A world without religion.

Religion is based on their beliefs and we humans are teaches kids to respect other peoples beliefs and their culture, the only thing people needs to take action when it comes to religion, is when a genocide or a mass murder happen, and there are religions there that are passive to the society and respect other peoples feelings, having religion remove will just provoke them and initiate more chaos to the world, i think the religion today is normal, haven't we been learn how to respect ones another instead of hating ones culture and beliefs?, well yes cause thats just normal for us humans, hatred is normal, its impossible to fully remove them, same goes to anger, same goes to beliefs, same goes to culture without having a fight, i disagree to what you have said for that is "being rude to other people who are not atheists" and basically forcing/threatening them to join your side which is not the moral way to do it.

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 14.05.2017 at 21:49

Tell that to the thousands of Romans that cheered and drank wine while watching humans be literally butchered before their eyes. Surely they possessed an instinct that would tell them "hey maybe this isn't such a cool thing to do"? I mean since it's just so obvious.

PS: Can you guess after which event support for the Colosseum started to wane? It was almost immediately following Constantine declaring Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire.

Nobody said the romans had good morals. And nobody said you can't go against your instincts. Youre using a 2 thousand year old civilisation that normalised violence and slavery as an example...

Ever ask yourself why the people who created christianity decided it was not ok to kill?

Eshkruar nga Permamuted, 15.05.2017 at 06:07

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 14.05.2017 at 21:49

Tell that to the thousands of Romans that cheered and drank wine while watching humans be literally butchered before their eyes. Surely they possessed an instinct that would tell them "hey maybe this isn't such a cool thing to do"? I mean since it's just so obvious.

PS: Can you guess after which event support for the Colosseum started to wane? It was almost immediately following Constantine declaring Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire.

Nobody said the romans had good morals. And nobody said you can't go against your instincts. Youre using a 2 thousand year old civilisation that normalised violence and slavery as an example...

Ever ask yourself why the people who created christianity decided it was not ok to kill?

instincts or biological tendency even if existent don't constitute objective morality, it's as absurd as saying killing is natural and therefore objectively moral.

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 14.05.2017 at 21:49

I do not agree with the assumption that our morals rely on religions. remember that they did not come out of nowhere but made by people. I do believe that people fail without religion when they need to look again and their morals and values, but that relook is a GOOD thing.

When religious man makes a sinn or has to make desicion he cares about himself failing god. losing his good value as a person and bringing shame. he is too busy that he barely sees how acts of selfishness affect other people. how most of his values and hope are not even a good things and very often he even has to obey to parts of religions that they don't even like because they are obliged.

Roman parades and games were not brutal because they did'nt have monotheist religion. it was because they were bound to culture and state that defined its own value by control power and the promise of brutality (social classes are included at this).

Eventually. the sane people gonna understand and respect the implocations of their actions and choices toward other people if you gonna let them examine them what is right instead of making them live by false values of "good" or "bad". i can put myself as an example. nowdays i make choices that i know i lose from. i am well aware of the "modern" attitude of "fuck everyone do what is good for yourself". religion disgusts me and i don't believe i would do it when i did believe in god, it will not lose anything or get hurt by doing it nothing actually bounds me but i still do what is right for other people. why? that's the nature of free men. and even little minority of the people grown wrong there are still laws in the countries that they are living at.

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 12.05.2017 at 19:32

Eshkruar nga brianwl, 12.05.2017 at 19:13

One can live by their own code of conduct, and develop it as they mature/grow up. Maybe i was just fortunate to grow up in a community where this was the norm - but many people, (most in my neck of the woods) don't need a gun toting police force or bible thumping priests to force them to accept an external 'moral code' that orders us under fear of imprisonment/excommunication not to kill and rape one another. (Ironically, the one or two kids that did, ended up in the army or a police force.)

Morals develop and evolve, and at times there are discussions with others, but authentic morality is tested when no one is watching - when you are totally free to do whatever you want, and no one exerts control over you - and with that free will, you still choose to do something useful. You only truly exercise free will when you choose from within, not react based on external circumstances.

