Iwish I could say it as well as this cove :-)

No. Absolutely not.

 

Yes I did.

A beautiful church. My wife's parents were married there too.

And a lovely old CofE vicar. Mr Grimster.

(Mind you, even he tried to tell us in the pre-wedding chat that (a) it would be a 'sin' for us to not have children and (b) if husband and wife couldn't agree on something important, the husband's say over-rules his wife's. I don't know if he noticed my jaw hitting the floor at these suggestions - I think I hid it well. And that, dear children, is why I consider my morals to actually be better judged than even that lovely vicar's. Because he was stymied by this cretinous thing called religion whereas I was left to use my rational judgement.)

 

Precisely.

Tho' I don't think that's what you meant?

But, thanks.

 

Another cretinous throw-in from the sideline.

The point is, Wry, if religious people have done good things, then that is 'good'. Hurrah! But if it took their religious belief to make them do these good things, then they are not innately good people. And - as you know - the self same belief is a likely to make them do 'bad' things.

You cannot argue against that piece of common sense, can you Ry?

And again I will challenge you - tell me one bad thing done in the name of atheism. Correct - you cannot.

Atheism doesn't 'do' good and atheism doesn't 'do' bad. Atheism effectively means 'rational of thought'. 'Clear-thinking'. Evidence-based rationale.

The good news is, that when you are rational of thought, you do actually tend to do good things and avoid doing bad things - 'cos that is common sense.

So, actually, atheists do tend to do 'good'. But they don't bleat on about it as tho' it was something amazing...

 

100% certified loooooooon.

 

A couple of points, Wry.

The first is, I reckon I actually have a pretty good grasp of general science - and you clearly don't. Because science is evidence based, and your beliefs are not.

It really is that simple.

And I would consider science as being the ultimate source of answers to life, the universe and everything.

We might not get to all the answers - we're already in the realms of quantum theory (which is waaaaaay over my head) - but all that exists is ultimately explainable even if we can't at the mo'.

The real point being that the answers will be based on 'evidence'. That wonderful thing that religious belief is complete devoid of.


Another point - don't try and suggest that religions give us humans our moral compass! That is a complete lie, but one often peddled by 'believers' like you.

Here's the thing - the bible is packed full of genocide, racism, misogyny, incest, slavery and other nasty stuff, all things either carried out by gawd herself or by his fervent followers in her name.

Most - even you? - followers of the scripture have actually tamed some of the most ridiculous stuff that's in the bible so's as to not be subjected to tooo much ridicule these days. (Even the lovely mormons had to very recently - and how embarrassing! - remove their racist comments about blacks from their 'bible' - this was in the 1970's?!).

Now, a question for Wry - who made the christians disavow a lot of the nasty stuff in the bible? Answer - it wasn't the christians themselves. It was pressure - ridicule - from the rational people who pointed out what a hellish doctrine the biblical christian belief actually is.

Honestly, Wry - did a bunch of church elders sit down one day and say "Hey, look at this! It says that gays should be stoned to death. That's a bit harsh, isn't it? What about people who worship false gawds - it suggest here we should slay them. Ooh, I don't fancy that too much. What d'ya reckon - should we perhaps pretend these passages don't really mean that?"

Nope - it took outside pressure to bring these religious creeps to their 'senses', to tell them "You simply cannot get away with such hellish doctrine in our present day."

They were forced to change. By a higher moral authority. That of philosophers and rational thinkers.

So - there you have it. The rational has a higher moral code than the 'believers'. The rational amongst us forced the christian community to temper their ways.

And that is why christianity toady is 'quite nice'.

(Unless it's catholicism - which is still evil.)