Philosophy Now Forum

IC: Sorry, but you keep denying real history, and I'm going to keep stressing the actual historical facts. You just falsely claimed that there is a separation of church and state in the USA, so protestant Christians could not have persecuted atheists and Jews. This is false history. The US Constitution's First Amendment only applied to the US government, not to any of the individual state governments. Why? Because each of the original 13 states all had official protestant Christian churches as state churches, and each state wanted no interference by the federal government. Originally, the states were more powerful in a person's daily life than the US government was. People thought of themselves first as citizens of a state, and only secondarily, if they thought about it at all, as a citizen of the United States. It wasn't until the late 1940s that the First Amendment was finally applied to the states through the 14th Amendment. Before that, the US Supreme Court, as well as various state supreme courts, affirmed convictions for such things as blasphemy, i.e., an atheist or a Jew speaking publicly about Jesus not being God.

IC: According to you, you have nothing to say in any public debate regarding issues concerning morality, which means that you are a non-participant in almost all political discussions in the USA's secular government. Why? It's because you boxed yourself into your own little private jail cell. By claiming that only divine commands count for morality, you have excluded yourself from political debate. In a secular society one cannot rely on an argument "because I believe God said so" to endorse their political position. It's because no one has any reason to be persuaded by such an argument, unless they happen to interpret the Bible in the exact same way you subjectively interpret it. In a secular society one is required to put forth a rational argument for one's moral and political positions. But, since you deny that there is any other basis for morality outside an actual command from God, that means that the only "argument" you can ever make is "I believe God said so."

By refusing to admit that you can not exclude other methods to ground morality, you have silenced yourself from all public debate that is meaningful.

Science Fan wrote: ↑Thu Jun 22, 2017 11:59 pm According to you, you have nothing to say in any public debate regarding issues concerning morality...

Rubbish. I said no such thing.

By claiming that only divine commands count for morality, you have excluded yourself from political debate.

Not at all. Non-sequitur.

In a secular society one cannot rely on an argument "because I believe God said so" to endorse their political position.

What you mean to say is that it is not always accepted as evidence by some people. I agree. So much the worse for secular society, if God indeed did say so. For morality is not premised on the consent of man, but on the will and nature of God. And whether or not secular society is willing to listen, it will remain true.

By refusing to admit that you can not exclude other methods to ground morality, you have silenced yourself from all public debate that is meaningful.

Not at all. Morality is objective and grounded in the nature of God. It will be true whether or not Atheists have any. Which, as you yourself have conceded, they do not; for you have shown that you cannot ground even one moral principle. (Or do you now have one?)

So who's out of the moral debate now? It sure ain't the Theist.

Science Fan wrote: ↑Thu Jun 22, 2017 11:53 pm IC: Sorry, but you keep denying real history,...

I'm waiting for you to make a point that has any implication for me. Nobody you're mentioning has anything to do with me. But I'm hopeful you'll eventually get to whatever point you're trying to make.

Is it "You're a Theist, so you have to be morally responsible for everything every nominal Theist does, but I'm an Atheist so I'm not responsible for what Atheists have done?"

Or is it some kind of racial thing with you about the US?

I just can't tell. So I need to wait to hear your point.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 23, 2017 1:06 am Morality is objective and grounded in the nature of God.

The problem, though, is that your God is not good. Your God is wicked. As you have it, he throws people into a lake of fire for eternity simply for failing to believe in him.

But you have an answer for this. It’s part of standard Christian apologetics, which arose in the first place (obviously) because Christian theism makes no sense. Your answer is that God gives the atheist what the atheist desires — permanent separation from God.

But this is not what the atheist desires! And he certainly doesn’t desire to be tortured for all eternity. The atheist simply lacks a belief that God exists. To deduce from this that the atheist desires to be separated from God, still more that he desires to be tortured for all eternity, is a glaring non-sequitur.

To lack a belief in God is not at all the same as wanting to be separate from him — if I wished to be “separate” from God, it follows that I already believe God exists. But I don’t! To say that someone desires to be separate from someone he does not believe exists is ruinous logic.

