"Richard Dawkins has now come out and repudiated his previous belief that Christianity should be banished from society even more firmly. In fact, he told The Times, ending religion—once his fervent goal—would be a terrible idea, because it would “give people a license to do really bad things.” Despite the fact that Dawkins has long argued that the very idea of the God of the Bible being necessary as a basis for morality is both ridiculous and offensive, he appears to be backtracking. “People may feel free to do bad things because they feel God is no longer watching them,” he said, citing the example of security cameras as a deterrent to shoplifting. One wonders if he has heard Douglas Murray remind people that the Soviets murdered their millions in the firm belief that there was no Judge waiting for them when the killing was over."

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/atheists-sound-the-alarm-decline-of-christianity-is-seriously-hurting-society?fbclid=IwAR3n2kgq7GroglelMOJyFpCzzoFHzB0_7IBUMUXqxhcvhB5AdgHk89dIhLA

I'm sure glad my atheist heroes aren't the atheist Joel Osteens but rather our own Dave and (Bo)Jerry.

By the way, have you two thought about going into the ice cream business?

But the sad truth is that most people are NOT capable of making good moral choices without something like Christianity to scare them into it, & even then, it has only a limited effect on them.

If you think I'm exaggerating, look up the stages of moral development. Most people never make it past the punishment & reward stage.

We need something better than Christianity to do the job, though. It's unhealthy even if it helps keep a few people in line.

In CA, security cameras are NOT a deterrent to shoplifting. The only deterrent is staying under the $950 cap on thievery. Cops won't try to bring a case against a shoplifter if that cap isn't exceeded.

I am not at all impressed with the percentage of Christians v. atheists in America's penal institutions.

No. $950 brings it up to the misdemeanor line. Under that amount cops in California treat it as just an act of ghawd.

Hey - $950 buys a lot of tees. I'm assuming.

Waaaaay back in the 90s, I think ~$400 was the threshold.

mumblemumbleconspiracymublemumblebuyingascrewdrivertobreakintoaplace=overtactmumblemumbledoesntmatterifyoubreakinmumble.

Miss you, Professor Méndez.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/06/2019 11:19AM by Beth.

The Deist framers of America's Constitution decided that religion was good for society and needed to be protected, because without it people would not feel compelled to obey the law.
However, our jails are not filled with Atheists, they're filled with believers.
That and more secular societies, like Northern Europe and Asia, have much lower crime rates than more religious societies, like America.

>> "....religion was good for society and needed to be protected, because without it people would not feel compelled to obey the law."

I can see them thinking that way. To me its the opposite. The atheist obeys the law, because its the law. That's it.

The theist doesn't obey the law because they answer to a higher power and their end typically justifies their means, even though its against the law.

Example.....

I've yet to hear about an atheist county clerk that refused to provide a marriage license to a gay couple because "they don't believe in god therefore they don't have to obey the law."

But I have heard of county clerks refusing marriage licenses because they answer to "a higher power...god's law."

Same for wedding cakes.

ziller can confirm this thred ~


brb ~ posting to RfM via jailhouse pay phone ~



ETA ~ (long story) ~



in b 4 ~ asking sherriff deputy for something written by atheist Richard Hawkings ~


brb ~ an getting a dog-eared copy of the Holy Bible nearly 6 hours later ~


in b 4 ~ gots 2 say ~


the 6am baloney sammich breakfast is pretty dam good tho ~



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/05/2019 04:21PM by ziller.

Ziller, do you think you would be a good person without your religion?

From Ziller's post above, it looks like prison is his religion, therefore, Ziller could not be good with out his religion.....or 6:00am sam'ich.

In B 4 ~ Ziller makes parole.

short answer = NO ~


long answer = NO ~ because without religion ziller was a self-righteous unsaved Morgbot; then an atheistic zealot an a selfish libertine ~


in b 4 ~ a thief, covetous, a drunkard, a reviler, an an extortioner ~


in b 4 ~ an ziller is still some of those things ~


brb ~ but one day ziller was washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Holy Spirit™ ~


IN b 4 ~ the 23rd psalm ~

"the lord jesus restores ziller's soul; the lord jesus leads ziller in the paths of righteousness for the lord's jesus name's sake" ~


in b 4 ~ https://youtu.be/9VGCNXGJJVI

And one correction to LW's post if I may. The original U.S. constitution, as passed by its framers in 1787, said absolutely nothing about religion, the press, gun rights, how accused persons were to be treated, or what powers would be delegated to the states. All of these items became part of the Bill of Rights which the original 13 colonies demanded before they agreed to support the document created by the Constitutional convention. If the Bill of Rights had not been added, then a lot of things that we take for granted now would never have occurred; and some of the problems we have now related to religious and press freedoms (not to mention owning a gun) would not be with us today.

