Are you also vehemently against anti-discrimination laws?

Ultimately most laws not essential for the basic existence of society are an attempt to force a particular worldview on the entire population.

I don't really understand how you can not come to the conclusion that having slaves is probably unethical without the help of a god. If religious people support not having slaves that's obviously fine but I think they should be supporting that regardless.

In other words, do you really need a god to tell you that you shouldn't keep slaves?

Alright then you would be ok with religious people legislating as long as they are in agreement with your views?

Yes, as long as the conclusions they draw can be made independently from religion. A broken clock is right twice a day. When they tell women they can't have an abortion after getting raped because it interferes with their hallucinations it's a problem.

Then you dont really support them and you would of fought the abolitionist attempts at legislation since they did not come to them independently outside of their religion.

I don't support their rights to make insane legislation any more than I would support mentally ill people to do so.

To me the problem starts when insanity that should be kept private is forcing harm to others. It's like I have my right of freedom but I can't go around stabbing people because that takes their rights away. The same goes for example abortion.

You can go round supporting bad legislation based on what ever you want.

One of the things I do like about living in the UK is that we are much better at secularism than the US (although we could be way better). This is a good example:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics...s-christianity

There are Christians (not a ton admittedly) who support abortion rights based on their religion but you would have them not bring those views into the public and keep them private.

That's true, it's just that I find the reasoning behind it despicable. It forces people to do things because they want to please their god so they don't even feel the responsibility for their actions. "well god wanted this so who am I to question it" leads to some very poor decisions. It allows people to not feel the impact of their decisions and so they don't feel bad for people who can't get an abortion since it is god's will.

Obviously the argument goes the opposite way. They will probably say I am despicable because I allow babies to be murdered or something like that and how I have no morals. I just can't make myself respect their right and toxic dogma. I would respect them if they don't do stuff like that out of insanity and yes that makes me hypocritical in that regard but I am ok with that.

Alright i guess.

I think it's a bad example but also a representative one. I liken it to recent Same Sex Marriage legislation, where citizens used their theological views to make what should have been secular legislation. Abolitionists might root their ideals in Christianity (for example) but that does not preclude them from supporting secular laws. e.g. Their god considers all people to be equal? Fine, but that's not the question. The question is how should your government treat people. If you want to ultimately base that on your theology, well OK, but it is not a theological question.

That is where SSM voting went completely off the rails. When the question concerns whether same sex couples should be allowed to enter the same contract with the state that heterosexual couples already have the right to do, your views on theological marriage are irrelevant, yet I expect a large number of theists in the US determined their vote that way.

This annoys me greatly.

It is also very different to legislation for which there is NO secular path (for instance, changing the national motto to "In God We Trust").

This angers me greatly.

Good question. Yet we do. If you have a favourite baseball cap, one that you love so much that you wear it all the time, every second of the day (some ppl behave this way, right?!), can they have their Driver's License photo taken with it on? Almost certainly no. What if it is a religious item? Almost certainly yes. What is the difference? Why are those reasons treated differently?

What is the difference between a sincerely held religious belief and just a sincerely held belief? Why is one considered differently to the other? It's odd, when you think about it.

Mightyboosh would often catch a lot of flak for considering religious beliefs to be 'more' than other beliefs. I'm more inclined to side with that particular idea, because religious beliefs are given such a special status not just socially, but even legally. Like political beliefs, they also form many other sub-beliefs. In fact I suspect religious beliefs impact political beliefs much more than the other way around.

Yeah but im trying to give an example of a belief held for religious reason that the people im talking to would want someone to hold and shouldn't mind them legislating on. So like slavery, murder, stealing things like that.

SSM could work though. There are liberal Christian denominations who marry homosexuals and fight for SSM. Should they stop fighting for the right of homosexuals to marry if its out of a religious belief?

If we dont want them to bring their God into politics for the bad it should go for the good. I just like to see if people bite the bullet so to speak.

This is true. But it's also true that many of his positions are built on very weak foundations and connections between religion and other things. One example that comes to mind was his thought that asking "What do Christians do?" (or something like that) was akin to the promotion of religion. So the criticism he receives is much more grounded in the weakness of the argument itself and not just because it's an argument regarding religious status.

