Is eating your children only a legal issue?

If not for laws making it illegal, atheists should be consistent and affirm eating your children is as acceptable as eating any other living things. You might claim we should protect all animal life or you may have some standard by which you decide which animals are expendable for food or other reasons (crop harming insects for instance) and which are too advanced (able to feel) or just too "cute" to kill or consume.

I would propose that it is impossible to live in our culture without killing some animals for some reasons. If it is OK to kill a chicken and eat it, then why not a child? You might say you are exempt form this reasoning because you are a vegetarian and would never advocate killing/eating a chicken, but are you really being consistent in your treatment of animals? Do you kill insects that invade your home, bacteria that invade your body or cause the death of animals through your part in polluting the environment? Are some kinds of life of greater or lesser value - says who?

As one famous animal rights expert put it -

"There’s no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals.” — Ingrid Newkirk, Washingtonian magazine, Aug 1986

Newkirk was trying to make a case for animal rights by suggesting we have just as much reason for protecting the rights of rats as children. She has a point, but unless their is some absolute moral standard from which we derive things like rights then she may be making the opposite point - if we have no basis for rights for rats then there is no basis for rights for people either.

Unless God has spoken, as the Christians claim, then any distinction between mammals and bacteria as worthy of rights is completely arbitrary. If you are to be totally true to an atheistic/evolutionary worldview, it would be wrong to distinguish even plant life or rocks from the sphere of rights as they all equally exist as products of the amoral process of time and chance acting on matter. Of course the rights they have is not the right to exist without being harmed, but the right or even obligation to consume each other as much as they are able as part of the evolutionary process.

If God has not spoken and given us specific information on morality as it relates to the world, then there is no basis for even having such discussions of "rights". Survival of the fittest must prevail and if it were legal to eat your children, no one could make any kind of moral argument regarding the rightness or wrongness of it.

If atheists were to act more like atheists and less like Christians (living like morals were real/absolute) we may not have survived long enough as a species to have these kinds of discussion (our parents may have eaten us), but do you want to be a consistent atheist or live?





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Why "Good without God" is Silly Talk!

First, to talk about moral categories like good and bad makes no sense for atheists. If mankind is just another organism that came about through the amoral process of time and chance acting on matter, then to talk about things as good or bad is just plain silly. Chemical reactions or the actions of biological units brought about through chemical reactions are have no basis for morals.

Even if you were to suggest some other method for deciding certain things are good or bad, such as: they are good for the survival of the species or even the individual, your evaluation could never be anything but pure subjectivity. If we are the standard for deciding if we are good, I suspect we will be good in our eyes and someone else may just as validly declare us bad. Further, even the notion that the survival of an individual, a species, or even the continued existence of the earth as a whole is in some way "good", can't be grounded in anything besides personal opinion.

It is fascinating how many atheists feel obligated (in their books/speeches) to point out the better things atheists have done and the worse things religious people have done throughout world history. Should I assume they would become Christians if the statistics supported the opposite being true? Have they forgotten Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-il and so many other murderous tyrants who were true to their atheistic/evolutionary beliefs? It has been suggested that some of these tyrants practiced a religion of sorts, but in practice they all assumed the role of god and acted according to an atheist/evolutionary worldview.

Likewise, this is an especially weak argument against Christianity since even though many who have called themselves Christians have done horrible things, the teachings of the Christian's Bible would have condemned those who did them and exposed them as not being Christians in any true biblical sense.

Clearly the tyrants who have been most successful in subduing/eliminating their foes were acting consistent with their atheist beliefs as they put survival of the fittest into action.

Face the facts - to even suggest life ought to continue is a moral statement that has no place in atheistic/evolutionary thinking.

Unless God speaks in some tangible way, such as the Bible as the Christians claim, then we have no basis for acknowledging morality as a category of thought/discussion, no language to speak within the category even if it existed and no standard we could use to evaluate it regardless.

So even if someone writes a book to the contrary - Good Without God - is silly talk.

Human Rights - Really?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Sound familiar?

It is from the Declaration of Independence.

Clearly, the Founding Fathers were aware that "human rights" could only be grounded in the reality of some higher authority whom they called "their  Creator". The majority assumed this creator had mandated these things for His creation and revealed it in the Bible.

We can be free of this Christian "human rights" nonsense if we will only think logically!

It is clear that unless a higher authority/creator tells us what is true, good, right, etc. in some absolute/concrete way, such as in a written document like the Bible, then "human rights" is nothing more than one or more persons' opinion of what ought to be in a world without oughts!

