Below are some quotes on atheism and morality:
Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov:
| “ | And Rakitin doesn't like God, oof, how he doesn't! That's the sore spot in all of them! But they conceal it. They lie. They pretend. 'What, are you going to push for that in the department of criticism?' I asked. 'Well, they won't let me do it openly,' he said, and laughed. 'But,' I asked, 'how will man be after that? Without God and the future life? It means everything is permitted now, one can do anything?' 'Didn't you know?' he said. And he laughed. 'Everything is permitted to the intelligent man,' he said. 'The intelligent man knows how to catch crayfish, but you killed and fouled it up,' he said, 'and now you're rotting in prison!' He said that to me. A natural-born swine! I once used to throw the likes of him out—well, and now I listen to them.[1] | ” |
Dr. Phil Fernandes says concerning atheism and moral relativism:
| “ | Nietzsche preached that a group of "supermen" must arise with the courage to create their own values through their "will to power." Nietzsche rejected the "soft" values of Christianity (brotherly love, turning the other cheek, charity, compassion, etc.); he felt they hindered man's creativity and potential....
Many other atheists agree with Nietzsche concerning moral relativism. British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) once wrote, "Outside human desires there is no moral standard." A. J. Ayer believed that moral commands did not result from any objective standard above man. Instead, Ayer stated that moral commands merely express one's subjective feelings. When one says that murder is wrong, one is merely saying that he or she feels that murder is wrong. Jean-Paul Sartre, a French existentialist, believed that there is no objective meaning to life. Therefore, according to Sartre, man must create his own values. There are many different ways that moral relativists attempt to determine what action should be taken. Hedonism is probably the most extreme. It declares that whatever brings the most pleasure is right. In other words, if it feels good, do it. If this position is true, then there is no basis from which to judge the actions of Adolf Hitler as being evil.[2] |
” |
- "Maybe the atheist cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman." - Laurence J. Peter[4]
"...the existence of a personal God is crucial for a coherent understanding of objective morality." - Paul Copan[5]
- "Atheism is a bleak worthless ideology. It robs the brain of reason, the conscience of moral guidance, the mind of tranquility and the soul of hope." - Nana Yiadom, March 11, 2011[6]
- "The irony of intolerant atheists is remarkable. They proudly declare their open-mindedness, and in the same breath they work feverishly to extinguish by force any mention of God, any support to theism, in civic life. Are you puzzled by this? Don't be. Censorship is in atheism's marrow... Moreover, atheism cannot withstand reasoned examination. The assertion that everything came from nothing, without reason and without moral law, isn't defensible in rational discourse, so silent assent is necessary to hold sway over culture." - Michael Egnor [7]
- "I find that contemporary atheists take great umbrage at the biblical claim that God holds people to be morally culpable for their unbelief. They want to maintain their unbelief in God without accepting the responsibility for it. ...unbelief is a choice. It is a choice to resist the force of the evidence and the drawing of God’s Holy Spirit. The unbeliever is like someone dying of a fatal disease who refuses to believe the medical evidence concerning the efficacy of a proffered cure and who rejects the testimony of his doctor to it and who, as a result, suffers the consequence of his own stubbornness. He has no one to blame but himself." - William Lane Craig[8]
Douglas Wilson declared:
| “ | If there is no God, then all that exists is time and chance acting on matter. If this is true then the difference between your thoughts and mine correspond to the difference between shaking up a bottle of Mountain Dew and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. You simply fizz atheistically and I fizz theistically. This means that you do not hold to atheism because it is true , but rather because of a series of chemical reactions... Morality, tragedy, and sorrow are equally evanescent. They are all empty sensations created by the chemical reactions of the brain, in turn created by too much pizza the night before. If there is no God, then all abstractions are chemical epiphenomena, like swamp gas over fetid water. This means that we have no reason for assigning truth and falsity to the chemical fizz we call reasoning or right and wrong to the irrational reaction we call morality. If no God, mankind is a set of bi-pedal carbon units of mostly water. And nothing else." - Douglas Wilson [9] | ” |
Distrust of atheists quotes
See also: Views on atheists
On December 10, 2011, USA Today reported in a story entitled Study: Atheists distrusted as much as rapists:
| “ | The study, conducted among 350 Americans adults and 420 Canadian college students, asked participants to decide if a fictional driver damaged a parked car and left the scene, then found a wallet and took the money, was the driver more likely to be a teacher, an atheist teacher, or a rapist teacher?
The participants, who were from religious and nonreligious backgrounds, most often chose the atheist teacher. The study is part of an attempt to understand what needs religion fulfills in people. Among the conclusions is a sense of trust in others. "People find atheists very suspect," Shariff said. "They don't fear God so we should distrust them; they do not have the same moral obligations of others. This is a common refrain against atheists. People fear them as a group."[10] |
” |
In 2015, the Christian Post reported in a story entitled Atheists Widely Distrusted, Even Among Themselves, UK Study Finds:
| “ | Distrust of atheists is "deeply and culturally ingrained" among people, and even many atheists are not able to trust each other, according to a new study carried out by the psychology department at Nottingham Trent University in England.
Published in the International Journal for The Psychology of Religion, the study, "The Robustness of Anti-Atheist Prejudice as Measured by Way of Cognitive Errors," was conducted with 100 participants from the U.K. .... The study shows that "anti-atheist prejudice is not confined either to dominantly religious countries or to religious individuals, but rather appears to be a robust judgment about atheists."[11] |
” |
See also
Notes
- ↑ Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, Pevear-Volokhonsky translation 1990, p. 589
- ↑ http://instituteofbiblicaldefense.com/1997/05/refuting-moral-relativism/
- ↑ Can Moral Objectivism Do Without God? by Peter S. Williams, Bethinking.org
- ↑ Peter, Laurence J. (1977). Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Times (New York: William Morrow), p. 44. Commenting on the Francis Thompson quote: "An atheist is a man who believes himself an accident."
- ↑ Can Moral Objectivism Do Without God? by Peter S. Williams, Bethinking.org
- ↑ Yiadom, Nana (March 11, 2011). "The 'no God' religion". GhanaWeb. Retrieved on February 26, 2015.
- ↑ Egnor, Michael (March 29, 2014). "Censorship is atheism's immune system". Evolution News and Views. Retrieved on February 26, 2015.
- ↑ Craig, William Lane (December 13, 2010). "Q&A Question #191: Is unbelief culpable?" Reasonable Faith website. Retrieved on May 24, 2015.
- ↑ Favorite quotes
- ↑ Study: Atheists distrusted as much as rapists
- ↑ Atheists Widely Distrusted, Even Among Themselves, UK Study Finds, Christian Post, 2015