Atheist Richard Dawkins is widely known or said to support moral living. Moral living is a consistent claim made by modern atheists, who arguable do live somewhat moral lives. However, the question I would like to ask is what is the standard of morality offered by modern atheists?
What is the measuring line of their morals?
In a recorded interview, atheist Richard Dawkins stated that he supports infanticide and can see no moral objection to that at all. Quote
“What about infanticide? Morally, Strickly morally I can see no objection to that at all. I would be in favour of infanticide.” Richard Dawkins
Obviously we have to take the context of the infantide he is speaking about into consideration, but in reality, this is totally depraved of him to make such a claim.
The problem with this type of so-called morality and logic which discerns this so-called morality is that it is based upon the opinions of men, who, by themselves are depraved, according to the natural depravity of man. Thus, when morality is discerned by men, then it moves downhill and has in fact, moved downhil and it is only a matter of time before it hits rockbottom.
Thus, I post the video of Dawkins in my comment box and leave his words for you to judge for yourself.
Remember the past!
Simon Peter Sutherland 
#1 by Simon Peter Sutherland on April 26, 2012 - 6:29 PM
#2 by Allallt on April 27, 2012 - 8:33 AM
Here is the whole interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYNY2oKVWU
The context of which you mention all too briefly, and never elaborate on, is euthanasia for a child in horrible suffering as a result of a terminal illness. That’s the context.
And Dawkins’ footnote on the topic is that he worries about the slippery-slope that may lead to.
I’m sorry if I consider this more compassionate than a view that mandates keeping the child alive in deep and unimaginable torment to die prematurely regardless. Is the moral option really the one that increases the amount of over all suffering?
#3 by Simon Peter Sutherland on April 27, 2012 - 10:17 AM
I have stated that there is a context, and that I have left the video on for people to judge for themselves, which you have.
However, you clearly do not see the same things that I see, This is just a minor form of what will progress further, however, I do not see that any human has the right to take away the life of a baby, either in the womb or otherwise.
There are many people in the world who are suffering in all forms, physical, mental, etc, shall science now claim that it is moral to remove them? Is a cancer patient not suffering? Should that patient be removed also?
Human beings suffer, that is a reality of life and no man has the right to say that because someone is born a certain way, that it is moral to remove them.
I’m glad that Jesus never took that viewpoint, but rather healed them.
#4 by Allallt on April 28, 2012 - 5:12 AM
Some people cannot be healed. Your cancer analysis is pretty poor because the patient is either healed or killed prematurely by chemotherapy.
For children the question gets more difficult: what if they are never going to reach the age of consent to such an idea as euthanasia, but will undoubtedly suffer in unimaginable pain for as long as they do live? Is your moral objection to allow that suffering?
As for your point on science taking an authority over such questions, Dawkins explicitly warns against that in the interview, and that is not the circumstance being advocated. You can’t block all new ideas by exaggerating them beyond what is being raised.
#5 by Simon Peter Sutherland on April 29, 2012 - 5:53 PM
Your defence is based upon your own personal bias. As are most. But it is in those conditions of personal bias that we all learn things.
A man may say 50% truth and 50% error. It is up to each person if he believes the truth or the error.
In this case, I reject your opinions that it is moral to take away any human beings life in infancy for they have not even had the time to do anything with their life because the infanticide inclinded adult has taken away their life as though they are God Himself.
Human beings are not God. Adults are not the judge and jury of human beings who are younger and maybe even more unwell than is considered normal.
As for your denial of my claim concerning the cancer point, I do not agree with you that my argument is poor, it is not poor, it is a reality based point. Those people who are sick would like nothing more than to be healed and so too, I imagine would those children whom your man Dawkins would have put to death.
Seems possible to me that you would defend Dawkins no matter what he says? ? ? But no doubt you would deny that.
It is not immoral to allow suffering, it is a reality of life and brings forth character and strength. Every human being suffers throughout life in one way or another, it makes us who we are.
I deny infanticide and a degrading filthy idea from the bowels of atheist science and I deny abortion too and so to does Gianna Jesson.