If we reject the notion of a creator/God we are free from "human rights".

Let me give a practical example -

Suppose ten people find themselves stuck on an island cut off from all other people, governments and laws. For the sake of argument, five are adult men, two are adult women and three are children age 9-11 (two girls and one boy).

Even though there is no moral basis for a majority vote for making decisions (evolution would not account for it), it is decided that they will vote to decide how things are to be run on the island. The five men decide they want the others to be their salves, in even the most heinous/unspeakable ways, so they convince one of the children to vote with them and the majority's will becomes law on the island. 

The women and children now find they have been voted into slavery by the majority. Removed from other laws/governments that dictate behavior and punish lawbreakers, can these slaves make any claim of their "human rights" being violated?

Most would say pedophilia is obviously wrong everywhere all the time, but lets be consistent atheists and acknowledge all morall standards are subjective and simply based on the standards particular societies have chosen. Therefore, slavery or pedophelia are simply the acceptable moral standard this society has voted into law.

This is even being generous, because in reality the will of any two of the castaways might just as well dictate accepted morality for this small society, if they are strong enough to force their will on the others. As I alluded to earlier, even voting can't be called "right" unless it is anchored in some higher authority/creator.

It is true that these kinds of things have happened many times throughout history and have often been called evil or even atrocities, but now we see that even the condemning of these actions is baseless when God is rejected.

"Human rights" as a concept doesn't even make sense if we (humans) are simply products of time and random chance on matter!

It is clear the Founding Fathers knew the consequences of a godless society and wrote the founding documents of our nation based on their strong religious (mostly Christian) beliefs, but now we can be free by following atheism to it's logical end and get in the process -

A world without any basis for "human rights"!

If you end up a slave in the process - I guess you can't complain, accept to time and chance acting on matter!

Why not get rid of the poor and weak?

I know it sounds harsh at first, but aren't you just reacting emotionally from a primitive man made standard of right and wrong that you have been taught to believe? Seriously, other animals from the microscopic level up to the largest on earth have natural predators to eliminate the weak and unproductive.

We have become so protected by advancements in technology and science that we need to consider helping natural selection out a bit, it would still be natural selection, because we are doing it and we are only parts of nature after all. By having us better producing members of the species weed out some of the less fruitful ones, we could make much better use of resources that are becoming more limited all the time.

I know those Christians will say that God has said in the Bible that He made man in His image and we need to respect and care for all human life (even the unborn if you can imagine that), but we don't believe in their God, so we must do as we think is best. I know you might say - well even an atheist should be concerned for the greater good and my suggestion mat not be what is best for the whole human race.

Who cares!

I am not obligated by evolution to do what is best for the whole human race - only what is best for me, and only I decide what that is. If my plan is bad for everyone but me, that is just too bad for you, unless you are strong enough to stop me.

Aren't you glad we aren't obligated to care for the poor and weak like those Christians? I know they don't always do it, but their Bible does teach it and unless God has spoken and told us about moral obligations to care for others then we have no reason to think we must.

Doesn't it make you feel safe, if you are very strong, at least for now?

Oh the Freedom of Meaninglessness!

Those poor Christians.

They believe God has spoken in the Bible and told mankind about who God is, what life is about, what is good/bad morally, how to be reconciled to God for not meeting his moral standards (Jesus/cross) and even gives a basis for knowing if anything (even our senses/thoughts/logic) are true or reliable.

We know better!

If God hasn't spoken then nothing has any meaning or purpose that can be known by us. Even our ability to know things by our senses or reason is simply our opinions drifting in a purposeless/meaningless/unknowable universe. Even if there were a god, we could not know anything about him or what he expects from us if he did not reveal himself in some concrete way, like the Bible.

It is so freeing to know that our lives have no meaning or purpose. We can work hard or not, be kind or not, pollute the environment or not and at the end of the day we can know nothing we did had any real meaning or purpose either way!

See how free that makes you feel!

Atheist - Be Consistent!

I am often amazed at the inconstancy of atheists. If we believe it - let's act like it. One example is on ecological issues. We are supposed to believe in evolution, but so often we see those who confess atheist beliefs doing ridiculous things - like putting beached whales back in the ocean!

How do we expect these whales to evolve if we keep putting them back! If we had any basis for calling something morally wrong/bad - this would be bad, but we don't, so  never mind I guess, but it still seams really inconsistent! Is being inconsistent bad?

Oops! I can't use categories like good or  bad - getting a headache!

Until next time!