On your own.

... Cute story, but it doesn't address my point in the slightest. ...

I thought the point you were making was:

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 12.05.2017 at 14:28

How can you develop a "truly moral" ethics on your own? That's a contradiction in terms.

So i thought what i said was on point.

However, if your point is what is 'good' then one way to look at it is in terms of entropy: (entropy being a measure of disorder)

So:

Any act that creates disorder (increases entropy) in our consciousness is moving away from good. (Extreme example - complete randomness => no order => 'evil')

Any act that creates order (decreases entropy) in our consciousness is 'good'. (Extreme example - highly structured information => order => 'good')

I used the word 'useful' because any highly structured entity capable of evolving can do something. (The opposite being 'destruction'.)

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 12.05.2017 at 19:32

You have no metric by which to measure your personal code of conduct against say Stalin's, beyond "muh feels".

In that sense, the metric is this:

If it creates complexity so it is able to do a wider range of 'works', it is 'good'.

For material (soulless things): (e.g. a car that can go forward and backwards has more usefulness, and less entropy, than a car that is the same, only it can't go in reverse.) The 'useful' car is 'more evolved' and therefor 'more good'.

For soulless people (automatons lacking free-will): e.g. a person that can use all AW strategies and also perform brain surgery, is more useful than a person who can only use RA, and can make no other contribution to society.

For spiritual people (exercising conscious free-will): e.g. a person who has the capacity to both forgive and retaliate when some automaton does wrong, is more useful than a person who has only the capacity to retaliate.

The above examples show the metric clearly...

However, it is not always so clear cut... for instance, is a player that knows RA, PD and MoS more useful than a player that knows RA, SM and GW? Clearly both are more evolved than the player who knows only RA, but each has chosen a different 'evolutionary path' as it were.

For spiritual people, nearly all evolutionary paths lead to varying degrees of 'usefulness' - but the underlying metric is how 'useful' they can be in helping others. The evil (devolving) consciousness only serves themselves... this is not simply a 'wishywashy Christianity' as you put it... it is fundamental in every known religious teaching, from Hinduism, to Buddhism, to Christianity to Islam, to nomadic animistic tribes to Norse paganism => to help others before helping yourself. You also see it in many mainstream movies that are popular across cultures and religions (e.g. Star Wars: The Jedi (serve others) vs The Sith (serve self), The Matrix (Neo serves others, Bane serves himself) and Lord of the Rings (Bilbo serves others, Sauron serves himself))

There is no surprise here - we are immersed in it, which makes it difficult to see. Like a fish asking how water is useful:
Be the Pond.

Eshkruar nga brianwl, 15.05.2017 at 06:33

3v1. does'nt it feel to mainstream or you?

Brianwl is troll

What about a world without Oil and petroleum?
Would the world be better?

I would rather die then not live without islam

I think that religion is really an important piece to the human race it gives us a difference that we want to make this me different from say Bob Ross while we both share some same rules for our self we still have something to make us different from each other say Bob Ross thinks that the world is better if everyone had the same religion while I think that Christians and Muslims could live in peace if we all would like each other the same as we would like our own (friends family and others with the same religion and ect.) so this really would on the person of said religion you ask as they all believe in something different (except Muslims Christians Judaism and Mormons they all believe in the same God and the same guy but they think he is a prophet, a god, a guy, and a god)

Eshkruar nga Khal.eesi, 14.05.2017 at 12:55

If you think that as a species we do not decide about everything, every single day of our lives, since ancient times, then you are deluded, sorry.

What...? XD What does this have to do with anything? I just said that since you decided it, it no longer is objective. Wtf are you talking about now khal?

Eshkruar nga Khal.eesi, 14.05.2017 at 12:55

We create arguments and reach logical conclusions every day and make decisions based on this process. Science does too, with your logic its not bad for health for humans to drink acid, since we have to decide if it is or not, therefore there is no objective sense of health.

Science does not simply create arguments, science proves them! Or else it would be no science, it would be just phylosophy maybe?