Someone like that would have to be a theist —believing in God, yet wishing to be separate from God . A literary example of such a character is Ivan Karamazov, who while ostensibly an atheist nevertheless firmly declared that if God existed, then he, Ivan, would “return the ticket” to heaven.

Now if, in fact, your God exists and really does throw people for all eternity into a lake of fire simply for lacking a belief in him, then I agree with Ivan — I would return the ticket. But not because I would want to be separate from good — rather, because I would want to be separate from evil. The God you believe in, if he exists, would be monstrously evil.

Your next apologetic strategy, of course, will be to deny that I have any ground to find God to be either good or evil, or anyone else to be good or evil, because I don’t believe in God. This is laughably circular and it is also stacking the deck.

Of course atheists have a ground for their morality; it is just not an obligation to a non-existent entity. Our morality is in our natures as evolved social species. An evolved social species without morality is a contradiction. It would not exist. Social species have moral feelings and behaviors; our primate relatives display them as do many non-primates, like bats and birds.

This disproves your claim that morality came after religion. Many animals display moral behavior yet obviously have no religion; it’s clear that our hominid ancestors had moral behavior yet no religion either.

Organized religion with all its attendant evils turned up when we settled down: became city-dwellers rather than hunter-gatherers. That is when we stratified into castes and hierarchies and rich and poor and when kings hired priests to wow the masses with mystical mumbo-jumbo so that the masses wouldn’t overthrow the kings. After all, if you can be convinced that the meek shall inherit the earth, you’ll stay meek until you die — and of course you won’t inherit shit.

... for you have shown that you cannot ground even one moral principle. (Or do you now have one?)

I just did.

Rather than something new, dishonest projections based on ignorance are common fare.

duplicate post.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 2:22 pm

davidm wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:47 am Your answer is that God gives the atheist what the atheist desires — permanent separation from God.

Do you or do you not desire that you should be without God? I need to know this in order to respond to this objection.

The atheist simply lacks a belief that God exists.

No, this is not true -- and not because I say so, but because of the basic meanings of words.

A+Theos = NO + God.

A+ gnosis = Not + know.

I'm not going to tell you which is the right term for you. I'm going to ask you.

So now we have to ask which you mean when you use the word "Atheism." You say you mean, "lacking a belief in God." We must ask, "Do you mean merely being passively uncertain whether or not such exists, or do you mean actively denying that such exists?"

If it's the latter, you're an Atheist, by definition, no question. If it's the former, though, you must be an agnostic: for you are not saying that you know God does not exist, nor even that you have reason to deny His possible existence: you're just confessing to a personal "lack" in being able to believe one way or the other -- as you say, you "lack" belief that God exists.

But if that's just a personal "lack" of certainty, then I fear it's of zero import to anyone else. For I might "lack" belief in England...and what is that to you if I do? It doesn't even suggest you can't know England, or that you're less rational for believing in England, or that I have information suggesting England doesn't exist. It just means that I have a blank space in my knowledge, and perhaps you do too, and perhaps you do not. Either way, I have no information upon which to pass judgment upon you, or upon the factual or mythical nature of your view, whichever it might be. I'm simply saying, "I'm personally A-England."

But maybe you're saying, "Well, I don't know about any God, and you cannot either." Maybe you'd add, "Your God is not like England, but more like a unicorn -- something that does not exist." But if you go that route, now you're saying you know something; you're saying you already know that God (like unicorns) does not exist. And you will have to forgive me for asking that obvious question: HOW do you know? What evidence, facts or logic led you to this certainty? And that's not a cynical question, it's just the most natural thing for me to ask when you've made a claim about what you think I can/cannot have reason to know myself.

And anyone who is considering a search for God would want to ask you exactly the same question. He would say to you, "You say I'm setting out on a fool's errand, chasing something I cannot find; dear sir, please help me by explaining how you have arrived at such confidence, such certainty, that there is no point in me looking for God, and I will thank you for saving me my pains."

So I must pause here and ask: what exactly are you claiming when you say you're an "Atheist"? Are you saying you are only personally uncertain, or that you are certain and I ought to be too?

Honest question here: I just want to know your position.

Next matter:

The God you believe in, if he exists, would be monstrously evil.

Atheists have no basis for judging anything as evil. And you are right to say...

