Torture and Atheist Morality

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Leo Volont, Feb 24, 2008.

  1. Leo Volont Registered Senior Member

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    Atheists continuously insist that they have a sense of Morality. Well, yes, a sense. They remember the difference between good and evil. However, there is nothing outside of law and peer pressure that could enforce this sense of morality into any action that could inconvenience an Atheist. They are willing to do good as long as it is conducive to their self interest, but, equally, they are willing to do evil also, if it is in their self interest and if they can keep it hushed up. Cheating on taxes, cheating on tests, cheating on their wives. Competition in the workplace – screwing people over on the excuse that the rules are the same for everybody – not finding a problem with making real life into some kind of a child’s game.

    But sometimes they don’t even bother to keep it secret. Here we have America’s and Britain’s advocacy for Torture. They KNOW it is wrong. But it is so darn in their Self Interest to do it. Well, not really in their self interest if they look at all the calculations involved. But for those in the Intelligence Community, all the nasty tools of the Inquisition come out in a celebration of useful Barbarism.

    Of course, on the political side, there are a great many Protestants that are actively advocating for Torture, but in their regards, they see it as just one more Sin from which their Salvation exempts them. It needs to be remembered, that in the War against God and Religion, it was not the Atheists who had fired the first shot, but the Protestants, and largely so that they could assert a more all inclusive Salvation when the Catholic Church had been insisting, against Paulist Doctrines, for a broader spectrum of social moralities, which isn’t to say that the Paulist Bishops were willing to apply Paulist Salvation Doctrines to themselves for the benefit of their own corruptions. The Protestants did not need nor want Morality. They substituted Law for Morality, as Law could be selectively applied. The whole point of Democracy is to allow certain powerful individuals to place a Government from whose laws they can be personally exempted or from which they can personally profit.

    Decades ago some atheists in the scientific community decided to take cover beneath a rather vague definition of God, more or less defining their ‘God’ as one in the same as the Universe itself… given such a loose definition they could say to the Redneck Inquisitions “I believe in ‘God’ so leave me alone”. Einstein was a famous instance of this – being one of the ‘nice’ scientists who believed in God… just don’t ask any question. But certain philosophers pointed out that a God with no personality and indisposed to be Providential would really be as good as no God at all. So it is with Morality and a God of Salvation. If this God has suddenly decided to suspend Morality by granting a universal dispensation against the imposition of any Moral Criteria, then God becomes Morally Useless, or the Religion of that God becomes morally useless. Yes, Protestants make a great deal of noise about supporting certain social mores with the weight of an imposed Morality, but it seems to be a great deal in the order of old fat ladies who call for sexual restraint – it effectively applies to other people’s actions and never to their own.

    Likewise, with Atheists and Protestants in their regards for Torture, in both giving it and receiving it. Many German and Japanese Intelligence Officers and Politicians had been hanged by American and British prosecutors for having had tortured American and British troops. Atheists and Protestants are willing to aim their Moral Sense outward when they themselves can support themselves in the roll of the Victim… when the Self Interest of Morality is on their own side, when the restraints of Morality are intended only to hold back the other guy. It reminds me of how the British and the American’s had a Holocaust going of their own, firebombing civilian population centers in both Europe and Japan… even the first Nuclear Bombs were not aimed against military targets but were set to incinerate women and children. Also, the British and American’s enforced a Food Embargo against Europe, again aimed against the Civilian Populations, and it is a little known fact that nearly every ‘Concentration Camp’ started out as Food Rationing Centers, and those who starved there were not killed by Adolf Hitler but by the American and the British Food Embargos. But the War Crimes Trials did not even bother to discuss these issues. After all, having ordered the deaths of millions of innocent people themselves, would Harry Truman or Winston Churchill really have minded being hung themselves. With so many others dead, why was it special for them to survive, especially in the face of so many outrages against Civilized Standards of Behavior. But here again we are discussing the Moralities of Atheists and Protestants which effectively are not moralities at all.
     
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  3. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    isnt that a rather silly idea?

    why do we have university courses that teach practical ethics in all sorts of fields from medical all the way to the law.

    There are intire libaries that are filled with litricture on ethics and morality
    TRUE ethics rather than that "thou shall not kill unless they are a fag and then tho shall beat them to a bloody pulp"
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2008
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  5. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    I didn't read the OP, because it didn't make a point in the first 2 sentences. But anyway, it is a gray matter and not black and white. There is good torture and bad torture.

    The problem is not the usage itself, but the application...
     
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  7. Pinocchio's Hoof Pay the Devil, or else.......£ Registered Senior Member

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    TUM PODEM EXTULIT HORRIDULUM.

    You have an anti-atheism problem,
     
  8. ashura the Old Right Registered Senior Member

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    The two possibilities with the Divine Command Theory, and why they're both unsatisfactory (obvious thanks to the Euthyphro Dilemma):

    1. Good things are good because God likes them. But then, good becomes very arbitrary. Anything that God happens to like at the moment can be considered good, and anything that he happens to dislike at the moment can be considered sinful. If tomorrow God liked the concept of humans murdering other humans, then would you be willing to say that murder is good?

    2. Other possibility is that God likes good things because they're good. However, that removes the source of goodness from God and places it elsewhere. This makes morality independent of God, and that contradicts the entire notion of morality coming from God.

