The biggest and most dangerous difference is that too many Christians believe it is their moral duty to stop other people from being immoral. And before all you theists get your panties in a bunch I know that not ALL so called Christians go on crusades but you can't ignore the fact that gay marriage and other similar morality issues cause those Christians to come out of the woodwork. And a majority of Christians seem to believe they have a moral obligation to "save" me. 

Also I will concede that some groups of atheists attempt to force their morality onto others such as the enviro wackos but atheists as a group tend to be far more tolerant of moral codes different from theirs.

Theism isn't the greatest evil facing mankind but is  certainly one of them. While some atheists take a more proactive role in trying to make Christians rational most of us are quite tolerant and only respond when our noses are forced into religion. Personally I don't see a point in going out of my way to make people rational, it is usually a waste of time. I'm not aware of any large sect of atheists trying to coerce or pressure people into a group to push their views onto them. I have had several Christians publicly pressure me into attending church services, or pray, or have made comments like "I will pray that you find god" blah blah blah like I have an illness etc. Atheists are becoming more vocal in recent years but I am not aware of any proactive movement to convert people to atheism. We might make fun of theists sometimes but for the most of us don't care what you think if you leave us alone. The problem arises when theists refuse to leave us alone. "Believe in God? We can fix that" really only applies to those theists that come here for honest intellectual discussion and are willing to challenge their own beliefs. Most atheists have attended church at some point and many have read the bible. Some even know the bible better than most Christians, but very few Christians are willing to entertain a rational conversation challenging their beliefs without resorting to "Your going to hell". Or looking at you like some kind of alien. I have even had people who are very close to me say some pretty horrible things about whats going to happen to me because of my beliefs. If there is a God and he is going to send me to Hell for not believing in him I'm not on his side anyway. I hate vain self-aggrandizing dictators.

Again I will emphasize that not ALL Christians are that way. There are even a few who have plunged into our little corner of the net and have had serious discussions. I'm just making statements about what I have experienced in my life. Take it for what its worth, anecdotal evidence.  

Except that science doesn't have anything to say about ethical issues. But it's certainly good at explaining why they are, and why they are what they are. None of these stem from the supernatural, but very natural biology.

"Right. I said that."
Right. So did I.
"I'm not sure what this means."
That is apparent. I don't know why, it's remarkably simple. For your information, emotion and self preservation are the keystones of morality. There is every scientific reason to use them. You give me a moral that doesn't stem from emotion and self preservation, and I'll show you that it isn't a moral to one who doesn't believe in fairy tales.

an individual who risk his own life and his families life to hide a jewish family during the holocaust. 

Now, explain the self-preservation part for me?

Regarding the rest of your strange position, do you really believe there is no way to test the effects of murder, theft, and rape? How ridiculous.

There is absolutely no purely logical connection between "helping others" and "increasing the likelihood of being helped yourself".  Likewise, there really is no purely logical connection between "right and wrong" and "self-preservation".  You are making empirical statements.   

These may only show why we may do a certain action.  But it does not tell us whether or not a certain action is right or wrong.

Moreover, your model does not explain kindness towards strangers.  If I help someone whom I may never see again, how does that increase the likelihood that someone will help me? 

Taken in isolation, there is no 'logical' connection between "helping others" and "increasing the likelihood of being helped yourself", but adding in the knowledge that, as a social species, we all tend to remember past actions of other members of our group towards us, and instinctively assume that others will similarly remember our actions to them. This provides the connection. This behavior has been scientifically demonstrated in both humans and other social animals.

Empathy helps to explain kindness toward strangers - the positive emotional reward system which encourages us to behave positively towards members of our group can flow over into our attitude to strangers. In any case, if a stranger shows no indication to be aggressive toward us, behaving positively toward them will encourage positive response to us. We cannot necessarily be sure we will never meet them again, and even if we don't, we may well increase our positive points within our group.

This has been studies extensively in Game Theory, and the concept of  Evolutionary Stable Strategies. This is about what are the best strategies to decide how to respond  to and treat others in the long term, in terms of the best outcome for the group.

The most consistently successful strategy is "Tit for Tat", best described by four 'rules':

1. Never be the first to defect 
2. Retaliate only after your partner has defected 
3. Be prepared to forgive after carrying out just one act of retaliation 
4. Adopt this strategy only if the probability of meeting the same player again exceeds 2/3.

