Atheist Morality per Ronald A Lindsay Pres and CEO of Center for Inquiry

Atheism Leads to Moral Decay: Once Again, the Big Lie
From HuffPo.

Recently a chancellor at Troy U. sent students a video which claimed that religious morals are necessary for a law abiding society. Atheists have trampled themselves trying to refute the video and vilify the chanceller. Here is the effort of R. A. Lindsey, which we shall analyze for its logic content.

”The assertion that widespread atheism will lead to moral and social decline is a claim oft-repeated. But frequent repetition doesn't make this unsupported assertion true. Instead, it serves as a reminder of the prejudice that many have toward atheists, as well as a telling admission of the weakness of arguments for theism.

To begin, where's the evidence to support this claim? None is cited in the video. That's not surprising, because there is no evidence to support this claim.

This assertion, contra the statement above, is easily supported by anyone who knows anything at all about history as recent as the 20th century. What is more interesting is that Atheists, when issuing denialist proclamations, totally ignore what most of the Atheists in the world did during that time. That information is not useful to the narrative. Let’s very quickly review the facts: Atheists seized major and minor governments through bloody revolutions, and proceeded to kill hundreds of millions of their own citizens in some of the most brutal fashions possible. The governing of Atheists is generally indiscernible from that of the most brutal barbarians. This certainly reflects either a lack of morality, or having accepted the morality of barbarism (which is pretty much the same thing when viewed from the outside).

But even more interestingly is Lindsay’s declaration that there is “NO evidence”, which he asserts as a truth claim without a smidgen of evidence provided. Non-existence requires a lot of evidentiary justification. Otherwise it is just logic error. He is not deterred by internal non-coherence, it is apparent.

The author, Ronald A. Lindsay, President & CEO, Center for Inquiry; Author of The Necessity of Secularism, has revealed at the very early point in his “analysis” that he is either massively ignorant of demonstrable Atheist moral abominations, or he is a liar of massive proportion. But let’s ignore that for now and see if there might be any actual case which he can make, possibly even revealing the actual source of a common set of moral principles for Atheism.

Next the data produced by Zuckerman is invoked, even as the Scandinavian countries wobble between financial collapse and internal wars between cultures.

” Widespread, voluntary rejection of belief in God is a phenomenon of only the last several decades, but there are a number of European countries, principally in Scandinavia, where a significant percentage of the population, if not a majority, no longer believes in a deity. The sociologist Phil Zuckerman, in his book-length study, Society Without God, described how Sweden and Denmark are peaceful, prosperous democracies with generally law-abiding, civic-minded populations, whose crime rates compare favorably with the United States, a much more religious nation. Their police presence is much lower as well. So much for the supposed tumble into the abyss.”

Zuckerman has been shown to assert in his “study” that Social Justice counts as morality and that Social Justice is the morality of Atheism. But Social Justice is merely a set of rules which are intended to apply to the Other, the Oppressor Class, and those rules do not apply to either the Victimhood Class or the Messiah Class of elitists, of which Zuckerman is a member. So in reality Social Justice is not a set of principles for personal behaviors, it is a set of restrictions placed by totalitarians on their hated Class: those who oppose their moral chaos.

To Quote Zuckerman indicates a belief system which belies the use of critical analytical, disciplined deductive processes, and illuminates rather the employment of the most simplistic rationalization process in supporting the presupposed narrative for an unproven and unprovable ideology.

But let’s move on, because Lindsay wrote much more.

” Moreover, empirical studies of the behavior of theists and nontheists have not revealed any significant causal connection between lack of belief in God and criminal conduct. If one visits our prisons, one would find the overwhelming majority of inmates are believers.”

So using “law abiding in order to avoid incarceration” is evidence for the existence of Atheist principles of morality? Only if the morality is Pragmatism/Consequentialism, both of which are tactics, not moral systems or sets of moral principles. Again the attempt to imply morality is a logical failure. Even proto-criminals do what they can to avoid incarceration.

But his case worsens, next, as he admits:

” Admittedly, a few years ago, the researchers Robert Putnam and David Campbell did conduct surveys, the results of which were summarized in their 2010 book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, which purported to show that religious Americans are more pro-social than nonreligious Americans. For example, religious Americans donate more to charities. Leaving aside questions about their methodology (the surveys relied heavily on self-reporting), a close look at their studies shows that it's not religious belief per se that correlates with altruism, but rather being active in a religious community. Being actively engaged in community associations may have some connection with pro-social behavior (in part, because it serves as a reminder of our obligations toward others), but there's no reason to think that civic associations cannot perform this function as well as religious groups.”

He is reduced to trying to rationalize away actual contrary data. What he cannot refute, he belittles by attempting to recharacterize the data. And at the end, he projects that the actual contributions by the religious could be performed by the non-religious as well. And where, exactly, is his data which shows this to be the case? And if it could be the case, why is it not the case? Coulda, shoulda, woulda…”; but didn’t, don’t, and won’t.

