"Why Believe in God" ad campaign
 

http://news.aol.com/article/holiday-...n-a-god/245127

And here's a thoughtful, loving, caring response already:

I do love those Sexy Humans!

Can we believe in dog?

"Oooh Spot. Ooooh Spot."

Tim is a douche bag.

Why is it that believers, in choosing faith, somehow lose the powers of perception? Why does a belief in God virtually always coincide with an inability to see any point of view but your own? It seems to genuinely not occur to these people that people who do not share their faith may not share their perspectives on reality and that fact does not make thier reality the only reality. It's so sad how otherwise intelligent people cut of thier noses and willingly choose to not see the world before their own eyes!

I heard (and saw pictures) of those ads in London, but I had not heard they were stateside yet. Way cool.

Not that they'll change anyone's mind....

Even the people running the ads don't intend to change anyone's mind. They stated their goal as simply reaching out to those athiests looking for others to connect with during an overwhelmingly Christy period.

I think we should be good for goodness' sake with or without religion! And I love that they're referencing a line of that ol' Christmas carol, but with deeper meaning than the original intended.

Love it.

¡Yo quiero mas!

The best part is the proper use of apostrophe.

I feel sorry for those who feel that you can only be good moral people if you are religious. If your religious beliefs are the only thing keeping you from becoming evil, then you have issues. IMO, of course.

Time for "Tim" to open a window...

GD, you're intentionally trying to bait me, aren't you?

I'll turn it around. If you are only good because of religion that I suggest you aren't really a good person, just a scared one.

I understand the point, but I admit I'm not nuts about the campaign.

It's likely my favorite ad campaign EVER.




Yes, I've seen how good religious people are. Oh yeah. Religion makes you good. That's a good one!

And ya better not shout
Ya better not cry!

Yes, but I don't think you can reach out and transform the faithful just by telling them religion is bad.

I admit I'm really uncomfortable with the way this campaign is totally dismissive of faith. Being good for goodness' sake is great, and should be promoted. But the part that is dismissive of believing in God, well, it doesn't sit well with me.

Again, they never claimed that as a goal.

And they didn't dismiss anything, they asked a question.

I like the text that was used for the British version of this campaign:

"There's probably no god, now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

I'm quite happy that my own personal minority is getting publicity and positive attention.

God's seen this campaign, and She's disgusted.

Further, they are hoping to make some like minded people feel a little less alienated during the holidays.

I am usually pretty polite about religion and I usually say all the right PC things. "No, I don't believe in God, but I respect your belief in God." "I am not religious, but I admire ritual and tradition."

At the end of the day, though, I don't believe in God. And it's dismissive to think, "People believe in God because that's what they need to believe." But, yeah, that's pretty much what I think most days.

And I have plenty of intelligent, good friends who do believe in God. Some even believe in Jesus. I have one friend - a very witty writer - who doesn't believe in evolution. And I do respect my friends. And I do respect their traditions. But there has to be at least some part of me that thinks their wrong in order to know I'm right. Heh. I don't feel God's presence. I see no evidence of a god's or gods' existence other than the life they were given through stories. And for me, the power of myth *is* very powerful.

But, again, at the end of the day, I think it's myth and some think it's real. And a part of me, as respectful and mindful of my friends as I want to be, I do shake my head a little at them. And, they, in turn, shake their heads at me. I'm okay being in the wrong if I am in the wrong. Doesn't need to be real for me.

So, there's a little close mindedness in all things, I suppose. And I think all the sexy humans are trying to do here is interject a little bit of their own belief system into the holiday season. Hurrah, I say!

Jesus died for my sins. I am making every effort to ensure that his death was not in vain.

Hee. And, for the record, I fvcking love Christmas!

A wonderful Pagan holiday known as Yule (and other names, depending on which mythology you prefer).

This is kind of why I love being agnostic. Or, well, spiritually undefined. I get to shake my head at people who spend time shaking their heads at each other, because I really have no firm assumption either way. Is there a god? Possibly. Is there no god? Possibly. Do I feel the need to define anything? Really, not so much.

And, thanks, man, for posting this in the daily grind, which is not visible to non-members. I'm still a closeted agnostic in some circles.

I was a closeted atheist/ hard agnostic/ non-theist (whatever) for a very long time, and I look forward to a day when that fact carries no stigma at all. It ought to matter as little as ones preference for Coke vs. Pepsi. (Come to think of it, some people get pretty het up about that one as well.)

If Jesus truly died for the sins of humanity, (as I once fervently believed) it seems to me that the only reasonable view is that of the Universalists - we're all covered - no pre-conditions, no belief requirements, no entrance exam. Universal sanctification, no damnation. (Though, practically everyone I know would want to make a few exceptions for the really really evil bastards - but strict Universalism says no, everyone gets spiritually overhauled and reunited with the big G.) Every other view ends up excluding enormous numbers of essentially good people, and I don't think any compassionate human of the 21st century should countenance such injustice.

So, Kevy, I bet you're covered. :)

So if I do follow a spiritual path, that includes believing in God, does this mean I'm a bad person?

I don't see where anything said in this thread so far would lead to that conclusion, no.

Most of the kindest and most giving people I know have some kind of belief. A few don't. Some of the nastiest I've ever met are believers. A few of them aren't.

There are plenty of other things to lead to the conclusion that I'm a bad person :)

I'm not really keen on the ads, but that's about it.

I know that the ads would have bothered the hell out of me back in my believing days. Part of that is because beliefs and world views are so closely tied in with how we view and value ourselves (and others). It's a deeply personal concern that hits us where we live.

It is also true that, for me anyway, when I used to encounter direct challenges to God belief, they made me very uncomfortable, because deep down, I was afraid the doubters might be on to something. For me, anyway, those fears came true, but I ended up happier that way. Everyone's mileage will vary, and that's totally groovy with me.

Last week, after Prop 8 passed, I was having a conversation with GC about religion, particularly about the comments that some were making about the various religious groups that went out of their way to push for the hateful legislation.

I was defending the people on LoT who were saying terrible things about the Mormon Church.

I guess I've grown to believe that most of the religious people that I've encountered in my life use their religion - and more specifically the dogma attached to their religion - as a crutch, something to give meaning and hope to their lives. When they stop using their crutch to prop themselves up and start swinging it around to hurt others, it reminds me that there are an awful lot of people walking around with potential weapons. And that scares me.

So when people say, "Hate the club, don't hate its members," I find it difficult to see the distinction. In theory, I support a libertarian reading of the 2nd Amendment, but I've been in places in America where people toting their guns around gave me the willies. I feel the same way about people who "cling to their religion."

