God - The Bear and Badger

Ali

Mod74 wrote:

You want to ridicule the fantastical or cherry pick certain passages but you're ignoring everything that's a perfectly sensible rational way to live your life. I don't understand why you're willing to accept societal rules handed down from millenia but religious ones are delusional.

Because those social rules are inherent in all herd and pack animals, and that's all we really are. They're the same rules a pack of wolves or pride on lions will live by, just dressed up with language and neuroticism which is uniquely human. You don't require religion to live a rational way of life, it's inherent within your very DNA. It's why every religion consists of near identical myths as well. The same human fears and obsessions cropping up as the same stories with different names. A good 20 years ago I read all of eminent mythologist, Joseph Campbell's, famous works (The Masks Of The Gods and Hero With a Thousand Faces) after watching his TV series, Power Of Myth. It's a fascinating insight into what it is to be human, and all religions are based on the same basic premises. The same stories of good and evil, reincarnation, prophets, virgin births etc etc crop up everywhere from the Mayans to the Christians to the most isolated tribes on the south Pacific atolls. They are not factual. THey are entirely created by humanity to explain what we were, until very recently, unable to explain and grew out of our own paranoias, and to give ourselves a needless sense of purpose and self importance.

Rev

Gonzo wrote:

Are u joan osborne?

No, I get that a lot though. I think its the way I style my hair.

I know it doesn't add much to the discussion but I thought I would add it anyway.Â

I'll continue on a more serious vein later.

Ali

revelthedog wrote:

Do the people that believe in gods honestly believe that said gods act exclusively for them, or even for humanity, given how much we know of the universe and just how vast it is, is a human-centric version of religion really possible?

I would consider religion to be human centric anyway. I guess it depends on how you would view God? Is it viewed as a singular entity that has one single point of manifestation? Or is it viewed as something that is omnipresent? - This view was popularised by churches to discourage certain actions considered sinful i.e. masturbation. If god was everywhere then it would be impossible to carry out sinful actions without retribution later on. It was also easier to rule the population if they thought that someone was always watching them as well.Â I think that our view of what God is has been 'humanised' to make it easier to understand, given a certain image to make it simpler for children to grasp. There are a lot of kids that think god is either - a man with a big white beard or Morgan Freeman. The Omnipresent is thrown in as they get 'older' I think that individuals have used god to justify their actions, or have claimed events in their favour to be proof that god only acts favourable for believers.Â maybe.

Isn't that verging on a cop out though? Moving the goal posts from a bloke in the sky to "it's a thing that's everywhere". You could just rename gravity "God"? Or matter, or energy, or dark matter? But the fact remains that this isn't what people traditionally call a god. A sentient being controlling their destiny from the sky.

Mod74

Yes, I'm aware the stories and "rules" we think of as religion pre-date current religions by a long way.

You could look at religion as formalising a set of laws that could be applied to a population in a time before there was a police force and justice system. If I killed my wife 2000 years ago I'd tell everyone she went to town and I never saw here again and would get away with it.

If I'm told there's a guy watching my every move and killing my wife sends me to hell forever maybe I'll think twice.

Nowadays we don't need religion to be societies police man and judge, so most countries don't use religious law. But the mechanisms for guiding and enforcing those rules are still there for those that choose to abide by them.

Regardless, I don't see the majority of religion as about telling you what not to do, more about guiding principles for things you should try to do to make everyone's life better.

I don't really see the difference between the deterrent being prison or hell. I don't really care if someone helps me or is nice to me because they're trying be a better Christian or they're just a helpful/nice person. I'm hardly likely to ask what their motives are, nor care.

Ali

Mod74 wrote:

I don't really care if someone helps me or is nice to me because they're trying be a better Christian or they're just a helpful/nice person. I'm hardly likely to ask what their motives are, nor care.

But, isn't it better if it's the latter? That they are doing it, not because it's expected of them, but because they wanted to?

Rev

Ali wrote:

revelthedog wrote:

Do the people that believe in gods honestly believe that said gods act exclusively for them, or even for humanity, given how much we know of the universe and just how vast it is, is a human-centric version of religion really possible?

I would consider religion to be human centric anyway. I guess it depends on how you would view God? Is it viewed as a singular entity that has one single point of manifestation? Or is it viewed as something that is omnipresent? - This view was popularised by churches to discourage certain actions considered sinful i.e. masturbation. If god was everywhere then it would be impossible to carry out sinful actions without retribution later on. It was also easier to rule the population if they thought that someone was always watching them as well.Â I think that our view of what God is has been 'humanised' to make it easier to understand, given a certain image to make it simpler for children to grasp. There are a lot of kids that think god is either - a man with a big white beard or Morgan Freeman. The Omnipresent is thrown in as they get 'older' I think that individuals have used god to justify their actions, or have claimed events in their favour to be proof that god only acts favourable for believers.Â maybe.

