6 ms·

I don't believe in God, but this is historically correct. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights as conceived by the United Nations traces its roots to the

I don't believe in God, but this is historically correct. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights as conceived by the United Nations traces its roots to the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen that was a product of the French revolution. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of... The preamble of this document directly references God: > In consequence, the National Assembly recognizes and declares, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and citizen https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/ilp-pji/rev5/index.html https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/ilp-pji/rev5/ind...

nottorp 5y ago
That's a declaration. Which apart from mentioning a supreme being (not the Christian god) has its roots in other concepts. However, the article is typical Christian propaganda insinuating that atheists are amoral and you need the benevolent guidance of a supernatural being (and its church) to behave like a decent human being.
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  > you need the benevolent guidance of a supernatural being… to behave like a decent human being. which is precisely why an atheist's morals are superior: they thought it through and convinced themselves that human rights is the better path. Religious people by definition only do it [their words] because their deity says so. Which is precisely why its so simple for the same benevolent guidance of a supernatural being to equally justify - inter alia - crusades, jihads, fatwas and honour killings.
  - alphachloride 5y ago
    In the context of the human rights record of several atheist societies like the USSR, where religious expression was forcibly curtailed, I find it hard to believe that an atheist's morals are inherently superior.
    - nickkell 5y ago
      Five years hard labour in Siberia should cure you of your disbelief comrade
- Anointmous 5y ago
  Atheists are immoral, because it's an illogical premise, proving a negative, and in the face of lots of evidence at that. That's why athiests always turn to insults, they have no argument - much like the message this is in response to. Agnostics, deists, and free thinkers are another matter. But from the outset, an atheist proclaims himself as someone irrational with nothing to say.
- Amezarak 5y ago
  The stronger form of this argument is made by Nietzsche, not by Christian propagandists. Without God, there is no objective moral foundation. Obviously, people remain 'moral' regardless of their religious orientation, because morality is a social phenomenon, it's the 'herd instinct in the individual'. But this morality shifts and changes with times and cultures. You have no perch from which to stand and declare yourself objectively morally correct relative to some other time or culture, aside from "well, I said so." You think human sacrifice, torture of children, throwing gay people off buildings is wrong - great, sure, but here's Society X that doesn't think that, that has a whole different moral framework, and in that context those actions may be entirely moral. Phrases like "decent human being" simply mean "conforms to societal expectations." That's why Nietzsche's famous death of God speech is directed to the atheists, not to believers. > The meaning of our cheerfulness.— The greatest recent event—that “God is dead,” that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable—is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. For the few at least, whose eyes, the suspicion in whose eyes is strong and subtle enough for this spectacle, some suns seem to have set and some ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt: to them our old world must appear daily more like evening, more mistrustful, stranger, “older.” But in the main one may say: the event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude’s capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of as having arrived as yet; much less may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really means—and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it: for example, the whole of our European morality. This long plenitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysm that is now impending: who could guess enough of it today to be compelled to play the teacher and advance proclaimer of this monstrous logic of terror, the prophet of a gloom and an eclipse of the sun whose like has probably never yet occurred on earth? On a historical note, viewing the outcomes and events of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Soviet-era, and the like, I think it may be worth considering even for a non-believer that the "objective" moral foundation provided by Christianity serves as a useful brake on the worse excesses that arise during societal upheavals.
  - krapp 5y ago
    Except Christian morality also shifts and changes with time and culture, because religious practice is a social phenomenon. There has never been a universal, objective Christian morality. The Bible says slaves should obey their masters, that women are as far beneath men as men are beneath God, and that homosexuality is an abomination worthy of death. Christian morality used to allow killing pagans, Jews and Protestants as heretics. Christians from a century ago would see modern Christians as weak-willed apostates (you don't even read the Bible in Latin, but gutteral English you swine!) and Christians from a thousand years ago might not even recognize the religion as theirs. Atheists reject the premise that morality presupposes God not because they reject morality but because they recognize that all moral systems are relative, and yet still have value. And yes, being a "decent human being" does simply mean "conforming to societal expectations," even when that society's expectations are based on the current generation's fashion in interpreting Biblical teaching. But it's enough for me to believe in the value of human life because I believe it, not because my society tells me a man in the sky will send me to hell if I don't. And from an atheist point of view it's obviously possible to accept a moral framework in a morally relative universe because that is what everyone, including religious people, are actually doing. Accepting the truth of the matter isn't going to cause society to collapse into barbarism and hedonism.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. I realize other commenters are doing it too but this was a noticeable plummet in discussion quality. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
litoorachure 5y ago
The "Supreme Being" in the French Revolution was not necessarily the Abrahamic God. One major cause of the revolution was the Church's corruption and overreach during the ancien regime, and they got pretty radical with religious experimentation during that time. They even tried to set up a state-sponsored "cult of reason" to replace religions like Christianity. That was followed by the "cult of the supreme being", because not many people felt comfortable worshipping an abstract reification of "rationality". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being
thisCtx 5y ago
Historically correct but do we need to tell that part of the story going forward? Can we not set the idea of “human rights” on its own pedestal and decide what those are and carry them forward in tradition and song? Why do we have a literal obligation to the asinine part of a dead philosophers opinions on their origin, along with an actual useful concept? Let’s dispense with the all-father bits and see it as we claim to; within the legislative and judicial process we in practice are all afforded the same privileges and obligations. Let’s discuss how in practice that’s not true and stop giving a shit what dead guy first conjured the idea. Caretaking the literal lineage is nothing more than banal taxonomy fetishism.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  > Historically correct but do we need to tell that part of the story going forward? Yes. Hiding the truth is almost always wrong.
  - Nevermark 5y ago
    I don't think the point is to suppress history. But that ideas about human rights can have a firmer foundation than a particular religion. I.e. moral principles such as equality and some basic rights result in a safer and more productive society for the vast majority of people, vs. alternate principles. They are less arbitrary principles than saying this group of people is better than another group, and results in a society with greater productivity and resiliancy than one where the strong continually put down the weak. The history is still meaningful, but is not the rationale.
    - torstenvl 5y ago
      Sorry, that's absurd. The rationale for why something exists cannot be divorced from the history for why it exists. And there is no source for a principle of equality in nature.
      - Nevermark 5y ago
        The history of something, and its current rationale, are two different things. They are related, but certainly the latter can be talked of coherently separately - if one chooses. Equality can be argued for in terms of economics, game theory, the objective recognition of commonality between humans, and from many other avenues, without reference to religion.
eternalban 5y ago
> The preamble of this document directly references God: No it certainly does not reference "God". The "Supreme Being" they were talking about was definitely not the God of Catholic Church that came under direct attack in the French Revolution. The French revolutionaries did not hide their Masonic root. It's right on the tin. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen_in_1789.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Declarat... The "Supreme Being" is the Masonic "Great Architect", a metaphysical notion entirely distinct from the experiential spiritual God of religions with visionary prophets and scripture. You can have a 'born again Christian' who experiences a divine encounter, but you don't have epiphanies with "the Supreme Being". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianisation_of_France_during_the_French_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianisation_of_France_d...

