Parents never feel the need to agonize over whether or not their child should be “forced” to brush his/her teeth or get to choose whether to bathe or not, wipe his/her butt after toilet or not … but too many parents sniff they wouldn’t think of “exposing” their child to God or religion until they are “old enough” to make a choice. It is those kids who become young adults vulnerable to any weird cultish thing that comes along. They have nothing to compare it with, indeed they may have picked up from their parents that mainstream Christians or Jews are something kind of dirty since the parents were so adamant in avoiding them.

 

Physical hygiene = good. Moral hygiene = bad.

 

Of course at this point you might be thinking I’m saying atheists can’t be moral. I’m not. Atheists are as good and thoughtful and caring as theists. But their morality is subjective. That is NOT a judgment, it is merely descriptive.

 

YOU may write for The Skeptic and many of the writers there are also skeptical. Believe it or not, being a skeptic, a thinker and even a scientist is not the exclusive province of atheists. Science is a process. Science is a tool. Science attempts to describe the physical world and how it works (and sometimes fails spectacularly). But it doesn’t occupy the same space as religion or morality or ethics and it should not try to.

 

Which is why I pointed you to the Dawkins interview, it shows how much Dawkins believes his own beliefs about “there is no God” gives him absolute moral judgment to hold everyone who doesn’t believe as himself as inferior.

 

Darleen

 

 

From: Barrett Brown [mailto:barriticus@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 1:04 PM
To: Darleen Click
Subject: Re: Religion

 

First off, I'd like to apologize for addressing you as "sweetheart" - that was extraordinarily immature on my part and entirely inexcusable no matter what issues I may have with you. My mom didn't raise me to behave like that towards women, or anyone.

 

Thanks again for bringing the Dawkins/Hewitt debate to my attention. I don't see anything within it that relates to the saying about those who disbelieve in God believing anything, though; is there a particular exchange that you think is somehow emblematic of that? Perhaps you could write a post on it.

 

At any rate, that saying is bunk. Atheists who are generally skeptics, such as myself - I write for Skeptic, in fact - certainly don't "believe in anything." We're a notoriously careful bunch. This is not to say that some atheists don't believe in nonsense and otherwise engage in sloppy thinking, as some of them obviously do. But to try to single out atheists as being particularly prone to believing just any little thing that comes along compared to religious people is, I think, not an assertion that holds up against even the slightest scrutiny.