Michael Shermer Creates a Morality

Michael Shermer, accused sex offender, tells us about morality. He claims to have a rebuttal to a video by Dennis Prager in which Prager claims that Atheism has no objective morality. In the end, Shermer agrees that there is no objective value to be found in his “moral universe”, but he has the true answer anyway. I’ve transcribed, sort of, the points that Shermer makes in his video which actually is there to pimp his book.

1. “Divine Command Theory is fallible.”

Doesn’t address the question: where are the objective morals of Atheism? What is the objective source? This is a Tu Quoque Fallacy and a Red Herring.

Plato’s dichotomy. If God exists, then God sets the rules for material existence, including morality.
“What if God said that murder is Ok, would that make murder right? Of course not.”

Of course not? Based on what Atheist, materialist principle?? What material, objective principle in the Atheist universe allows this statement as if it is true? Immediately, then, he declares a truth statement, a moral principle, with no reasoning, no grounding, no proof, much less objective proof of an empirical nature which would be objectively obvious to all reasonable people. He makes this declaration for no objective reason. He probably assumes that all westerners who are acculturated in the western Judeo-Christian ethic will automatically agree with him due to their cultural bias. It must be that, because there is no logic presented, nor any empirical, objective knowledge of a material source.

“What are the ‘reasons’ murder is wrong, and why can’t we base our morals on those reasons alone, and skip the divine middle man?”

Why? Because Atheism has proved conclusively that that doesn’t work: Atheist nations in the past century murdered at will, and in large volumes – from 150 to 250 million people slaughtered by Atheists under Atheist principles, for Atheist "reasons". Those principles were declared rational and were based in Darwinism, so they were also declared ‘scientific’. And they were justified by their use of Marxist/Nietschean principles, which justified massive bloodshed. Atheism was and is the state religion of China. And it also was of the USSR. Yes it is a religion if it allows moral decisions such as justified genocide.

“If it is really wrong in the moral universe, it doesn’t matter what God thinks or if there is a God or not: it’s still wrong”.

Completely false premise: there is no moral universe. There is no rational supersession of a deity; that is logically absurd under Reduction Ad Absurdum. Especially not of a hypothetical 'universe of morality' which supersedes a creating being. There is no evidence, material or otherwise, that anything like a moral universe exists. Certainly it does not exist as a sub-function of the material universe, and Atheists have long claimed that the material universe doesn’t care about humans in the least, and there is no morality contained in material objects, and therefore no material, objective morality can exist. If he is declaring the existence of a non-material universe, then he has stepped out beyond the philosophical materialism, which Atheists hold dear. What is the source of whatever exists in that non-material universe, and what would make it ‘objective’? he doesn't say, because that universe isn't there.

It can’t be wrong without a source for morality which is superior to humanity. Humans can’t dictate morality for other humans. Although Atheists and Islamists try.

Standard Atheist complaint, which also obviates any such thing as a superior moral universe. For Atheists, all of the universe is material, physical. The Atheist is the highest manifestation of material existence. Because there is only material existence, there is nothing which is "superior to humanity". So claiming that morality requires something that cannot exist for Atheists (God), justifies the denial of a deity, but Shermer instead uses it to justify a mystery universe which non-physically, spiritually (?) holds sway. Nobody but he knew it existed.

2. Either/Or Fallacy. (False Dichotomy)
“Between ‘absolute’ morality and ‘relative’ morality is ‘provisional’ morality: moral values that are true for most people, in most circumstances, most of the time. All societies around the world have sanctions against murder.” “All social order would break down”.

False Dichotomy does not refer to ontology (objective physical existence), it refers to epistemology (truth), generally in regards to choices in decision making. This use of False Dichotomy is "Fuzzy Logic", which violates the First Principle of Non-Contradiction: If it is true, then it is true; if it is not true, then it is false (truth is binary).

If morality is not true, then it is false. He proposes a False Trichotomy, which introduces a vast spectrum of possible "true moralities" that exist in between the Truth and the Not Truth. This also is the Fallacy of Equivocation, which changes word meanings in order to serve a purpose in argumentation. Morality either exists or it does not exist.

Provisional morality is again completely “relative” to the subjective whim of the individual; it is not objective in any sense, it is subjective, a creation of the speaker. Shermer likes to pretend that he is the creator of morality. In reality, every Atheist can create his own "moral code" to suit his own desires. And he can change that "moral code" at the blink of an eye, as the situation requires.

It is empirically, demonstratively, false to claim that all societies have sanctions against murder. Along with the defunct Aztecs/Toltecs who killed regularly and the still-extant Amazonian tribes that still kill regularly (and cannibalize) there are the Atheist governments which engage in murder on the order of genocides. Social order did not break down under Atheist governments because all thought and action were closely controlled. Violators of the social order were removed from society. Completely removed. Read Solzhenitsyn; he lived it.

“Exceptions: self-defense; capital punishment; Just war”. “But it is true that murder is wrong”.

This is the same issue as before: By what "objective" moral principle is this true, and it is set in place by what objective material mechanism? And how is “truth” determined? On the obviously sliding scale of Shermer?

3. “Religious Source of morality is unreliable”

This is a dodge. It doesn’t address the concept of Atheist objective morality. This is a Tu Quoque Fallacy, and a Red Herring. A twofer.

“Most people don’t see burning bushes or stone tablets from the Almighty. So where do these ideas about Right and Wrong come from? There are many ‘holy books’, with different commands for different religions, so which one is right? These make absolute moral claims that contradict one another. They can’t all be right. Even in Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, there is disagreement as to what is Right and Wrong.”

Then the prior statement regarding the singular worldwide cultural understanding of morality being unified, is false. This then is Non-coherent; internal contradiction. Violates the Principle of Non-Contradiction. But most importantly it is useless in explaining how Atheistic "objective morality" even works, much less how it is based in reality, or where one can find the "universe".

“Members of these religions still commit violence in the name of God today”.

False Equivalence Fallacy. One, not all are violent and that is a blatant lie, Abrahamic religion – and Atheist States – have been far more violent. Aside from false, this is on the order of slander.

“Religion has no method to determine Right from Wrong”.

Demonstrably false. Truth value = zero.

“It’s religion that gives us moral opinions, but science has a systematic method for determining truth claims”.

False Equivalency, and False Premise: Scientism as a religious claim: This statement and its implication are absolutely False according to the Scientific Method, which must self-restrict strictly to material phenomena which are amenable to measurement by technology, and repeatably reproduced in material experiments for validation, falsification and objectivity. Science can say nothing without repeatable demonstrations via experiments by disinterested parties, designed to validate or falsify hypotheses regarding material cause and effect. All scientific findings are contingent upon possible future invalidation (falsification); they are never objective truth. Any other claim for science is false. Therefore, any religious claim for science is false, and obtuse.

If a proposition is of a non-material nature, science is impotent to discuss it, much less render an objective judgment. Any statement otherwise is FALSE, and ignorant or evil.

4. “Absolute Morality Corrupts, Absolutely”
“Absolute morality inexorably leads to the conclusion that anyone that believes differently has departed from the truth, and thus is unprotected by our moral obligations”.

Historically this absolutism lead to the Crusades, Inquisitions, witch hunts, religious wars and genocides, all in the name of God. Today, suicide bomber shout out Allahu Ackbar, ‘God is Great’. These Islamic terrorists also believe in absolute, God given moral values of Right and Wrong, and they act accordingly.”

Leftist Atheists usually endow their pet: Islam with Peace, except when it is useful not to. The Crusades were 200 to 250 generations ago. Since then Christianity has had billions of followers, many of which created the republican form of government which eliminated slavery, emancipated women and blacks, etc. This accusation is without merit. It amounts to another slander.

“What about Hitler, Stalin and Mao? Aren’t they examples of godless, relativistic Atheism? NO.”

“First, Hitler was not an Atheist. Hitler was a Catholic, and Stalin was Orthodox. But all this is irrelevant, because they killed in the name of ideology, not Atheism, which isn’t even a belief system. In fact, National Socialism and Communism were faux religions in those societies, and as such they provided their believers with absolute moral values about Right and Wrong. They serve as examples of why absolute morality corrupts, absolutely.”