Your next apologetic strategy, of course, will be to deny that I have any ground to find God to be either good or evil, or anyone else to be good or evil, because I don’t believe in God. This is laughably circular and it is also stacking the deck.

Well, if it's so clearly "circular," as you imagine, it should be quite a simple matter to show it's circular. So perhaps now you'll show that an Atheist actually DOES have a moral precept he can use to judge God.

I think you'll find that if the deck is stacked, it's stacked against Atheism by Atheism. David Hume thought so, and gave very firm reasons for you to know this. Nobody has been able, so far, to solve "Hume's Guillotine," and if you ever do, let's hear about it.

But Hume was more courageous than most Atheists today are prepared to be. They want to retain morality, but affirm Atheism. Hume, that great Atheist hero, saw that was codswallop. He was willing to call that bluff. You should, perhaps, listen to the legacy of Atheism.

Our morality is in our natures as evolved social species. An evolved social species without morality is a contradiction. It would not exist. Social species have moral feelings and behaviors; our primate relatives display them as do many non-primates, like bats and birds.

Ah, but none of this defeats or even represents a response to Hume. These are all "is" statements, statements about "things which are being done," not about things which "ought to be done." And the problem with that is that the same logic would grant grounds for evil primate habits -- rape or making war, for example, which are also almost as old as the human race. You would never be able to say why one such ancient habit was good and another was evil -- at least, not in anything stronger than a statement of personal taste or of social preference, both contingent and neither obligatory morally.

It's clear that our hominid ancestors had moral behavior yet no religion either.

Well, every ancient society of which we have any record at all was religious. You can easily confirm that. However, even were it otherwise, that would not save a bad argument like this one. It's just another "is" claim, but has no implication in it that we are obliged to follow their lead.

I think that maybe you've done is assume the metanarrative of Evolutionism, then project from that to a past of which we have absolutely no record, deciding unilaterally that whatever religion is, it cannot (for some reason you'll have to explain) have existed back there. And all this in defiance of all the history we do know. That's hardly the way to build a case. It's certainly not a claim anyone should just grant you.

... for you have shown that you cannot ground even one moral principle. (Or do you now have one?)

I just did.

I'm sorry...I must have missed it. Please state it concisely, as in "All Atheists are morally bound to ______________________."

Immanuel Can wrote:So now we have to ask which you mean when you use the word "Atheism." You say you mean, "lacking a belief in God." We must ask, "Do you mean merely being passively uncertain whether or not such exists, or do you mean actively denying that such exists?" ...

Neither, it's the not thinking the thought at all. That is, in the life of an atheist no thought of a 'God' or 'God's' occurs in any way or form, unless of course one is engaged in conversation with a theist.

If it's the latter, you're an Atheist, by definition, no question. ...

Not really, what you are more likely to be is an ex-theist.

If it's the former, though, you must be an agnostic: for you are not saying that you know God does not exist, nor even that you have reason to deny His possible existence: you're just confessing to a personal "lack" in being able to believe one way or the other -- as you say, you "lack" belief that God exists.

Not really what an agnostic is, an agnostic believes nothing is known or can be known about a or any 'God', they could be atheists in the sense I understand but they can't be in the sense IC wants.

And anyone who is considering a search for God would want to ask you exactly the same question. He would say to you, "You say I'm setting out on a fool's errand, chasing something I cannot find; dear sir, please help me by explaining how you have arrived at such confidence, such certainty, that there is no point in me looking for God, and I will thank you for saving me my pains." ...

Well the ex-theist atheists would say, because I've been there done that but the atheist would not stop anyone wishing to embark upon such a search, how they want to spend their time is up to them.

So I must pause here and ask: what exactly are you claiming when you say you're an "Atheist"? Are you saying you are only personally uncertain, or that you are certain and I ought to be too?

What I and the other atheists I know say is that we don't have the thought of a 'God' or 'God's' in our head in our everyday life.

Atheists have no basis for judging anything as evil. ...

Well if you mean by 'evil' what your Bible tells you then for sure or if you mean what your 'God' tells you in your head(seek help if it's a voice) then definitely for sure but if you mean actions that I have an emotional response to then no as I find this has been a very good judge of what is evil and what is not.

