Thread: God

"My morals are based on my views that human life is sacred
and is not to be tampered with"

Oh sure thats nothing to do with Christianity..... yea...

"I don't really think
that any amount of rationalization is helpful in deciding
what is moral and what is not"

Morality makes no sense without social context. The idea that rationalisation is not helpfull is ridiculous. Whilst morality might be illogical from a personal perspective it is perfectly logical from a social perspective that is how we can make sense of it.

If we follow your method you just end up with loads of different people with differing personal moral values who are incapable of agreeing since they all "feel differently" and thats all that matters so every social decisions is vetoed by someone:

Science: Transplants are good!
Christians: No they are unnatural.
Science: Eh? That makes no sense....

Society: Right then, no transplants.

In fact to show that your way of viewing morality is absurd, I will present you with a situation that FEELS wrong, but cannot by any stretch of the imagination be constrewed as morally wrong:

Robots that look like people. If you make a robotic face that looks like a human face people start reacting to it as if it was human despite knowing otherwise. For example if you make the face contort as if in pain people will display sympathetic responses to the robot despite knowing it isn't feeling anything at all.

In that instances running the program that moves the robots facial features in a specific way "feels" wrong, but clearly it isn't. Ergo we cannot judge morality purely on how things feel.

>My morals are based on my views that human life is sacred
and is not to be tampered with

thats the main problem I have with those who try to stifle research in this area. They feel that the process in which human life is sacred, but I dont feel that way. Neither do many people. And what right do you (not you Nick in particular ) have to prevent me or others from doing research in this area?

This sort of thing goes back to what was said earlier in this thread, religion is constantly trying to hold back science. And you may say that your views have nothing to do with your religion, but I highly doubt that, considering most religions view human life as sacred and such. Also, is it just a coincidence that the loudest voice in opposition to stem cell research is from right wing christian republicans (referring to the situation in America).

"I thought you accepted that morals were not caused by
rational thought"

They aren't completely rational that doesn't mean they do not have rational elements.

Most morality can be rationalised (from the individuals point of view)via the "what if you were in their place" line of reasoning, whilst this is not a logical basis for the individual's moral behaviour, it is a means of understanding morality and deducing what to consider right and wrong.

which leads on to your next point:

"But you do believe murder is immoral and why?"

There are two answers to this:

1) I value my own life, and I wouldn't want to be murdered, therefore I shouldn't murder anyone else. Ie. an empathy based approach to ethics.

2) The reason murder is immoral is because a society with free-murder would collapse instantly.

We have a personal explanation, and social explanation. Generally speaking morality is based on these two views.

Take Fraud: technically stealing 1 penny frmo every company around the world harms no one, scratch point 1, BUT a society in which everyone does this collapses. Hence immoral.

There are of course several different ways of considering morality/ethics in a wider context, personally i try to use the utilitarian perspective (ie the best for the most) when determining my ethics.

"I was hoping you would accept this as a universal truth; even
if sacred is only quasi-religious."

Funnily enough the idea that there is something significant about human life compared to other life is entirely religious, it is most certainly NOT a universal truth.

"I'm not conservative or republican. Some of my views are liberal, for example, I'm against capital punishment."

Are you against capital punishment because you think human life is sacred? If that is the case then you are using reasoning to determine your morals.

Most people do, they have a set number of scenarios that they "know" the moral answer to: Murder is wrong, etc. etc. Then they compare their "known answers" to given situations to determine their ethics.

Having said that from what i can see you seem to have several contradictions in your own ethics:

You deem human life sacred (blatently because of religion)

therefore you veto abortion and stem cell research, and you are anti capital punishment. Correct?

However, presumeably you are not anti psychology, or anti antibiotic screening using human cultured skin cells. And yet these two would seem to violate your "human life is sacred therefore shouldn't be experimented upon" views.

The problem with morality is this:

Unless you're carefull you end up with temporally defined morals.

What i mean by this, is that if you follow the "it feels bad therefore it is bad", then you don't always end up following the futures path, because what "feels right", is often based on the kind of ideas we are used to:

When the Victorians came across organ transplantation the idea horrified them because it was completely contrary to ideas of "natural"/"unnatural" that they were used to. So they deemed it immoral. Thing is following generations do not have the hang-ups of previous generations, so ultimately morality is NOT determined by those hang-ups, they just delay stuff. For that reason you have to be very carefull about what to believe with regards to ethics to avoid basing morality on familiarity the same way the Victorians did for organ transplantation.

>But you do believe murder is immoral and why?

Sure I believe murder is immoral. Why I believe murder is immoral is irrelevant. It seems you are trying to compare "murdering" a few stem cells with murdering a human being, which makes no sense. How does one conclude that stem cells -- no more alive than the cells you "murder" on your face when you wash it -- deserve the protection one would give a human being.

The only way to conclude this is to assume there is something special about human life over other forms of life, which is strictly a religious argument

>I was hoping you would accept this as a universal truth; even
if sacred is only quasi-religious.

Clyde took the words right out of my mouth.

>I'm not conservative or republican. Some of my views are liberal, for example, I'm against capital punishment

You didnt say you werent Christian

Ok Clyde, I am going to try and comment on teh co-exsistance of education and religion. I may not make sense, I may cut this off short, but perhaps you will see it.

I agree with you that reform movements in westren cultures are becoming more and more prevelant. And with this comes more and more personal interpretation, debates over morals, and the "culturizing" of religion. While I think that this is good, I like people being able to decide for themsevles after careful thought and debate, I think you may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

For example:

Two of my old high school teachers, a married couple, who I knew very well for various reasons. They are two of the smartest people I know. If I was going on Who Wants to be a Millionaire they would be right at the top of my lifeline list. Now before you speak up on it, they are both science teachers, one physics, the other biology, geology, and enviromental. However, they are both very well versed in a lot of things, all subjects.

Now in my reform temple, in reality a very small percentage of teh congragation goes to weekly services. Turnout is generally low. However, they must go nearly 50% of the time. They have taught religious school, one of their fathers (a distiguished doctor) taught my father (i think heh). If you ask them how we came to be theyll say evolution, you ask how the universe came to be they can thoughouly explain the big bang theory, and probably several others as well. However they are religious. I have never actually talked to them about this, but I know that they take the religion for it's spiritual value, someplace even to organize ones thoughts etc. In all honesty, i don't know why, but they do. This is one example, I know of others. But it is possible for the two, science and religion, to co-exsist.

You talk about how we learn our morals and ethics from our culture as much as our religion. Well lets not forget that religion is part of the culture. Even though I don't nessicarily believe in what the Torah says happen, there is still much to be learned from it. Now to extend from this point:

You say that culture and society teaches us morals and should along with our parents. Well first of all the culture that currently "sells" isn't exactly one of high morals, but ignoring that. Lets assume that pure faith based religion moves on, and religions are becoming mroe and more libral. Eventually you get to the point that very few people are going to church etc. Parents are attempting to teach their children morals. Here are the problems with that, just like many parents aren't very good @ teaching their kids normal school topics for the ever changing world (so we send kids to schools, along with time issues), it is very difficult for parents to teach their kids all their moral values. Plus hearing these values only from parents doesn't make teh ethics very strong in children, especially when many are rebelling from those parents. So parents send their kids to an institution, say once a week, that teaches them morals and ethics. Perhaps it even uses ancectdotes from the past, and perhaps it even uses an idealized person as an example, though it doesn't have to. Now just because parents aren't able to teach their children all of these things, that doesn't mean that they don't want their children to have the same beliefs and morals that they do. So the parents choose a group to send their children to, perhaps even the same group that they went to to learn when they were young.

Since these kids know each other throughout childhood, and they have things in common, and since the parents of the kids are the similarlly interconnected, these places would logically become centers of social and cultural gathering. They would be an importatn place in teh culture of those people....I could go on but I'm sure you see the point, this is very church like.

Next I point to Tibetain monks, a subject I don't know as much about as I should. However, from what I know their religion is more based on self-meditation and thought rather than blind faith, yet it is a religion.

My point is that the definition of religion might change. It will never again, in westren society, be the same as it was 500 years ago with the pope and priests telling people what is right and wrong. Remember people back then couldn't read, the preists were often all they had to tell them. But language isn't staginate, and people often need something to believe in. The definition and center of religion may change, but it willnot go away any time soon, nor should it.

As a final, and seperate topic, I'm going to breifly point out something about faith, and the helpfullness of believing in a being greater than yourself. In blaming something, psychologists find that people do it in one of two ways. They intrenalize it, or they externalize it. Here are some examples:

Failed a test:

Internalize - I'm stupid, I didn't study hard enough, I should work harder. (Often even when the person studied a lot)

Externalize - The teacher graded too hard. They didn't say that woudl be on it. It was too hard. I was unlucky.

Now you won't be too surprised to know that when people internalize things too often, namely bad things, they become depressed and it is much more difficult or impposible, to lead a successful life. That is one where a person is happy, and can look back on it and say that they are proud of what they've done, it doesn't nessicarily have anything to do (psychologicaly) with money. And that is the most important thing. And that isn't good. I could go on a rant and point out that it is people's happyness that is most important etc, and if they are happy and successful in their life, and have not purposefully cause others to be unsuccessfull, then it doesn't really matter how they led their life. The point is they've led it, and studies actually show that the elderly who are most satisfied with their lives are the religious, and the non-religious, the people in between are most likely (but not garenteed!) to be unsatisfied.

For example:

Two of my old high school teachers, a married couple, who I knew very well for various reasons. They are two of the smartest people I know. If I was going on Who Wants to be a Millionaire they would be right at the top of my lifeline list. Now before you speak up on it, they are both science teachers, one physics, the other biology, geology, and enviromental. However, they are both very well versed in a lot of things, all subjects.

Now in my reform temple, in reality a very small percentage of teh congragation goes to weekly services. Turnout is generally low. However, they must go nearly 50% of the time. They have taught religious school, one of their fathers (a distiguished doctor) taught my father (i think heh). If you ask them how we came to be theyll say evolution, you ask how the universe came to be they can thoughouly explain the big bang theory, and probably several others as well. However they are religious. I have never actually talked to them about this, but I know that they take the religion for it's spiritual value, someplace even to organize ones thoughts etc. In all honesty, i don't know why, but they do. This is one example, I know of others. But it is possible for the two, science and religion, to co-exsist.

But you see you generalise future generations on the basis of individual examples.

What I mean is that it IS possible for science/education and religion to coexist inside a specific persons head, it is not possible for science and religion to coexist in a society over a large amount of time.

Ok that wasn't very clear and your probably thinking i've lost the plot, let me clarify;

People who are brought up in a religious environment can go on to become very intelligent scientists: 7% of the National Academy of sciences believe in God. Are these 7% stupid? Are they poor scientists? No, far from it. They have separated the two in their minds.

In that sense coexistence CAN occur, because people can live with paradoxes. BUT and this is the key point, over time less and less people will believe, because whilst people who are brought up with religion can live with paradoxes, people who aren't cannot.

If you have been brought up with religion/God and that is a large portion of your world view then you may be able to make do with contradictions involving it, but that only works IF you religion is already a large(ish) part of your world view.

Basically religion cannot rely on upbringing to combat the advances of education because in the long run the numbers will dwindle since a decent number of people brought up with religion (more as religions social acceptability fades) will lose their faith.

What about people who aren't brought up with religion converting?

Well conversion is where education smacks religion, you see science doesn't point to God, and logic makes belief in God absurd.