Isn't that verging on a cop out though? Moving the goal posts from a bloke in the sky to "it's a thing that's everywhere". You could just rename gravity "God"? Or matter, or energy, or dark matter? But the fact remains that this isn't what people traditionally call a god. A sentient being controlling their destiny from the sky.

Agreed, but I think the omnipresent idea was added in as a system of control.Â
Yes, it was a collection of concentrated energy manifested into a figure - but at the same time, it was everywhere to keep an eye on everyone.Â

Its not moving the goal posts, I think it was added in addition.

Mod74

Ali wrote:

Mod74 wrote:

I don't really care if someone helps me or is nice to me because they're trying be a better Christian or they're just a helpful/nice person. I'm hardly likely to ask what their motives are, nor care.

But, isn't it better if it's the latter? That they are doing it, not because it's expected of them, but because they wanted to?

I'd still stay they want to, because they're doing something encouraged by a set of guidelines they associate with.

Doesn't society/law expect people to behave in a certain way -even if they don't want to- as well?

Ali

Mod74 wrote:

I don't really care if someone helps me or is nice to me because they're trying be a better Christian or they're just a helpful/nice person. I'm hardly likely to ask what their motives are, nor care.

But, isn't it better if it's the latter? That they are doing it, not because it's expected of them, but because they wanted to?

I'd still stay they want to, because they're doing something encouraged by a set of guidelines they associate with. Doesn't society/law expect people to behave in a certain way -even if they don't want to- as well?

Like I said before, it's preprogrammed into us to help each other. It's not society or law, it's because we know, intrinsically, what is right or wrong because, without that distinction, our species would have joined the billions of others that have become extinct.Â

Like the oft quoted Steven Weinberg said, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

My point is the same. You can be a good person without religion. The vast majority of people ARE good people. Even Unlikely. Religion, however, like the most twisted extremes of politics, gives evil people the justification for being evil and for forcing good people to follow them.

Rev

Ali wrote:

Mod74 wrote:

I don't really care if someone helps me or is nice to me because they're trying be a better Christian or they're just a helpful/nice person. I'm hardly likely to ask what their motives are, nor care.

But, isn't it better if it's the latter? That they are doing it, not because it's expected of them, but because they wanted to?

I'd still stay they want to, because they're doing something encouraged by a set of guidelines they associate with. Doesn't society/law expect people to behave in a certain way -even if they don't want to- as well?

Like I said before, it's preprogrammed into us to help each other. It's not society or law, it's because we know, intrinsically, what is right or wrong because, without that distinction, our species would have joined the billions of others that have become extinct. Like the oft quoted Steven Weinberg said, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

Or money. I'm surprised that the accumulation of wealth in religion hasn't reared its head much in the debate as well.

Facewon

@Mod: You used "faith" in at least 3 different ways in that response to SG. That's the problem.

JonB

Ali wrote:

I don't really care if someone helps me or is nice to me because they're trying be a better Christian or they're just a helpful/nice person. I'm hardly likely to ask what their motives are, nor care.

But, isn't it better if it's the latter? That they are doing it, not because it's expected of them, but because they wanted to?

I'd still stay they want to, because they're doing something encouraged by a set of guidelines they associate with. Doesn't society/law expect people to behave in a certain way -even if they don't want to- as well?

Like I said before, it's preprogrammed into us to help each other. It's not society or law, it's because we know, intrinsically, what is right or wrong because, without that distinction, our species would have joined the billions of others that have become extinct.

What? If that were true there would have been no need for religion or laws in the first place. As soon as you try and reduce any argument to some essence of human nature you're on shaky ground (is that what you call science?). We could equally (wrongly) say that humans are intrinsically selfish and therefore need rules to ever do anything good.

Your point about people doing things 'because they want to' rather than because they're expected to by religion is the same as well. That would mean everyone's intrinsically good except for people who need religion, and they are intrinsically evil and need to be kept in line. It doesn't make sense. If you were to examine why people want to do good things you'd come up with all sorts of reasons, all of them based on some concept of historically developed social norm. There's no way you can separate religious motivation from those. Religious people 'want' to do good things in exactly the same way other people 'want' to do good things - because of the morality they have assimilated from society. If you think you can extract society and ideology from human behaviour and reduce it to an essence, you're dead wrong.

Ali

That essence came long before religion and written law. Law is merely the formal manifestation of that instinct. There will always be people who try and move outwith that instrinsic morality for their own gain, or because they are sociopaths or psychopaths. The law is merely a way for normal moral members of society to deal with this aberrant minority. And religion is just a manifestation of that law mixed up with mythology.

