I guess that’s the kind of thing I mean ballistic. I don’t mean to suggest that atheists are less moral; I don’t believe that for a second. What I mean is kind of like what you said about swearing although swearing is just one aspect of a deeper malaise. It’s hard to articulate the thought but with me the reason I don’t swear as a general rule, and certainly not for the sake of it, or when trying to express a point or articulate an argument or viewpoint, is because it is like an admission of losing an argument or resorting to inner anger when that is less effective than intelligent and cogent use of the English language. It is kind of like asking myself why would I resort to trying to offend another? The answer is never going to be a nice one if the receiver of it is really thought of as having sincerity as a human being, despite having a view that one doesn’t agree with.
Also at the risk of sounding like something Jesus would say, it seems to be a case that treating friends and those who agree with us as equals with magnanimity and equity is easy to do. When it is so done to so called enemies and those with very different and opposing viewpoints it says something about character and the inner person. It is like the difference between one who does the right thing because it is so written, or against the law, but will at the first opportunity seek the preverbal loop hole and those who, because of integrity of heart, do the right thing regardless of law or written codes. This phenomenon, I guess one could call it a lack of internal integrity, cuts across the religious divide between atheists and theists. Theists may be more obviously subject to infractions of such intergrity because of the written codes and grandiose claims of moral integrity, defined of course by written codes from the bible and so on. However atheists seem to have this issue also but without the obviousness of it, because they don’t claim a religious code and so on. The charge of hypocrisy cannot be levelled against the atheists on such grounds but lack of internal integrity could well be a charge that could be made.
Of course when a religious person swears at us, or shows a non-generous spirit we get angrier because of the hypocritical aspect of it, as well as the offensiveness of it to us as sincere human beings, and we all like to think of ourselves as sincere. With the atheists though it calls to mind when they were religious and the questions surrounding what part of it did they ever take to heart? For instance the New Testament talks about words seasoned with salt and love thy enemies; good advice for anyone who want to be genuine and effective in the world, so why the rejection of that with some? Perhaps because the spirit of law as it were never took root, as is often also the case with Christians. So it is like two groups of people, those sincere of heart and those not, putting it in a simplistic way! These two groups cut across the divide between atheist and theist of the x JW grouping. It obviously goes beyond the x JW groupings as well, to all sorts of people but there is something about having been a JW once that one would have hoped said something about the person but even that is subject to all sorts of categorisations.
An example may the divide between born ins and converts perhaps, and anther is the so called search for truth and the supposed integrity that went along with that. In fact with me that emphasis the JWs put on truth and its search, did them a disservice in my case as that never stopped and helped lead me out of that religion, but with some it seems to have stopped after a certain point until truth itself becomes completely relative to itself and thus loses all meaning. I could go on but it just a thought or two.
