Skip to main content

No God, No Morality?

By Simplex Munditiis ~

Firstly let us ignore the laughable irony and hypocrisy of being told that a loving and let's not forget, omniscient God that would curse the entire human race for two peoples' mistake, then later kill most of that race, amongst a myriad of, shall we say, 'morally questionable' events such as the raping of virgins, is somehow the fount of all morality.

The State of MoralityImage by Bart van Damme via Flickr
China. Egypt. India. The Incan Empire. The Aztec Empire. The Native American tribes. The Inuits. The African tribes. What is one thing all these societies have in common? They all have laws and rules against murder and theft amongst others. None of those societies developed these laws after Christianity spread to their lands, they had these laws for centuries before. Surely these heathens that do not know God and all his morality would have no laws banning what, by some odd coincidence, is also banned by the Ten Commandments? God is not the fountain of all morality. Morality stems from our sapience as well as our primal nature born from when we were still animals swinging from the trees. We recognize that killing someone for no reason is wrong, that it harms the entire group/tribe/society. We recognize that if someone has something, then we have no right to snatch it from them. Our morality is not a divinely-commanded set of rules, the base of our morality is simply 'don't do something that will harm the group', such as killing a member of the group. Later when society developed we refined these basic rules, and built upon them as technology and science evolved. If our morality came from God, then surely God would act to preserve his morality? Surely we cannot go against the morality of a supreme Creator? And yet we can, and daily people do. And anyway, should we really trust the laws and morals of our race to a Dude In The Sky and his Book and religion which are all chock-full of divinely condoned;

Genocide; I needn't call up the Flood here. And there is also all the various peoples the Israelites were commanded by God to go out and kill.

Bribery; Hey, if you join this religion, you can go to a magical place where all your dreams come true, we call it Heaven!

Blackmail; But, if you don't do as we say you won't go to Heaven, and instead you'll go to a horrible torturous place we call Hell.

Rape; God was very clear in his instructions to the Israelites to go kill the men of various local peoples and take the virgins as wives.

Who is the more moral group, those that hold up their little book that condones the above based on the fact that in that book it just happens to state that it's for the greater good; or the group that rejects this book, and instead chooses the morality that is based upon not harming others? Torture; Hell obviously. And also Job, I mean, isn't it simply loving to torture someone who has done nothing and kill of his family all because of a bet?

Incest; According to the Good Book, the entire human race is the product of incest! Not once, with Adam and Eve, but twice; with Noah! And that's not including the rest, such as Lot and his daughters. And every animal is also the product of incest, thanks to Noah and the Flood once more.

Child abuse and murder; Now you might say sending bears to maul small children is completely callous, vile and cruel, but hey, its God, we can't argue against him, he's far too loving. And of course, there's all the children drowned in the flood, killed in Sodom and Gomorrah (let's not pretend the entire two cities were just full of depraved gay men, that's laughable), and of course, all the Egyptian first-borns.

Slavery; Fully condoned and supported by the Bible and God, which even makes sure to tell slaves to enjoy their slavery.

Homophobia; The current debate in California shows just this. God really hates them gays.

Animal cruelty; Even Jesus himself joined in, driving pigs to drown themselves because despite being God incarnate, he just didn't seem omnipotent enough to just make the demons vanish.


Sexism; Remember kids, Adam was formed first, and then Eve, so women are inferior and can do nothing without men, and certainly must not speak against a man.

Cruelty; God really does have quite the vicious streak, from cursing an entire species because of two people's mistakes, to trying to kill people for not being circumcised, to killing almost everyone because of a hissy-fit, to refusing to let his own specially-chosen people go free, just so he can plague Egypt a bit more and kill a few more people.

There's much, much more, which for the sakes of brevity and sanity I shall avoid for now. But really I ask you, who is the more moral group, those that hold up their little book that condones the above based on the fact that in that book it just happens to state that it's for the greater good; or the group that rejects this book, and instead chooses the morality that is based upon not harming others?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro