If all you are expressing when you denounce others as evil are your personal preferences then you have destroyed your own case. You do it because you know that an objective universal standards of good and evil do exist apart from your opinion. You're just too dishonest to admit it. The Atheist Lady doth protest too much!!! "No. I live in a democracy where standards are standardised and where policies are voted on."
Of course for the Atheist, standards are all completely subjective and morally non binding. As long as one can avoid unpleasant consequences, there is absolutely no reason that other peoples standards must be adhered to.
The Atheist is of the same mind as Groucho Marx, who famously said:
"Those are my principles, if you don't like them, well I have others."
"People have sufficient common interests that laws may be made and enforcement may be ordered."
That's great as long as people are one big family but Humans are divided into groups who's interests are NOT common and if fact conflict. It's at this point where the Atheist has nothing else to fall back on but that "Might is Right". Your position logically eliminates all objections and moral denunciations of the actions of others, since there is no objective higher authority to appeal to. That eliminates your phony arguments against the Ancient Israelis and exposes you as either someone who is disingenuous or someone who doesn't really believe his own philosophy. I would say it's both.
""First, do no harm" has guided philosophers and other social leaders for thousands of years. In primitive tribes, that stricture applied only to the tribe. In these enlightened times, many people apply the idea to all humans—some going even farther."
That's just cherry picking Theistic religions because they happen to suit you for the moment, but the Atheist has no philosophical basis to ground such assertions and no firm basis to denounce others who refuse to follow your made up rules. |