I will speak out against it as the filthy scum that it is and I will not back down from my beliefs and neither will I share a table with a man who supports the murder of unborn children and infanticide. Take it or leave it.
#6 by Allallt on April 30, 2012 - 2:01 PM
You say that the cancer patient would prefer to be healed. I don’t doubt it, but the entire point here is that cures are not an option. Pay attention: Dawkins believes infanticide is permissible on the sole grounds of a crippling agonising terminal illness for which there is not a cure. I’m sure the baby would prefer to be cured of its suffering and allowed to life a life as long as a healthy person. But that, definitionally, is not an option.
“It is not immoral to allow suffering, it is a reality of life…” Can you take a moment to seriously consider all the things that are simply a fact of life and are immoral. Suffering may be a fact of life, but that doesn’t mean that its prevention isn’t moral or that ignoring it when you could prevent it is not immoral.
As for humans playing God, that doesn’t work either. God made all of us, but parents made their children. If God is allowed to kill us (which you evidently think He is) then how can you explain–without special pleading–that parents cannot make the same decisions.
If you think morality is grounded in God then God must be moral. How are we supposed to recognise the moral bits if we permit God’s immoral actions (like murder, and suffering, and the way he treated Job etc). If giving us life gives him the right to murder then it follows that all parents have the right to kill their children.
If you think death is a judgement, you don’t understand what the Bible says: you are judged after your death, so your death cannot be your judgement.
#7 by Simon Peter Sutherland on April 30, 2012 - 4:21 PM
Not interested. Your comments are inconsistent and typical of one who is on the side of a cloak that covers evil.
You claim that the God of the Bible has committed murder, that is pathetic. Murder is a human act based upon the human condition and an act of injustice, it is not consistent with the actions of a Spirit being who gives life and takes it away as He wills. God has at no time murdered anyone, for murder is illegal but God is outside law in His eternal state and when He conducts His work here on earth, He conducts it according to His revealed will, thus the events of Job took place before the law of Moses was written and that changes everything. He never did anything like that again to His people. Thus, from the time of the giving of the law at Sinai, killing in warfare was not and is not considered murder, neither is is illegal, if it is written in the law.
Thus, your argument is inconsistent and ignorant and illogical according to theo-LOGIC. You are attempting to argue a theo-LOGICAL matter or matters according to the logic that men have set in place and it does not work.
However, God can do what He wants, He gives life and takes it away as He wills, and He is not in the dock and if you don’t like that, then hard lines on you.
O, and do not attempt to tell me that I don’t understand the Bible, that is totally pathetic. On the contrary, it is impossible for you in your current depraved condition and without the presence of the Holy Spirit to even remotely understand the Bible. Thus, it is you who do not understand.
Infanticide is evil, depraved and nothing more than the scum that sits upon the surface of a sewer and I will never recant of that position. Now you can either take that or leave it and I do not really care which one it is.
Adios
#8 by Allallt on April 30, 2012 - 4:44 PM
I understand the Bible just fine. And I didn’t say you don’t. What I did say was that if you think death is our judgement then you don’t understand the Bible. You hadn’t said that you think that, it’s just a get-out clause I wished to close in case you tried it.
Now, I’m still very sure that your idea of a moral world is one where we let a child suffer in debilitating, crippling, unfathomable agony for as long as is possible if it has the misfortune to be born with certain conditions.
I consider that immoral. But here’s the strength of your stance: you haven’t succumbed to the secular philosophy of valuing quality of life to underpin your metaphysical thoughts.
I suppose I should congratulate you on the strength of your convictions, but I think you’re a bad person for it.
Now, to address an earlier point, how is my own moral bias–it’s not a bias, it’s a definition–any less valuable than your moral bias? The fact that your moral bias is actually God’s moral bias still leaves you with a moral bias (and means that your moral bias is something you’ve taken by authority or by faith instead of thinking about it…)
#9 by Simon Peter Sutherland on April 30, 2012 - 4:59 PM
Once again, you are mixing oil with water, by even mentioning “faith” your entering into a whole system of thought, of which your understanding of faith is not my understanding of faith.