Hitler was NOT a Catholic; he killed Catholics who refused to change over to Hitler’s ideology which was Hitlerism forced-preached in previouly Catholic Churches, i.e., it was Norse pagan superiority and Darwinism.

Lenin and Stalin killed almost all priests, killed Christians en masse, and destroyed most churches. Atheism was the official state ideology, starting with Lenin. The religious position was Atheism.

The idea that National Socialism and Communism were Catholic or Orthodox is part of the Big Lie. They were godless, Humanist, New Man, Utopia on Earth ideologies, which engaged casually in savagery and eugenics, not to mention industrialized genocides – brutality completely unhampered by any moral qualms, due to the Atheist-Darwinist basis. Atheism and Darwinism were the belief systems that allowed zero morality to intervene.

And this Atheist invokes these false arguments as if they are true, a demonstration of the quality of morality of Atheists, right on video for all to see.

“CONCLUSION.
So. Morality is not absolute. But neither is it relative. So where does it come from?

We get our morality from our parents; peers; mentors; teachers; books; and culture. And we listen to that ‘still small voice within, our moral conscience. Morality is in our nature, we are moral beings with real moral emotions that we can reason about, which we’ve been doing for centuries.

Absolutely not true. Atheists are generally Consequentialists who declare completely subjectively that a certain goal is "moral", and any means to get to that goal is therefore moral. That is both Darwinian, Nietzschean, and Atheist to the core.

Ever since the Enlightenment, religious based theocracies have been replaced with constitution-based democracies, and the result was the abolition of slavery and torture, democratic rule of law, decline of violence, and the granting of civil rights, women’s rights, children’s rights, gay rights and animal rights, as our moral sphere has expanded ever larger.

This is the blatant false appropriation claim of the accomplishments of the Christian Western culture for Atheism. It is cultural theft; Darwinism and eugenics is the result of Atheism. The constitutional governments were formed based on rights endowed by the Creator... Except in France under the Atheist Leftists and the huge eugenic bloodbath ensued there. That was the Dawn of the Enlightenment, which declared Atheism to be the correct ideology.

Book pimping:

...a ‘real moral universe’ with ‘real moral values’ about Right and Wrong. And there is an arc to that moral universe that really does bend towards truth, justice and freedom. It’s up to us to make that happen.

If there is an arc to morality, Atheism drives that arc toward totalitarian barbarism, eugenics, and mass murder as was done in the 20th century, everywhere that it held sway..

Shermer has committed the overall Fallacy of Equivocation regarding the term "objective". Objective means that there is demonstrable physical evidence which can be observed by any reasonable person just by looking at it, observing it. Shermer's subjective universe is not objective in any manner. So Prager is right.

Note that this author, Michael Shermer, is a sexual predator accused by multiple females including Leftist females.

Michael Shermer has no moral principles, which is why he proposes an Excluded Middle Fallacy (First Principle of Rational Thought) in order to slide his subjective morality in between absolute Right and Absolutely NOT Right: Wrong. His morality is not morality, it is an excuse to do as he wishes and to declare that to be "moral".

Study: Now People Give Reasons For Not Trusting Atheists

Atheists remain most disliked religious minority in the U.S.

"Ten years ago University of Minnesota sociologists conducted research showing that, among a long list of racial and religious minority groups, atheists were the most disliked group of people in the United States. Last month they followed up with new research that shows that Americans still have negative opinions of atheists and the non-religious--and now they have a good theory about why that is.

Their findings are available online in the article “Atheists and Other Cultural Outsiders: Moral Boundaries and the Non-Religious in the United States” (Social Forces). The research team comprises Department of Sociology professors Penny Edgell, Douglas Hartmann, and Joseph Gerteis and graduate student Evan Stewart.

Survey data collected in 2014 shows that, compared to data collected in 2003, Americans have sharpened their negative views of atheists, despite an increase in people identifying as non-religious and an increase in public discussion of non-belief.

The findings of this most recent survey support the argument that atheists are persistent cultural outsiders in the United States because they are perceived to have rejected cultural values and practices understood as essential to private morality, civic virtue, and national identity. Moreover, any refusal to embrace a religious identity of any type is troubling for a large portion of Americans.

Forty percent of Americans view the non-religious--atheist, agnostic, no-religion, and spiritual-but-not-religious--as problematic, even though 33 percent of the survey respondents identify with those categories.

By the numbers, researchers found that:

40% of Americans disapprove of non-religion
33% of respondents fall into a broad “religious nones” category: 3.8% as atheist, 3.5% as agnostic, 7.1 % as “spiritual but not religious,” and 18.5% as “nothing in particular.”
27% of Americans say that atheists “don't share my morals or values.”

Comparing the “religious nones,” respondents had less negative views of people who say they have no religion, and feel more positively about those who are “spiritual but not religious.”

These attitudes are strongly driven by a belief that religiosity is central for civic virtue, that societal standards of right and wrong should be rooted in historic religious traditions, and that Christianity underpins American identity.

Some measures of the respondents’ attitudes show that Muslim-Americans are as distrusted, and in some cases more distrusted, than the non-religious. Analysis of these attitudes will be the subject of another paper by the same research team forthcoming later in 2016.

“There are no mainstream, cultural expressions or depictions, on television for example, to present atheism to the general public,” says Edgell. “It’s only in the last decade that a secular coalition of American atheist and non-religion organizations have gotten together. I expect that in the near future we’ll see more effort on their part to change perceptions and lobby to change policy,” regarding the role of religion in everyday life.

The survey was conducted by GFK Group, with just over 2,500 people participating."

Interesting. Atheists are trusted about the same as Muslims, now.

Atheism: When Ethics Are Grounded in "the Literal Ground"

If atheists do have values, what are they?

"There’s an interesting article in the Guardian by Julian Baggini. Now that nearly half of Britons say that they have no religion, he observes, some believers are saying that atheism is also a sort of faith. Though an atheist, he is not of the Dick Dawkins school, and so does not respond with Dickish bluntness. He is not one of those ‘zealous’ atheists who sees religion ‘as an offence to human rationality.’ People like that do seem to have a sort of crusading faith, he says. Excessive trust in the power of reason can be dangerous, he adds.

He admits that the ‘meaning and value’ that atheists find in life is not strictly evidence-based, and so has a faith-resembling aspect. But it’s misleading to call this ‘faith’, he concludes. ‘The non-religious do not find meaning, purpose and value by taking a leap into the unknown and transcendental. We find it in the beauty and joy of life, and in the empathy that makes us see value in the lives of others too. These things are not facts captured by fundamental physics but nor are they religious mysteries to be taken on faith. What grounds us ethically can be found entirely on the literal ground on which we live.’"

I really have to take the "literal ground" statement as a metaphor, despite the embedded word, "literal". That is perhaps an undeserved charity, since the statement refers, literally, to "literal"... However, I prefer to move on to the beauty and joy - and Empathy - statement.

Beauty is not exclusive to Atheists (Carl Sagan seemed to think otherwise). But it is not an ethic. Are ugly people not valuable? Beauty is a purely subjective judgment, and its application is uneven, even contradictory. An ugly person might have led a beautiful life, had a beautiful mind, or have led a morally beautiful life. A beautiful person might be a pervert of lowest esteem (or the newest Victinhood Class member). Beauty is merely an expression of appreciation which one has for an object, such as a beautiful equation. There is zero ethical content in beauty.

The same goes for joy. Joy is just happy, happy, happy. No ethical content there, either. Stalin was happy when Trotsky was killed with a mountaineering ice pick. So "happy" and "joy" don't provide any ethical direction at all.

Which leaves the standard claim of massive empathy which Atheists claim to have, as this Atheist does. Empathy, however, is not a trait which Atheists should bring up, because studies show that Atheists have a distinct paucity of Empathy. Atheist empathy stalls out at the same level that psychopath empathy does. Not an auspicious source for Atheist moral superiority, or even parity.

So maybe "the literal ground" should be taken more literally as the basis for Atheist ethics. But what ethical principles they find in the dirt are not obvious, and certainly haven't helped them with their empathy problem.

In a Society Free From Moral Principle, This is a Result

Mother says sex with her son is 'incredible' as she reveals they're planning marriage and trying for baby

I read the other day that a woman went to Europe so that she could marry herself. And I know of people who have married bridges, trucks, trees and such. But they don't generate offspring. Used to be that you couldn't marry your first cousin, for genetic reasons. But apparently that is oppressive, and hateful. So its completely open, now that "secular" morality is the rage.

Saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.

I have quoted the Qur'an; This is from the Old Testament:

13 For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.

14 They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.

15 They acted shamefully, they committed abomination; yet they were not ashamed, they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord.

16 Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, “We will not walk in it.”

17 Also I raised up sentinels for you: “Give heed to the sound of the trumpet!” But they said, “We will not give heed.”

Jeremiah 6.

Valerie Tarico, on Something...

“There is no god — now what?”: How to find meaning in an atheist world

Tarico interviews Filmmaker and photographer Chris Johnson on the dangers of religion and his new documentary, “A Better Life”

“Our public conversation about atheism is two dimensional,” says Johnson. “It’s time to open the next phase. For ten years we’ve talked about what we don’t believe in. The dialogue kicked off by the New Atheist movement was much needed, but after we strip away gods and superstition, what is left? How do we see ourselves and our lives and our relationships? That’s what we need to talk about next.”

This is the necessary admission that they have nothing else, beyond rejection and personal opinions for moral constructs.

"Some people were expecting to hear the same thing from everyone—why religion is wrong. But instead, the atheists in the film were talking about really big questions: How do we find meaning and purpose? How do we relate with each other? How do we deal with our own mortality? How do we interact with the world around us? They talked about dimensions of the religious experience that are accessible to people outside of religion. So many people get incredible experiences going to church. But if you assume that all of this is natural, then these powerful experiences have natural causes. So we can ask, how can we have the same rich experiences without the things we don’t like about religion?"

Blatantly groping for religiousness without a deity. For blessings without a blessor, in a creation without a creator. Creating meaning in a material universe which has no meaning. Consider this sentence, excised from its context:

" If we can get that without the false truth claims of religion, we get the best of both worlds."

Atheism, being purely rejection without evidence or rational argument, gives the Atheist nothing. It empties the soul of hope. It empties the mind of logic. All because of rejecting the fundamentals: the single moral authority; the single source of rationality in a universe based on laws which are not man-made. Atheists have nothing but the accident of their existence in a cold and dying universe which cares nothing for them.

"People think that to have profound meaningful experiences and commitments takes religion or some higher power outside of yourself. But it doesn’t.

In fact, an evidence-based rational perspective can make you more understanding and compassionate. The naturalist worldview recognizes many complex causes and effects in people’s lives and that can lead to compassion. If you look at the bishop in Les Miserables who lies and saves Jean Valjean from going back to prison, that is an act of grace—an act of compassion. This idea of grace, the idea of undeserved forgiveness—we tend to think of that in a religious sense. But if you look at the world as purely natural, then you could be inclined to think of that in the same sense. I’m an atheist and the story of Les Miserables resonates with me in the same way it does with many believers. The ideas of compassion and forgiveness are universally human and not strictly religious."

This is a common Atheist lie.

The huge Atheist experiments of the 20th century, Marxist-Atheist Communism, were the exact opposite of compassionate and forgiving, and on a hugely bloody, torturing-murderous exercise of Atheism in power. This is evidence. It is the evidence-based rational perspective to which Atheists are blind and seemingly intellectually immune. And that places Atheism into the blind belief category.

Fact: compassion and forgiveness are NOT universally human; and they are strictly religious, in fact they are primarily Christian. (Not Islamic, for certain). The author is co-opting Christianity at every turn, while leaving out the deity. This is because Atheists want themselves to be the pinnacle of existence. By stealing Christianity from its deity, the Atheist may pretend to be what he is not: the deity himself.

But this Atheist is just a thief; without the prior existence of Christianity he has nothing new to offer. At least Atheist philosophers have contrary moral/ethical programs (all starting with consequentialism) which they wish to promote.

"If there is no god pulling the strings, then all that is left is the world and the people around us."

Nothing for the Atheist, except Christian precepts to steal.

Atheists are always suspect. That is because there is no moral authority behind any of this or any other Atheist moral/ethical proclamation. Only the presupposed "elitness" of the Atheist exists as a source for authority, and that is a delusion, an affect which Atheists try to maintain, despite their failures to ever produce either evidence or logic for their position, which flies in the face of their claim to be grounded in both evidence and logic.

There is more at the site, if you care to read it. I didn't.

The Connection Between Atheism and Social Justice

Atheism starts with rejection: “there is no deity”. It sometimes quickly progresses to denial: “I have no beliefs regarding a deity”. Atheism becomes a moral and intellectual VOID.

The Atheist VOID is highly conducive to the self-creation of personal moral principles. It is common for those moral principles to apply to others, rather than to the Atheist self. This, in turn, produces a highly “moral” Atheist self, and also a highly “immoral” Other. This engenders eliteness for the Atheist, who has done nothing of merit to produce such eliteness.

Atheists have tended to aggregate into moral groups. This allows the Atheist-Leftists to identify common elitist morals for the Other, and those become the Class designations for placing the entirety of humanity into tribes or classes. The three classes start with themselves, the elites, who they designate as the saviors of the “downtrodden”. They become the Messiah Class. Since they need someone to “save”, they designate “Victimhood” Classes which are determined by their own criteria. And there needs to be someone to save the Victimhood classes from: those are everyone else – the Oppressor Class.

This is Cultural Marxism, which is Atheist to the core.

The Messiah Class is self-anointed (in Thomas Sowell’s words) to attack and destroy the Oppressor Class. The methodology is moot; whatever works is the motto of Atheist Consequentialism, under which the only immoral tactic is the one not used (Alinsky).

Not all Atheists become Leftists and Social Justice Warriors. Christopher Hitchens was a conservative. But Hitchens also used the Class System. He merely defined the classes differently from the Left. The Marxist tendencies to destroy the Oppressor Class in order to save the Victimhood Class were still in play and strong in Hitchens.

However, the majority of Atheists do tend toward Leftism. They have granted themselves superiority in logic and evidence and intellect, despite having no evidence of any superiority in any of those things. But having granted themselves this superiority places them directly in the elitist class, with the self-granted responsibility to save the world from their lessors.

In the western nations, the Atheist Social Justice war is against Christians, straights and males, as well as any who hold to moral principles which are not Social Justice principles.

Atheist Social Justice Warriors cannot be negotiated with; they view themselves as morally superior, intellectually superior, logical and evidence-based. Thus they are "right" in every subjective sense. The Atheist Social Justice Warrior has joined a group which is socially narcissistic, and can see no defect in himself and considers all criticism to be due to defects in the Other. The phenomenon of the Atheist Social Justice Warrior, then, is one of psychological defect, a mental state of delusion - a delusion which cannot be removed even by logic, rational argumentation, blatant objective evidence, or common sense.

It can only be contained. It must be; it's intent and objective is to destroy the rest of us.

Atheism and the Culture Wars

Contrary to what any and probably every Atheist might claim, there is no such thing as a common set of “Atheist moral principles”. Atheism is purely a rejection of the source of morality and normative institutions for western culture. And the rejection is done without any logical argument or empirical evidence in support of that rejection, and it is thus not based in rational principles, but is merely rejectionism.

When an Atheist claims a set of moral principles, those principles are always those which the Atheist either creates for himself, or which the Atheist has co-opted from somewhere because those principles are compatible and congenial to himself. The Atheist is not stressed in any manner to meet his own specifications for his own behaviors. Whatever principles he adopts for himself are congruent with his existing behaviors, and further, the principles can be amended immediately when a different behavior is desired. What the Atheist does consider to be fixed and rigid are his principles for the behaviors of others who are not himself or his tribe. These are not to be violated or invalidated, and to do so will be met with righteous indignation suitable to the Atheist’s presumed moral superiority.

The rejection which characterizes Atheism extends to all worldview principles, including the principles of Truth. For the Atheist, any declaration of truth is subjective, regardless of its substance and validation, unless it is a truth uttered by the Atheist himself. This leads to the de facto declaration that “it is true that there is no truth”, which under traditional, Aristotelian and Enlightenment thought is a self-refuting, paradoxical fallacy. But for the Atheist, for whom truth is not so determined, it is easily accepted as a First Principle.

