March 07, 2007

Why do you persist in trying to make atheism into a creed? The ten commandments of atheism is a sad attempt to create a doctrine that most thinking people neither require nor subscribe to. You are only offering the deist fuel to further their cause

I'm not trying to make atheism into a creed. The "ten commandments of atheism" is not an attempt to make a doctrine for atheists, but instead to demonstrate to those who think that atheists are not moral that atheists are pretty much as moral as they are.

You say that "most thinking people neither require nor subscribe to" these rules. Can you be more specific about which of the rules thinking people wouldn't subscribe to? It seems to me that most thinking people (at least the moral ones) would subscribe to rules against killing, cheating, stealing, and lying. If the thinking person is an atheist, then I assume that they don't have gods or worship anything. That leaves being polite, taking a day off once in a while, and not being greedy as debatable, but I'd hope that thinking people wouldn't be against these principles.

As for giving fuel to deists, what fuel would that be? None of these rules imply that there is a deity and none of them are articles of faith. They are all arrived at through a logical, rational process that has nothing to do with religion. Besides, deists only barely let the concept of god interfere with their day-to-day actions, and I almost never run into a deist who argues against atheism. As I see it, it's more complexly religious folks that cause the most problems.

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