Atheists get away with all their "fun", while Christians are scrutinised. When Christians fall, the media tears them apart, but Atheists don't make the news. If their acts are really atrocious, "bad" Christians even make it to the history books, but of how many "bad" Atheists have you read in history?
There are very good reasons for this anomaly.
Christian morals
Christians (are supposed to) stand for high moral values. That is part and parcel of being a Christian. That is what is expected of one when you are a Christian. After all, the battle against sin (even in Christ) is part of a Christian life and lifestyle. But Christians are human and we do make mistakes, but that is why there is grace in repentance and forgiveness.
Christians have a moral reference. And, yes, I know there are various churches and denominations that interpret certain things differently. The Atheists also ever-so-quick to remind us of the Old Testament laws – and question their applicability in modern society. But, in general, we have the “golden rule”, which states:
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
Or, put slightly differently by Jesus:
‘My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command.’
We all know that it is impossible to perfectly achieve these commands, but what matters is that Christians 1) have these as absolute reference and 2) strive towards them.
The point here is the absolute reference. We know what to aim for. And, admittedly, some people's aim is more accurate than others. (BTW: that is what sin is: “missing the goal”. It's actually very simple: if you don't do anything out of love, you are missing the goal = sin.)
Atheist morals(?)
Let's now bring Atheists into the picture:
Atheists do not have an absolute moral reference. To them moral values are relative.
They feel strongly about the fact that morality is relative, because:
Society has to sort out what they want to agree upon themselves
Morality may differ from culture to culture, or country to country
Morality evolves over time, etc.
The problem is that, what I hold as a moral value may not be what my “neighbour” (spouse, friend, whatever...) holds as a moral value. In fact, an Atheist does not even have to have any particular moral value if he thinks it is not necessary, because: who says there must be something like that? After all, morals are things imposed by a deity! And Atheists don't believe in deities.
Atheists may decide to comply with a country's laws, as they judge them as agreed upon by the citizens of that country. (They may also decide to break them – as long as they don't get caught. Just like many of us Christians :-)
With the above logic, I have never been able able to understand why many Atheists on this forum claim that they are on higher moral ground than Christians. MemeMan even devoted an article to “Atheism Breeds Pity, While Faith Begets Indifference”, which was the first article I ever accused of being “dribble” (see reference below).
Let an Atheist tell us himself
Actions speak louder than words. Let's turn to the one Atheist who exposed his life to us: Brett Rosenberg. Later known as “Crotch Rocket”, or more recently as “Bapka”.
I know that a sample of one is not statistically significant, but Brett's life serves well as an example of what may happen in a world of no moral absolutes or rather, where you make up your values as you go along.
We are also very fortunate to have had his ex-wife and an ex-lover to respond to his articles (see references below).
But Brett, pleeeezzz understand: this article is NOT about you. You're life that you opened so publicly merely serves as a good display window for Atheist values. I am not playing 'holier than thou” either, nor am I trying to make you look any worse in public. And I expect that you are going to say that you wrote many of the comments or articles as tongue-in-cheek. But, your ex-wife and ex-lover's articles help us get clarity. Due to the fact you are also a self-proclaimed Atheist, I am merely using your actions as examples of relative (or no?) Atheist moral values. To remove yourself from the picture, I will therefore rather refer to an anonymous “Mr. Atheist” in the examples.
Mr. Atheist has relative to no moral values, so it is fine to do the following:
Mr. Atheist marries a charming girl. They have wild sex when he gets from work. Nothing wrong with that. Even Christians do that - within the marriage.
They decide to have kids. Mr. Atheist reasons “She wants a baby and all the fun of sex went out of the window”
The babies arrive, and all Mr. Atheist thinks about is himself and sex. So, he ends up “end up in front of the computer either chatting to hot girls on the web or masturbating on Skype with them”.
Eventually, Mr. Atheist was sick and tired of on the web with girls and he got himself a hot blonde secretary.
I am not sure whether it is the same secretary, but Mr. Atheist reveals in a comment in an article (http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/I-am-a-sinner-for-having-slept-with-a-woman-20120615) that “During her [his wife's] last trimester of the youngest son's pregnancy, I went to Cape Town on a business trip and picked up a woman at the hotel where I was staying.” Mmm... little to no morals certainly do have benefits!
