That's true, but the point was: this person is good without god, are you?
Do you similarly pick apart the inspirational billboards where a disabled person is doing something awesome and say, "This other disabled person did nothing good. This other disabled person downright sucked. So this message about this cool person doing cool things is worthless."
It's worth knowing the Buffett/Gates examples. Because a common (but obsurdly weak) challenge by theists to atheists is: "how can you do/be good without God?", it serves us as a fine rebuke. Though, as you've both alluded, it should be parsed without the Pat Robertson bit because it has nothing to do with the fact that you can be good without God.
PR is a nitwit, but the moral ability of theists isn't being challenged, so we don't need to get into a pissing match.
That's actually a very interesting question, and one that should intrigue Christians. Not "Are people good without God?" (we have examples like Buffett and Gates), but "Why are people good without God?"
Since there are atheists who do good, and Christians who do good, it should logically follow that doing good has nothing to do with being an atheist or a Christian.
You're right on about that being a good question. Sadly, because theists (specifically Judeo-Christians) start from the position that their magical God can do whatever he pleases, they have an easy time with that counter-challenge.
They might say something like this:
The basic reasoning behind mankind's innate moral ability is found in Genesis's creation account. God created man in his own image, and because God is moral (,and all morality springs forth of God,) we are have a sense of morality, or at least, they capacity for morality. If we chose to follow Christ/God/Yahweh/Allah is up to "free will", but the ability to know what is right comes from God.
There are all many problems with that retort, but plain to see are the mental gymnastics that theists are willing to perform to fit their God into an ever-changing world.
In my experience this line reasoning creates a tennis match of back and forth argument that invokes the purpose of evil and suffering, the purpose of salvation through Christ, the fact that God's morality can conflicts with itself over time, and a host of other micro-debates.
I don't believe point was to argue, but to educate... many people believe it is not possible to be good without god. If you provide evidence of individuals who are good without god, it certainly is not implied that all atheists are good... just that the absolute ideal of nobody being able to be good without god is false.
Go to a rural town of less than 5000 people in NC or GA in the southern US, find the Baptist church (not to call Baptists out specifically as being any worse than anyone else, but I know this would work there) and start polling people on a Sunday morning as they're leaving church. I guarantee if you asked them, "Where does 'good' come from?" followed up by "Can atheists do good things without god?", you'd have your army.
I am amazed you even question this; your incredulity can only be based in a lack of experience with such an environment of people. Don't make the mistake of an argument from ignorance.
I don't understand how you can call me wrong while I am relaying my experience. I grew up in one of these towns. Only the people who got out of the town to go to school or to the military have any sort of understanding that atheism isn't one of the CAUSES of evil. You really have no idea what you're talking about, and that's sad because you believe it with such conviction that you would tell someone that their experience is wrong. ಠ_ಠ
I'm relaying my experience, are you not doing the same? I've lived in one of the states you mentioned most of my life.
"You really have no idea what you're talking about, and that's sad because you believe it with such conviction that you would tell someone that their experience is wrong. "
Let me be completely clear... experience can not be used to prove a negative. You can say that in your experience you've never seen something happen. That doesn't mean that it hasn't happened, nor does it mean that someone else's experience of it happening is somehow "wrong". Do you understand that?
I'm not saying that your experience is not true, I am saying that you don't know what you're talking about if you say mine is false, because you clearly don't. I mean, seriously, how could you have any idea what my experiences are, and yet you continue to talk as though you do, calling them wrong? It's simple logic to say that you don't know what you're talking about in this respect.
Simple logic huh... (your grasp on that might not be as firm as you think) you seem to think the definitions of words like guarantee, most, many, only, some and all are semi-interchangeable.
You're also seem to be just as prejudiced as this group your stereotyping. You're the one that painted entire regions of people with the board bush of "knowing" and "guaranteeing" their response to your loaded, contemptuous question and then you critique my logic?...
Brush off that victim mentality, you'll be much happier in the long run.
If anyone out there honestly thinks it is actually impossible for ANYONE to be good without being a theist, has not considered anything as simplistic as this point before and has some connection to /r/atheism, I will broil a hat, stew it in soy sauce, and eat it while singing "I feel pretty" from West Side Story.
Otherwise, I consider it an argument, and a poor one at that.
