No matter how many times we have asked atheists to do that, they haven't, even though they perfectly well know that it is the Achilles heel of atheism. The truth is that they just cannot do it. Otherwise they would have done it a long time ago already. — alcontali

Apparently you have not heard of Sam Harris, who spends a lot of his time addressing precisely this issue. Check out his work and come back before posting more opinions.

The Haddith, the other leg of islamic morality, actually show this islamic telephone game clearly. It is all "as narrated by xxx who heard it narrated from yyy who heard it narrated from zzz" etc. So no, you do NOT need paper to pass on information, although of course it helps. — Nobeernolife

The hadiths are documented now. It does not matter today that they were initially transmitted orally. That only mattered in the period during which they were orally transmitted. That period is history now. Furthermore, all information is initially undocumented until it is. If information cannot be undocumented until it is, then no information could ever be documented.

If I just listed a bunch of rules now those rules would be written down but I don't know how that would suddenly validate them. — BitconnectCarlos

Documenting information allows it to be objectively transmitted. It also allows the information be stored without alterations. Civilization has been keeping written records for thousands of years now.

Since atheism is not a belief system in itself, just the absence of one, it is absurd to ask for atheist rules. — Nobeernolife

Well, no. That is not absurd.

Atheism rejects all other rules without proposing alternative ones, while still accepting the idea that such rules are necessary. That is clearly the fundamental contradiction in atheism. Atheism would only be sustainable if it either switched to a trivialist morality ("there is no morality needed") or proposes an alternative ("our own rules").

The disbelief in a god does not mean there is no need for ethics. — Nobeernolife

It does mean that there is no need for ethics in atheism, because it rejects all other, existing rules for ethics without proposing an alternative take on ethics. Therefore, from atheism necessarily entails a trivialist take on morality.

Documenting information allows it to be objectively transmitted. It also allows the information be stored without alterations. Civilization has been keeping written records for thousands of years now.

I understand that and I completely agree but I think rational people can agree that just because something is written down or it's in a beautiful book somewhere doesn't immediately give it authority or make it a source of authority.

I understand that and I completely agree but I think rational people can agree that just because something is written down or it's in a beautiful book somewhere doesn't immediately give it authority or make it a source of authority. — BitconnectCarlos

The fact that information is documented does not necessarily give it authority. It is simply strong evidence that the information exists.

There is simply no evidence that atheist morality exists. If it exists, it can be documented. So, where can we read a copy of the documentation?

It does mean that there is no need for ethics in atheism, because it rejects all other, existing rules for ethics without proposing an alternative take on ethics. Therefore, from atheism necessarily entails a trivialist take on morality. — alcontali

You sound very confused here. By definition, atheism is simply a disbelief in good. It does not "reject" any ethical system, it simply does not address any. Atheism in itself is not a belief system, so it is meanigless to compare it to one.

Living in a society of ourse requires a code of ethics, and as I said it is possible to create one without referring to Allah, Yahwe, Neptune, Zeus, or Hoitsipotsli.

The hadiths are documented now. It does not matter today that they were initially transmitted orally. That only mattered in the period during which they were orally transmitted. That period is history now — alcontali

That period lasted for hundreds of years, so for an extremely long time, muslim morality was simply transmitted orally... something you claimed is impossible.

The Dining Kruber study is flawed like all psychological studies. You can't measure a person's intelligence. Conservatives say "freebies aren't fair, we are all equal" yet they believe the IQ myth because the like being cushy in the middle of the hambuger. Philosophy can rip wholes in all of psychology and almost all theoretical physics because those fields are really philosophy.

It does not "reject" any ethical system, it simply does not address any. — Nobeernolife

"Believing" in a religion means that you accept the religion's moral rules as a matter of self-discipline. So, if an atheist accepts, for example, the moral rules of Christianity, then he is simply a Christian and not an atheist. The same is true for an atheist who keeps the moral rules of Islam, or any religion for that matter.

Furthermore, an atheist who is consistent will not accept God's law while simultaneously rejecting the lawmaking God. That behaviour does not make sense. Seriously, why would he do that? Why would he put in effort in keeping the self-discipline mandated by a God in whom he does not believe? How would he motivate that to himself?

Seriously, it does not make sense to accept God's law while rejecting God. It is again contradictory.

Living in a society of ourse requires a code of ethics, and as I said it is possible to create one without referring to Allah, Yahwe, Neptune, Zeus, or Hoitsipotsli. — Nobeernolife

Well, if it is possible to do that, then why don't you just do it?

Conservative logic says Hannity and the whole gang owe all their money to service men, police, and fire fighters. "It's not fair they put their lives and limbs on the line and you don't give them all your money" i say. Marxist at least understand the meaning of " society". In a sense i do owe them all my money. Society works on more principles, though, than conservatives know of

That period lasted for hundreds of years, so for an extremely long time, muslim morality was simply transmitted orally... something you claimed is impossible. — Nobeernolife

I did not claim that it was impossible. Can you quote me on that?

