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“Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man?” These words spoken by Friedrich Nietzsche, the late 19th-century German philosopher who challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional beliefs of morality, are central to the ages-old discussion; are atheists less moral than theists? While theists place their faith into the hands of an almighty being, atheists place their faith into their own hands. Contrary to popular belief, atheists are not devil-worshipping thugs who corrupt our cities, but are ordinary people, just like you, with many of the same morals and values. Unfortunately, theists often use their religious beliefs and “values” as a front to commit terrible acts, such as war, violence, and acts of terror. Take this excerpt from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, for example. Douglass writes, “I have said my master found religious sanction for his cruelty. As an example, I will state one of many facts going to prove the charge. I have seen him tie up a lame young woman, and whip her with a heavy cowskin upon her naked shoulders… and, in justification of the bloody deed, he would quote this …show more content…
Only one in ten (9%) atheists said that they discussed their beliefs with religious people on a weekly basis, and two-thirds (65%) reported that they almost never shared their views on religion with the religious. Contrastingly, 26% of theists share their views at least once a week with people of different beliefs and even religions. Atheists stand firm and solid within their own beliefs without having to disprove anyone else’s, or shove their ideas down closed throats. Theists, on the other hand, seem to enjoy telling others, especially those with different beliefs than themselves, that their beliefs are wrong, and that the only way is God’s
Religion is a part of society that is so closely bound to the rest of one’s life it becomes hard to distinguish what part of religion is actually being portrayed through themselves, or what is being portrayed through their culture and the rest of their society. In Holy Terrors, Bruce Lincoln states that religion is used as a justifiable mean of supporting violence and war throughout time (Lincoln 2). This becomes truly visible in times such as the practice of Jihad, the Reformation, and 9/11. The purpose of this essay is to show that as long as religion is bound to a political and cultural aspect of a community, religious war and destruction will always occur throughout the world. A historical methodology will be deployed in order to gain
H.J McCloskey’s article, “On Being an Atheist,” is an attempt to show atheism as a more practical alternative to the Christian belief. McCloskey reasons against the theistic beliefs of the cosmological argument, the teleological argument and design. He references the presence of evil in a world created by God and the absurdity of living by faith. This article is an attempt to reason that God does not exist because He is perfect and the world is not perfect; evil exists therefore God cannot exist. McCloskey’s article labels these arguments as “proofs” and concludes none of these arguments would be evidence of God’s existence. I find McCloskey’s article to lack logic and coherence which only serves to invalidate his arguments. I find this little more than an attempt to justify his own atheistic worldview.
The problem of evil is a difficult objection to contend with for theists. Indeed, major crises of faith can occur after observing or experiencing the wide variety and depths of suffering in the world. It also stands that these “evils” of suffering call into question the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The “greater good defense” tries to account for some of the issues presented, but still has flaws of its own.
Contrary to popular belief, there is not so much a “war on Christianity” as there is a war on the first amendment by the religious and atheists. However, if we are to have this discussion properly, we must assert which is better for moral and ethical teaching. Paul Kurtz in his article, Atheism Teaches Morality and Ethics, argues from the view that—though it is quite obvious from the title—atheism is the best source for these teachings; Stephen J. Pope argues from the opposite view in his article, Only Religion Can Teach Morality and Ethics. Although I do not believe either writer quite gets it right, these two present quality perspectives from both sides of the aisle.
Morality and ethics have always been a large source of debate and contention between different factions of various interests, beliefs, and ideals due to its centrality and foundational role in society and civilization and incredible importance to everyday life and decision making. In many of these disputes religious belief, or a lack thereof, serves as an important driving force behind one or both sides of the argument. In the modern world, one of the bigger instances of this can be seen in the many debates between Atheistic and religious individuals about the implications of religious belief on morality. One of the most famous Atheists, Christopher Hitchens, asserts that religion is not only unnecessary for morality, but actually impedes it. In his work God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything, Christopher Hitchens challenges religious believers to “name an ethical statement or action, made or performed by a person of faith that could not have been made or performed by a non-believer”, and proudly states afterwards that many have made the attempt but no one has given him a satisfactory answer. However, the best response to this challenge is to point out the inherent flaws in his logic, the unfairness of his challenge, and the fact that Hitchens is asking the wrong question in the first place.