I've studied animal behaviour all my working life. The social norms and following of hierachy and moral codes are true amongst any group of intelligent animals, human or otherwise. To fail to follow that evolution is to fail as a species. Our strength is in working and living together and our adaptability. It's why we have become the dominant species. We evolved with an intrinsic morality, just as wolves, whales, lions, gorillas etc did. Law is merely that instinct presented as a social code. Where is the difference between the police, or a priest, enforcing the social or religious laws on a worng doer, and an alpha male wolf doing the same?Â

We do not need religion to be moral. It is simply a superficial layer placed upon our basic moral instinct. A superficial layer that, ironically, is often used to promote extremely immoral behaviour.

Brooks

The conflation of social controls with explanations for the real is what makes religions pretty fascinating.

Brooks

Trying to draw dos and don'ts from teh scienz isn't without precedents and problems, of course.

Brooks

Still, I'm confident my line would have survived any eugenic meddling to arrive at me anyway.

The ripe irony being that I refuse to breed.

Ali

Gonzo wrote:

what does "preprogrammed" mean? How does the law which says you drive on the left fit with the need to deal with "the aberrant minority"?

That's not a law of morality. That's a law to stop idiots being idiotic.

cockbeard

Are the epic poems also dangerous? They have similar teachings/morals/fables to the Abrahamic books. Or is it just the organisation of a belief into a societal structure that is dangerous?

Also by that Weinberg quote, is he stating that all combatants in battle are evil, or has something other than religion caused them to kill and maim?

Mod74

Facewon wrote:

@Mod: You used "faith" in at least 3 different ways in that response to SG. That's the problem.

Why is it a problem? I explained after each by what I meant by the term in each instance.

For some people "faith" is a blind adherence to mumbo jumbo. To others it isn't.

If we can't get past the difference between Faith and faith without getting bogged down in semantics we might as well all go home now.

Talk about religious groups twisting words? All I've seen from the anti-brigade is the fixation on particular words when what people mean by them should be perfectly obvious by reading the sentences surrounding them.

You may as well be plucking half sentences from the bible and applying your own meaning. Oh wait.

Mod74

Ali wrote:

I don't really care if someone helps me or is nice to me because they're trying be a better Christian or they're just a helpful/nice person. I'm hardly likely to ask what their motives are, nor care.

But, isn't it better if it's the latter? That they are doing it, not because it's expected of them, but because they wanted to?

I'd still stay they want to, because they're doing something encouraged by a set of guidelines they associate with. Doesn't society/law expect people to behave in a certain way -even if they don't want to- as well?

Like I said before, it's preprogrammed into us to help each other. It's not society or law, it's because we know, intrinsically, what is right or wrong because, without that distinction, our species would have joined the billions of others that have become extinct.Â Like the oft quoted Steven Weinberg said, "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." My point is the same. You can be a good person without religion. The vast majority of people ARE good people. Even Unlikely. Religion, however, like the most twisted extremes of politics, gives evil people the justification for being evil and for forcing good people to follow them.

Is it fuck pre-programmed in.

EDIT: JonB put it better than I could ever hope to.

Rev

At a base genetic level we are preprogrammed to breed.Â
Nothing more.
Good and Evil are completely subjective, depending on the society you are in.Â

At present, I'm about to throw a crisp bag in the bin that will take thousands of years to bio-degrade, Though, If I persuaded thousands of people to stop eating these crisps, people would lose their jobs.
I'm driving car that pollutes theÂ atmosphereÂ and leads to damage to the environment, though I'm going to my job that helps me to pay taxes and keeps the economy going.
I saw someone fighting in the street and didn't step in and stop them. Â
I sent an email that got someone in trouble for not doing their job that they might get fired for.
I coveted my neighbours oxen and it was a really nice one too.Â
Are these acts evil or good.

There will always be people who try and move outwith that instrinsic morality for their own gain, or because they are sociopaths or psychopaths

Politicians? Successful Business People? Drug Dealers? Welfare Cheats? People who sell items on eBay and don't pay taxes? People that take up disabled spaces at Tesco's?Â

We kill Wolves, Whales, Lions and Gorillas as well..Â

Good and Evil is something learned and something that is defined by society itself...Â

Ali

cockbeard wrote:

Are the epic poems also dangerous? They have similar teachings/morals/fables to the Abrahamic books. Or is it just the organisation of a belief into a societal structure that is dangerous?

The latter. The teachings of the fables just give examples of morality, just as the Norse poems of the Poetic Edda, Aesop's Fables etc

Also by that Weinberg quote, is he stating that all combatants in battle are evil, or has something other than religion caused them to kill and maim?

That would come under the good people doing evil things. You're also assuming that this is true of both parties and that one isn't merely defending themselves from attack.

Ali

revelthedog wrote:

At a base genetic level we are preprogrammed to breed.Â Nothing more. Good and Evil are completely subjective, depending on the society you are in.

