Imagine, there's no heaven

Frank 013 · Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:10 pm Post subject: Re: Imagine there's no tech

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Niall
So all you have to do then is convince everybody to agree to be atheists, right?

Right!

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Niall
Couldn't we just convince everybody to be Catholic? Jewish? Sunni? Buddhist?

No, those beliefs are just too silly. ::04

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Niall
A justification, maybe. A cause, I doubt it.

I think religion can be a cause sometimes especially when the religion orders believers to take certain actions like convert or kill all non believers, which both Christianity and Islam have in their text.

As an example certain religions teach that the practitioners of other faiths are going to hell and not to associate with them, some also teach that homosexuality is a sin and those people will somehow corrupt our family values leading to cultural decay and chaos.

The result of these teachings is bigotry which has led to altered behavior through religious belief and the people who believe this stuff do act on it.

But I agree that normally cause is personal.

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Niall
The absurd takes many forms both positive and negative, and while I'd agree that religion does not necessarily make somebody act in an extreme fashion (either positive or negative)

I agree that religion does not necessarily make somebody act in an extreme fashion, but I think that it can.

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Niall
The argument being put forth here is that if somebody believes in God they have some sort of extra additional motivation to behave in a certain manner.

I think this can be true if a religion gives absurd orders, and the level of the believer’s fanaticism is acceptable to allow the absurd behavior.

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Niall
Besides, racism has always been a ridiculous and absurd thing. Racists often turned to religion, but during the 19th century, they adopted the scientific method and attempted to use it to justify their beliefs. Religion isn't needed. In its absence, those who believe in the absurd simply create new forms of justification.

Very true but shouldn’t we narrow their ability to justify these behaviors when possible? one of the dangers of religion is that they can be so morally malleable, and when religion is used to justify an action people can tend to accept it?

Denying Gays the right to legal union is a good example here. The religious have single-handedly kept a portion of our society from having equal rights in the eyes of the law, over something that is frankly none of their business.

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Niall
I'm not saying that an implication of the argument presented is that atheists will not act in altruistic ways (like you did), only that, everything else being equal, they'll be less likely to behave in an extreme altruistic manner when compared to a religious individual.

I would say atheists are less likely to act in extreme ways in general. But I also think that the extreme is where the problem lies.

Later

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 11:57 am Post subject: Re: Imagine there's no tech

I agree with George that religion being taught by qualified teachers, and this by no means implies priests, imams or rabbis or any other tradition specific representative, is a good thing. Religion is part of our history and NEEDS to be understood. But we need to expose everyone to all versions with an emphasis on none.

I would love to take a comparative religion course. I think my basic mindset would not be changed in any way regarding my atheism, but I would like to learn some more about it all.

Mr. P.

Mr. P's place. I warned you!!!

Mr. P's Bookshelf.

I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

The pain in hell has two sides. The kind you can touch with your hand; the kind you can feel in your heart...Scorsese's "Mean Streets"

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Niall001 · Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 11:31 am Post subject: Re: Imagine there's no tech

Irish:

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Who do you mean by “we”?

The human race? Mankind. Society.

Or do you just think that it is everybody for themselves?

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Or the brainwashing that continues to control many of the adult religious faithful. In fact, Dawkins’ prologue introduced the idea that he wished to let people know that they could be atheist, that it is an acceptable belief system. Indoctrination is most successful in childhood (Dawkins notes it is particularly disgusting that religion preys on vulnerable, childish minds), but religion also encourages the same ignorance among its adults. I personally did not recognize that trait until after I left the church. I agree it is necessary for children to be “indoctrinated” into a rules system. But that indoctrination can come through instruction and socialization; it need not come through religious dogma.

I'm afraid I don't really find that sense of promoting ignorance, but I suppose that's to be expected!

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I now recognize that you don’t need religion to teach morals, you just teach them. For instance, I would no more tell a child not to lie because god is watching her, than I would tell her there is a boogey man under her bed to keep her from crawling out at night.

