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Do Athiests have morals?

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
59 pages and still no answer! Please come up with one soon as I need to know whether I have morals, it's confusing not knowing! :p

Tell me about it! Just 59 pages ago, I innocently thought I had morals. Now, I can't seem to find a definitive answer worth its weight in pixels. Alas! Am I doomed to go through the rest of my life not knowing?
 

Muffled

Jesus in me
59 pages and still no answer! Please come up with one soon as I need to know whether I have morals, it's confusing not knowing! :p

I believe everyone has morals but they don't necessarily conform to the Christian ethic. For instance by and large homosexuality has become moral in the USA but it is still contrary to the Christian ethic.
 

viole

Ontological Naturalist
Premium Member
I believe everyone has morals but they don't necessarily conform to the Christian ethic. For instance by and large homosexuality has become moral in the USA but it is still contrary to the Christian ethic.

To the Christian ethic in the USA, maybe, and probably not for all Christians in America either. So, i would not generalize and assume that all Christians share the same ethics. They don't. The attitude towards gay is just one of the many ethical disagreements among Christians.

For instance, In the North (Europe) Christian churches perform gay marriages without problems. And they also reject death penalty, and guns possession, in general.

That should defuse the question of the OP, since it does not relate holding value X to believe in Y.

Are those Christians without morals, too? What do you think?

Ciao

- viole
 

Pudding

Well-Known Member
Quick definitions for the unlearned:

Amoral: lacking a moral sense; unconcerned with the rightness or wrongness of something.

Immoral: not conforming to accepted standards of morality.

Moral: concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.

When someone claims that he/she is irreligious, does it give them justifications to negate teachings of religious communities. For example, thou not steal. Does it give someone who claims to be irreligious the right to steal?

Also, which of the above words excellently describes the life of an Athiest?

Immoral: not conforming to accepted standards of morality.

Which accepted standards of morality is the universal undeniable unarguably super best awesome superior objective morality?

Is that one from thousands of different religion's accepted standards of morality? Which one?

Is that one from many other different secular's accepted standards of morality? Which one?

When a person choose to follow an accepted standard of morality, then s/he become immoral because of not conforming to thousands of other different accepted standards of morality? Is that means everyone is immoral?

A: My accepted standard of morality is the best universal objective moral, it's an universal undeniable unarguably fact.
B: No, mine is better.
C: No, mine is superior than your both.
D: No, mine is the best moral.
E: ......

Religious people have religious accepted standards of morals.

Irreligious people have secular accepted standards of morals.
 
Last edited:

serp777

Well-Known Member
Religion--the institution allowing anyone to justify any morality with divine authority through ambiguous interpretations and picking and choosing.
 

1robin

Christian/Baptist
Yes. The intention was to have the people rule. If the people were a religious people then the laws passed would reflect that but it wouldn't respect establishments of religion. There would not be religiously based laws but laws based in the needs and wants of a religious people. There is no god authority in government but only the voices of the people.
Well what you say it partially right but not exactly. Yes the governing institution was to be run by the people. I don't think there is any other choice. A metaphor might help clarify this. It you imagine a nation is a dualistic institution having a body and soul. Our body was to be man made law, our soul was to be Judeo-Christian. The people who founded this nation were religious and our laws do reflect that. Our founders were 95% Christians and 4.9% theists and deists.

However your last statement is where the shipwreck occurred. You cannot possibly know nor can I possible prove whether there is a God which can provided or grounded the foundation of this nation and it's laws. The only thing we can do is conclude whether the founders claimed there was and so acted on that belief. I can submit evidence until this keyboard breaks but let me just a give a few examples.

1. "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible." George Washington
2. John Adams - The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.
3. John Quincy Adams - The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.
4. Thomas Jefferson - God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?
5. Abraham Lincoln - These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began -- so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built. Speech at Lewistown, Illinois, on August 17, 1858 (CWAL II:546)

Now there is five but I can supply 5 thousand. They are among the most influential statesmen in our history and they speak directly to what you claim is not true. If 5 is not enough 5 thousand would not be.


On the topic, the prohibition was not a religiously motivated thing. Some used religion as a tool but it was not because people were upset. Women were tired of their husbands getting drunk and beating them.
Yes it was, it was preached from thousands of pulpits every Sunday. That is not to say it was only a religious thing, so the only issue is how much of it was inspired by faith.