Now that doesn't mean that smart people today never convert, plainly some (though not that many) do, why is this? Well we can attribute this to the social acceptability that religion currently posesses, and the inability of many people (yes, even smart ones)to think straight: Currently education even in science does not place great emphasis "how" to think. Look how much trouble i get into in these debates trying to explain to people the issues with irrational conclusions. However as education progresses more emphasis will be placed on how to form a valid conclusion. You can already see it happening today, science is moving further away from the "memorise this list facts/formula/numbers/etc." and placing more emphasis on understanding the concepts, this approach will broaden into a grasp of HOW to go about forming conclusions.

That is bad news for conversion.

Smart people today might be able to live with belief in God (but statistically speaking the more scientifically literate the less likely to believe in God) but smart people of tommorow will not.

"You talk about how we learn our morals and ethics from our culture as much as our religion. Well lets not forget that religion is part of the culture"

Well right now it might be but it doesnt have to be. And (as far as i can see - and i may well have a skewed view point) in England the culture seems to be very secular in nature.

"You say that culture and society teaches us morals and should along with our parents. Well first of all the culture that currently "sells" isn't exactly one of high morals, but ignoring that. Lets assume that pure faith based religion moves on, and religions are becoming mroe and more libral. Eventually you get to the point that very few people are going to church etc. Parents are attempting to teach their children morals. Here are the problems with that, just like many parents aren't very good @ teaching their kids normal school topics for the ever changing world (so we send kids to schools, along with time issues), it is very difficult for parents to teach their kids all their moral values. Plus hearing these values only from parents doesn't make teh ethics very strong in children, especially when many are rebelling from those parents"

I'm not sure i get your "culture that "sells" isn't exactly one of high morals" statement, you're saying that western society is generally immoral?

You seem to be suggesting that religion or atleast some sort of religious substitute is needed for proper ethical training. I'm not sure i suppose its possible but we dont see animals needing an institution to teach them social rules i don't see why we would either.

Society as a whole teaches ethics, parents are usually responsible for a reasonable portion of that, but children aren't only "heaing it" at home, they see it everywhere they go; in the interactions between people. The learning of morality and ethics has a lot to do with how people react to our actions.

As far as i'm aware children brought up in non-religious house holds are no more likely to commit crimes than those brought up in religious ones. (In my own personal experience i have never seen an ethical divide between those with religious upbringing and those with not)

I found this on the web:

http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9151.htm

There is an interesting post relating to ethics/religion, there is a link to a study although the poster explains some of the problems with it. (EDIT: it doesn't actually seem to spend much time addressing what we are discussing here, still i figure i;ll leave it because its semi-relevent).

However lets say you are right lets say that some form of ethical teaching outside parenting is needed, or at the very least usefull.

I can certainly see some of the nice aspects to church, and i have no problem with them, i have no problem with ethical teaching but you see there is a fundamental difference between an institution that teaches social interaction and one that teaches about things that actually ARE. One is in the realm of the humanties the other is in the realm of science.

There is a place for church-like ethical teaching as long as it does overstep the boundaries and teach about how the world IS in an irrational way. If that is the future for religion and it is a plausable future then I welcome it whole-heartedly.

"Next I point to Tibetain monks, a subject I don't know as much about as I should. However, from what I know their religion is more based on self-meditation and thought rather than blind faith, yet it is a religion."

Indeed it counts as a religion yet it is more focussed on the social interaction - the "how to live your life" part, and so has less of the negative side-effects. Religion is only bad because of its irrational beliefs, the other aspects are not socially damaging, in fact as you have pointed out it can be argued that many of them can be benefical, well thats great, we keep the good and we throw out the bad. Basically we are left with humanism in churches.

"My point is that the definition of religion might change"

Hmm well i'm not so sure that we will call these schools of ethics 'religion', humanism is practically that and its not considered to be a religion as such. But in the end its just semantics, whether or not its called religion is fairly irrelevant, what matters is its nature.

When i talk of religion i mean, religion in the form of institutionalised teaching of irrational beliefs.