Yes, but those details are arguable.

The Framers didn't have the right to "pass" the constitution in 1787. That was up to the individual states, the last of which didn't ratify the system till 1790. And as you note, the BoR was part of the deal that eventually enabled that ratification--and the BoR was created by the same Framers, largely Madison.

So the constitution was not established in 1887. That's merely when the authors presented the original, ultimately incomplete, document to the country.

And they promised they'd address slavery (the international slave trade and sale of slaves in the US but maybe not slavery itself) in 1808. Slaves thrown under the ratification bus? Indeed. Slavery addressed in 1808? HAHAHAHAHAHAH

Hell, king George made us do it:

"he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." <-- Stricken!

Time between the Bill of Rights (1st ten Amendments) and the 13th Amendment ending slavery? A little over 80 years. No biggie.

/s



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/06/2019 04:10PM by Beth.

Those three post-Civil War amendments are the heart and soul of the republic. They represent the first effort to embody the Jeffersonian ideal that all men [sic] are created equal.

ziller Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ziller can confirm this thred ~
>

> the 6am baloney sammich breakfast is pretty dam
> good tho ~

zil: I hope it's on 100% whole wheat bread.

> The Deist framers of America's Constitution
> decided that religion was good for society and
> needed to be protected, because without it people
> would not feel compelled to obey the law.

Not true, Kori. The framers believed that religion was deeply entrenched and, for the vast majority of people, an unchanging reality. They did not want to promote religion per se, but rather to remove the possibility that a religion might attain governmental power.

Europe had just experienced 200 years of war largely motivated by secular divisions and the role of governments in siding with one faith against another. The reason for the separation of church and state in the US constitution was to insulate society from the dangers that emerge when one religion attempts to gain control of the government in order to repress, or even slaughter, another religion.

It was a realpolitik decision, not a sentimental one, not a religious one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/05/2019 04:46PM by Lot's Wife.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > The Deist framers of America's Constitution
> > decided that religion was good for society and
> > needed to be protected, because without it
> people
> > would not feel compelled to obey the law.
>
> Not true, Kori.



Kori may or may not exist,
depending upon whether or not you are observing him.


The framers believed that
> religion was deeply entrenched and, for the vast
> majority of people, an unchanging reality. They
> did not want to promote religion per se, but
> rather to remove the possibility that a religion
> might attain governmental power.


I read that in Issacson's Ben Franklin,
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=ben+franklin+walter+isaacson&i=stripbooks&gclid=CjwKCAiAh5_uBRA5EiwASW3Iav7qhhkpKgdd-G-T_XFDluJzJJupNKDr-v-t9jHlTcmybnH0HcEwRxoCOvoQAvD_BwE&hvadid=241653182382&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1027784&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=89314036142703530&hvtargid=kwd-795226265&hydadcr=22128_10167285&tag=googhydr-20&ref=pd_sl_672p5zzdgm_e

Franklin and Jefferson were quite clear and articulate about why they protected, not promoted, religion. One reason was because Franklin had a couple of friends who were atheists who had no problem stealing from him, and Franklin thought it was good for people to have some fear of God so that at least they had a reason to not violate the rights of others.

It's like Napoleon said, "Religion is what keeps poor from killing the rich."

It's not like the rich and powerful have ever really believed in reigion, they have just used it to get poor people to pay their taxes the way they faithfully paid their tithes to the Pope and it's been working towards that end ever since.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Deist framers of America's Constitution
> decided that religion was good for society and
> needed to be protected, because without it people
> would not feel compelled to obey the law.
> However, our jails are not filled with Atheists,
> they're filled with believers.
> That and more secular societies, like Northern
> Europe and Asia, have much lower crime rates than
> more religious societies, like America.

Jails are filled with believers? Anything to back up that statement. The incarceration rates for Mormons is probably a lot lower than for atheists.