So Science has studied and revealed more insights into this business of the 'best' way to interact with others far more thoroughly than you have. This approach provides a truly objective approach to developing ethical guidelines, as against the ultimately arbitrary religious approach of enshrining a mix of normal empathic social responses and primitive tribal taboos into a holy book.

As to the ideas of 'right' and 'wrong', they are matters of opinion and personal judgement.

EDIT:

The impression may be that these are conscious calculations, but this is normally not true. As thinking entities, we have brought such ideas into our conscious minds, but that is not necessary for such 'strategies' to evolve even among much more primitive life-forms.

The sub-conscious aspect explains how such ideas as 'right' and 'wrong' arise - they are the labels which we apply to the 'instinctive' and/or intuitive positive and negative reactions which various ideas and observed behaviors trigger in us.

I never said that there was no connection.  I'm saying that there is no purely logical connection, whether or not you take the statement in isolation.  All you are giving me are empirical truths which do nothing other than explain how someone may derive their moral knowledge, but says absolutely nothing about whether or not something is right or wrong.

So do you agree that "By helping others, you increase the likely hood of being helped yourself in times of need" does not account for kindness towards strangers?

What do you mean "Science"?  My understanding was that science is a field of study and not something that researches things.  Did you mean that certain scientists have researched this more than me? 

It really doesn't matter.  We do not need your scientists or "Game Theory" in order to acquire moral knowledge anymore than you need to believe in God in order to employ metaphysical concepts such as logic or morals.  This is a classic example of the noetic effect of sin.

So is it a matter of opinion that the Holocaust was wrong?

Is it a matter of opinion that it is wrong to violently rape a small child?

So here are some points of fact:

(1) You put forth an argument and did not offer any justification or sources whatsoever, and this was even before Bob responded.

(2) You are essentially relying on other people (who are apparently much smarter than you) to fight your battles and pretending that you are doing so because it is not worth your time, which is indirectly insulting Bob as you are essentially saying that your time is more valuable than his.

(3) You continue to launch ad hominem attacks and still do not offer any justification except by citing someone who just wrote a response, which is essentially an appeal to a second-hand authority on scientific matters.

You are hilarious.

Oh, so now we are deferring to "common sense" to justify our views?  Are you aware that in most of the world, it is "common sense" that God exists?  I can dig up the statistics for you if you want.

LOL.  So you are limited?  Are you admitting that you do not know what you are talking about? 

You are the one who said that my post was so ridiculous that you didn't even want to respond to it.  It wasn't worthy of your response, due to its silliness.  Apparently, it only warranted the response of someone with less worth than you, I presume?

It is totally irrelevant to anything that there is no 'purely logical connection' between those statements. Empirical knowledge is essential to understand actual rather than purely hypothetical or deductive truths about reality.

I was not trying to define 'right' and 'wrong' in that part of my post.

So your response here amounts to a pure non-sequitur/

No. That is an absurdly simplistic comment on what I said.

It is both, and more - it is a set of methods of research and testing and verification of observations and theories, to get progressively more accurate and complete descriptions of all entities and processes and interactions between entities, from the sub-atomic to the cosmological, from simple 'matter' to conscious life.

You obviously have not done any worthwhile research into this subject, judging by your comments.

I was not saying we get our basic moral knowledge from Science and game theory, but it reveals insights into why we tend to have the morals we have, where they come from, and why even non-human animals display some of the same patterns of behavior and reaction to others, such as a basic sense of 'fairness'.

Ultimately, yes. However, the advantages of co-operation and mutual assistance in a social group over violent and destructive behavior have lead to us having a 'built-in' negative reaction against such behavior, as well as the feeling of empathy, which helps drive such cooperative behavior. This is why personal opinions and judgement are normally against such behavior as you describe, since they are very strongly influenced by such instinctive reactions.

Since 'right' and 'wrong' really only make sense in a social context, social consensus is very important in determining what is 'should' be classified as right or wrong.

If, somehow, the vast majority of individuals in a society were accepting of actions which we find repugnant, including the 'victims', and the behavior did not lead to wholesale death and destruction of the society, then we would have no 'right' to label them 'wrong', any more than we should regard the common behavior of a female spider in killing and eating the male after mating as 'wrong'.

'Rape' is by definition 'wrong', otherwise it would be described merely as 'having sex'. I note in passing that 'rape' is not explicitly condemned in the Bible, AFAIK. It certainly isn't even in the Ten Commandments'.