This ad campaign makes me smile, because it underlines my reality that I don't need that crutch, and I don't have to assume that my fellow humans are cripples.

Jesus Saves Sinners
...and redeems them for valuable prizes.

Out of curiosity (and this gets to the core of Richard Dawkins view of atheism), do you consider those two possibilities to be equally likely?


I, for example, also view both as possible. One is just a hell of a lot more likely than the other.

I definitely feel a need to define God once that becomes the topic of discussion. The question "Does the Biblical God Yahweh exist?" is a very different question from "Is there a universal energy that binds everything together and causes there to be something rather than nothing?" And there are nearly infinite other ways to understand or define the noun "god."

I love the LoT.

Honestly? I don't put too much thought into it.

I feel a deeply spiritual connection to nature, and to other people.

Love, and the power it has, makes me feel stronger and I've seen it do amazing things. And my Catholic family brought me up believing that "God is love." I don't think they were exactly trying to say "God is another name for that everything-is-big-and-connected feeling," but that's sort of where I've landed in my spiritual journey. Is that actually a higher power? I dunno. It feels high and powerful to me. Is it more likely that feeling is a construct of man? Sure, I guess. But, you know, it feels divine to me, in its way, so I remain open to the possibility that it is.

Man, I've never been so honest about how I feel on the topic. Well, in writing. It's hard - my family is so very tied to their religious beliefs, and with my mother's health in particular, I'm not willing to waste the little time I have left with her on a conversation that will truly break her heart.

I can very much relate to this concern. I had a period where I felt it was very important to let my family know where I stand, mostly so I wouldn't have to lie to them when this stuff (inevitably) comes up. But now, it's so much more important to me to simply love them and enjoy their company.

Hey, I saw this on a Billboard off the 710 months ago - it made me smile and visit their website - but that was the non-Christmas version without the "be good for goodness sake" tag line.

God is love.
Love is blind.
Ray Charles is blind.

Ergo: God is Ray Charles.

I think the ad campaign is kinda cool.
I love promoting the idea that just because you're not religious it doesn't mean you're a bad person.

I'm glad you have been. It's pretty much precisely where I am spiritually myself, and it somehow gives me that everything-is-big-and-connected feeling to know that you grok it that way, too.

This is worth repeating. It's become my exact view on my family. It has to be.

Dig the ad campaign.

This about sums it up for me:
I post it a lot. It's on my Facebook page.
:)

CNN just did a story about Jim Jones and the Guyana mass suicide and that tragic bit o' history is enough for me wanting never to be involved with an organized religion ever again. The story creeped me out as a kid and it creeps me out now as a big kid. I remember watching the movie Guyana Tragedy as a kid and then going to church later on that week. I remember thinking 'how is this different from Jonestown?' I just can't put myself in a place where I'm supposed to speak and sit and stand just like everyone else and feel good about it. I like thinking for myself.

If I believed in heaven of a type worth being in (I add that caveat but the heaven generally believed in by those in the judeo-christian tradition does not appeal to me at all) I think the urge to suicide would be irresistible.

In the presence of such belief, continuing to live your temporal life is just a very odd form of masochism.

Maybe that's why certain Muslims are so cool with suicide, and Westerners see it as suckitude.

Well, I'd like to think that I've have sufficient self restraint to only take with me those who wish to go.

I'd like to know what your ruffled panties have do to with yule?

But I love the photo. ha ha ha.

This is much more to my thinking then that of a God and heaven up in the clouds and a devil out to tempt everyone to sin. Thanks for putting it into words for me. When I try to explain it I end up rambling a bit and can't really clarify it as well as you just did.

Let's hear it for strong nuclear force!

Oh. I thought he was talking about midichlorians.

Midichlorians! Now that's blasphemy!

Yes, that second definition is so broad as to include literally everything, so,maybe not too useful by itself. Let's add a moral dimension to it just for fun. (The force that holds us together also nudges us towards evolving into more compassionate beings.)

Of course, I'm now guilty of inventing a God to my own specifications, rather than trying to discover what is actually true. So it goes.

No -I don't think it does. I don't think it has any moral anything about it. I feel that you can influence though. And this probably goes back to my Wiccan days - the good you put out comes back to you moreso as does the bad.

It's the selfish motivation factor I guess - don't do back stuff or worse bad stuff will happen to do. Therefore, when bad things happen one may indeed ask - what did I do to deserve this?

But that's just me and my thought process. YMMV.

In a way, that is the secret behind The Secret. The problem is that if carried to its conclusion it removes any need for compassion at any level. For if bad things happen, the person brought it on themselves.

The poor deserve to be poor because they must have done something bad. The sick deserve to be sick. And the rich must be incredibly good people.

We ridicule this idea when Jerry Falwell says it and personifies that force in the form of a vengeful god. And yet I hear a lot of people espouse the same fundamental idea, just emphasising the good half instead of the punishment half. But they're both still there.


===

And now I'm sliding into debating. I knew GD was baiting me. I'll try to stop.

Quit pretending you have free will.

I can't, it's built in. All I can do it quit pretending I don't know that I lack free will.

AMEN BROTHER!

Not to get too far into it, but I don't think BLAME automatically comes from those who adhere to a more thought-influenced view of the workings of the universe.

I do believe in God but i don't let that drive me or my morals beliefs etc. I don't let it try to influence others. But for this holiday season the season isn't about gifts. Yes that is a big part of it. But somehow this society is drilled with every commercial every store the objective isn't to spend the day with family and friends realizing what the day really is about. It's about spending that almighty dollar and to give gifts. Material things are fine but we can't take them with us when we go. Such a shame to make a material holiday out of something that is so simple and with this economy the way it is if no presents were under the tree i'd be fine with that.

I always assumed that the phrase "for goodness' sake" was a way of invoking God without quite taking his name in vain.

That observation aside, I still vote "no." As a believer in "self-evident truths," there's probably not much about the sponsor's positions that I would disagree with. Still, I view this as imposing a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Thus, what we are left with are reachers reaching out to seekers. Reachers and seekers generally intersect at the point of mischief and self-righteousness. If we're keeping score, I say the campaign sucks.

Well damn, I guess that ad worked.

People are talking.

Some churches preach common sense

Aren't you supposed to call a doctor after four hours?

More seriously it is a bit odd to preach that you should have sex whether you want to or not. And of course, the reason for him preaching this common sense is to reclaim sex from the dirty perverts who are having it in ways he doesn't approve of.

That's if the erection lasts that long. Sex is possible, albeit more complicated, without erection.

Yes, but as an evangelical faith I am thinking there isn't so much approval of those complications.

Why would you dirty something meant only for strengthening marriage you dirty pervert. You must be from Arizona.

Hey, watch it, no personal attacks buddy.

