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The Forum > Article Comments > Morality and the 'new atheism' > Comments

Morality and the 'new atheism' : Comments

By Benjamin O'Donnell, published 1/2/2008

The problem of morality: good deeds, it seems, really are their own reward.

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As for O'Donnell's 'Anti Dogmatists' article:

The reason first and foremost for the rise of these ‘new atheists’ is the amount of evil coming from Islam. If vegetarians were violently intolerant and mass murderers there would be a backlash against them.

The problem is these critics who might ordinarily have no strong opinions about religion think Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all the same. The rise of religiously motivated terrorism is a convenient stick to hit Christianity with. The irony is the militant atheists end up as fanatical as the jihadis they excoriate.

Even fellow atheists and admirers of the authors think they’re fanatics.

Daniel Dennett Hunts the Snark http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=5394
Christopher Hitchens http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050301907.html
Richard Dawkins http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

They sell books because for a generation we have lived in a secular cocoon. The great mass of people have received as secular an indoctrination as the typical European received a religious one in the Middle Ages. This generation are simply buying books that support their brainwashing.

Pope Benedict’s Regensburg lecture explained the proper application of reason to religious truth claims, and the encyclical Fides et Ratio is the Catholic Church’s official word on the matter but has O’Donnell read either? On any other subject this would be intolerable but when it comes to theology “any shoddy old travesty will pass muster”.

The author seems to have no idea what a dogma is. Yet he centres his whole thesis around the concept. Is he aware that naturalism contains a whole slew of them? It is not dogma per se but the reasonableness of these unprovable starting points that is the issue.

It was atheistic scientism and its dogma that embryos aren’t human life that sought continued destruction of embryos for stem cells research in the face of evidence of the much more successful science on somatic stem cells. Embryonic s.cell research is now being abandoned for the somatic kind.

What happens when our ingenuities are used to avoid the consequences of breaking the natural law http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3541

Don’t even get me started on Sweden or the false opposition of religion v faith
Posted by Martin Ibn Warriq, Tuesday, 19 February 2008 5:30:58 PM
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i think martin has framed the single dumbest proof of the existence of god.

as for why hitchens and co are now selling books. i think martin's right, that it's partially to do with the recent rise of religiously inspired violence. (the christian right in america has done its bit to help). but i'd suggest it also has to do with people sick of the moral superiority of the likes of martin and philip.

it's incredible. martin and philip can go on post after post, thread after thread, pontificating about the glory of god. but they will never ever address the fact that there is simply no foundation for their moral superiority, not a scrap of evidence for the existence of a christian god. they simply repeat and repeat that morality is god-given. it's absurd and it's disgusting.
Posted by bushbasher, Tuesday, 19 February 2008 5:48:39 PM
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*The problem is these critics who might ordinarily have no strong opinions about religion think Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all the same.*

Martin, I think you forget that the Catholic Church used to have
people like us burnt at the stake. It was only the uprising of
the masses, which effectively neutered them in the end.

Many of us were actually brainwashed by the church as little
innocent kiddies, but luckily became informed about what a corrupt,
controlling organisation that the Catholic Church actually is.

Read your history. Anyone who is not disgusted by the history
of the Xtian Church, frankly deserves to be conned by them.
Posted by Yabby, Tuesday, 19 February 2008 6:13:48 PM
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Martin,

The lived experience of the Bible, or any other book, is not authoritive because it does not rely on a consensus of participants.

If someone wants to live their life according to their particular interpretation of the Bible, good for them. Just don't force it on to others. That is the most wicked, evil and immoral thing a person can do.

Once again, for the third time, I have to explain to you that moral conclusions do not correspond with objective reality. That is confusing what 'is' the case (factual statement) with what ought to be the case (normative statement).

Further, you seem confused about morals and ethics. The former, as previously explained, represent principles of intersubjective consensus. The latter represent a contextual implementation.

For example, it is not necessarily ethical to save a child until they gain consciousness, or reaches an age of reason and gives assent. If you think the contrary I suggest raise all those born with anencephaly - otherwise you are a hypocrite.

Yes, only fully rational groups can have moral experiences. That is why we do not put animals, children or the insane on trial.

My onus of proof is a very simple test;

I will write a book, which will be divinely revealed (trust me). I want you then to follow it. It will determine who you can have sex with, and how, which nationalities are holy and which can be enslaved, what you can and cannot eat, and what tortures you are to perform on you children to indicate they are part of our special family.

What? You object? But why? BECAUSE YOU DON'T AGREE?

Well then... so moral principles are validated by agreement between particpants after all?

Yabby,

Right you are. It was only a few hundred years in the recent past, that a member of my religion was burnt at the stake TWICE by his fellow Christians. His crime? He questioned the validity of the Trinity. Such good, righteous, moral people!
Posted by Lev, Tuesday, 19 February 2008 9:11:10 PM
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I've read the article Martin linked and will respond with some initial comments.
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=3541

"First between adults, then between children, then between adults and children. The last item has not been added yet, but will be soon.."

The distinction between adult and child might be fine-tuned (and the legal equivalents between age of majority and minority) but the secular rational tendency is towards informed consent. To suggest that sex outside of marriage is a slippery slope towards pedophilia is unsubstantiated.

"A colleague tells me that some of his fellow legal scholars call child molestation "intergenerational intimacy": that’s euphemism."

More unsubstantiated rhetoric. "Intergenerational intimacy" refers to, as the phrase says, consensual relations between generations; such as an 18 year-old and a 40 year old - a story which is old as the Bible.

"First we were to approve of killing the sick and unconscious, then of killing the conscious and consenting. Now we are to approve of killing the conscious and protesting, for in the United States, doctors starved and dehydrated stroke patient Marjorie Nighbert.."

And even more! In fact, Ms Nighbert executed a power of attorney and stated that in the event of an incapacitating illness she did not wish to be maintained. When it was claimed she wanted to rescind that request the Judge appointed a court investigator to determine if Miss Nighbert was competent to rescind her prior directive. The investigator reported that she was not.

"Antigone’s claim that this higher law has divine authority can easily be misunderstood, because the Greeks did not have a tradition of verbal revelation."

The author (who is apparently a professor of government and philosophy!) appears to ignorant of Socrate's daimon, Orphic revelation, the Pythagoreans, and indeed the entirety of Hellenic contemplative thought!

Enough.. I could go on, but there's no need. The author calls his prejudices "Natural Law". Yet there is nothing natural about it. What is natural about humans is our capacity to communicate, to reach agreement and therefore - act morally towards each other.
Posted by Lev, Wednesday, 20 February 2008 4:45:20 PM
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Hi Lev,

Yes, I'm aware of Hitler's divine reasoning for his atrocities.

But most Theists see this as highly debatable, so I use that line to prevent myself from looking too biased towards Atheism.

I probably should have said: "Not necessarily", rather than a straight-out: "No".
Posted by AJ Philips, Friday, 22 February 2008 7:20:39 PM
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