Lol I know how to cook healthy meals and realize I should eat them more often. But I never do because I don't want to.
tell me about it. Sometimes what we know we ought to do--and what we actually do--are two different things.
Saying I can't possibly know how to make a veggie dish or that I am ignorant about health just based on my actions is silly.
I agree. My argument isn't that atheists don't know what morality is. My argument is that when the atheist denies objective morality, it creates an issue for his/her moral worldview, because then he must look inside himself to come up with a moral code (subjectivity). And if he determines what's right and wrong based on his subjective judgment, then whenever he commits an objectively evil act, he may subjectively judge it as good or not-evil. He would be in error for this.
I think there is a core morality that's written on all our hearts no matter who we are. However, the FULLNESS of moral truth has been given to us by God. So while an atheist can agree with me murder is wrong, his morality falls into error when he advocates abortion (murder of the unborn).
Lots of atheist who commit detrimental actions know they are wrong just like religious people do.
Agreed. Both religious and non-religious people commit sin because they simply choose to. Mostly, both groups do it out of weakness, and some of them (from both groups) do it out of malice.
Annnnd, once again, how do you explain why there are so many religious countries that are violent and unstable and so many completely secular ones that have an extremely high quality of life?
This question meshes a few things together. I assume by quality of life you mean health, home, education, freedom, recourse to a civil justice system, and relative safety/protection. A violent or unstable society can definitely affect quality of life. However, how are you defining "religious country" and "secular country"?
The following is from an online CNN article on the
Top 10 Most Unstable Countries:
Afghanistan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo also ranked in the top five.
Egypt has been downgraded to "extreme risk" for the first time as a result of violence following the ousting of former President Mohamed Morsy and an increase in terrorist attacks in the Sinai Peninsula, the report said.
Maplecroft warned that Syria, Egypt and Libya are "now so bad" that they will be "mired in exceptionally high levels of dynamic political risk for years to come."
A fall in political violence in the Philippines, India and Uganda has contributed to these countries experiencing the biggest reduction in short-term political risk over the past four years.
Improvements in the level of governance has also helped to lower risk levels in Malaysia and Israel in the same period.
Social unrest
The report said there is a higher chance for social unrest to exacerbate political instability in Bangladesh, Belarus, China, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.
"This is due to the erosion of democratic freedoms, increasing crackdowns on political position and the brutality by security forces towards protesters, compounded by rising food prices and worsening working conditions," Maplecroft said in a statement.
Another concern for foreign investors is that there has been a major increase in oppression by governments worldwide.
A "religious" or religion-friendly government can commit oppression and destabilizing actions, as well as a secular one (such as North Korea, China, etc.)
I think it has more to do with a struggle for power, and the brutal methods to obtain it, as well as war-waging, and the structure of the government and who is running the government. Governments that are headed by a single dictator (North Korea, for example) is going to offer less quality of life than a democracy which is accountable to voters. Heck, the Vatican is a city-state ruled by a religious monarch (Pope Francis) and it is not war-torn or bulldozing people.
So I think several factors come into play, such as the country's size, geographic location, history, culture, wealth/economy, type of government (monarchy, democracy, Communist), etc. It's not a simple matter of "This is all due to religion or lack thereof."
When I spoke earlier of atheist Communist Soviet Russia, it was to reject the stereotype that if you're religious you're automatically evil/violent/hateful and if you're atheist, you're automatically peaceful and a humanitarian. My argument is that we are all fallen and all sinful. The difference between us though is that I have more access to more moral truths, and I have a greater responsibility.
I have found that many atheist and agnostics in the black community grew up in church. I was just wondering.