Oh, I'm sorry. Let me rephrase in the message board time honored way of avoiding personal attacks:

Some group of people of which you are a member, but I'm not saying this about you personally just a group of people that so happens to include you, must be from Arizona.

Visible Alex mojo! :snap:

Huh?

BTW, the phrase "you can't take it with you" always kind of annoyed me. Um, yeah, I don't expect to play my Wii after I'm dead. If you believe in a heavenly, blissful afterlife, why would you want to take things with you? You wouldn't need them. I really don't care that I can't take stuff with me, because it's about having the item now.

You can't take it with you but you can take it with you all the way up to the exact moment when you no longer care.

No you certainly can't take it with you when you die. We all will die. For example you can't take your Wii with you. It's just material objects. As for the wanting an item NOW well that's what makes the economy go around.

What do you mean I can't take my stuff with me!?!?!?! :(

I can accept that my father died and that my mom won't be around forever. What's going to be really trippy is when my children, grandchildren and so on start passing on.

As to the add campaign, I was very, very, very mildly amused that an atheist organization used a phrase that I believe assumes the existence of a god whose name is not to be abused. And the campaign still sucks.

Nope when you die you can't take anything with you. It's all left behind to be sifted thru by family members or friends.

That's why i live life to the fullest....and to cherish moments with friends and family. Time is precious.

I think the phrase is meant mostly for money. Unless you're Scrooge, you don't enjoy the money in its money form.

Stop hoarding, spend it on yourself, have a good time or buy stuff. Give to charity. Heck, bestow it on your hiers while you're still alive and watch them enjoy it.

But don't just keep it there ... You Can't Take It With You.

I think it means, don't waste your time making more money than you need. Spend your time on people and things that you love.

That's certainly the message of the play and movie, notwithstanding Grandpa's refusal to pay his income tax.

I thought "You Can't Take It With You" was a wonderful play.

ETA: wrong thread.

Well, color me embarrassed. It seems I pasted the wrong link in this post. With apologies for anyone who clicked it at work.

While I did not find the original link I meant to post, here is something up the same alley.

Oh how I long for the innocent days of Rick Rolling.

It's not like you'll be around to see it (probably). Unless you're a vampire.

I agree with Strangler, in the sense that it's about not wasting your time on more material purposes than you need. I don't think it was intended to be about, say, things you enjoy (say, Wii) but more about the pursuit of wealth for the purpose of being wealthy, the acquiring of stuff for the sake of acquiring stuff, not because you love it. The aim of making "this much" money so you can say you have "this much." And at the cost of perhaps missing out on other things, which are free in terms of monetary exchange but expensive in terms of energy and time. Namely, love. Friends. Family.

VAM yet again... :snap:

Kevy's going to be quite upset that he can't take his junk with him.... :evil:

VAM!

And here I just assumed the frilly panty picture was intentional. :p

I thought it was intentional as well - like I'd been rick rolled with a kevy panty pick on purpose! It was funnier to find out he didn't realize it though. I kept mentioning it and he like - what's this thing you have with my frilly butt? :D

I feel like I rickrolled myself

Regarding the bus ads that say we should all just be good, this person Tim Wildmon (who I never heard of) is saying that that only works as long as there is agreement as to what good is. And if you think about it... he's right.

Did you ever stop to think where your values come from? Most non-religious people will say something like "from my heart", "what I feel is right" or "from my concience". What they are not thinking about is that morality is learned, and that their sense of right and wrong has been formed by a culture whose values come from organized religion, a fact of history whether they are conscious of it or not. This has worked pretty well in modern times, with predictable results, as the major religions like Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism all share basic rules.

The problem is, the great majority of the time, people who do bad think they are doing good. A stark example: two Palestinians, a Muslim and a Christian, share the same government and economic circumstances. The Muslim can be recruited as a suicide bomber and blow up a bus filled with children he doesn't know, because he believes he is doing something good and will go to Heaven. The Christian believes he would go to Hell for the very same act. Same biology, same physical environment, but opposite ideology. (Whether this is a perversion of Islam or not is not relevant to my point).

So I don't trust people's "hearts" to lead them to do good; murderers from Jim Jones to Mao felt they had people's best interests at heart and sold their new, better ideologies as a replacement for the traditional religions that went before. And it seems that people do need and seek someone or something to guide them. So better it be a supernatural loving force than a corruptible human leader, or each corruptible person's own feelings.

Even though I am a non-religious person myself, I can't ignore that so much of the good in our society is based on Judeo-Christian values, and I have to agree with Voltaire who said:

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

At last...I have found a label for myself.

I'm a Non-Theist !!!

Excuse me while I run to the nearest hilltop, shove Maria Von-Trapp out of my freakin' way and shout "I'm a Non-Theist" until it echoes from every canyon and rattles every tole-painted cowbell in the valley.

Wow, what a relief, now I have a label, I am validated - complete.


Note: How Stoat chooses to treat people has nothing to do with his religion or lack of it...he knows they could one day judge him, and he is entirely comfortable with that possibility.

Just because organize religion has been the source in the past does not mean it's the only possibility. We have, for instance, a pretty damned good set of laws in the US that do not rely on belief in God. Whether they were inspired by religious beliefs to begins with is irrelevant as to whether belief in God is a necessity for goodness.

The framers of the Constitution, while obviously influenced by religious belief because that was their background, made a conscious decision to leave god out of the Constitution. They instead created a set of guidelines that did not require belief in their, or any, god to make sense. It all boiled down to, essentially, "freedom and morality ends where your actions affect other people."

I was raised in a culturally religious environment in that I learned about my religion (Judaism) and participated in the traditions. However, my parents are not strongly religious people and their interest in it for themselves, and their children, was pretty much only to the extent that it was a tried-and-true, convenient shortcut for instilling a sense of community. They never relied on it as the arbiter of morality, and as long as I can remember, my sense of morality was, "Be good because it's the right thing to do," not "be good because god said so."

There was discussion in another thread recently of how religion, though it has been associated with many bad acts throughout history was not necessarily the source of or cause for these acts. People at times are apt to do bad things to other people, and while they might claim religion as a reason for their acts, it is likely that without religion, many of the same things would have happened, though they would have been given a different rationale.

I think something similar is at work in the question of religion and goodness. There is an obvious utility to society in ideas such as treating your neighbor the way you would like to be treated, and so if there were no religion to use as a framework to teach and enforce that notion, it would have been taught and enforced in another way. So sure, it is accurate to say that our values historically come from a religious source, but we were going to come to those values one way or another, because they are needed for a functioning society.

If modern morality derives from ancient religion, where did ancient morality come from since societies have been around longer than the religions we're now relying on?