Ah yes, but what we do not teach children is as important as what we teach them. You can teach a child that something is right or wrong, and if you only believe that these are historical conventions and modern constructions and not actual absolutes, then do you teach the child that these notions are malleable? Is leaving out certain pieces of information not the same as telling the kid tales of monsters? If we let them believe in Good and Bad as though they were real and not just constructions that exist only in our minds, then does that not have the same effect.

Regardless, I don't think that you need to fool children into believing in a God just to get them to act morally. But I do think it helps to be economical with the truth, and even if you don't believe in a God, well it can be a useful lie, at least in some respects.

Full of Porn*

http://plainofpillars.blogspot.com

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 5:17 pm Post subject: Re: Imagine there's no tech

Niall:

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Or do you just think that it is everybody for themselves?

When it really comes down to it, it is. The 'self' becomes groups and not necessarily individuals. There is always faction. Sad, but true. But we should work as much as possible to stop this. You can start by dropping this 'god' crap!

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I'm afraid I don't really find that sense of promoting ignorance, but I suppose that's to be expected!

Do you deny, then, that this happens? Just because YOU have not experienced this does not preclude it from being something that happens. Just as my experience of people does not speak to ALL those people, no?

There is obviously some form of mind control at work with any system that states that there is some 'being' that is always watching you and is never wrong and that 'you will be judged'.

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then do you teach the child that these notions are malleable?

Absolutely! These notions are malleable! Murder is wrong, but killing in self defense is not. Killing is wrong, but allowing someone die who is so very sick with no hope for a cure is not...especially if they WANT to die!! Stealing is wrong, but if you are starving and need to survive, then stealing some food may not be the worst that you can do. Beating someone up is wrong if you can avoid it and if the other person did nothing to deserve the beating, but beating the shit out of someone raping someone is not wrong at all!! Use of force in one situation is bad while in another it is good. Of course these things are malleable. If not, there would be no problem with morals at all! And also no need to invent an absolute source, which never holds the morals as absolute anyway!

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Regardless, I don't think that you need to fool children into believing in a God just to get them to act morally. But I do think it helps to be economical with the truth, and even if you don't believe in a God, well it can be a useful lie, at least in some respects.

But you still do not show why you need a god. Honest discussion is just as good.

Mr. P.

I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana Boditharta (former booktalk troll)

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

What is all this shit about Angels? Have you heard this? 3 out of 4 people believe in Angels. Are you F****** STUPID? Has everybody lost their mind? - George Carlin

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Niall001 · Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 11:24 am Post subject: Re: Imagine there's no tech

Mr. P.

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Do you deny, then, that this happens? Just because YOU have not experienced this does not preclude it from being something that happens. Just as my experience of people does not speak to ALL those people, no?

Hmm. Think you misunderstand me. I wouldn't say that it doesn't or hasn't happened, only that it's not something that I never found. Now, what I took from Irish's words (correctly or incorrectly I'm not certain) was the notion that it was an intrinsic part of belief.

I said:

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then do you teach the child that these notions are malleable?

You said:

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Absolutely! These notions are malleable! Murder is wrong, but killing in self defense is not. Killing is wrong, but allowing someone die who is so very sick with no hope for a cure is not...especially if they WANT to die!! Stealing is wrong, but if you are starving and need to survive, then stealing some food may not be the worst that you can do.

You've taken me up wrong. By malleable, I don't mean that certain acts are wrong under certain circumstances but not under others, I mean that while for instance rape is now considered right, that is partly an historical accident. What constitutes rape in one era and one culture does not constitute rape in another.

The religious tend to believe in absolute right and wrong, that somethings are always wrong and that right and wrong are not just constructions. Generally, atheists tend to believe that right and wrong are cultural conventions that partly result from biological predispositions of differing strengths.

The religious tend to believe that right and wrong would exist regardless of whether humanity did. But since atheists tend not to believe that right and wrong only exist within our minds, they do not.

So, if you have an atheist child, do you educate them about the changeable nature of morality? Or do you use rules of thumb and act as though these notions were actualities and not just constructions?