And I have already explained why the invention of appliances and access to electricity has deteriorated the family dynamic of the days of old. I don't see any way shape or form how secularization actually has done anything. In many ways the late 50's and subsequent 60's were consequences of these advances.
I am not agreeing with you but lets pretend that is true to begin with. It fits perfectly in line with the cycle of empires I gave.

1. A movement is born in bondage.
2. The desperation of bondage leads to an intense dependence on faith.
3. Faith produces great courage and moral excellence which throws off the shackles of bondage and .
4. This produces a nation with great freedom.
5. This produces a nation with great abundance. This is where faith starts to be discarded.
6. Abundance produces a lack of faith and the vacuum is filled by selfishness. This is where secularism begins it's march and where consumerism rears it's head.
7. Selfishness produces complacency.
8. Complacency produces apathy (this is the stage we are at now).
9. Apathy produces dependence, this is the stage we are moving into where more people receive from the government than contribute. At this point we are simply bleeding out, drawing on credit we earned in our former faith based years of abundance. Eventually we run out and everything implodes.
10. Then what faith rescued from bondage, the lack of faith has placed right back in it.



I don't think that I have any sort of god that I worship. Some have told me its money or its my own personal whatever. But the reality of the situation is that god only works as a psychological placeholder. If one accepts that there is no god or at least doesn't assume there is one, then we realize we were never stronger because of god. We were just as strong or just as moral one way or the other. Religious morality is rooted in secular morality. It is simply secular morality that cannot be questioned.
Those who deny the true God leave a vacuum we are designed to have filled. It is filled with something which does not belong there, but those who have invented a false God are seldom able to recognize it for a God. I will spare you all the theology about what makes a thing an idol or a God as you would not accept it anyway.

Religious morality is not derived from secular morality. Morality has been associated with God's from the beginning. Even when they were false God's it was they who grounded morality, not secularism. Secularism is not a thing by which a moral can be wrung from. Secularism is merely the denial of any ultimate moral foundation. It is by definition the worst possible moral foundation even in theory. Even children know this, when told to do something the first thing they ask is "Oh yeah, who says". In your world view no ultimate authority says because no ultimate judge exists to have any moral duty towards. You may argue that I should treat you well so some arbitrary goal may be furthered but you cannot show I have any actually duty to agree.
 

Monk Of Reason

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
Well what you say it partially right but not exactly. Yes the governing institution was to be run by the people. I don't think there is any other choice. A metaphor might help clarify this. It you imagine a nation is a dualistic institution having a body and soul. Our body was to be man made law, our soul was to be Judeo-Christian. The people who founded this nation were religious and our laws do reflect that. Our founders were 95% Christians and 4.9% theists and deists.

However your last statement is where the shipwreck occurred. You cannot possibly know nor can I possible prove whether there is a God which can provided or grounded the foundation of this nation and it's laws. The only thing we can do is conclude whether the founders claimed there was and so acted on that belief. I can submit evidence until this keyboard breaks but let me just a give a few examples.

1. "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible." George Washington
2. John Adams - The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.
3. John Quincy Adams - The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.
4. Thomas Jefferson - God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?
5. Abraham Lincoln - These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began -- so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built. Speech at Lewistown, Illinois, on August 17, 1858 (CWAL II:546)

Now there is five but I can supply 5 thousand. They are among the most influential statesmen in our history and they speak directly to what you claim is not true. If 5 is not enough 5 thousand would not be.
And I will say its is irrelevant. I could supply several quotes as well and we could get into a quote battle. We can get conflicting quotes from the same individual on mutliple occasions. Don't forget our founding fathers were politicians.

But the government that was created was created specifically and independently of religion. There is to be no religious rule. Christian or otherwise.
Yes it was, it was preached from thousands of pulpits every Sunday. That is not to say it was only a religious thing, so the only issue is how much of it was inspired by faith.
And I would say zero actually. Seeing as sacramental wine has been a core concept of Christianity for the majority of its existence.
I am not agreeing with you but lets pretend that is true to begin with. It fits perfectly in line with the cycle of empires I gave.

