Atheism=Nihilism?

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1308555854' post='2256272']
That's actually quite insulting.

Would you call the golden rule a half baked concept?

How does the golden rule stack up beside the adherence to not having female preists because, through observing tradition, you don't think god wants female preists?
[/quote]
Didn't mean to insult you. I'm talking about my experience. No I wouldn't call the golden rule a half-baked concept, although if it were divorced from theistic tradition I don't think it would have a lot of logical consistency outside of utilitarianism.

[stevil]

[quote name='Nihil Obstat' timestamp='1308556009' post='2256274']
Didn't mean to insult you. I'm talking about my experience. No I wouldn't call the golden rule a half-baked concept, although if it were divorced from theistic tradition I don't think it would have a lot of logical consistency outside of utilitarianism.
[/quote]
The golden rule, a humanistic outlook and adherence to the governing laws tends to keep people including Atheists on the straight and narrow.
Going by an American report based on religious affilliation, Atheists are under represented in comparison to percentage of population in prisons with respect to their percentage of population outside of prison. We tend to be quite law abiding.
The times we disagree with theists tend to be when we side with equal rights (Gay marriage, Women in power positions), or giving people the right to choose an end to their own suffering (Euthanasia), or offering respect towards people who choose to love someone of the same gender, or when we are pro education (sex ed), or when we look to be inclusive of all religions and non religions.
I can't know who the people are that have given you your perspective of Atheists in general, but I think generally we are pretty decent people and I think that secular law (e.g. common law) has progressed over many years of many people around the world discussing issues and confilct and how it applies to real world situations.

For the most part I feel that theists and atheists agree on "morals", but there are some that we disagree on. I often think there is too much focus on the differences.

Edited June 20, 2011 by stevil

[Guest fullerej]

[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1308558922' post='2256276']
Going by an American report based on religious affilliation, Atheists are under represented in comparison to percentage of population in prisons with respect to their percentage of population outside of prison. We tend to be quite law abiding.
[/quote]

I wonder if this is a religious/moral reason, or more of a socioeconomic reason. Atheists are also under represented in the poorer socioeconomic levels as well. Just a thought.

[Socrates]

[img]http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/GregoryIRice/nihilists.jpg[/img]
Vee believe in nuzzink, Lebowski, NUZZINK!

[img]http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/GregoryIRice/NIhilists2.jpg[/img]

[img]http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g470/GregoryIRice/nihilism.jpg[/img]

[Polsky215]

[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1308555854' post='2256272']<br />That's actually quite insulting.<br /><br />Would you call the golden rule a half baked concept? <br /><br />How does the golden rule stack up beside the adherence to not having female preists because, through observing tradition, you don't think god wants female preists?<br />[/quote]<br /><br /><br />

Yes im quoting myself but i need to fix a mistake when i see it. Here is the response to those who call the women priest question sexist.
[quote name='Polsky215' timestamp='1308424313' post='2255661']<br />The answer is very simple. No where in the bible are there women priests. As Catholics (and as Christians), our religion is believed to be from God, not from humans. Therefore, our only means of knowing what is morally right and wrong is from the bible and revelation. Since no divine revelation has proclaimed, &quot;Thou shalt ordain women,&quot; lets address what the scripture says. No where in scripture are women priests ordained. Women in the new (and the old though possibly less obviously) are treated in high esteem. Jesus treats women with great respect and spends large amounts of time with them. He never scolds women because they just so happen to never be wrong. However, Jesus is constantly having to repremand and correct the silly men who he travels with who just dont seem to understand or be willing to receive his message like the women. On top of this the most important saint and queen of heaven is mary, a woman. Mary is the greatest human to ever live asside from Jesus who was God. Ironically other Christian faiths have removed mary from her position of importance as set up by the Catholic Church. To claim that the church is sexist is ridiculous. <br /><br />But why not women priests, if women can do the job as good as men and are even held in such high esteem? The answer primarily comes from the fact that Jesus, when he established the priesthood at the last supper saying, &quot;do this in memory of me,&quot;, purposefully had no women present. Jesus had no problem breaking away from cultural norms (ex: the sabbath, eating with women on other occasions, talking with foreign women and prostitutes) so any argument saying that he was held back from ordaining women by cultural factors is false. He was God; He did what he wanted to do! On top of that if there was one person to ever deserve being a priest (if being a priest were about what one deserves or their capability at the &quot;job&quot;) Mary would be that person. Jesus never ordained his so highly esteemed mother. Now we see that Jesus and all of scripture have made it very clear that women are not to be priests, but what is the possible logical reasoning of God?<br /><br />The answer is symbolism that has an important role in every sacrament. God begot humans out of his love. Creation was receptive of this begetting. In marriage man begets (though not totally in the same way) children out of himself, his own seed, and the woman is receptive of this. The priesthood (masculine) is a marriage with the church (feminine). The priest acts as a man in marriage begetting the spiritual seeds of grace from God to the receptive church. This is the role of the priest and that is why it is reserved for men reguardless of how much better women might be at the &quot;job.&quot; <br /><br />For further explanation read: &quot;The priveledge of being a woman&quot; by alice von hildebrandt and &quot;Why matter matters&quot; by David Lang<br />[/quote]<br /><br /><br />

