Saturday 27th of April 2024
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two for the price of one...

good

I find it ludicrous that the brother of Christopher Hitchens, Peter, states without flinching that "Good without God? Morality's Foundations Crumble in the Absence of Christianity"... It's quite insulting really. He is pissing on his brother's work with abandon, as well as pissing on all other religious beliefs — two for the price of one: 


"In their attempt to argue that effective and binding codes can be developed without a deity, atheists often mistake inferior codes - "common decency" - for absolute moral systems. The Golden Rule, or doing as you would be done by, is such a code. But the fact that men can arrive at the Golden Rule without religion does not mean that man can arrive at the Christian moral code without religion." http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2014/12/03/4141760.htm

This crap is beyond the pale. One could argue that the present religious code of Christianity was extracted holus-bolus from the Egyptian civil codes and married to a few Greek and Roman values. The rest is quite fanciful... Read Peter's statement carefully: "does not mean that man can arrive at the Christian moral code without religion." Of course. It's a truism that defeats itself. The Christian moral code needs religion. It is a religious concept. But a similar code can be achieve and often better adhered to without religion. Capiche? And what about women? Man? There is a word that takes care of both man and woman and it's "human". 

Most of Peter Hitchens diatribe is dedicated to pointing out that Atheists are inferior in their view of good and evil... I hope he comes to his senses and start to understand his brother's views a bit more... "good and evil" do not exist a-priori and a-posteriori...
Atheistic value of good is not inferior to that of Christianity — or inferior to that of other religion for that matter. I would argue that the atheistic value of good is far superior to that of religiousness. Why. Because it demands a full altruistic dedication to oneself and to others without caveats or promises of any sorts. 

This is what Peter says of his brother, Christopher:

"It is striking that in his dismissal of a need for absolute theistic morality, my late brother Christopher states that "the order to 'love thy neighbour as thyself' is too extreme and too strenuous to be obeyed." Humans, he says, "are not so constituted as to care for others as much as themselves." This is demonstrably untrue, and can be shown to be untrue, first through the unshakeable devotion of mothers to their children; through thousands of examples of doctors and nurses risking (and undergoing) infection and death in the course of caring for others; in the uncounted cases of husbands caring for sick, incontinent and demented wives (and vice versa) at their lives' end; through the heartrending deeds of courage on the battlefield, of men actually laying down their lives for others."


Well, it is part of Golden Code to love thy neighbour like one love thyself, BUT, and there are a few butts here, this golden Code is not exclusive to Christianity. In fact I would suggest that most atheists adhere to this code far better than most religious nuts who "sin" then go to confession and repeat the crummy process daily...

 

One does not need to be a religious person to care. The examples of generosity given by Peter Hitchens are excellent, though there is NO PROOF that any of these people ARE RELIGIOUS. And this attitude is relative. I can find ten times more example of Christians not doing "the right thing" in terms of crisis... I can cite many occasion when the Christians do not turn the other cheek and give as bad a treatment to others than they have received. Is this the Golden Rule? Kick someone's arse because that someone kicked yours? The golden rule is thus faulty and end up as "an eye for an eye" rule. Selfishness is not exclusive to atheism.

 

The more we understand that humans are an animal species with a few imperfections, evolutionary-wise, the faster we can help better our relationships without religious fantasies. But the religious priests do not want us to come to term with our animality — because this would make them obsolete.  These days, most of Christianity is bent on selling "good" while in the past it was hell-bent on selling "the fear of god" — which is losing traction somewhat. 

 

And there were religious wars between the various Christian factions as to whom had the best phone line to god. 

 

Peter Hitchens diatribe is totally ill-thought out and is limited to his little petty religious mind. His conclusion is atrociously far from reality and the ABC should not publish his rubbish — rubbish which of course is delighting the CONservatives, presently leading this country (Australia) to oblivion. 

 

This is what Peter Hitchens says:

 

"If atheists or anti-theists have the good fortune to live in a society still governed by religious belief, or even its twilit afterglow, they are free from absolute moral bonds, while those around them are not. This is a tremendous liberation for anyone who is even slightly selfish. And what clever person is not imaginatively and cunningly selfish?

Oddly enough, very few atheists are as delighted by this prospect as they ought to be. At least they are not delighted openly, or in public. Could this be because they really do not grasp this astonishingly simple point, based as it is on their own insistence that the only conceivable external source of law and morality does not exist? Why create such a difficulty for themselves at all?

Might it be because they fear that, by admitting their delight at the non-existence of good and evil, they are revealing something of their motives for their belief? Could it be that the last thing on earth they wish to acknowledge is that they have motives for their belief, since by doing so they would open up their flanks to attack?"


This is complete rubbish of course... Atheists in countries governed by religious beliefs are often PERSECUTED, such as in Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia... In the Western World, atheists often lay low because the political system rarely accept them in the ranks. Can you imagine an atheist in the White House? No. Never. The only professed atheist who was a national leader was Julia Gillard in Australia but she was hammered like you would not believe not just for being an atheist but for being a "barren and unwedded and a woman" in a blokesy rabid pseudo-governmental institution that has swung back to its nasty views of womankind. 

