{"id":2972,"date":"2012-06-08T08:18:39","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T13:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2972"},"modified":"2012-06-08T08:18:39","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T13:18:39","slug":"the-moral-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2972","title":{"rendered":"The Moral Goal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christians often ask atheists about the purpose of life. But I think a better question is what is the purpose of our morality? On this question, the divide between Christians and atheists couldn\u2019t be wider.<\/p>\n<p>For Christians, morality amounts to God\u2019s whim, while for atheists morality is about the well-being of sentient creatures. Christians tend to be concerned about the next life, while atheists are usually concerned about this one. For Christians (particularly fundamentalists) the goal is to save souls at all costs. But for atheists, the goal is to improve the lives of the living.<\/p>\n<p>What are the consequences of these goals? For Christians, it means trying to convert people often time no matter the consequences. It means sending missionaries to poor or devastated areas of the world and exploiting people when they are at their most vulnerable time. That, after all, is the mission. Since a poor quality of life makes people more vulnerable to the message of Jesus, religious believers have a vested interest in keeping the poor, poor. They have a vested interest in helping people just enough to make them grateful, but not enough for them to have the time, education, independence to think critically and doubt <a style=\"text-decoration: none; font-weight:normal; color: #333\" href = \"http:\/\/viagraspills.com\/tab\/otc-viagra\/\">http:\/\/viagraspills.com\/tab&#8230;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Atheistic morality cares more about helping people period. We don\u2019t need to use people\u2019s desperation to spread our message. Our message isn\u2019t the goal. The goal is to help people to be more educated and to have a better quality of life here on Earth because we have but one life to live and we would like people to live their lives well.<\/p>\n<h6 class=\"zemanta-related-title\" style=\"font-size: 1em;\">Related articles<\/h6>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=13\" target=\"_blank\">Christian Car Bomb Argument<\/a><\/p>\n<ul class=\"zemanta-article-ul zemanta-article-ul-image\" style=\"margin-left: 0px; display: inline-block; list-style-type: none;\">\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; text-align: left; font-size: 12px; width: 80px; height: 240px; margin: 10px 40px 20px 0px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2970\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; border: 0px none; display: block; box-shadow: 1px 1px 3px #999999;\" src=\"http:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/92934207_80_80.jpg\" alt=\"\"><\/a><a style=\"display: block; width: 80px; height: 90px; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; line-height: 14pt;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2970\" target=\"_blank\">&#8216;The Atheist Challenge&#8217;<\/a>\n<div style=\"clear: both; margin: 10px 0px;\">\n<hr style=\"margin: 0px;\">\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"zemanta-article-ul-li-image zemanta-article-ul-li\" style=\"display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; text-align: left; font-size: 12px; width: 80px; height: 240px; margin: 10px 40px 20px 0px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/atheism-in-national\/atheist-converts-to-christianity-media-s-coverage\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"padding: 0px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; border: 0px none; display: block; box-shadow: 1px 1px 3px #999999;\" src=\"http:\/\/i.zemanta.com\/83271827_80_80.jpg\" alt=\"\"><\/a><a style=\"display: block; width: 80px; height: 90px; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none; line-height: 14pt;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/atheism-in-national\/atheist-converts-to-christianity-media-s-coverage\" target=\"_blank\">Atheist converts to Christianity: Media&#8217;s coverage<\/a>\n<div style=\"clear: both; margin: 10px 0px;\">\n<hr style=\"margin: 0px;\">\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=233acc39-e4f4-4a93-b932-f5ec6b838857\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"linkwithin_hook\" id=\"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=2972\"><\/div><script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christians often ask atheists about the purpose of life. But I think a better question is what is the purpose of our morality? On this question, the divide between Christians and atheists couldn\u2019t be wider. For Christians, morality amounts to God\u2019s whim, while for atheists morality is about the well-being of sentient creatures. Christians tend [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n<script>\n<!-- \/\/LinkWithinCodeStart\nvar linkwithin_site_id = 317364;\nvar linkwithin_div_class = \"linkwithin_hook\";\n\/\/LinkWithinCodeEnd -->\n<\/script>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/widget.js\"><\/script>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/\"><img src=\"http:\/\/www.linkwithin.com\/pixel.png\" alt=\"Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...\" style=\"border: 0\" \/><\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1039,561,368],"tags":[2215,37,2216,1264],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2972"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2976,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2972\/revisions\/2976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}