It’s not unusual for a Christian ‘zealot’ to accuse an atheist of ‘cherry picking’.
When the latter uses a quote from the Bible to argue something which ‘displeases’ the former, of course.


“If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”

I found this quote, which belongs to Dostoevsky, in an article published by http://www.thecatholicthing.org in 2016.
” That is to say, the nonexistence of God means that we live in a world of perfect moral freedom; we may do anything we like, up to and including mass murder. “

Well, if I remember correctly – more than three decades have passed since I had read The Brothers Karamazov, which didn’t impress me much, the book is an intricate, but very compelling, demonstration of the exact contrary.

” Raskolnikov is unable to live with himself after the assassination of the usurer. It is fundamentally unable to clear his sense of right and wrong, to silence his conscience. Initially, he tries to continue living, enjoying his cunning, concluding that it is a superman. Yet the humble Sonya reminds him of his act, reminds him of his guilt and therefore needs forgiveness. Dostoevsky destroyed the theory of the Superman condemning the characters involved in the mental suffering until they recognize the truth.“

Time has come for me to admit of having myself committed the sin.
The quote I used above ends with ” and the light of Christianity. “

Cherry picking had grabbed my attention while researching for a future post. ‘Moral identity‘. Which implies ‘autonomous morality’:

” The theory that each person imposes the moral law on himself. It is opposed to heteronomous morality, which holds that the moral law is imposed from outside of man by another, and ultimately by the divine Other, who is God, which makes the moral law theonomous. ”

So.
Those engaged in cherry picking do it because the selection serves their purposes or because their actions are “imposed from outside”?

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