Morals have been around a long, long time, at least a couple thousand years (maybe more, depending on how serious you think people took those original ten Commandments.)AlabamAlum wrote:IB:
The belief that no cultures viewed murder as wrong before the fable of the burning bush and stone tablets is beyond the pale. There were established civilizations before Moses that had laws and a belief in right and wrong - which included punishments for murder; predating Moses are civilizations in Sumer, Persia, Asian, Egypt, etc, and numerous other cultures concurrent with Moses or even afterwards (Toltec, for example) that had no knowledge of 'stone tablets', but who had well defined laws and mores.
You've essentially implied that atheists, without benefit in a belief in god(s), are wild animals.
Atheism is new. That secular humanistic religion (a religion of no religion) is only a couple-hundred years old at most. That is it. And it has the ultimate benefit OF Christianity. What I mean by that is that Christianity (not atheism) defined morality. Morals were already there LONG before Atheism came to town. Atheism can take NO CREDIT (none what-so-ever) for helping to shape moral man. (An atheist could say that he or she IS moral, but it is not atheism that gave the atheist their morality. That was Christianity.)
Nope, atheism does not add to a culture's moral foundation. It is atheism that tears morals down, tries to bit-by-incremental-bit, dismantle the foundation of a civilized society. An atheist could claim that their religion is science. Science is Amoral. Doing what is Right vs doing what is wrong play no part in science.
Ayn Rand took ultimate pride in her Fundamental Atheism. She had absolutely no problem with adultry. And why not, to her human beings were nothing more than animals where one is rated better than the other based solely on their intellect. That is what atheism has wrought.
AA, we are heading back in that direction. The turning point was the 1960s. If it felt good, do it. Divorce, Drug addition, Abortion, Infidelity, Euthanasia, Eugenics, Illegitimacy, ALL frowned upon (and at one time, something that brought SHAME to those involved), frowned upon by the Christian. Right there in the Bible, those things are bad. To an atheist... well, they are a bit more morally relativistic.
