Ok, atheists- Do you believe there is right and wrong?
56 comments
Animals kill out of necessity to eat and provide food for their young. Man has the intelligence (usually) to use farming and breeding livestock for food. Under normal circumstances, man has no need to take lives.
And what kind of damn fool question are you asking anyway? Darwinism is about evolution, a scientific explanation of how living creatures came to be what they are today. It is NOT a way of life or a bloody religion, you dumb shit.
Goddamnit, survival of the fittest doesn't come anywhere close to meaning that. Humans have developed the ability to think and rationalize. It was in their best interest to get along and not kill each other unjudiciously. And no one man declared it was wrong to kill or steal, it was a recognition over many years that co-operation and societal living was advantageous to remaining wild and uncivilized. And that, Dawn, is an example (but by no means the only one) of evolution and survival of the fittest.
If you believe in Darwin, who taught survival of the fittest, why is it wrong for a man to kill another man if he wants what he has?
Because if someone does that, the rest of us will stop him before he does it to one of us too. Laws against killing were around long before the Bible.
What man has the right to declare it's not right to steal or kill?
For social animals like humans, "survival of the fittest" includes the ability to form cooperative associations with each other for the common welfare. Even dog packs have their own internal rules.
Darwinism teaches us that you do what you have to, to survive.
So does the Bible. Does the Bible forbid armies or war?
i think the "author" of this quote is really just speaking of the nihilism that darwinism has been accused of, and one facet of nihilism is amorality, which it must be remmebered is different from IMmorality. This actually isnt all that unusual a misunderstanding, and a good article about it (from the christian side) is http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/dennett.htm
Dawn doesn't know what secular humanism is.
Dawn probably isn't being an ass, she's just not informed. =/
God DAMMIT I'm sick of this argument! Evolution simply describes WHAT HAPPENS. It doesn't say it's good, bad, or indifferent. Will you fundie morons please pull your heads out of your asses and realize this???
Survival of the fittest group though requires it's members to respect, help, and cooperate with the other members. Even lions don't just kill each other simply for food; other factors would have to come in for that. And anyways, morals aren't derived from the theory of evolution, just as religion isn't derived from the theory of gravity. Religion might make a bit more sense if it was though...
Evolution has no moral teachings. It is a scientific theory that explains the diversity and relatedness of life on earth.
Darwin didn't teach that the strong should exploit the weak any more than the theory of gravity teaches we should all jump off cliffs.
@Eric,
Evolution has nothing to do with morality. And in all actuality my morality is very simple. If it hurts people don't do it, if it helps people do it. I've yet to find a situation where that simple code doesn't work.
Right or wrong?, whether atheist or not is REASON actually, which tells you. And they don't believe in Darwing more than...........say, William Faulkner. Again, what was your question, anyway?
Huh, you need the threat of eternal damnation to keep you in line? I just need the idea of being a good person to my fellow man to keep me in line. You must be a scared, sad person. I feel sorry for you.
-pb
Evolution isn't meant to provide a moral code. It's a fluxing theory.
A lion will kill a gazelle, but we don't set up holocaust museums for gazelles.
I won't even start on how fucktarded that is.
"What man has the right to declare it's not right to steal or kill? Darwinism teaches us that you do what you have to, to survive."
Yeah, well, "survive" =/= "have a better television set," so I'm not sure I see your point here.
The term 'Survival of the fittest' was coined by Herbert Spencer, not Darwin, and it's an indicator of reproductive success, not physical fitness or any propensity to bump off your competitors.
Dickweed fundie idiots.
"If you believe in Darwin...."
Right there is where I just wanted to scream. To fundies, everything is a religion. They cannot even grasp the simple notion that acceptance of Darwin's basic findings is not the same thing as worshipping the man. How fixated on faith can you get?
Look, Dawn C: Darwin wasn't a prophet, a god, or a guru; he was a scientist, in every sense that actually matters. His works are not venerated as holy writ; they are acknowledged as important first steps toward the vastly greater knowledge humanity now has on the subject.
There is a universe of difference between honoring a great man and his works and, on the other hand, worshipping him and treating his writings as a guide to morality. Darwin's evolutionary writings had no more to with morality than the contents of a telephone directory, and anyone who tries to treat them as such is idiotic and/or loony.
Ethics come from the common values of a society.
Morals come form the natural sense of empathy that all mentally-healthy folk posess.
Neither requires the promise of heaven, or the threat of hell, to work.
(Thank you for fixing the edit function.)
