Hi Diagoras, Thanks for your reply.

My dear, it is really hard to say who is the 'presenter of a claim'. To me, athiest faith is the challenger to the already existing religious faiths. Hence the burdon of proof is on them for presenting this new idea. However, as I said, in order to avoid this futile discussion, I don’t argue on who has the burden and have gone beyond this rudimentary argument. 

Kindly note my remarks "scientists in the present world ". I don't think America represents whole world scientific community. Isn’t it? Therefore, statistics on the selected sample are not true representative of the population. Secondly, the percentages shown on your referred website for some of the years don’t add up to 100%. Either there is a typo or something actually missing in the data.

 Your reply misses the point of the argument. The question was how to define what is good and bad without the concept of God and not who is more or less law abiding.

Again, both of them doesn't provide any distinction of humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. So your reply again misses the mark. Many animal species live in societies with their own set of rules. I don’t think they are based on any moral codified ethics but through evolutionary program of ‘survival of the fittest’.

 

 Your conclusion from your own examples is not logically linked up. If for someone, God defines morality, how can you conclude that it was drawn within himself? Secondly, the very basic question of discussing what is right or wrong comes under the perview of religions debating whose teachings are more closer to serving the humanity and thus universal than the others. For that, discussion are made within these religious faiths. But I don’t see on which basis an atheist can put forward his moral/ethical laws etc?

Thanks for your reference to wikipedia. There are two issues with your reply. Firstly, kindly note the words “selfless service” in my post where as according to evolutionary biology “reciprocal altuism” is not un-conditional. Therefore it is hard to equate the two. Secondly, the evolutionary sciences dealing with social behaviors of homo-sepians has been unable to delink / decouple religious faith based behaviors/attitudes from those purely based upon the process of natural selection. This is simply because history has been predominantly baised towards religious influences. There is hardly any society discovered as yet which was purly aetheist in their beliefs. Hence, all studies carried out on the behavioral evolutionary processes of homospeians, the baises of some sort of religious faith always exists. Here is a small example that I found interesting from your own references. While discussing Setting up altruistic partnerships the author quotes very famous religious text “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” as a favourable approach. Now it is really hard to prove that this approach towards others  is based purely on evolutionary processes or through religious teachings indoctrinated throughout the history of mankind.

Personally speaking, even if it is through the science of evolutionary process, the credit must be given to the people of that religion who first applied it in times when there was no such science known per se. Isn’t it? But the question remains, who told them to do follow it and why it remained hidden from the people of other faiths, espcially from the aethiests of that time (if there were any).

 

 

 Yes, discussion could be more useful if Diagoras explained the nature of  belief in plain words. Otherwise it is is no use wandering in the randomland. Let us have some concrete base to go on or off, please.

 Is it the problem about the belief in the creator?? Then there will be a definite question about the belief in the creation too. Diagoras please explain your belief in some easy detail so that we can understand it better.

Do you have a problem about the existence of God?

Do you feel that there is no God, (The Creator) ?

Thanks.

Hi to my athiest new friend (hopefully)

As far as I know there are 3 basic principals that all human would view and hold as correct and these are:

1- Nothing can not create a thing,

2- the act is a mirror of the capacity of the doer and of some of his/her characteristics, and

3- S/he who hasn't got something (say object ''A'') cannot give that thing (the object''A'')

Now my question is: do you accept these 3 principals?

Kind regards

Zakaria

My dear, it is really hard to say who is the 'presenter of a claim'. To me, athiest faith is the challenger to the already existing religious faiths. Hence the burdon of proof is on them for presenting this new idea. However, as I said, in order to avoid this futile discussion, I don’t argue on who has the burden and have gone beyond this rudimentary argument.

Nah, that's not my position at least. It consists of you saying "God exists," and I reply "prove it."

Kindly note my remarks "scientists in the present world ". I don't think America represents whole world scientific community. Isn’t it? Therefore, statistics on the selected sample are not true representative of the population. Secondly, the percentages shown on your referred website for some of the years don’t add up to 100%. Either there is a typo or something actually missing in the data.

Well, America is the leader of the modern scientific world. However, other heavily scientific areas such as Europe and Japan are all very secular themselves.

In stats, when percentages don't add up, the remainder are unknown answers (lost, never responded, etc.)

Your reply misses the point of the argument. The question was how to define what is good and bad without the concept of God and not who is more or less law abiding.

I was just pointing out that the Atheists, whom apparently can't tell the difference between right and wrong, make up a minority of the prison population.

Again, both of them doesn't provide any distinction of humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. So your reply again misses the mark. Many animal species live in societies with their own set of rules. I don’t think they are based on any moral codified ethics but through evolutionary program of ‘survival of the fittest’.

I concur. Human morals are the product of years of natural and artificial evolution.

Your conclusion from your own examples is not logically linked up. If for someone, God defines morality, how can you conclude that it was drawn within himself? Secondly, the very basic question of discussing what is right or wrong comes under the perview of religions debating whose teachings are more closer to serving the humanity and thus universal than the others. For that, discussion are made within these religious faiths. But I don’t see on which basis an atheist can put forward his moral/ethical laws etc?

No, my point was that if you claim that we get our morals from God, then if God commanded one to murder and infant would it be right? Since God is the giver of morality, is not his will the only judge of what's good?

Religions are nor the only source of morality, there are a multitude of secular moral traditions ranging from the European Enlightenment to the Chinese Confucianist teachings and even the United States Constitution and government. See Secular Humanism for a recent moral philosophy.

Thanks for your reference to wikipedia. There are two issues with your reply. Firstly, kindly note the words “selfless service” in my post where as according to evolutionary biology “reciprocal altuism” is not un-conditional. Therefore it is hard to equate the two. Secondly, the evolutionary sciences dealing with social behaviors of homo-sepians has been unable to delink / decouple religious faith based behaviors/attitudes from those purely based upon the process of natural selection. This is simply because history has been predominantly baised towards religious influences. There is hardly any society discovered as yet which was purly aetheist in their beliefs. Hence, all studies carried out on the behavioral evolutionary processes of homospeians, the baises of some sort of religious faith always exists. Here is a small example that I found interesting from your own references. While discussing Setting up altruistic partnerships the author quotes very famous religious text “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” as a favourable approach. Now it is really hard to prove that this approach towards others  is based purely on evolutionary processes or through religious teachings indoctrinated throughout the history of mankind.

Personally speaking, even if it is through the science of evolutionary process, the credit must be given to the people of that religion who first applied it in times when there was no such science known per se. Isn’t it? But the question remains, who told them to do follow it and why it remained hidden from the people of other faiths, espcially from the aethiests of that time (if there were any).

I'm confused as to what your asking, but I'll try to answer your point.

There have been very few atheist societies, but there have been quite a few secular ones. Earlier I cited the Enlightenment, China, and the United States but even the pre-Socratic traditions of Ancient Greece had secular roots.

Humans have acted out of altruism not because of religion, but because of basic evolutionary mechanisms and more complex social mechanisms that evolved over millions and thousands of years respectively.