There being no truth, hence there are no lies; and there is also neither good nor evil, except that which is so designated by the Atheist. There is nothing new about this; it was fully explored by Friedrich Nietzsche well over a century ago, and is fully explained in his book, “Beyond Good and Evil”. It is not an arbitrary declaration which he makes; it is an inevitable condition of Atheism.

”But if he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Samuel Johnson; Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson” 1791.

Atheism is more than a mere rejection of the culture and norms of western civilization. It is also a simultaneous rejection of logic and morality, neither of which the Atheist wants applied to himself. Because the Atheist sees onerous restriction on himself by such logic and morality, he must reject everything which attaches to either. So logic and morality, having been rejected, must be inverted in order to avoid them in their standard forms. That is the genesis of Leftism, the rejection of Enlightenment principles.

“When I was a young man, being anxious to distinguish myself, I was perpetually starting new propositions. But I soon gave this over; for, I found that generally what was new was false”.
Samuel Johnson, quoting Goldsmith; “Boswell’s ‘Life of Samuel Johnson’”, 1791.

To be sure not all Atheists are Leftists, although most of them are. Christopher Hitchens was the standard bearer for non-Leftist Atheism. But what we see in common between them is the strident illogic with which both sides are afflicted due to their basic, same rejectionism of all prior normative standards.

Atheists usually respond, “You don’t know anything about Atheism”, and that right after (or before) having claimed that “Atheism is nothing but a lack of belief”, which itself is a claim of several facets: first, notice that there is no claim of morality attached to the “lack of belief”. Next, notice that they will not admit to having rejected any contrary arguments or evidence, which is because they don’t want to defend their own lack of arguments and evidence as well as find themselves required to use actual logic and/or science in their own defense of their rejections. In fact, the “lack of belief” concept is perfectly extensible to all “onerous” forms of “repressive” institutions which are rejected without rational cause.

Rejectionism extends to Free Thought, as well. Free Thought is anything but free; it is the Hegelian antithesis of free. Free Thought is just a name for a particular dogma. Free thinkers do not accept much thought at all, certainly not if it does not conform to their self-derived principles. The dogmatism of Free Thought is obvious and palpable. Normative cultural principles are not even acceptable topics for Free Thinkers except as objects of ridicule and hatred.

Which brings us to normative cultural principles and their treatment by Atheists, Leftists and Free Thinkers.

The primary normative cultural principle under attack today is the principle of “tolerance”, originally the Voltairian principle of defending the right to disagree, no matter to what degree. As they commonly do, the Atheist, Leftist, Free Thinkers use the word in an inverted fashion. What tolerance means to them is that all of their antics, regardless of the extent of purposeful insanity and provocation, must be tolerated to the point that those antics are the New Norm, fully accepted by everyone without exception. This naturally morphs into a moral position, and the contrary of that moral position (dissent) becomes the only evil known to the Atheist, Leftist, Free Thought self-designated moral policing juggernaut. Dissent must be eradicated by the defenders of the New Morality. These view themselves as Messiahs who are morally obligated to produce salvation through purges. And all prior normative institutions and their subscribers qualify is being purgeable as opportunity presents. Tolerance, the Votairian version, is swamped by self-righteous assertion of censorship.

Which brings us to the concept of “Free exercise of religion”, a phrase so potent and incorruptible that has had to be changed – to “freedom of worship”, the new Leftist term which conceptually is far different. Those afflicted with allegiance to the prior normative institutions and their meanings are now confronted with having to worship only as they are allowed, under “positive liberties” to worship, namely where such worship does not make the Atheists and Leftists physically ill and cause lawsuits such as the dozens of “cross” lawsuits filed by the FFRF, in the attempt to destroy by bankruptcy those who dissent from the all new cultural progress.

Thus the corruption of the language of moral principles, starting with corruption of the concept of tolerance into intolerance, and moving into the corruption of any other principle at the whim of the Atheist/Leftist, becomes the driving provocation of culture war, the war to eliminate all prior notions of morality and logic and to obtain total assent to the new inversions.

The second response to this revelation is always, “that’s not true”, “you are deluded”, and other useless denials. Notice that the response is never one of accommodation in the form of actual tolerance. Nor is there any logic, grounded and testable argument presented, nor are there any empirical experimental results presented. That is because they have none, and they know they have none.

If Atheists could refute all of this using science and logic, they would. But they can’t and they don’t, because their faith in science is a fallacy – ideological Scientism – and their use of logic is inverted into self-refutations. So what they resort to, again, is merely intellectual intransigence: the avoidance by redefining who they are, into who they are not: holders of non-beliefs.

Boswell: “He is totally unfixed in his principles, and wants to puzzle other people. I said his principles had been poisoned by an infidel writer, but that he was, nevertheless, a benevolent, good man.
Johnson: ”We can have no dependence upon that instinctive, that constitutional goodness which is not founded on principle. I grant you that such a man may be a very amiable member of society. I can conceive him placed in such a situation that he is not much tempted to deviate from what is right; and as every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts, I can conceive of him doing nothing wrong. But if such a man stood in need of money, I should not like to trust him; and I should certainly not trust him with young ladies, for there is always temptation. Hume and other skeptical innovators, are vain men, and will gratify themselves at any expence. Truth will not afford sufficient food for their vanity; so they have betaken themselves to errour. Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull. ”
Samuel Johnson; Boswell’s “Life of Samuel Johnson”

Are There Moral Facts?

The difference between fact, opinion and belief can get muddy:

Why Our Children Don’t Think There Are Moral Facts

"A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. When I went to visit my son’s second grade open house, I found a troubling pair of signs hanging over the bulletin board. They read:

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

Hoping that this set of definitions was a one-off mistake, I went home and Googled “fact vs. opinion.” The definitions I found online were substantially the same as the one in my son’s classroom. As it turns out, the Common Core standards used by a majority of K-12 programs in the country require that students be able to “distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.” And the Common Core institute provides a helpful page full of links to definitions, lesson plans and quizzes to ensure that students can tell the difference between facts and opinions.

So what’s wrong with this distinction and how does it undermine the view that there are objective moral facts?

First, the definition of a fact waffles between truth and proof — two obviously different features. Things can be true even if no one can prove them. For example, it could be true that there is life elsewhere in the universe even though no one can prove it. Conversely, many of the things we once “proved” turned out to be false. For example, many people once thought that the earth was flat. It’s a mistake to confuse truth (a feature of the world) with proof (a feature of our mental lives). Furthermore, if proof is required for facts, then facts become person-relative. Something might be a fact for me if I can prove it but not a fact for you if you can’t. In that case, E=MC2 is a fact for a physicist but not for me.

But second, and worse, students are taught that claims are either facts or opinions. They are given quizzes in which they must sort claims into one camp or the other but not both. But if a fact is something that is true and an opinion is something that is believed, then many claims will obviously be both. For example, I asked my son about this distinction after his open house. He confidently explained that facts were things that were true whereas opinions are things that are believed. We then had this conversation:

Me: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?”

Him: “It’s a fact.”

Me: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.”

Him: “Yeah, but it’s true.”

Me: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?”

The blank stare on his face said it all."

And there is this:

Do College Students Care About Truth?

"So after reading these tests for truth, [see link for those] what do I see out there?

Do I see college students who know about these tests for truth? Of course not. And which test for truth do I see the most when talking to students about the truth claims of Christianity? I will skip #2, #3, and #4. These tests for truth almost never come up.

The most popular view today seems to be #1 (a pragmatic view of truth) and then coming in second place is a tie between #5 and #6 (“Truth is what feels good” and “Truth is what is existentially relevant”).

...

So what about atheists?

The one bright spot is that since popular atheists started writing their books and we saw a more aggresive approach towards atheism on the campus, I so see some interest in the truth question. In other words, atheism has caused some people to ask whether a belief is objectively true and corresponds to reality. Ravi Zacharias once said,

“There is just enough of the modern worldview left so that reason still has a point of entry. But we have to use this knowledge wisely. We cannot give an overdose of argumentation.”- “An Ancient Message, Through Modern Means To the Postmodern Mind” in Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns, 2002, p. 27

Many of our speakers at Ohio State appeal to modern (not post-modern) objections such as science, evidence, miracles, etc. So this is why our speakers like Frank Turek and William Lane Craig have had good turnouts for their events."

