Hey /r/atheism, I made something for you. Hope you guys/gals like it.

cloakzore · 11 months

It's also worth noting Malcolm was kind of an asshole before his split with the Nation of Islam.

fine_young_cannibal · 11 months

"Religion does not always correlate with ethics..."

However, evil ALWAYS correlates with mustaches and their kin.

forthewar · 11 months

If Malcolm X were a white Christian, I'm pretty sure no one would be citing him as a good person. He'd just be another homophobic, misogynistic, racist bigot.

iamamemeama · 11 months

So you're saying that what religion really correlates with, is facial hair?

DidoAmerikaneca · 11 months

Here is why so many atheists get stuck up on this. In our society, many religious folk instantly correlate a lack of religion with a lack of ethics. And we are stuck with this stigma. Consequently, we perpetually try to show and bring up the many wrongs religious individuals have committed, in order to show that religion does not imply ethics either.

Furthermore, we try to emphasize the goodness of atheists, in order to show that a lack of religion does not imply a lack of ethics. But people like you generally don't have a problem with that.

Reingding13 · 11 months

Malcolm X was your good Muslim? Seriously? The dude advocated violence.

TerXIII · 11 months

I fail to understand how differences in facial hair make someone more or less ethical. That was your point right?

painperdu · 11 months

So, religion has a net zero affect on human behavior? Why are there so many religious believers who think otherwise?

I think when Atheists point out the evil some religious people cause they do so to point out the hypocrisy of what those religious people believe. Merely believing in god is overwhelmingly equated with goodness when in fact that is not necessarily so -as you have rightly pointed out.

So, can you admit that belief in religion, as concerns goodness, is nonsense?

Endemoniada · 11 months

Religion does not always correlate with ethics...

No, but it justifies it in a way that non-religion, by definition, cannot. If I, as an atheist, do evil, I have to take full responsibility for that evil on myself. If a theist does evil, he can simply claim his God demanded it, and in the eyes of millions of people be completely justified, right, and avoid all responsibility for his actions. In extreme cases, people even praise him for it.

That is the problem we're trying to raise awareness of. Get it?

theroarer · 11 months

But isn't religion SUPPOSED to correlate ethics?

HopelessR · 11 months

Did you just try to convince me that Malcolm X was a good Muslim?

ZachGates · 11 months

The problem here is that the evil done by theists was a direct result OF their theism. Without that, they'd have had no reason to do what they did.

You can't say that Stalin's actions were due to his atheism.

LetsDancing · 11 months

I think Martin Luther and his violent antisemetism would make a nice Evil Xtian side.

DownWithTheSickness · 11 months

It's pretty sad that Malcom X was the best Muslim you could come up with.

mmmsausages · 11 months

Wasn't Stalin raised religiously and then trained to be monk? Also he adopted this concept from Lenin, the method was to remove a an opiate "Religion" from the Soviet Union. Stalin had a different policy outside of the Soviet Union, he supported the Communist Uyghur Muslim separatists under Ehmetjan Qasim in the Ili Rebellion against the Anti Communist Republic of China regime. He supplied weapons to the Uyghur Ili army and Red Army support against Chinese forces, and helped them established the Second East Turkestan Republic of which Islam was the official state religion.

IConrad · 11 months

Joseph Stalin was a former Seminary student who told his daughter, upon being asked why he had a copy of the bible (after years of being dictator) that he believed Jesus was real. (According to her own biography of him.)

Just an FYI.

Consider Pat Tillman instead of Bill Gates.

phuck · 11 months

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

Steven Weinberg

Kinbensha · 11 months

"Religion does not always correlate with ethics"

True, but it always correlates with a delusional lifestyle that I find insulting to science. Stop making excuses for religious people by pointing to the good ones like they somehow make it all better.

Obvious0ne · 11 months

I was with you until the "get over it" line... That turned a good message into a juvenile whine.

oddmanout · 11 months

Unfortunately, most of the people that need to see this chart would think Malcolm X is bad.

For more effectiveness, I say we switch the good Muslim to Dr. Oz.

Seraph451 · 11 months

If you think MLK was the definition of a good Christian, you should probably do some research on the stuff he pulled behind closed doors, and behind the back of his wife.

I agree with a number of other comments here that the question isn't about individuals who are good or evil. The real question is whether or not religion overall is good for society or not, and so far I have to disagree with the "live and let live" way of thinking on this.

jjsullivan5196 · 11 months

Woah Woah WOAH

Hold it there hold it, I know Bill Gates did donate a lot of his wealth, but I don't think he is the best example.