nottorp 5y ago

That's a declaration. Which apart from mentioning a supreme being (not the Christian god) has its roots in other concepts. However, the article is typical Christian propaganda insinuating that atheists are amoral and you need the benevolent guidance of a supernatural being (and its church) to behave like a decent human being.

throwaway210222 5y ago
> you need the benevolent guidance of a supernatural being… to behave like a decent human being. which is precisely why an atheist's morals are superior: they thought it through and convinced themselves that human rights is the better path. Religious people by definition only do it [their words] because their deity says so. Which is precisely why its so simple for the same benevolent guidance of a supernatural being to equally justify - inter alia - crusades, jihads, fatwas and honour killings.
- alphachloride 5y ago
  In the context of the human rights record of several atheist societies like the USSR, where religious expression was forcibly curtailed, I find it hard to believe that an atheist's morals are inherently superior.
  - nickkell 5y ago
    Five years hard labour in Siberia should cure you of your disbelief comrade
Anointmous 5y ago
Atheists are immoral, because it's an illogical premise, proving a negative, and in the face of lots of evidence at that. That's why athiests always turn to insults, they have no argument - much like the message this is in response to. Agnostics, deists, and free thinkers are another matter. But from the outset, an atheist proclaims himself as someone irrational with nothing to say.
Amezarak 5y ago
The stronger form of this argument is made by Nietzsche, not by Christian propagandists. Without God, there is no objective moral foundation. Obviously, people remain 'moral' regardless of their religious orientation, because morality is a social phenomenon, it's the 'herd instinct in the individual'. But this morality shifts and changes with times and cultures. You have no perch from which to stand and declare yourself objectively morally correct relative to some other time or culture, aside from "well, I said so." You think human sacrifice, torture of children, throwing gay people off buildings is wrong - great, sure, but here's Society X that doesn't think that, that has a whole different moral framework, and in that context those actions may be entirely moral. Phrases like "decent human being" simply mean "conforms to societal expectations." That's why Nietzsche's famous death of God speech is directed to the atheists, not to believers. > The meaning of our cheerfulness.— The greatest recent event—that “God is dead,” that the belief in the Christian God has become unbelievable—is already beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe. For the few at least, whose eyes, the suspicion in whose eyes is strong and subtle enough for this spectacle, some suns seem to have set and some ancient and profound trust has been turned into doubt: to them our old world must appear daily more like evening, more mistrustful, stranger, “older.” But in the main one may say: the event itself is far too great, too distant, too remote from the multitude’s capacity for comprehension even for the tidings of it to be thought of as having arrived as yet; much less may one suppose that many people know as yet what this event really means—and how much must collapse now that this faith has been undermined because it was built upon this faith, propped up by it, grown into it: for example, the whole of our European morality. This long plenitude and sequence of breakdown, destruction, ruin, and cataclysm that is now impending: who could guess enough of it today to be compelled to play the teacher and advance proclaimer of this monstrous logic of terror, the prophet of a gloom and an eclipse of the sun whose like has probably never yet occurred on earth? On a historical note, viewing the outcomes and events of the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Soviet-era, and the like, I think it may be worth considering even for a non-believer that the "objective" moral foundation provided by Christianity serves as a useful brake on the worse excesses that arise during societal upheavals.
- krapp 5y ago
  Except Christian morality also shifts and changes with time and culture, because religious practice is a social phenomenon. There has never been a universal, objective Christian morality. The Bible says slaves should obey their masters, that women are as far beneath men as men are beneath God, and that homosexuality is an abomination worthy of death. Christian morality used to allow killing pagans, Jews and Protestants as heretics. Christians from a century ago would see modern Christians as weak-willed apostates (you don't even read the Bible in Latin, but gutteral English you swine!) and Christians from a thousand years ago might not even recognize the religion as theirs. Atheists reject the premise that morality presupposes God not because they reject morality but because they recognize that all moral systems are relative, and yet still have value. And yes, being a "decent human being" does simply mean "conforming to societal expectations," even when that society's expectations are based on the current generation's fashion in interpreting Biblical teaching. But it's enough for me to believe in the value of human life because I believe it, not because my society tells me a man in the sky will send me to hell if I don't. And from an atheist point of view it's obviously possible to accept a moral framework in a morally relative universe because that is what everyone, including religious people, are actually doing. Accepting the truth of the matter isn't going to cause society to collapse into barbarism and hedonism.
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. I realize other commenters are doing it too but this was a noticeable plummet in discussion quality. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