I'd argue that rather than even the godless sneaking peaks at religion for how best to behave, religion instead simply declared themselves the inventors of how people generally behaved anyway.

As evidence of this I'd offer the fact that when societal norms change extensively it is frequently religion scrambling to catch up and then eventually stamping the new norm with the label "proper god-fearing behavior."

Any society is going to form rules to survive. I would argue (even though I believe in God) that religion was a useful tool to give the ruling person/group ultimate power to implement those rules. Hammurabi declared his laws as divinely inspired, but it certainly seemed to help keep his people in line and cement his authority. I think that humans are largely social animals, and I tend to follow the idea of social contract as our motivation to stay out of trouble, trouble being whatever is deemed a negative social action by the larger group.

Even moreso, moral and ethical standards change in ways that foster the continued survival and flourishing of a group. Back in more tribal times, morality, laws and religion tended to be highly "us vs. them" (out of brutal necessity) with "us" given divinely favored status. In this very different world, the in-group grows ever larger and more inclusive, and our laws and morality slowly shift to accomodate.

Back in the day, "thou shalt not kill" meant "don't kill one another within our tribe." Read your Bible and you'll find that ruthless slaughter of the other guy was not just the norm, it was commanded by the deity.

Of course, the classic "reciprocal ethic" (the Golden Rule) predates any Judeo-Christian tradition by centuries. You'll find it in ancient Mesopotamian religion, Hinduism, Taoism, and on and on. And even that core ethical notion is (and always has been) open to debate.

Another quick thought - There is scarce little in the teachings of Jesus that isn't also found in earlier traditions. It isn't that Jesus was saying anything terribly innovative, but more that Christianity succeeded (in its pre-Constantine days) because it sought to bring its ethic to a broader community, essentially making the in-group more diverse and inclusive. There was a price for admission (exclusivity; you couldn't be Christian and still belong to your former religion) but Christianity succeeded in the ancient marketplace of religions (and boy was that a buyer's market!) in part by breaking down some social barriers, at least within its own house.

Raising the ancient equivalent of the Third Estate to a position of moral superiority was a good move, actually. It set the stage for many a revolution by the masses, especially when Christianity was adopted as the religion of the realm. It was a good time to be a cheesemaker. (Sorry, NA).

Yay, cheesemakers.

This supports my theory that all religions have it "a little right", and that the real "truth" is that there is a superior being who has tried many different ways to communicate with us.

How does this support that theory?

Consistency might point to a higher truth... higher than specific religions' dogma.

This and other recent discussions here have lead me to the book, The Secular Conscience. I've just started, but a good read so far. If anyone's wondering how a atheism and morality can coexist, take a gander.

Interestingly, it is so far making what I think, stripping away the bluster and red herrings, was Sir Dillon's point in the other thread. And, as presented by this author, I have a hard time finding fault with it. Namely, he argues that secular liberalism has taken the "belief is a private matter" concept too far, leaving them (us) impotent to engage in public critical discourse. If it's okay for everyone to believe whatever they want, then we can't criticize their statements of belief, right? Wrong, by Dacey's reasoning. His point is not, "it's private, so let's stay out of it," his point is, "Everyone's free to express it, so let's jump in and make ourselves heard." It's a strong point.

Most chairs look pretty much the same, not because some external supernatural force binds chairs together. It's because that's the reasonable way to solve the problem of sitting.

Animals share many of the same evolutionary traits because those traits are the ones that give the best chance for survival.

Stable, successful societies share much of the same structure and morality because it works. No magic or supernatural being necessary.

And the purveyors of fine cheese products, as well.:D

Master Pangloss taught the metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology. He could prove to admiration that there is no effect without a cause; and, that in this best of all possible worlds, the Baron's castle was the most magnificent of all castles, and My Lady the best of all possible baronesses.

"It is demonstrable," said he, "that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. Observe, for instance, the nose is formed for spectacles, therefore we wear spectacles. The legs are visibly designed for stockings, accordingly we wear stockings. Stones were made to be hewn and to construct castles, therefore My Lord has a magnificent castle; for the greatest baron in the province ought to be the best lodged. Swine were intended to be eaten, therefore we eat pork all the year round: and they, who assert that everything is right, do not express themselves correctly; they should say that everything is best."

Suddenly I feel like gardening.

^ I would really love to see a good production of that show. The only thing I can remember being produced around here, was a concert version some years ago.

I love Voltaire. I totally would have stalked him if I lived during his time.

I know quite a few folks who certainly know how to "Glitter and Be Gay." :)

Candide - Love the book, love the show, best Bernstein score ever!

For truly this is the best of all possible worlds. Nothing like a good Candide quote to make the day a better place to be.

I've been talking lot about how Christianity is driven to convert others to their beliefs. I'm not sure how this same concept plays out in other religions - I certainly have no Muslims coming to my door. I think Buddhism is more "religion" or attraction rather than promotion. I am not familiar with the specifics of other religions to know if other have the "Go, be a fisher of men" concept. I find the way that concept has played out in our culture to be very interesting.

Judaism is definitely not a proselytizing religion. You're either born into it or you choose to convert. And according to certain traditions, rabbis, when asked to perform an "official" conversion, are supposed to turn the person away 3 times before agreeing to to ensure their commitment.

But, then, many Christians aren't looking to convert anyone. (It simply wasn't something we did in the diocese where I grew up.) And [big disclaimer here] a few extremist Muslims aren't looking to allow anyone who isn't Muslim to survive.

But as an institution, Christianity has historically encouraged it more than any other. Or at the very least, have been most successful at expanding their conversion efforts worldwide. Just ask native Americans and Africans and European pagans, and just about everyone during the crusades, and countless island nations, and...well you get the point.

I'm sure there are Jews that have taken it upon themselves to proselytize their religion, but if they do so it's without encouragement from any accepted part of the community or the world-wide institution such as it exists.

I know some groups are more into upholding Christ's command than others. To certain groups, it is COMMAND!

This was one of the songs we sang over and over based on Matthew 4:19-20 and Mark 1:17.

"I will make you fishers of men
fishers of men
fishers of men
I will make you fishers of men
if you follow Me

if you follow Me
if you follow Me
I will make you fishers of men
if you follow Me..."

In my church, we took the Fishers of Men part pretty seriously - my family even more so since my Mom was raised a version of Pentecostal.


Oh, and in my seraches to confirm bible verses (somehow I just cn't quote them like I used to) I found GODTUBE!

Well, in terms of religious outlooks on salvation, I suppose evangelism (sure, give up what you are and join us) is preferable* to racism/ethnicism (tough titties said the kitty when the milk ran dry, unless you were born to the right group of people then it is a nice titty).