1. A movement is born in bondage.
2. The desperation of bondage leads to an intense dependence on faith.
3. Faith produces great courage and moral excellence which throws off the shackles of bondage and .
4. This produces a nation with great freedom.
5. This produces a nation with great abundance. This is where faith starts to be discarded.
6. Abundance produces a lack of faith and the vacuum is filled by selfishness. This is where secularism begins it's march and where consumerism rears it's head.
7. Selfishness produces complacency.
8. Complacency produces apathy (this is the stage we are at now).
9. Apathy produces dependence, this is the stage we are moving into where more people receive from the government than contribute. At this point we are simply bleeding out, drawing on credit we earned in our former faith based years of abundance. Eventually we run out and everything implodes.
10. Then what faith rescued from bondage, the lack of faith has placed right back in it.
I would disagree with your speculation.
Those who deny the true God leave a vacuum we are designed to have filled. It is filled with something which does not belong there, but those who have invented a false God are seldom able to recognize it for a God. I will spare you all the theology about what makes a thing an idol or a God as you would not accept it anyway.
I reject your theory of human psychology and an inherent need for god. I reject that I hold any notion or concept with any similarity to the way you hold your concept of god.
Religious morality is not derived from secular morality. Morality has been associated with God's from the beginning. Even when they were false God's it was they who grounded morality, not secularism. Secularism is not a thing by which a moral can be wrung from. Secularism is merely the denial of any ultimate moral foundation. It is by definition the worst possible moral foundation even in theory. Even children know this, when told to do something the first thing they ask is "Oh yeah, who says". In your world view no ultimate authority says because no ultimate judge exists to have any moral duty towards. You may argue that I should treat you well so some arbitrary goal may be furthered but you cannot show I have any actually duty to agree.

This I also fully disagree with. I think it is obvious when studied that religious morality is not god given but created and stated as god given. Otherwise we wouldn't have such drastic changes over time and place depending on what is morally corrected based in religion. It also explains how we have come up with the majority of our own moral codes free from the bible and this includes Christians themselves. It is a misconception that religion was the source of morality rather than a mediator of pre-existing morality.
 

1robin

Christian/Baptist
This is part of my own argument actually. The concept of faith is something that we have used as a societal and psychological catch all for things we aren't able to deal with. It may be stress, it may be fear, ect. However morality tends to do the opposite. We tend to loose our morality as a people when things get hard. When things are good we have time to discuss and think on the matters. With the rise of secularism we tend to see a rise in moral action if gauged by crime. The vast majority of people in prison for example are very religious for example. I think its a trend that people in despair fall into. It doesn't make it right and by all accounts the evidence doesn't support that it makes them moral.
I will agree that you can make an argument that religion is something we appeal to when we run out of other choices (even though tens of millions do not live like that). However it is just as likely (and I think more so, as your argument is ad hoc) that faith is what we claim it to be. Something the natural man needs but finds inconvenient, something that will only be fully trusted when other things let us down. Either argument explains the facts well but I think mine explains them better. For example faith once turned to in earnest succeeds so often there must be something substantive to it. I will give one example. The slaves came here with every type of belief in witchcraft, voodoo, and shamanism imaginable. They very soon abandoned those beliefs because they produced no result. They eventually adopted Christianity in overwhelming numbers, soon after other Christians set them free. When they wanted full equality they stopped trying to take it by force and turned to faith again. It was soon rewarded with equality. BTW it was the faith of the founders that set them free, not secularism, not any modern humanistic ideals. It was an appeal to promises made by men of faith hundreds of years earlier. IOW faith actually produces results so often as to justify thinking it contains power.

I commend yours. Well actually I condemn it but that is neither here nor there. If we get the link again I will go through and post the images here on the forum since you were saying you had trouble with that. I can prove, definitively that your claim was wrong.
I have been burned out on debate for over a week. I can't remember what the graphs were about.

Except that we still have a lower teen pregnancy rate than the forties. I have very specifically shown you that the ONLY time that it was lower than it is right now was literally DURING WWII when a lager percentage of our healthy young males were in other countries.
Your going to have to adjust whatever number you find for this absurd statistic. There were only 13% of births to teens that were unmarried in 1950. That rose to 79% in the year 2000. So in effect there were a lot more illegitimate teen births since 1950 than before. I cannot count births to teens when they were married a moral fault, no one should, but you are. Why?

