User talk:Weri long wang/Atheisthate

Some misconceptions

Hello again. :-) I didn't want to add this with our conversation about the article, but your comments on my userpage seem to indicate you have a few major misconceptions about Christianity:

• On the subject of humanism and abortion I believe, what a religious individual might call a “soul” emanates from the brain.

A religious person considers the brain and soul as distinct. Non-human animals, for instance, have brains, thought processes, and even emotions, but many Christians would not consider them having souls. Any culture that believes in an afterlife must acknowledge that the soul is independent of the brain, in order for it to continue existing after the brain has been destroyed. By the same rationale, it can exist before the brain is formed.

• Therefore I believe that a grouping of cells doesn’t qualify as a true human (or whatever other animal that embryo will become) until its nervous system has at least partly developed. That means that a fertilized human egg doesn’t count as a human in the same way that a fully grown doctor with a family does.

You may have noticed that abortion is one of my hot-button issues. :-) I actually do find it interesting that so many of us Christians wield religious arguments when it comes to abortion; I find secularized logic to be more reaching in today's society. My belief that prenatals have rights revolves around this: 1) They are living. This is undisputed. 2) They are human. They possess human DNA and everything they grow is human; after all, no one really believes that the child evolves inside the mother's womb, from lesser animals. 3) They are individual. From the moment of fertilization, the subject has its own 46 chromosomes and needs only to grow and develop. Humans continue growing throughout the course of their lives, with some of the greatest changes developing in infancy and adolescence. When exactly would you say a prenatal "becomes" human? When the umbilical cord is cut? You say it is when nerves appear. Should a woman be allowed to abort her child after the nerves appear? Many would say yes, but I find it horrible. I find it as horrible as saying that a woman has the right to abort her child within the first week of its birth. After all, that newborn has no sense of its surroundings. Most of its physical and cognitive functions have barely taken shape, and, if it survives, it wouldn't have had any memory of this developing time. The potential child may become a burden on society in general, so now, right after its birth, would be the perfect time to eliminate it, before it really starts to live. I find that type of thinking terrible, but it is slowly becoming the norm. You mention that a fully grown doctor with a family counts more than a fertilized human egg. Does that doctor count more than a fully grown doctor without a family? More than a farmer? Does the fully grown doctor with a family count more than a homeless person, or an unwanted orphan, or a former doctor whose arthritis is too advanced for him/her to help society much anymore? The path of liberalism has always been extending the most basic rights to everyone, at the expense of more advanced rights to the more priveleged.

• Did you know that around 80% of fertilized eggs “abort” themselves anyway as a kind of built-in quality control system?

I knew the percentage was high. Did you know that around 100% of people "abort" at some point in their lives, anway? Sometimes it comes with time, sometimes accidents happen. Did you know that infants are more likely to "naturally abort" than adults? Or that newborns are more likely to than infants? Yet it's still not right to bring their deaths ourselves, no matter how many occur without murder. And this isn't Bible talk, either; it's the same concepts of morality that all humans possess on their own, which I seriously hope will eventually lead people to see how wrong this practice is.

• It’s funny that you mention the fact that evolution says that life popped out of nowhere (even though it doesn’t truly say that), you miss the point that creationism says exactly the same thing! Problems is which one of these is more likely to pop out of nowhere?

Oh no no no, not at all! Creationism does not say that life popped out of nowhere; it says that life popped out of God (so to speak). And none of the Abrahamic faiths will say that God appeared out of nowhere Himself; the belief is that God simply always was. Just glance at the opening quotes for the Creationism article, as it makes fun of "John 1:1". Non-creation evolution may not "truly" say that life popped out of nowhere, but, when push comes to shove, it does have life appearing where there was no life, ever, before. I can believe that animals can change their patterns and evolve over considerable time; I do not believe that dirt and minerals have the survival capacity to develop into living organisms, since non-living things would not need a survival capacity at all. -BaronGrackle 13:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• • I know you said you didn't want to get into a long argument, but since you added some quotes since then, I thought I might respond a little.
• I wonder what these people would say if they knew that the majority of conceived embryos spontaneously abort anyway. It is probably best seen as a kind of natural ‘quality control’

What I was saying earlier was that people spontaneously abort, or "die", more often than we'd care them to. They might die before birth, or during it, or as a teenager, or maybe in their elderly years. Just because death happens naturally doesn't give us the right or reason to kill them ourselves for the sake of convenience.