Full of Porn*

http://plainofpillars.blogspot.com

Mr. Pessimistic · Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:51 pm Post subject: Re: Imagine there's no tech

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I wouldn't say that it doesn't or hasn't happened, only that it's not something that I never found.

Ok then. But keep in mind, when people like rose and I state such a thing, we do intend to give a picture of a priest or other faithful person saying "Ignorance is grand, lets all be ignorant". While this does happen sometimes, I am not suggesting that the method is that transparent. The ignorance is promoted by not accepting things like science...or adding a caveat that science has no authority on god.

I saw a sign today on the local church in town...it said "Any science that omits god is no science at all". That is promoting ignorance, IMO.

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I mean that while for instance rape is now considered right, that is partly an historical accident.

Rape is now considered right? Ireland must be a f'd up place! (Just kidding). But please explain.

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What constitutes rape in one era and one culture does not constitute rape in another.

I think this is tending towards semantics rather thann any substantial difference in rape. Rape: Forced sexual contact without consent. Now whether the LAW prosectured rape in the same way is a different story, and has nothing to do with the morality of the act itself.

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The religious tend to believe that right and wrong would exist regardless of whether humanity did. But since atheists tend not to believe that right and wrong only exist within our minds, they do not.

I can agree with this...but I cannot see how or why the religious version is seriously considered at all. Without humans, who would we apply this system to? Is a gorilla 'raping' the female gorilla commiting a sin? Without humanity, what IS right and wrong and what would the God that the moral system derives from apply it to? HOW is it universal if there are no specially created beings to function within it?

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So, if you have an atheist child, do you educate them about the changeable nature of morality?

Yes. I try to explain WHY it is right or wrong to do something. I just dont lay down the law, so to speak. I try to teach my children HOW to think and not what to think.

Mr. P.

I'm not saying it's usual for people to do those things but I(with the permission of God) have raised a dog from the dead and healed many people from all sorts of ailments. - Asana Boditharta (former booktalk troll)

The one thing of which I am positive is that there is much of which to be negative - Mr. P.

What is all this shit about Angels? Have you heard this? 3 out of 4 people believe in Angels. Are you F****** STUPID? Has everybody lost their mind? - George Carlin

I came to kick ass and chew Bubble Gum...and I am all out of Bubble Gum - They Live, Roddy Piper

Niall001 · Posted: Sun Jan 28, 2007 1:15 pm Post subject: --

Ah Crap. Man, my last post was a bit of a mess. Keep losing posts and trying to retype them quickly. Anyway, getting back on track:

As for adding a caveat that science has no authority on God, well to be honest, I think you'll find that to be true. Dawkins is relatively unqiue(?) in arguing that the existence of God as a scientific hypothesis. The likes of Huxley and Gould seemed to realise as much. I don't see as to how science can speak on any matter (no matter how hypothetical) that is not a part of the physical world.

Rape:What I meant to say was that rape (or at least certain forms of it were considered ok in the past. For instance, look at the invention of this new notion of "date rape". Once upon a time, it was the case that "No meant no." Now, it's "No means no, but sometimes yes does as well".

A better example would be to look at the notion of lesser peoples. Because Africans , Indians and Arabs were considered lesser peoples, in the past, Europeans did not consider it wrong to enslave such people. And to kill one of these people was little worse than killing an animal. Raping a black woman wasn't really considered rape. Who was it that said it wasn't so much rape as just bad taste?

Hell there were some pretty fucked up conventions regarding victory in war. It was taken for granted that the victors could steal, rape and murder for three days after they took a town in the past. And that was accepted as part and parcel of the deal. Now the losers never liked this, but they would have done the same thing had they won, and they would have considered it, if not morally right, then not immoral.

Look at something like murder. Today, we tend to disapprove of murder in almost all circumstances. But, we eat meat. Now if the PETA mentality were ever to become popular in the future, then eating meat would be considered immoral. Isn't their catchphrase "Meat is Murder?" They would look back at us in the same way that we look back on the slavers and the rapists.

Without a supernatural basis that transcends the natural world, morality becomes a convention or an opinion. And while I've got an opinion about what constitutes good music, I'd not push it on somebody else, especially my own children. Still, I'd be horrified if they liked the Backstreet Boys.