I sense a general misconception of science coming from your words. Science is no decision, science is something proved due to evidence, arguments and logic. Moral is a subjective decision, no experimentation involved, no arguments involve, just your own benefit and your own judgement of what is good or bad. If science had to work this way, we'd be quite screwed...

Eshkruar nga Khal.eesi, 14.05.2017 at 12:55

Again that liberal line of thought. No he is not planning on imposing anything, he is not a dictator like the ones you just absolved of any responsibility without realizing, he is just a scientist and a skeptic. He is making an argument based on his research and his thoughts and is proposing not imposing. Theres a big difference.

I was just giving examples of how would that be called in other circunstances... Anyway, he chose that purpose for this own morals by himself, thus it is subjective. A proposal does not involve science if it is not proven, argumented, corroborated, reproducible, etc. It's a beautiful proposal but still, not objective.

Eshkruar nga Khal.eesi, 14.05.2017 at 12:55

As for the presuppositions, science is based on values that must be presupposed too, like the desire to understand the universe, a respect for evidence and logical coherence, etc. One who doesn't share these values cannot do science.

Ofc, science is based on a couple values (a person won't be scientist if he is not curious obviously cause he will give no fuck about anything new XD), but no moral in them, just a simple wish for wisdom, knowledge, perfection. Thus science can't and doesn't get involved in morals.

Eshkruar nga Khal.eesi, 14.05.2017 at 12:55

Wether you realize it or not, the majority of us "Westerners" do agree with this for the most part, at least in modern times. The problem arises, when we are talking about different cultures and ethnicities and using your moral relativism, you deny us the right to criticize them for oppressing, harassing and affecting the well being of conscious human beings.

I'm sorry if I'm going against your thoughts, but as a matter of fact there is no objective moral (same as the Earth is not the centre of the universe), just different morals which happen to be judged from the moral perspective of others. I am not denying your right to judge and criticise, as a matter of fact, I am simply telling you that you're judging based on your morals, which is the most natural and common thing to do. But from another person's perspective with his own morals, judgements will be done differently from yourself and that's something you should perfectly understand. So I don't see the need for this discussion, I'm not sure why you feel your right to speak freely threatened by my words. I could summarize all my words in a very simple sentence for you to understand: there is no such thing as perfection when it comes to good and evil (no objective moral), there are always shades, and you're no exception to this rule.

Eshkruar nga Khal.eesi, 14.05.2017 at 12:55

Quoting Sam Harris

"Increasingly, Americans will come to believe that the only people hard-headed enough to fight the religious lunatics of the Muslim world are the religious lunatics of the West. Indeed, it is telling that the people who speak with the greatest moral clarity about the current wars in the Middle East are members of the Christian right, whose infatuation with biblical prophecy is nearly as troubling as the ideology of our enemies. Religious dogmatism is now playing both sides of the board in a very dangerous game.

While liberals should be the ones pointing the way beyond this Iron Age madness, they are rendering themselves increasingly irrelevant. Being generally reasonable and tolerant of diversity, liberals should be especially sensitive to the dangers of religious literalism. But they aren't.

The same failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants. The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists. To say that this does not bode well for liberalism is an understatement: It does not bode well for the future of civilization"

Ofc usa thinks we are his closest allies... because europe and usa have similar moral basis. And yeah, what does he mean by that? That we shouldn't let there be religious freedom or that we should just eradicate Islam? And religious extremism amongs immigrants? Extremism how? I've met many immigrant which have adapted just perfectly, even better than natives, and they still practice their own religion so idk. I wouldn't generalize like that.

I still don't see the connection about this with moral objectivism/subjectivism tho. That's a very different discussion.

Eshkruar nga Khal.eesi, 14.05.2017 at 12:55

Who says science cannot be used to study morality? Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena fully constrained by the laws of nature . Therefore, there must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. morality must be viewed in the context of our growing scientific understanding of the mind. If there are truths to be known about the mind, there will be truths to be known about how minds flourish. Consequently, there will be truths to be known about good and evil.