'Violent' may or may not be problematic, depending on the attitudes of the individuals - some people appear to get excited by a degree of 'violence' in sexual activities. 

It is generally accepted that violence of any kind against children is 'wrong', ie damaging to the victims and to society in general.

The holocaust was strongly influenced by attitudes of one religion against another, so it is arguably an example of the negative effects that religious attitudes can have in either overcoming our more positive instincts and/or playing up our more negative impulses.

Our tendencies to violence, which might be argued counter the the claim of natural positive ethics, are inappropriate triggering of competitive or defensive behavior which are necessary in other circumstances. Natural selection will tend to keep the balance of competitive/cooperative/violent roughly optimal. 

Unfortunately, we now live in societies very different in many ways to that which we evolved in, so our natural reactions are more likely than once they would have been to be inappropriate, ie 'wrong'.

Belief does not equate to common sense.
Yes, I'm posting with a PS3, which has limitations on characters, formatting, and windows. Nice try though. Oh wait.... no it wasn't.
Keep making a fool of yourself though, it pleases me.

Yea, that's pretty simple, but utterly stupid. The various German families who risked their lives to hide their Jewish neighbors, didn't do so because they thought to themselves that by helping them, they would increase the likely-hood of being helped in a time of need. 

My father didn't feed the homeless, nor did I volunteer at a shelter, because of a weird belief in karma, that somehow feeding a bum, was going to garner me some magical help in a time of need, by doing so. 

The German families who hid Jewish strangers, didn't do so for the sake of self-preservation, in fact they acted contrary to that. The Germans who refused to aid their Jewish neighbors, did so out of self-preservation, to safeguard their lives. 

It doesn't even follow in any logic or coherent sense, that they acted as they did, because they though some mysterious sort of help would arrive when they were in need as well.

You're just trying to pass off religious nonsense, perhaps you should learn to get a clue. 

Uhm, yea, you should probably learn to speak for yourself. And when you finally learn how to respond to a post let me know.

Vastet, while there are quite a few intelligent atheist in this forum, such as Bob Spence, or Nigelthebold, PaultheSkeptic, you are not one of them, you belong to the ranks of the MattShizles, and Brian78, you're more of their puppet, or their mascot. It's why you're never too far from giving them head, and no one ever seems to be returning you the favor.

I may be offensive, I may get under a few people skins, but I doubt anyone other than yourself would care to imply that I'm an idiot, or that their intellectual capacity is greater than mine. 

If Bob Spence were to claim that my intelligence barely surpasses that of a high schooler, I just might take that seriously, but hearing you do so, is rather funny, like a Hovind calling Dawkins an idiot.

It is absolutely relevant.  It forces us to focus on the fact that that connection you make between concepts is one that is justified on contingent grounds and does not amount to any sort of rational basis for justifying absolute ought statements.

"I read a lot of philosophy a long time ago, and I still have a few 'heroes', such as Bertrand Russell, David Hume, and Daniel Dennett."

Your "hero" David Hume disagrees with you:

"It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. Let the course of things be allowed hitherto ever so regular; that alone, without some new argument or inference, proves not that, for the future, it will continue so. In vain do you pretend to have learned the nature of bodies from your past experience. Their secret nature, and consequently all their effects and influence, may change, without any change in their sensible qualities. This happens sometimes, and with regard to some objects: Why may it not happen always, and with regard to all objects?"

http://18th.eserver.org/hume-enquiry.html

Which is all irrelevant to the question of why we ought to do A instead of B.

I'll respond to the rest of your post later.

Well, he was responding to a comment of vastets, which began with a claim that individuals who risked their lives to hide jewish families during the holocaust did so, because of self-preservation, which Vastet claimed was "that it increase the likelihood of being helped yourself. He made the connection, and it was totally bogus. 

They did it out of sheer sense of emotionalism, when asked as to why they did what they did, the response would akin to "it was the right thing to do, in and of itself." (as suggested by Michael Gazzinger in "Human",) They did it out of their sheer sense of compassion and empathy, not out of any twisted notion of self-preservation. 

If self-preservation was a factor, they wouldn't of risked their lives doing what they did, for strangers. 

