You're still missing my point. The exact religious motivation is ultimately irrelevant for the topic I was getting at, it's more referencing the idea that most people tend to argue their religion approves of the things they already approve of and disapproves of the things they already disapprove of. Religious law becomes confirmation of their own biases rather than a clear change from previously held moral or ethical beliefs. This is hardly confined to any one religion. This is important when we consider how people will act without religion because my argument is that people's overall morals won't change much when we take out the middle step of religion.

And I think you'd find even if we based morality on a strictly cost/benefit analysis behaving in a way that clearly brings harm to others is typically not going to bring you any long term benefit. Especially if other people are basing their own morality on a similar structure because their clear solution would be to eliminate you. Such arguments are at best short sighted.

Aside from that, we are in many ways beholden to our biology and humans are wired to be social animals and have all of the biological features that come with that. Just looking at the brain chemistry side of things we can see that when we act in socially positive ways our brains release oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine which people tend to really enjoy. I suppose you could ask why would our bodies do this, wondering if perhaps this was something that must have been designed in. But there's a pretty easy evolutionary answer in that if the behaviors being encouraged improve the group's (not the individual's, by the way) chances of surviving to the next generation then those changes are going to persist.

So what started everything?

schmendeler said:

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AGC said:

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schmendeler said:

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If you can't think of a reason to control your behaviour other than "God told me not to", you're either not very imaginative, or pretty dumb.

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What makes this completely fabricated and arbitrary reason meaningful or moral in any way?

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What's wrong with fabricated and arbitrary, and what is meaningful and moral?

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That's kind of the point isn't it? If you just make up whatever you want to, why do you even need a reason? What's wrong with the behavior that it needs to be controlled?

dermdoc said:

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So what started everything?

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Sounds a bit like materialism to me. Which is ultimately fatalistic

AGC said:

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dermdoc said:

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So what started everything?

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Sounds a bit like materialism to me. Which is ultimately fatalistic

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I was talking about Creation.

The most correct answer we've got for that question is: "We don't know."

Sure, we've got answers backed up by lots of corroborating data for everything slightly after the Big Bang. But as for that very first moment and how it came to be, we don't know for sure. We've got lots of ideas and some of them look more promising than others, but at the moment we can't say with any real sense of certainty what started it all.

But here's the most important thing to remember: "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer and one we shouldn't be afraid of. For a lot of questions humanity has asked itself during our history "I don't know" would have been the best possible answer up until very recently. Consider, for example, a person several thousand years ago trying to figure out what lightning was and why it happened. Lots of them came up with answers attributing the appearance of lightning to various deities which, now that we know what actually causes lightning, might seem silly to our modern sensibilities. We don't learn anything about the world we live in by shrugging our shoulders and saying "God must have done it", we've got to keep looking for answers. But what if a god really did do it, you might ask? Well then in the mean time we'll be here figuring out all of the ways it didn't happen.

I guess the question is that if all morals, and even rights are merely social and personal constructs, then certain rights are not "endowed by our creator" rather "agreed upon by consensus at the moment". Meaning if enough people agree something that we consider "objectively evil" today could become " Objectively good" tomorrow.

Their has to be some tether to morality other than popular opinion in the moment. I would contend that Christianity acknowledges this truth rather than invented it. I mean sure we have garbage monsters in Christianity, but even they, when confronted/caught, admit, "yeah that was wrong". It's pretty rare to find people who claim "murder being immoral is just a social construct."

To me, there is too much order in nature to think it just "happened". And if God pursued me(and He did), He will pursue you also.

dermdoc said:

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To me, there is too much order in nature to think it just "happened". And if God pursued me(and He did), He will pursue you also.

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Thanks for that.

Love wins.

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What's wrong with fabricated and arbitrary, and what is meaningful and moral?

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I think deep down, fabricated and arbitrary is unacceptable to most all of us. It would mean that we could imagine a scenario in which slavery, as it was practiced in the US, became good and right. If the South had won and decided to kill every last person who had any qualms at all regarding the morality of slavery, the unanimous consensus would be that slavery was right. Given no grounded standard, there would be no reason to argue otherwise.

Even if that were all true, and I do take issue with much of it, that wouldn't mean a world in which all moral systems are fabricated and arbitrary any less possible. The world doesn't care what you'd prefer to be true or find to be unacceptable, it either is or isn't. Not liking the consequences of a world without God didn't mean God exists.

Regarding empathy, I can understand how it has significant explanatory power in the naturalistic worldview. Undoubtedly, many of our shared morals seem to find a common root in empathy. When you reduce empathy to a mere instinct though, I'm not sure that it fully explains what is going on when we make moral choices.