Anyway you should not demean and insult a great brain like Sam Harris, stating he is talking "bullshit". Thats the classic type of arrogance the uneducated masses show, leave that for waffel and commando eagle, you are better than that.

I didn't insult his brain, I despise his words because they do not sound appropiate from a serious scientist. Science never gets involved with morals, it's in its own definition! To say otherwise proves little profesionalism...

Science will study the mind and determine how it works. Science will not tell the mind how to work or think! There is no right or wrong to morality, just different perspectives. Science can break down these different perspectives (psychology) and will study its context. But science will never claim to have an absolute answer to moral and phylosphical questions. That's another level meant for phylosophers to talk about, discuss, think about, even judge sometimes.

You should have learned the differences between both fields by now, if not I'll gladly give you more examples as to how both work.

I have to catch up on what a lot of people have said but just my personal opinion:

I think without religion, the world can still develop a sense of ethics, a sense of morals. I don't think we need a book written thousands of years ago to develop these. When you're just looking at children, at babies, they almost always have an uncanny ability to connect with their fellow, um, babies. There's no hate, there's no diabolical selfishness, just a certain sense of love. Across human history and civilization, societies have been able to use religion to justify killing (murder is simply an unjustified killing). If people tomm were to wake up and decide that there is no god, there is no afterlife; if they accept the notion, the fact that there is not a lot of evidence to support that after we pass our thoughts, our ideals, our soul is then reconfigured and we all are going to see one another in some theme park, I don't see there being a lack of moral accountability. What I mean by this is that we have no way to "reason" that murder is wrong.

To argue that we need religion because without it there are no morals I think is a rather dismal view of humanity and certainly dismal view of your own self. The idea that without the belief is a supernatural being that you would have no incentive to not kill someone or no recourse from committing such an act is simply wrong. Even soldiers who go out fighting change when they kill someone. It's certainly can be a justifiable killing, but taking another persons life changes you. It takes a certain amount of "evil" if you will to do it. I highly doubt that atheist who kill someone are going to have a severely less of a "change" than someone who is religious.

At the end of the day though, morals can certainly come from religion- but they don't exclusively come from it. You don't HAVE to have religion to have morals- any decent society can have a set of morals established.

Anyone can name a morally evil act committed in the name of religion, I cannot think of a morally good act thet could not be committed without religion.

Eshkruar nga Guest, 15.05.2017 at 06:18

instincts or biological tendency even if existent don't constitute objective morality, it's as absurd as saying killing is natural and therefore objectively moral.

I never said they did. But they do suggest it exists.

Yeah man.. .br fuck religion...

*hits bong, turns on cosmos*

Eshkruar nga Valetorious, 15.05.2017 at 20:35

Yeah man.. .br fuck religion...

*hits bong, turns on cosmos*

Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 15.05.2017 at 20:53

Eshkruar nga Valetorious, 15.05.2017 at 20:35

Yeah man.. .br fuck religion...

*hits bong, turns on cosmos*

Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

Yeah but the meme is that people who hate religion are the ones who smonk weed and watch basic scientific shows such as bill nye or in this case neil degrasse tyson's show cosmos. It's like it forms them into some weird pseudo-intellectual being.

Just a stereotype meme though, don't take it seriously although this does apply to quite a good amount of people lmao

Eshkruar nga Valetorious, 15.05.2017 at 21:17

Just a stereotype meme though, don't take it seriously although this does apply to quite a good amount of people lmao

I'm aware, I know many of these "I fucking love science" meme types that love pop science and being on the "side of science" whatever that means.

It's a shame though because Sagan's original 80s Cosmos was actually a great show, very quotable! Bill Nye and his cohort on the other hand care more about advancing a political agenda than promoting actual science. But hey that's just my opinion >:)

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 15.05.2017 at 20:53

Eshkruar nga Valetorious, 15.05.2017 at 20:35

Yeah man.. .br fuck religion...

*hits bong, turns on cosmos*

Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

Our final test being defeating the savagery hard wired into our brains and coming together as a species. Until that time we are not worthy to ascend into the heavens.