But yes there was something along the trend that we saw an increase but thanks to education and reasoning we have found effective ways to reduce teen pregnancies to a rate lower than they have ever been before except in extreme wartime.
I was attempting to show that secularism has had a negative moral impact on society. When I said teen births I was talking about pregnancy outside of marriage. I did not think I needed to state that and since you pointed it out I thought you understood that. So your numbers have no bearing on my claim, but the number of single ten pregnancies do and they are trending exactly as I said.

So the only issue left is why morally questionable statistic associated with birth rates (among countless moral statistics) has grown worse. You say it was because of consumerism. If so consumerism if you will note my cycle of democracies is a symptom of secularism in many respects. Faith has divine commands against consumerism, secularism has no divine commands against anything. So what we have is secularism produces what I listed in my democracy cycle, a transfer of priority from faith and family to selfishness and materialism. This would mean that women would desire success more than a family at an early age, but they would retain the lust factor they have always had. This plus the improvement in birth control would produce exactly what we have. Less teen age births (if that statistic is even true), the same or more selfish indulgence of lust, and the production of more children out of wedlock. This all dovetails perfectly into a dramatic rise of one parent homes, no parent homes, gang activity, despair produces drug abuse, etc........

The very response this portion of your post was responding to refutes it.

1. Irrelevant
It is the most relevant issue possible. I defend a faith not people. If you cannot blame the faith then my defense has prevailed. If your merely defending people who hijack a faith and then disobey it then I agree and condemn them as well. You cannot modern slavery on the bible, only on those who disobey it. As relevant as possible.
2. Untrue. God didn't free them. People did.
The man who fired the first shots against slavery was preacher and he said his actions were the result of faith, the man more responsible for their freedom than any human on earth (Lincoln) said he did so on principles of faith, at least 300,000 Christians died to free them and judging from their personal correspondence almost all were acting on a combination of reasons the principle one being faith, the sole hope of the slaves themselves was in Yahweh. If your going to refute that your going to have to do better than saying "untrue".
3. True but irrelevant
Very relevant, see no 1. At this point I am not sure what your even attacking.
4. Irrelevant statistic but the argument there are no atheists in foxholes has been blown out of the water as secularists are actually over-represented in our military.
I did not mention foxholes. That saying is meant to convey the trend that people in danger seek God in many instances, has nothing to do with what I said.
5. irrelevant
You have your relevancy hat on backwards.

I am left without knowing what your even arguing for. I was defending the faith motivation in freeing the slaves and the lack of any biblical justification for slavery. Neither one of those was challenged.


I argue that we cannot have freedom of religion if faith is part of our government. It simply does not work. Especially with a religion that claims total and perfect truth in the face of other contradicting religions as lies.
Then I guess we do not have any secular, atheist, or Muslim members of government then. Freedom of religion was meant to stop exactly what happened in England. The dictation of religion and the institutionalization of it. In short to stop the government from taking over the church and ruining it. That is why they left England.

I wonder why.
Because a tyrannical madman so homicidal he once prayed for people he had killed to come back to life so he could kill them again is a poor role model. I as disappointed as I would be to find out Hitler has a bust in the white house. There is no mystery to that.
 

Monk Of Reason

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
I will agree that you can make an argument that religion is something we appeal to when we run out of other choices (even though tens of millions do not live like that). However it is just as likely (and I think more so, as your argument is ad hoc) that faith is what we claim it to be. Something the natural man needs but finds inconvenient, something that will only be fully trusted when other things let us down. Either argument explains the facts well but I think mine explains them better. For example faith once turned to in earnest succeeds so often there must be something substantive to it. I will give one example. The slaves came here with every type of belief in witchcraft, voodoo, and shamanism imaginable. They very soon abandoned those beliefs because they produced no result. They eventually adopted Christianity in overwhelming numbers, soon after other Christians set them free. When they wanted full equality they stopped trying to take it by force and turned to faith again. It was soon rewarded with equality. BTW it was the faith of the founders that set them free, not secularism, not any modern humanistic ideals. It was an appeal to promises made by men of faith hundreds of years earlier. IOW faith actually produces results so often as to justify thinking it contains power.
Then I guess you and I will simply disagree. The brittish had every access to god as the rebels. It was not in the name of god that they rebelled but it was a commonly held phrase to talk about their "god given right to freedom" but really it was propaganda against taxation of our nations wealth and natural resources. That was the reason for the revolution. And as far as I am concerned wealth and buisiness are secular aspects not religious ones.