litoorachure 5y ago

The "Supreme Being" in the French Revolution was not necessarily the Abrahamic God. One major cause of the revolution was the Church's corruption and overreach during the ancien regime, and they got pretty radical with religious experimentation during that time. They even tried to set up a state-sponsored "cult of reason" to replace religions like Christianity. That was followed by the "cult of the supreme being", because not many people felt comfortable worshipping an abstract reification of "rationality". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_Reason https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being

thisCtx 5y ago

Historically correct but do we need to tell that part of the story going forward? Can we not set the idea of “human rights” on its own pedestal and decide what those are and carry them forward in tradition and song? Why do we have a literal obligation to the asinine part of a dead philosophers opinions on their origin, along with an actual useful concept? Let’s dispense with the all-father bits and see it as we claim to; within the legislative and judicial process we in practice are all afforded the same privileges and obligations. Let’s discuss how in practice that’s not true and stop giving a shit what dead guy first conjured the idea. Caretaking the literal lineage is nothing more than banal taxonomy fetishism.

torstenvl 5y ago
> Historically correct but do we need to tell that part of the story going forward? Yes. Hiding the truth is almost always wrong.
- Nevermark 5y ago
  I don't think the point is to suppress history. But that ideas about human rights can have a firmer foundation than a particular religion. I.e. moral principles such as equality and some basic rights result in a safer and more productive society for the vast majority of people, vs. alternate principles. They are less arbitrary principles than saying this group of people is better than another group, and results in a society with greater productivity and resiliancy than one where the strong continually put down the weak. The history is still meaningful, but is not the rationale.
  - torstenvl 5y ago
    Sorry, that's absurd. The rationale for why something exists cannot be divorced from the history for why it exists. And there is no source for a principle of equality in nature.
    - Nevermark 5y ago
      The history of something, and its current rationale, are two different things. They are related, but certainly the latter can be talked of coherently separately - if one chooses. Equality can be argued for in terms of economics, game theory, the objective recognition of commonality between humans, and from many other avenues, without reference to religion.

eternalban 5y ago

> The preamble of this document directly references God: No it certainly does not reference "God". The "Supreme Being" they were talking about was definitely not the God of Catholic Church that came under direct attack in the French Revolution. The French revolutionaries did not hide their Masonic root. It's right on the tin. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_of_the_Citizen_in_1789.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Declarat... The "Supreme Being" is the Masonic "Great Architect", a metaphysical notion entirely distinct from the experiential spiritual God of religions with visionary prophets and scripture. You can have a 'born again Christian' who experiences a divine encounter, but you don't have epiphanies with "the Supreme Being". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_the_Supreme_Being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianisation_of_France_during_the_French_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianisation_of_France_d...