We all likely agree we are instinctually empathetic. We also likely agree we instinctually desire self-preservation. Sometimes these two instincts nicely align and both favor a certain course of action. Other times, they are in direct conflict. C.S. Lewis uses the example of a person drowning in the ocean. Imagine a person, on the shore, sees someone drowning in the ocean 100 yards out. The person on the shore is a mediocre swimmer and believes that a rescue mission poses a significant danger to himself. The empathy instinct motivates him to attempt a rescue. The self-preservation instinct desires to remain on the shore.

What is it that judges which instinct is right? It does not make sense to me to say it is empathy that is judging between itself and self-preservation, and it is too simple to say one always acts upon whichever instinct is the strongest. Sometimes the course of action one deems as right, is the one the person feels less inclined to do. It seems there is something apart from either of the two instincts that arbitrates which of the two will lead to the right course of action. What is that thing in the view of our naturalists?

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The world doesn't care what you'd prefer to be true or find to be unacceptable, it either is or isn't

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Of course. Similarly, just because I believe I exist in a universe where I can more or less trust my senses and rely on empiric information, doesn't make it so. We could just as easily be plugged into the matrix.

I know, I was talking about his post.

Not trying to pile on. You've done a good job arguing your side, and I agree with a lot of your assertions. Especially people using their morals to define their faith instead of the other way around.

However, this caught my eye:

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And I think you'd find even if we based morality on a strictly cost/benefit analysis behaving in a way that clearly brings harm to others is typically not going to bring you any long term benefit. Especially if other people are basing their own morality on a similar structure because their clear solution would be to eliminate you. Such arguments are at best short sighted.

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Maybe. But those moralities would not be good. To my knowledge, all systems that propose goodness inherently fall back on a higher power. Religion and philosophy both do this. In religion it's God or gods, in philosophy it's Goodness, Truth, First Cause, or some other abstract and transcendental concept. Even Darwinism requires a higher good of passing on genes that surpasses strict self-interest. Without this, you are left with naked calculations of self-benefit, such as Utilitarianism or the behaviors seen in game theory. While cooperation and kindness can be beneficial in most situations, there are definitely situations were competition and cruelty are to the greatest advantage. Without some higher purpose, what's to hold someone back from the latter?

ramblin_ag02 said:

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Not trying to pile on. You've done a good job arguing your side, and I agree with a lot of your assertions. Especially people using their morals to define their faith instead of the other way around.

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I would second this. Appreciate your patience, tone, and tenor with the responses.

I think Jordan Peterson nails it with his take on Jungian approach and how society requires archetypes and the only reliable archetypes that can set a rock solid foundation are those that are religious in nature. That ultimately cannot be questioned and set a constant, unchangeable standard. Because of our inherent nature and tribalism, anything less will ultimately collapse and be replaced.

JJMt said:

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I honestly don't know enough about eastern philosophy or religions to say that those ethics would almost uncannily line up with Christian ethics.

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The Indian Christian philosopher, Vishal Mangalwadi, has written an entire book about how eastern philosophy and religions are nothing like Christianity. His book is entitled "The Book that Made Your World" and goes into thorough historical detail as to how what we hold valuable in Western culture is derived almost entirely from Christianity, and those same values are alien to eastern philosophies and religions. In fact, the modern achievements of which the East is most proud, such as India's universities, were founded by Protestant missionaries.

The idea of human rights is uniquely Western and, more specifically, Christian.

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Looks like an interesting book JJMt.

"Journey with Mangalwadi as he examines the origins of a civilization's greatness and the misguided beliefs that threaten to unravel its progress. Learn how the Bible transformed the social, political, and religious institutions that have sustained Western culture for the past millennium, and discover how secular corruption endangers the stability and longevity of Western civilization."

Could you summarize the misguided beliefs and secular corruption that endangers us?

JJMt said:

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[On a side note, a topic that Mangalwadi does not get into but is worth noting is that it is impossible to make a culture secular and irreligious. Secularism, atheism and agnosticism are religions in their own right. By making a culture secular, we are simply replacing one religion with another.]

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I think this section in particular is worth further discussion. In order to judge whether or not that claim is true we have to first ask what is a religion? Is it simply a belief's stance on the existence and nature of deities or the supernatural? I'd argue that no, a religion is more than that. Religions go beyond simply teaching the existence of whatever supernatural force they believe in and offer specific instructions on what cultural and moral obligations that core belief implies.

And I think we should also consider where we draw the line between religion and philosophy? I'd especially classify secularism as a philosophy in that the behaviors it teaches aren't presented as commands from any deity or based on a specific religious belief. In fact, secularism makes no assumption on the validity of any specific religion. You could easily be a Christian secularist, honestly many people are. Secularism simply starts with the premise that we live in a society that includes people of many different beliefs and backgrounds and attempts to offer a way to structure that society which treats everyone as fairly as possible.