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I can agree with this...but I cannot see how or why the religious version is seriously considered at all. Without humans, who would we apply this system to? Is a gorilla 'raping' the female gorilla commiting a sin? Without humanity, what IS right and wrong and what would the God that the moral system derives from apply it to? HOW is it universal if there are no specially created beings to function within it?

Ach, you're moving into a complicated area. Does a gorilla commit a sin when it rapes another gorilla, I have no idea. But I doubt it, since there is an absence of free will.

Now we can both agree that there are many potential acts that have not been carried out, yet which if they were carried out we would consider immoral. Now in the absence of humanity, and even in the absence of creation, there would still be the potential for immorality so long as there was a God.

Edited by: Niall001 at: 1/29/07 7:09 am

irishrosem · Doctorate Joined: 19 Oct 2006 Posts: 536 Gender:

I know I’ve missed a bit of this conversation; I’ve been skiing. I think you and I have similar opinions on this one, Mr.P.

Niall: Now, it's "No means no, but sometimes yes does as well".

Niall, I’m not exactly sure what you mean by this. Perhaps my head is still a bit loopy from the high altitude, but is this supposed to be a statement to illustrate date rape?

Also, those examples you gave—“lesser people,” war spoils, murder—are all tied in with the transitory nature of religious morality, which rarely transcends social customs. Dawkins, I think pretty effectively, addresses this in Chapter 7. Religious morality is, by no means, set in stone (despite the ten commandments’ reputed origins). It is left up to individual interpretation similar to secular morality. This is its inherent problem in my mind. There is no ultimate truth, and yet the sheeple look to those who claim to have the ultimate truth to pronounce their findings. (The pope’s infallibility is an extreme example of this set-up.) So the faithful are told that homosexuality is bad, because god says so in such and such story. Those who blindly (ignorantly) follow do not decide for themselves. If there were no falsely defined “ultimate truth” then there would be opportunity for discussion on the subject matter. This is another example of the embrace of ignorance that I recognize in religion.

Saint Gasoline · Intern Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 151 Gender:

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Without a supernatural basis that transcends the natural world, morality becomes a convention or an opinion.

And even WITH a supernatural basis, morality is still a convention and an opinion. No one has access to this "supernatural" realm, so there is no way to really even know what is moral, in such a case. For all practical purposes, then, religious morality is just a matter of taste as religious morality, given our epistemic limitations.

However, I think you are wrong when you say that morality must either be supernatural or arbitrary. What is it about being supernatural that somehow makes it non-arbitrary? (It certainly seems plausible for an omnipotent being to make murder acceptable one day, and then prohibit it the next.) And what about all the objective ethical theories proposed by philosophers that make no appeal to supernaturalism? We're talking about the large majority of ethical theories, too. Very few philosophers endorse Divine Command morality.

Visit my website at http://www.saintgasoline.com if you like fart jokes, poop jokes, or jokes about other hilarious substances.

George Ricker · Posted: Tue Jan 30, 2007 12:29 pm Post subject: Re: --

Saint Gasoline: And even WITH a supernatural basis, morality is still a convention and an opinion. No one has access to this "supernatural" realm, so there is no way to really even know what is moral, in such a case. For all practical purposes, then, religious morality is just a matter of taste as religious morality, given our epistemic limitations.

_________________________________________

The whole notion of our only choice being between a set of moral values that are authored by a deity and the whims and wishes of individuals is one of the great fictions put out in support of religions.

As SG points out, even if the supernatural exists, there is no way to determine what moral values would apply. All we are left with, when all is said and done, is our own human efforts. However, those human efforts have been preconditioned by millions of years of evolution and fine tuned by the evolution of human societies and human cultures.

Morality evolves as we evolve. It has never been an absolute declaration of right and wrong that was good for all people for all time. Neither has it ever been "just do what feels good at the moment." At least, not for most people most of the time.

George

"Godlessness is not about denying the existence of nonsensical beings. It is the starting point for living life without them."

Godless in America by George A. Ricker


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