Many people believe in good and evil because most believe in a high power of being. But for those who don't believe in a higher power of being, what would be the point of good and evil, since the symbolism of both are based on some kind of deity? And that deity provided the foundation of morality that divides good and evil.

So what do you think?






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"Jesus is my Lord and Savior. And if you believe in him, he can be your's too."

This should be good.

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I'm tryna be better off, not better than...

You don't need a deity to have a moral ground.

I don't need a god to determine stealing is wrong.

>You don't need a deity to have a moral ground.

Do you believe that Morality is a human nature concept?


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"Jesus is my Lord and Savior. And if you believe in him, he can be your's too."

>Do you believe that Morality is a human nature concept?

its a concept that exists throughout the animal kingdom
its why they all attack the 'other' moreso than themselves
its also why cannibalism e.g is quite rare
self-destruction is not a trait that ensures survival of any species.

All "human" experiences come from human beings, however, many of them were modeled after nature. The indigenous man discovered morality in a very simple and practical way.

When he over fished the river, people down the river did not have enough to eat, and thus the concept of "take only what you need/share" came into being.

The people up the river did not need a deity to tell them to share, the people down the river came to speak with them, and voila.

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"Jesus is my Lord and Savior. And if you believe in him, he can be your's too."

and as God is an invention of man, I don't believe God set morality. WE set morality, because WE invented God.

I know that's not how you see it, but you asked the opinion of an Atheist, so there you have it...

You know, when facts are presented, but instead of using the intellect that 'god' gave you, you rely on myths & old tales of faith. I mean really, in 2015, post internet, people believe in caveman logic.


pretty lazy & cowardly, which is evil in my book


even jesus stood up to scrutiny, too bad his followers don't. They just quote what a bunch of old white men copied.



Good? Those who live & confront reality in the present without the need of a deity to tell them right from wrong i.e. adults.


Luckily society is starting to finally grow up a little, with so many leaving ALL the faiths in droves

>Many people believe in good and evil because most believe in
>a high power of being.


the reason for the existence of a deity has nothing to do with our moral code
but everything to do with trying to explain of whence we came and of where we are going
that is why almost all creation myths try to explain the reason of our existence and not
the reason why we do what we do - and this also explains why our sense of morality is relative
in a lot of situations what we do within our community is very different from what we do to those not in our communities
it might be ok to steal murder and plunder the other, where it would not at all be acceptable within those we call our kin.
this is why i believe the our sense of morality is an evolutionary trait
we (luckily) figured out early on that our continued existence depends on our obligations toward each other
and this has ensured the survival of ours species as we know it
it also explains why very many different cultures have very many different versions of where we go when we die
and how we segregate those we want to be with us in the after life from those we'd hate to share our afterlife with
xtianity does this very well
but its all a primitive way of explaining the things we grapple with that we do not know
but as we continue to push the boundaries and limitations of our knowledge,
we come to realize that we do not need to depend on these very early and nonsensical thoughts/beliefs
we can do better
and thank god for science because it allows us to do that.

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"Jesus is my Lord and Savior. And if you believe in him, he can be your's too."

im pretty sure im answering the qn.
which is wrong in its premise
you call that a debate?

The OP is designed to work only for a narrow frame of responses to which Case_One has something prepared. If you deviate from that he has to respond with something to deflect what you said without actually making an attempt to comprehend what you're saying and respond accordingly.

This is important. It's why TDW was so often a cut and paste from other authors and why these questions are retreads of posts or themes he and others have done again and again here.

It's also why he'll frequently dissolve into platitudes like I love you, or I'm praying for you, or have a great day, or something likewise empty and completely irrelevant to what you're saying.

Consider that, next time, before responding. Try to give the answer he needs you to give.

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"Jesus is my Lord and Savior. And if you believe in him, he can be your's too."

Your compliance is appreciated.

But you should be seeking God's attention so that he can heal you and help you to overcome your personal anger issues.
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"Jesus is my Lord and Savior. And if you believe in him, he can be your's too."

>But you should be seeking God's attention so that he can heal
>you and help you to overcome your personal anger issues.

You wanted in, I indulged you. Thanks for again underlining my point, your compliance is appreciated.

>But you should be seeking God's attention so that he can heal
>you and help you to overcome your personal anger issues.

i actually think TDS did very well to explain the main objective of your post
some of us chose to respond to the question and not the questioner
despite probably knowing that this would devolve to some immature and judgemental back and forth
like you've just displayed here and that TDS has then just pointed out
its unfortunate that you cant even recognize how well you play this role
such that one can predict exactly how you would react.

>The OP is designed to work only for a narrow frame of
>responses

even when i know that is not what is called for

im just failing to understand why anyone would ask for
an atheist point of view
and when they get it they say the OP is not a debate?
what does that even mean?

>even when i know that is not what is called for
>
>im just failing to understand why anyone would ask for
>an atheist point of view
>and when they get it they say the OP is not a debate?
>what does that even mean?

But if you've spent a lot of time around people preaching on street corners, there's a certain type that likes to lay issues out, thinking they'll trap you. Some of them even work to scripts (that's why those send offs like I love you and God loves you are so pat and common).

If you talk to these people in person you can sometimes catch them out by asking them if they can repeat to you what you've just said, or even if they can show they understand your side of the 'conversation.' They don't know, because the question that implies they want your point of view isn't genuine. That's not to say they're not genuine in their intentions, they're just caught up in a system that has restricted their freedom of thought and want company in the shackles.