However, your comments concerning suffering children, is a mind game and a play on emotions, go ahead and deny it, but it will not change it.
Life is life, you did not give life and you have no right whatsoever to take life.
Now you say at the end, “..instead of thinking about it” once again, you are slipping into a logic system which assumes things and applies that assumption towards all people who are called Christian.
I have thought about it, long and deeply and I can prove that my understanding concerning infanticide has not come from the written text of the Bible, since the Bible is pretty much silent about it. But the Bible mentions a form of abortion, but infanticide, no, so my conslusions have nothing whatsoever to do with faith, on the contrary, I do not believe you understand what faith actually is. It certainly is not blind and neither is it ignorant of reality or evidence.
Infanticide is evil and a cloaked masquerade with an agenda to go further into other forms of this depravity.
Now, I am not going to convince you and you are not going to convince me, so I suggest we agree to disagree.
#10 by Allallt on April 30, 2012 - 5:15 PM
Fine, I deny that I am trying to play emotional mind games. I am trying to get you to think about the paradox of your idea of a moral decision being one that lowers the well being and happiness and increases the suffering and pain.
I’ve pulled you up on the slippery-slope fallacy once already: we’re not talking about whether this way of thinking is meant to push an agenda to go further. We are talking about the actual issue: euthanasia of a child in deep unfathomable suffering.
To say you’ve not taken your conclusion on faith is a nonsense. It grounds morality in God and ignores the concept of suffering, it has no non-faith claims, it relies on the special pleading case for God’s right to do as He wishes with the life He creates yet parents cannot do the same.
My favourite part, of course, is that I’m not allowed to discuss this issue with you; you cannot be questioned. If I do it on your grounds (the Bible and faith) I don’t know what I’m talking about, and if I don’t do it on your grounds I’m depraved and Godless. If that is not the perfect system to encourage your non-thinking–the complete ignorance to criticism–then nothing is.
On God’s authority you think God has the right to kill. On God’s authority you think life for life’s sake is more important than the quality of life.
At this point I’m not even trying to get you to change your mind on the issue, I’m trying to get you to recognise how you reached the conclusion.
Don’t tell me I don’t know how you did it, that doesn’t help. Actually tell me how you did it (especially if I am wrong).
#11 by Simon Peter Sutherland on April 30, 2012 - 5:26 PM
This is all very boring. You are “trying to get you to recognise how you reached the conclusion.” Good grief. You think you have to tell me how I arrived at a conclusion? How arrogant and conceited are you?
I have arrived at my conclusion that infanticide is evil because a baby is formed by a sexual act, the baby forms in the mothers womb, the baby grows, the baby is born, the baby is alive, the baby has life, the baby is a human being. But infanticide takes away the lives of fellow human beings without their consent, it stops their hearts, the blood no longer flows, the mind ceases to be, there is no hope for those persons to ever live. Murder. Nothing more than murder.
As for your pathetic comment that I cannot be questioned, that is a joke right? I am writing all these things, putting out debates, writing books, songs, films, etc just so that the whole world has to agree with me or leave me alone?
Really. On the contrary, I do not agree with you or father Dawkins and it seems to me that it is the modern atheist movement who seeks to have the whole world agree with it and the claims and books of its sacred cows or else be deemed as a stupid ignorant, deluded faith-head and a scientific heretic who deserves nothing more than to be insulted or burned at the scientific stake.
#12 by Allallt on April 30, 2012 - 5:59 PM
(Forgive me a longer reply)
Unfortunately no, it wasn’t a joke. It doesn’t matter how much writing you are doing, you tried to close me off from the conversation by telling me I didn’t understand the concept of faith or the Bible so I can’t mention them, and I can’t talk without reference to them because that is depraved and immoral. If you consider that the same as a debate then you are mistaken.
You also didn’t answer the request for an explanation of how you reached the conclusion. You just described life, then death, then used the buzz word “murder”. There is no explanation there.
Did I say I was telling you how you reached the conclusion. No. I said I was trying to get you to recognise how you reached it. And until you can put a coherent reason into words I don’t think you can answer that challenge.