*If you accept as a given that at least one religious faith is the truth (which, of course, I don't ).

Oh dear, GODTUBE is going to cost me a lot of hours and brain cells.

A very dear friend of mine is involved in the drama ministry of her Methodist church. (As churches go, I like it. It's very gay-friendly and has a terrific music program.) My friend often brings scripts to work and I sometimes run lines with her for practice. I've noticed a trend, well exemplified by this skit, called "The Stool." Go ahead, give it a look.

I've ended up reading as some hip, cool version of "Jesus" numerous times for skits very much like this one, and I'm always surprised at how nonchalantly modern day Christians put words in the mouth of their Lord and Savior. These skits are the dramatized equivalent of those billboards that feature messages such as "Hey, why don't you spend Sunday at MY place? - GOD."

I know its supposed to be a light-hearted way of getting a message across, but, really, I could see this approach creating problems. ("I don't feel as close to Jesus as I'd like." "Well, perhaps you aren't listening hard enough." "But, the lady in the skit was able to trade lame quips and actually climb all over him. Why can't I?")

I think there are scriptural passages that would discourage such casual attributions. Anyway, it's hard to satirize this stuff. Jesus needs a better PR person.

I just have to add, for those who have watched the skit linked in my previous post - where in the Bible does Jesus say anything like "Let me make all of your decisions for you!"

Indeed. I won't go off topic too far, but I've found a lovely new (to me) cheese.

Interesting that this topic came up again, since I recently discussed this with a colleague of a different mindset than I.

WWJD?

And don't dare question WHY!

I wasn't saying one had to believe in God, rather that the concept of rules coming from a transcendent authority, and that are known and predictable, is what has created our successful concept of good and bad. Even though our laws came from religion, what's more important is that people develop a sense of conscience (traditionally through religion) so that they choose to behave well before the law has to be used to reign them in.

But the first thing doesn't make sense without the latter. That was my point about the bus ads: our idea of what "the right thing to do" is didn't just come from nowhere or from instinct, it DID start with "because God said so". (Whether you believe or not as Voltaire said). Without that, we are back to whatever each person feels is good.

There are plenty philosophers who deduce what is a priori good, without evoking God. I don't think Buddhism requires a God, but suggests as good the absence of suffering. I think one can understand suffering and it's aleviation as a basis for morality that transcends the concept of God.

Of course, as a rational hedonist, I'd also say that ultimately what feels good is the basis for most morality anyway - it's just easier to justify when you say you were only following (divine) orders (like killing the godless infidels)

Yes, we are. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I would argue that people are like that anyway.

While I'm not a practicing Wiccan, I do try and follow the Wiccan Rede:

"Do what you will, so long as it harms none "

Coming late to the discussion, I respectfully disagree. Christianity has merely incorporated the social contract which has been around forever of "don't do this to me and I won't do it to you." Fear of "in kind" retribution (whether by an individual or the state) is a powerful motivator for choosing what we now call "the moral path".

Yes, I specifically mentioned Buddhism as an example of a value system that produces good results in modern times. But it is a religion. That’s one of the reasons I referred several times to “non-religious” (as opposed to "athiest") folk in my original post.

That may be hedonistic, but its certainly not rational: I was talking about what is good and you wrote "what feels good" as being the basis for most morality. Big difference; they are almost always the opposite! Examples: 1) Tagging feels good, but is not good. 2) Stealing something when no one is looking feels good and is easier than working for it but is not good. (In fact, many thieves steel not for gain, but because it does feel good to them.) 3) Heroin feels good, but is not good.

Morality is about doing the right thing which is usually the harder choice. As far as your comment about killing infidels, I don't think anyone can say the suicide bomber is motivated by it it feeling good, in fact it feels quite bad, but in his mind it is doing good.

I see a few comments from others too who maybe got confused by what I wrote: I didn’t say “what feels good”, I wrote that I fear “what each person feels is good”, which the suicide bomber is an example of.

Without that, we are back to whatever each person feels is good.

You don't think there's anything wrong with murder as long as the murderer feels he is doing good? I don't know if you read my original post, but I gave 3 examples of this (Mao, Jim Jones, suicide bombers).

You're confusing atheism (or non-religiousness or whatever) with anarchy.

Yes, he does think there's something wrong with murder. And so do most people, regardless of the existence of god. It doesn't require a belief in god to come to the conclusion that acceptance of murder is a bad thing.

What he doesn't think there's anything wrong with is leaving it up to a reasonable social dialog to determine what is and isn't acceptable rather than relying on some external source of morality.

PPOR

Though I should add that € I'm sure will make a convincing argument for anarchy also.

No we're not. Or rather, of course we are but that has little to do with morality at the societal level. And societal morality has little to do with morality at the individual level.



Of course I think there is something wrong with it, but my thinking that does not make it objectively wrong (and it obviously has no influence on the personal morality of the murderer; we'll ignore the fact that most murderers consider what they do immoral even if they derive some pleasure or other benefit from it).

The definition of murder is surprisingly fluid over time and place. The social contract can exist in the absence of an absolute universal morality. In my opinion, it does.

As I said earlier, religion did not create morality, it just claimed credit for it and generally just claims credit for whichever morality is in current vogue (or maybe current vogue minue 30 years).

Also, of your three examples, I don't really have a problem with Jim Jones. Well, I have a problem with the congressional assassination but not really with the mass suicide part. Death is a perfectly acceptable choice, and if others are willing to join you in it then I'm ok with that.

Things are not done in a vacuum. There are consequences for doing things. Tagging, for instance - If you damage my property, I might kick your ass, or call the law and have them kick your ass. I like having property, as it makes me feel good, and has nothing to do with the existence of a God. If you make me feel ungood by messing with it, I will make you feel ungood too, thereby making tagging NOT feel good to you. Societal pressures are just as valid as internal pressures. This works again for stealing.

As for heroin, well, there are plenty of ex-addicts who will tell you that heroin is not good, that they do not want to be the people they become when they are on it.

Here is a nice god-independent lesson I learned as a kid. Butterscotch candy made me happy. One Halloween, it seemed every other house was giving it out. When I got home, I took all the butterscotch and put it in a big pile, and then ate one after the other after the other. Needless to say, after 15 or so I felt ill. It took me a few years to look at butterscotch again, and now I can eat it - but only ONE in a sitting. One butterscotch feels good.

The suicide bomber is also a good example why learning what is right and wrong from religion isn't more intelligent than learning right and wrong from life experience and preservationist instinct.

From this comment and others, I think you and other folks are equating atheism and non-religiousness. They are different. For example, many practicing Jews don't believe in God but want to preserve their traditions and pass their value system to the next generation. This is what I have been advocating; not necessarily belief in God ( my reference to the Voltaire quote acknowledges that God may be man-made), but the acknowledgement that our moral frame of reference comes out of a system of thought derived from religion.

