Animal cruelty is another example. To one person killing an animal seems perfectly natural, to another it seems unethical and morally wrong.

If wrongness is anything that willfully harms another human being, isn't the reason because it's detrimental to society and to the species as a whole? No group of animals would tolerate another animal killing its own members, thus cooperation of the species is good while killing is bad. But then the reason for not killing is merely a biological function of survival. Violating that need for survival creates a feeling of wrongness. Thus right and wrong are only strong emotional states.

This ethical relativism still feels wrong, but does a positive or negative feeling mean anything?  Are there morals, or are morals subjective and agreed upon?   

I can only ask this as a loaded and unanswerable question, making the question worthless:  Would there be more murderers in an atheist society?   No, because people naturally feel empathy for each other- but would there be a greater number of atheists who do not feel empathy for each other, compared to today?  Does contemporary religion prevent a greater number of murders compared to a society with no religious ethics?  Say you live in an impoverished country where survival of the fittest is the most important, and the easiest way to survive is to be unethical.  If a society of nonreligious people is more ethically relative, or views actions as selfish or unselfish, or is selfishly utilitarian to maximize the survival of an individual with little regard for others, then wouldn't religion prevent most of that, acting as a buffer that keeps people from being selfish?  The selfishness of crime is not seen as just "it's only the police and the laws that I'm disobeying" but "it's eternal God who I'm disobeying." 

I'd like to see some criminal statistics.  I've heard most American criminals are Christian.  I'm wondering about other countries.  I'm wondering if crime is mostly due to lack of religious ethics or societal ethics.  Does having religious ethics and societal ethics decrease the chance of crime compared to someone with only societal ethics? 

All of these questions assume too much, so statistics would be more helpful in judging the "atheists commit more crimes" claim, though I'm asking "do immoral/unethical atheists commit more crimes than immoral/unethical religious people?"  Which isn't something you can really verify.    

 

Unfortunately, I can't give you the statistics myself, but I've heard a commonly referenced statistic that the most atheistic societies on the planet are also the ones with the lowest crime rate. I've heard seems that religious belief and criminal activity are correlated pretty highly on a large scale.

Of course, there are a lot of confounders here - the most atheistic societies are also the most developed (with the exception of the u.s.) and developed countries might just naturally have a lower crime rate. The most atheistic societies also have the highest standards of living, the best medical care and education and so on (again, with the exception of the u.s.) all of which might also reduce crime rates. The united states stands as a shining counterexample here, though - great doctors (and a crappy medical system), great educators (and a worthless educational system), the highest standards of living for the wealthy (and very low standards of living for the impoverished), the highest rate of religious adherence among first-world countries (by a huge margin) and the highest crime rate among first-world countries (by an equally huge margin).

Obviously, you should check all of this for yourself, I'm just repeating stuff I've heard elsewhere and haven't checked at all.

 

You ask whether religious belief might be a good thing in society simply because it might stop a proportion of those people who do tend to be murderers from acting on their desires. I think the more important question goes straight to the heart of the nature/nurture blend:

Are religious parents more likely to raise children who, if they later lose their religious foundation, are more likely to become violent criminals?

I hope you see that the answer can be "yes" to both our questions at the same time and if it is it's the better choice to remove religion from society and suffer the terror of a generation of murderers so that for the remainder of our civilization people won't need to supress their murderous insticts through guilt (since those murderous insticts will be significantly less frequent). Of course, I don't know what the answers to those questions actually are.

 

Additionally, I believe there is a big difference between "sin" and "moral wrongdoing". That difference, in my mind, is that "sin" is a specifically religious term having to do with some sort of objective and deific "wrong", whereas "moral wrongdoing" is relative to a given moral system and so only needs a moral system to exist, not a god.

While atheistic society might not have a place for the concept of sin (as I use it), it certainly has a place for that of moral wrongdoing - killing someone is wrong in our socially constructed moral system whether or not god said so. "If god tells you it's okay to kill, god's wrong." (paraphrased from memory - I think Richard Dawkins said it).

Sin as defined in relation to divine law is predicated on proving a divinity. It's difficult to determine the natural cause of morality when you take it as a fixed idea, which it isn't. Morality has changed (and hopefully mostly progressed) over time, but its manifestation in mainstream American society (as opposed to more marginal and extreme groups), while giving credit to holy books, isn't really faithful to them. If prescribed doctrine isn't followed strictly, what is it within a person that empowers them to make this divergence from the texts, but stop short of amorality? Is it that divine intent has gradually and silently lost its love for stonings and slavery and believers have magically become aware of this, or is it possible that the majority of people (mainstream belivers included) are following a completely different moral imperative which has been falsely attributed to ancient texts?

Oh sugarfree!  They abound. 

Just look at the fuss in Kansas over teaching evolution. 

I have met so many people that fuss over gays.  They act as if giving gays the right to marry is going to affect their own life in some manner.  The reason they always give for having that opinion is because "it's a sin according to the bible."

I sat across the aisle at my Day Job for 4 or 5 YEARS and had to listen to a gal have fits over gay marriage.  She had fits over the Teri Shivo case.  She continutally posted anti-stem-cell research messages on the bulletin boards with the message "This will make human cloning a constitutional right"   (which was totally untrue because part of the initiative was that human cloning was banned).