• An early embryo has the sentience, as well as the semblance, of a tadpole. A doctor is a grown-up conscious being with hopes, loves, aspirations, fears, a massive store of human knowledge, the capacity for deep emotion, very probably a devastated widow and orphaned children and perhaps elderly parents who dote on him.

Just change a few words. "A recently newborn baby has the sentience, as well as the semblance, of a tadpole in its mid-stages. A doctor is a grown-up conscious being with hopes, loves..." and so on, and so forth. I believe that you too cringe at the idea of this doctor being measured as more worthy of life than this newborn. For an expecting mother (or family) looking forward to greeting their new child, only to have it die unexpectantly, you could quite easily have a devastated family. For a particularly despicable doctor who abused or leeched off his family, it may have been that his wife, children, and parents might have even wished him dead. But they can't kill him even if it does make their lives easier. It's illegal, and it's morally wrong.
Or imagine a scenario with a despicable doctor who controls his wife, and the only thing the wife has ever wanted was to have a baby of her own. But the terrible doctor will abandon and ruin her if she has it, pressuring her into an abortion. A wild scenario? Perhaps. But in it you can see an occasion where it's tempting to say that the embryo is more deserving of rights than the doctor. But we still can't say that it's right to kill the doctor, or that this is the only way to preserve the wife, her family, and their new child. I think you and I share some common ground in this. -BaronGrackle 01:56, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Atheism article

Hey! Well, I didn't revert all of your edits, just most of the abortion and creation parts. It's not JUST that I didn't like your changes, it's that they didn't poke enough fun at atheism. For instance, what if I were to go the the Catholicism article and start making edits, criticizing and making fun of viewpoints OTHER than Catholicism? Sarcastically talking about how Protestants have no Table of Contents, or how Baha'ai have no link to their predecessors, or how Atheists (stereotypically) randomly decide which humanist principles to keep and which to throw away? Or what if I were to go to the Creationism article and post those same sentences, the ones that point out flaws with anti-Creationism? It would be reverted, because it would be parodying everything except what the article was about, which would be off. There are already so many articles here that glorify atheism; just about every single religion article does. There has to be a place were we can sit and laugh at ITS faults, too.
See, to critics of the belief system, the funny thing about atheistic support of abortion is that it's one of the only platforms that stands inconsistent with scientific definitions of life and with the liberal principles of basic rights for all, as opposed to unlimited rights to few (elitism). Now, you can disagree with that, and we can argue it till we're both blue in the face, but that's what religious folk find ridiculous about it, and that's what we'd find to be funny. The funny thing to think about anti-creationism isn't the concept of evolution; it's the concept of the very beginning, how something suddenly appeared from nothing. The kind of information you wrote would be perfect... but perfect for the Creationism article. It just seems more balanced that way for full entertainment, you know? -BaronGrackle 22:49, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

• It's not just that it's not hard on Atheism, it's that much of it isn't about Atheism. You posted your edits on my userpage in 5 different bullets, and 4 of the bullets make constant reference to "Christian", Christianity, or the Bible. Things like stoning to death for "moving sticks on the Sabbath" are funny because of how ridiculous they sound, but they're much funnier in Christianity, Judaism, or any of those other articles. This is how I would see the second bullet you posted:

One major principle of Atheism is that since we as humans possess a highly developed brain, we can figure out for ourselves what is right and what is wrong without needing a book written during the dark ages to define our “morals” for us. If we are to believe Christians, all Atheists are immoral monsters who don’t know right from wrong. Ironically, history has demonstrated that the majority of hate and suffering throughout time has actually come from religious extremists, monsters like Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Grand Moff Tarkin, and other self-proclaimed fundamentalists.

Now we could mention the real examples of religious hatemongers, all the genocidal Popes and Caliphs and Darths, but this way actually addresses the topic article. If you read an article about an influential worldview on Uncyclopedia, shouldn't it take at least a few cheap shots at it? -BaronGrackle 13:03, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

• Again, we come round the mulberry bush. :-) I'll yield Hitler was probably more neo-pagan than atheist, so we should leave that reference out. He mentions God quite a few times, usually in the context of German racial superiority. At one point all the crosses on church steeples in Germany were ordered to be replaced by swastikas. It's not quite as open-and-shut as either of us had made it out to be (http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhitlerchristian.html).

Also, the holocaust is a classic example of people being persecuted (and this case killed en masse) simply because of their religion. So to cite Hitler and his actions as an example of the evils of atheism is a very very bad pick!