Atheism and agnosticism on the other hand certainly are religious in nature. However, I wouldn't consider either of them to be a full religion any more than I'd consider theism to be one. All of them are lacking the trappings that go along with that belief that can turn it into a full religion.

I agree. That's a tough point to make. I tend to generally think of religion as a belief in some sort of supernatural sentience, and I would group in the behaviors and rituals associated with those beliefs. This definition is broad enough to include everything from primitive animism to deism to complex modern systems of faith. It does exclude atheism and agnosticim, because they specifically do not believe in supernatural sentience. If you said that religion encompasses any beliefs, positive or negative, regarding the supernatural, then you still wouldn't rope in agnositicism.

I think a better word for what he's trying to get at is "creed". Religions are creeds, but so are secular constructs such as communism and secularism. Creeds don't have to have any relation to the supernatural, whereas that's a defining feature IMHO of religion

Ags4DaWin said:

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queso1 said:

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Christianity has done so much for the world. However, I don't understand the need for a higher power for a person to have morality and love for his fellow man.

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I would suggest that you read some Nietzsche.

Without a higher purpose, AKA "the divine" then the meaning of our lives are reduced to the immediate ramifications of our actions. some cultures may develop a set of moral imperatives to leave a positive legacy for their children and/or honor ancestors of the past as a substitute for or in conjunction with some belief in divinity. these try to guide human behavior beyond a focus on immediate gratification of animal instincts and pursuit of short term pleasure.

but historically you will see a trend that even though these relatively atheistic culturally developed imperatives have some worth as far as guiding morals they are also heavily slanted culturally.

For example the mongols did not have so much an organized religion as they did a set of imperatives to honor their ancestors and to make the world better for their children. Their ancestor was genghis and they honored him by continuing his tradition of waging war and subjugating people. They left a legacy and made the world better for their children by waging war and subjugating people.

Not necessarily a recipe for a peaceful world.

Today you see people who are atheistic trying to leave the world better for children- all children but it has turned into a worship of things like climate change and demonization of the industrial world which has led to rabid irrational behavior from many and a lack of tolerance between ideologues which is a prelude to violent action.

Without a set of divine laws even the best of intentions turn south quickly as individuals become radical idealogues to those philosophies they feel are best in line with their personal philosophy of morality. And this is often a best case scenario.

Worst case is that Without a sense of the eternal and divine laws, human beings have no incentive to look beyond the selfish motivation to obtain as much stuff and stimulate as many senses as they can while alive. Without a belief in the divine and a sense of divine justice, there is no deterrent other than fear of getting caught to act in ways that are morally corrupt if these actions serve to fulfill short term goals and desires.

Most atheists i know believe that you can substitute the divine for a respect for all humans and on a small scale this is possible. Some small percentage of human beings are programmed that way, but that small percentage is vastly outweighed by the latter two categories i spoke of.

The problem with smart well meaning people who have been surrounded all their lives by other smart well meaning people is that they have an enormously hard time understanding how absolutely stupid and corrupt the average person is. So when you remove the divine from the equation you have a large stupid and corrupt population which has nothing above it to serve for guidance when their animal instincts begin to kick in. Then they take all the smart, well meaning people that still exist and enslave them or line them up against the wall and shoot them.

We are all animals after all.

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This is excellent! I always pondered on this.

Sharing the fact that Jesus said "love your neighbor as yourself." is understandable, but sharing the part about Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, might and strength is kind of a hurdle especially with the atheist and agnostic crowd.

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Christianity has done so much for the world. However, I don't understand the need for a higher power for a person to have morality and love for his fellow man.

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If there is no God then morality is a construct of the human mind.
If the human mind is simply a material result of an accidental explosion of molecules then why would trust it to determine a moral system?
If morality is a construct of the human mind then whose human mind? Adolf's, Ghandi's, or mother Teresas?

Without God there are all no absolute moral standards. Nothing is should be forbidden or sacred or wrong. However no one, even the most staunch atheists live this out. We all use phrases like, "he was wrong for doing that, or she shouldn't have done that" and appeals to an absolute moral standard.

During the Nuremberg trials the German lawyer was super smart and appealed to this. "Who are you to tell us Germans how we can live?" The opposing lawyers had to circle the wagons. When they came back, they appealed to a law "above the law of Germany" that human life is valuable.

God created humanity therefore life has value and purpose and meaning. If life is an accident it has no absolute value, meaning, or purpose. Our conscious usually accuses us or defends us when we live out the wrong worldview. The cannibals who eat others don't want to be eaten.