But there is more to it than that. There ARE moral facts, those which can be deduced with disciplined Aristotelian, grounded, valid deductive processes, and validated with Reductio Ad Absurdum.

For example, we might deduce that murder is bad, as a moral fact. Reductio would ask, how would our world be if that deduction were not true? We can observe that if murder were a perfectly moral activity, then the world would be a far worse place in which to live. (In fact, in Atheist totalitarian countries where government murder of its own peoples is de rigeur, life is indeed quite animalistic, and mere survival is the objective.)

Deduction, done legitimately, produces truth. It can and does produce the moral truths which apply at the universal level to human existence. Denial of this is rooted in the objection to any moral authority (or logical, intelligent existence) outside of the human individual. It is the arrogance accompanying the emotional need for personal deliverance from external moral law and the knowledge of higher authority than humans.

There are moral facts. Those who object to them, say in the pursuit of abortion or infanticide, have placed their personal moral authority over both received and deduced moral principles. These are moral dictators.




This process is clearly the result of evolution as Dawkins explains:

"An atheist before Darwin could have said, following Hume: "I have no explanation for complex biological design. All I know is that God isn't a good explanation, so we must wait and hope that somebody comes up with a better one." I can't help feeling that such a position, though logically sound, would have left one feeling pretty unsatisfied, and that although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (1986), page 6"

Under the moral and intellectual VOID of Atheism, any personal opinion can be substituted for moral fact. The moral and ethical crisis of western culture is due to the secularization of education to the point of Atheist moral voidism being installed and instilled in generations of western youth, who emerge with no moral compass whatsoever, other than their personal opinions. There is no such thing as an Atheist Moral Code.

Atheist morals start with consequentialist tactics (pragmatism) which immediately backfills the Atheist Void which is attained by rejectionism. They might then progress (or not) to presuming that their own behavioral proclivities are moral (aka: "Moral Without God"), because they have stayed out of prison (so far). And the use of their own behaviors as moral principles makes the Atheist moral-by-definition, i.e. tautologically moral. Thus being so completely moral and without even the ability to betray that sort of moral definition, the Atheist becomes a moral elite by his own lights.

Dawkins and Singer are examples of such moral eliteness. They pronounce moral principles for the morally defective herd, while also admitting that there are no objective moral facts in the Atheist universe (a logical non-coherence which never concerns them in the slightest). This extends to the inability to say that Hitler's extermination of classes of humans was morally wrong:

""What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question."
Richard Dawkins

When morality is left to secular government schools, this is what you get. The effluent from the Atheist void includes Moral Dictators, who prey on the totally amoral.

Obama Murders Black Teenager by Proxy: Press Is Silent

Which Black Lives Actually Matter In Obama's Utopia?

Father Of Black Teenager Murdered By Illegal Alien Asks ‘Do Black Lives Really Matter?’

"The father of a black teenager murdered by an illegal immigrant asked “do black lives really matter?” in a House hearing to review the Department of Homeland Security’s policies towards “non-citizens unlawfully present in the United States.”

That father, Jamiel Shaw, and Michael Ronnebeck, the uncle of another man murdered earlier this month by an illegal immigrant, testified at Wednesday’s hearing in front of a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Both men asserted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) lax detainment policies contributed to the death of their family members. ICE came under intense scrutiny last year when it was revealed that in 2013 the agency had released over 36,000 convicted criminal aliens from its custody. Of those, nearly 200 had committed murder."

Obama knowingly released murderers onto American society; he is guilty of these and other murders and crimes being perpetrated by these darlings of the Obama, his Administration and the Left.

Doing this to Americans is criminal, and would be impeachable except that half of Congress is also guilty of these murders and crimes. No impeachment of this criminal is possible.

To assess the morality of these governmental human virulences, only the immigration policy need be addressed and analyzed, even in isolation from all their other atrocities in the past 6 years.

If you voted for utopia, here it is. This represents the standard Leftist Utopia.

A Message to Valerie Tarico

I left the following comment over at Valerie Tarico's site. I hope she responds, but few Atheists actually do, especially when they are asked to defend their Atheism. They cannot, so they don't. We'll see.

"Valerie,
Your visceral hatred has truly colored your view of the world, to the point of spreading your distortions to other haters who feed on your hate. Atheism has been the most destructive ideology that the world has ever known, even in just the past 100 years, torturing and killing several hundred million humans and enslaving entire continents under the slavery of Atheist ideological oppression.

Yet you act as if "religion", under which generalization you categorize Christianity along with all other "sects", is the world's only issue. Atheism starts with rejection of principles, including morality, thereby placing itself into an unprincipled void of pure rejectionism (euphemistically called "doubt" by yourself, but really just blind rejection supported by cherry picking certain self-assigned offenses about which to complain). Doubt and rejectionism become solipsist and pyrrhonian, rejecting all knowledge, yet they are thought to generate logical arguments without the benefit of actual disciplined deduction. Skepticism never generates actual knowledge. Taken to emotional limits it prevents analysis of concepts and thus denies possible truths merely on the basis of its own presumed truth claim.

Atheism ultimately self-entitles the Atheist to believe in the inferiority of all non-Atheists, and hence creates the self-perception of the personal superiority of the Atheist. This leads directly to the elitism of self-endowed Messiahism described by Thomas Sowell, and the three-class system of the Leftist elites, who thrive on placing people into Victimhood Classes and Oppressor Classes in order to maintain themselves in their elitist Messiah Class.

You are a Messiah Class elitist who demonizes your preferred enemy, "religion", as the Oppressor Class. You, like feminists and black racists, are also in your own Victimhood Class, as an officially oppressed victim of the Oppressor Class. The three-class system clinches your superiority by your inclusion into a phony class. But it self-authorizes your class war on the Other, the Oppressor Class which you have designated as such by yourself.

The three-class system derives directly from Marxism, and is imbued with the same elitist, savior mentality which involves the Nietzschean will to power for the elites, and the domination of the inferior "herd", and the Leninist claim to a "scientific" basis (in your case psychology, the least empirical of sciences save anthropology which renounced its scientific basis in a spurt of intellectual honesty).

As is common, this is all falsely predicated in "science" (a la Lenin), in your case the faux science of psychological "interpretations" which in your hands become moral judgments, from an ideology which denies the existence of morality (again per Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil). Yet you and Atheists in general create your own moral principles, and fully condemn those who are Othered by their differing ideology from your own personal creation.

Your site is strikingly similar to white supremacist sites I have stumbled onto.

In fact, the morality of the modern western Messiah Class is eliminationist, just as are all supremacists. Tolerance now means tolerance for all Classes except the Oppressor Class, whose opinions of dissent must be quashed under hate crimes. Equality now means equality for all Classes except the Oppressor Class, which must be held back in education, have its wealth redistributed, and its "privilege" revoked and reversed in order to favor the Victimhood Classes.

Atheist supremacism has demonstrated its vile character sufficiently in the Atheist domination of the USSR, China, S.E.Asia, Cuba, etc, with political genocides and gulags - all similar to the Atheist French Revolution and its Reign of Terror.

Atheism and its complete moral and intellectual void is the world's biggest hazard, even today, as the Russians re-invade their previous captive nations and China arms itself beyond the capabilities of free nations. Atheist domination differs from ISIS only in the fact that Atheism has no morality attached to it, and thus is free to assert any atrocity, anywhere, any time.

Actually, Atheism is on the same moral plane as ISIS, isn't it?

Your own pretensions of morality and moral judgment are purely derived from yourself as the determiner of what is moral and what is not, under your own personal moral authority to decide morality for the masses. It cannot come from Atheism, because Atheism has no morality attached to it. So it is purely your own device, your own opinion, which you pass off as definitive morality from your presumed position of moral (and intellectual) superiority. Thus you have self-elevated to godhood, and the self-perception of elitism and perfection, purely based on three words: "ain't no God". And that enabling phrase has created (in you) a moral authority over your designated Oppressor Class.

Being the elite, then, perhaps you can prove that there is no God other than yourself. No Atheist has ever done that, though, certainly not using the intellectual tools of disciplined deduction, nor the functional tools of materialist empiricism. Yet if you have managed to do so, then how about providing that proof over at this site:
atheism-analyzed.blogspot.com

We'll watch for your proof.
Stan
"

Valerie moderates comments, so this might not make it onto her site. We'll see.

