₦airaland Forum

Tamaratonye5:
Superfluous adverb removed.

I take your point. I figure it's at least 90% odds that he's not interested in learning, if only based on how the average theist tends to act and how he's not yet deviated far from that mold. But how politely or rudely the links are proffered to him might (low odds, but it's possible) change whether he reads up on the subject, and even if it doesn't it's still honest to distinguish between what I suspect and what I know. So "maybe" isn't superfluous here.

Hi, SlayerofSatan

SlayerofSatan:
Here's my question. Where do atheists get their morality from?

Answers will vary. It's like asking where non-Lagosians live. Where do non-Lagosians live? Lots of places. Just not Lagos. Where do atheists get their morality? Lots of places. Just not from theism. Also, you're in broken-record territory here. This is apologist boiler plate and it's really low-quality stuff. Rarely you'll find an atheist who hasn't thought through this, usually because they're too young or have only recently deconverted and so haven't had much opportunity to learn about the topic. Early twenties is about where its limited efficacy drops from "rarely works" to "almost never works". Most of us are pretty sick of theists implying or outright shouting that we can't be moral just because we don't share your belief in the specific religious doctrine of a god existing. We hear it a lot and experience has taught us that the people saying it do so mostly out of ignorance (believing, wrongly, that it's true) or active malice (knowing better, but slandering us anyway because theists don't have to abide by basic human decency, I guess).

If you're taking this approach out of ignorance rather than malice, Wikipedia's articles on secular morality and secular ethics are decent (if abbreviated) starting points for learning about the topic. But your question felt more rhetorical than inquisitive, so maybe you're not interested in learning the answer. This trick is most effective for preaching to other theists who don't know better, in an attempt to get them to hate their atheist neighbors and so... I dunno, not talk to us so they don't start questioning the faith? See us as a common enemy and thereby unify the ranks? Harass us in an extortionary attempt to force us to convert? Make object lessons of us and so menace those who might otherwise leave? Stochastic terrorism? Motives for using it vary, and any particular instance of saying it out of malice can include any or all of these motives. But it's only really effective when talking to theists, and specifically theists who don't know better. Trying this trick on us (or on theists who do know better) will just alienate your audience and drag your religion's reputation through yet more muck. If you want to be an effective apologist, rather than a performative one, you need to up your game far past the bar set by Ray Comfort.

@budaatum

Point of correction. Christianity PROFESSES that one should help one's neighbors rather than calling on God to help them, in theory. In practice, Christianity often teaches Christians to (instead of helping) offer thoughts, prayers, and critiques about how whatever hardship the neighbor has been going through is a sign the neighbor's not right with God and they should be miserable about that in addition to being miserable due to the hardship.

Rema14:
Why social media

Because social media has, albeit unintentionally, ruined the fabric of social connection. Imagine meeting someone in person, you've had such a great interaction with them, the energy you shared - the conversation, it all was beautiful. You exchange numbers or an email. You come home, you contemplate how good the day and how weirdly, somewhere in October, you've bumped into someone and it went well. You sleep. This was the 90s. In the 90s, when you met someone, you exchanged contact, not social profiles, so to contact them, or they contact you, both parties had to make a deliberate effort. Technology back then, was a tool to connect and hear me out, connect to the same interaction - the same medium, in-person talking. Sure you shared a few emails, but ultimately you wanted to get back together to the old cafe where you left. No ambiguity, but enough space to grow.

Fast forward to today, you meet, you exchange social profiles - let’s take Instagram for example. In my life, whoever I have met through Instagram has always ended up in an ambiguous and awkward friendship, and ultimately becoming a poison. You meet them, they meet you. Exchange socials. Hit follow on profiles. Come back home, sleep. And from there, everything is downhill. You see their stories, they see your stories. It continues. Days. Weeks. No interaction, no energy. Never get to know each other. The awesome interaction you both had, what went wrong? 2 months later with no messages exchanged, both are silently watching stories and posts of each other, and ultimately, you hit unfollow. The person you met was lost. And believe me when I say this, this is a pattern I noticed and almost all the people I exchanged my social with (especially IG) when I first met them, and followed ended up just placeholders, not friends. What social media seems to ruin, is that it takes the connection, and makes the connection poisonous by constantly exposing each other to the point the connection that was once a beauty of the offline, goes online, killing the mystique and killing empathy. In the first timeline, you weren’t exposed, there was distance, there was anticipation. No ambiguity. No interaction override. I feel truly sad writing this but lost many good people by just following them, wish I had gotten to know them before subscribing to their life that I never wanted to be the audience of, but a part of.