unigolyn
User
Karma: 6
|
Re:Dawkins on CNN, Monday - 2007/02/15 21:06
mddawson wrote:
Perhaps the atheist should have responded "Yes America was founded on Christian principles --- like slavery". That would have shut the preacher up.
And the obvious response would be HOW DARE YOU, YOU RACIST!
As Vlad quoted further up this thread:
In response to the viewer's comparison of sectarian prayer in school and slavery as equally illegal under the Constitution, Hunter said, "[D]on't compare your plight to some sort of civil rights issue. It's not. You choose to be an atheist. I didn't choose to be black. I have never seen a sign that read: Christians Only."
"You're still white and will never know what it feels like being black. You can only sympathize, you cannot empathize. And that you still insist to compare [slavery and religious instruction in government education] underscores my point."
I personally think that slavery is a very good answer to the whole "where do atheists get their morality" charge. A few hundred years ago, every decent, God-fearing Christian thought slavery was hunky-dory. Both the old and new testaments sanction slavery. But now EVERYONE in the civilized world abhors slavery, Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists alike. What was wrong with those previous centuries of Christians? Why didn't they get their God-given, impossible-to-have-without-divine-mandate morals until the 18th century?
The only sensible answer is that religious mores, just like any other social mores, change over time and adapt to what society in general holds to be moral. When religious precepts conflict with what society deems moral, religion loses out.
Early Mormons practiced polygamy, because that's what their loon-in-charge preached. If Mormons base their morality on Mormonism, they should to this day be polygamists, one and all. But no, the LDS church these days preaches the "traditional morals" of monogamy, with polygamist Mormons being members of wacky outlying sects.
Thousands of preachers, just a hundred years ago, supported racial segragation as "traditional morals". If you ask that smarmy black preacher what he thinks of those preachers, he would naturally counter that they weren't "true Christians" or following the "true Word of God". Which again begs the question of why Jesus's track record for 1.9 millennia after his world-changing dog and pony show was so piss-poor. And the answer, again, is - the Bible is a literary Rorschach blot where people see what they're inclined to see, based on the ever-evolving moral standards of their contemporary society. Atheists are just as well equipped to follow social standards as theists.
And even if there is a universally good and just code of morality to be derived from the Bible, which they so badly need to believe in order to be moral, they have to face the clear facts of history which show that they're either just as bad at figuring that code out as the hundreds of generations before them were, or they're among the first generations to get it right, for no particular reason.
While I understand that it's difficult to keep one's composure in the company of vile, hateful idiots, Ellen Johnson's counter-argument was "all theists are evil and hate atheists", which is tripe. Most theists are neither purposefully evil nor necessarily stupid - they're just used to arguing without having to follow logic. Therefore you can never out-righteous them, but you can certainly out-think them, and force them into a tautological corner where their arguments seem stupid even to them. And then you DO NOT let them change the subject.
When they talk about "In God We Trust", only point out that this was added in the 1950s, and for the preceding 180 years, the sole motto on US bills was "E pluribus unum", a call to pluralism if ever there was one.
|