Now, obviously, part of the problem here is that your decision to let a child continue to live in abject suffering without hope of relief is immoral, and you think the same about my decision to allow that child to be relieved of that abject suffering. That is an emotionally difficult topic. But the issue I’m actually trying to discuss is your reasoning.
You haven’t answered the challenge of your bias. You reject the idea that it is God’s bias that you are taking on authority (because that would be a faith claim). But you don’t offer any reason why your moral intuition here is not just a bias. Or is it on faith, as you do claim that “God can do what He wants”?
See, you told me that “Your comments are inconsistent”, but it seems to me that yours are too (and I say “too” out of politeness because I can’t see where I am being inconsistent. Please point it out to me like I had the courtesy to do for you above).
Parents do give life. If you get rid of parenthood life ends. Parents give life. Now, you say because God also gives life He can do what He wants with it. It is inconsistent to not extend the same liberties to parents.
Personally, in case you’re wondering, I condemn the taking of life. It doesn’t matter to me if God is the one responsible, or people. If I believed in God I would think Him a tyrant without human compare any time I considered the death tolls of natural disasters. But you forgive God that, and that’s inconsistent with thoughts of morality.
How do I get from condemning the taking of life to allowing euthanasia? Simple, the thing I value is not life. Life is a context in which experiences and thoughts can arise: concepts of beauty and the feeling of awe, satisfaction and love, liberty and achievement. I value these things. Life is necessary for these things, so life should be cherished. But, when all life can bring forward is pain and suffering and anguish (which was the topic of discussion) I maintain that that life can be ended as the kinder option.
#13 by Simon Peter Sutherland on April 30, 2012 - 6:25 PM
You are using words which are used in the context of your thinking. Words which if I attempted to communicate why I say this, would take up to 70,000 words to explain in detail.
We clearly do not think the same, and in order for me to attempt to communicate what I am saying and where I am coming from it would take you at least 6 years of study of theological matters to even grasp what it is I am saying. It is for this reason why it is hard for a theologian to debate issues with modern atheists, who have progressed into a system of thought which is as far apart from one another as India is from England. Should I now spend 24 hours attempting to even reach the land which you now walk upon?
No matter what I say to you, you have made up your mind, according to the system of thought of which you have moved into.
We have no common ground whatsoever, we are as far apart in our thinking as Doug Wilson and Christopher Hitchens.
I see no way forwards, I find your comments ignorant, unlearned of theological understanding. Trying to reach you with what I see and know, is like my trying to paint a wall with ice cream, it just gets more and more messy and muddled everytime the cream is put upon the wall.
We have no common ground at all, we do not even think the same about life, death, health, God, thinking, etc. You see a word and that word progresses into your line of thought for that word, and I see a word and my thoughts go to my line of thought for that word, and for each of us to attempt to communicate on a blog of what scholarly line of thought each of us have progressed into concerning all those words is not going to work on this blog.
I write these things, that people may consider my points, take them away and think about them. If they do not agree with me, then what of it?
Thus, if you do not agree with me, of which I do not agree with you, then that is it. Agree to disagree, or else prove yourself to be more dogmatic than you claim to be.
I have stated that if you want to go on in your line of thought and that your conscience does not agree with mine, then so be it. I am not going to lose sleep over it. I am content to know that people think differently and I do not want to you think like me, and I am content to disagree with you and you with me. So let it go and move on.
Thanks for the debate, and for you comments. But for the reasons I have just mentioned, I see no common ground for us to debate concerning this matter. Life is sacred, life is life and Oil and water cannot mix.
#14 by Allallt on April 30, 2012 - 6:51 PM
Fine. The conversation is over. But as you’re leaving notes for people who may come across this conversation at a later date, allow me to do the same:
You insist on calling him Christofer Hitchens, when it’s Christopher. You also keep spelling it “appart”, when it’s “apart”, and you can’t spell “strictly”; you claim an inability to communicate your point and yet you expect us to believe you spent 6 years studying theological matters (or at least that your understanding is so great that I’d need 6 years off understanding to be on par with you).