No, I didn't take them down.  However, I was highly amused when someone else did.

The xian right is alive and well in the bible belt.

People being gay has nothing to do with children. There's no secular problem with it at all. I've known many people who were raised by homosexuals and turned out a lot better than some people raised by hetrosexuals. I've also known homosexuals who raised those children. I must say your comment is without merit. Especially when taking into account all the ways that children are raised. The worst of them all is the state.

I've also witnessed irrefutable evidence that homosexuality is genetic. Just do a google search on gay sheep. You'll see it too. People are attracted to those who attract them. There's no choice in what attracts you. I don't choose to find a (generalization)110 year old, 200 kilogram female unattractive; or a 30 year old 100 kilogram male unattractive; or a 25 year old, 70 kilogram female attractive. It's simply the way I was born.

The whole gay issue is just a storm in a teacup. What is it to be gay exactly?  It means if you're a guy you find guys more attractive, if you're a girl you find girls more attractive.  

Let me put it to you like this.  Does it matter if someone prefers red cars over green ones?  Does it matter if someone prefers strawberry milkshakes over vanilla ones?  Does it matter if someone prefers people with glasses over those who don't?  Does it matter if someone prefers a person with a more athletic body over a non-athletic body?  Does it matter if a person prefers short hair over long?  Does it matter if someone prefers more effeminate people over others?  It's all a matter of taste, nothing more.  "sexuality" is a myth, it's making a big deal about nothing.

They do? Since when is this an issue with just gay marriage? Shouldn't this be attacking single parents first? After all, most gay couples I know have close friends of the opposite sex, so any child would have regular role models of both sexes anyway, just not in an immediately parental role.

I'll also go with Penn & Teller's arguments about this on Bullshit: gay parents are typically older and more financially secure, which makes them more likely to raise healthy, well-adjusted children. Additionally, gay parents can't have accidental children, so that's a potential risk of unexpected financial insecurity they don't have to deal with. Studies have shown that the only negative consequence for a child of gay parents is that they have to deal with the bigotry of other people regarding their parents.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that marriage as a secular institution should be abolished altogether, but if it's going to stick around anyone should be able to do it.



Ahem. Minor nitpicky correction: "... that homosexuality has a strong biologically hereditary component."



Right. I'm a Jew, I worked yesterday. Stone me to death.

1) Who says it's not more fun if the parts don't fit together?

2) The parts actually do fit together just fine.

3) Whether or not it's logical makes absolutely no difference to whether or not it's moral.

Yes, exactly. And that's a damn good thing.



You certainly would. What is it?



... Making sin relevant?

The problem I see is one of worldview.  I view the Bible as my infallible, inerrant source of morality, history, and the redemption of our own sinful natures.  I will venture to say that that puts me in the 1% or less minority in this group.  In the Bible, gay sex (not love) is called immoral.  (And let's be frank: the parts don't fit together; c'mon!  Get real!  Is gay sex even LOGICAL??)

 

Other folks have no guidelines by which they base absolute morality on; so morals become relative to the situation that they find themselves in. That was clearly illustrated by the example of murder vs. fighting in a war given above.

 

You're begging the question of whether a moral atheist just hasn't had enough incentive to commit a crime. Like, if an armored car driver was changing a flat, I'd be forced by my lack of beliefs to club him with his tire wrench. Nice try. I haven't seen a lot of Christians object to the tens of thousands of civilian casualties in Iraq, so I'm guessing there's a "situational morality" at work there. Funny that.

 

I can cram Bible verses galore about the immorality of gay sex down your throats. 

 

Interesting choice of words.

 

It won't matter because I'm not going to get anywhere.  You do not ascribe the same level of authority to the Bible that I do.  I'd get further with the logic argument.

 

And yet you proceed to paraphrase and distill the meaningless biblical text. A world of difference.

 

And here is the conclusion: Most people on this board who aren't Christians have no absolute sense of morality as defined by the Bible.  Therefore, morality is defined as a matter of context.

 

Or the Qur'an, or Dianetics. Which begs the question "What prevents an atheist from committing x?" The difference is the secular moral imperative leaves room for improvement. If one era says slavery is OK, people who disagree can eventually get in changed; eventually the immorality of slavery seems obvious. I can cherry-pick from ancient texts to derive my morality, but it's only by the disregarding of scores of bizarre dogmatic rules that I'd live anything that remotely resembled a modern mainstream life. Which is exactly what most Americans do, believers included.

 

What prevents an atheist raping and murdering because he doesn't believe in hell? I'd guess the same thing that prevents a mainstream Muslim or Christian keeping slaves or killing infidels, despite having the infallible justification for doing so. It's only those pesky secular laws that see a such a broad range of people being entitled to human rights. As I see it, faith as a moral cause is a conceit.

Interesting because the Midwest is exactly where I am.  Right smack dab in the center of it.

Believe it or not, folks in Wisconsin and Minnesota consider themselves to be in the Midwest.  Personally, I think they're in the "North".

I'm on the state line between Kansas and Missouri.  I guess I could qualify "the center of it" as geographical center.