Atheist Commandments

[Pannonian]

1. Thou shalt contribute to the Babe Thread.

[Adrian II]

1. Thou shalt nothing. Whatsoever. Cool it.

[Samurai Waki]

1. Thou shalt nothing. Whatsoever. Cool it.

I sense Adrian is jockeying for a position in the mod staff

[JAG]

# Thou shalt obey all laws. This doe not validate the Nurenburg Defence.
# Thou shalt obey all orders given in authourity, unless that contradicts rule 1

I don't understand why this would have to be applied to atheists alone as a rule and not everyone. But also, they are terrible rules anyway.

*senses this going to the backroom anyway*

[Beirut]

I'm curious why an atheist would begin a phrase with "thou shalt".

Backroom? Maybe. But for the moment we would do well to heed Pannonian's advice.

[Flying Pig]

Thou shalt for the idea and tradition. Really, atheists need them more than godly people because they have no God to tell them what i good or not. With a religion you can just ry to please God, without a set of rules is required

Need isnt really important. The idea was to set out a 'code of morals' without a mention of god. These do not only apply to atheists!

@JAG, it doesn't only apply to atheists, butit's a really good one (I think) because there are always some people who claim 'my religion told me to commit this crime/ I can't do this because God says...'

[The_Doctor]

Empathy.

(I would post more, but I am about to have dinner).

[JAG]

Thou shalt for the idea and tradition. Really, atheists need them more than godly people because they have no God to tell them what i good or not. With a religion you can just ry to please God, without a set of rules is required

Need isnt really important. The idea was to set out a 'code of morals' without a mention of god. These do not only apply to atheists!

@JAG, it doesn't only apply to atheists, butit's a really good one (I think) because there are always some people who claim 'my religion told me to commit this crime/ I can't do this because God says...'

Ok firstly, what you are talking about and getting at with the whole topic is something which has been debated for centuries and is debated in the mind of everyone - religious or not - everyday; morality.

Just because there is no written code, like the ten commandments, for atheists - like me - it doesn't mean that they cannot find their own morality, without having some written document labbeled 'Atheist commandments', to tell them what to believe. Part of the point of being an Atheist is the fact that when you say 'there is no God' you are also free to state to yourself 'there is not God and thus all the religious morality can either be rubbish to me or still mean something, it is my choice'. So

atheists need them more than godly people because they have no God to tell them what i good or not.

that point, is irrelevant.

Secondly, need is important - as it is the fundamental point. For Atheists there is, quite simply, no need for things to be written down, morality - like with religious people - comes from various and varying means, because one of the options and inputs isn't there - the ten commandments - doesn't mean a supplimentary one needs to be invented.

Thirdly, People claim many things lead them to commit a crime, ultimately it is always a choice, regardless of pressure put on you any which way, and thus the responsibility is always your own.

A few quotes from Sartre seem apt for this whole thread -

The existentialist...thinks it very distressing that God does not exist, because all possibility of finding values in a heaven of ideas disappears along with Him; there can no longer be a priori of God, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. Nowhere is it written that the Good exists, that we must be honest, that we must not lie; because the fact is that we are on a plane where there are only men. Dostoyevsky said, If God didn't exist, everything would be possible. That is the very starting point of existentialism. Indeed, everything is permissible if God does not exist, and as a result man is forlorn, because neither within him nor without does he find anything to cling to.

Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterward. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.

From his play No Exit -

GARCIN: I "dreamt," you say. It was no dream. When I chose the hardest path, I made my choice deliberately. A man is what he wills himself to be.

INEZ: Prove it. Prove it was no dream. It's what one does, and nothing else, that shows the stuff one's made of.

GARCIN: I died too soon. I wasn't allowed time to - to do my deeds.

INEZ: One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet one's whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are - your life, and nothing else.