"Believing" in a religion means that you accept the religion's moral rules as a matter of self-discipline. So, if an atheist accepts, for example, the moral rules of Christianity, then he is simply a Christian and not an atheist. The same is true for an atheist who keeps the moral rules of Islam, or any religion for that matter. — alcontali

Nope, that is a non sequitur. One does not follow from the other. And, as I pointed out, it is possible to construct an ethical code without referring to religion. Are you reading messages before responding to them?

You really have a skewed understanding of atheism. The label "atheism" only addresses the proposition in the belief of a God/Gods. That is all there is to it. Anything besides that is a separate issue. Every atheist (Non believer in a God/Gods) holds different world views in regards to every aspect of life. I happen to espouse secular morality and situational ethics and I also believe in evolution, another atheist may think otherwise.

Your statement "the atheist..." is a nonsensical statement. For the reasons I mentioned above. Not all atheists think the same. The only thing atheists have in common is their disbelief in a God/Gods.

I did not claim that it was impossible. Can you quote me on that? — alcontali

You wrote:
In an illiterate society there is no need to document anything, not even the laws. Nothing. So, the real question becomes: Why are we reading and writing, instead of just saying things?
Or we could just invent things on the fly without committing to them?
That would allow us to retract what we said when it suit us. Yes, agreed, there are indeed numerous benefits to not writing down anything.

I understood that to be sarcasm and an argument for written scriptures. So you meant that literally?

Think about it, do you really go to the school and tell them how to educate the kids and what to teach them? — Sir2u

Yes, I do. I took my kids out of school for a whole year, appointed an (excellent) Filipina tutor for their English instead. Next, we travelled all together around SE Asia for the whole year. The result is that my kids are now fluent in English while their current classmates are absolutely not. So, I simply changed the priorities. — alcontali

Once again you are contradicting yourself. First you say that you can tell the schools what to do, then you say that you had to take your kids out of school to do what you wanted to do with them. Make up your mind.

Saddling an entire generation with usury-infested student-loan debt? Wow. Do you want a revolution, or yet another insurgency, or what?

By the way, saddling someone with usury-infested loans is not the same as giving that person "help".

In that case, you are not helping the student. Instead, you will be helping the banksters that will originate these loans and who will make endless amounts of money from charging usury on them. You will also be helping the universities who will be able to pay million-dollar salary to their principal and faculty deans. The students? Not so much. With their worthless degree they will, more likely than not, end up in a dead-end part-time job slinging coffees at Starbucks. — alcontali

Once again you are you are failing to answer a simple question. If you don't have an answer it would be easier to say so instead of repeating yourself with non answers I do not want.

You really do not seem to understand the student loan crisis, do you? — alcontali

Apart from the fact that you have not shown any data to even prove that this crisis exists, I understand it perfectly and I don't care about it. I doubt that anyone put a gun to anyone's head and forced them to take a loan. So it is not my problem.
If you read the article you provided a link to it says that many students are using other methods of obtaining an education, so there are alternative ways if the people were not too lazy to look for and consider other ways to do things. If they are lazy, then they deserve the wrath allah, thor, apollo and anyone else.

You seem to think that your simplistic way of reasoning is solving a problem. No, it is creating problems! — alcontali

Sadly I have not tried to solve the problems of anyone else. I solve my own and those I get paid to solve.

If you want to learn how to solve problems, then study some engineering instead of your liberal-art nonsense. Do something "hard" for a change! As I have told you earlier, your simple minded views do not solve the problem. No, they are the problem! — alcontali

You are certainly a presumptuous little man are you not. If you had asked, or bothered to look at any of my other posts would feel stupid after making this comment.

I have a degree in engineering and design of factories.
I am a qualified welder
I am a qualified plumber
I am a qualified electrician
I am qualified to work on automobile and marine engines and drive systems
I have designed and built several house including the one I live in that survived an earthquake of 7.3

What the fuck have you done with your pompous little life?

No, I know for a fact that this is not true.

No matter how many times we have asked atheists to do that, they haven't, even though they perfectly well know that it is the Achilles heel of atheism. The truth is that they just cannot do it. Otherwise they would have done it a long time ago already. — alcontali

Who the hell would be interested in writing down a bunch of rules that most people follow without knowing because they are just plain ordinary common sense. Nobody needs a written rule that tells you when you can or cannot beat your wife. They apparently have those written into islamic moral laws though.

Let me ask you a couple of questions. How many atheist are condemned to prison for immoral acts? How many religious people are sentenced for the same crimes?
When you have that information then I will believe that atheists are the bad guy that the data shows them to be.

Atheism may reject God's law, i.e. tenets and rules, but it clearly does not propose alternative tenets or rules. That entails that there would be no need for moral rules. Hence, according to the atheist view, all behaviour would be equally moral.


It does mean that there is no need for ethics in atheism, because it rejects all other, existing rules for ethics without proposing an alternative take on ethics. Therefore, from atheism necessarily entails a trivialist take on morality. — alcontali

Atheism does not reject god's laws, if it can even be proven that they are his to begin with. Atheism rejects the idea of gods existing.
Where is written, as you insist on things being written down to be valid, that there HAS TO BE written moral laws or tenets to guide human behavior?
How does the fact that atheist have no written rules mean that we don't have need for them or have none?
And how can you state at the same time that atheists have no laws and then say that according to atheist laws.
It appears to me that you should start to think about what you write because you are continuously contradicting yourself.

