>> ^MaxWilder:
>> ^cindercone:
The point I was making is this: I propose that since our current society is Theologically based, the conversion to rational reasoning would be disastrous. Society would fail. If I proposed this, you might argue my proposal. You would argue that the new ascendant rationale could not be determined in advance, or you would argue that rational reasoning would ascend. So either an unknown reasoning would emerge, or we would be dependent upon a historically flawed human assumption of rational reasoning for anything short of total anarchy. THAT is the proof.

First of all, "society" has frequently changed the structure on which it is based throughout history, and though it has gone through some tough times as a result, it doesn't simply "fail". Furthermore, the fear of the outcome of such a change has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of religion in the first place.
Because of the nature of theological indoctrination, even in ideal circumstances it would take generations to remove religion from society. During that time, people will develop other moral codes, whether it is "enlightened self-interest" or something else. Those ethics will be hotly debated, but at least they won't be founded on irrational fairy tales, and therefor will not be available for use as justification for war.
>> ^cindercone:
Obviously, HE doesn’t spend the emotional energy arguing nuclear proliferation and abortion. For him to imply that gay marriage and abortion are issues that are only emotionally contested because of the presence of theology is ridiculous.
How can you say that? It is patently obvious that abortion and gay marriage are only contested on theological grounds. Even if you could find examples of non-religious people who are anti-abortion or anti-gay marriage (which I doubt), those would be so few in number as to be laughable.
The point is that these issues are stupid fights that are distracting people from the real threats to society. In order to move attention from a distraction to a real issue, you have to attack the distraction.


The fallacy here is that the smallness of the number of anti-abortion or anti-gay Atheists would be ridiculous while the smallness of the number of Atheists themselves wouldn't.
What is the percentage of Atheists that hold conservative such as anti-gay marriage and anti-abortion? I don't know. You don't either. In this context any counter proof for your feeling that there ain't no such people can't be simply dismissed on the grounds of being numerically insignificant.

All that said I'm an anti gay marriage Atheist. And in fact, the Soviet Union criminalized homosexuality from the 1930's up to it's dissolution. The law was only repealed in 1993. None of the 5 current communist states accept gay marriage either. Since communism is a generally Atheist ideology, there you have your share of anti gay marriage Atheists, historically and currently.

Just please let's not get on logical implication nonsense here. I know Atheism doesn't imply Communism. I'm not a Communist myself. But it's the other way around: Communism largely implies Atheism. Plus Communism provides you with the one instance of an Atheist society, so it's quite relevant to determine what kind of morals can exist in the absence of religious guidance.