Blackmailed other businesses, hammered free software, kicked his childhood friend out of his company who he had co-founded with, generally only seemed to care about his own wealth(except for charity, I know).

And now his company is constantly ratted out on wikileaks for some horrid things.

willbir · 11 months

There are smokers that get lung cancer and smokers that don't get lung cancer. Smoking doesn't always correlate with cancer. Get over it.

myeverymovment · 11 months

It's not a correlation, our point is religion is no moral compass.

Valendr0s · 11 months

I don't believe I've seen even the hint of a consensus on /r/atheism on a stance that good is the exclusive domain of secularism or that evil is the exclusive domain of religion.

We simply point out that there are some religious folk who have a stance that their chosen religion can do no harm and all atrocities committed in the name of it were done by false members or the acts are taken 'out of context'.

These same people will often also take a critical view of secularism, taking the opinion that evil will be the inevitable result without taking into consideration all the facts.

rathum2323 · 11 months

atheism is not a belief system. people don't commit crimes in the name of atheism. but people do commit crimes in the name of religion. Infact, apostasy is punishable by death in islam.

farting_tomato · 11 months

Using Malcolm X is a bit controversial, don't you think?

Surely you can come up with other good muslim people.

nomagneticmonopoles · 11 months

Malcolm X was...good? Couldn't you chose Jibran or something?

DaveChild · 11 months

Religion does not always correlate with ethics.

The issue is that the religious generally claim the moral high ground. In doing so, they implicitly invite criticism when members of their religion do immoral things. Atheists don't claim that atheism automatically bestows morality upon people - usually we claim that morality is intrinsic and some people are immoral.

BeerGogglesFTW · 11 months

No correlation in religion, but 2/3 of good people are black though, and 2/3 of bad people are white.

super__mario · 11 months

Sure, there are good and bad people in any camp. But the question that should be discussed here is, does religion make people behave better? I think the overwhelming evidence is that it does not. There is nothing a religious person does that can't be done by an atheist. But there are plenty of things a religious person does (because of religion and demands from god) that atheist does not do, like genital mutilation, stoning of adulterers, cutting off of arms and genocide of infidels, to name a few.

itzjamesftw · 11 months

Why is this pointed out to /atheism? This can be in the same context of christian/religious folk.

Tenacious_Dim · 11 months

Isn't that kind of the point anyways? People are responsible for their moral compass not the deities they do or don't believe in.

erickety · 11 months

That's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to you.

Space_Ninja · 11 months

I've never met an atheist that did something bad because the Flying Spaghetti Monster told him to. Your argument is invalid.

Smallpaul · 11 months

Are there really no uncontroversially good famous muslims? Malcolm X is not exactly considered a saint. If you're willing to educate people, you could choose this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirza_Ghulam_Ahmad

Or this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nafez_Assaily

Found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism_in_Islam

Atario · 11 months

Correction: Stalin and his ilk are religious — one of the most primitive forms of religion, the cult of personality. Stalin wants you to worship the god, and the god is him.

Identity_disorder · 11 months

Hey guys-i'm here for the circlejerk.

Rockran · 11 months

But for a good person to do evil thing, that takes religion.

SAVED!

aikbix · 11 months

My apologies for putting Bill Gates on the image. I know he isn't the best person to stick in there (considering some of Microsoft's practices), but he was the first person that came to mind. If anybody knows of somebody better, then I can stick him/her on there instead.

EDIT: Here is one with Carl Sagan. I tried one with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but its difficult to distinguish him when vectorized.

Cattywampus · 11 months

Martin Luther King Jr. was a good Christian? I wasn't aware that forcing lots of young activists to have sex with you was being a "good Christian". Apparently continually cheating on your wife while convincing vulnerable young girls that fucking you was "empowering the movement" is seen as good Christian behavior. Interesting.

bob-o · 11 months

Malcolm X was fairly evil...

THUMB5UP · 11 months

I wouldn't post this anywhere. I'm sorry, but Bill Gates as ethical is inherently wrong. Yes, he did some good but his business practices are ruthless and unethical. Sorry, man. Looks great, though.

vfr · 11 months

Thank you for taking the time to make a graphic that says something everyone already fucking knew.

PeterJerome · 11 months

Cute. However, there is no "atheist Bible" or holy text that would tell us it's okay to kill someone for not sharing the same beliefs. This is where the difference lies; we have no way of justifying our actions other than by the consequences or by emotional means.