UPDATE:
My comment did not make it onto her site, but many hundreds of others did make it, well over 700 so far. Tarico is a magnet for the eliminationist AtheoLeft, it appears. And Tarico censors criticism that is dangerous to the ambient narrative, although some cannon fodder is allowed in to feed the Atheist site dwellers.

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

Why Atheists Are Not Trusted.

This study confirms the analysis which has been made here on this blog: "Atheist As Other". It is shown in many polls that Atheists are trusted at levels commensurate with child molesters. This study, done in 2006, gives support for that lack of trust, and enumerates the reasons why that is the case.

"In these interviews, the atheist emerges as a
culturally powerful “other” in part because the
category is multivalent (Turner 1974), loaded
with multiple meanings. For all these respondents,
atheists represent a general lack of morality,
but for some, this lack was associated with
criminality and its dangers to safety and public
order, while for others the absence of morality
was that of people whose resources or positions
place them above the common standards
of mainstream American life. To put it somewhat
differently, atheists can be symbolically placed
at either end of the American status hierarchy.
What holds these seemingly contradictory views
together is that the problem of the atheist was
perceived to be a problem of self-interest, an
excessive individualism that undermines trust
and the public good. In this, our respondents
draw the same link between religion and the
taming of self-interest that Tocqueville wrote
about over a century ago (Tocqueville [1992]
2000, see especially volume 2, parts I and II).
It is important to note that our respondents did
not refer to particular atheists whom they had
encountered. Rather they used the atheist as a
symbolic figure to represent their fears about
those trends in American life—increasing criminality,
rampant self-interest, an unaccountable
elite—that they believe undermine trust and a
common sense of purpose.

In recent public discourse, atheists take on a
similar symbolic role. We found that the figure
of the atheist is invoked rhetorically to discuss
the links—or tensions—among religion, morality,
civic responsibility, and patriotism. In particular,
the association of the atheist with a kind
of unaccountable elitism has surfaced in recent
public debates. The civically engaged atheists’
awareness of the negative stereotypes of atheists
has led to the coining of a new term,
“Brights,” around which to identify and organize
and thus, according to one prominent Bright,
to challenge the association between atheism,
immorality, and lack of civic commitment. One
of those advocates has gone so far as to claim
the following:7

Many of the nation’s clergy members are closet
brights, I suspect. We are, in fact, the moral backbone
of the nation: brights take their civic duties
seriously precisely because they don’t trust God to
save humanity from its follies (Dennett 2003).

In a review of the book The Twilight of
Atheism, Charlotte Allen (2004) not only associates
atheism with totalitarianism but also sees
this notion of the “Brights” as particularly troubling
because of the intersection of science with
big money and the ability to influence public
policy. She worries if atheism,

“may yet be experiencing a new dawn: a terrifying new
alliance with money and power, of a kind even
Marx could not have foreseen”

[Emphasis added]

The danger to civilized society comes not from biker gangs and other bottom feeding ne'er-do-wells who are de facto Atheists; it comes from the elites for whom no objective moral code applies. These are now found throughout government and big money lobbying and financial institutions.

No amount of whining that they are "good without God" can serve to overcome their obvious lack of objective moral principles, or any kind of morals at all save making their own personal behaviors into "moral principles". Atheists seem to think that people who do have actual objective moral principles against which their behaviors are measured cannot see the difference (possibly because Atheists themselves cannot). So Atheists demand moral parity at a minimum, and ultimately promote themselves to moral supremacy since they cannot fail to be moral under their own tautological moral system.

This amounts to pure irrationality, and increases the distance between Atheists and the rest of the human race.

Further, Atheists tend very strongly to Leftist anti-American standards; it is the Atheists who engage in elitist totalitarian Othering of the bulk of Americans. That's how Marxism works, on its way toward totalitarian control: "othering" while claiming to be the saviors of those who are Othered.

Atheists are held in total disregard because their lack of principles (both moral and intellectual) renders them completely incompatible with a principled society. Atheists respond that principles are discriminatory, an irrational position which serves only to lock in the disregard with which they are held... and deserve.

It is arguable that Atheists start as damaged and broken people who go on to attempt to damage and break entire social structures in order to normalize themselves, even to be able to view themselves as "saviors" of society by reducing it to their own level of moral and intellectual chaos.

Remember that it was Silverman who declared in a federal lawsuit that the mere sight of the 9/11 "cross" damaged Atheists by giving them dyspepsia. That their rationalizations are so entirely irrational completely escapes them, proving their irrationality.

Still More Atheist Commandments

Atheists keep coming up with alternatives to the Ten Commandments. None of them stick as actual Atheist moral principles, and this set shows why.

"Ten people collectively won the Rethink Prize, which was granted for their efforts in re-imagining the traditional Ten Commandments; they will share a collective $10,000 prize.

Below, see their new set of commandments:

1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence.
2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true.
3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world.
4. Every person has the right to control over their body.
5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life.
6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them.
7. Treat others as you would want them to treat you, and can reasonably expect them to want to be treated. Think about their perspective.
8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations.
9. There is no one right way to live.
10.Leave the world a better place than you found it.

These were chosen among 2,800 total submissions. What do you think of them? You can read the original Ten Commandments here."

Bayer and Figdor organized this contest around their book, “Atheist Mind, Human Heart,” which itself contained such things which we discussed elsewhere, some time back. So let's see how the contest winners' commandments hold up to logical scrutiny.

"1. Be open-minded and be willing to alter your beliefs with new evidence."

Atheists reject all but material evidence; so there is no evidence possible which will change their minds, because their minds are set on a logical fallacy: Category Error.

"2. Strive to understand what is most likely to be true, not to believe what you wish to be true."

This places truth squarely into the probabilistic zone, where Atheists can use Baye's Theorem to manipulate "truth" according to their biases. They know that there is no truth except that which they make up. So they make "making it up" into a commandment. The non-specificity of this statement allows anything to be calculated as "probably" true, and certain Atheists do this all the time.

"3. The scientific method is the most reliable way of understanding the natural world."

This is not a commandment at all, unless it commands Atheists to be Scientistic Materialists (and that is not clear from the assertion being made). Atheists are Scientistic by ideology, and their Scientism is stuck in Newtonian space. The idea of reality being nothing but probability fields all the way down is not useful to them in their Materialism, especially the part about the necessity of external conscious intervention to collapse the equation and produce anything resembling the special case of Newton's physics. Besides, this is not a commandment at all.

"4. Every person has the right to control over their body."

Also not a commandment, this is a phony "right", which will be interpreted to include only those who are "allowed" to be persons. It is an Atheist pass-time to create new definitions of personhood, depending upon the situation. This does not apply, of course, to anyone declared not-a-person by Atheists.

"5. God is not necessary to be a good person or to live a full and meaningful life."

Another non-commandment; it is an assertion with no definition of "good". Good is what every Atheist defines it to be, for his own purpose, at the moment called "now". This could apply to Lenin or Mao or Pol Pot, or Castro quite well.

"6. Be mindful of the consequences of all your actions and recognize that you must take responsibility for them."

A weak attempt at a commandment, which fails to instruct as to what sort of consequences are Good and which are Bad, or even consequences for whom. That's because there is no Good/Bad judgment possible under the Atheist Void of moral emptiness. As Nietzsche demonstrated, there can be no good or evil under Atheism. So this "commandment" is without meaning, except possibly as a "don't get caught by the law" caveat.

"8. We have the responsibility to consider others, including future generations."

And how should we consider them? As impediments to happiness requiring abortion? As Oppressors of our Victimhood Classes to be suppressed and removed? This bogus "commandment" also is without meaning, and is manipulable in every conceivable dimension.

"9. There is no one right way to live."

Now we are getting somewhere, even though this is not a commandment. This one is an assertion that ANYTHING GOES.

"10.Leave the world a better place than you found it."

Would the world be a better place without certain categories of people in it? Is that what we have here? Being non-specific as to what a "better place" would entail, leaves this commandment just as open to subjective interpretation as is possible. For the totalitarian AtheoLeft, a better world would be one where they, the elites, dominate and control the lives of the perpetual Victimhood herd, which is constantly being equalized and admonished to tolerate the dictates of the elites.
(As always, see the Humanist Manifesto I).