Those rabid monsters just can't comprehend that anyone would do things out of their own goodness, or a sense of "hey, this helps people. I like when people help me, and it feels nice to help others" (yes, feeling helpful's altruistic. its a social mechanism evolved in MANY creatures including bats)
To them, not having a spiked tazer-chain-collar combined with infinite punishment for finite transgressions of contradictory orders is the (by their own admission) "only thing keeping us from raping/murdering/violating/cornholeing/torturing everything and everyone in sight, as there's nothing to stop us."
In other words, beating and raising your kids with nothing but violence and fear nets you... (wait for it... waaait fooor it....) MORE of the same immoral views violence, hatemongering and fear-induced behaviors!
If you believe in Darwin, who taught survival of the fittest, why is it wrong for a man to kill another man if he wants what he has?
Because a society that allows such behaviour is a weak society and will collapse and be replaced by fitter ones that don't allow it. This is because evolution of societies trumps that of individuals. Indeed, it is such a fundamental strengthening of society that it not only manifests in practically every society that has evolved and survived for any length of time, religious or atheist, but it's become hardwired into our brains over the course of parallel social and individual evolution as things like empathy and compassion.
And before you point out that this means religion is good because it strengthens society, a rational atheistic society still trumps an irrational theistic one on other fronts such as longevity due to technological progress, assuming it matches it on the original front by manifesting equally effective principles of morality.
Believe in Darwin...
Um, no. I agree in principle with the premise that Darwin proposed; the evidence he displayed and described certainly reinforced the plausibility of his idea.
Nobody prays to Darwin, nobody tithes his nonexistent priests, nobody shouts out passages from On the Origin of the Species from a podium. Not a religion.
How about Einsteinism? It has a nice ring to it....
Some humans are prone to kill without reason or need. Social Darwinism tends to obscure that fact.
Repeat after me, Dawn: "The Theory of Evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive: it describes and explains a natural phenomenon, it doesn't attempt to prescribe or enforce a set of moral values."
humans create a social code of proper conduct, or morality. this is a survival trait, as humans are social animals that need to function as a group. all pack animals have social rules they follow, just look at a pack of dogs. you can't tell me dogs have their own secret bible that tells them what to do.
...why is it wrong for a man to kill another man if he wants what he has?
A lion will kill a gazelle, but we don't set up holocaust museums for gazelles.
Darwinism teaches us that you do what you have to, to survive.
"If you believe in Darwin, who taught survival of the fittest, why is it wrong for a man to kill another man if he wants what he has?"
Let's consider this, I want to survive and you want to survive. If we work together, our chances of surviving increase for both of us. Let's make an agreement, I will not kill you, you will not kill me. Are you in? How about that: we established rules for conduct without an appeal to supernatural figures.
Now let's expand that a bit. Let's agree that you and I can both believe whatever we want to about supernatural entities, including doubting their existence. Oh, what's that? Your supernatural entity says I should be killed for suggesting that? And your supernatural entity's law trumps to civil agreement that you and I just made?
Okay, now we have a problem!
"Do you believe there is right and wrong? "
There's a 'you're dead and I'm not.'
Well, I'm dead now but how many book covers do yo have?
Darwin didn't teach survival of the fittest, but his studies described how survival of the fittest works in nature.
And humans don't generally have to kill to survive... but if they have to, they do.
And please ditch the words "right" and "wrong". They are meaningless constructs... you should use "good" and "bad" instead, because they describe the outcome of actions on a basis of results, not an assumed externally dictated moral code which may not always serve the good of humanity.
Yes, I do believe there is right and wrong.
there is no right or wrong in a perfect absolute sense. There is what benefits society and what harms society.
In a small village if I got up one morning and killed Bert the beermaker then all of the villagers would get no beer, and that makes them unhappy. Killing bert was bad.
A lion killing a gazelle is simply a carnivore getting a meal, for itself and the rest of its group.
Darwinism does not exist in reality, and the Theory of Evolution ays no such thing.
Do what you have to to survive is pretty much reality and the law allows for some cases of it.
“Ok, atheists- Do you believe there is right and wrong?”
“Who makes that call? If you believe in Darwin, who taught survival of the fittest, why is it wrong for a man to kill another man if he wants what he has?”
"A lion will kill a gazelle, but we don't set up holocaust museums for gazelles.”
"Yet we do for humans. What man has the right to declare it's not right to steal or kill?”
“Darwinism teaches us that you do what you have to, to survive”
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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