Religion and Ethics Forum

Well I cannot speak for all atheists (and nor can you speak for all christians).

But my experience is exactly the opposite. I became interested in, recognised the importance of and really started to take notice of ethics/morality from the point where I recognised I was atheist. Prior to that, in my nominal 'I guess there a god and I guess that god is the christian god because that's what my societal upbringing told me' morality and ethics were something largely outsourced - something that you were told what to do and not do by others on the basis of some rule book, based on some nominal god. Something that wasn't really personally about me, nor something that I felt I had personal responsibility for.

That all changed when I came to recognise that I did not believe in god - no longer could I just leave this to others and their rules and their books. Nope I had a personal responsibility to determine what I considered to be right and wrong and a personal responsibility to uphold my own moral conscience. In a way this was really a bit scary - suddenly I had to do some work on the ethics, rather than outsourcing. And that's what I did - from that point onwards (and continuing to this day) I have had a deep personal and professional interest in ethics. I doubt that would have happened had I not become an atheist.
So what - see above.

This atheist would counter - that tolerance, calmness etc are better in me since accepting that I did not believe in god.

You are a theist and I am not: no doubt there may be other differences between us (for example, on the matter of our facial hair), but whether these qualify as 'significant' is another matter entirely.

And are there any of those values that you disagree with Sriram. That seems like an excellent list of values that we should all be following.

And you seem to imply that these values are somehow opposed to religious values - are they? I don't think they are - I suspect most religions also espouse most of these values albeit they may be described in rather different terms. I think what we are seeing, largely, is much more universal values that are intrinsic to the human experience and to the development of the human species via evolution. These have always been there. At times they have been phrased in the language of religion, but now they are being phrased in a secular manner to reflect a decline in religiosity in most developed countries.

Dear Fellow posters,

Somebody tell me I am wrong, ...

Tell me I am wrong, please.

Gonnagle.

I know what Grok is, Jeremy, thank you. Is the information it provided me wrong? Do you have a link to the correct information? And thank you for your advice, I won't be following it.

If what you say is true about what the academic said then I disagree with the decision to bar him from the US. Do you have a link? The sources I found said the contentious messages had not been published.

I'm not in the business of defending hypocrisy. It's been enlightening seeing what the US government has been funding around the world until now. I'm against the US government interfering covertly in other countries' affairs, pushing agendas that are not evident to most voters, including US voters. I'm quite surprised that "the left" now seem outraged that the US government is exposing and putting a stop to the interference.

I think the reason Vance focused on the abortion thing is because it plays well with his own base. It doesn't alter the fact that freedom of expression and association is currently under threat in the UK and EU. I'll not bother providing links to the news stories, since you seem to expect me to take your word for whatever, you can take mine.