Under atheism, is good versus evil just a difference of opinion?
Atheists deny any moral authority greater than the human individual, who is himself an accidental product that arose ultimately as a mutation of bacteria, though with a gargantuan ego, rather than the creature God designed in his own image. On nearly any issue (e.g., terrorist mass murder), there are wide differences in individual opinion, for and against. Without a God who endows us with rights and liberty, imposes universal duties, and designs the laws of nature, are differences over moral issues such as terrorist mass murders mere differences of opinion?
So you're saying that if god commands it it is moral. So under your system, anything is moral as well as long as god commands it. That's a bit scary, and we know it's scary because your god commands a lot of bogus shit, such as hating gays, automatic obedience to authority. He tells the Muslims to take up holy wars. He told the Jews to do a lot of murder for patches of land. Get fucking real would you.
Nice rant, dude. Can you please have a real conversation with a real atheist sometime and actually LISTEN to what they have to say? Atheists don't deny a "moral authority" as you put it. Yes, we all have our own morals/values and we don't need your god to define them for us, but we also live in communities and there are community standards as well as laws. We don't deny the existence of those.
The thought that an atheist would believe mass murder is a-OK because he doesn't have a fairy tale about a critter in the sky that he takes on blind faith is pure rubbish.
Life for atheist is a pointless, meaningless and futile endeavor as is morality. You cannot have one without the other. There are of course moral atheist. But they cannot explain their morality within the context of their belief that everything is meaningless.
as an atheist I'm going to tell you my believe on good v evil.I believe that good and evil are acts committed by people a choice everyone has on if they will be the one to help or hit.Religion,on my views,is corrupt and evil having caused,in most cases,more evil then good i have excepted that this is not true for all in said religions and Buddhism is a great religion cent red on mediation and peace unlike Christianity without a doubt the most war like of all
I'd say your sense of "good and evil" would be more your judgment of certain situations and your perspective on it. Your ability to empathize would contribute to that. Really for the most part the idea of right and wrong is born of social awareness. Opinion does of course come into it too, which is why there are many controversial issues.
Yes, you were made in god's image which is why all of you, collectively, are murders. Your god committed genocide whenever it was convenient yet he said - thou shalt not kill - so you, in god's image killed throughout history and are today killing people in Africa that you don't like. if you could do it in the US you would, but here you have to legislate against people so they will not have the civil rights you hold so dear. But then, again in god's image, he considered slaves as part of your heritage so maybe you want all of those people as slaves.
You're probably thinking about nihilism.
Good and evil are human terms, used to describe actions that either benefit or degrade society. They are not god-given, and vary from culture to culture, but developed as ancient ancestor humans (or hairless monkeys, if you'd like) evolved. This is because humans are social animals without any natural weapons like talons, massive strength, large mass etc. All we've got is our brains and our ability to co-operate with other humans, which has given rise to a set of fine-chiseled "rules" which allows us to survive. If you hurt another human being, you're basically making it harder for yourself to survive because of the risk of expulsion, being punished other ways etc.
Therefore, we empathize. That is our single greatest asset for survival, and the one that you Christians claim you own, but in reality is as universal as stupidity and delusion (which you DO exhibit).
Although I have met a few who despite the fact that they do not intellectually believe in God they still live moral, ethically and charitable lives, it seems to me that many are atheists not for intellectual reasons but because they do not want to believe that they will be judged for their actions.
I'm not an atheist, but nor do i believe in a greater moral authority, so i believe i can answer your question.
there is no such thing as good and evil, opinion or otherwise. this is because good can come of evil and evil can come of good and so on. they cause each other, they ARE each other. if that is too abstract for you, let me explain clearly:
an evil man is drunk driving and maims an Innocent, this is bad.
but the Innocent is then saved from a draft into an unjust war due to his injury, this is good
but then he is branded a coward this is bad
so he sets out to prove he's a hero and saves many lives, this is good
but one of the lives he saves is a budding young Hitler, this is bad
and so on and so forth. there is no good, no bad, just a series of things that happen, ebb and flow, back and forth. belief in good and evil is a sign of narrow mindedness, of literally not seeing the bigger picture.
As humans we have obviously come up with a better system of justice and social morals. These change and grow with the knowledge we gain throughout time and the needs of our fellow humans. I see no evidence of "god" doing any of that. To be moral one needs ethics and religion seriously lacks those and is nothing but moralistic expecting people to live by a set of strict rules that don't change. That is NOT moral authority.
Ugh, no no no! We're not an accidental product! EWW it makes me shiver how you could be so dumb to think that. EWW! We came here by evolution, which is not an accident!!!
And moral standards arose when early man started to socialize with each other, and naturally a person with no 'morals', if you will, would do something crazy like kill his family. Naturally, this would result in him not being able to reproduce.