Oh no. Just a little research shows that people could not escape persecution by converting (as they could in the days when the church was persecuting, not that that's any better), as Hitler considered the Jews a mongrel race of culture destroyers by their very biological natures. You could be targeted if you never had claims to Judaism; if your family tree had aspects of it, you were genetically sub-human.

Yes, but you also added quite a few more - from the other side! Implying that atheists believe rape is okay for example.

Ha ha! Of COURSE atheists don't believe rape is okay! Catholics don't believe priests molesting altar boys is okay, either. Muslims don't simply babble and bang their heads against the dirt. Agnostics don't use their free time to put rufies in ladies' drinks. This is Uncyclopedia! The accusation is out there in the world that these "immoral" acts are linked progressively, and people believe it, so it deserves to be documented. You can refute it in a "real" article.

Although, it is worth noting, that rape of women seems perfectly okay according to the Bible!

Tell that to Dinah's brothers (a disturbing story in itself). Though they were punished, too. I consider the Genesis 19 story as involving a man willing to sacrifice his daughters before sacrificing a guest in his house. Though it is notable that he did not "throw" them out to the group of men, and in the end they were untouched. And as for the condonement of the story in Judges 19, all you need to do is look to Judges 20. The concubine was cut up after she had been raped and killed, and her parts were sent to rally others to punish those who committed the atrocious act. I don't know what web site you got the link to for these "immoral" Judeo-Christian verses, but it looks like they were just spitting out quick verses with no surrounding context.

And I also notice that you simply reverted all of my edits, as if they had never existed, perhaps to make your way of life seem more spotless. For someone who claims to not worship Athe, you certainly take considerable offense when she is legitimately slandered. Look, we don't really need every single piece of the edit I put up earlier, just a few things so the article doesn't look like a huge, ignorant altar, oblivious to its faults. -BaronGrackle 23:16, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Ackbar Ackbar! It's a trap!

I yield that Hitler was his own sort of makeshift theism, but that's all you'll get out of me. There are some significant quotes that fail to get mentioned on "nobelief.com":

"National Socialism and religion cannot exist together...."

"The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity's illegitimate child. Both are inventions of the Jew. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity...."

"The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity"

"It would always be disagreeable for me to go down to posterity as a man who made concessions in this field. I realize that man, in his imperfection, can commit innumerable errors-- but to devote myself deliberately to errors, that is something I cannot do. I shall never come personally to terms with the Christian lie."

And there are others, along with many of his pro-Christian quotes, here: link. Now, I suggest we just bury this piece and remove that section about Hitler altogether, instead of potshotting each other with every random thing Hitler says contradicting himself.

"Plus it kind of proves the point I was putting across: in at least one part of the Bible (we’ll consider these two stories one and the same; probably an editing error a few thousand years ago) raping women is perfectly acceptable."

Only if by "perfectly acceptable" you mean "punishable by death and extreme destruction". Judges 20 is pretty brutal about what happens to the rapists, as is the case in any Biblical account.

"If Judaism (and religion in general) didn’t exist then that would have been 6-10 million lives (and probably a world war) prevented."

See, these types of claims trouble me, things like the belief that the world would have no violence if not for religion. People have been monsters, regardless of whatever beliefs they claimed to have held, and they have found new reasons to kill even if pre-existing ones were denied to them. Christianity, or any religion for that matter, did not drive Hitler to kill Jews, Gypsies, Communists, Slavs, Blacks, Homosexuals, Christians-converted-from-Judaism, AND all the rest, all at once (but, strangely/randomly enough, not the Arabs, Muslims, or Japanese). Too many ideological and racial hatreds, scattered about randomly, to be assigned to a single source. Not to mention that, according to Atheist belief, religion is completely man-made. Therefore, even if we were to view religion as an atrocious plague, having it wiped clean from history would do nothing to prevent some other man-made ideology from committing equally or more atrocious acts. Like you said earlier... Stalin was a monster who just so happened to be an atheist. The difference is, with most religions, such acts are hypocrisy.

I am also a mite curious as to exactly who told this American woman in her forties that her Protestant friend was guaranteed to be burning in Hell. Though we do have very distinct beliefs about what is sinful, what is correct, and what is in accordance with God, the church has never officially declared any single person to be, without shadow of a doubt, currently in Hell. Even Judas. You won't find it in any documents, regardless of what some molesting abomination of a priest may have told her.