Many a true word are spoken in jest, as Mr. Atheist reveals in a comment in the same article: "There will be no sex in heaven??? Please scrap me from the list!!!! I want to die during intercourse and please can I come back like a Buddhist and have some more lives so I can sleep with thousands of women!"
By this time, the news24 community is bashing Mr. Atheist! So what does he do? He merely shifts his moral values! Atheism sure has huge benefits!
Continuing:
In the same article, Mr. Atheist does a turnaround and makes a public declaration: “I have always loved you no matter who I have slept with in the past. I know you don't understand this, but it is really true. I want to be back at home with you... But most of all I want that girl back that I married 10 years ago. I don't care if you get 4000 wrinkles and grow old, you are the one that I want to put my arm around when I fall asleep”. Wow, Mr. Atheist has seen the light! Or has he?
Ah, the making of a great love story! Unfortunately it is not the kind where you “love God... and love your neighbour as yourself”.
So, Mr. Atheist's wife writes an article, revealing her side of the story, confirming what Mr. Atheist has done. This also now grants Mr. Atheist the opportunity to display his moral fibre and show his re-found true love for his wife...
But, instead of showing remorse, Mr. Atheist instead stays true to his lack of morals and now REALLY shows his full colours by writing an article “How to cheat on your wife”.
In that article (see references below), he exposes what the life of an Atheist could really be:
Mr. Atheist has no problem with abusing the church if it fits his diabolical purposes...
“There will be women at that church you can sit and fantasise about”
You go to dating sites and “please don’t tell those ex-fridges on the dating site you are an atheist! Please not! Be a Christian.”
Mr. Atheist doesn't care about other people: he feeds his wife sleeping pills – obviously without her consent!
Next, Mr. Atheist gets onto (what he calls) the “Cyber Highway to Hell”, or the “Forbidden Freeway” where he roams and “feels the joys of youth return to the hell you created for yourself”
Mr. Atheist hides behind a mask: “Don’t say anything evil or sexual. Pretend you have forgotten you have a penis. Portray the perfect man”. No morals – no problems!
Mr. Atheist then proves that the article is actually NOT a joke as he uses his experience to lead readers through the delicate tricks of “hooking” an unsuspecting “secretary” under the guise of being her “boss”.
Mr. Atheist's ex-lover also explains in detail how:
Mr. Atheist even abuses her as his extra-marital lover and
Mr. Atheist also has no problems with shady business deals.
She even confirms how he did to her "exactly like he instructed men to do in his last article". Therefore, no room for Mr. Atheist to claim it was all a joke!
But she finally came to realise that she “was nothing more than a side dish on his menu of women”
Mr. Atheist sums it up quite well when he says: “There are no rules any more. You are now Satan personified!”.
The ACTUAL point is...
But this article is not about “Mr. Atheist”, or the bad things he has done (and keeps on doing), or how he sees people as objects to tread upon for his own benefit and satisfaction.
No, the actual point of the article is the following:
What if it was not “Mr. Atheist” who did all of this, but “Mr. Christian”?
Mr. Christian would have been torn apart in this forum. A Mr. Christian who did these thing to his wife would probably have been in the newspapers! We would never have heard the end of this!
Why?
Because Christians stand for what they believe in
Because Christians are not supposed to act that way.
Christians have an absolute reference to be measured against, a goal he is supposed to strive towards.
It is perfectly natural for the media to report, and for history to record, when Christians mess up. They are not supposed to mess up!
But all of that does not count for an Atheist! Does he get torn apart in the media? No, not this time! Not ever!
Why? Because:
The guy who did this is an Atheist.
And, unlike Christians, Atheists stand morally for... nothing. Their only claim to fame is the fact that they do not believe in any deity
Therefore, the world does not say a word about the actions of Mr. Atheist – due the fact that not believing in God implies that it would be silly of us to expect much morals from Atheists (if any).
Atheists have no absolute moral reference in which they "believe". Yes, they fall back on science, on maths, on statistics, on natural selection, etc. ... but these things do not concern themselves with morals or ethics!
Happy ending
The story has a happy ending: Mr. Atheist lives happily ever after, albeit with many hurt, devastated and mutilated bodies in his wake that he does not care about. Why should Mr. Atheist care? Morals are not going to steal any joy from him!
So, Mr. Atheist's story merely died a silent media death... like any Atheist screw-ups did throughout history.
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Articles references:
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