Should I be afraid of Atheists the most?

Question

Christian are suppose to love thy neighbor.
Hindu's and some buddhists believe in karma and bad acts reap bad outcomes coming back in a balance of the universe.
Islamic terrorist believe in protecting their own and killing infedels.

However, what moral obligation do athiests have to mankind? In reality, I see no reason to trust them because they have no real moral obligation for caring about others.

Is this logically correct? Why are athiests to be trusted?

Answer 1

"Is this logically correct?"

From a philosophical perspective, I would say no, because you are presupposing that only religions provide any moral or ethical guidance for humankind. Yet there are many philsophical schools that are meant to help one learn to be an ethical human being; for example, this was the core of Socratic and Platonic thought.

Whether you choose to "trust" an atheist or not is your personal choice. But I would review how you drew your conclusions based on what I would consider a faulty premise.

Answer 2

So, just because someone doesn't buy into religion he isn't a good and moral person?? Just because atheists don't believe in God they can't tell the difference between right and wrong?!? You've got to be kidding me. I have known several atheists in my life who are all morally upstanding citizens. They don't need a church to tell them what is right and wrong or to tell them how to behave. Several of the atheists I know, including my father, are teachers. How is that not caring for others??

Yes, some atheists are not the most upstanding and moral people in the world, but aren't there members of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and every other religion that do not follow the teachings of their church. Just look at all of the people who go to church every Sunday and as soon as they leave the sanctuary are doing things that are against the church's teachings. How about the Catholic priests that are molesting little boys? What about the televangelists who are pilfering money from their churches and cheating on their wives? They have the moral code spelled out for them and yet they do immoral and bad things anyway. I think you are being unfair to group all atheists in the same category as these people. Simply because someone doesn't feel that they can believe in something based on faith alone does not mean that they are a bad person.

Answer 3

Logically you are correct, but at the same time the laws of the land are typically enough to allow you to trust an Atheist. But, other than that, there is no reason why an Atheist wouldn't do whatever was necessary for their own personal good. Imagine we did not have anyone to enforce laws on society, then an Atheist could certainly not be trusted because nothing would hold that person back from doing whatever they needed for their own good, it would just be a matter of staying alive and increasing ones own status and possessions. In this society without any enforcement of laws, people with religion would still have their believes of what would happen after this life to keep them in check.

Answer 4

In my opinion, atheists are no more, and no less "trustworthy" than any other human being. There will always be good and bad people depending on whose side they're on. (Yours or someone else's)

The difference between an atheist and a theist is that the theist has a clearly defined "side" that he's on. I'm a very moral person, but I know that most Christians won't want to associate with me, because I'm not on their side.

But I will also say that even when I was a Christian, I never met an atheist that I didn't like. I have, however, met plenty of Christians that I didn't like. This was mainly due to the fact that they were so judgemental against people not on their "team".

And don't even get me started on the muslims...

Answer 5

Actually, I tend to trust non-theists the most, in part because their morality is human centered, not God centered.

Here's how I look at it. Christians are supposed to love their neighbor. Why? Because if they dont, God's going to be pissed. The same for Muslims and Jews. Hindus are supposed to because if they dont then they will come back as a lower form of life.

Why would a non-theist behave morally? Because it's the right thing to do. Because people have inherent dignity and worth that doesn't depend on the existance of a theological framework. This was the ultimate conclusion that Sartre came to - God is Dead, but we're still responsible for our actions. Because an non-theists morality comes from personal responsibility, not theological threat, I tend to trust it as being more enduring.

Answer 6

Most atheists believe in ethics and in doing what is right to keep order in society. To some degree this works, because if the majority isn't offended, then there is peace. So, no you've no reason to fear them.

The only problem with such a philosophy is that peoples' perspectives shift with time. When we see horrible crimes in the news on a daily basis: Child molestation, murder, rape, etc., we start to become numb to it.

Soon we start to ascribe medical conditions to these actions in an effort to explain them. So then the perpetrators of such actions are considered "insane," and not responsible for their actions.

Any code of values based on a popular view of right and wrong is subject to "moral creep," a phenomenon in which values change over time.

Regardless of whether or not we believe in God, it should be evident that the Bible, even as a literary source, provides a very clear and unchanging moral base for society. It establishes right and wrong with no chance for "value-shift" to take place.

Unfortunately, it seems that many atheists are more concerned with obliterating any expression of religious freedom than in maintaining a stable society.

Answer 7

You make the mistake of assuming that morality comes from religion. It does not. In reality, the morality expressed in religious dogma comes from human nature, and human nature is the product of evolution. Therefore religion is superfluous to morality. Atheists are moral individuals because it is in the nature of people to be moral individuals.

I might add that religion is inherently sinister, even the most apparently benign warm-and-fuzzy English churches. There's something deeply worrying about people who believe, promote and get together to share superstitious nonsense - It's a concept that seems to be the ideal breeding ground for abuse (child-molesting priests), extremism ('god hates fags' etc.), contempt for human life (islamic terrorists) and self-destruction (mass suicides). I'm sure I could think of other things.

No doubt many religious people are wonderful, warm, kind human beings, but religion has an almost unlimited potential to corrupt and deprave - You can see every day in the news that there's absolutely no limit to what a person can end up doing as a result of fervently held religious convictions. I'm reminded of that saying... something along the lines of "good men will do good, and evil men will do evil, but for good men to do evil, that takes religion".

Answer 8

I trust someone more if they come to the conclusion that they have a moral obligation to other humans, simply because they are also human.

If the only reason that you have morals comes because a book written 4000 years ago said so... then that would make me more afraid. That, to me, is a tenuous grasp on morality.

Answer 9

With you logic I would trust Athiests more than I would Islamic terrorists. According to your logic Athiests have no rules about loving thy neighbor or karma, but they also don't believe in killing infedels.

Answer 10

Atheists are the few who realize that religion is a load of crap.. it's no more realistic or unrealistic than saying we're a colony of an advanced alien race. Aliens are our God, they created us and anything we don't understand.. we can blame it on them. People look to a spritual being for something they can't understand with science.. human sacrifices, holidays, feasts, why it rains, why people die.

Look up a list of the most religious countries/counties/anything that believe in God or consider themselves religious and then find a violent crime rate per 1000 people. There's a startling correlation between the two. Then don't get us started about all your holy wars for the sake of your "God". If anything, I fear all these relgious radicals and lemmings.