Originally Posted by
HoreTore
This has been repeated, in more words or less, enough times in this thread that I believe this is the basis of your argument. So, I will respond to this.
First, I will say that this is a classic case of why the form someone writes in is so important. Written as a question, this statement would've made you appear curious, interested and as a good and honest debater. Written as a conclusion, as you have done, it makes you look like an unintelligent dick, completely uninterested in what anyone else has to say because you know best. Pardon my french. I look forward to more threads, as always, but do keep that in mind for your next threads. And I might add that I've had more or less the same debate with PVC before, a thread which spread into several pages of very worthy debate, of which at least I(can't speak for pvc of course) learned a lot, so it's not the subject that is the problem here.
So, on to the actual statement, question form or not:
As I have already explained, "atheism" does not contain anything but the disbelief in the divine. There is nothing more to us that "we" all share. Instead, we subscribe to a wealth of vastly different philosophies. Religious people do the same, of course, what seperates an atheist from a religious man is that the philosophies does not contain a divine authority.
At least two such philosophies has been mentioned in this thread already, so I will deal with those two first, then move on to a few others:
First, the philosophy you brought forth, which you called "evolution/darwin/hitler", which I guess is your attempt to describe what we call Social Darwinism. This is a formely popular, but now massively discredited philosophy. It was of course the philosophy which formed parts of the foundation of National Socialism.
A small digression is in order here: the roots of national socialism did not begin with darwinism. Rather, the movement which eventually culminated in the modern german state on one hand, and national socialism on the other hand, started roughly a century prior to The Origin of Species. That movements aim was to create a common state for the fractured germanosphere. A tired saying is that the French had a state, but needed a people, while the Germans had a people, but needed a state. Anyway, as this movement went on, it branched out, branched in again, picked up new ideas, discarded old ideas, etc. This is quite standard for movements which spans a long time period(including your christianity, might I add). One of its branches became known as National Socialism, and it was this branch which picked up Social Darwinism(to the largest degree).
Back to Social Darwinism. This is the belief that the natural way our species has been formed should be used as both an authority and an ideal for society. There's not really any point to add more to it than that, other than to say that there are very few people, religious or atheist, who subscribe to it today. It's been relegated to the looniebin, and with good cause.
The second philosophy brought up in this thread was by Kadagar, when he stated "what if everyone else behaved like me?" This philosophy can be called(avoid weird names) "generalized self-interest". You stated that if I feel like raping someone, lacking a god, I should do it. No. With self-interest as an ideal and authority, even if you feel like raping someone, it's still not right to do so. If you choose to rape someone, you are creating a society where rape is okay. In a society where rape is okay, you get raped yourself. That's not in your self-interest. As such, the authority(self-interest) states that rape is wrong. With a generalized self-interest in mind, you must consider not only the effects an action has directly on yourself, but also the effects it has on others, since those effects will eventually effect you yourself.
Now on to other sources of authority and ideals. "The common good" is a common one. "Maximized happiness" is one. "The Circle of Life" is common among tree-huggers and other smelly hippies. A simple "that which makes the world progress" another.
All of these are authorities of the exact same level as your god. And just like your god does, we feel like it's okay to "force" these authorities upon the rest of society, regardless of majority opinion of it. "The common good" becomes no less potent even if just a minority believes in it, just like your god's message and authority does not diminish when only a minority in society believes in him. We who do not believe in a divine authority will always have at least one like these that we base our outlook upon. And of course - just like a religious man can convert from one religion to another, so will atheists pick or discard these moral authorities. Your claim that atheists cannot have moral absolutes because we do not have any authorities to pin them on is therefore clearly false: we do have authorities of the same magnitude as the christian god, and we are fully capable of having moral absolutes.
If you find all of this hard to understand and/or strange, try thinking of it as an "atheist religion", that might help your understanding.
Edit:
The belt buckle in Brenus' picture says "Gott Mit Uns", german for "God is with us". The christian god, that is. That Nazi soldiers had Gott Mit Uns written on their belt buckles is honestly common knowledge among anyone with at least some knowledge of Nazi Germany. Which makes me wonder just how much you honestly understand and know about the various quotes you have given in this thread....
In math terms, this is like failing simple fractions while giving a lecture on integration.