I'm always puzzled why the Christian should care about others evil acts as surely their 'God' is going to punish the perpetrator so why would they interfere as surely the act is all in 'God's' will in the first place?

... Well, every ancient society of which we have any record at all was religious. ...

Eh!? Are you saying their 'God's' existed? As it is your claim that it is the existence of your 'God' that grounds morality.
I doubt it, so are you saying that all they needed was the belief in a 'God' or 'God's' to act properly and it didn't matter whether these 'God's' existed or not? If so then I think it not a great jump to just believe that to act properly all one needs is the belief that one should act properly.

I think that maybe you've done is assume the metanarrative of Evolutionism, then project from that to a past of which we have absolutely no record, deciding unilaterally that whatever religion is, it cannot (for some reason you'll have to explain) have existed back there. And all this in defiance of all the history we do know. ...

How does IC explain some of the other animals acting it what looks like a moral way towards others?

I'm sorry...I must have missed it. Please state it concisely, as in ...

All atheists are morally bound to do what they believe is morally right.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:15 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 2:22 pm

davidm wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:47 am Your answer is that God gives the atheist what the atheist desires — permanent separation from God.

Do you or do you not desire that you should be without God? I need to know this in order to respond to this objection.

I'm going very briefly address the above, and then in my next post skip to your comments on Hume. I'll later circle back to the rest of your post.

As to the above, what part of my post on this subject did you fail to understand? I invite you to reread it, and get back to me if you still have questions about what I wrote.

Now on to Hume in a forthcoming post.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:15 pm Ah, but none of this defeats or even represents a response to Hume. These are all "is" statements, statements about "things which are being done," not about things which "ought to be done." And the problem with that is that the same logic would grant grounds for evil primate habits -- rape or making war, for example, which are also almost as old as the human race. You would never be able to say why one such ancient habit was good and another was evil -- at least, not in anything stronger than a statement of personal taste or of social preference, both contingent and neither obligatory morally.

If you had explicitly desired to talk about Hume’s Guillotine, you should have said so. Perhaps you thought it was implicit in your post, but I took your request a different way.

Hume’s Guillotine One cannot validly derive a normative proposition from a descriptive one.

But Hume’s Guillotine supervenes on another colorfully named Humean proposition.

Hume’s Fork All knowledge is based either on logic or definitions, or else on empiricism.

Now I would suggest to you this: If you are proposing to chop off the head of the atheist with the Guillotine, make sure that you yourself are not first impaled on the prongs of the Fork! For since we do not know god by logic or definitions, and since we do not know him empirically, it follows that we have no knowledge of God according to Hume! But the Guillotine supervenes on the Fork: Since we cannot empirically witness the move from “is” to “ought,” and since this move cannot be derived from logic (quite the contrary) or from definitions, it follows we can have no knowledge of how “ought” is derived from “is.”

Quite candidly, I would just suggest that it’s not very honest debating to claim that the atheist has a problem with the Guillotine, without first acknowledging the theist’s problem with the Fork, upon which the Guillotine depends!

You cannot logically subscribe to Hume’s Guillotine without also subscribing to his Fork, in which case you acknowledge that we can have no knowledge of God. Please don’t cherrypick Hume!

But it’s even worse than that for the theist. If, in trying to ground morality, the atheist runs afoul of the Guillotine, then so does the theist — even more so! (Whereas the atheist has no problem with the Fork.)

I can write a statement as follows, and it’s perfectly fine as far as it goes:

If it is immoral to commit murder, and if I want to be moral, then I ought to refrain from committing murder.

The problem, of course, is that Hume is just pushed back a step. Is it immoral to commit murder? Even if it is, ought I want to be moral, and hence refrain from murder?

Unfortunately for the theist, he has an even bigger bunch of ifs to deal with. Here they are:

If God exists, and if god is perfectly moral, and if God holds that murder is immoral, and if I believe in God and if I want to be moral, than I ought to refrain from committing murder.

Whew!

As we can see, Hume’s Guillotine is a much bigger problem for the theist than it is for the atheist, when it comes to grounding morality. And of course as noted above, the Fork is fatal to the theist while not being a problem in the slightest for the atheist, or more specifically, for the logician or for the metaphysical naturalist.