But no, I don't want you to add a part about Athe commanding the Communists to kill everyone; I don't think it or the current Hitler version fits very well. I liked aspects of the previous version, with a single off-hand reference to Stalin, Mao, Tarkin... you know, just enough to make you chuckle, and then think on it. How atheist governments have not proven to be superior to ones allowing free religion, or even theocracies. -BaronGrackle 17:26, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

And again

I see you have greatly reduced the segment on Adolf Hitler in the Atheism article, but I am a bit surprised that you left it there, including a link to the wikipedia article that basically undermines the argument that Hitler was any form of Christian except his own, Aryan-German variant. I'll defer my other comments to the topic to that very article.

"Whether or not Hitler was a devout Christian and whether or not his anti-Semitism stemmed from that is irrelevant; the point is that wasn’t his (or Stalin’s or Mao’s) atheism that drove him into doing what he did."

The correlation being that it wasn't his Christianity (or any religion) that drove him into doing what he did. You cannot say that it is without abandoning the claim that his devoutness was "irrelevant".

"You cannot fairly associate causation with a lack of something – Stalin’s actions were not driven on by religion, therefore they were driven on by atheism."

Well, you've barricaded atheism into quite a protective little trench. If Atheism is nothing but a lack of religion, and one cannot blame anything on a lack, then can anything be blamed on atheism? Consider: one of the pillars of Communism is that religion exists only to keep the lower classes satisfied in their lowly places. Communist governments must root out and oppose any fragments of these evil forces. This is the type of government that Stalin was leading. This was the type of government that enabled Stalin to kill as many people as he did, and there is no going around that.

"What? Would Stalin have been different if he had been touched by the graceful hand of our lord or something?"

Perhaps not. My question to you is this: had Stalin been a religious homicidal type, would you blame his atrocities on his particular religion?

"So what about the man who gave his daughter over to be raped? The man who gave over his concubine to be raped? What happened to them?"

Well (I wasn't sure until I looked it up just now), Lot was date-raped, the children from which became a group of people who were enemies of Israel and eventually thrashed by them (Moabites and Ammonites). As for the Levite fellow it doesn't specify, but after his tribe wipes out the Benjaminites they fall into a state of raiding, wife-stealing, and anarchy. No one really gets rewarded in those stories.

"And you never responded to what I said about Abraham and his atrocious behavior followed by the old Nuremberg plea “I was only following orders”."

I didn't, because I didn't feel we shared enough common ground for anything I said on it to convince you. But I ascribe a lot to the fact that God purposely made Abraham's Isaac sacrifice away from other onlookers and that both he and Isaac understood what was going on. It couldn't legitimately happen today because, in Abraham's time, there was still much unknown about how one should sacrifice before God. By replacing the sacrifice with one of His own in that story, God shows the Jewish people that human sacrifice is not part of his worship. Christians believe that Jesus fulfills that perfect sacrifice that "God will provide", according to Abraham at the time, so that it is the only one necessary. Any claiming that God told them to sacrifice their child in today's time would have to reconcile that claim with scripture that Abraham did not have, or else claim their God is separate from the Judeo-Christian understanding.

"You’re Ann-Coultering me there. Al Gore never said he “invented the internet”, nor did I say that there would be no violence without religion, nor has Richard Dawkins, or anyone that I know."

This was the statement I responded to:

"If Judaism (and religion in general) didn’t exist then that would have been 6-10 million lives (and probably a world war) prevented."

...which seems to blame both the Holocaust and World War II on the fact that the concept of religion exists. I am not "Ann-Coultering" you.

"What I meant was, were it not for Hitler’s vehement anti-Semitism, most likely a result of his Christian “love”, he would not have targeted a group of human beings who share no other feature other than that they happened to have brought up in a particular religion."

Perhaps; perhaps not. While Christians have been anti-Jewish, the phrase "Anti-Semitism" has "scientific" racial origins concerning those who believe Aryans are superior, as you can read on the wikipedia article. But if we yield that Hitler would not have had anything against Jews, as they would not have existed, then whom would he have targeted? Germany lost World War I without being totally crushed, and Hitler was among those who believed his country had been betrayed internally. In this alternative scenario, he wouldn't be able to blame the Jews, as they do not exist. He would still be able to blame the Communists. Perhaps the Gypsies too, so long as we focus on the nomadic lifestyle aspect of Gypsies, as opposed to their specific religious tenets... but perhaps not. Blacks are still fair game, as are Slavs, as are homosexuals. Maybe he would have just exterminated those who were not ethnically "German" enough, those whose recent ancestors had been from some other European ethnicity. Or maybe he still would have targeted the Jewish group of people ("Jewish" as in the ethnicity that fled their homeland and scattered amidst Europe, not Jewish the religion). The fact remains that Hitler needed a scapegoat, he would have found one, and some group of people would have been exterminated. As we discussed above, the fact that Stalin was born in an anti-religious environment did not seem to sway him from his homicidal nature, so there is no reason to assume Hitler would have been a terrific human being had he been given an areligious upbringing.

