The Truth About Atheism Part Two "Atheism and Ethics, Religions, God"

3. Are atheists unethical?

For sure you have heard this more than hundred times, 99.9% of theists believe that the only way to be ethical is to have a punishment that appears in their "Heaven and Hell" beliefs.
 
They believe that without religion, there wouldn't be any ethical nor moral systems for people, although people are the ones who made ethics, on the other hand most of the religions talk about ethics and morality as the most important thing to walk by although those religions are created by humans, and I'm not the only one who says that, but every theist or in other words religious person believes that his religion is the only righteous religion that has been created by his god, and other religions are fake made by humans, but they all almost have the same ethics, doesn't that tell you something?

So the big question is, "Does atheists follow ethics and morality?". The answer is a resounding “Yes!” From Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius to Einstein and Bertrand Russell, pagans as well as nonbelievers have produced moral systems that compare favorably with the best that modern religions have to offer. In fact, rational ethical systems are often preferable to traditional religions, most of which contain arbitrary or contradictory precepts, some of them blatantly immoral.

Christians may point with pride to the Ten Commandments, for example, but the Bible also includes embarrassments such as its endorsement of slavery or the absurd and brutal punishments prescribed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Muslims call Islam a “religion of peace” in spite of frequent references to jihad or “holy war” in the Koran.

Finding flaws in doctrinal religion is easy and tempting too, if you’ve been condemned as a sociopath, because you reject superstition, or threatened with the fires of perdition, because you won’t genuflect to imaginary deities. However, this kind of fault-finding doesn’t help to create consensus about effective morality, which is – or should be – one of our primary goals in human society, whether we’re atheist or faithful.


4. Why atheists do not believe in God?

There are many reasons not to believe in the existence of god, but before I list some of them, I would like to state a very important message to all theists, it isn't our mission to prove the none existence of god, it is your mission to prove that a god exists, we are tired of being asked to prove there is no god, and I have pointed it in the first part of this article saying "We cannot prove that there is no God, because you can't prove the non existence of something that doesn't exist, or proving something illogical by logic, like saying "prove to me that there is no elephant in that cup", you can't prove that cause obviously the person who is asking for a prove is totally insane."
 
Now for the reasons why we do not believe in a god or a deity, here I list some and not all

1. Lack of evidence : -
 
Many people are atheists because they think there is no evidence for God's existence - or at least no reliable evidence. They argue that a person should only believe in things for which they have good evidence.
 
A philosopher might say that they start from the presumption of Atheism. They say that there is as much evidence for the existence of God (any particular god at all) as there is for the existence of unicorns.
 
And although they might be more polite about it, someone who follows a particular faith may have the same sort of opinion about the existence of the gods of other faiths.
 
Mostly, believers accept the idea of god without asking for any good evidence, mostly cause that's what they know, they know nothing else, most of people are born into a religious society who believes in god and discriminate who ever say otherwise like Saudi Arabia, Egypt etc.
 
They are afraid as they feel there is no hope if there isn't any god, they are born afraid he might smite them, and how many people did any god smite that we know of? "except of course in the holy books'

2. God is unnecessary :-
 
Atheists argue that because everything in the universe can be explained in a satisfactory way without using God as part of the explanation, then there is no point in saying that God exists.
 
The argument is based on a philosophical idea called Occam's Razor, popularised by William of Occam in the 14th century.
In Latin it goes Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitateor in English... "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily".
This is usually simplified to say that the simplest answer is the best answer.
 
So, says the atheist, since the entire universe, and all of creation can be explained by evolution and scientific cosmology, we don't need the existence of another entity called God.
 
Therefore God doesn't exist.
 
Does this prove God doesn't exist? No it doesn't. It merely proves that the assumption that God exists isn't needed, and so can be abandoned.
 
If was alive now, William of Occam would not have agreed; he was a Franciscan monk who never doubted the existence of God.
 
But in his century he wasn't breaking the rule named after him. 
14th century science knew nothing about evolution or how the universe came into being. God was the only explanation available, and thus very necessary.
 
What William would think if he lived now is another matter...

3. God is meaningless :-
 
Some philosophers think that religious language doesn't mean anything at all, and therefore that there's no point in asking whether God exists.
 
They would say that a sentence like "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" is neither true or false, it's meaningless; in the same way that "colourless green ideas sleep furiously" is meaningless.
 
Logical Positivists argued that a sentence was meaningless if it wasn't either true or false, and they said that a sentence would only be true or false if
 
If it could be tested by an experiment,
 
OR
 
If it was true by definition
 
A more accurate version of this idea can be found here
 
Since you couldn't verify the existence of God by any sort of "sense experience", and it wasn't true by definition (eg in the way "a triangle has 3 sides" is true), the logical positivists argued that it was pointless asking the question since it could not be answered true or false.
 
These particular philosophers didn't only say that religious talk was meaningless, they thought that much of philosophical discussion, metaphysics for example, was meaningless too. This philosophical theory is no longer popular, and attention has returned to the issues of what "God" means and whether "God" exists.

There are many other reasons like, the problem of Evil, that science explains mostly everything, and for those who think that the fact science can't explain everything does prove the existence of god, and then start explaining what isn't explained by godly or supernatural powers, I'd say people like you in the early ages thought that thunder is a punishment of god... and that's all I have to say.

5. Are atheists against religions?

Absolutely a big NO!, Atheists aren't against any kind of believe, we just disagree with the fact of being discriminated by religions, and some actions of religious people, for an example, how many wars started in the name of a religion or another? How many children, women, and old people have died cause of religious wars?.

We are not against religions, but we do think some religions are bad, and others have their goods and bads, for an example:


The bad

* Religion gets people to believe something untrue. 

* Religion makes people base the way they run their lives on a falsehood.
 
* Religion stops people thinking in a rational and objective way.
 
* Religion forces people to rely on outside authority, rather than becoming self-reliant.
 
* Religion imposes irrational rules of good and bad behaviour.
 
* Religion divides people, and is a cause of conflict and war.
 
* The hierarchical structure of most religions is anti-democratic, and thus offends basic human rights.
 
* Religion doesn't give equal treatment to women and gay people, and thus offends basic human rights.
 
* Religion obstructs scientific research.
 
* Religion wastes time and money.
 
The good
 
Most atheists willingly concede there are some good things about religion, such as:
 
* Religious art and music
 
* Religious charities and good works
 
* Much religious wisdom and scripture
 
* Human fellowship and togetherness

So we are not against religions, we disagree with it, but we are not trying to make other people atheists, we just want our space to work, develop, do researches and take our course in the evolution.

And yet again I will have to apologize to all of you for not continuing any further, you will have to wait for the third part of this article, hopefully in a couple of days I will be answering the questions about the start of atheism, what do atheists do? and the meaning of life.

but before I post the third Part of this article I will be posting an article tomorrow about Mr. Sayed Al Qimni and his problem, this article would be in both English and Arabic

Cheers,

Tim Serpent