I am not sure why you bring up anarchy, none of my examples are anarchists. All of them are motivated by the belief in pretty structured ideological systems (Maoist Communism, Jones Cult, Sharia Law). But since you bring it up, I guess one could add anarchists as another example of what is worrisome to me, that is people who think they are doing what's right and good, but are not, and justify it as their personal morality. (The anarchist would probably have some notion that people should be free from government oppression, etc.)

What I am saying is that our definition of murder comes from a Judeo-Christian value system. The ancient Greeks and the Nazis both systematically killed or euthanized deformed, retarded, or incapacitated people, but they didn't think of it as murder; in fact, it was very rational in terms of the efficient use of resources and functioning of the society as a whole.

So, now from our present day perspective, can you tell me why murdering somebody is wrong? Putting God aside, as that can't be proven or disproven, the scientific facts we know are that we humans are a biological machine that runs on electricity and our emotions are based on chemicals like endorphins, dopamine, and hormones. Humans are easy to make; so easy that there is probably getting to be too many for the amount of resources available. So, what is wrong with eliminating some?
Just because it causes suffering? That doesn’t make something wrong, lots of things cause suffering that are morally neutral.

I would really like an answer, because the only one I know of is a religious one that says that every human has a supernatural component that gives it transcendent worth, a worth that is beyond that of an animal or a rock. But it’s not rational or scientific.

Our reasonable social dialog (which I am advocating) seems reasonable to you and I because we grew up with a common value system, (which is external). The Greeks and Nazis participated in a dialog that was reasonable to them too, but came up with a very different system.

And that's fine. I have no expectation that the social contract reached by any individual society will be the one I prefer. And our current definition of murder is not entirely that of judeo-christian tradition. For example, by many traditions abortion (as we're so loudly reminded) is murder, euthanasia (as practiced in some European countries and Oregon) is murder.

Personally, I agree that the former is not and that the latter is. Society will or will not come to match my views.

Whether you like the fluidity of morality does not change the fact that it is fluid. When enough people feel the same way and change an aspect of societal morality, religion is pretty much helpless to stop it (this is why divorce is now legal in Ireland).

As for why, without referencing god, I think murder is wrong:

I place almost no inherent value on your individual life. This is true. If we learned later today that you were dead all it would be is an interesting factoid.

But I care if you were murdered for the same reason I don't really care if 600 villagers in Africa die but do care if they all die of ebola: I don't want it to happen to me. So I'd really appreciate it if society rallied round to make sure the ebola epidemic did not spread.

This is because I very much do place an inherent value on my life. I'd really prefer it not end until I choose that it does. So, by society gathering round to condemn killing people like me, to the extent that this pressure prevents me specifically from being killed I am in favor. Selfishness is why murder is bad; if I were guaranteed to be exempted from any murdering, my opposition to it would fall precipitously (but not completely since there are other lives that I hold in some value). Continuing this to other conclusion is why drunk driving is bad (you driving drunk could hurt me) but Jim Jones convincing hundreds to kill themselves is not (if Jim Jones successfully convinces me then see the second sentence of this paragraph).

And yes, there are people who want to continue their religious culture even in the absence of god. I just think they're even more irrational than the people who actually believe the god is there and therefore think they're doing what he commanded. Avoiding bacon-wrapped asparagus because your deluded (as you now think they were if you don't believe their god exists) ancestors did is just silly*.




*And yes, for whomever might feel inclined to bring it up, I do engage in a very similar form of silliness myself. Being silly doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, but it doesn't make it less silly.

And Jews stoned people to death for touching a woman while she was on her period. And Christians tortured and slaughtered people because they believed a little bit differently than they did. And they didn't consider that murder. So, as Alex says, our current Judeo/Christian definition of what is right has changed to catch up to the societal definition, not the other way around. People are perfectly capable of forming and refining the social contract without religion. If anything, the inclusion of religion in the discourse slows the process down as it's a force that resists what may be necessary change.

The fallacy that makes most people scared to give up on religion is that selfishness is a bad thing.

The reality is, everything thing we do is selfish. Every single decision is selfish. In the end, it comes down to "because I want to".

Even acts that are materially selfless are ultimately motivated by selfishness. They are performed because the performer would feel worse about themselves if they didn't.

"But I've given up my own fulfillment to raise my kids!" Only because you'd feel worse about not raising your kids.

And yes, some people have different selfish desires, and that's where law enforcement comes in. Hopefully, they'll feel worse about the prospect of being in jail instead of fulfilling their selfish tendencies that negatively affect other people.

But the selfish desire of the majority of people for personal safety, as Alex defined well, is what motivates the social contract, independent of religious belief.

Perhaps it's a slight diversion, but I must interject. While it's interesting, and while I agree at some level, I don't find it terribly pragmatic to tear apart terms like selfishness and free will--terms which everybody should agree have recognizable moral connotations in the social context in which we live.

Put another way, if I said to one of my kids, "Don't you think you're being a little selfish," and they came back at me with, "well, so are you with your criticisms," I would not reward them with an ice cream for brilliant philosophy.

Good thing we're not talking to children.

I didn't say that all selfishness is morally neutral. All I'm saying is that selfishness is not inherently bad in all cases.

So you are saying murder is wrong because the person being killed does not want that to happen? Just because you don't want it to happen doesn't necessarily create a moral barrier to others. For example, because thieves don't want to be arrested doesn't make arresting them an immoral act.

Then you gave selfishness as a second reason. Now you are into the business of saying an act is wrong because of the thinking or motivation of the perpetrator. So it would not be wrong if the killer had an altruistic motive? The 9/11 murderers did, even giving their lives for the cause.

Another post in this thread claims that everything is selfish (9/11 perpetrators wanted to go to heaven). I don’t agree myself, but if it were true, and we applied your logic of selfish=wrong, then everything would be wrong.

Still wondering what is wrong about murdering.

Maybe not so silly if you learn the background and wisdom behind some of the practices. Having a Sabbath or day of rest once a week from TV and computers could lead to a happier, more mentally healthy life and people be more inclined on that day to bond and empathize with friends, for example. This day was one of the first animal rights laws in history, as it required that domesticated beasts rest also. Judaism had other more detailed strictures protecting animals such as prohibiting the amputation and consumption of single limbs which was practiced before then. Now, I am not saying that secular value systems can’t come up with similar norms, and sometimes they do; but for the most part, THEY DIDN’T, whereas the religious traditions as they have evolved have a pretty good system that should not be discarded lightly. A lot of the figuring out has been done.