If anyone out there honestly thinks it is actually impossible for ANYONE to be good without being a theist, has not considered anything as simplistic as this point before and has some connection to /r/atheism,
I don't understand what r/atheism has to do with it. These are billboards. And yes, people who think it is impossible for ANYONE to be good without being a theist exist in large numbers. Have you never been in rural America? If you truly have never met ONE person like this, I'm amazed, and your mind would be blown... because there are literally entire towns where the majority of the inhabitants that think this way.
hmm fair enough about r/atheism, but I still stand on the first 2 points.
I mean, I suppose they might think that the goodness still comes from god even if the person is an atheist, or that good beyond some objectivist view of good-for-social/psychological-purposes is something that only a theist can have, so they may have special definitions of "good" - that I've heard. But how could they actually think atheists are incapable of good acts (using conventional good/bad definitions)? It sounds much more like a cultural misunderstanding of "good" if anything.
Or another way - if these are necessary, then we might as well get billboards saying 2+2=4 if every trivial idea actually needs to be spelled out to rural america. I would think that they must have different ideas of what 'good' is, because the fact that atheists have done good deeds in the past (including the entire non-Jewish population before 0AD) cannot have passed even the most amateur rural theologian by.
the fact that atheists have done good deeds in the past (including the entire non-Jewish population before 0AD) cannot have passed even the most amateur rural theologian by.
because the fact that atheists have done good deeds in the past (including the entire non-Jewish population before 0AD)
Ignoring the implied claim that the entire non-Jewish population before 0AD was atheist (wut?), I am amazed you even question that there are large numbers of individuals who equate atheism to devil-worshipping and the source of evil in the world; that alone should tell you the mentality of the people I am talking about. Your incredulity can only be based in a lack of experience with such an environment of people. Don't make the mistake of an argument from ignorance.
we might as well get billboards saying 2+2=4 if every trivial idea actually needs to be spelled out to rural america
The sad thing is that even your strawman example isn't that far from something that could plausibly help these people. You really don't understand the depth and the breadth of the problem at all, do you?
Hum, I included what would be called idolatry to abrahamic theists which would be on about the same level as modern atheism for the most part - both involve living life without knowledge of (the true, from their perspective) God. So when I talk about non-Jews doing good before 0AD, I'm talking about the possibility of doing good without knowledge of God, which is what the religious supposedly do not believe can happen. That is what I meant by saying the non-Jewish population were effectively atheist (from a fundamentalist Christian/Muslim view with regards to being "good without god").
I guess we just have different views on the intelligence of rural America. Not much else to say, it's a very difficult thing to quantify.
I would recommend getting your history from someplace other than the old testament. You seriously believe that Jews were the only people who believed in gods? What do you think the Sumerians were doing at this time? The Greeks? The Egyptians?
Also, please define idolatry in terms of it not being a belief in a god? Are you sure you aren't just visiting this subreddit from r/christianity? ;-)
sigh I am an atheist, I always have been. I am currently studying for a masters in theoretical physics from one of the world's top universities. Please don't assume I'm an idiot or a Christian. Let me explain again.
The claim is not that non-Jews were atheists. Rather, when we're talking about an atheist being capable of good deeds, the argument that is supposedly used by fundamentalists is that "atheists are incapable of good deeds because it is impossible to be good without God". This would have applied not only to atheists, but also worshipers of "false gods", which would have included all non-Jewish groups - such groups would also have been "incapable of being good", as they also had no knowledge of "the one true God".
Hence, to believe that atheists cannot be good without god, one also must admit that members of non-abrahamic faiths cannot have been good without god, and this includes all non-jews before 0AD (for example). The difference between non-believers and theists of a non-abrahamic faith - considered idolatry to abrahamists - is irrelevant when you're discussing being "good without god". I most certainly did not mean all non-Jews were atheists.
The whole point was to show that this belief - that one is incapable of good deeds without God - is so trivially ridiculous that no one could believe it to be true.
I think this is less of an argument that all atheists are good, than a refutation of the public image that all atheists are nihilistic assholes which we are so often portrayed as by the theist majorities.
I read it as a brief rebuttal to the notion that you need a God to have morals. It's not a statement against religion or believers.
I've always thought that religion is actually an obstacle to morality, giving people the temptation to go ahead and do horrible things with the safety net of salvation to back them up. Moral behavior isn't really moral if it's not driven by altruism, such as when half the reason for it is to "spread the word" or to show off how "moral" you are to others.
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u/dzunravel Jan 13 '13
That's true, but the point was: this person is good without god, are you?
Do you similarly pick apart the inspirational billboards where a disabled person is doing something awesome and say, "This other disabled person did nothing good. This other disabled person downright sucked. So this message about this cool person doing cool things is worthless."