I actually did a structured debate on whether religion is good or bad for society once, so I had an opportunity to develop my opinions on this a bit. So I'll submit my own two cents on the matter.

Before I start, though, I might want to make my own religious status clear. I'm nonreligious, and I believe that it is inherently impossible to convincingly prove or disprove the truths implied in any religious faith, code of ethics, or any system of organised belief. I also believe that absence of evidence is weak evidence of absence: hence my lack of religious affiliation.

My opinion on life and the universe, basically, can be summarised by this. Life happens, deal with it - the universe doesn't care. If you don't like it, then by all means try to change it, but don't think anyone else is obligated to help you in any way.

You may have noted a distinct lack of any religious sentiment in that statement.

====================================================

That disclaimer being said, onto my opinions.

It is my personal opinion that religion has no real place in the twenty-first century. In older times, religion may have made sense. In the days when everyone lived in constant fear of the harshness of nature and of each other, religion provided spiritual solace, a means of social organisation, and a common code of morality. But we as a species have progressed so far beyond it. As we, by our own efforts and not by the grace of god, liberate increasingly large sections of our population from the chronic fear of starvation or violence through a society that grows increasingly sophisticated and respectful, our need to maintain elaborate religious systems of belief have pretty much disappeared.

I generally accept the validity of people choosing their own spirituality. The core questions of life and the universe - what our purpose is, what moral good is, etc - are inherently unanswerable, so as far as I care in those questions the answers that religion provide are as valid as any other. I do, however, oppose religious thought whenever it interferes with what I see as the values of modern society - personal and political freedoms, social equality, and so on.

====================================================

Responding to: Hellykin, Sanguinare, Acquiesce, Wheelo. I'd especially like to thank Acquiesce for providing several well-developed posts I can talk about.
On the subject of religious morality.

There has been a lot of talk in this thread about how religion can help provide a code of morality. As Acquiesce pointed out, morality can mean two things: natural law (universal morality), or a convenient code of behaviour.

I maintain the Bayesian belief that absence of evidence is weak evidence of absence. Therefore I find it more rational to believe in the absence of a universal morality than to believe in its presence. It is also my belief that the incredibly divergent codes of morality independently derived by different societies is reasonable evidence against the relevance of universal morality, even if it exists. I therefore do not agree that the moral codes provided by any religion or system of belief constitutes universal morality.

Acquiesce has made a lot of interesting statements in this matter: that religion is necessary to answer the universal questions. What is good? What is useful? What is moral? In accordance with the above principle, my opinion is that this questions is invalid because it assumes that certain things are inherently good, useful, or moral. I disagree with the assumption that certain things are inherently good, useful, or moral, therefore I do not believe those are questions that need to be answered, and so I disagree that religion is needed to answer them.

Acquiesce has accused brianwl of having "no metric by which to measure your personal code of conduct against say Stalin's, beyond "muh feels." I fully agree. But I would go further and add that Acquiesce also has no metric by which to measure Christianity's code of conduct against Stalin's, beyond "muh feels." If, indeed, the consensus of humanity does happen to be that ax murder is morally acceptable (which thankfully it isn't), then on what basis can one say that his/her code of morality is more valid than the human consensus?

That leaves convenient codes of behaviour. Without a doubt, religions have provided many convenient codes of behaviour that have allowed relatively regulated, civilised societal behaviour to emerge. But I do not believe that religion is necessary for the creation of these common codes of behaviour. Any code of behaviour requires some kind of belief to exist at all (because it is impossible to have a perfectly logical and externally proven system of morality), but there is no reason why this belief has to take the form of organised and institutionalised religion. Religion or not, values emerge when people think, and religion or not, values lead to codes of behaviour.

Wheelo has pointed out that most people derive their code of ethics from the societal code of ethics, and religion strongly influences societal code of ethics. This is more or less true. But I would argue that since religion is the product of human psychology to begin with, fundamentally these codes of morality come from people's psychology. I'd also like to mention that societies that don't have religious belief also often have codes of ethics, so religion is not an essential element of developing such a code of ethics.

