Guru Mike attempts to conveys moral instruction to some who are clearly in need of it:
The next time some godbot twit tries to say we need god for our morality, I’m going to direct them to this a-hole’s blog. Morals do not consist of blindly following dear leader’s orders. That’s not morality, that’s obedience. Real morals start with the idea that you dont do things to others that you would not want done to yourself.
By all means, do send them here. Obviously Mike could use some more in-depth reading here; if he visited more often he would know that since the Golden Rule is but a subset of Christian morality, traditional Western morals do not start there.
And as has been pointed out before, morals cannot possibly start there even outside the Christian perspective. Attempting to use the Golden Rule as a base for morality is a logical dead end, as it grants a free pass to anyone who happens to be twisted enough to desire the sort of thing they wish to inflict on others.
Strange masochists lurking in dungeons enacting violent fantasies is no basis for a system of morality!
The Bible is forthright. The one thing, the only thing, God demands is our obedience. To understand is good, but to obey is better, mostly because we are incapable of understanding. Glass darkly and all that. Ironically, Mike comes close to the truth, he simply fails to grasp that obedience is morality.
Of course, this should not be confused with the “just following orders” defense for which Mike has rightful contempt. A human authority which gives illicit orders is an illegitimate authority, but God’s authority can never be illegitimate, therefore His orders cannot be illicit, however repugnant they may strike us at first.
It seems more than a little ironic, though, that so many atheists should get their panties in a bunch over a hypothetical Divine-ordered child-killing of the sort that has never taken place in two thousand years of Christianity while simultaneously supporting the thousands of actual child murders that occur daily. (I know, I know, unborn children aren’t children, they’re goldfish or ferns or whatever. That’s why gays and feminists are so terrified of sex selection and pre-natal testing, right?)
For folks that claim to be so terribly fond of reason, it is astonishing how little familiarity with it these atheists demonstrate. It seems absence really does make the heart grow fonder after all.