"As a final, and seperate topic, I'm going to breifly point out something about faith, and the helpfullness of believing in a being greater than yourself. In blaming something, psychologists find that people do it in one of two ways. They intrenalize it, or they externalize it. Here are some examples"

Ok.....

Failed a test:

Internalize - I'm stupid, I didn't study hard enough, I should work harder. (Often even when the person studied a lot)

Externalize - The teacher graded too hard. They didn't say that woudl be on it. It was too hard. I was unlucky.

Now you won't be too surprised to know that when people internalize things too often, namely bad things, they become depressed and it is much more difficult or impposible, to lead a successful life

Hmm you mean that blaming something that you are actually responsible for on someone else is a good thing? Sounds odd but if thats what the stats say....... I can only speak for myself but I usually "internalise" in so far as I look to see why i've done badly and then attempt to remedy the situation.

"The point is they've led it, and studies actually show that the elderly who are most satisfied with their lives are the religious, and the non-religious, the people in between are most likely (but not garenteed!) to be unsatisfied."

Well that is interesting but you cannot derive a suitable conclusion simply from that data, for example you do not know whether or not people are unhappy because atheism inherently leads to unhappyness or because it is still a social faux-pas in a fair portion of the world. Furthermore throughout history man-kind has been looking at how to view himself with reference to a God, theologians have thousands of years of acceptance over how to live life and how to think of themselves behind their beliefs atheists have a few centuries at best.

It is very easy to be miserable as an atheist, because elements that are deemed important primarily due to religious thinking are swept away. But there is nothing intrinsic about those elements, it is merely that humanity has thought that way for a large period of time.

As an example i give you "meaning", thats one of the first things that i come up against in religious arguments, they tell me that without God there is no meaning to life, to existance, to morality!, etc. etc. My response is usually along the lines of..... "so?"

Because meaning has become such an important thing for us its easy to find atheism depressing, BUT thats just social conditioning!

I advise every atheist or agnostic to read Dawkins "Unweaving the Rainbow", I assure you, you can be just as satisfied and content with life as an atheist as you can as a theist, you merely require a different outlook, one that has not had thousands of years to develop, but one which society will, I suspect gradually begin to adopt as religious answers are no longer accepted.

"LOL, I would never have fought with you so hard if I had known your definition of religion! I thought you were against anything that taught spirituality and proper ways to live one's life over science and logic, even if it kept to itself and didn't overstep boundaries. I thought you found all religion illogical, irrational, wrong, and harmful to society, not just the ones that preach about God or the earth being on a back of a turtle etc."

Well i don't like "spiritual" i don't think the term has any meaning.

But i certainly have nothing against the teaching of ethics. I am somewhat dubious of being told "how" to live your life in concrete terms, I'd much prefer it in the form of advice. (I'm not reffering to ethics here, more to the kind of buddist teachings)

I do find all religion illogical in so far as i have yet to find one which does not involve irrrational beliefs, thats why I back humanism, that has the ethical teaching and to a certain extent the advice for living life, without the irrationality.

I'm sorry if i gave you some other impression, i did not mean to.

But you see you generalise future generations on the basis of individual examples.

This is true, but you have to start somewhere.

Hmm you mean that blaming something that you are actually responsible for on someone else is a good thing? Sounds odd but if thats what the stats say....... I can only speak for myself but I usually "internalise" in so far as I look to see why i've done badly and then attempt to remedy the situation.

Ok I don't think you quite understand this concept....It is possible that the test was too hard. Blaming it on yourself just beats you down.

Another example where internalizing is bad:

Say you're late for an appointment. You park in the handicapp cause you feel rushed. You go to your appointment and while there your car is towed. Angerily you call your wife/mother to come pick you up. On the way to get you she's hit by a drunk driver, or any driver, and dies.

It is not an uncommon thing for people to blame themselves in this situation. If you had taken your time, whatever. However it wasn't your fault, it was the durnk driver's.