"The causes of the waves of “obvious” mass-genocides in the 20th century usually revolve around communism and/or nationalism certainly not atheism, but, a lot of the less well publicized acts of genocide, such as in Bosnia and Kosovo for example, (which are in the Stalin range too) are driven by religious differences."

With that definition, it is impossible to assign blame to atheism for anything. I direct you to my comments above in regard to Communism; a significant portion of that killing is anti-religious in nature, at times directed specifically against religious leaders and figureheads, so atheism is as much to blame as religion is in an anti-secular state. Nationalism is an interesting one, because we can use your definition to suddenly pardon any religious killing except those that took place under a Pope or an Anglican king. Russian pogroms? Those were done by the nationalistic Russian Czar, not the patriarch. Spanish Inquisition? Spanish monarchs unifying the Iberian peninsula under their rule, in acts taken separate from any Papal provision. Now don't bother refuting those last examples, as I don't really believe that. But a violent nationalism that has been given life apart from religion, particularly cases in which religious groups are targeted as subversive to national interests, certainly has at least modest origins in areligious thought. Therefore, areligious thought has the responsibility to shoulder some of the blame, just as religious thought does in the other cases. Many of the modern acts of genocide are driven by religious differences, but that is not because of religion. That is because of the differences. The proof? The proof is that, when you remove religion, people still kill each other over different differences.

"A large part of this episode deals with the Christian church terrifying youngsters with images of hell. For instance he meets a psychologist in her 50s who came from a strong Christian “group” and as a girl was frightened to death by what she was told."

And what of those of us whose lives have literally been saved by religion, whether through hope given or through selfless acts of another? And those like myself whose morality code would be considerably warped without the beliefs; based not solely on a fear of Hell but also on concepts of human worth in general. Secularly speaking, humans are worthless things, and the only reason to live yourself or propagate is because a little gene inside you wants to keep living, for reasons it does not understand. A part of me can understand why so many have no problem with abortion, but that is a terrible (hopefully small) part that focuses on the fact that that being is unwanted and no one will care if he/she is killed. A terrible mindframe. Imagine if the same thinking were applied to female babies in China, or to newborns with retardation, or to the elderly, or to minority races. "But the embryos are not people; all the other examples are", you might say. But that is a very unscientific answer. The female newborns are only women and thus not as human as men, the ones with retardation are not fully developed and never will be, the elderly have already passed their moment of human rationality and have already decayed past it (imagine empathizing with an Alzheimer's victim; do they even know that they are still alive?), and minorities are only near breeds of what the rest of us have developed into. These have actually been thoughts of people! And I seem to have strayed back to my abortion hot-button, so I will cease. Just consider what motivates this "humanistic empathy", and consider how many of us, religious and irreligious alike, are blissfully free of its bonds. Likewise, consider how easy it is to pick out a group and exclude them from it. Finally, consider why we should have that empathy at all. If you can kill a man and take his possessions, and you are guaranteed that you will not be punished for doing so, and you are guaranteed that you will not be rewarded in any way for not doing so, and it is certain that this man is of no benefit to society—in fact, it might benefit society to have him removed (because he is an unproductive fellow)... then why not kill him? There is no secular-rational reason for empathizing with others or loving others without benefit except for 1) the fear that you might be punished otherwise, or 2) absolutely blind faith in the concept of empathy.

"Mentioning those names in an article about atheism clearly implies that just because they were not religious implies that they were motivated by atheism, or that atheism makes you that way. It is hurtful, hateful and inappropriate and I can assure you that I wasn’t chuckling at it."

Uncyclopedia. You don't honestly believe that the information on the Catholicism, Christianity, Religion, Organized Religion, or any of those other articles are accurate. They are distortions, and I can hardly look at the pages without resisting the urge to edit them, to clarify the misconceptions and replace them with actual teachings and practices. But I don't, because it is a parody site. It is hurtful, it is hateful, but it is very, very appropriate. But don't worry; at this point I have given up on touching your Atheism article. I'm just talking now, answering your responses until you've had enough of my ramblings. :-) -BaronGrackle 00:02, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Life

"On the question of abortion, religous people believe a human embryo (or even a zygote or reproductive cell for that matter) is created in the image of God. So the human isn't worth anything, only god."

