Who would you expect to be more moral - an Atheist or a Theist?

[Georgia Avenue]

As others have said, as a theist (rather more of a Deist, but nvm) I can’t vote for either one. I don’t EXPECT an Atheist to act immorally because I believe all people are guided by intentions towards an absolute good whether they believe it or not. And plenty of Theists are unable to control their nasty bits despite a conscious knowledge of why they should behave. As Hobbes said, “For the thoughts are to the desires as scouts and spies to range abroad and find the way to the things desired, all steadiness of the mind's motion, and all quickness of the same.”

[Dan Mezick]

You are off by a mile here.

The bottom line is that not every professing Christian in the world believes the "once saved always saved" theology you describe.

In reality, very few professing Christians buy that. It is a popular notion among certain Southern denominations, leading me to belive you are likely from that region.

As for atheists-- certainly a pure atheist has more courage in his little finger than most people have in their whole body.

The reality is there are few actual pure atheists for precisely this reason. Ditto for pure Christians. Philosophical purists (both extremes) tend to be very moral and courageous precisely BECAUSE they have thought it through completely for themselves, and they have the guts to live it out.

Both are rare and 99% of the people are philosophically "mixed breed" mongrels. The missing element is courage.

[Carl_William]

Just a comment: Only Winners Post & they tend to be atheists....

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Which brings me back to a point I made a while ago - there seem to be more non-theists on poker forums (even Negreanu's Full Contact) than any other forums I have been on. Now, I haven't visited a lot of scientific forums so it is probably true there as well. Is this because poker players tend to be very logical and mathematically inclined?


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It seems to me that 90 percent or probably a much higher percentage of 2plus2 posters are winners at poker or claim to be winners (give the impression or claim to win on balance). The fact is: ON BALANCE; winners play more hours and more often than poker losers. Most of the 2Plus2 poker forum posters claim to win so many big bets per a certain time span. The players who lose money or break about even probably make up at least 98 percent of the total poker population, and as a result of this fact; many losers don't put in that many poker hours; and very few losers post on 2Plus2. All this tells me is that many of the people who boast about their poker winnings (i.e., TwoPlusTwo posters) are atheists.... The survey or poll is loaded with people of a certain type, and not a representative sample of the overall human population. Many very intelligent people don't play poker (at least serious compulsive poker -- serious poker is generally compulsive) or don't develop poker skills, and are not born natural poker players.

How would a survey(poll) concerning the theist-atheistic moral thing for the poker losers be made?

Another thing; the propaganda put out by poker people:
"That a pro poker playing career is a great thing"

Is it really? Or is it mostly a line to keep the current poker hype craze going.... By the way; it's an old line....

Things like:
Go to work when you feel like it.
Get out of bed when you wake up.
You are your own boss.



Sitting a poker table 50 hours a week in not a noble thing to do with our finite lifetime -- the theist or atheistic time span on earth....