The Carrot & the Stick vs. Socialization


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Teaching via Mockery

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Religious apologists often confuse the word objective with words like absolute, transcendent, and universal--especially when talking about morality. To illustrate what objective means, I will now insult these people. They are stupid...at least in the subjective sense, which is a judgement I'm making influenced by personal feelings and opinions. However, in the recent past, I could test these people and state objectively that they are morons, imbeciles and idiots--each of these labels corresponding with an IQ score of 51�70, 21�50, and IQ of 0�20 respectively. A metric, like an IQ score, means that feelings and opinions can't factor in. Your IQ is your IQ regardless of what I personally think of you, and therefore objective.?
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#notworthfollowing

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It used to be that wearing a shirt with the headline �Atheist� was considered to be the gold standard in testing public reception of the label. Most of us never wore such shirts and assumed that non-atheists would be confrontational or, at the least, expect the shirt-wearer to be confrontational. Living in the bible belt, I get it. Don�t expect to see me wearing such a shirt to a job interview. Still, Americans came close to having our first non-Christian candidate for President this year with Bernie Sanders. This suggests that at least half the population of the US is more receptive than ever. So I made shirts. They aren�t as explicit as a shirt with the big block letters A-T-H-E-I-S-T. Think of them as part of a campaign. Each shirt displays a passage of the bible, not unlike a Christian wearing John 3:16 across their chest. The primary difference is that the passages available here are the parts of the bible Christians don�t advertise. They are about God commanding the murder of kid...
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Morality and the Definition Divide

Search �morality� in Merriam-Webster and the first definition you�ll see is �beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior.� That�s beliefs, plural. This implies that what I believe is right and wrong isn�t the only belief out there, which should be obvious. Add the word �objective� in front of a word with a definition like this and the result is an oxymoron. Morality, by definition, is subjective. Case closed. Well, of course the case isn�t closed. I can�t cite Merriam-Webster and expect millennia of philosophy to buckle.  Honestly, it isn�t even justified. Merriam-Webster has four definitions for the word �morality,� and MW is hardly the only dictionary in circulation. Should I go with the terminology of Google? Wikipedia? Who is the linguistic authority here? Few theists will deny the reality that different beliefs of right and wrong behavior exist, they just believe one in particular belief is true in an absolute and objective way, conveniently, it�s their own...
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