Flynn, I'm offended you would think an atheist or non believer wouldn't consider raping a little girl wrong because we don't have "morals".
Enzyme, I'm sorry you've misunderstood me. I never said atheists wouldn't consider rape wrong, or that atheists don't have morals. I never said that, and that's not the claim at all.
What I said is that on an atheistic view, you can "say" or "claim" you personally think something is wrong, but there's no objective truth to anything actually being right or wrong. On atheism, there is no grounding for morality, so morality is really just 'preference'. There's no objective right or wrong. You may personally think rape is wrong, but you'd have no ground to stand on if some other culture used rape regularly. You couldn't claim that culture was any worse than the culture you adhere to... and if you did, you'd be a hypocrite, affirming objective morality with no objective source of morality.
Most atheists agree on this. Richard Dawkins, for example, specifically states there is at bottom no good, no evil, only pitiless indifference. The sole purpose for every living thing is to propagate it's DNA. That's it.
That's
your view as an atheist. You cannot affirm objective morality. You can claim something's "wrong" or "right", but it's no different than if I say I like blue, and you like green. It's preference. Not fact. Mother Theresa, on your view, is no "better" a person (objectively) than Adolf Hitler. Hitler is no "worse" than anyone else morally, just "different".
That's
your vie, as an atheist. It's inescapable.
But I think you and I both know that's wrong. I think you and I both agree love is better than hate. I think we both agree rape is wrong - objectively. It's just as false to say raping a child is "good" as it is to say 2+2=5. Some things at least, are truly wrong... the theist can make those claims, because God's the source of all objective good, so things *can* be truly "good" or truly "bad".
But make no mistake... I never claimed atheists cannot act morally, or that they'd say rape isn't wrong. I said that regardless of what they personally feel, on their view, nothing is objectively "good" or objectively "bad", and that just rings false with me... and with most people. Most people affirm "right" and "wrong".
That's a disgusting thing to assume and probably just more of your word play you like to do.
You can have an innate sense of right and wrong without being a believer.
Oh, absolutely. The Holy Spirit's in all of us, whether you recognize it or not. We all affirm "right" and "wrong" (even if we don't all agree)... but on the atheistic view, this moral sense is just a social, biological adaptation. Saying "rape is wrong" on this view is no different than saying "I like the color red". There's no objective truth to it, it's just a subjective 'feeling', based on evolution. Imagine for a moment you could rewind the tape of "evolution", and we evolved more like bees, where a 'queen' killed drones. Would that be objectively "wrong" to arbitrarily kill others? Well, on the atheistic view - no. It would objectively NOT be "wrong", because the concept of "good" and "evil" as such, do not exist on that world view.
Obviously I wouldn't want to torture someone or kill someone, because I wouldn't want them to do that to me.
Also, just from a science view having no laws and let people kill each other at will, etc. would not be good for furthering society. You have to have laws to keep society functioning in a civil manner, but they don't have to be in the name of God.
No argument there at all. We have laws, and we have consequences to our actions in a society. That's a fact. But on the atheistic view, the man who wants to kill his child for fun - and gets away with it - hasn't done anything objectively wrong. He may have done something socially taboo, but on the atheistic view, it's not objectively wrong.
That's
your view. You can't escape that.
...unless you affirm theism. The theist has a moral law giver, who's goodness flow necessarily out of Him. The theist can affirm objective morality. The theist can say, "a culture that rapes their children is wrong to do so. Objectively." ... The atheist cannot affirm that.