>Jails are filled with believers? Anything to back up that statement. The incarceration rates for Mormons is probably a lot lower than for atheists.

Hard to find good data, but there is this

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/are-prisoners-less-likely-to-be-atheists/

To suggest that Christians who lose their faith (for whatever reason) will be prone to do "really bad things" is an indictment of both atheism and Christianity. It is an indictment against atheism because it suggests that without a belief in some form of accountability to God, a former Christian and converted atheist will be amoral or immoral. That is both empirically false and offensive, as many of us exMormons are living witnesses. As such, there is no reason whatever to believe that if religion were universally abandoned (praise God), formerly religious people would lose all sense of morality and do bad things.

It is also an indictment on Christians because it suggests that Christians act morally out of fear of God's retribution, rather than out of a personal and genuine moral sense, which I think is also false.

I think this is just another case of Dawkins seeking attention, notoriety, and the sale of books and lecture tickets. Ho hum. Let's face it, he is an egomaniac who seeks to profit on his long past glory as a player in evolutionary biology.

What *does* trouble me more than Christians becoming atheists, is Christians remaining Christians; not because of their moral attitudes per se, but because of their Christian attitudes and worldview. Notice that Christians are hung-up on the idea of "The Kingdom of God." This speaks volumes as to what kind of a society they advocate; i.e. one that has a "righteous king" rather than one that has an elected President. Their ideal is stated in the BoM where a "righteous king" is said to be better than the will of the people. The problem is, of course, that "righteous" to Christians is whatever nonsense they think is God's will; not humanistic values of freedom, equalitarianism, respect for persons, democracy, etc. All such values would be readily abandoned, if the "evils" of abortion and homosexuality could just be stopped in its tracks.

What troubles me about atheists is that they often adopt a materialist worldview that substitutes science for God and otherwise transcendent human values. That is a trend, and it is perhaps most exemplified by modern neuroscience, cognitive science, and biology, wherein free will is denied, and human beings are characterized as complex, mechanistic, biological robots. Such a worldview is not only false (IMHO) but also dangerous.

Now, I admit that in the above I have been shamelessly stereotyping. But, we do have subtle and not-so-subtle fundamentalist trends in Christianity (and religion generally) and scientific atheism, both of which, in their own way, are undermining morality now, and offer the potential of much worse.

Maybe Rusty is right to water down Mormonism. If you keep them in the shallow end of the pool, they’re less likely to go off the deep end.

But it’s not all lime Kool Aid. Dumbing down the doctrine to mind numbing levels ensures that only numb skulls remain.

I suspect that the prevalence of Atheism here is emotion-based. For many, it’s the only option after such an immense betrayal. After all, being a Mormon is first about finding God on your own terms and after that going along with the batsh*t crazy stuff. It’s a lot to sort out, but critical thinking doesn’t end with Mormonism. Materialism has its own problems.

Speaking for myself, emotion had nothing to do with my acceptance of atheism.

Emotion led me into the cult and kept me there. Emotion plagued me after leaving. I "felt" as an intuition that yes, I'd been betrayed and that sucked, but I just hadn't found the right way to God.

Emotion kept me busy buying books and listening to gurus and aligning my chakras and chanting and kissing icons and reading every possible Bible translation. Emotion drove me to mosques and synagogues, studying Arabic and Koine Greek and Hebrew. Emotion pulled me to pray, and pray, and pray for hours, In tears. On my knees. Like this:

"Hey, God Person, it's me, Margaret. Look, I don't mean to be uppity, but my Dad tried to kill me a couple times and my Mom is in la-la land and my sister has cancer, and the Mormons were lying and everyone else says different stuff about You, and since I've had such a rough ride I don't know who or what to believe. Nothing anyone is saying is making any sense! Could You please, please, please just show me where I belong and what system You want me to use? Better yet, all I really need is for you to say 'hi', just once. In some meaningful way where I will KNOW that it's you. A dream, a sign, whatever. Everybody says not to ask You that but I'm starting to feel like I'm talking to myself and the empty room, and I'm just ready to give up on it all, so please, please be my Big Parent. I don't really have any parents and I need one really bad. Please. Just one nudge on my lifeline. Just one moment of feeling like You're really there. I AM BEGGING YOU. Please."

This went on for years. The emotion of hope kept me asking, again and again.