And it still stands that countries that are poor and distraught are far more religious than countries that are not. Then after that the moral fabric of that society is inversely proportional when mapped out.
Your going to have to adjust whatever number you find for this absurd statistic. There were only 13% of births to teens that were unmarried in 1950. That rose to 79% in the year 2000. So in effect there were a lot more illegitimate teen births since 1950 than before. I cannot count births to teens when they were married a moral fault, no one should, but you are. Why?
Its because we have deemed teens to be too young to marry. In a way it is actually a progression of society. Girls are not having children younger but getting married later. Also it was blasphemous to have a child out of wedlock in the 50's. Now it is not so important. Neither are signs of degradation of morality but rather progress in the society with inadequate sexual education.
I was attempting to show that secularism has had a negative moral impact on society. When I said teen births I was talking about pregnancy outside of marriage. I did not think I needed to state that and since you pointed it out I thought you understood that. So your numbers have no bearing on my claim, but the number of single ten pregnancies do and they are trending exactly as I said.

So the only issue left is why morally questionable statistic associated with birth rates (among countless moral statistics) has grown worse. You say it was because of consumerism. If so consumerism if you will note my cycle of democracies is a symptom of secularism in many respects. Faith has divine commands against consumerism, secularism has no divine commands against anything. So what we have is secularism produces what I listed in my democracy cycle, a transfer of priority from faith and family to selfishness and materialism. This would mean that women would desire success more than a family at an early age, but they would retain the lust factor they have always had. This plus the improvement in birth control would produce exactly what we have. Less teen age births (if that statistic is even true), the same or more selfish indulgence of lust, and the production of more children out of wedlock. This all dovetails perfectly into a dramatic rise of one parent homes, no parent homes, gang activity, despair produces drug abuse, etc........

The very response this portion of your post was responding to refutes it.
I disagree. I will grant that there was some crazyness in the 50's but that was breaking the shackles of the previous social lines added to people. In almost every aspect it has resulted in far more good than bad.
It is the most relevant issue possible. I defend a faith not people. If you cannot blame the faith then my defense has prevailed. If your merely defending people who hijack a faith and then disobey it then I agree and condemn them as well. You cannot modern slavery on the bible, only on those who disobey it. As relevant as possible.
The bible did nothing to stop slavery. It was stopped eventually when people's minds were changed enough. I think it is highly irrelevant that you think the bible doesn't support slavery. The bible was used to support slavery and to denounce it. If it can be used on both sides it can't claim any sort of credit as the source of its removal.
The man who fired the first shots against slavery was preacher and he said his actions were the result of faith, the man more responsible for their freedom than any human on earth (Lincoln) said he did so on principles of faith, at least 300,000 Christians died to free them and judging from their personal correspondence almost all were acting on a combination of reasons the principle one being faith, the sole hope of the slaves themselves was in Yahweh. If your going to refute that your going to have to do better than saying "untrue".
Alright. God never came down to free slaves. God sat by for tens of thousands of years and let slavery happen. It was only when we started to see people as people in a well understood sociological aspect of cultural change in history. It had absolutely nothing to do with god and in fact I personally believe that had religion not been involved from the start it would have been eradicated earlier.
Very relevant, see no 1. At this point I am not sure what your even attacking.
Explain how it is relevant to proving the case that religion was the only source of morality that set up the end of slavery.
I did not mention foxholes. That saying is meant to convey the trend that people in danger seek God in many instances, has nothing to do with what I said.
Then respond to the rest of what I stated
You have your relevancy hat on backwards.

I am left without knowing what your even arguing for. I was defending the faith motivation in freeing the slaves and the lack of any biblical justification for slavery. Neither one of those was challenged.
I don't logically see how you can defend the assumption that Christianity freed slavery because Christianity was used to JUSTIFY slavery. You can take up your biblical argument with the Sourthern Christians of the days of old. But you cannot simply say it was the bible and be done with it.

If I said that it was the English language that freed the slaves even though both sides spoke the English language wouldn't that simply not make any sense?

Then I guess we do not have any secular, atheist, or Muslim members of government then. Freedom of religion was meant to stop exactly what happened in England. The dictation of religion and the institutionalization of it. In short to stop the government from taking over the church and ruining it. That is why they left England.
I do hope you aren't talking about the puritans. Please please PLEASE make the ignorant claim that they came here for religious freedom.

