Some influential atheists with highly developed ethics who spring to mind -
Stalin,
Mao,
Pol Pot

Proxy,
I've offered a real argument. Do you have anything but cliched thinking to put forward?

He was doing it by proxy Squeers.

Am I being ambiguous or something?

Can someone please tell me what about my posts is so difficult to grasp?

Am I not explaining myself well or something?

Squeers,

<<The atheists I know, btw, are highly ethical...>>

Not necessarily.

Atheism says nothing about ethics. There are atheists with very bad ethics. Proxy has fallaciously pointed out a few.

Like it’s been said before, organising atheists would be like trying to herd cats - impossible. They’re all individual thinkers.

Of course, theists are individual thinkers too, only they have a doctrine from which they can pick and choose pieces of in order to give divine justification for what they do, whether that be good or bad.

Proxy,

You haven’t read a word I’ve written, have you?

Like a typical theist, you ignore what I say; give no rebuttal, then comeback with the same old discredited assertions.

Anyway, thanks for revealing that you truly are a theist (of some sort). Only theists are stupid enough to mention Stalin et al - particularly while totally ignoring idiotic comments from people like Runner.

What you and your fellow theists never seem to realise is that the dictators you’ve mentioned didn’t do what they did in the name of atheism, and that’s the bottom line. They didn’t do what they did because they were atheists.

The societies established by the dictators you mentioned were not atheist societies because there’s nothing within atheism to support them. They were anti-religious societies and the fact that that technically also makes them atheistic is of no significance.

I can understand your desire to hide your theistic beliefs though. You at least recognise that your religious beliefs will cause you to lose credibility. Some theists, on the other hand, are silly enough to pretend that their faith makes them intellectual and sophisticated.

Yes much easier to name a few leaders, who just also happened to be atheists, who were corrupt and avoid naming the numerous religious leaders who, despite their faith, used their power for evil purposes. Perhaps all of these leaders had a penchant for brocolli as well, equally as irrelevant.

It worries me that Christians feel they are not accountable to anyone while they are on earth, only accountable to a supernatural force which one meets upon death and all evil doings are forgiven. Not much incentive or accountability in that.

Much better we be accountable during our lives to our families, friends, fellow human beings along with a caring of the environment in which we all live and depend

AJ Philips,
I do apologise for not hanging on your every word; I've got a bad habit of thinking for myself--not that you don't make admirable sense. I was actually addressing ethics, alluded to earlier on in the thread. And I certainly said nothing about atheists 'necessarily' being ethical, I merely recounted that the atheists of my acquaintance, including a swag of Buddhists, were 'ethical', whatever that means (I acknowledge of course that ethics is a highly contested pseudo-reality).
AJ: <Like it’s been said before, organising atheists would be like trying to herd cats - impossible. They’re all individual thinkers.>

Like 'I've' said before, true individual thinkers are rare beasts (possibly non-existent); it's pure hubris to imagine the atheist paradigm is any closer to the truth of metaphysics than theism. The great virtue of (undogmatic) atheism is humility. Atheism is properly nothing more than a negation, or unsubscription. But then, humility is non sequitur to the dogmatic atheist/positivist who believes that all must finally fall under his sway. The virtue of real enlightenment thought is its agility.