Then, one day, I said to my husband (statistician/actuary, to whom numbers are the only real thing in reality) that I couldn't find God and I'd been looking for so long and it hurt so much that God was ignoring me. He said, "That's because you're looking for God with your heart instead of your brain. Try looking with that organ instead and you won't have to look very long."

I turned off the emotion and started to really think vs feel for once, and I found my answers. Emotion had everything to do with my pining belief, and has nothing to do with my non-belief.

the sect Betsy DeVos belongs to. They don't believe in freedom of choice. They want the legal right to cram their religion down everybody else's throats. These are the ones who want to have "In God We Trust" posted in public school classrooms, or have a moment for "voluntary" prayer, maybe even Bible teachings.

If people want their kids exposed to this sort of stuff, they can send them to religious schools or home-school them. It does NOT belong in public schools.

And then there are the ones who want to dictate women's reproductive rights. Don't even get me started.

Or teaching Creationism alongside evolution in public schools.

Enough, already! If I want my kids exposed to this kind of stuff, I'll see to it myself, at home.

"'I'll do you if you'll do me, but I'm first...' is the path that leads to sin and degradation. The proper format to live a clean, healthy, vibrant life is, 'I'll do you if you'll do me and we'll toss to see who goes first.'

"Leaving things to chance is what makes humans the noble creatures that they are, or ought to be."

  --Judic West, Archie & the Gang Comics, North Cambridgeshire OBE

“People may feel free to do bad things because they feel God is no longer watching them,”

Religion never really taught good versus bad, it mostly taught what God supposedly commands and wants (usually by delusional religious leaders) and you most obey or else suffer.

If incidentally 'religion' happens to include good things along the way, then that is likely mostly influenced with what society has gravitated towards, seeing how mutually beneficial it is to everyone.

Slave holders, those keeping other people in captivity in the South for forced labor, were Christians who went to church on Sunday, where "it was said that both the Old and New Testament give permission to hold others as slaves. In the Old Testament, God and the Patriarchs approve. As for the New Testament, Jesus and the Apostles show that slavery is permissible." The Bible is so handy to justify so many things. The Bible enables more sin than it stops by a long shot.

I found many articles about Christians being admonished from Southern pulpits to treat their slaves well after reading in the Bible that it was okay to have slaves. I wonder how MLK felt about that type of Christian ensuring that people do no wrong?

If you need a religion to keep you in line, how much in this life have you grown?

Not just in the south. It was just abandoned earlier in most of the north.

Mr. Dawkins is right in a way. The values system used in the U.S. and western Europe has its basis in Judeo-Christian (and Muslim, though many probably would not accept that) mythology. That doesn't mean that you need these mythologies to justify most of the values ingrained into us--you can justify those without religion; however, it does mean that we do have to acknowledge where our values system originated.

Is it possible that you are selling the origin of our value system short?

Isn't it possible that long before organized religion that ancient man understood the value of reciprocity? Working together. I suspect "One hand has washed the other" for more years than sundry Gods made it possible for men to dominate with dogma.

Perhaps religion harnessed existing values for its own purposes as a means of control rather than generating them out of goodness?

This is a good point. The western value system is in its basic outlines the same as evolved in most other regions and civilizations. That indicates that humanity's basic moral code antedates any particular religious tradition.

I have had several devout Christians assure me that, without their religion, they would be knocking over convenience stores, kicking the dog, romancing the neighbor's wife and grabbing old ladies' purses.

I tell them to remain Christian, for the safety of the rest of us.

Exactly. If they were to lose their faith, they could not be trusted. They need a sky cop. They do not tend to look internally for moral conciliation.

More strawman arguments for christinsanity.

Reminds me of Dumbo with his magic feather. Some people seem to need that crutch on which to blame their behavior, good or bad.

Hmm. I don’t know. It seems to me that there are an awful lot of religious people in prison. Fear of punishment doesn’t always deter people.

I’m not religious and have no fear whatsoever of an eternal punishment and yet I’m a deeply moral person because that’s who I am and who I want to be.

I’m not one to believe that morality comes from religion. I think there will always be people who cause trouble for others and people who stop to think about the impact that they have on others, whether they are religious or not.