Religion at one point provided a way to force people's codes of behaviour to agree with each other, and in the past that may have been necessary. But now, with secular-democratic systems providing laws for the state to enforce in many areas around the world, it's clear that religion isn't the only way to force conformity.

====================================================

Responding to : Hellykin, RaulPB
On the subject of social control.

Of course, theory is always good, but what role has religion actually played in our societies and our lives? I'm inclined to agree with RaulPB that religion was, very often, used as a means of social control. Organised religion has helped maintain social cohesion and stability, and indeed most people do consider cohesion and stability to be good things, but naturally that cohesion and stability was cohesion and stability that was favourable to the few people at the top who controlled religious organisations. As I have said above, in the industrial and post-industrial eras, there are many different ways through which social cohesion and stability can be maintained. It is my opinion that those systems that disproportionately favour a small segment of society less are better.

Asides from social control, I could talk about the many positive aspects of religion and the many negative aspects of religion in industrial civilisation, but my final opinion there is "meh." I don't think religion has been disastrous to human society, nor do I think that religion has been fantastic to human society.

====================================================

Individual responses:

Eshkruar nga Wheelo, 13.05.2017 at 09:06

Although I'm friends with many atheists and they're perfectly normal people, I have found that people with a serious grudge to religion are usually unhappy with themselves and see it as the "go to" topic to exert their negativity.

You may find that there is such a disgruntled and unhappy segment on the both sides of any debate. It has been my experience, frequenting discussions on both sides of many issues, that in most cases those arguing for one side of an argument aren't any nicer or less nice than those arguing for the other side of that argument.

Eshkruar nga Guest, 15.05.2017 at 05:39

Thinking morals are subjective isn't the same as thinking it is fine, that if someone kills another as long as they think it's morally right. The whole idea of 'moral relativism' is a bizarre caricature only believed in by a very small minority of idiots.

Saying that there is no basis to conclusively claim that it is morally unacceptable to kill someone is not the same as saying that it is fine to kill someone. I refrain heavily from doing certain things that I find perfectly acceptable because I value my relationship with human civilisation, and I also do some things that I myself find morally unacceptable because I value my personal gain.

Eshkruar nga Helly, 16.05.2017 at 01:44

Our final test being defeating the savagery hard wired into our brains and coming together as a species. Until that time we are not worthy to ascend into the heavens.

I would argue that the savagery hard-wired into our brains have been defeated the moment humanity proved itself capable of sustaining a complex society. Temporarily, for the moment, because we can't genetically engineer our nature away yet.

But human civilisation is an incredibly complex, sensitive, specialised, and fragile system that have somehow managed to endure for quite a few generations. Savages don't - can't - build systems like that.

====================================================

That took a while to write. This is an interesting topic.

Eshkruar nga International, 16.05.2017 at 04:03

It is also my belief that the incredibly divergent codes of morality independently derived by different societies is reasonable evidence against the relevance of universal morality, even if it exists. I therefore do not agree that the moral codes provided by any religion or system of belief constitutes universal morality.

Acquiesce has accused brianwl of having "no metric by which to measure your personal code of conduct against say Stalin's, beyond "muh feels." I fully agree. But I would go further and add that Acquiesce also has no metric by which to measure Christianity's code of conduct against Stalin's, beyond "muh feels." If, indeed, the consensus of humanity does happen to be that ax murder is morally acceptable (which thankfully it isn't), then on what basis can one say that his/her code of morality is more valid than the human consensus?

That took a while to write. This is an interesting topic.

Too many arguments for me to respond to each but since you were so gracious in your reply I'll make a few brief points.

Starting with your claim about incredibly divergent codes of morality. Let me explain why this is a distraction. Different societies may have different opinions about what is morally valuable, just as they may have different opinions about what happens after death. But this does not entail the conclusion that what is really right in one culture is really wrong in another, any more than different opinions about life after death proves the conclusion that different things really happen after death, depending on cultural beliefs. The fact that societies disagree has nothing to say either way about what is really true.