Theology is an intentionally reflective endeavor. Every day we reflect upon the real, vital, and true experience of the benevolent God that exists. We as humans tend to be social beings, and being so we communicate our beliefs with one another in order to validate ourselves. Furthermore atheism has many forms, three of the most popular atheistic beliefs include: scientific atheism, humanistic atheism and the most popular one being protest atheism. Scientific atheism is the idea that science is the answer for everything and god is not existent. The humanistic approach states that society is self-sufficient; therefore God is not needed for survival. Therefore how could he exist? The position that I will argue in this paper is the pessimistic idea of protest atheism.
The atheist might also interject that moral codes and values are created by societies to prevent strife and discordance. This argument and question is logically incoherent, for atheists have no basis upon which value judgments can be made. The atheist believes that rape is no worse than stealing a candy bar, for they believe that actions aren 't beholden to any mode of intrinsic objectivity, but are rather different, not good or bad. The next point I would make is as follows, why would an atheist characterize modern society as being morally superior to an ancient Hebrew society? The atheist cannot answer this question, for they have no basis upon which value judgments can be made, which would therefore justify the existence of objective moral
Morals are having principles or habits with respect to right or wrong conduct (“Morals”). Having morals is something that people can have or lack. In religion, believing in a god with morals is a necessity. In Ancient Greece, however, Greek religion believed in gods and goddesses with immoral behaviors.
5. Smith, J. M. (2011). Becoming an atheist in America: Constructing Identity and Meaning from
...ferences and similarities as its predecessor atheism. Individuals and groups continue to assert their ideologies through their writings and critics continue to rebut these claims. As discussed, new atheism has shown evident different approaches in showing how religion has detrimental effects on society using events such as the many previous wars that have been initiated due to issues concerning religion. New atheism also addresses how these views and conceptions are forced upon children which highlight the significant developments of the ideas that have emerged since traditional atheistic times. By understanding how atheism and new atheism has developed and evolved, it can also be understood that there will be an endless and continuous arrivals of more diverse interpretations, approaches and goals of new atheism and issues revolving around religion in the future.
Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 deals with many issues that mankind is prone to deal with. One issue that is raised is the subject of theism versus atheism.
The problem of reconciling an omnipotent, perfectly just, perfectly benevolent god with a world full of evil and suffering has plagued believers since the beginning of religious thought. Atheists often site this paradox in order to demonstrate that such a god cannot exist and, therefore, that theism is an invalid position. Theodicy is a branch of philosophy that seeks to defend religion by reconciling the supposed existence of an omnipotent, perfectly just God with the presence of evil and suffering in the world. In fact, the word “theodicy” consists of the Greek words “theos,” or God, and “dike,” or justice (Knox 1981, 1). Thus, theodicy seeks to find a sense of divine justice in a world filled with suffering.
The idea of human evolution puts strong Christians and firm atheists at opposite grounds. Christians believe that God is the reason for mankind’s creation of changes, while atheists believe in the theory of evolution and gene pools. However, science does prove that evolution and genetics is a reason behind the changes throughout history of mankind, but there still lies reason to believe that God is the source for miracles and unexplainable diseases. As Vaughn wrote, “moral disagreements between cultures can arise not just because their basic moral principles clash, but because they have differing non-moral beliefs that put those principles in very different lights,”
God chooses not to step in the middle of man’s affairs simply because he gave us the free will to choose right from wrong; therefore we are left to our own devices. Only through the power of prayer will God intervene. Sometimes his answers are not what we want to hear or not at all. It is easy to understand how a person could progress from Deism to the nothingness of Nihilism (Sire, 2009, p. 94) and to the equivalency of God (Sire, 2009, p. 179) in the New Age, where God doesn’t...
6. Bohdan R. Bociurkiw and John W. Strong, Religion and Atheism in the U.S.S.R. and