” In addition, the Putnam and Campbell study revealed one important aspect of conduct toward others where the nonreligious scored better than the religious, and that is with respect to support of civil liberties and conduct and attitudes toward minorities, such as gays and lesbians. Put simply, the nonreligious are, overall, more tolerant. Bottom line: even assuming the Putnam and Campbell study is reliable, at most it shows that there are some differences in conduct between religious and nonreligious, not that a religious society is necessarily better or that a democracy cannot survive with a nonreligious population.”

Lindsay goes into full retreat here, falling back onto Social Justice again. There is no question of Atheist attraction to Social Justice Class Wars and their own personal elitism. But again, those are not moral principles for personal behaviors, they are conditions for Class Warfare.

Social Justice is the contrary to moral principles; it relativizes behaviors which are acceptable to one class into contraries which apply depending upon one’s designated class. The designated Oppressor Class is the only class with prescribed behaviors, and those prescriptions are both at the whim of the Messiah Class, and are the polar opposite of morals. Tolerance now means that the Other, Oppressor Class, must tolerate everything which the Messiah class dictates to be the new “Good”; this is absolute and no other moral systems or considerations are allowed. However, the other two classes are freed, completely, from tolerating the Oppressor Class; in fact, the Oppressor Class is not to be tolerated, at all, and eliminationist rhetoric from the Messiah and Victimhood Classes is common. Under Social Justice, then, the Messiahs and Victimhood Classes become the Oppressors of the Oppressor Class, and claim sole moral authority and justification for doing so. Thus, oppression of the Other, with moral anarchy for Messiahs and Victimhood Classes is the moral theory of Social Justice. It is purely absolutist totalitarian, with the overtone of self-righteous elitism and moral supremacy.

Still, Lindsay is not done:

”Of course, the most interesting thing about the assertions that atheism leads to moral decay is the motivation for such claims. Exactly who is supposed to be persuaded by these claims? It's not like atheists are suddenly going to slap their foreheads and exclaim, "My goodness, I better start believing in God." No, these claims are clearly designed to bolster the religious who may have some doubts about the soundness of their beliefs. To put it mildly, the intellectual foundations for theism have been greatly eroded over the last couple of centuries. It is much more difficult to accept belief in invisible spirits. So, if one cannot come up with a positive argument for belief in God, try to scare people into believing. We better believe in God or chaos will result!”

To quote him roughly, where’s the evidence for this accusation? First, under what deductive argument have the intellectual foundations of theism been eroded? This is a fatuous claim, one of wishful thinking, and one which Atheists never, ever question, much less provide evidence for validation when they are questioned about it. In other words, if it were actually the case, then he would have referred in specific rather than general terms.

He ludicrously finds design (when unable to find such in DNA no doubt) without showing why that interpretation is necessary and sufficient to be the sole explanation. To do that he would have had to explore the issue of actual Atheist Principles of Morality: he does not because he cannot. All he can do at this point is to attribute fabricated onerous motivations to those who point out that Atheists Have No Common Set of Documented Moral Principles. And again, Social Justice is NOT a set of moral principles, so his erstwhile claim is false, maximally false and without intellectual redemption.

And his final shot is that the Chancellor is in need of re-education, a charge that rings hollow (and Marxist) coming from a writer who did not prove in the least that Atheists have a morality that can be called The Atheist Morality. In fact, he proved that his own tolerance is that of the Messiah Class: non-existant and unnecessary due to the Three Class System and his own personally designated elitist position within the Messiah Class.

So, let’s summarize his arguments in favor of the existence of Atheist Moral Principles.

1. There is no evidence that there is no set of Atheist Moral Principles. Fallacy: generalization regarding a non-existence; also false because there actually is evidence.

2. Atheists are not jailed at a higher rate than religious criminals. Fallacy: not an argument for Atheist Moral Principles, just an argument for Consequentialist tactics.

3. Zuckerman produced data on Scandanavian secular governments which shows how great they are. Except that this (1) is not the case unless socialism is the desire; (2) is not the case in current EU realities and culture wars; (3) ignores the major Atheist countries of the world. Fallacy: Special Pleading and ignoring reality of current events.

4. Admits that data shows much greater religious charitable giving and activity. Claims that such could be done in secularism too, but shows no reasons why it could or why it is not. Fallacy: Not an argument in fayor of Atheist Moral Principles, in fact a negative argument.

5. Claims Social Justice for Atheism, and presumes that Social Justice constitutes a moral theory. Fallacy: misrepresenting an argument, which actually works against the premise.

6. Claims that the “most interesting” aspect is the motivation for claiming that there is no set of Atheist Moral Principles; the motivation being to incorrectly instill fear into the believer, who must have fear in order to believe. Fallacy: total lack of evidence; fabricated psychological melodrama instead of statement of empirical fact; use of fatuous denigration rather than disciplined deductive argumentation.

7. Claims that the above “reasoning” shows that it is the chancellor who needs re-education.

Nowhere does he even attempt to use either direct proof of a set of common principles to which Atheists subscribe to guide their own behaviors. In fact, he attempts to place Social Justice diktats in place of personal moral principles. So we can conclude that he doesn’t know of any actual moral principles common to all Atheists, and is merely blowing the same smoke that other Atheist apologists must blow to cover for the moral lack of Atheism.

Addendum:
This book blows Zuckerman' case away.

Sorry, liberals, Scandinavian countries aren’t utopias