On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 8:13 AM, Dev <thedevil
...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Thank you, rappy. I've been saying this for a while here. If
> "intolerance" in and of itself is bad, then being "intolerant of
> intolerance" is of course hypocritical. I've seen this attitude pop up
> here and there, right now bob600 and Walt seem particularly guilty of
> it (although theists constantly whine about "intolerance" despite the
> "intolerance" that is built into their respective faiths), and I
> really can't have any respect for people whose core "values" are
> completely based on holding standards to others that they don't hold
> to themselves.
> I think not living up to your own standards is failing
> the most basic test of ethics.
This is a really good point and the fact is that any moral and ethical human
being will, by virtue of their morality and ethics, be intolerant of that
which is immoral and unethical.
Many theists seem to think that because they are theists and they have a
doctrine which they obey that somehow gives them the moral high ground, but
they don't actually have to apply any other moral or ethical guidelines to
themselves.
The better one's apply secular morality and ethics, others are in jail
waiting to go to heaven and be forgiven by god and the rest just running
around acting holier than thou while doing whatever they nasty thing they
want to and using their doctrine to put up the pretense that their shit
smells sweeter than anyone else's and to cover for their nasty behavior.
I have a neighbor like that. She's the nastiest person in the world and
would sell out her own mother given the chance but parades around "god
blessing" everyone while she screws everyone she can for whatever she can
get. She hides behind her Christianity to commit bad acts and then uses it
to protect herself from the consequences of her bad acts (god will forgive
me, I'm a sinner type crap).
A moral and ethical person first has to hold themselves to the highest
standards before they can expect that from anyone else and to claim moral
superiority while not holding oneself to those standards is self-serving at
best and immoral and unethical at worst.
> On Jun 27, 9:46 pm, rappoccio <rappoc...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > It has recently been argued that anti-theists are being unfair to
> > theists. The argument boils down to this:
> > -If theists believe something that does not contradict secular
> > morality, then anti-theists have no justification to say it's
> > irrational and immoral.
> > -This is because they "just believe" in something based on "irrational
> > intuition", and if it does not contradict secular morality, then it is
> > permissible.
> > Let's apply this to the stance of the anti-theist... that religion, in
> > and of itself, is immoral. Let's pretend that anti-theists have
> > arrived at this conclusion via the same "irrational intuition" that
> > theists are allegedly using for their conclusions. Of course this
> > isn't actually true and anti-theists do a lot better with their
> > arguments, but pretend that it is based on nothing aside from
> > "irrational intuition". Now change "theists" in the above sentence to
> > "anti-theists".
> > -If anti-theists believe something that does not contradict secular
> > morality, then anti-anti-theists have no justification to say it's
> > irrational and immoral.
> > -This is because they "just believe" in something based on "irrational
> > intuition", and if it does not contradict secular morality, then it is
> > permissible.
> > Now, the question remains, does anti-theism contradict secular
> > morality?
> > Clearly anti-theism does not contradict secular morality more than
> > theism (and of course, I believe it contradicts secular morality a
> > great deal less, but that's besides the point to this discussion at
> > hand). Therefore, based exclusively on this, there is no justification
> > that someone should be "anti-anti-theist" for the reasons above. An
> > anti-anti-theist can not consistently criticize anti-theists for the
> > very thing the anti-theists are criticizing theists for.
> > That makes anti-anti-theists hypocritical.
--
------------------------------------------------
Trance Gemini
Irrationally held "truths" may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley
Which God Do You Kill For? --Unknown
Love is friendship on fire -- Unknown