If I propose an alternative to islamic laws about wife beating, would you guys pay any attention? of course not because my rules are not written in a pretty little book that is supposed to have some sort of authority. But wait a minute, who authorized your little book anyway? Why is your little book any more authorized to be the guide to human morality than the bible, the Torah, or The Lord of the Rings. Personally I would adopt the last if I had to make a choice about moral guidelines for my life, it is much more realistic.

Furthermore, an atheist who is consistent will not accept God's law while simultaneously rejecting the lawmaking God. — alcontali

Not accepting a god's law and behaving properly according to the society in which one lives are not at all contradictory.

That behaviour does not make sense. Seriously, why would he do that? Why would he put in effort in keeping the self-discipline mandated by a God in whom he does not believe? How would he motivate that to himself? — alcontali

So if you live in a society that is not islamic, you would not respect their ideals, laws and so on? Most atheist can get along with anyone and everyone that also respects their point of view whilst disagreeing with it. An atheist is usually self motivated to get along with the rest of humanity because it would be just plain bloody stupid to antagonize the people around you all of the time.
I have lived and visited in many countries in Europe and the Americas and have never had any problems adapting to their way of life. If you look at the situation in Europe right now you will see that the muslims that go there to take advantage of the freebie system fail drastically to adapt the their new home and spend most of the time trying to live exactly as they did in the old country which they were too happy to escape from.

I am still waiting for an answer to my questions.

I know this creates questions, but what if Christians outlaw pornography and we have all the porn stars making an honest working at Jack in the box! Porn takes some guts but they will have to learn a new set in another profession. I see no way of weeding out the truly lazy in sociey. My "how can psychology become a science" thread presents more difficulties. They say Marx himself studied math and stats in order to predict the communist utopia. He worked on it tiil he died. But it sounds like everyone agrees there is free will in this thread's discussion, so we have to posit compatabilism if we are to say prophets are just really good sociologists\mafhematicians.

There is simply no evidence that atheist morality exists. If it exists, it can be documented. So, where can we read a copy of the documentation?

I'm not really aiming to get into another conversation about atheist morality right now.

I'd like to stick with the social rules/norms issue: Do you not believe in social norms/social rules or etiquette because there is no one God-given source which includes all of them? I'm just curious as to your thoughts on how these rules are justified, if they are at all in your opinion.

I think it is about time that we put the atheist moral rules down in writing so that they cannot be denied in the future.

I think that we should just start by making notes of the rules so that we can categorize them later and them put them in hierarchical order.

I have at least one rule that I would definitely like to see in the book, but I am not sure if it would be right to do it here or in a new thread so that everyone interested in living a moral life under the atheistic code of morality can add their ideas for consideration.

One of the most import laws that we should include is as follows.

One should avoid at all costs that the animals kept in one's house as domestic pets be allowed to defecate on the lawn of the neighbor.

What do you guys think?

One should avoid at all costs that the animals kept in one's house as domestic pets be allowed to defecate on the lawn of the neighbor.

I vote yay on this proposal.

I'd like to propose the urinal rule: If in a public restroom with many urinals available, do not utilize the one directly next to a stranger. Additionally do not strike up a chat with said stranger.

New thread OR continue here? :cool:

Honestly I'm fine continuing here as kind of a joke. Obviously it's just not possible to account for every single rule for every single circumstance. I wasn't quite following your previous discussion with alcontali but we were discussing a similar topic.

So we have 2 rules, where do we go from here?

Atheists unite against the behemoth of the religious sects. Let's make a stand and formalize our institution. Then we can claim equal rights and tax privileges like the rest of them do.

:rofl:

Just thought of something. If we had a separate thread it could be a rival to the Shout Box or the never ending Last Word. :cool:

I know this creates questions, but what if Christians outlaw pornography and we have all the porn stars making an honest working at Jack in the box! — Gregory

OOOOHhhhhhhh nooooo.

How would all of those poor kids that never get to see a woman naked until they are married to one get an education?

A Christian advocate is threatening to sue the NFL for discrimination towards Christians, showing immodesty without warning, and putting souls in danger. All because of the Lopez-Shakira show

A Christian advocate is threatening to sue the NFL for discrimination towards Christians, showing immodesty without warning, and putting souls in danger. All because of the Lopez-Shakira show — Gregory

We need a rule about that for our moral code, let me think.

Thou shall not do evil to those that try to bring happiness to the masses.

That should stop those idiots going to court.

Forbid thy tongue from mentioning those to which there is no evidence of existence.

That should stop them from blabbing about lost souls. Fucks up Santa Clause as well but you cannot eat your cake ad have it at the same time can you.

And, as I pointed out, it is possible to construct an ethical code without referring to religion. — Nobeernolife

If it is possible, then why don't you do it?
And if you did it, then where is it documented?