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Polsky215' timestamp='1308594741' post='2256371']
<br /><br /><br />

Yes im quoting myself but i need to fix a mistake when i see it. Here is the response to those who call the women priest question sexist.
<br /><br /><br />
[/quote]
Why are you trying to html tag your posts?

[Polsky215]

i dont know what im doing. im new here

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='Polsky215' timestamp='1308595871' post='2256378']
i dont know what im doing. im new here
[/quote]
Do you normally write in html on other web pages? IPBoard uses a set of tags kind of similar to html, but it uses square brackets [ ]. It also uses much less than, say, the html editor in blogspot.

[Mr.Cat]

[quote name='fullerej' timestamp='1308591603' post='2256357']I wonder if this is a religious/moral reason, or more of a socioeconomic reason. Atheists are also under represented in the poorer socioeconomic levels as well. Just a thought.[/quote]More income, social support, education, and intelligence tends to result in less religiously.

From personal experience and observation, I notice atheists/agnostics are more compelled to be individually and socially responsible.

Edited June 20, 2011 by Mr.CatholicCat

[stevil]

[quote name='Polsky215' timestamp='1308594741' post='2256371']
Here is the response to those who call the women priest question sexist.
[/quote]

Sorry to go off topic, but I am still a bit baffled as to why Catholics don't think an all male priesthood is not a form of sexism.

Here is a definition from Wikipedia [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism"]Sexism - Wikipedia[/url]
"[b]Sexism[/b], also known as [b]gender discrimination[/b] or [b]sex discrimination[/b], is the application of the belief or attitude that there are characteristics implicit to one's gender that indirectly affect one's abilities in unrelated areas"

So doesn't the adherance of a belief that god doesn't want females to be ordained fit this description? Here we have a belief that the characteristics implicit to females indirectly affect their abilities to perform the role of a preist.

I guess it comes down to thinking whether the role of a preist is related or unrelated to the characteristics implicit to females. I don't know what those characteristics would be and why they would impact performance within the role.

[Mr.Cat]

[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1308650244' post='2256715']Sorry to go off topic, but I am still a bit baffled as to why Catholics don't think an all male priesthood is not a form of sexism.[/quote]Catholics view it as gender roles, not as employment opportunity. But I am baffled as you are, because you are correct, it is technically discrimination and sexism.

[xSilverPhinx]

-Double post -

Edited June 21, 2011 by xSilverPhinx

[xSilverPhinx]

It would help to define what you mean by nihilistic before asking whether it logically follows from atheism.

From Wiki:

[quote]Moral nihilism

[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_nihilism"]Moral nihilism[/url], also known as [b]ethical nihilism[/b], is the [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-ethics"]meta-ethical[/url] view that morality does not exist as something inherent to objective reality; therefore no action is necessarily preferable to any other. For example, a moral nihilist would say that killing someone, for whatever reason, is not inherently right or wrong. Other nihilists may argue not that there is no morality at all, but that if it does exist, it is a human and thus artificial construction, wherein any and all meaning is relative for different possible outcomes. As an example, if someone kills someone else, such a nihilist might argue that killing is not inherently a bad thing, bad independently from our moral beliefs, only that because of the way morality is constructed as some rudimentary dichotomy, what is said to be a bad thing is given a higher negative weighting than what is called good: as a result, killing the individual was bad because it did not let the individual live, which was arbitrarily given a positive weighting. In this way a moral nihilist believes that all moral claims are false.[/quote]

These are not exactly my views. Though I don't think that objective morality coming from an objective source exists, I still see moral systems having to obey certain rules in order to be called moral. Those can be inconsistent and vary between contexts so not absolute, but moral systems have their own intrinsic quality without which they would not be moral.

They're also a product of social cooperation whose goal is to thrive.

I would call myself a metaphysical nihilist, and that follows from [i]my[/i] atheism, though there are atheists who believe in some sort of metaphysical reality though without gods.

