@Wehraboo Thorne was a badass, the stuff of legend, worthy of articles in Soldier of Fortune. Those were great days, when men were men and fought across continents, career soldiers making history

@Victus Shmmidtt you ever read any of those? Like the Books of Adam and Eve...all kinds of really weird stuff in them

2 Adam/Eve even says there's two heavens

I haven't actually sat down and read them but I have looked up some of the main thesises of those types of books

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/apo/index.htm

Pretty much all of them are at this site

And a bunch of other religious texts, Buddhism etc

I like how it calls them the"Other Apocrypha"

The Catholic books are what non Catholics, including atheists call "apocryphal" but we call "deuterocanonical"

So the "other apocrypha" are rejected by everyone except Tewahedo

I have been recently been in debate with someone about the validity of the Book of Enoch. I reject it and he supports it. Weirdly enough he's a prot.

Weird

Even Catholics reject it

Indeed. Then again, he reads into Jewish and Hebrew Mysticism

Well I think it's all worth reading. Even if it's not inspired, at worst we need to know how to explain it away. Have an answer for everything. But a lot of it definitely should not be believed as inspired, or even historical fact.

I am pretty disappointed in the lack of any really good, consistent arguments against Atheism itself.

Especially on Youtube.

Man, I wished this guy was still around now-a-days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZimD8DKiPTU

Until a god is proven real there wont be

Excpet for the fact that Atheism has no sense of unity except for the universal principle of "everything is relative."

Atheism is, in a sense, one projection of the total philosphy of post-modernism (i.e. everything is relative and all things are subjective).

It doesnt need unity

You do if you want to even have a society to begin with.

It isnt a religion in itself but a rejection of it

Which is why Atheism is always doomed to bring about chaos.

And you dont need religion to have a society

Just set morals

If you need to believe in a god to not rape steal or murder then thats a pretty shit society regardless of whether theres a god or not

"Just set morals."

Again, if everything is relative, why should anyone follow a set of morals?

If you want to have a free society, you need to have religion. If you want to have a society that actually progresses, you need to have religion.

Without religion, you have authoritarianism and, in the end, nothing.

Why should anyone follow a set of morals from a god they dont know exists

Furthermore having religion isnt always the right way as the religions have fought against each other by saying another religion is different.

Or that their belief is false somehow.

On top of that you cant teach religion in school anymore. How do you suppose to go about teaching morals or ethics through religion? Through which religion?

Basic ethics can be taught without religion and works more with the law and how laws are made.

On top of that ethics and morals are already enforced by learning institutions, public office and government jobs.

>why should anyone follow a set of morals form a god they dont know exists

ask that to literally the billions of people throughout history who did the very thing you question

it's a weak point and should be discounted

That anyone with any shred of legitimate real world power would follow them is enough to follow them.

as long as you believe that humans are significant and unique in the vast cosmos, and that you believe we have an innate moral compass, that's good enough for me

i really hate people who say we are no different than animals

who say we are equal to animals

we are superior to animals

Humans > non-humans

My retort was in direct relation to his

though i am very skeptical of atheists, because at least in my own eyes, God's existence is self-evident in everything we know about our universe
but different people will take away different meanings about things

If people can follow morales because god they can follow them to not be a cunt

That morales somehow only become valid if god is watching is a ridiculous assertion.

i believe humans have an innate moral compass, whether or not that derives from God is irrelevant

As do I

if someone does not believe murder or theft, etc is immoral, they are wrong

moral relativism is annoying -- there are certain things that are subjective

I also believe that bad is a matter of placing your needs above the same needs of another just because

but there are very objective moral stances that humans must take

lest we stop being human

Saying morals are relitive is a cop out

At least from how I was taught

there are things that i consider very immoral, but probably won't cause harm to another person, so it can fall under "subjective morality" (though i personally disagree, but i can step away to assess the objectivity of it)

Everyone is equal and should be treated equal

such as premarital sex -- i personally disagree with it (not necessarily for religious reasons, either), and i look at it as immoral

Putting one persons needs above anothers or a groups is immoral

mainly because i see sex as something more than just physical

Yeah

i think being religion enforces morality (if you actually believe in the religion), but i do not think it is necessary for humans to be moral

Same

it strengthens your moral compass (unless you're, like, a satanist lmao)

Amd like I said ethics are already enforced in many places

yes

and one's ethics and morals may not always line up

School government hell even normal civilians are being held to ethical standards outside of religion

Thinking we can be moral without God is incorrect. If you grew up in Western society, your entire moral compass has been shaped by Judeo-Christian values. Especially in the United States. Your idea of don’t rape and murder comes from Judeo-Christian values. Why do you think there’s so much chaos in Europe where Muslims are? They have a worldview that thinks rape and murder is totally okay, as long as it’s against Christians and Jews.

