Tag Archives: Hate

Polemics

Is morality rational, on atheism?

24 Comments

UPDATE: Welcome readers from the the Western Experience! Thanks for the link, Jason!

Last week, I posted a list of 13 questions that Christians could use to get discussions going with their atheist friends. We got 10 responses to the questions. Yesterday, we took a look at the minimal requirements for robust, prescriptive morality. Today, we’ll evaluate atheism, as represented by the 10 respondents to the survey, to see whether the minimal requirements are rationally grounded by atheism.

1) Objective moral values: NOT GROUNDED

All ten respondents stated that moral values have no mind-independent existence. In other words, they are purely subjective. Eight of the respondents thought that each person should decide for themselves what is moral for them, and 2 thought that each person should act in accordance with the arbitrary social conventions of the culture where they lived. Those standards change over time and in different places, of course. They are arbitrary.

2) Objective moral duties: NOT GROUNDED

All ten respondents said that there was no such thing as objective moral values, and so there can be no objective moral duties either. Most people said that their own preferences were the source of subjective moral values. But a duty owed to oneself can be canceled when things get difficult. The best attempt was the social contract answer, but this fails because the social contract is arbitrary. There is no reason to limit your happiness because of an arbitrary social contract, so long as you can escape the social consequences of disobedience.

3) Moral accountability: NOT GROUNDED

Nine respondents did not believe in God. The one who did believe said that God did not care about our actions. Therefore, there is no accountability for the decisions we make. So long as we can avoid the consequences for violating the arbitrary fashions of the time and place where we live, nothing will happen to us if we put our happiness above the needs of our feelings of “empathy” for others.

4) Free will: NOT GROUNDED

All ten respondents were materialists, and therefore did not believe in minds or souls independent of the material that makes up the body. Therefore, everything that humans do is fully determined by the genetic programming and the sensory inputs. To expect moral choices or moral responsibility on atheism is like expecting the same from a computer. Physical systems don’t have free will. There is no “ought to do” for lumps of matter that are not designed by anyone for any specific purpose.

5) Ultimate significance: NOT GROUNDED

All ten of the respondents were materialists, so life ends in the grave for them. Scientists have discovered that in the future, the amount of usable energy, such as the heat and light emitted by stars, will run down to zero, the “heat death of the universe”. What this means is that the entire universe will become cold and lifeless at some point. Humans are therefore doomed to extinction no matter how they act.

Conclusion

On atheism, there is no reason for an atheist to constrain his pursuit of happiness. If he does take into account the needs of others because of feelings and emotions (“empathy”), he is acting irrationally. Feelings are not logical arguments. There is no such thing as a “moral” action on atheism, all actions are undertaken for pleasure or personal preference.

In the survey results, none of the ten respondents could oppose slavery on rational grounds, none of the ten respondents could perform self-sacrificial acts on rational grounds, and none of the ten respondents could explain why murder was wrong, on rational grounds. They may have chosen the right alternative, but only based on emotion, not on reason.

As Greg Koukl argues, morality is not rationally grounded on atheism. Now, it is true that atheists act inconsistently in ways that seem to be moral. This is because:

  1. Judeo-Christian morality is still floating around in out Western society, even though it is on the way out due to materialist persecution of public religious expression and the Judeo-Christian theology that grounded morality
  2. Regardless of what materialism says, God made the universe with objective moral values, and humans with free will, so even if people say that morality is relative and that they are machines, they may still act inconsistently to do the right thing, since their views are mistaken, especially if the costs are minimal

But when the heat is really on, they will cave in to their desires. Rational grounding is needed in order to do the right thing when there are consequences for doing the right thing.

Further study

You can get the full story on the requirements for rational morality in a published, peer-reviewed paper written by William Lane Craig here. You can also hear and see him present the paper to an audience of students and faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008. The audio is clipped at 67 minutes, the video is the full 84 minutes. There is 45 minutes of Q&A, with many atheist challengers.

The video of this lecture is the best material you can get on this issue, and the Q&A from the hostile audience is vital to the lesson. More debates on atheism and morality can be found on the debate and lecture page.

You can find a post contrasting the morality of an authentic, consistent Christian with an authentic, consistent non-Christian here. A post examining how atheism is responsible for the deaths of 100 million innocent people in the 20th century alone is here. A post analyzing the tiny number of deaths that religion was responsible for is here.

Videos

Bill Maher mocks Carrie Prejean’s stand on marriage

11 Comments

Spotted this video over at Hot Air, posted by AllahPundit, who is an atheist. He is beginning to question whether atheism leads to great heights of moral behavior. You’ll recall that this is one of the factors that convinced A.N. Wilson, as well as the Wintery Knight himself.

Atheism maintains that the universe is an accident, that there is no objective moral standard, no free will, no accountability when you die, no ultimate significance to our actions, no after-life, and no one to whom moral duty is owed. Bill Maher is a committed atheist. Let’s see what counts as morality on atheism.

And here is an excerpt from AllahPundit’s comments:

A quickie from last night’s show displaying all the charm and subtlety we’ve come to expect, and surely the first time in his life that he’s had an unkind word to say about breast implants. There’s something cosmically apt about him attacking her: No one in American media better embodies the lefty paradox of libertinism paired with judgmentalism, therefore no one’s better qualified to prosecute her for the left’s capital crime of hypocrisy.

Why are atheists making moral judgments in an accidental universe, where their moral standards are just their own personal preferences, or at best the arbitrary conventions of their society? Why even attribute blame to Carrie Prejean if she doesn’t even have free will, which is an impossibility on atheism, since we are just mindless matter?

