Fun and Witty T-Shirts for Atheists, Agnostics, skeptics and anyone else who would face hellfire if there actually is a god |
I’ve seen my share of ridiculous church signs but we have to create a new dumbass award for whoever came up with this one I found on reddit. The person who posted the picture says the area code is 716, in case you’d like to call in and answer their question. I wonder if there are any prizes to be won!
If Evolution is true, why help the poor?
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u dont need to do anything how poor are evolving into credible biengs ,just take away ur capitalism ,or mullaism.
why is this sign so stupid? just because you don’t agree with the folks who put it up doesn’t mean it isn’t a valid question. essentially, it is asking where we get our morality. it has to come from somewhere, right? survival of the fittest and natural selection can seem to speak against a moral right and wrong. if there is no supernatural being to bring about justice after death, then why be concerned with anyone but ourselves in life? why should we help the poor? because it is right? why is it right? where does “right” come from?
i think it is important that we look for the answers to these questions. you can’t defend what you believe if you can’t answer questions like this.
@wanderer
You pose some very interesting questions. Here are some thoughts on the origin of morality and ethics for you to ponder:
@dog
Thanks for posting that video. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like Dawkins has an answer for that question, either. He says that our sense of being nice to our neighbor probably stemmed from our ancestors living in small tribes and dealing mostly with a small number of people, mainly family. I feel like that is a shallow answer. How does that explain why people aren’t at war with the neighboring cultures that they do not interact with? Or at least the ones that we do not exchange goods with? If life evolved to this point on a principle of survival, why do we attempt to live peacefully with everyone? Being nice doesn’t always help you stay alive.
He goes on to say that the question of where our general morality comes from is very hard to answer, and he leaves it at that. He does say that he is grateful we are nice, but I still feel unsatisfied from his response.
Again, thanks for the video.
@wanderer
The origins of morality are indeed hard to discern. However, in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins says the Kuna of Central America (a small tribe that has had no contact with Westerners or formal religion) share practically the same morality as the rest of us (as judged by their responses to objective questions about how they would tackle specific moral dilemmas). It’s a very interesting argument points to morality predating religion. You can read some parts of it here on Google Books.
As regards why we don’t wantonly attack our neighbors, we do – when think we can get away with it. Look back at history, for the largest part of civilization people have constantly been at war with neighboring cultures that they did not trade with. Whenever explorers discovered a new culture, it was always either trade, or pillage if you could.
I’d like to say that today the situation is different, but it is not. Countries are allied and in contact around the globe, and international law and powerful friends prevent the wholesale colonization and pillaging that used to go on. Today countries think twice before invading their neighbor.
And yet there are not only plenty of wars around the globe, but also a wholesale exploitation of weaker countries (or their people) by the strong – from the War in Iraq that was started on false pretexts that got the whole world to not only allow, but assist the US to have its way, to the diamond mines in Africa and the sweatshops in Asia and Latin America. If you look at the governments we elect and how they behave on an international level, you’ll see that they are totally driven by ‘national interest’, which means selfishness trumps morality.
I don’t mean to be so cynical, but that’s the way it is.
I can’t argue that morality precedes religion. In fact, I know that Christianity doesn’t claim that morality came from religion. They believe it was instilled in man when God created him. It does make sense that mankind’s moral right and wrong would come from something other. It seems odd that cultures, large and small, have developed similar moralities.
You make a good point. We are selfish, and things are screwed up. I personally believe that things would be more screwed up if we actually existed and evolved through a process of natural selection. If we can’t prove that the evolutionary process gave us our morality, the very thing keeping most of us from stealing, raping, etc., then I can’t accept it as a valid answer. If I have to go on faith that things just turned out the way they are, then I’d rather place my faith in something else.
wanderer has said:
“if there is no supernatural being to bring about justice after death, then why be concerned with anyone but ourselves in life?”
I am not surprised he has no difficulty explaining where his morality comes from. He has absolutely none! To be good for fear of punishment is the opposite of morality.
Oh god, if this is the 716, I’m ashamed to live here. :/
Know the truth and the truth shall set you free. One in ten Americans are atheists. Less than 1 percent of the American prison population are atheists. This number suggests that atheists are more moral than their Protestant (28%), Islamic (21%), Jewish (19%) and Catholic (27%) counterparts.
The lowest level of emotional intelligence is where a human follows the social contract only if threatened with a negative consequence. Most religions cater to this crowd. (ex. General rabble, if you don’t _______ (fill in the blank) God/Allah/Yaweh/Krishna tells will punish you.) If theists don’t get caught, they believe they are somehow cleverer than their god’s system, and make a habit of socially destructive behavior.
Evolution demands that beings display species beneficial behavior.
Atheists understand morality is entirely a choice. I personally choose to follow the social contract because I understand that my social activism creates a better world for myself and my offspring. It is only logical to be moral, as I am connected to my world by my actions. My existence is little more than a cosmic blip in an infinite stretch of reality therefore I treasure and nurture my existence and it’s connections.
Social responsibility/ morality is a form of species evolution.
@Ricardo
Morals are simply principles of right and wrong. While I believe that morals are instilled in man by God, I do not see how this translates to me being “immoral.” Also, I do believe that God will hold us accountable in some way, but that is not to say that I only attempt to be moral for my own benefit.
@Clark
Those statistics (as far as I can tell) are recorded responses of prisoners who are already in prison. A better, but more difficult to produce, study would determine a persons beliefs before and after they were incarcerated. Turning to some kind of faith in a period of suffering is common in all humans. That does not prove atheists to be more moral.
There is so much more to Christianity than avoiding punishment. It is not meant to be a religion where you follow certain rules and do certain things to appease an angry God. It is about a relationship between the divine and mortal, Creator and creation.
I also believe that morality is a choice. There are many who claim to be Christians who choose to cheat on their taxes, cut you off in traffic, rob convenience stores, launder money, etc. Still, there are others, both non-Christian and Christian, who let you merge when your lane is ending, pick up a shift for you at work, give money to charities, start charities, etc. Believing that God created the world and loves us does not automatically make us more moral than anyone else. It’s still a choice.
To do good in God’s eyes.
From what I know about God I find arguing about God’s existence to be pointless.
What makes a person believe in God is set by the individual.
It is interesting how Christians “knew” there religion was right throughout time and decided to kill anyone who didn’t agree with them. Where was their sense of morality? Well, like every other religious conflict in life, those specific person’s sense of morality came from their specific up-bringing. Therefore they believed they were doing this for their false deity because he willed it (when they never got a message from him to do it, they just assumed). Morality is an opinion of the individual, nothing more, nothing less. Morality changes over time for a specific person over time. That is how it works. Any higher meaning or deeper conflict is simply naive people over-thinking the sense of morality and not willing to accept the fact that it is their choice that they feel that way. Nothing else.