Like Einstein said, "A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
(Albert Einstein, "Religion and Science", New York Times Magazine, 9 November 1930)


I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms.
(Albert Einstein, Obituary in New York Times, 19 April 1955)

Even if Christianity was useful as a social control mechanism to promote law and order, how would you go about getting people to believe in false stuff? People cannot just choose to believe. Even if society did a good job of brainwashing everyone to conform to Christianity, there would always be a few people who are born as atheists or become atheists. Those people would not be scared of God and would be free to commit crimes without fear of supernatural punishment if they had criminal tendencies. (Only some people have criminal tendencies. Most of these atheists would not wish to commit crimes that would harm others although they would be liable to violate silly religious rules like not wearing head scarves, eating pork, or drinking coffee.)

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Richard Dawkins has now come out and repudiated
> his previous belief that Christianity should be
> banished from society even more firmly. In fact,
> he told The Times, ending religion—once his
> fervent goal—would be a terrible idea, because
> it would “give people a license to do really bad
> things.”

I do not understand the Christianity=[all] religions equation.

It is not Christianity [alone] which works to prevent "really bad things"--many other religions (from native religions to world religions) do too.

The other factor is that, taking Christianity as whole, the Christian historical record re: good things done and bad things done is definitely mixed--to a greater extent than any other religion I am personally aware of.

The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea. Conduct deprived of its religious supports, deteriorates into epicurean chaos; life itself, short of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth. In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death - Will Durant, "Our Oriental Heritage."

That would be the same volume in which Durrant wrote that modern research has "restored considerable credit to those chapters of Genesis that record the early traditions of the Jews. In its outlines, and barring supernatural incidents, the story of the Jews as unfolded in the Old Testament has stood the test of criticism and archeology; every year adds corroboration from documents, monuments, or excavations."

That should give a sense of his credibility regarding religion.

I categorically reject the notion that one must believe in an invisible sky daddy to have morals. That is just horsesh*t. Having good morals means being a decent human being, not harming others, and doing good to your fellow upright apes.

Penn Jillette once said something like "I have already raped and murdered everyone he ever wanted to ... the list of people I want to rape and kill is *zero*."

And if you read the Old Testament, how one finds the commandments contained there in even remotely moral is beyond me. Slavery, genocide, death penalty for the most minor of sin, women being forced to marry their rapists, etc., is all in there. And the slavery one is reaffirmed as being God commanded in Bible 2.0 (the New Testament).

The non-decline of Christianity is seriously hurting society

We have to keep it out of public schools. They'll kill us with that. Homeschooling and religious schooling keeps creating a crowd of misinformed citizens. The struggle goes on.

I don’t buy this supposed change of heart. I don’t know if I’m allowed to post a link to an interview two and a half months ago. It can be found on Youtube under Richard Dawkins on scientific truth, outgrowing God and life beyond Earth (16 to 18 minutes in).

Dawkins said this in the interview:

“... evidence based, you’re right, people do need to be policed but I don’t find that a good reason to propagate a falsehood, as I believe it is. If you say, ‘well, you and I are too intelligent to believe in god but other people need it’, what a patronizing condescending attitude, ‘other people need it in order to be good’. Why don’t we try and foster goodness without the divine policeman?”

Without Christianity as an ethics framework, we as a society are unable to agree on basic values. We may reach that point after ~2000 years of Humanism, but until we reach that point we are in chaos.

Once a bishop came to my home. He asked me if I thought that my position was "right." I had to admit that I was not "right." I was able to change that night for the better. Could the bishop have reached me without an agreement between us on what was "right?"

Christianity has formed our society. Over generations we built a consensus on what constitutes acceptable conduct. Without Christianity, what's next?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2019 02:58PM by idleswell.

How did that Christian ethical framework fare during the Thirty Years War with its 8 million casualties?

If that ethical framework is necessary, how do effectively atheistic countries like Japan and the Scandinavian ones maintain common values?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How did that Christian ethical framework fare
> during the Thirty Years War with its 8 million
> casualties?

Hitler espoused "Christian Values"
Slave owners espoused "Christian Values"
"Christian Values" drove the Crusades.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from killing the rich." Napoleon

> If that ethical framework is necessary, how do
> effectively atheistic countries like Japan and the
> Scandinavian ones maintain common values?

Nearly ALL Asian, Australian & European countries are 'atheistic' or at least far more secular than the US and they don't have near the social problems we have in the US.
The same holds true if you compare social well being in the Bible Belt vs. other far more secular parts of the US.

Why is that?

Christians can't even agree on what the ethics from the Bible should be.