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Re: Christian and Atheist Moral Absolutes
by anarch

Sorry, but in my atheist view of the world there certainly are moral absolutes, one of which is devotion to the truth, so far as I can understand it. Very few people with any religious belief share that devotion. First, there are all those people who follow a religion because it provides them with some kind of comfort or feeling of security - if that is how you see things then you are clearly privileging your inner glow over the truth. Second, there are people who will shift their position with almost infinite flexibility, to preserve their 'faith' - so that items of dogma which were once treated as statements of fact, like the creation of the world in seven days, are now treated as metaphors. And third, there are those who are simply contemptuous of the truth, including those christians and muslims who still insist the world really was a seven day wonder. I have some sympathy for the first two groups, but they are still lost - once you allow any metaphysical belief into your mind you have thrown off the constraints which should be imposed by evidence and rational argument, so anything at all is possible. I have no sympathy at all for the third group, they include the willfully ignorant, the insanely deluded and a large number of deliberate liars.

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