We believe that all humans are created in the image of God, that this is where we gain our capacity to be good in the "humanistic" way. The human, though it fails on several accounts, is loved by God and thus given an undeserved worth. This love gives us the ability to be better than we could be otherwise... charitable acts, good deeds, and other evidence of what you or others might call humanism is derived from this.

"The way secular thinking sees it the worth of a human being lies in the human's conscious sense of existence not on the fact that that human is created in the image of god."

So what, if a human knows that it exists? So what? If dolphins and gorillas can be made to discern the idea of their own existence, will that make them equal with humans (not just deserving of rights, which all animals are, but equal)? Why? Why is a gorilla that realizes it is a gorilla, more deserving of anything than a dog who would give its life for its beloved master? Why is a homicidal maniac who recognizes himself as a man, worth more than a harmless parakeet?

For that matter, what of those that do not realize they exist? A newborn human has no idea of what or where it is, much less the concept of what "is" is; it will not gain this until the sense is developed. An elderly person whose mind is slowly disappearing is losing or has already lost this sense of self-consciousness, and it can never be regained. I know you or other humanists do not think these two lives are worthless. You find worth in them, but not because they are conscious of their surroundings... it is because they are a person like you or me, and most of us still realize that individual humanity makes a person worthwhile, not the fickle spraying of selective self-consciousness. This is why I hope everyone will one day realize the humanity of the unborn.

"I think it’s clear that making a person believe that the only reason to be good is to please God (or avoid suffering in hell) is just selfish, not moral."

You're listening, but I don't think you're believing me. Fear of Hell is not the prime reason a Christian (or anyone) is called or compelled to do good. All of us are imperfect, but all of us are loved by God, and any act committed against each other is a betrayal of that love. No, I do not believe that I should commit abominable acts if I could get away with or be rewarded for them, but that is because I believe that the true essence of people is goodness itself, and worth preserving because we can act to serve God, a "good incarnate", if you would. But if we were just organisms, and "good" is just a term whose definition changes with the times, then why would it matter whether we were "good"? If I feed a starving orphan, change his outlook on life, and cause him to inspire some other person in the future, what does that matter? If that orphan dies in the street, then he's done and that's that. If he lives on with some new inspiration, then he will suffer goods with bads, he will shape things, and he will have a chance to actually live... but what does that matter? You can't explain exactly why it matters; you just feel that it does, and you know that it does. It is completely emotional, completely biased, and completely unscientific, but it is completely true regardless.

"I don’t kill people because my true moral sense tells me that taking a person’s life is one of the worst things you can do"

One's perception of true moral sense is often relative. Why does your true moral sense tell you that taking a person's life is so terrible, if we all die anyway? You have nothing to go on but tradition, what others have told you, along with a small feeling inside you that has been shaped by those traditions. When we were babies we reached and grabbed and screamed and desired... if we had been powerful enough to kill to get what we wanted, then we would have. No, you picked up your concept of morality somewhere, as did I.

And note how true moral sense has often failed society in the past. True moral sense told us that African peoples and nations needed to be taken care of, as children do. True moral sense told us that women were physically and emotionally unfit to have any role in the legal world. True moral sense tells us now that humans do not become humans until they grow nerves. Or, as some believe, until their heart beats. Or until they feel the light of the outside world. Or until the umbilical cord is cut. Your position is actually one of the tamer ones, thank goodness. But I submit that your classification of "unnerved" unborn as subhuman does not derive from any natural thoughts that just came to your brain as it developed, but that it was instead inspired from your individual set of traditions and role models. Or from the fact that probably every person you've spoken to who believed the unborn to be living just happened to be from Christian heritage, and we'll just forget the fact that the issue is over those very scientific 46 chromosomes that define our individuality.

"And why do atheists feal love for one another?"

Like with anyone, there are a few possible reasons that differ from person to person.

1) They fear punishment. Even if you don't see anyone watching, someone could be.

2) They seek reward. Reward is not just materialistic. Perhaps the person helped could help one back someday, in return. Perhaps there is a sense of comraderie if the person belongs to your same social or belief group, or the hope of converting them if they belong to a different set. Maybe just the simple feeling of pleasure inside is enough to drive one, just as any form of pleasure-seeking is.

3) Remember that religious people believe that good, self-less atheists are acting on the spirit of God within them without realizing it. Of course atheists and others have no reason to believe this, but hey, you asked what I felt.

-BaronGrackle 23:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)