But let me go all arguendo here. Let’s stipulate, for the sake of argument, that your God exists, and that he is morally perfect. (If he throws innocent people into a lake of fire for all eternity he is morally wicked, as I explained above, but let’s pretend he doesn’t do that, just to get on with things.)

Now we get this.

P1 (Descriptive) God exists (we’re going to have to pretend that he exists in some way that can be detected on Hume’s Fork; but as I said, arguendo.)

P2 (Descriptive) God is morally perfect (no lakes of fire, sorry)

P3 (Descriptive) God wants you to behave morally.

C: (Normative!) Therefore, you ought to behave morally.

Holy shit, look at that! The whole argument is decapitated by the Guillotine, even if, on the principle of charity, we grant you your God’s existence and his moral perfection!

You argument clearly attempts to derive an “ought” from an “is” — and hence as you yourself have pointed out, it is invalid. I am afraid in invoking the Guillotine, you are hoist by your own petard.

So the theist is in the same boat with the atheist on grounding morality in the shadow of the Guillotine. His problem is even worse in that he cannot even first get by the Fork, which he must do to validly invoke the Guillotine!

(By Christ, I wish you people had some decent smiles here. At the Freeethought Forum I’ve got a guillotine and a fork smilie!)

Hume’s Guillotine seems to be a more generalized logical objection, which is that one cannot draw a valid normative conclusion from premises that themselves have no normative content. As such, it is fatal to theistic grounding of moral behavior.

In my next post I’ll expand upon my own grounding of morality, and how the Guillotine impacts it, which it certainly does. But while my argument also runs afoul of the Guillotine, it is, unlike theism, perfectly consistent with the Fork, and I will argue that this fact is all that matters.

davidm wrote: ↑Sat Jul 01, 2017 2:59 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:15 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 2:22 pm

Do you or do you not desire that you should be without God? I need to know this in order to respond to this objection.

I'm going very briefly address the above...

You promised this, but you didn't. I still don't see an answer to my question.

"I do" or "I do not" should be sufficient to clarify your position. Which is it?

davidm wrote: ↑Sat Jul 01, 2017 4:30 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:15 pm Ah, but none of this defeats or even represents a response to Hume. These are all "is" statements, statements about "things which are being done," not about things which "ought to be done." And the problem with that is that the same logic would grant grounds for evil primate habits -- rape or making war, for example, which are also almost as old as the human race. You would never be able to say why one such ancient habit was good and another was evil -- at least, not in anything stronger than a statement of personal taste or of social preference, both contingent and neither obligatory morally.

If you had explicitly desired to talk about Hume’s Guillotine, you should have said so. Perhaps you thought it was implicit in your post, but I took your request a different way.

Hume’s Guillotine One cannot validly derive a normative proposition from a descriptive one.

But Hume’s Guillotine supervenes on another colorfully named Humean proposition.

Hume’s Fork All knowledge is based either on logic or definitions, or else on empiricism.

It does not require the latter, actually. They are separate issues. The "fork" has no implications for morality, except to imply that morality does not exist at all...which is what the guillotine does. On that point, they concur: but the fork is not necessary for the guillotine, either before or after.

However, you don't seem to know how Theism is really grounded. For if you did, you'd perhaps know that it can be grounded by all three "tines."

For since we do not know god by logic or definitions, and since we do not know him empirically, it follows that we have no knowledge of God according to Hume!

We do know God by logic and definitions, and also by empirical means. For example, the Ontological, Cosmological, Design, Teleological, Experiential and Miraculous arguments all depend on exactly these things, as you can easily verify. Now, do I expect you to accept any of these arguments? No, for you are not prepared to do so, I'm sure. But that's quite a different thing from what you claim...namely, that Theist arguments are not appeals to logic, definitions or empirical proof: they clearly are! The question of your willingness or unwillingness to accept them as true does not change that. They are what they are...logical, definitional and empirical.

