It's Pronounced "Eye-run-ee"

[kaasirpent]

Glenn Beck had a rally in DC that he "accidentally" <wink wink> scheduled on the anniversary of MLK Jr's rally 47 years before. Afterward, he was interviewed by Bill O'Reilly. And he said this:

Self regulation. It means that you don’t need—you’re not doing things because of penalty from a government. You’re doing things because of the set of values that you have. The Judeo-Christian values move you and motivate you to do better.

Um...yeah.

So, let me see if I have this straight. It's called "self" regulation if, instead of doing "the right thing" because you fear reprisals from the government, you do "the right thing" for fear of eternal damnation at the whimsical hand of a deity? Because that's, like, totally different. <eyeroll>

How about if you do the right thing out of empathy for your fellow man? No fear involved. No hypocrisy.

Oh, right. That's called "amorality."

The depth of my disgust for these...people...runs deeper than it's possible for me to describe.

Ethics and morality do not require religion or even "spirituality." And it insults and offends me and every thinking person to have them spout the lie that they do as though it were incontrovertible fact.

Controvert this, liars.

Comments

[bramblekite.livejournal.com]

Yuck. I agree with you 100%...the sad thing is that a lot of people, leaders, celebrities, politicians, etc. are sociopaths. That means that they don't have an internal compass, or empathy, or concern for their fellow human beings, because they don't recognize other humans as being anything but extensions of their own ego.

Therefore, the only reason to do the right thing is because there is someone bigger than you (parent, cop, boss, government, God) standing over you with some large force or threat, to MAKE you behave. Anything other than the clash of predatory instincts and the eventual victory of the most powerful entity does not make sense to them.

Kindness for the sake of being kind, or goodness for the sake of common humanity just means you are "weak" and gets you kicked in the teeth when you're dealing with sociopaths like Beck and his friends.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

More to the point, there's the crazy assumption that people, for whatever reason, on average 'do the right thing', and that any system of penalties for not doing the right thing is somehow interfering. Considering how often the Right uses the 'logic' of "if you aren't guilty, you don't have to worry about it", the hypocrisy amuses me. Have people already forgotten about Halliburton, Enron, Goldman-Sachs, etc.? Feh. What's good for the 'market' (read: stockholders) isn't good for everybody.

[dorsai.livejournal.com]

What's to get upset about?

The God-botherers think you're an amoral wretch who will run amok at any moment due to your lack of a divinely imposed morality. Meanwhile, you laugh at them for basing their entire worldview on what you believe to be fairy tales and superstition.

Sounds like a perfectly balanced relationship to me. :)

[craftsman.livejournal.com]

Sounds like there is not difference between an athiest and an antithiest. So much for freedom of belief (or nonbelief).

[kaasirpent]

I'm not sure what you mean by "so much for freedom of belief." You can believe whatever you want, no matter how wrong it is. And the belief that there is no morality without religion is demonstrably wrong, as is the belief that morality within religion is somehow superior.

There is a big difference between atheism and anti-theism. Atheists don't believe in any sort of divine being. Anti-theists are specifically against theism itself.

For myself, I'm not against theism, per se. I'm against hypocrisy and many of the actions people take based on their faith-based ethics. And I'm against people telling me what I do and do not believe in based on an incorrect or incomplete understanding of the facts.

[craftsman.livejournal.com]

Most "athiests" are vehemently opposed to any religious beliefs. You are the exception. You sometimes still fall into the "lets make fun of people who don't believe the same as me" trap, but not too often.

BTW, Glenn started looking at dates around September 11 but not on the day where they could get a park permit for 300K people. This just happened to be the closest non-holiday weekend that was open. When the coincidence was pointed out, he explicitly included Dr. King's daughter in the event.

Glenn sincerely believes that moral authority (right and wrong) derives from an external standard. His standard is God. He was railing against those who believe that everything is relative and there are no moral absolutes. And to him and many others, having a spiritually derived moral code is a stronger system. For them.

Finally, name another group that had anywhere close to that many people there and left the mall and reflecting pool area cleaner than they found it.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2010/08/29/will-media-notice-how-clean-beck-rally-participants-left-national-mall

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Yep.

Hell, I try to do the right thing because it's the right thing. They're saying that if Big Daddy wasn't watching them every second, they'd do the wrong thing every time.

Thanks, at least, for the warning.