You haven’t even asked me if I’ve ever done any level of theological study, you’ve just disagreed with me and so written it off as unlearned (don’t worry too much about finding me ignorant and unlearned, I think way worse of you).
You talk in metaphors–“reach the land which you now walk upon”–in the hope that someone will imagine a meaning for you.
Not only that, but your last response (and I leave it to your readers to decide the validity of this accusation for themselves) was devoid of meaning. It meant nothing.
As for us having no common ground, I find that odd. I find that odd for two reasons: firstly, I thought it fair to assume we at least shared physical and demonstrable reality and secondly the dramatic fobbing off I got in that last post was your apparent reply to my challenges to you.
You refer to my “system of thought” like you know me and dogmas I carry. But if I challenged you to name one, you couldn’t.
Your ice cream metaphor is your fault. You’re the one making a mess. I’ve been clear with my stance from the start.
I also love your challenge. You tell me to stop the conversation with you or me dismissed as dogmatic. Again, cutting yourself off from criticism (from me at least).
Lastly, I shan’t thank you for the debate. I originally posted to let you know why I left condescended to by another post. The only point you have articulated to any extent is that you have no apology for the contempt you show atheists.
So here’s my challenge: direct your readers here. All of them. See if they can see my point and, more interestingly to me, my criticism.
#15 by Simon Peter Sutherland on April 30, 2012 - 7:25 PM
Yes. I leave the comments here for all to see. The people can make their own minds up, I’m fine with that. However, I think you fail to see that the matter is a conscience issue and anyone who knows a thing or two, knows that people can be pursuaded into all sorts of evils by argument and pursuasive words. Such, I think, is the case here. Dawkins has pursuaded people into an shameful evil thing and the conscience is quenched.
As for the spelling comments? Not sure what that is about, however, if I have made any errors, it is because I am only human and with that many contrasting arguments and attacks I get from modern atheists, its a wonder I can even think clearly. However, I know professors from Universities and museums who consistently use a spell checker and when they write by hand, it is evident why. However, you have slumped low with that argument, as it is a consistent falling of modern atheists, who when they have lost the debate and cannot pursuade the person they see before them into their line of thought, they fall into the ditch of going through their words to find any errors, this is common with modern atheists. Yet it works both ways, I have found more errors in the spelling of modern atheists than I myself found at school, and with so many modern atheists being from America, and very narrow minded, they forget the fact the spelling in England somewhat differs to spelling in America. A basic word programme reveals that and the spell checker often attempts to correct English spelling according to a USA setting.
Obviously that is not the case with Christopher Hitchens, which if I have spelled his name that way, it is just a clerical typing error, nothing whatsoever to do with my lack of familiarity with him. I find his books somewhat like Hitlers books and full of error, lies and poor theological understanding. But now and again, he said some good things and I regard Hitchens as the best of the bunch, which does not say very much for my views of the modern atheists which are stil alive.
#16 by Candide on June 30, 2013 - 3:59 PM
Mr. Strickly, you have to watch the entire discourse of Singer and Dawkins, not just the clip that you have here. And if you listen closely, you will know the context within which the statements of both speakers are founded. They were discussing about moral boundaries and slippery slopes if they agreed that roadkill victims and flesh eating were moral (Singer) and if abortion and infanticide were moral (Dawkins). Dawkins posits a question right after his infanticide statement. If you still cannot grasp the discussion, it’s not anyone’s fault God had spent less time on you. Regards, Francois.
#17 by Simon Peter Sutherland on June 30, 2013 - 4:41 PM
Pulling out the old ‘context’ or the old ‘out of context’ arguments cannot deny the truth of this matter. Neither can your ad hominem methods.
2 questions:
1) What makes you think I have not listened to the interview before I wrote on it? Is it because I differ to you concerning its meaning?
2) What do you mean “it’s not anyone’s fault God had spent less time on you”?
#18 by Andres San Martin on October 28, 2015 - 6:07 PM
to dawkins and his “believers”, the infanticide have a “context”…. ¿murder can have a “context” … Richard dawkins, inmoral…