So then by your logic, if people believe it's a good idea to jump off a bridge, it must be common sense. How ridiculous. Look up the definitions for sense and belief, come back and try again.
Also, don't be jealous that I have a PS3. It just adds to your self ownage.

"Well, he was responding to a comment of vastets, which began with a claim that individuals who risked their lives to hide jewish families during the holocaust did so, because of self-preservation, which Vastet claimed was "that it increase the likelihood of being helped yourself. He made the connection, and it was totally bogus"

Yet another straw man. If you'd bothered to read, you'd see I said self preservation AND emotion. But you're just an idiot.

Uhm here's your question: "You give me a moral that doesn't stem from emotion and self preservation,  and I'll show you that it isn't a moral to one who doesn't believe in fairy tales."

The "and" is the important word here. 

Uhm go back to post 62, and here I gave you a "moral" that involves emotion but doesn't involve self-preservation, in fact I said the "moral" stands contrary to it:

The Twelve: "an individual who risk his own life and his families life to hide a jewish family during the holocaust. 

Now, explain the self-preservation part for me?"

To which you responded: "So simple. By helping others, you increase the likely hood of being helped yourself in times of need."

Do you understand yet what's being discussed? Yes you said self preservation AND emotion, and it was the self-preservation part that I took issue with. 

To break it down for you more child-like, in hopes that this time around you get.

If I were to say that all morals are based on emotions and a belief in fairies, and challenge you to find one "moral" that doesn't involve "emotions and a belief in fairies", and then you go and give me a moral that involves one of the factors (emotions) but not the other (belief in fairies,) then my claim as to what morality is composed of has been refuted.. 

I'm not arguing the emotion part, nor would you in the example above, you'd take gripes with the fairy bit, as i took gripes with the "self-preservation" bit.

Then would the Holocaust and rape stop being wrong as soon as our instinctive reactions became favorable to such instances?

And if two societies hold two mutually exclusive moral positions on an issue, how do we determine which one is correct?  They cannot both be right (law of excluded middle).

Now you are randomly adding qualifiers to your statements. 

Why should it matter if the victims were accepting of certain actions?  What does that have to do with what you were saying before?  Why not just let the majority rule? 

What does "wholesale death and destruction of society" have to do with anything?  

You went from explaining where morals come from (i.e. our "built-in" negative reactions, which actually is falsified by a number of serial killers still living today) to just stating that the consent of victims and preservation of society makes certain things okay.  You've introduced premises into the argument which have no connection to the other premises that you've made, which means that you are just assuming them to be true.

Umm, no it is not.  "Rape" is refers to nothing more than forcing someone to have sex with you.  It may also be defined as "unlawful compulsion", but the law has nothing to do with right or wrong.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rape

You cannot read the Bible like one of your science books.  The Gospel is not a step by step treatise on salvation.  It requires critical thinking, i.e. the very definition of "exegesis".  It isn't even just one book.  It is 66 books.  You have to understand it in that context, along with history and tradition.  Knowledge, in this case, is cumulative.  Not singular. 

But I can already tell that your mechanical view of the world doesn't permit you to think critically.  

TMI.

It is also "generally accepted" that God exists.

This is a blatant oversimplification of history.  I could answer this in many paragraphs, but it has nothing to do with our discussion.

Two distinctions you're missing: first, between "philosophic traditions" and "people," and second, between "true" and "not obviously false." 

You mention people above, but I referred specifically to philosophic traditions. The mob shouldn't command intellectual respect, but a philosophic tradition should. If dozens of the greatest minds in history agreed that jumping off a bridge was a good thing, you would probably think "hmm, maybe it's not so obvious that jumping off a bridge is bad" or "hmm, maybe I should see what convinced these geniuses that jumping off a bridge was a good thing before forming an opinion" (which implicitly admits that it is not obvious what position one ought to take). I'm not saying you would - or should - conclude that it's true that jumping off of a bridge is good. I am saying that in that situation you would and should conclude that it's not obviously false that jumping off of a bridge is good.

In reality, though, you're never going to get whole traditions of great thinkers arguing that people should jump off of a bridge (or arguing for any other equally stupid position). If lots of really smart people think something, there's probably an interesting argument for it - which is why, when you see that lots of smart people think that we shouldn't always act based upon emotion and self-preservation, you should conclude that it is not "obvious" that we should always act based upon emotion and self-preservation.

How do you know that? 

