Some days you just gotta love the godidiots:
- American’s increasing acceptance of religious diversity doesn’t extend to those who don’t believe in a god, according to a national survey by researchers in the University of Minnesota’s department of sociology.
From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.”
...
Edgell believes a fear of moral decline and resulting social disorder is behind the findings. “Americans believe they share more than rules and procedures with their fellow citizens—they share an understanding of right and wrong,” she said. “Our findings seem to rest on a view of atheists as self-interested individuals who are not concerned with the common good.”
- Who believes that torture is never justified?
| Catholics | 26% |
| White Protestant | 31% |
| White evangelical | 31% |
| Secular | 41% |
| Total | 32% |
7 Comments:
History shows that believers are perfectly capable of assuming that God's will just so happens to be whatever suits their own selfish interests (and therefore the rules don't apply). But given the understanding of history and logic available to the Citizen F ilk that seem to make up a majority of voters, it seems perfectly logical to assume that human nature would force better behavior from someone who believes they are accountable to an undeceivable higher power than from someone who believes only fallable and foolable human agencies can render judgement. This is the 21st century, but only for some of us.
I don't think "human nature" is doing any such thing. I think we live in a culture that socializes individuals to feel they are not responsible to themselves or their fellow humans, but rather to ill-defined Powers That Be.
God is the ultimate exercise in moral relativity, because whatever God says is right becomes right to the believer. If God says hating homos is right, it is. If God says drowning kittens is right, it is. If God says torturing brown people is right, it is. The believer refuses to take any responsibility for their own moral conclusions, and instead throws up their hands and say, "What can I say? God WANTS me to drown the kittens!"
Hell, our (nominally) secular government is engaged in this same kind of campaign. Don't trust yer lyin' eyes, trust The Powers That Be. Don't evaluate, don't criticize, for the love of Jeebus don't think, just hate on the homos and all will be right with the world. When the Powers say torture is right, by God it IS right!
History has taught us what can happen when people are "just following orders." Hopefully some day the majority of Americans will have internalized these lessons.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. Galileo
God is not an excuse for moral relativity, although like anything else he can be used for one. God gives me absolute principles and tells me that someone knows when I fail to apply them to the best of my ability. God is the only one I cannot hope to fool, unlike my boss, my mother, the law and myself, by saying that I tried my hardest when I did not, or that there were extenuating circumstances when I could have overcome them.
As for my comment on human behavior, I think you are misreading me. My point is that human nature inclines us to see our own best interests as also the greater good (What's good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA). Witness the sincerity with which Citizen F believes the stupidest and most obviously, demonstrably untrue things if it is convenient for him to do so. Without a strong grounding in either religious or nontheistic philosophy, tradition, or something I can't imagine consistently doing the right thing when noone's watching (or when the watchers are hostile to the right thing).
Since you don't believe in a higher power holding you accountable, you doing the right thing basically comes down to you deciding to do it on your own, correct? In the real world, you're as likely to do that as a believer is to honestly evaluate what God would want, but I can see how for the redneck crowd atheists seem harder to trust than people of even 'wrong' religions.
http://www.law.ucla.edu/
volokh/custody.pdf
"Gods will is just that: Gods will. It is quite different from Man's will." (a quote from Golda's Balcony)
Did you see that? How was it? I wanted to when I was stranded in NYC on my way back from Israel a few years ago, but I didn't have the money.
It was good. Sound quality on stage was so-so, a little hard to understand certain parts. Overall I thought it was a good performance. I only know bits and pieces of the history, so I cant speak for its accuracy, but from what Ive heard its very accurate too.
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