First of all, I need to say that if you are going to reference a study, an article, etc. in a post, you need give a link. Stop making me do your research.
Secondly, can we please give the "atheists are immoral and dangerous" meme a rest? Please? Atheists act just like everyone else. To be fair, we're better at marriage (the more fundy you are, the more likely you are to get divorced), but there appears to be little real life relationship between believing a thing is wrong and actually not doing it. (See: The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion.)
Makarios pulls out and dusts off this meme, yet again, in his post Atheist Richard Dawkins. (I don't know why he feels a need to put the word "atheist" in front of "Richard Dawkins". It's sort of like saying "Catholic Pope".)
Preaches the atheistic anti-life dogma i can't decide if he means that atheists tend to be prochoice, or that we're just against life in general. either way, stoopid. that works AGAINST natural selection natural selection has nothing to do with birth control. i don't know much about the subject, but i would think that birth control and fertility medicine are skewing our results a bit. by causing in atheists an aversion to reproducing their genes atheists are in no way averse to reproducing. most atheists i know, like most people i know, have children. what a strange world Makarios lives in. (out of three marriages Dawkins could only stomach the creation of one child that's just rude. first of all, his wives would have had the final say in whether or not they got pregnant. secondly, we don't know if his wives were infertile, or if dawkins has fertility issues. makarios could well be mocking some poor woman who desperately wants to have children and can't. lastly, in the end, whether or not to have children is a personal choice. i choose no, you choose yes. good for both of us.), and/or killing their offspring by the millions every year. wft?! anyone seen those news reports? seriously, what. the. fuck.
The Barna Research Group found regarding atheism and the morality that those who hold to the world views of atheism or agnosticism in America were more likely, than theists in America, to look upon the following behaviours as morally acceptable: (as I said, there is a huge difference between finding something to be immoral and actually not doing it, but let's play along)
no, wait, let's not. I found the study Makarios helpfully didn't bother to provide a link to. It's from 2003 and it is not what Makarios represents it to be.
More than four out of five adults - 83% - contend that they are concerned about the moral condition of the nation. Given that 84% of all adults consider themselves to be Christian, they have good reason to worry about the moral state of the country: many of [Christians'] views conflict with the moral teachings of their professed faith.
wait, that's not atheists or agnostics. that's christians. i assume Makarios is engaging in a No True Scotsman here, but he's misrepresenting the study. the participants in the study were not atheists and agnostics- they were christians.
and this is how christians felt about a variety of issues in 2003:
illegal drug use; 17% of those interviewed felt that was acceptable. hardly a majority.
excessive drinking; holy ambiguous, batman. 35% were in favor of "drunkenness".
sexual relationships outside of marriage; 42% were okay with this, though with the caveat that the relationship is hetero.
abortion; 45% in favor of.
cohabiting with someone of opposite sex outside of marriage; 60% were fine with it
obscene language; 36%. more people were okay with abortion and adultery than with saying "fuck"? seriously?
gambling; 61% in favor of. I wonder if they reminded people that the lottery is a form of gambling. as is bingo.
pornography 38%. abortion and adultery yes, porn no? where did they find these people? and obscene sexual behaviour wtf is that?;
and engaging in homosexuality and bisexuality 30% weren't bothered by Teh Gai at all.
the rest of the post is some quotes from dead philosophers that I guarantee Makarios does not understand, but that was fun. It's nice to know what christians are really all about.