Let's summarize. Only a few of the "commandments" are actually commandments at all; the rest are assertions of one type or another. Those which actually are commandments are so non-specific as to cover any interpretation which might be put on them, thus allowing any type of behavior whatsoever.

Commandment number 9, (not actually a commandment) says it all: ANYTHING GOES in Atheist-land.

However, since Atheist thinking and behavior is not subject to logical scrutiny, at least not by Atheists, they are still without any restrictions and for them, ANYTHING GOES is the winning Atheist principle of moral conduct..

Atheist Fundamentalism?

An Atheist Asserts “Religious Privilege” as a counter-attack. James Croft, a leader in training at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, writes about it at Chris Stedman's site, and we'll look at his claims.

It is not enough to merely be non-religious any more. You must declare your opposition to and offense taken by religious existence itself, not to mention your Victimization by religion. Religious existence is characterized by religious privilege, “privilege” being the new microagression which is visible only to those with highly specialized sensory apparati, those new privilege detector organs recently acquired by evolution in the Messiah Class.

Here Croft gives the defining situation:

“’I don’t believe in God,’ he said looking up from the menu. Was he challenging me because he knows I’m a Christian minister, I wondered?… Was he intentionally being aggressive?”

“Consider how intolerant this reaction is; how immediate, how judgmental. The mere words “I don’t believe in God” are a potential aggression. This is a reaction of someone with religious privilege, unused to having her assumptions about the world challenged. If your response to hearing someone say “I don’t believe in God” is to consider it an attack on your own beliefs, the problem is with you—not with any “fundamentalist atheism.” Imagine if I took every expression that someone is a Christian as a potential affront to me. How ridiculous would that seem? Yet atheists put up with this reaction all the time.”

It’s hard not to laugh in the face of this Atheist (and his apologist). The blurting of Atheism out of the blue, for no contextual reason borne of conversation, obviously was meant for other than information transfer. But what was it meant to accomplish? Any rational person would wonder. But not this Atheist, of course. For him, the incongruity of this out of place declaration bears no examination; in fact, the examination which it does produce in the Christian is decried as irrational. Only in the inverted logic of Atheism could this possibly be the case.

And contrary to what he claims, Atheists do indeed take any profession of faith as a personal attack on themselves; it produces the "gastric distress" claims used in court by the American Atheists. Faith belongs in the basement. Massive Atheist organizations exist specifically to drive religion out of their sight. They are cultural bullies.

The nouveau classist-chic privilege "microaggression" charge is similar to the charge that

“you’re too stupid to know how stupid you are, but I’m smart and I will tell you how stupid you are; believe me, you are stupid”.

In the case of the three-class Messiahs, microaggression is visible only to themselves, as is your perpetual guilt:

“you’re too biased by privilege and stupid to know how biased by privilege and stupid you are, but I am smart and unbiased by privilege, so I will tell you how biased by privilege and stupid you are”

– hence, microaggression, invisible except to Messiahs and their pet Victims.

However, the main thrust of the article is that Atheists cannot be fundamentalists because they have no principles at all, no fundamentals and no principles about which to be fundamental.

That is false, but just to this extent. Atheists are pretty much in agreement that religion of all types is wrong, evil, and that Atheists are put upon by the existence of religion. There undoubtedly are some who do not care about religion one way or another, but those people are not out making claims about how abused they are by religion all over the web. Everyone who goes onto the web as an Atheist is highly likely to adhere to the above fundamentals (and more, but that’s for a different time).

Free Thinking means thinking anarchically without constraints by religion. If hatred of religion did not exist, there would be no reason to claim Free Thinking. The same applies to the religion of Humanism, which started from the premise of religious hatred, and elitist desire to eradicate all religion by taking over all institutions (as always, read the Humanist Manifesto I).

But back to Croft and his claims regarding the persecution of Atheists:

That the charge of “atheist fundamentalism” is frequently a fig leaf for distaste of atheism in general is clear in the way the term is used by enormously powerful religious individuals to push their own agendas. The Archbishop of Wales, for instance, once decried “atheistic fundamentalism” for, among other things, wanting public hospitals to not assume all of their clients are Christian, and wanting public schools to respect the religious diversity of their students. To the archbishop, the desire of atheists to be equal is “atheist fundamentalism.”

This is false, at its core. What Atheists want is not “diversity respect” in any sense: they do not respect diversity. What they demand is pure Atheism in schools and hospitals, not tolerance of diversity.

This nefarious use of the term reveals the charge of “atheist fundamentalism” for what it sometimes is: A weapon to marginalize critique of religion and the religious, and to maintain a status quo in which religious viewpoints, practices, and communities are privileged over nonreligious ones.

And of course it is not “critique of religion” which is the issue. It is the Atheist raw attacks on religion by attempting to drive religion underground as they Athei-ize all of culture, education and government. Croft is deliberately misrepresenting Atheist actions as benign critiques, abstract discussions regarding religions and the religious: Atheist actions are anything but benign; their attacks are anything but mere "critiques", as Croft's use of the weaponized "privilege" demonstrates.

Croft is certainly correct in his claim that there are no binding moral principles to Atheism, if that is indeed his claim. That includes lying in defense of a false picture of Atheism, concealing that which Atheism becomes as it metastasizes into Leftist, totalitarian, elitist three-class Messiahism, and its attack on western civil culture in general.

It is this which one sees when one sees an Atheist, and for good reason. They are both Messiahs and Victims, and religion is the Oppressor Class.

Croft tries to calm the dialog with the following:

“I understand the desire of some religious people to hit back against what seems to them—and what sometimes really is—unreasonable and unfair criticism of their faith tradition. I understand too the desire of many atheists to improve the quality of discourse within our own community, so that we become more thoughtful, precise, and kind in our critiques of religion. But the term “atheist fundamentalism” is always inaccurate and often harmful. We should find clearer terms.”

Well, to be more specific, accurate and descriptive, I suggest the term “Atheist fundamentalism” be replaced with “Atheist Three-Class Messiahism”. That should clear up their position.

Naming the Rape Accusers?

At first I was suspicious of this idea. But then the idea of being accused anonymously, if false, and allowing the real perpetrator to walk free is unacceptable. Plus it is inequitable in the world which demands absolute equality in all things sexual.

So yes, the rape accuser should be named. But not just that. If the accused is not convicted in an official court of law (not a campus kangaroo court run by feministas) then the accuser should be charged with false accusation and attempted destruction of her intended target.

I think that in today's twisted judicial processes which are canted against the accused before any facts are discovered, the field should be leveled such that the accused is presumed innocent once again, can face his accuser, and can be convicted only on objective factual evidence.

Does this tilt too far away from victim's rights? It depends on who the victim actually is. But it would encourage college women to stay sober, be rational, and keep their panties on. And the same goes for the college men.

Unfortunately, feminism today demands the right of women to get drunk and stupid and too impaired to be vigilant for predators. It also encourages revenge, in the form of post-sexual accusations against the "privileged" male who is always their target. So males need to watch for predators also: feminists are everywhere.

Long gone is any advice to keep one's pants zipped. Much less monogamous relationships. Those things interfere with "freedom", aka moral anarchy. And of course, that's the real problem.

Greta Christina Nukes a Black Atheist Clear Into a New Identity

A Black Atheist On Being Blocked By Greta Christina While Discussing Ferguson


"I’ve always respected Greta Christina immensely as a social justice warrior. I’ve never met her, but I’ve asked her for advice on a couple occasions and have generally liked what she had to say, although I haven’t always been sure about her apparent “my way or the highway” approach to social justice issues. I would like to think I believe in protecting the marginalized, but I also would like to be convinced, because I think that convincing arguments go further than mere shame, oftentimes, in making change happen (shame can be a useful tool, true, but I think convincing arguments need to be made, as well).

So when Greta Christina stated:
"There are some debates I am willing to have. The question of whether police should be able to shoot unarmed black men with their hands in the air, and not even get fucking indicted, is not one of them. If you want to have a calm, civil debate about this, save us all some time and stop following me right now. I don't want to have to say "Go fuck yourself, blocked" to every one of you."

