont think ALL morals are subjective in the absence of god, right? For example, most people would agree that kicking a defenseless animal would be morally bad. I think most people would agree with that, religious or otherwise. It wouldnt be subjective in the same way “vanilla ice cream is the best flavor” would be. It would be objective in the same way “the sky is blue” would be regardless of a few people that think the sky is a different color

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Anonymous #6 3w

What is this idea that morality needs an absolute standard? People within the SAME religious sects cannot even agree on the same standard of morality, across any religion really. “Absolute morality” is a fantasy that only exists in your head and the idea that we cant have a society without an absolute moral standard is wrong. The reality is, most people across different beliefs and religions already roughly agree on what “good” morals are. That there are places of disagreement doesnt undo that.

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Anonymous OP 3w

Morality, by your standard is created in your head. Your justification that because “most people roughly agree” does not determine that what you think is good. That is a fantasy that only exists in your head.

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Anonymous #8 3w

I get what you mean, 100%. But the fact that even within the same religion these kinds of disagreement exist is in itself the issue. Because those religions always claim to have the “correct” moral standard and yet even within themselves they cant agree to follow them. If the morals proposed were really true and correct, there would be no room for misinterpretation. What i dislike from religion is that once morals are posited there is no room for challenging them

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Anonymous #6 3w

You misunderstand. I didnt make the prescriptive statement that “because people agree, it’s good”. I made the descriptive statement that “people CAN agree despite having different moral backgrounds”. Your position (as a theist) is a prescriptive one “because it came from x, it’s good”. Prescriptive statements DEFINITIONALLY come from your head. Descriptive ones definitionally do not. See the difference?

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Anonymous OP 3w

And yet regardless it has no grasp on the moral status of the agreements themselves. What’s your point?

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Anonymous OP 3w

I understand your point, but disagreement between followers doesnt mean the belief itself is flawed. That happens in almost every system– laws, politics, even science. People interpret things differently because humans aren’t perfect. Disagreement usually reflects human interpretation, not necessarily that the core idea is wrong.

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Anonymous #6 3w

I’m not saying people can’t agree. But there is inherent malleability on general agreements. The people who have decided ethics, laws, or rules will not be same, and especially if those things are subjected simply to the compromises and moral agreements of a mass of people, or even worse a select few in the elite class, I do not think it is beyond reason to expect a runaway behavior.

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Anonymous #6 3w

There is nothing wrong with “malleability in general agreements”. Your morals SHOULD change with time. At some point in history slavery was seen as morally okay. Thankfully we fought that battle and won. Same with giving women equal representation in government and society. The issue is that you think that because it’s malleable that means it’s arbitrary and that’s simply not the case

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Anonymous OP 3w

That is always the response until the “most people” start saying pdfs are okay and doing the things you don’t like.

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Anonymous #6 3w

“Your morals should change” You have limits, and I have limits. If everyone went with everything it would end quite badly, considering the systems that are ruling the world today.

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Anonymous #6 3w

People like you are the “until” you are so scared of. The ones who claim to have never-changing and absolute morals. You have no historical evidence of collective morals changing for the worse. If we were to follow religious ethics exactly how they’re taught we’d still have slavery and women would still be second class citizens. Same with the obsession of prepubescent girls to keep for marriage glorifying their virginity.

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Anonymous OP 3w

We still have slavery. It’s called child trafficking, and we still have women treated worse because of some religious doctrine. Not all will do that, nor do all agree. Change within a religion is not all unknown, bounded by their text or oral history. You are then accusing the actual religion itself as opposed to the practitioners. You nor I can say what life would be like under one circumstance. But we are run by an elite PDF ring and their likely policies will reflect that.

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Anonymous OP 3w

In Islam you could marry 10 year olds. That’s why child marriage is so prevalent there. You didn’t say it directly, but heavily indicated your morals are superior. If you think I follow a God who is a “genocidal maniac” of course you think your morals will reign supreme over me. So I need you to substantiate why you are the judge of morals of what’s right and wrong

4