[Polsky215]

Yes, the catholic stand point is that implicitly in the female person there is an inability to be a priest reguardless of whether they can preform the material "jobs" involved in being a priest. Likewise, implicitly males cannot be mothers, whether or not science inables them to do the "job" of being a mother by giving them an artificial womb (all women in the church are called to be mothers whether spiritually or physically). Men and women are different but equal in unity. Remember that catholics believe in a soul that separates there natures. No material reconfiguring done by science can change there essential nature that is controlled by the God given soul.

[Socrates]

As Catholics, we believe that the God's Natural Law is written on the hearts of all men, so we should not be shocked if atheists and unbelievers live decent moral lives. We're not Calvinists who believe in the total depravity of man.

However, there's absolutely nothing about atheist itself (lack of belief in God) that dictates that people should live morally.

An atheist's morality by definition would have to come from something outside of atheism.
Most atheists would say that morality is simply a set of man-made rules or consensus, and thus is subjective, and subject to change.


While most people, atheist are otherwise, are not monsters, if there is no God, and no moral absolutes, there is no absolute reason why people should not commit acts of mass murder and the like if they think it is the best way to accomplish their goals.
As has been often pointed out, most of histories greatest mass-murderers have been atheists or men who reject or disregard traditional religion.

And if there is no intrinsic meaning to human life or human actions, and all we are ultimately is meaningless protoplasm trying to spread genes, we have no absolute criteria for condemning even obviously evil actions, outside of subjective personal preference.
By such purely materialist standards, if we follow them consistently, the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews, for instance, has no more ultimate meaning or moral value than one strain of bacteria killing off another strain of bacteria.

Of course, most atheists don't follow atheism/materialism to its ugly nihilistic logical conclusions.


And while most atheists may be decent enough folks, I don't see much of the really heroic or saintly levels of self-giving from atheists - those that give up everything to serving others. Where's the atheist version of a Mother Theresa or St. Francis of Assisi?
I'm not saying atheists can't be charitable, but atheism just doesn't seem to inspire the same amount of extreme self-giving that fervent Christian faith can lead to. Of course, most of us Christians are nowhere near that level of sanctity, either, but this kind of really radical self-giving found in many of the saints seems to come only from radical devotion to Christ. As does turning the other cheek and praying for one's persecutors, and loving one's enemies, as taught by Christ - things that go beyond mere human virtue.

There have been many cases of irreligious people who lived self-centered or even evil and criminal lives, who underwent a dramatic conversion to virtue and self-giving after having a conversion to Christ. I'm not aware of many devout Christians who had a similar change towards virtue after becoming atheist.


[quote name='stevil' timestamp='1308558922' post='2256276']
The golden rule, a humanistic outlook and adherence to the governing laws tends to keep people including Atheists on the straight and narrow.
Going by an American report based on religious affilliation, Atheists are under represented in comparison to percentage of population in prisons with respect to their percentage of population outside of prison. We tend to be quite law abiding.
[/quote]


[quote name='fullerej' timestamp='1308591603' post='2256357']
I wonder if this is a religious/moral reason, or more of a socioeconomic reason. Atheists are also under represented in the poorer socioeconomic levels as well. Just a thought.
[/quote]
I'm sure if the figures in that study took into account actively religious Christians (those that attend church weekly or so, read the Bible and pray regularly, active in their church), their levels of incarceration would be even lower than atheists.

There are many, many people in this country (probably now a solid majority) who may not be actively atheist, and may have been baptized or loosely affiliated as Christian, but who rarely if ever attend church, pray, or read the Bible, and generally don't care much about religion one way or the other.

I think I can safely say that most of the people committing crimes are not living actively religious Christian lives. After all, if one murders, rapes, or robs, he is directly violating the moral teachings of Christian religion.
If you want to blame Christianity or religion for higher crime rates, you're going to have to provide some evidence that a significant portion of those crimes are somehow religiously motivated, or at least that religion was a factor. Otherwise, i don't see a compelling case.

But if you insist on going with the correlation = causality fallacy, it could be noted that whites are proportionately under-represented in the prison population, and that blacks and hispanics are over-representated. You could just as easy blame race (or racism) as religion. (Not to get into that whole debate here, just illustrating the dangers of equating correlation with causality.)

And incidentally, Charles Murray, in a survey of American whites (he chose to include only non-hispanic whites to avoid the results turning into debates over race and racism) found that the socio-economic top 20% of the white population was far more religiously active than the bottom 30%. See video lecture here: http://www.aei.org/video/101414