I was a bit taken aback. Blind acceptance was not healthy, I thought -- it would hurt, rather than help, the rational argument that there were other very real, substantiated problems, and make it seem as if those that wanted these problems discussed were irrational ignorers of evidence. So I said something briefly -- and, in spite of the prior statement (and partly because no black individuals from the United States had yet seemed to comment on the situation), I thought there was a chance to make a difference with a relevant statement. I was sorely disappointed:
"

Christina has had her Messiah Narrative challenged by a designated Victimhood individual, one who thinks that Rush To Judgment based on racial prejudice might not be a good thing. Even if it satisfies the Oppressor Class/Victimhood Class Social Justice Moral needs of the AtheoLeft. That presents an unsolvable paradox for Christina: the Victimhood Class is always morally right no matter what; But this Victimhood Class individual is contradicting her Victimhood Narrative which is also morally right no matter what. The resulting mental collapse which Christina has is inevitable.

Undoubtedly Christina will continue with her demand for Social Justice, meaning that regardless of the situation, the black is always right and the white male is always wrong. And she will shut out of her mental landscape any thought that another black might also be right - that she is wrong.

Because here is the thing about being right: messiahs as a class are always right - always. So if they are challenged, even by a black, the black becomes an Oppressor, automatically. This black had his identity changed in the twinkling of Greta's keypad.

More on The Atheist Ten Commandments

From the Washington Post:

“Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-First Century,” a new book by Lex Bayer and John Figdor.

Book Review by Kimberly Winston.

This time the full ten non-commandments are listed in the review, and presuming that they are accurate (it is WaPo after all) we can do the following analysis. Even though they are not advertised as moral commandments, they do presumptively form some sort of argument or framework for an Atheist moral theory. Or else why would they be a rewrite of the original Ten Commandments?


The Ten Non-Commandments:

I. The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.

There is no reason to assume that "world" in this context refers merely to planet Earth. At a minimum it must refer to the universe, since there is much about the universe and its characteristics that influence some, but certainly not all, of our beliefs. The implication here is two-fold: first, that the term "world" represents all existence; and that the term "real" refers to physical, material. So the implication, not stated, yet blindingly obvious, is that the intent is to claim that "all existence is physical". That this is not stated full-out indicates intellectual treachery at play, and that caution is warranted.

This in no manner is anything other than an unsustainable assertion; it is an assertion being placed as a premise for further arguments.

This assertion ignores science: quantum mechanics to be precise. It further ignores the limits of science, specifically the inability of science to address issues it cannot test such as whether non-physical existence exists. One cannot successfully subject non-material entities to physical, material testing. So the first premise is anti-science and deceptive, plus its very intent is to lock in the unprovable premise of Philosophical Materialism, merely by virtue of an unprovable assertion about "the world".

It is without any empirical proof, it is unfalsifiable and non-empirical; the underlying prejudice of this assertion is false.

II. We can perceive the world only through our human senses.

Having already declared the "world" to be "real", and presuming that it is "real" because we sense that which is "real", yet our senses are finite and limited, then there possibly is "reality" which cannot be sensed. But that is not the meaning of the two things taken together as they are here. If our senses apprehend all of existence, and the "physical, material" is all that we apprehend, then physical, material existence is all of existence. This is the underlying message. But it is not the case that it can be proven, physically, that our senses apprehend "all of existence", even given our technical sense extensions.

This assertion, then, falsely extends the deception of “world” and “real” to “all that exists is that which we sense, period”; it is validation that the meaning of the term "world" is purely physical in this context. There is no philosophical or empirical reason to believe this to be true. It appears to be a purposeful deception designed to reach the objective of Atheism via Philosophical Materialism.

III. We use rational thought and language as tools for understanding the world.

And we - some of us - use them for much more than that. We use them for disciplined logic, and perception of valid and true arguments, discriminating against false, non-valid, ungrounded and untrue arguments, as we will do here in this analysis.

IV. [It is true that]: All truth is proportional to the evidence.

Truth is binary, not proportional; if a proposition is not completely and 100% true and valid, then it is false, period. If there is falseness in any part of an argument, then the argument is false. Arguing otherwise is anti-rational and violates the First Principle of Excluded Middle: either it completely true or it is false - it is not proportional to anything. This assertion is a purposeful, ideological redefinition which is anti-logic.

Second, this statement self-refutes because it is asserted without any evidence, physical or otherwise, that it is true. Again, it is a redefinition, a corrupted attempt at tautology, but one which fails its own criterion.

Further, without defining the term, evidence, it is being covertly presupposed here that “evidence” is purely physical in nature. This leads to the overt refutation of the above premises since there is no possible physical proof or evidence which demonstrates objectively (empirically) that there is no existence which is not physical. All of this is obscured in the language being used which is concealing the actual meanings being projected. The use of the term “world” is euphemistic for universal-existence in one case and physical-existence-only in another case. It is arguable whether the deception is purposeful, or is self-administered. But it is deception.

V. There is no God.

Immediately after claiming truth to be proportional to evidence, this assertion is made with precisely no evidence, certainly no empirical, physical evidence to support it. This amazing juxtapositioning of two contradictory assertions is a perfect demonstration of the lack of logical principles – no, the abject violation of basic logical principles – which are being asserted here.

To make certain that this is clear, let’s take the two propositions, side by side.

First: [It is true that]: truth is proportional to [physical] evidence.

Second: [It is true that]: “There is no God”. [Affirming evidence not required. Physical evidence of non-existence is itself non-existant, by definition]

.
So: if the first is “true”, then the second cannot be “true”. They are contradictory statements, i.e. non-coherent.

Contrarily, if one says,

First: [It is true that]: "There is no God." [Affirming evidence not required];

Second: [It is true that]: "Truth is proportional to [physical] evidence."

If the first is true then the second cannot be "true". They still are contradictory, non-coherent statements.

Here’s what is actually true: the First Principle of Non-Contradiction.

VI. We all strive to live a happy life. We pursue things that make us happy and avoid things that do not.

Anyone who is responsible knows that this is a misconstrual of actual life. Much of life involves doing things one would rather avoid but cannot due to responsibilities. This is maximally absurd, and further it has no bearing on anything prior to this assertion or after this assertion, so it has no value as a premise as well as being absurd. Finally, it is just the “Do as thou wilt” proclamation of Satanism.

VII. There is no universal moral truth. Our experiences and preferences shape our sense of how to behave.

Certainly Atheists want this to be true, because if there actually IS universal, objective moral truth then the whole point of being a hedonist Atheist is severely cramped.

But more to the point, it is absolutely the case that Atheists make up their own codes of behavior based solely on their own preferences. That has no conjunction with actual moral behavior. It is the behavior code of the common two year old child, yet to respond to discipline, much less develop self-disipline. That is self-centered, self-serving and selfishness which becomes the “moral code” of the individual Atheist.

And yet again, if [It is universally true that]: there is no universal moral truth, then IV above comes into play to contradict this assertion due to lack of affirming physical evidence. Non-coherence.

VIII. We act morally when the happiness of others makes us happy.

Here is the second AMAZING JUXTAPOSITION of contradictory assertions. The immediately preceding assertion declares: NO morality. This assertion declares: Morality IS THIS.

Logic is obviously the first victim in this set of unconnected and false assertions/premises/arguments.

IX. We benefit from living in, and supporting, an ethical society.

This is a failed observation due to prior assertions, since it contradicts VI and VII above: there is no universal ETHICAL truth. Atheists develop their own personal “preference” as how to behave, so ethics does not fit into the equation. Atheists benefit from behaving as their preferences dictate; i.e., whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it. That is the specific assertion of VII, above.

Now if the claim is that the Atheist benefits from living in a non-Atheist, ethical society, then this might make sense; but that is not the intent.

X. All our beliefs are subject to change in the face of new evidence, including these.

None of this is actually evidence based, so the undeniable fact that Atheists can (and do) change their “moral beliefs” on a moment’s notice is not caused by “new evidence”, it is caused by changes in preferences in any given situation. (See VII). This final assertion is completely unremarkable, considering that it is a restatement of previous claims, except with a meaningless reference to "evidence" thrown in for mere appearance.

The logic failures which pervade this ten point non-argument are blatantly egregious to the point of adolescent thought processes.

This is nothing more than a set of logically disconnected platitudes based on zero physical evidence and zero responsibility to anything other than self.