Doesn't work like that on a message board, but you'll see the behaviour where it's clear the person is barely reading what you wrote, if at all, because they're too busy thinking about their next reply.

Debates, questions, these are the bait to lure you in for the switcheroo.

I still think good on you for genuinely replying. Someone else might get something out of it. jrocc went through something similar the other day

http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=4&topic_id=12807590&mesg_id=12807590&listing_type=search#12808623

He clearly got frustrated but his side of the discussion was illuminating for me.

So, I'm not sure what your issue is or what you're looking for, but you can have a hand full of chill and relax.
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"Jesus is my Lord and Savior. And if you believe in him, he can be your's too."

>So, I'm not sure what your issue is or what you're looking
>for, but you can have a hand full of chill and relax.

so again, wtf is this chill and relax apropos to?
i gave a very comprehensive response which illustrates my belief (as an atheist, or to be more accurate, apatheiest)
which is your very question
and i completely do not understand your response to my response

so again, i ask, what exactly are you saying?

lol
what were you expecting, simplified yes and no answers? you can't be that obtuse.

that's his whole MO.

If there is no heaven or hell, Believers fear we will devolve into an individualistic kill or be killed world (at least more so than it is today) without a final reward or reckoning, because the only good would be what's good to you.

But is good / evil, determined by God, man or is it is what it is

its much easier to just let the religion do the hard part of teaching them how morality and difficult concepts of social interaction work

If a God exists.

God cannot be omnipresent and everywhere, EXCEPT for these parts and places and people where it does not.

Since I do believe in a higher power, I instead say that there is not "good" and "evil" but rather perception. The battle field of good and evil isn't a war of us vs them, bit rather a battle within in doing what is righteous.

Even in Genesis, God didn't ask "who told you you were evil?" God asked "who told you you were naked?" That shift in perception of that which was always good is what brought doubt to truth, and leveraged all of the evils we perceive now, imho.

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

And you still doing these post.

We get it nigga you been touched by the big fella

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"Jesus is my Lord and Savior. And if you believe in him, he can be your's too."

OP, you sound...insecure.

If you don't care for the question you can leave and I'm still going to love you for that fact.


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"Jesus is my Lord and Savior. And if you believe in him, he can be your's too."

You know damn well asking difficult questions is something you want to do so you keep asking atheists why they aren't convinced by the thing that pays your bills just to make sure you didn't fuck up and invest in the wrong thing.

I won't hold your hand through this.

We know why you're questioning though... just be happy your congregation doesn't know this is your username...

there's good and bad

then there is divine and evil

i don't believe any of them objectively exist though. good and bad have practical subjectiviity based on individual mores whether arrived at through personal experience or passed down culturally through things like religion, customs and governance.

divine and evil are figuratively subjective used to separate oneself from the pattern one experiences practically subjective as good and bad.

but they are all functional concepts for things which do not actually exist.

i'm sure a gut reaction to that is to come up with some horrific example (usually involving a child) and saying something like how can you not consider that bd/evil. and more than likely if horrific enough i'd have to concede that it does indeed sound pretty bad, but that's because i like most cannot escape from the subjective judgement of it.

and don't get me wrong subjective judgement plays an important role in social organization, as there are mores which have to be established to ensure civility. but none of these things make anything objectively good or bad. ithat's why we don't say that goverments tell us what is good and bad, they just tell uts what's legal and illegal (based on a collective subjective evaluation).

where things get tricky is in the figurative use with divine and evil as it purports its objectivity upon the dogmatic. it's kinda like the statistics you used to open this thread. They are infallible and accusatory in even the presenting of an open discussion. Many and most people, automatically making someone like myself with a different opinion, less and least. How can I possibly deny that?

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I think "Evil" is a trickier one. Very loaded word.

They come from within. It's been shown in puppet experiments that children have the capability to think morally before they even have language, so they haven't been taught it by religion and/or children's stories yet, but they instinctively gravitate towards sharers and away from thieves.

Morality is a fluid concept based on a VERY complex interaction between nature and experience though and will be experienced subtly and not-so-subtly differently by everyone... almost all of it can be "unlearnt" and replaced to an extent by teaching, dogma and experience... most religions, to me, are an attempt to attach an aggregation of individual morality to an attractive narrative in order to maintain a large, stable society (much like the Law, Constitution etc do today).

Things that benefit the group form the basis of "good", things that don't benefit the group form the basis for "evil", and because actual survival was involved with early hominid societies sometimes selfish actions could actually lead to the long term survival of the group so it isn't necessarily a case where "altruism" is the be all end all for what it considered to be good. For instance, "bravery", something that we all think of as a beneficial trait is in many ways selfish, but because it has the capacity to bring benefits to the group as a whole it was a net good where as "greed" would not in almost all instances.


"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts..." -The Bard

question to answer with a Christian, because God ordered the killing of thousands
of folks. If I point that out, you're programmed to quote the book of Isaiah on some
"God's thoughts and ways are higher than ours so it's about the end result" or something along those lines.
When you introduce that kind of thinking, either of us can say that everything is good or bad,
because it's something that God or the Universe allowed to happen... or it was necessary
in the grander scheme of things which we don't yet understand, or what have you.

In the bible, God ordered killing, so is killing "evil" or "bad"? Is it only "good" when one
proclaims to be led by God to do such a thing?
Is it cool to give up ya daughters to be raped by God's angels?
This is, precisely, where religion causes atrocious acts and gotdamn nutcases.
That "God said do it, so it's good" mentality.
If good is determined by the "God" in some of these holy books, then "mufucka
(we) fucked up, huh?" (c)Rev X