Nor does the fact that we are taught morality by society prove that morality is subjective. Yes, we learn the rules of football from society but we also learn the multiplication table. One is manmade, the other is not.

As for accusing me of the same thing I accused Brian of, well don't you see that's exactly what we're arguing about? I can judge Christianity's code above Stalin's if I believe that Christianity's comes from God through divine revelation or whatever other means, i.e- if I believe morality to be something discovered rather than created. It's the fact that you believe all moral codes to be mere human creations that strips you of the ability to judge them, because you cannot measure a thing if you've nothing to compare it against, and what higher thing can you compare it to without appealing to natural law? Which isn't to say you have to buy Christianity in the slightest to agree that what I'm saying makes logical sense. I don't even have to be religious to make the argument, and I believed it all the same when I was militantly atheist.

Eshkruar nga brianwl, 15.05.2017 at 06:33

Never use entropy as an analogy. I couldn't make heads or tales of that section of your post.

Eshkruar nga Permamuted, 16.05.2017 at 12:00

Eshkruar nga brianwl, 15.05.2017 at 06:33

Never use entropy as an analogy. I couldn't make heads or tales of that section of your post.

You should be able to substitute 'Entropy' with 'Bat Crap Craziness' and nothing is lost in translation

Eshkruar nga Pheonixking929, 15.05.2017 at 19:29

I have to catch up on what a lot of people have said but just my personal opinion:

I think without religion, the world can still develop a sense of ethics, a sense of morals. I don't think we need a book written thousands of years ago to develop these. When you're just looking at children, at babies, they almost always have an uncanny ability to connect with their fellow, um, babies. There's no hate, there's no diabolical selfishness, just a certain sense of love. Across human history and civilization, societies have been able to use religion to justify killing (murder is simply an unjustified killing). If people tomm were to wake up and decide that there is no god, there is no afterlife; if they accept the notion, the fact that there is not a lot of evidence to support that after we pass our thoughts, our ideals, our soul is then reconfigured and we all are going to see one another in some theme park, I don't see there being a lack of moral accountability. What I mean by this is that we have no way to "reason" that murder is wrong.

To argue that we need religion because without it there are no morals I think is a rather dismal view of humanity and certainly dismal view of your own self. The idea that without the belief is a supernatural being that you would have no incentive to not kill someone or no recourse from committing such an act is simply wrong. Even soldiers who go out fighting change when they kill someone. It's certainly can be a justifiable killing, but taking another persons life changes you. It takes a certain amount of "evil" if you will to do it. I highly doubt that atheist who kill someone are going to have a severely less of a "change" than someone who is religious.

At the end of the day though, morals can certainly come from religion- but they don't exclusively come from it. You don't HAVE to have religion to have morals- any decent society can have a set of morals established.

Anyone can name a morally evil act committed in the name of religion, I cannot think of a morally good act thet could not be committed without religion.

Well as an athiest I belive men wrote the laws in religion so that proves humans can be moral to a point.
Also selfish but mostly moral.

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 16.05.2017 at 11:16

Nor does the fact that we are taught morality by society prove that morality is subjective. Yes, we learn the rules of football from society but we also learn the multiplication table. One is manmade, the other is not.

Comparing some random rules for a game that some people agreed upon with a mathematical fact? Interesting, makes sense (sarcasm). Again, how does that prove that morality is not subjective?

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 16.05.2017 at 11:16

because you cannot measure a thing if you've nothing to compare it against

How not? Fuck sake, there are so many morals around the world to campare it against I couldn't even start pointing out all of them! But most importantly, you've got your own morals to compare everything against.

Eshkruar nga Permamuted, 16.05.2017 at 12:00

Never use entropy as an analogy. I couldn't make heads or tales of that section of your post.

Easy, substitute "entropy" with "disorder", synonyms

Eshkruar nga RaulPB, 16.05.2017 at 13:04

Eshkruar nga Permamuted, 16.05.2017 at 12:00

Never use entropy as an analogy. I couldn't make heads or tales of that section of your post.

