That's the reason I shouldn't rant. Incoherence is *not* a virtue.

I so hope this election is over soon. Because if I have to see those posters proclaiming "Werte brauchen Gott" (Moral values need god) for much longer, I'm going to rant someones ear off. Probably J.'s, because she is most often unlucky enough to be my audience.

( A bit of background on these posters: )

Now back to my original rant.

I've been an atheist for my whole life. Even in Kindergarten the idea of a god, a higher being or some kind of cosmic balance just didn't make sense to me at all. (There's also a fair bit of what nostalgia_lj perfectly phrases here as "I do not believe in any gods, but the argument that such a thing could exist is not enough to make me want to worship it because I don't recognise something like that as having any jurisdiction over my moral beliefs." to my atheism, but that's not the point.)
Despite being an atheist I have moral values. Granted, I can trace most of them back to my one governing rule "Don't fuck up other people's lives, it leads to too much work". But I know others who have a much more sophisticated system of justifications.

It *is* possible to have values without believing in a god. Personally, I think if you have to buy into a whole system of believes to understand the moral values, they can't be very good, but then, I'm a huge fan of keeping things simple.

I guess what it all boils down to is that I really, really dislike those posters and wanted to make that known to people who will probably never even see them.

</rant>

---

ETA, because I've not posted a meme in so long, and it ate LJ:
( See? I'm not a nice person! Even online quizzes agree. )