From: maguire@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Bill Maguire)
Subject: Re: god is in all of us
Organization: Clarkson University, Potsdam NY
	<1992Sep30.093755.29218@walter.cray.com>
	<1992Oct13.203927.20286@Princeton.EDU>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 18:19:13 GMT

In article <1992Oct13.203927.20286@Princeton.EDU> jwfost@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Joshua W. Fost) writes:
>In article <1992Sep30.093755.29218@walter.cray.com> jwest@wisc (Jeff West) writes:
>>michalek@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Libor Michalek) writes:
>>: Sure this could be counter productive someone could
>>: say to them self "I could die today so I better do something outragous
>>: like kill as many people as I can". But If you use the same wisdom you
>>: used when becoming an athiest this can be avoided. Maybe being an athiest
>>: isn't ok BY ITSELF but if you apply some of that atheist logic to the
>>: rest of your life you will probablly see an overall improvment in the
>>: rest of your life and you hopefully wont kill someone. 

>I think you are addressing one of the two issues central to (a)theism
>discussions. The first is the mapping of theistic claims (or scientific,
>for that matter) onto empirical data, and the second, the one you are
>addressing, is the contribution made to society and individual morals.
>To show that religion is part and parcel of an ethical system that will
>permit the survival of society, you need to satisfy the requirements
>of necessity and sufficiency. That is, you need to show that you can
>have a "good" moral system if and only if you are relgious, so that
>not only do all relgious people always act in ethically sound ways,
>*and* that all people who act in ethically sound ways are religious.
>I'm pretty sure this cannot be done. I'm not claiming that atheists
>are more (or less) likely than theists to act in ethically sound ways, 
>but perhaps they are about equal. For example, I know many people
>who are atheists, but who have a moral system that is just as beneficial
>to society as that of the best of the theists.  

As an atheist some of my morals stem from an old Twilight Zone or was it a
Tales from the Darkside episode.

A man is given a box with a button on it and told "If you push the
button  someone will die and you will get a million dollars."  In the
end the man pushes the button and is given his money and told, "Now we
will give the box to somebody who doesn't know you."

This kind of follows from the christians "Do unto others." and it
makes sense.  If we did whatever we wanted, (you're an athiest?  So you
can kill somebody.) our society would break down to the point where it
would be detrimental to our own survival.

You don't need God to have morals.  The idea that

religious(person) => moral(person)

doesn't hold and

~religious(person) => moral(person)

certainly doesn't hold either.  What makes a person moral IMHO is either
their intelligence in understanding the above parable, or a baseless
belief in some mythical punishment.   If it takes the threat of
punishment for a person to behave morally, then that person is still
nothing more than a child.

Most athiests I have met have been more moral than the majority of
christians I have met.  Christian have an escape clause, its called
God's forgiveness.  As athiests we have no such escape clause for an
unmoral act may begat another unmoral act.  Most aithiests I have met
are not homophobic or racist.  Just look at those two Pats in the
republican party for an example of the opposite.

-Bill