Harbal wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 7:08 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 6:32 pm
No. Just aren't representative of the general population.
Do you think they are?
Probably not, but I think that supports my view more than yours.
I don't think it does, actually.
As you rightly point out, being here is no particular guarantee of anything...it's an open forum. And we can probably both point to plenty of posts that make one wonder if there shouldn't at least be some minimum intelligence prerequisite...
For the average person, their moral conduct isn't informed by any religious belief.
The average secular Westerner, you mean. Others are more aware of the derivation.
But this is hardly a stroke in the favour of secular Westerners. All it means it that a lot of them are not aware of where their moral beliefs actually come from. And they continue to replicate behaviours that their Atheism or agnosticism give them no reason to suppose are obligatory. So it seems they've just "reified" (to use the PoMo term) morality into their consciousness, and have lost all sense that they owe it nothing.
That's hardly high praise for them.
...just to say that a person believes in God tells you no more about that person than saying someone in an atheist tells you.
Well, it doesn't even tell you which "god" they think they believe in, or what they mean by "believe." So yes, they can be just as ignorant of their own beliefs as an Atheist can be. But here's the difference: whereas a
thinking Christian can find the logic that connects belief to action, the way his ontology sponsors morality, the Atheist never can -- and the more
thinking the Atheist is, the more he's likely to realize the absence of any such connection.
That's why Nietzsche recognized it, but most garden-variety Atheists are probably still oblivious to it. They simply lack either Neitzsche's perspecacity, or his nerve.