And if you aren't then I don't know what your talking about. But I'll let you respond before I explain how this is wrong.
 

1robin

Christian/Baptist
And I will say its is irrelevant. I could supply several quotes as well and we could get into a quote battle. We can get conflicting quotes from the same individual on multiple occasions. Don't forget our founding fathers were politicians.
You have been using the word "irrelevant" like a crutch lately. There cannot possible be anything more relevant than the very people who founded this country saying the exact opposite of what you claimed. If you claim their faith had no role in the government they produced what could possibly be more relevant that they themselves claiming the opposite? Your basically saying if I don't just accept whatever you declare is true then any effort to resolve a thing even using the very men's words themselves impossible .

But the government that was created was created specifically and independently of religion. There is to be no religious rule. Christian or otherwise.
How in the world secularists get these volumes of declarations out of one sentence that says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

is beyond me.

1. "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible." George Washington
This is the exact opposite of what you said.
2. John Adams - The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.
This is the exact opposite of what you said.
3. John Quincy Adams - The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.
This is the exact opposite of what you said.
4. Thomas Jefferson - God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God?
This is the exact opposite of what you said.
5. Abraham Lincoln - These communities, by their representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began -- so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built. Speech at Lewistown, Illinois, on August 17, 1858 (CWAL II:546)
This is the exact opposite of what you said.

Those two simplistic and short sentences reflect two facts, neither of which you grant.
1. They were trying to prevent the government from taking over the church and making it some mandatory, singular, uniform, one size fits institution.
2. They were setting up a government not a church. I do not see how they could have incorporated one additional theological foundation without it becoming a church. For pity's sake they grounded all rights exclusively in God. How much more theological grounding can politics be and still be called politics?





And I would say zero actually. Seeing as sacramental wine has been a core concept of Christianity for the majority of its existence.
Even the bible does not say wine, but only fruit of the vine. Most prohibitionists were not motivated to stop drinking entirely but viewed getting rid of alcohol altogether the only way to stop the effects of over indulgence. In fact the only people to protest the use of wine in communion were Christian's.

The Temperance Movement
The country's first serious anti-alcohol movement grew out of a fervor for reform that swept the nation in the 1830s and 1840s. Many abolitionists fighting to rid the country of slavery came to see drink as an equally great evil to be eradicated – if America were ever to be fully cleansed of sin. The temperance movement, rooted in America's Protestant churches, first urged moderation, then encouraged drinkers to help each other to resist temptation, and ultimately demanded that local, state, and national governments prohibit alcohol outright.

In the 1870s, inspired by the rising indignation of Methodist and Baptist clergymen, and by distraught wives and mothers whose lives had been ruined by the excesses of the saloon,
Prohibition: Roots of Prohibition | PBS

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in November 1874 in Cleveland, Ohio. After Frances Willard took over leadership in 1879, the WCTU became one of the largest and most influential women’s groups of the 19th century by expanding its platform to campaign for labor laws, prison reform and suffrage.
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union - Women’s History - HISTORY.com

Hardly zero.

I would disagree with your speculation.
It is not mine, it is a famous work by Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee FRSE (15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian who served as Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities, in the University of Edinburgh.[1
Alexander Fraser Tytler - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I reject your theory of human psychology and an inherent need for god. I reject that I hold any notion or concept with any similarity to the way you hold your concept of god.
Your expected a-priori rejection was why I did not bother explaining it beyond what the theory is.


This I also fully disagree with. I think it is obvious when studied that religious morality is not god given but created and stated as god given. Otherwise we wouldn't have such drastic changes over time and place depending on what is morally corrected based in religion. It also explains how we have come up with the majority of our own moral codes free from the bible and this includes Christians themselves. It is a misconception that religion was the source of morality rather than a mediator of pre-existing morality.
I can present a far better argument than you ever can about the foundation of any actual objective moral duties and values but that is not what you were talking about. You said that morality was derived from secularism. That is not what history says. History shows that almost all morality was prescribed to God's and a huge proportion of it conflicts with even the idea of evolutionarily derived values or what would far later be called humanism. Again your going to have to adopt a position you prescribe to certain societies and individuals specifically denied by those exact individuals. Now you welcome to think whatever you want in spite of what those you think it of specifically claim but you cannot expect me to find it compelling.
 
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