[thechat] Religious dependance

Tara Cleveland tara at taracleveland.com
Fri Jan 17 12:26:00 CST 2003


Joe Crawford wrote:

> And hold on there pardner, I can do that trick to. Let me bring up a
> famous athiest, Stalin --- so much for atheism as a creed by which people
> can live more ethically than the religious.
>
> The hipocrisy game is too easy. We can quote people who don't
> practice what they preach all day long, and it neither proves nor
> disproves religion or atheism as a means to live by.

The difference is that atheists don't generally claim that ethical,
tolerant, civil behaviour is part of their belief system - in fact they
don't have a belief "system",  they have *a* belief - one single belief -
God does not exist. Everything else is up for grabs.

People who claim they are religious, and whose religion requires them to
behave ethically, morally and tolerantly, and then don't behave that way are
hypocrites. People who claim they don't believe in God, but behave immorally
aren't hypocrites (well at least not in that regard) because they never said
they would behave morally.

I'm not saying that atheists can't be evil people, I'm just saying that
being an atheist doesn't automatically make you an evil person, and that
being religious doesn't automatically make you a good person.

Now if you were comparing communism (Stalin) and Christianity (Bush) as
belief systems, you might have an argument... ;-)

Regards,
Tara




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