Thursday, August 13, 2009

Why Xians Need Rules

Maybe I just need to stop listening to and reading anything Xians write about their beliefs. I feel compelled to write comments arguing against their assertions, but the Xians just ignore them and the free-thinkers have heard it all before. A case in point; In the middle of some forum, one of god's select had to throw in the ol' chestnut about atheists not having morality because they don't have a religion to tell them the rules. As always, a freshman college course, in this case Social Anthropology, is sufficient to rebut that assertion, but I also thought about the light this assertion sheds on the Xian.

The insistence that morality can't exist without religious guidance, in spite of the fact that they keep addressing this to atheists who clearly understand and practice morality as adeptly as their Xian counterparts, suggests that maybe the Xians have no capacity to act morally without threats of eternal damnation. If these Xians feel that they, themselves, would be unable to act morally without thinking a vengeful god is watching over them, maybe they cling to the structure of religion to help them control their sociopathy.

Let's see, what are the symptoms of a sociopath, or what they now prefer to call a person with antisocial personality disorder? They include persistent lying (where have I seen that lately? Oh yeah, Ken Ham's Museum-o-lies.), an extreme sense of entitlement (like when someone feels that his personal beliefs should be part of public school curricula and be codified into local, state and federal law), lack of remorse or empathy (like the way he doesn't understand or care when people become upset, or become the victims of prejudice, as a result of his personal beliefs becoming part of the curriculum or the law), a tendency to violate the rights and boundaries of others (like when he fights to keep other religions out of his neighborhood, also see above), aggressive behavior (like threatening to murder someone for breaking a cracker), and, of course, a general difficulty distinguishing between right and wrong.

Well, maybe there are some slight similarities between sociopaths and evangelical Xians, but they're mighty subtle. So if these Xian writers assert that morality requires adherence to religion, because they themselves are unable to be moral without adherence to religion, we may never know for sure. Oh wait! What's the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath? I may have looked up the wrong one.

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