Fortunae · 11 months

How about John Lennon?

Impressario · 11 months

This is a strange submission. Let's try to analyze it, break it down.

I fail to see how atheists or r/atheism are known at large for claiming that religion always negatively correlates to ethics. It's a bold claim; would require there never be counter-examples. That's a bit silly, don't you think? To claim there are no good religious people anywhere at any time. Seems a strawman, without reference. Easy to get over something one doesn't claim.

There are perhaps arguments to be made for loose correlations, such as the high standard of living, low crime rates, and high happiness indexes of largely nontheist Scandinavian countries. Or the various make-ups of prison populations. But they are loose correlations, not very solid, and not to even approach causation.

But despite that this graphic already fails by forwarding a strawman to criticize, let's push on to the core of this issue. People can obviously be good and bad with, or isolated from religion. Disregarding people, religion itself is a neutral tool like anything else. But the discussion is how people may mix with the characteristics of that neutral tool. A product, most often accompanied by faith and divine authority.

And in any situation where there is an unchallenged authority who is believed to always be right, mortal or divine, the moral and ethical standards forwarded better happen to be good ones. Yet even if they are, the process that churned them out is still a negative one. Because they are untouchable in several ways. Extra, insidious layers against criticism and refinement.

Atheism holds little in this way. There may be common moral paths atheists take, but it does not forward commandments and the like itself. So the common and uncommon moral paths atheists take, are more open to refinement and criticism, being absent an authority and faith.

And that makes for an important difference when we label people religious or not in this morality context. The nontheists in the graphic, are not responsible as nontheists, but as themselves. Atheism the tool holds no moral standards to blame. However, religious people are a package; the self and the tool mixed to forward a specific morality. Even if one may think they got their specific religious morality wrong... well that's the problem isn't it; good luck convincing them that.

The tool of religion presents an inherent problem that atheism does not. This is the more important discussion than the silliness and cloudiness of the graphic.

CertusAT · 11 months

Living without Religion doesn't give you any kind of incentive to do evil things.

Living with Religion gives you TONS of incentives to do evil things.

sqdrn · 11 months

Are you saying that atheism is a religion?

Techno_viking22 · 11 months

Religion doesn't correlate with ethics but two out of three times glasses do.

lingual_panda · 11 months

Enjoyed the faces.

Fyrus · 11 months

Most atheists don't care what religion people follow, we just don't want to be seen as evil because we don't believe in a religion, thus the "good without god" campaign.

cloudberries · 11 months

Pfft. It's like prodding a beehive with a stick.

DonJewman · 11 months

Sure being religious doesn't mean you're evil, but c'mon its pretty obvious that these people are believing a hoax. It's better to know the truth even if it bites than live a lie that makes you feel better, because you only grow up with doubt or become delusional. That's just my response to the "deal with it" at the end.

HeroicLife · 11 months

If religion does not correlate with ethics, what is the point of religion?

If your religion has so little ethical content or is so unconvincing that it does not influence the followers believes, it's a useless religion.

In fact, religion has a major impact on ethics - all of it bad.

Airazz · 11 months

Without religion, good people would do good things and bad people would do bad things. But it takes religion for good people to do bad things.

HeroicLife · 11 months

Mystics sometimes argue that religion makes people moral. I disagree: morality is a practical science which can only be understood by rational consideration, not emotionalism (the epistemological method of faith).

To the extent that religious dogmas and religious people preach and act morally, they derive their principles using the same rational methods and the same evidence that is available to everyone. Since rational moral claims need no mystical basis, it is only the irrational and immoral actions which require religious justification. To the extent that religious beliefs as such influence people’s actions, they can only influence them to do wrong – sometimes unspeakable and sometimes trivial, but still evil.

stan11003 · 11 months

I think atheist who think all the major evil in the world comes from religion are just a naive as they think the religious are. People have been doing bad for a long time study and psychology or history and you will realize bad is part of us. That special kind of blood lust which we call war is in our bones.

craybatesedu · 11 months

Really, we're going to say that Malcolm X was a good guy? What about the, you know, open and unabashed racism?

commiewizard · 11 months

The great circlejerk won't like this.

MrBlindZombie · 11 months

The difference being that Stalin didn't commit his crimes in the name of Atheism.