Moreover, Revelation is an empirical claim. The Moral Argument, however, unlike these others, does not depend exclusively on empirical premises, and yet manages to be devastating to anyone who holds that moral properties are objectively real, or to anyone who invokes the Atheist "Argument from Evil," as you are hoping to do: for no concept of "evil" can be substantiated from an Atheist perspective, and so the key argument you wish to invoke in your indictment of God cannot even get off the ground, Atheistically speaking.

So your "fork" claim is just verifiably untrue. It presents no problem at all to Theism, because Theism clearly DOES stake its claims on logical, empirical and definitional statements. Apparently, you just don't like the arguments. But they are there.

But the Guillotine supervenes on the Fork: Since we cannot empirically witness the move from “is” to “ought,” and since this move cannot be derived from logic (quite the contrary) or from definitions, it follows we can have no knowledge of how “ought” is derived from “is.”

This argument doesn't disarm the guillotine: it restates it in a slightly different form. You need to disarm the guillotine, or else it still cuts...but only Atheism, since Atheism has no empirical grounds.

Theism makes empirical claims all the time. The Resurrection, for example, is not a theoretical or literary claim but a historical-factual one.

Quite candidly, I would just suggest that it’s not very honest debating to claim that the atheist has a problem with the Guillotine, without first acknowledging the theist’s problem with the Fork, upon which the Guillotine depends!

We don't have the problem you think we do. You're reckoning without revelation; and to decide arbitrarily, beforehand, that even if the open question is whether or not God exists, somehow even if He did it would be impossible for him to perform a revelation of Himself...well, talk about a huge non-sequitur!

You cannot logically subscribe to Hume’s Guillotine without also subscribing to his Fork, in which case you acknowledge that we can have no knowledge of God. Please don’t cherrypick Hume!

I wasn't, as you can see. You've simply misunderstood the basis of Theist claims.

But it’s even worse than that for the theist. If, in trying to ground morality, the atheist runs afoul of the Guillotine, then so does the theist — even more so! (Whereas the atheist has no problem with the Fork.)

Not at all. IF we allow that God might exist (which we have to, in order to have the discussion, since it is the conclusion that stands yet to be proved), then the Theist has an absolute buck-stops-here grounding for morality in the nature and revealed will of God. The Atheist has nothing. Nada.

I can write a statement as follows, and it’s perfectly fine as far as it goes:

If it is immoral to commit murder, and if I want to be moral, then I ought to refrain from committing murder.

The Atheist cannot justify the first premise at all, and the second is merely a practical claim without any moral content. And you recognize this as follows:

The problem, of course, is that Hume is just pushed back a step. Is it immoral to commit murder? Even if it is, ought I want to be moral, and hence refrain from murder?

Right. You have used an "ought" which refers merely to practical considerations, not moral ones. From an Atheist perspective, it can never be said that it is "wrong" to murder at all. Neither need it be "right" to do so, from that perspective. There is, according to Hume, no substance to morality. It's merely emotive, he thought, an expression on par with feelings, but devoid of any objective moral content.

Unfortunately for the theist, he has an even bigger bunch of ifs to deal with. Here they are:

If God exists, and if god is perfectly moral, and if God holds that murder is immoral, and if I believe in God and if I want to be moral, than I ought to refrain from committing murder.

Yes...

It actually looks much simpler than you want it to look. It's "Thou shalt not murder." Pretty simple, that.

The belief in God, the claim that He holds murder to be immoral, and the assumption that a human being ought to want to be moral are all nicely bundled into that package. After all, you already granted the person's Theism.

As we can see, Hume’s Guillotine is a much bigger problem for the theist than it is for the atheist, when it comes to grounding morality. And of course as noted above, the Fork is fatal to the theist while not being a problem in the slightest for the atheist, or more specifically, for the logician or for the metaphysical naturalist.

Neither is any problem at all, actually. As you can see, you've granted the Theist everything at the start.

But let me go all arguendo here. Let’s stipulate, for the sake of argument, that your God exists, and that he is morally perfect. (If he throws innocent people into a lake of fire for all eternity he is morally wicked, as I explained above, but let’s pretend he doesn’t do that, just to get on with things.)

Again, I believe you can't justify any Atheist judgment of "morally wicked." You need to show that you can, before you can invoke any.