What are morals? What is right and wrong?

What a man says? Who is a man to decide the law? Why does your law supersede mine? Why does a king make laws and not a commoner? Is a policeman just an armed man in a uniform, or does he not carry with him some kind of higher authority?

If men are equal, then there must be something unequal to man, with authority over men.

Because the notion of God is the only thing that gives morals any sort of meaning to them.

Without that, morals are meaningless.

Police are in no way shape or form Gods agents. Laws are created by common people from time to time and put into law if the vote is held. That the only way to hold any power in the world is to be moral is what gives it moral. That the current morales may have derived from religion is meaningless, we can continue to use them without the religion.

If men were God or angels there would be no place for laws, if men were actually governed by God or angels there would be no need for government. Cops derive their power by being found ethically physically and mentally fit for the job in accordance with established norms.

The basics of ethics and morals is when you want for others as you would want for yourself. You can cite that the hordes on filth pouring into the EU are doing just that but they are also running from a country that they had dissaggreed with in the first place not realizing they were the cause or that they had real power to changed it.

No one religion reigns supreme in the world and yet the world mostly holds to the same moral compass. Laws give morals punishable failing points by society. Societal norms decide the standards for those Police and Judges who will uphold the laws. Society votes for the people that make the laws. The learning institution's introduce and practice the morals our society holds at a base level.

Without humans morals have no meaning to them. All God is is a shiny package that was used to gift those morals to the animals we once were.

The quality of state you live in is purely up to the people that live in it not the god they worship. If it was South America would be a better place than the Middle East. But as it stand both are morally corrupt shit holes regardless of the god being worshipped.

If God was all that was needed why did it take so many thousands of years for the morals to finally take hold of them? Its because even according to the religion humans commit actions of their own choosing.

God doesnt make men moral, men with morals make men moral.

Socrates and Plato are philosophers whos morals and teachings we still use today as the baseline for teaching morals and ethics.

They were atheists in a time of many religions and before widespread western religion. They were men of great intelligence which is a key factor in ones ability to be moral. Without intelligence you cannot gauge the detriment of your actions on others. God has nothing to do with it.

Thus morality is relative and subjective just like the term shithole, and therefore the tyranny in California is not unethical or immoral because it's what the people voted for.

An atheist is accountable to no one except himself and is not punished if he is not caught. If he does something immoral but not illegal, then nothing happens. For an atheist who obeys the law, the law itself is his god, yet laws change and are different in different places.

Different people believe different things and so what is right is subjective and different for each person.

Why is it wrong for the communist revolutionary to take your farm? Without God, without someone higher to say what is right or wrong, then the revolutionary could be right if his movement is popular. It has been throughout history at different times and places.

The idea that morality is just "don't do something to someone unless you want them to do it to you" is essentially libertarianism. The best example of a libertarian system is Kowloon Walled City. No government, infested with drugs, gambling, and prostitution.

Laws aren't morals.

That's why we call them "Laws" and not "Codes of morality."

Exactly

But he's equating the two

Says it's right or wrong because people voted on it

A Law is the written rules that govern a society and can, and often do, have no baring on right and wrong. For example, the law requires that you pay your taxes, regardless of the morality of it.

Morals are unwritten laws dictated by society as a whole and are affirmed by common belief, not by the force of the state.

I missed a large conversation

And what if the common belief is different? Such as the middle east, where the common belief is that you can be killed for not being Muslim

In fact Muslims are a massive population worldwide and in about 50 countries are the majority

In Saudi Arabia, the common belief is that a victim of rape should be stoned to death for adultery...

"That the current morales may have derived from religion is meaningless, we can continue to use them without the religion."

Again, the problem is how do you get people to follow them? If there is no higher power to give them any sort of inherent meaning and, in turn, the weight of importance needed to be followed, then why would people follow them? This is why religion us so important in maintaining morality and why there will be no such thing as a "post-religion" society. Society, itself, is an abstract concept built upon belief and that belief is built upon religious devotion and faith.

Islam is a unique case where religion is governance. It is less religion and more ideology.

>Have morals without Religion

Look at Europe, only 3% of the population are Saved Christians. When you remove God and allow man to operate under their own laws, society collapses.