This is irrational internalizing, but people do it.

Trust me the studies are out there on this one. There are particuarlly a bunch that show that woman are much more likely to internalize, while men externalize.

Well that is interesting but you cannot derive a suitable conclusion simply from that data, for example you do not know whether or not people are unhappy because atheism inherently leads to unhappyness or because it is still a social faux-pas in a fair portion of the world. Furthermore throughout history man-kind has been looking at how to view himself with reference to a God, theologians have thousands of years of acceptance over how to live life and how to think of themselves behind their beliefs atheists have a few centuries at best.

Well first of all yes it can be derrived by data, that's what psycologists do, using science, scientific method, and such they derrived those conclusions. What more do you want?
Umm why don't you read my quote again:

The point is they've led it, and studies actually show that the elderly who are most satisfied with their lives are the religious, and the non-religious, the people in between are most likely (but not garenteed!) to be unsatisfied.

Therefore the point is, if they live satisfying lives, and don't cause others to live unsatisfactory ones, who cares? They are happy. And under atheism when you die that's it, so nothing wrong there. If you try and force your view that they shouldn't have a faith based view on them, then you're just as bad as the people who tried to force their views on others in teh past, and often caused wars.


Edit: Sorry i didn't reply to all of your topics, but I don't believe that they all need it, plus i have dinner .

Oh but as far as animals needing schools for social learnign. Well animals don't have societies that are nearly as complex as ours. Plus they don't have to seal with issues like morals, ethis etc.

Well, I doubt most humanists (and I consider myself one) think of humanism in purely logical terms. Acknowledging the social usefulness of ethical behavior, I believe most people adhere to the philosophy of humanism do so because it feels right, not out of a Vulcan, Spock style of logic.
Some of this feeling no doubt arises out of social conditioning, even when religious trappings are discarded. But that also begs the question that some religious beliefs are also an attempt to codify, albeit often unsuccessfully, social structures that pre-existed the religion.
Evolution has resulted in a social situation where humanism is one of, if not the, best strategies to preserve our genes. Humans survive best in social groups.
Unfortunately, a few things counter it. Individuals (and their genes) can be rewarded for antisocial behavior, as long as the majority don't engage in the same behavior. Our "intelligence" also allows us to override programmed behavior, for good or ill. There's also a conflict between genetic behavior designed to improve the survival of the individual genes and more generic species genes (at least, this is something being debated). Individually, individuals can be more successful passing along their genes through antisocial behavior: rape, infanticide, homicide, etc. Socially, for the species, this is a self destructive strategy, at least if something like human intelligence is to arise.
Religion, among other things, was an attempt to reconcile these conflicting genetic directives.
I think most, not all, humanists are at least agnostic about the existance of God, what or who ever she may be. We may acknowledge her possibility, perhaps probabilty, but don't use her as a reason for appropriate behavior.

Surly lying in some cases is win-win. What is socially
wrong about prostitution? isn't that win-win?

Uh-uh. Don't want ma jeans goin to anyone, man.

Rationality can only give you a sequence of events that
will happend if you do something. It's not going to tell
you if any event in the sequence is wrong or right.

*whispers*that's because there really isn't any right or wrong*/whispher*

"Surly lying in some cases is win-win."

Thats what we call "little white lies".

"What is socially
wrong about prostitution? isn't that win-win?"

Perhaps. I'm not sure, who is morally wrong here, the prostitute or the client?

To be honest i don't really think prostituion really is morally wrong. Though i'm wondering whether "normal" human relationships would suffer if prostituion was widespread.

Hmm, i'd consider prostitution to be more bad etiquette than ethically wrong, and that may be social bias on my part.

"Rationality can only give you a sequence of events that
will happend if you do something. It's not going to tell
you if any event in the sequence is wrong or right."

Rationality is used to determine whether or not a new scenario is ethical based on comparisons with previous scenarios where the ethics are "known".