This is absurd. God has not endowed us with rights, man has. Look at some past cultures where people were treated like scum for thousands of years. And that isn't liberty. "Universal duties" ? I'm sorry, but I don't recall people traveling to other parts of the universe, but much less the solar system.
And to answer your question, terrorist mass murders arises from religion itself. And it is a difference of moral standpoints, because people go with what "Feels good, and what feels right", and since they're brainwashed into believing that almighty, big good, sky daddy wants to kill the "Evil West", they believe that is the good thing to do, and follow their dopamine their brain, and thus result in killing people. Our morals pertain to dopamine and dopamine only. That's why crazy people find it fun to kill innocent people. It's not a 'difference of opinion', you stupid bastard.
I ANSWER FOR MYSELF ALONE
Long-term benefits and happiness for the society=> my moral compass
I think everyone has their own view/opinion on issues, it's their right
But when it comes to actions, everyone MUST do good, what's good or bad is decided by the consideration of the community's profits, Seth is OKAY (just okay) when either it benefits or causes no harm.(For example to this def: homo = OK, Pedro = bad.)
Atheists simply do what's good not what's told
Why is that so hard to grasp?
With regards to terrorist mass murders I assume your talking about Muslims, there are some Muslims who wouldn't consider these people terrorists they would see it as doing what God wants them to do. So it depends on which God you choose to believe in as to what you feel is right and just, and so 'mere difference of opinion' yes, you have answered your own question
"deny any moral authority greater than the human"
what a very odd way to put atheists dint believe in god due to there being no evidence of any god
it has nothing to do with 'envying' and more to do with accepting
on the subject of good and evil, i see them as natural issues, they exist, no god needed for that
no it has little to do with opinion of individual and more to do with opinion of society, same as all morals
In denying the truth they bring in the lies and the evil, so it is a problem of good versus evil. Those who oppose Communism have some good points, but in order to be on the side of truth we need to be born again of the Spirit and have Jesus in our hearts. Communists got so evil they were doing the worst things to Christians. All evil rulers feel threatened by Christians.
If you would allow that there can be no good or evil without an objective reference, which is what the Bible teaches, then it can be nothing more than just an opinion. When good and bad become an intellectual position, rather than a moral one, the whole thing breaks down. It surprises me that atheists have a natural knowledge of good and bad, which is that "image of God" in all of us, but try to bypass that with some sort of intellectual shuck and jive, in the interest of "worshiping the created (ourselves) rather than the Creator". Doomed to fail. Be well.
Yes, ultimately,
and especially if the opinion has powerful armies and bombs and or controls the most influential media
I do, however, know some atheists who are natural Law Ethics advocates and advocate objective moral law ( such as banning abortion and other forms of murder, not recognizing 'gay marriage', etc)
also, most atheists i know are 'cultural Christians'( to use militant anti-theist Dawkins self-description) when it comes to such things as rape, pillage, the murder of innocents( except for abortion and 'euthanasia')
but without objective Natural Law norms there is no substantial theoretical justification for not adopting 'Viking ethics" of "Woe to the weak and deceived and vanquished'
Christopher Hitchens is a rare bird among atheists. Most atheists are sitarists at heart. Most inevitably embrace it, justify it; they relish it. It's in their political speech, their expressed thought processes, but the fact of this flies right over their heads. Most have been brainwashed, you see; they are sitarists by default, hence, unwittingly corrupt. The only legitimate stance that an atheist can take to avoid the thuggery of moral relativism and, subsequently, stat ism, as Hitchens consciously does, is to embrace the Lockean natural law of unfettered individual and economic liberty, which, of course, is extrapolated from the Judeo-Christian moral system of thought. But few atheists take this road, as the education system that brainwashes them into believing that the irrationality of atheism is sound is the very same education system that promotes stardust collectivism. But then atheism, after all, is the first stop on the road of idolatry; stat ism is the final destination and the progenitor of all human atrocities, that is, on this side of the spiritual divide.
Most atheists are just too stupid and corrupt to notice the difference between Judeo-Christianity's scion-political implications, the application of which prohibit the establishment of stat ism, and the ravages of statism that have been visited upon humanity by corrupt men in its name. Indeed, even Christopher Hitchens for all his eruditeness is a bit confused along these lines. After all, he knows about Locke?s extrapolation and understands it from the classical Deist's perspective, though he himself be an atheist. What causes him to accuse the mystical aspects of Judeo-Christianity when his socio-political philosophy is based on their subsequent morality? Instead, more rationally, why doesn't he accuse the demagoguery of pretenders who actually believe in neither the mystical or the moral teachings of Christ, and, therefore, reject the latter's socio-political implications as well? Go figure. Just another one of those mysteries of fools being turned over to a darkened heart (Rom. 1:21).
Under atheism, is good versus evil just a difference of opinion?