Incorrect. Far more behaviour is genetically inherited than merely the requirement to breed. Why does a labrador like to carry things? Why does a Collie puppy round up ducklings? They often haven't been taught these things, we have selectively chosen those members of each breed who demonstrated these beahviours and continued to breed them so there is now a selected genetic behavioural trait.

Mod74

Humans have bred so they display helpful to the point of altruistic behaviour instinctively?

That rather flies in the face of everything I understand about genetics. Which I'll admit isn't a colossal amount.

Ali

Any behaviour that is not learned is preprogrammed instinct.

Ali

Mod74 wrote:

Humans have bred so they display helpful to the point of altruistic behaviour instinctively? That rather flies in the face of everything I understand about genetics. Which I'll admit isn't a colossal amount.

Fascinating book:

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8240.html

JonB

Ali wrote:

That essence came long before religion and written law. Law is merely the formal manifestation of that instinct. There will always be people who try and move outwith that instrinsic morality for their own gain, or because they are sociopaths or psychopaths. The law is merely a way for normal moral members of society to deal with this aberrant minority. And religion is just a manifestation of that law mixed up with mythology.

You're taking a concept developed in society and language and applying it to a point before the concept existed. The law is an encoding of moral and social norms, which in turn affects ideas of morality. How would you even prove that morals existed before any kind of society?

I've studied animal behaviour all my working life. The social norms and following of hierachy and moral codes are true amongst any group of intelligent animals, human or otherwise. To fail to follow that evolution is to fail as a species. Our strength is in working and living together and our adaptability. It's why we have become the dominant species. We evolved with an intrinsic morality, just as wolves, whales, lions, gorillas etc did. Law is merely that instinct presented as a social code. Where is the difference between the police, or a priest, enforcing the social or religious laws on a worng doer, and an alpha male wolf doing the same?

Â
Animals do not have morality. Morality requires some concept of right and wrong. Animals have different forms of social behaviour (including eating their own kind in some cases), but they have no sense of altruism. And that's precisely the point - humans developed socially for reasons that preceded morality - morality, as in the concept of right and wrong, is a code that develops from social behaviour as society becomes more complex (the division of labour), social behaviour originates from the need to propagate and otherwise survive. Something like incest becomes a moral issue because it is seen to lead to weaker offspring, not because there's a built in sense of its wrongness in humans.

We do not need religion to be moral. It is simply a superficial layer placed upon our basic moral instinct. A superficial layer that, ironically, is often used to promote extremely immoral behaviour.

We do not need religion to be moral, but we do need some kind of ideology with historical roots that gives us an understanding of morality. These ideologies can be centred around many different things - e.g. the nation, history, freedom - and any of them can be used to promote extreme immoral behaviour (see fascism, Soviet communism and neoliberal capitalism respectively), even amongst those who believe they are acting with good intentions.

Brooks

S'true. Without the gruntwork of the Enlightment, how arrive we at modern humanism.

Memecraft.

Rev

Ali wrote:

revelthedog wrote:

At a base genetic level we are preprogrammed to breed.Â Nothing more. Good and Evil are completely subjective, depending on the society you are in.

Incorrect. Far more behaviour is genetically inherited than merely the requirement to breed. Why does a labrador like to carry things? Why does a Collie puppy round up ducklings? They often haven't been taught these things, we have selectively chosen those members of each breed who demonstrated these beahviours and continued to breed them so there is now a selected genetic behavioural trait.

Really? I think you will find that every living thing on the planet is here to breed, make copies of itself, pass on genetic information. Other base actions are generally learned. They are bred for certain physical attributes that allow them to carry out certain actions. they may even be breed for aggressiveness or passiveness.Â
But being born with these abilities you stated above? I can't say I agree with you.

djchump

JonB wrote:

... Animals do not have morality. Morality requires some concept of right and wrong. Animals have different forms of social behaviour (including eating their own kind in some cases), but they have no sense of altruism. ...

Animals do have altruistic behaviour though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_in_animals
http://andy-luttrell.suite101.com/the-evolution-of-altruism-a169593
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology

Goes back to Darwin (group selected behaviour) but has been expanded and expounded upon since.

I dunno if you mean they have no "sense of altruism" contrasted with simply showing altruistic behaviour, but given that many higher animals have emotion, and show altruistic behaviour, seems unfounded to claim that they have no "sense of altruism" (i.e. internal moral compass or whatever you wish to call it).

JonB

Those examples add complexity to evolutionary theory, yes, but they don't demonstrate morality in animals. I wouldn't even call them altruistic behaviour unless it can be proven that such acts are the result of a conscious decision-making process in which the animal is aware that its choice is somehow good or bad and weighs up the options accordingly. Altruism is not only an act but also an intention.

It occurs to me in fact that Ali's arguments for intrinsic morality are closer to religious ideas (perhaps I should ask how this intrinsic morality originates), and certainly more metaphysical and less scientific than my argument, which is ironic considering they're being used to repudiate religion.

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