[deleted] · 11 months

These are outliers. You haven't shown anything about correlation

BrawndoTTM · 11 months

Nice, except Adolf Hitler was a polytheist, not a Christian.

eyeball_kid · 11 months

To be fair, it was under Stalin's leadership that the USSR was transformed from a chaotic agricultural economy to a fully industrialized power capable of smashing fascism. 80% of all German casualties were on the Eastern Front.

ImAWhaleBiologist · 11 months

Stalin was an atheist and forced atheism out of political necessity. Religion puts something higher than him, and he wasn't going to let that happen. I doubt he cared very much about the hypocrisy and bad logic of religions.

blackstar9000 · 11 months

If you ever issue a revised version, I'd suggest trading someone in for Bill Gates. Generally speaking, it's a bad idea to build an ethical case on a living person. They still have time to surprise you.

Maybe use Linus Pauling instead. Dude won the Nobel Prize twice, once for chemistry and once for peace.

BALAGU3R · 11 months

Malcom X encouraged violence... Islam may be a tad more violent than the rest if the example for good wanted to kill caucasians.

hachiko007 · 11 months

I don't agree. Religion is directly tied to ethics when it SPECIFICALLY states in the teachings to do something wrong. If you think differently maybe you ought to READ the bible, qur'an, or the hadiths; all of which are full of evil unethical bullshit.

To make matters worse, the people that read that crap will without a doubt do EXACTLY as stated in the teachings regardless of how unethical it is. They do it just because some book told them it is ok to kill any person they think is a sinner, stone their wife if she doesn't obey, or any other the other inhumane teaching of Abrahamic religions.

blipblipbeep · 11 months

Ill give you that but my x-wife is a christian (good on her, i suppose) and she thinks god speaks to her and tells her what to do next. she always gets it right because what you don't know about her yet is that she has an IQ around 150 and her looks are comparable to Ali Larter, I shit you not.

What i am saying is good or bad religion still creates an illusion that you cant do things for yourself When really, you ether do it for yourself or somebody else does it for you, where is god in that equation.

acoolguy123 · 11 months

No stupidhead, fapfapfapfap, religion is the cause of all the evil in the world, ALL OF IT

FAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAPFAP

superflysucka · 11 months

So, subscribing to and religiously adhering to a very specific dogmatic ideology (and ALL the "moral" teachings therein) has no behavioral influence or effect?

If this is true, we should be able to poll the entire Mormon population of Utah about gay rights (marriage) and the results should be identical to non-Mormon population. Of course, most Mormons in Utah believe that gays should be ostracized, denied equal rights and shunned from society. The idea that the dogmatic ideology of Mormonism is NOT responsible for instilling this hatred is a bunch of bullshit.

So, I take it the OP also believes that there are good KKK members and bad ones? I mean David Duke (not counting his racist views) was by all accounts a pretty moral guy. Does this mean that his dogmatic ideology (aka religion) of the KKK did not shape his beliefs/behavior?

Loop_Within_A_Loop · 11 months

Hey bro, that's been our point from like the very beginning.

MMMREESESCUPS · 11 months

Was Bill Gates the best example for an ethical atheist?

photobesity · 11 months

Kind of cool but hard to accept in full as it relies on generalities. Malcolm X can be seen as an angry product of his times and not full of all goodness. (Who is?) And many might question the ethics of Bill Gate. Though again, he is putting his money where his mouth is with his foundation, right? But I like the post, thanks!

hereticingoodcompany · 11 months

I appreciate your design. It looks nice.

Get over what? I'm fine. Most of us are. We don't sit around foaming at the mouth because religion exists. The whole point is that religion is used (not manipulated, typically.) to justify the evil doing of some people. If I am bad as an atheist then I leave behind a terrible legacy for my children. That makes it my fault. I don't have this excuse of religion and it's perceived around here as weak and sad.

RuddyBollocks · 11 months

Well, Malcolm X was originally part of a sect started by African nationalists in America called the Nation of Islam, which was as much a political organization as a religious one, and which advocated violent actions among other things. Admittedly, later in life Malcolm X distanced himself from the philosophies of the Nation of Islam and became more of a strident Muslim, but he started out not necessarily a "good" Muslim.

frogmeat · 11 months

I don't understand why the Christians and Muslims are "good" or "evil" while the nonreligious are "ethical" or "evil".

I realize it's not your intent, but it sounds like you're agreeing that nonreligious people can't be "good without god".

Ahpeydey · 11 months

Malcolm X pretty much promoted violence wasn't exactly Martin Luther King esque


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