When I say secular systems have not generally produced good results, let me give you my evidence: In four centuries, the Catholic Inquisition is estimated to have murdered about 30,000 people. (I am making a case for contemporary religious values anyway). The secular ideologies that replaced religious ones in the 20th century, most notably under Mao and Stalin, murdered 100 million, besides massive forced relocation and theft of property. Without the notion that something transcends our physical existence, this human tragedy more easily becomes an acceptable cost of attaining your utopian vision for society on earth, because there is nothing else but that.

Pointing out awful practices that members of a group did does not mean their value system is bad unless those things are proclaimed to be an integral part of it. It was after the Jews entered into a pact with God to worship only him that the golden calf was brought into the temple. The Bible is a story of human failing and struggle. People don’t always live up to their standards, but that doesn’t make the standard wrong. So to be fair, we have to ask: were these acts prescribed by their philosophy, or were they done contrary to it? This is a question that many are asking of Islam today.

I think it’s overly cynical to say that everything is ultimately selfish. If someone donates their fortune to an orphanage, I would say it is altruistic and not be concerned about whether their motivation was to go to heaven or not. Otherwise, altruism has no meaning. I care much more about what people do than the reason they did it. (In fact, many times we are not even sure of our own motives.)

I'm glad I don't live near you, then.

I wish I had time to participate in this chat, but I'm extra busy for the next few days. Very quickly, I'd mention that Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot are always brought up by religious apologists to rub in the faces of the secular. But they were hardly bastions of rational secular philosophy. They essentially created godless pseudo-religions with themselves as supreme entities - kind of like the Caesars of yore. In other words, nothing new at all. Political ideology elevated to the status of unquestionable truth can be just as devastating as religion, no doubt about it. But this is irrelevant to the question of whether we derive our morality from a supernatural source. These abusive regimes are a long way away from secular liberal democracies, which currently seem to be exterminating hardly anyone in Scandinavian countries, for instance.

Altruism has been observed in other animal species. Does this mean that our own sense of altruism evolved, or is some supernatural agency granting an awakening morality to a few other primates? I'd say more likely the former.

Altruism aside, self-interest is still a perfectly reasonable place from which to say murder is wrong, or at least extremely inconvenient. And getting from "I don't want to be killed" to "I shouldn't kill others" is perfectly logical. If you live in any kind of in-group at all, and you engage in murder, you can jolly well expect the group to want you out of the picture, and you can easily understand why. ("They don't want to die, just like me.") From here, it isn't that far a jump to say, "Okay, there are other beings with self-interest, just like me. We can work together for our mutual protection." It isn't necessarily the complete picture, but I fail to see any inherent flaws in this explanation. In even the smallest tribe, proscribing murder is a no-brainer. (Of course, the same protecting of self-interest will likely mean that killing folks in the other tribes will be allowed or even encouraged if and when they become a threat. That hasn't changed, alas.)

That's all I have time for. I'm always interested in this topic, so y'all have a ball with it. I'll check back later. <swims away>

No, I didn't say that.

No, I didn't say that.

That would be up to the societies involved to collectively decide. There are many examples where killing for altruistic (or other) reasons is considered acceptable. The views of individuals aren't individually relevant.

You don't seem to have read what I wrote very well because I never suggested such logic as "selfish=wrong".

Inherently? Nothing. Subjectively? It's only wrong when you're murdering me. Pragmatically? I'm willing to pretend it is wrong if you're murdered for the side benefit of everybody else pretending they think it is wrong for me to be murdered.


If you, in order to continue the traditions pretend that the god no longer believes to exist actually exists then yes, perfectly silly. Regardless of the merit of the practice.

As I've said I make no beef with many aspects of religion, I just think that generally religion co-opted them rather than creating them and the same positions can be achieved without religion.


I'd rather that than lying to ourselves (not that I am accepting your larger argument). If the only reason we are generally good to each other is because of a giant invisible mommy in the next room who'll ground us, then I'd rather we accept that and work on it and just get rid of the invisible mommy.

But as has been asked several times in this thread, if religious morality is what we need then which religious morality are you advocating? It seems to be judeo-christian, but in that case which judeo-christian morality, and how forcefully to we impose it on the non judeo-christians? And, almost as importantly, what do we do about the fact that the judeo-christian mommy is, as described in available texts, a major dickhead subject to incredible mood swings?

Read Leviticus and go count the number of reasons God says we should kill people. And I guarnatee you that Torquemada would happily have pointed out to you how integral in the bible what he carried out was. The golden calf was never brought to the temple it was made in the desert at the foot of Sinai while Moses was receiving the 15 10 Commandments.

Again, it's only "cynical" if you buy into the fallacy that "selfish" is inherently a bad thing.

This just makes me think of that skit Flippyshark posted, The Stool. "Just let Jesus make your decisions for you and don't ask why." Umm, the WHY is the important part. If taking a day of rest leads to better physical and mental health, then take a day of rest because it leads to better physical and mental health, not "because God said so." Otherwise, how do you expect people to come to rational conclusions on new moral challenges that are not explicitly covered in their choice of god handbook?

Visible Mojo for Alex and GD for wonderful posts.

This is the facet of religion with which I currently struggle. So many of the "instructions" were clearly (from our modern perspective) designed to address social issues of the time. And we have no trouble, as a (western) society, dismissing the rules about stoning and selling daughters and whatnot. But the other rules society swears are the unerring Word of God and must be obeyed blindly.

It's not like Leviticus, to use the previously mentioned example, has some sort of list where rules from column A must be obeyed until the advent of the internal combustion engine and rules from column B must be obeyed in perpetuity. I see them as rules with a purpose - and when the purpose is no longer relevant, the rules need no longer required blind adherence.

Major religious figures themselves are often philsophers of a sort, exploring the meaning of truth and faith and societal compact - reorganizing (sometimes to radical effect) the everyday practices supporting one religious sect or another. How can you be a philosopher and not question? How can you follow a philosopher and not emulate their questioning?

And yet, the modern questioner finds themselves frequently on the outsides of both camps - devout believers and devout nonbelievers. The believers expect the blind obedience to bearded, be-robed imagry they've been trained to worship -- all else is heresy. And the nonbelievers likewise point to the questioning as proof that the belief system is complete poppycock with nary a shred of truth nor utility.

How am I supposed to find truth if I don't look for it?

VGDM from Mel Brooks. ;)

I don't say that there is nary a shred of truth nor utility. Just that the truth and utility is available outside the framework of religion or spirituality.

If you, in your personal quest for "truth" feel it is found in a religious framework, I really don't care. It is when those who have found it there declare that because that is where they found it, it is the only place it can be found that I have issues. (Or when they claim real world proof for their faith, then yes I'll probe that reality.)