 

Free from moral bonds? Atheist are free from the punishments associated with Hell and idiotic stuff but most atheists have some major decency and would feel oblige to have a humanitarian code in which caring for others is at the core of it. Now Peter I have no idea what you talk about when you say: "motives for their beliefs"... No idea. I could somehow guess that "if you help others, they might help you in return" — a system of pay-off in a social context. But from my observation, most atheists I know would care about people because these people may be in dire-strait, with NO THOUGHTS about pay-off... The Pay-off actually is a concept strongly attached to the religious moral code: If you do this you will go to hell or if you are good you will go to heaven... 

 

There is no such thing as hell or heaven or after-life, but there is something like pain and happiness derived from our animality, on this planet... Pain and contentment rule most species on earth. Atheists try to minimise pain and increase happiness for themselves and others. Nothing wrong with that.

 

 

Gus Leonisky

 

Your local good atheist

 

the pain of deceit..

Here I will develop the various concepts of variants in which we "love" pain and become addicted to be a psychopath.

It's quite complicated yet very simple. It has been my observation that many "religious people" develop an anti-good philosophy (including self-flagellation) or impose strict rules that are contrary to the good of all, leading to slavery and the victimisation of women. 

Nietzsche...

 

“Man is the cruelest animal," says Zarathustra. "When gazing at tragedies, bull-fights, crucifixations [Crucifixion] he hath hitherto felt happier than at any other time on Earth. And when he invented Hell...lo, Hell was his Heaven on Earth"; he could put up with suffering now, by contemplating the eternal punishment of his oppressors in the other world.”


― Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (German: Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen, also translated as Thus Spake Zarathustra) is a philosophical novel by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, composed in four parts between 1883 and 1885 and published between 1883 and 1891.[1] Much of the work deals with ideas such as the "eternal recurrence of the same", the parable on the "death of God", and the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, which were first introduced in The Gay Science.[2]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He was interested in the enhancement of individual and cultural health, and believed in life, creativity, power, and the realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. Often referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers along with Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), Nietzsche's revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and social revolutionaries.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1938.Friedrich_Nietzsche
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Unfortunately/fortunately, Friedrich is correct. To a point. Because not all of us have invented Hell and some of us are willing to deal with pain without blaming nor fighting someone else. Science can help us here but it has a long way to go. And science these days is too often used by psychos to do more damage than good. 

Hell and Heaven is the invention of psychopath and of sadists. God is a sadist, though most of the religious idiot doodahs have invented "reasons" for "god" inflicting pain and suffering on "his creation". To paraphrase Alan Jones, It's rubbish of course. The original sin is rubbish. The concept of god is rubbish. 
All the religious invention has been a pretext for controlling masses and conquering others. The Christian religion has been a major culprit in parallel with the Muslim religion since their inceptions. Judaism at this level is more sneaky in its survival. Though the Christian religion's aggressive attitude started to "apparently" wane in the 18th century during the age of entitlement, er... I mean enlightenment, the Muslim religion's aggressive attitude is still going on, mostly spurred by a dual desire to convert (conquer) the world and defend itself against external influences led by Christian aggressive attitude that have gone undercover. Most of the wars led in the world at present are still done under the banners of gods of this or that. "Doing good" under these dictums is often an abandonment of self. It's led by fear of god and reaction to others' fear. 

It's a question of relative numbers in our social environment. How many of us are psychopaths, how many of us are ready to follow the leading psychos and how many of us can be humanists without compromise, or "at what point" do we become psycho ourselves after being so "good". It does not take much to stir the masses into a frenzy, when the time is right, that is to say when most of the people are hurting or looking for an escape or looking for a scapegoat. Religion has been a great opportunistic stifling power here — making us accept pain under a banner of better after death.

This, the nature of pain and contentment (especially the memory of life...) is quite complex, especially when muddled by religious illusions, social misunderstanding and lies. We are very good at lying. Lying to ourself is a common occurrence daily. We use this to motivate, to make something happen even if we know the result is going to be iffy. We gamble. We hope. We have little reserve of understanding and tons of habit to submission to what we are told and to what is organised for us. It's our social network. Like ants, we are programmed (educated) to behave at our station. Unlike ants, we can improve our position, philosophically, socially and materially. But we have to do this without mucking up the planet. So far, under the instruction of religious conquest, we've just done that: we are mucking up the planet. Under the power of greed, which itself is an invention of religion as a sin, we are also mucking up the planet. The "forbidden fruit" is the one we want. "Sinning" is performed daily by religious nuts like pigs rolling in mud. We are destroying nature. We do not understand nature because should we know it, we would not destroy it. Nature as life as we know it only exist on this little planet that we are fouling and destroying to suit our wants — which are way-way over-inflated needs. Nothing I can do, except pointing this out and trying to minimise my own footprint. It's hard to do when everyone else around trample the flower beds. But we can throw out the morons leading us, before we become morons ourselves. 

Doing real good requires more than just being good. It demands acceptance of who we are. Under the religious umbrella, we've got "buckley's chance" of that. We still can do good but it's heavily loaded with wrong caveats from religious psychopaths.