Go ahead.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 3:15 pm
So now we have to ask which you mean when you use the word "Atheism." You say you mean, "lacking a belief in God." We must ask, "Do you mean merely being passively uncertain whether or not such exists, or do you mean actively denying that such exists?"

If it's the latter, you're an Atheist, by definition, no question. If it's the former, though, you must be an agnostic: for you are not saying that you know God does not exist, nor even that you have reason to deny His possible existence: you're just confessing to a personal "lack" in being able to believe one way or the other -- as you say, you "lack" belief that God exists.

Atheism doesn’t just go along to get along. It’s not passive, it’s active.

Since atheism is an assertion that the existence of God is impossible, what could possibly be the intent of an atheist in referencing the bible?

The intent is to actively discredit the bible. Why?

Rationality and observation indicate that the reason is to prove that Christianity is harmful to humanity, and that atheism is the antidote to the state of mind that causes the harmfulness.

The true desire of atheists is to remove the concept of Christianity from consciousness by censoring references, when possible.

This is evident from the push to remove all public displays of Christianity from consciousness. No mangers at Christmas, change Christmas time to holiday time, refer to Christians as Xtians, and so on.

Atheists give other religions a pass.
It gets insidiously deeper, too, such as the media's under-reporting of Christian persecution in the world.

In fact, clever atheists lump Christianity in with other religions that actually do harm humanity in the name of the religion, in order to discredit Christianity as also being harmful, simply because it too is a religion.

The dishonesty of the selective targeting and subterfuge is what links the topic of atheism to the propagandizing, indoctrinating and conditioning methods used in the name of secular education, and used in the Alinsky-style practice of progressive politics.

Walker wrote: ↑Sat Jul 01, 2017 3:58 pmAtheism doesn’t just go along to get along. It’s not passive, it’s active.

I agree. As a merely passive view, it's unspeakably trivial. But I find that those who declare themselves Atheists invariably want to propagandize. They're most certainly active.

Rationality and observation indicate that the reason is to prove that Christianity is harmful to humanity, and that atheism is the antidote to the state of mind that causes the harmfulness.

Yes. And I note that they are not against ALL religion at all. They expend little venom on Buddhists, or Wiccans or Zoroastrians, or whatever. They only hate the true God, really.

Ironically, when they stand before Him, they'll never be able to say, "I didn't know who you were, and I didn't mean it." It will be obvious which understanding of God they singled out, and on which understanding of God they expended all their venom. Judgment will be warranted in full measure. No Atheist will be able to say that God is not being fair. After all, they'll only reap the seeds they're sowing right now, every day. In life, they spent their time spitting at God...so when He says to them "Depart from me, you workers of iniquity, for I never knew you," it won't mean that God didn't know who they were -- He knows that -- it will mean that He never stood in any approving relationship to them. In fact, that's the literal meaning of the word in the Greek there. For before He rejected them, they chose to stand in no approving relationship to Him.

The true desire of atheists is to remove the concept of Christianity from consciousness by censoring references, when possible.

Indeed so.

This is evident from the push to remove all public displays of Christianity from consciousness. No mangers at Christmas, change Christmas time to holiday time, refer to Christians as Xtians, and so on.

Ironically, many of them also champion the cause of "Islamophobia" prevention, even to the point of allowing that sharia law should be granted a special place in a secular democracy. They hate God so much they're happy to put the weapons of their own destruction in the hands of the Islamists. So sad.

Atheists give other religions a pass.

Yep.

It gets insidiously deeper, too, such as the media's under-reporting of Christian persecution in the world.

Yes. If you think about it, that's about the stupidest strategy they could take, too. They could grant refugee status to hundreds of thousands of Christians every year -- genuine refugees with an immediate death-threat hanging over their heads -- and the result would be only genuine kindness, stronger democracy and better resistance to Islamic terror. But they don't do it.

In fact, clever atheists lump Christianity in with other religions that actually do harm humanity in the name of the religion, in order to discredit Christianity as also being harmful, simply because it too is a religion.

Yep.

The dishonesty of the selective targeting and subterfuge is what links the topic of atheism to the propagandizing, indoctrinating and conditioning methods used in the name of secular education, and used in the Alinsky-style practice of progressive politics.

Yep.

Great message. I agree completely.