Easy, substitute "entropy" with "disorder", synonyms

Aww, i still think mine was better ♥

These are really bla clarification questions so you're going to have to do better if you want me to waste my time responding further.

Eshkruar nga RaulPB, 16.05.2017 at 13:03

Comparing some random rules for a game that some people agreed upon with a mathematical fact? Interesting, makes sense (sarcasm). Again, how does that prove that morality is not subjective?

It makes perfect sense because I'm making a distinction. Some rules society teaches us are socially constructed (like football's); some are rules that exist outside society (like maths). You believe morality falls in with the former; I believe the latter. My purpose was not to prove that morality is objective by pointing this out, it was only to show that it's a fallacy to assume that just because society teaches something then it must therefore be entirely socially constructed.

Eshkruar nga RaulPB, 16.05.2017 at 13:03

How not? Fuck sake, there are so many morals around the world to campare it against I couldn't even start pointing out all of them! But most importantly, you've got your own morals to compare everything against.

Once again my point seems entirely lost on you so here's a clarifying quote-

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something-some Real Morality-for them to be true about.

Eshkruar nga brianwl, 16.05.2017 at 13:15

Aww, i still think mine was better ♥

Definately funnier and more original

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 16.05.2017 at 13:46

These are really bla clarification questions so you're going to have to do better if you want me to waste my time responding further.

Eshkruar nga RaulPB, 16.05.2017 at 13:03

Comparing some random rules for a game that some people agreed upon with a mathematical fact? Interesting, makes sense (sarcasm). Again, how does that prove that morality is not subjective?

It makes perfect sense because I'm making a distinction. Some rules society teaches us are socially constructed (like football's); some are rules that exist outside society (like maths). You believe morality falls in with the former; I believe the latter. My purpose was not to prove that morality is objective by pointing this out, it was only to show that it's a fallacy to assume that just because society teaches something then it must therefore be entirely socially constructed.

Eshkruar nga RaulPB, 16.05.2017 at 13:03

How not? Fuck sake, there are so many morals around the world to campare it against I couldn't even start pointing out all of them! But most importantly, you've got your own morals to compare everything against.

Once again my point seems entirely lost on you so here's a clarifying quote-

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something-some Real Morality-for them to be true about.

Your partialy right.
Normality is what we measure these standards with
Now the norm is what most people in the world agree on
now for example
Traffic lights
Most of the world agree on it
So that is the norm
Second example
If most of the world agreed that we go out every tuesday and have sex with sheep
That would be the norm reguardless if you think its wrong or right.

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 16.05.2017 at 13:46

It makes perfect sense because I'm making a distinction. Some rules society teaches us are socially constructed (like football's); some are rules that exist outside society (like maths). You believe morality falls in with the former; I believe the latter. My purpose was not to prove that morality is objective by pointing this out, it was only to show that it's a fallacy to assume that just because society teaches something then it must therefore be entirely socially constructed.

That's precisely the whole concept of being subjective........... something socially constructed as morality, taught by society and agreed upon by society is inmediatelly subjective. Maths was not constructed by society, it was observed in nature, everywhere. We just had to learn to communicate in mathematical language. Moral is no where to be seen, we developed it ourselves since the time we started being conscious about our acts.

Eshkruar nga Acquiesce, 16.05.2017 at 13:46

Once again my point seems entirely lost on you so here's a clarifying quote-

The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something-some Real Morality-for them to be true about.

Nope, you're actually comparing it with what one could consider his own moral or the set of rules that adapt better to ones perspective of life. You've never compared anything to that so called "real morality", you're subjectively implicating that the morals you're using are the best there could be with no proof of that being true. Those simply suit you (individually or collectively as a community) better.

By that you're basically saying that there's just one perspective to life, to actions, to thoughts, etc. When in reality we've got a very wide variety of shades of every kind of perspective to judge everything that goes on. You've got a very simplistic way of understanding human psychology if I may say. Things are not always black and white, simply good or bad, better or worse.