    This dilemma has been around for a long long time and it's easy to see why many wouldn't be satisfied with the Divine Command theory after they've given it a bit of thought. Of course the easy answer would simply to believe that morality came from humanity and humanity alone, but that doesn't seem to jive well with some theists. :shrug:

    Like Asguard already mentioned, practical ethics tends to render this divine stuff moot.
     
  9. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    True ethics come from 2 sorces in combination

    1) the in built capacity for empathy
    2) the desire for social cohesian

    In combination these lead to ethics, nothing to do with imaginary creatures
    As for ethical decision making (ie is it more ethical to take course a or course b) in most people these decisions are made on gut instint based on there own empathy. Some people however CAN use ethical principles (like for instance principle based ethics which is the system i subscribe to as well as most of the nursing proffession) to make there decisions

    God and religion was invented to give these principles to a culture that was just developing and didnt have any better system of social cohesian to fall back on. We are grown up enough now to move past the fairy tales
     
  10. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    You can lie all you want to about that but we all know today that there were manufacturing plants in both of those cities and were military targets because of those manufacturing plants that help supply the Japanese war effort. For you to state this blatant lie only shows your ignorance of what the truth is.

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  11. John99 Banned Banned

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    Asguard, perhaps you should do a little more research. Start with Khmer Rouge.
     
  12. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    I sugest you start with a book called "ethics and law for the health proffessional" i will find the author tomorow maybe

    It has a really good break down of different systems of ethics

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    Of all of them i try to follow the principle based aproch because 1) its so well suited for the health care industry and 2) it slides well into the rest of life

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  13. sowhatifit'sdark Valued Senior Member

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  14. tresbien Banned Banned

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    The solution lies in the fact u need to strike a balance between the meterialism and spirituality.

    Allah says:
    Verily, in the remembrance of Allah hearts find rest.

    Allah says:
    - Do not strain your eyes in longing for the things that we have given to some groups of them to enjoy, the splendor of the life of this world, through which we test them. But the provision of your Lord is better and more lasting.

    Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) said: “If there are three of you, do not two of you talk secretly to one another to the exclusion of the third until you mix with other people, because you may hurt his feelings.”

    God has said:

    “But whoever turns away from the Quran,[1] he will have a hard life, and We will raise him up blind on the Day of Judgment.” (Quran 20:124)

    Whoever does right, whether male or female, and is a believer, We will make him live a good life, and We will award them their reward for the best of what they used to do. (Quran, 16:97)
     
    Last edited: Feb 24, 2008
  15. sowhatifit'sdark Valued Senior Member

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    Poor Hitler. He just meant to keep those Jews near the ovens so he could control their food intake, but the Allies forced his hand. And then the Nazis had all these Jews and Gypsies etc. killed to make their deaths less painful. It is a coincidence that a political party with near absolute power that built its platform comparing Jews to rodents - and we know how people deal with rodents - and that moved all these Jews to concentration camps -those that were not gassed in trucks or shot and tossed in mass graves immediately - where they were systematically killed. Poor Hitler. Yes, he hated Jews and with his fellow Nazis, after dehumanizing them for over decade, transported them to where they were all killed by German soldiers, but it is really the Allies fault.

    There is a reason this is a little known fact. It is because it is a poorly substantiated hallucination.
     
  16. sowhatifit'sdark Valued Senior Member

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    Sure get some sexism in while you're at it. As everyone knows restrictive sexual morals have come from men, from Popes and Imams, priests and pastors. And male police and mostly male mobs have enforced this with violence. But blame your problems on 'old fat ladies' if it makes the source of the problem seem to be far away from you. Who am I to get in the way of your condemning finger and purity?
     
  17. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Self interest is an over riding concern in most humans, atheism just makes it easier and guiltless. I'd say you would find people who support torture for various reasons in all kinds of groups.
     
  18. sowhatifit'sdark Valued Senior Member

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    The first sentence is a hypothesis that sounds logical and may or may not be. Oddly enough most of the atheists I know seem as prone to feeling guilty as anyone else.

    And religious people have generally managed to even include torture in their standard practices.

    Possibly atheists feel less guilt, so they have less obstacles to torture. I don't know. Possibly religious people can feel more justified by their religions to be violent - torture being a subset of violence. I don't know about this either.
     
  19. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The people promoting torture in the US are overwhelmingly fundamentalist Christians. Catholics have an historical affinity for torture. I don't see how they are any more moral than an atheist, who is good simply to be good, not to avoid torture.

    I'm an atheist, and I don't cheat on my taxes, I don't screw people over at work, I am compassionate and good towards my fellow man, because I know we are all we have. There's no divinity out there to look out for our society, it's just you and me.
     
  20. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    S.A.M. i find that highly offencive. Just because someone is an athiast doesnt remove there conciouse. Guilt is not a thesit exclusive emotion and nither is empathy. In fact i would say ATHIASTS are more likly to actually empathise with someone than theists based on the fact that an athiast can actually see things from a gay persons perspective where as a THEIST just sees an imaginary 2 headed monster
     
  21. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Well if we are judging all theists by the fundies, I am judging all atheists by the militants.

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  22. scorpius a realist Valued Senior Member

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    thats my feeling exactly,and Im atheist,whats it with these religious nuts making atheists into some kind of monsters without compassion? :shrug:

    http://www.atheists.org/Atheism/ethics.html
     
  23. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Probably the last 60 years of mayhem
     

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