There are some things that other people do that I don’t like based on personal preferences. For example, I do not like people who spend a lot of time following sports or watching popular movies in the theater. But I don’t insult them for not complying with my preferences. And that’s all morality is, on atheism. Individual preferences and cultural conventions.

You can only judge others if there is an objective standard that is binding on this other person. What sense does it make to mock and deride people who have different preferences than you do? It seems as if atheists do believe in objective morality, however inconsistently. But only when judging others, never when judging themselves.

News

Democrats vote to protect pedophiles in H.R. 1913 hate crime bill

1 Comment

UPDATE: Welcome readers from But as For Me! Thanks for the link!

UPDATE: If you are looking for the story about bloggers facing jail terms for “harassing” public figures, see here.

The indomitable Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has the full story on the hate crime here. (H/T Stop the ACLU)

She links to this video of Democrats voting for protection for pedophiles, and against protections for military veterans.

And then writes this summary about the left (Democrats), and their inevitable drive towards fascism:

Hate crime — hate is in the eye of the beholder, eh? And if you are a Democrat – you protect child rapists, but G-d forbid you protect the military.

Hate crime legislation will be used as a tool against the right. Period. A crime is a crime. WTF is the “hate” bias? Will those screaming for the death to Jews at those demonstrations in January be prosecuted under these laws?

Who are these people?  Good is evil and evil is good. Good luck with that super majority, America.

Yes, remember the speeches by Evan Sayet at the Heritage Foundation. Good is evil, and evil is good. That is the essence of the left.

I’m going to steal some comments from RedState that Pamela cites.

Over at Red State:

This is really kind of mind numbing and demonstrates what is wrong with Congress.

During a House Judiciary Committee meeting, Congressman Steve King (R-IA) offered up an amendment to the hate crimes bill to exclude pedophiles from being a protected category under the hate crimes legislation.

Every single Democrat voted it down.

In the same meeting, Congressman Tom Rooney (R-FL) offered an amendment to include veterans as a class protected under the hate crimes bill. Not only did the Democrats vote it down, but Cogresswoman Debbie Waasserman Schultz attacked the Republicans for even thinking veterans might need protection under hate crimes legislation. After all, who but Democrats in Congress hate veterans?

Pamela cites Congress Louis Gohmert to explain what does this hate crime bill does.

If a mother hears that their child has been raped and she slaps the assailant with her purse, she is now gone after as a hate criminal because this is a protected class. There are other protected classes in here. I mean simple exhibitionism. I have female friends who have told me over the years that some guy flashed them, and their immediate reaction was to hit them with their purse. Well now, he’s committed a misdemeanor, she has committed a federal hate crime because the exhibitionism is protected under sexual orientation.

The Democrat bill says that Americans can’t make moral judgments on others, because that makes those poor victims feel bad. If moral people make moral judgments against these victims, it’s a federal crime. Democrats are the party of moral relativism and moral equivalence. And Christians voted for Democrats in record numbers because we were too lazy to inform ourselves about them before the election.

And one more quote from Pamela’s post:

Similar state laws have resulted in persecution for Christians. In Philadelphia several years ago, a 73-year-old grandmother was jailed for trying to share Christian tracts with people at a homosexual festival.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said H.R. 1913 will create “thought crimes,” and U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said it will end equality in the U.S.

Gohmert warned the law will be used against pastors – or anyone else – who speaks against homosexuality or other alternative sexual lifestyle choices. He said it provides that anyone who through speech “induces” commission of a violent hate crime “will be tried as a principal” alongside the active offender.

Critics say that would allow for prosecutions against pastors who preach a biblical ban on homosexuality if someone who hears such a message later is accused of any crime.

Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, said, “A pastor’s sermon could be considered ‘hate speech’ under this legislation if heard by an individual who then acts aggressively against persons based on ‘sexual orientation.’ The pastor could be prosecuted for ‘conspiracy to commit a hate crime'” she said.

On the other side of the religious liberty aisle, there’s Republican Senator James Inhofe’s recognition of the National Day of Prayer, which Obama refused to recognize publicly.

The New Testament’s Book of James states, “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” I wholeheartedly agree and personally rely on prayer in every aspect of my life. Today, we honor the “National Day of Prayer,” a day that has been officially recognized since 1952 by the President of the United States, who issues an annual proclamation in its honor.

“Across the country, people from different walks of faith and different walks of life gather together to pray for our nation.  In 2008, over two million people attended 40,000 locally organized events nationwide, and the governors from all 50 states signed similar proclamations.

“The National Day of Prayer is a traditional and fundamental part of our history. In 1775, while forming a nation, the Continental Congress invited the colonies to pray for wisdom. This first call to prayer has since become a tradition and has not ceased from reoccurring in the years that followed. In 1789, President George Washington issued the first presidential proclamation for prayer as he stated, “It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and to humbly implore His protection and favor…” And in 1863, President Lincoln proclaimed a day of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer.”

“Prayer is as important today as it was when our Founding Fathers first formed our nation. Today, may God continue to bless you all in a special way.

Michele Malkin talks about Obama’s refusal to hold a public prayer event, which Bush did for all 8 of his years, in this Fox News video clip. He talked so much about the importance of prayer during his campaigns, but I guess the mask is off now.

I know fundamentalist Christians who voted for Barack Obama based on his skin color, (which is the same color as my skin, by the way). Unbelievable! Their votes undermined the free expression of Christian beliefs in the public square. Newsflash! Barack Obama shows no evidence of being a Christian in his policies. On the contrary, his policies are deeply anti-Christian, anti-capitalism and anti-liberty. His skin color should have been irrelevant to the decision of who to vote for, for Christians.

UPDATE: The Maritime Sentry has a relevant video with Steve King and Sean Hannity.