There is a level at which these distinctions ("political" vs "religious" beliefs) don't even matter. The further down you go, the less important those labels are. There's a messy intersection of religion and culture (which includes politics) that doesn't necessarily allow us to draw clean lines all the time.

I think abortion is not a very good example to use here. The non-religious arguments that abortion is, at least some of the time, immoral, are real arguments. Furthermore, the Bible doesn't condemn abortion in a clear way at all. Deciding exactly when someone becomes a person worthy of being protected by law seems to me a very difficult moral question, and not one that obviously starts at birth.

Yeah. Both positions:

- Abortion after X weeks is essentially no different to the brutal murder of the most defenseless young children and is a horrible act that no civilized society can condone.
- Abortion should be legal and we shouldn't condemn it

Are both very defensible. In fact, the first is far more defensible than the second. You could argue that atheism has created this medical mass murder of the defenseless and vulnerable.

If anything the prevalence and normalization of abortion is an argument for the net harm of atheism.

When presented with a clear contradiction between beliefs and behaviors, rather than adjusting and reevaluating the beliefs that lead to the contradiction, he decides "I am okay with that."

It's a reaction to irrational thought. Call it fighting fire with fire.

Also leave me alone you creep.

Call it what you will. The end result is the same. You're not applying logic to your situation. You're trying to justify irrationality.

Posting in a public forum opens your words to be criticized in the public forum. If you want to go around spouting nonsense about religious people, you don't really have much space to hide when the tables are turned.

Edit: *Especially* when it's just echoing your own words back at you.

You're right. I still have the ability to put you on ignore though. Also you I am fine with being hypocritical at some instance but are you fine with being a jackass that will die all alone?

How many atheists are there who support baby rights?

If you apply logical and moral principles consistently, abortion is a horrific thing. And it's the fault of the callousness and mentalism of atheism, which sees humans that can feel and think but not talk or demonstrate reason, as merely nuisances to be murdered, so that a woman can have her bad decision and/or bad forward planning reversed (in most cases - rape, disease are exceptions and also a fraction of abortion decisions).

Every country where abortions are legal has term limits.
Pain awareness doesn't develop until the third trimester.

Oh boy. At the risk of this thread going wildly off-track:

Baby rights? Do you mean zygote rights? Blastocyte rights? Embro rights? Fetus rights? After birth rights? (not 'afterbirth' rights, lol). Calling the early development stages a 'baby' does happen conversationally of course, but it's not scientific, and it's usually intended to generate an emotional reaction.

But I'll try and give a broad answer if you mean in development: probably most of them, but they would be relative to the rights of the mother, whose rights should not be in question (but often ignored in abortion debates).

I noticed in your previous comment you said "Abortion after X weeks". I suspect this was deliberate. If not, why include a time period at all? Surely because it is recognised that there are important differences that happen over time. I'd also add that adding exceptions for rape, for example, shows an inconsistency. If someone's position was based on the supposed rights of the unborn, how could those rights change if the pregnancy was due to rape? The only way to justify it would be to elevate the rights of the mother, but only under that circumstance (which is of no fault of the unborn).

Not sure why you'd include all those emotion-loaded words if you're trying to give a convincing rational position, especially that the 'nuisance baby' can feel and think. Good luck supporting those assertions for the developmental stage that the overwhelming majority of abortions are performed.

What's most baffling, actually I'll say annoying if I'm honest (because I think you know better) is that atheism (being the answer to a single issue concerning the existence of god(s)) is irrelevant. It might be that the way someone gets to being an atheist is also how they get to being pro-life, but it almost certainly isn't being atheist that gets them there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you are at least a non-believer (I put it that way in case you take the philosophical atheist definition, as I do, that an atheist takes the 'believe not' over the 'not believe' stance). It sounds as if you think there is a moral chasm between 'not believing' and 'believing not', so rather than sending this thread down the abortion debate rabbit hole, perhaps you could explain that particular part.

My atheism book they handed out to me gives no moral guidelines on abortion.