You continually serve as an example for why a scientist should never leave the laboratory.  Your understanding of Christian theology is practically non-existent. God does not "specify" a set of rules.  Goodness is not something that God brought into existence.  He did not sit down and decide to write a series of prescriptive laws.  In fact, a Christian will agree with you that ethical decisions are for the most part situational and require critical thinking (which is highly unfortunate for you, but I digress).  The Christian position is simply that good and evil exist.  Goodness is a manifestation of God, anything distinct from that is evil. If you are more interested in the doctrine of divine simplicity, then read up:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-simplicity/

Once again, are you equating right and wrong with personal feelings?

After all, I could find a lot of people who are absolutely disgusted by the idea of homosexuality.  Under your worldview, that would mean that homosexuality is inherently wicked, because it instinctively leads to feelings of disgust.

If you are going to say that these feelings were mistakenly instilled into the subjects, then that is just special pleading.  You simply apply these physical factors in domains that you are already comfortable with and attempt to attach a "scientific basis" to your pre-existing moral framework.

Moreover, I would be highly interested to know how your experiment would work.  Would we attach millions of people to machines and analyze their positive feelings?

Which has nothing to do with the objective existence of absolute morals.

When did I say that anything subject to human judgment is disavowed automatically?  I would simply endorse the judgment that is most rationally justified and you are being highly irrational right now.

Why?  Because you say so?  You previously claimed that morals are subjective and now you are trying to offer me some objective basis to an ought statement.

I could perfectly conceive of a species which does not "value" survival and continues to exist.

They are random.  You were initially discussing how we may obtain our morals and you went from that to, "We must value survival, we must be fair to victims, etc."  Are morals subjective or are they not? 

If you are going to tell me what I should and should not do, then you need to offer me a rational justification.  All you have offered me so far is that I should rely on my instinctive feelings, which means that the ethics of the gay bashers are as legitimate as the ethics of the liberals.  Likewise, it would mean that the ethics of the sadist are as legitimate as the ethics of the traditionalists.

Umm, yes.  You are claiming a connection between personal feelings and moral actions and I'm demonstrating to you that the connection IS NOT THERE.  All I have to find is a few examples to the contrary and your point is falsified.  By simply disregarding the examples, you rely on an ad hoc fallacy of automatically repudiating anything that is contrary to the point that you've made.

One could make all kinds of arguments about what is going to best contribute to the survival of the species.  I could argue that we ought to execute any individuals who are disabled because they are costing millions of tax dollars to regular people, due to the financial requirements of giving them social insurance, homes, health insurance.  And these people are not contributing to society at all, that is, they do not work, write books, poetry, music, art, etc.  They are just sitting in their group homes costing us money, so we ought to execute them all.  Then our species will advance because we will have weeded out the weak and have excess financial resources to boot.  Under your ethical framework, this is permissible.

It's not my opinion.  It's in the dictionary.  Why are you the authority on what words mean?

Why?  Because you say it is? 

You are the one who said that morality is subjective, so you really have no business judging the ethics of the Bible (especially when one considers that you probably have never even read it).

But it has nothing to do with truth, just as the communitative belief in God does not necessitate that God does in fact exist.

I asked you if the wrongness of the Holocaust was subjective and you digressed into some argument about how it was caused by religion.

If you want to stray off topic, I can point out the fact that motivation to stop the Holocaust had very little to do with proliferation of the species or inner feelings.  I would imagine that the inner feelings associated with the prospect of leaving one's family to possibly die in another country are not too positive.  For most of the soldiers who enlisted without even waiting to be drafted, it had to do with the recognition that human life has a value and a sanctity that is other-worldly and that mass genocide is absolutely wrong, not just in anyone's opinion, but in fact.  They did not adopt your point of view to say that Hitler's morality was just as valid as anyone else's.

"I actually haven't said that. Nor have I made any points that require it."

You haven't implicitly stated that, no. But I was able to infer that from your posts. If you don't hold to the idea that there are moral absolutes, then I apologise.

Edit: While my above statement remains true, I have concluded that due to the high numbers of participating theists in this thread it has become more confusing than I am used to in seperating you from each other. This has been very much compounded by my inability to quote each of you as I go so I still have room to respond, something I'm still getting used to.

But if it is a defense or argument that will be utilised by your opposition, it is quite valid to attack it. In point of fact, it is quite related to the OP, as it IS a critical difference between the average atheist and the average christian.