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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (2642)	10/25/2000 9:15:37 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

I see you've abandoned your argument that atheists are as ethical as believers Why wouldn't they be? I'm not one but I know some. They seem to be as ethical as believers.

To: Ilaine who wrote (2642)	10/25/2000 10:21:34 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

<<OK, I see you've abandoned your argument that atheists are as ethical as believers. Now your argument is that atheism has nothing to do with ethics or morality. I agree.>> Surely you know I have never "abandoned" any such thing. How odd of you to say that. Over two years ago, on feelies, I posted this: <<<It is discouraging to me that after all these exchanges, you continue not to understand that "atheism" is not a moral code any more than theism is a moral code. The difference is that I say good resides in man, and you say it resides in some other entity. And there is not one moral code for theists any more than there is for atheists. There is no way to move forward if this simple concept cannot be grasped... I like good, kind, decent theists, and don't like mean, vicious, base atheists. I have know both, and I've known the reverse case.... There is not the least evidence that atheists are less ethical than believers. You twisted my words trickily, and presumably intentionally, into a meaning they don't contain when you claim that I have "abandoned an argument that atheists are as ethical as believers." You have implied there that I now concede they aren't. This is what I actually wrote: Again, atheism is not a moral code. It is a statement of opinion about a single issue. Atheists are as various in their moral codes as are theists. >>> Atheism is not a moral code. Atheists are human beings who have moral codes. I will next post some data about atheists and theists who were part of a study and their particular moral codes. I posted it earlier, but perhaps you didn't see it. If you had, you would know that my suspicion is that in America, at least, atheists.... Well, I'll post it now.

To: Ilaine who wrote (2642)	10/25/2000 10:25:23 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Excerpted from Do You Believe in God? by Michael Shermer, from Sceptic,vol 6 no 2 [paragraphing mine.E] "...In 1934 Abraham Franzblau found a negative correlation between acceptance of religious beliefs and three different measures of honesty. That is, as religiosity increased, honesty decreased. In 1950 Murray Ross conducted a survey among 2,000 associates of the YMCA and discovered that agnostics and atheists were more likely to express their willingness to aid the poor than those who rated themselves as deeply religious. Hirschi and Stark (1969) reported no difference in the self-reported likelihood to commit crimes between children who attend church regularly and those who do not. These are not isolated databases. Ronald Smith, Gregory Wheeler, and Edward Diener (1975), for example, discovered that college-aged students in religious schools were no less likely to cheat on a test than their atheist and agnostic counterparts in nonreligious schools. Surprisingly (given the opposite public perception), Russell Middleton and Snell Putney (1962) reported an increase in cheating among religious students versus nonreligious students. Finally,... David Wulff's comprehensive survey of correlational studies in his textbook, Psychology of Religion (1991), reviews dozens more studies of this nature, [ital.mine.E] as well as those that reveal that there is a consistent positive correlation between "religious affiliation, church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy, rated importance of religion, and so on" with "ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, dogmatism, social distance, rigidity, intolerance of ambiguity, and specific forms of prejudice, especially against Jews and blacks" (219-220). The conclusion is clear: not only does religion not necessarily make one more moral, it is at least statistically associated with intolerance, racism, sexism, and disregard of most of the other values desired in a free and democratic society." [And of course we know that atheists are underrepresented in prison. Of course the more educated you are the more likely you are to be an atheist, and the more likely you are to earn a decent living and stay of of prison....][Have there been any studies of the correlation of education and moral codes? I wonder.]

To: Ilaine who wrote (2642)	10/25/2000 10:35:13 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

I see you've abandoned your argument that atheists are as ethical as believers. Now your argument is that atheism has nothing to do with ethics or morality. Minor point of logic. It is entirely possible to observe that atheists are as ethical, in practice, as believers, and still maintain that atheism - or any other belief - is not necessarily connected to ethical behaviour. There is every reason, given the full spectrum of ethical or counter-ethical behaviour present in most belief systems, to suppose that there is no connection at all between belief and ethical behaviour.