I've been very consciously keeping my responses in the language of free will. Obviously (if you're aware of my past here), I don't really believe that. We're just biological machines running on an electrical power source with a chemical operating system. The selfishness I've described (I originally used the word narcissism in my post above before changing it; wonder how that word choice would have altered things) isn't something I think we choose; it is just evolved into us and, I would argue, that produces a very general framework of morality that is pretty common across human time and space, though in specifics there is a fair amount of diversity.

Why do you grant the privilege of this cop out to religion, but not to secularism?

I'm back for a minute or two, and I am also enjoying this discussion.

I tend to use the term "self-interest' instead of selfishness, as the latter has a somewhat negative connotation, trained into us from childhood. "Enlightened self-interest" is perhaps even better, and includes the idea that serving the interests of others aids in furthering one's own interests, which I think is not only true, it's a pretty good basis for personal ethics. It's also entirely rational and non-dependent on revelation.

"Selfishness" often connotes "unenlightened self interest" - in other words, inconsiderate, myopic greed and disdain for the well-being of others. I presume that this has not been the intended usage of it in Alex and GD's posts.

My few minutes are almost up - I'll throw in a quick and almost entirely irrelevant anecdote. I just returned from performing an interactive murder mystery. Our audience was a local Christian private school, and the kids were mostly high school age. (Our show was their reward for doing well in their "Academic Olympics.") Anyhow, during the Q&A section of the show, where the audience gets to question the actor/suspects, one of the students, a young lady of I'm guessing sixteen or so, demanded of the detective character, "Did you vote for Obama?" The actor playing the detective said, 'I don't know what that has to do with the murder, but yes, I did." The girl looked right at him and said, "How dare you!" Then she sat down. The room got real quiet, until the detective went on to the next table. Awkward.

Anyway, neither here nor there, but it just now happened, and I wanted to share. I'm off to my next show. Check back in later.

It's times like this where I wish The Hedonist Manifesto were a completed reference work that I could quote at will

Happy New Year to everyone.

To summarize, I am an agnostic and I am using using logic to argue for faith, and that the concept of good God is necessary for a predictable morality with good results. By good results I mean now, as exemplified by the US, not the middle ages! I tried to put the evil religion has done in perspective by pointing out that the number of people murdered in the inquisition in 4 centuries was in the tens of thousands, whereas secular ideology has murdered about 100 million in the 20th century alone. Also, I am not saying it’s great in all cases, just better than the alternative.

What is the alternative? In the quote below, FlippyShark made a pretty good case for it: Enlightened Self Interest (ESI) as exemplified by Scandinavian countries who have not attacked others as he has pointed out. He is right, really all of Western Europe (WE) has become secular. Most LOT folks and about half of the US sees that as a better and more evolved value system than the JudeoChristian (JC) one our country was founded upon. My response is this: looking at a map of the world, I see a lot more Cambodias than Swedens, and when one goes up against the other the Cambodias will prevail because the Swedens have neither the ability nor the will to defend their value system, partly because they don’t have a strong sense of what it is.

They don't need to keep an army to defend themselves because they are part of NATO which means they will be defended by the US military, whose armies defended them against Nazism, and whose missiles defended them against Communism, yet they did not speak out against either. In fact, Sweden and Switzerland made a big point of being neutral instead of helping to defeat these threats. A more recent example is German soldiers' rules of engagement in Afganistan: only fire at the enemy in self defense. I have heard it said that Germany took the wrong lesson from WWII: Instead of learning to fight evil, they learned it was evil to fight.

Now partly due to this very attitude and their commitment to ZPG (in fact, their population continues to decrease), a third threat is emerging to this secular culture - the growing Islamic population, who is very committed to their own culture and values, and willing to fight for them. I am not saying they are a necessarily a physical threat (although more than a hundred thousand cars were burned in France by Muslim protestors in 2006). But if current trends continue, they certainly will supplant a culture whose primary value is tolerance of other cultures.

Although WE are not a threat to other good societies, the problem is they are not a threat to bad ones either. WE has the same pacifism problem as Buddhism, where secular forces (who have apparently disregarded ESI) have slaughtered and consumed Myanmar and Tibet, who were never a threat to them.

While ESI seems to make sense theoretically, it doesn’t seem to play out reliably in the real world from either a biological or logical sense. Both people and societies benefit often from stealing and murdering. Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe benefitted by murdering their opponents and Arafat stole more than $1 billion to personal accounts in France and was revered as a hero by many. We hear about people who steal in corporations because they get arrogant careless and get caught, but how many more will we never know about?

We know from WWII accounts that Jews in danger would first go to the house of a priest or nun as they were more likely to be hidden than if they knocked on the door of a lawyer or professor. The neutral secular countries don’t have the same record of putting themselves at risk, and it seems that there are sound logical and biological reasons for it.

I leave you with a graphic of the US stamp honoring the 4 chaplains (2 ministers, a priest and a rabbi) who drowned because they gave their life vests to sailors when the SS Dorchester was sunk. Seems like their JC ideology trumped their biological imperative for survival or the logical one which would argue that 4 sailors out of hundreds would be more expendable than the few chaplains who were there to give sustenance to many.

Originally Posted by David E.
Pointing out awful practices that members of a group did does not mean their value system is bad unless those things are proclaimed to be an integral part of it.

Not sure why you call this a cop out. I think I'm just stating a fact. To give a simple example: millions of people go to places of worship and hear the teachings, among which murder and stealing are prohibited. Some of them still go and commit awful murders. Does the fact that people can't live up to the teachings mean they are wrong or that the deviation becomes the badge of that religion?

As far as me not granting this to secular ideology, what did I write that makes you think this? I don't think I have painted secularism by pointing out the few aberrations. Funny, there is not a really a formal ideology that secular people hold up as a model, so I can't even say they are not living up to their standards because each person might have their own version.

-----

Alex, regarding the why is murder wrong question, you pointed out that I was not understanding what you wrote, in which case I still don't. Seemed like you were saying you thought murder was wrong in your case, but that it might not apply to others. Is that right, or do you agree with Flippyshark's answer which was a universal societal one, Enlightened Self Interest?

As to a secular value system, the story goes that the great sage Hillel was asked if/or said that he could teach the whole Torah while standing on one foot. Challenged to do it, he stood on one foot, recited the golden rule and declared, "That is the whole of the law. The rest is commentary. Go forth and learn." Since you are an agnostic, I assume you have no trouble agreeing that this moral principle--which sounds a lot more moral than enlightened self interest--predates its clever attribution to a divine source. I think the "self-evident truths" set out in the opening to the Declaration of Independence states some key principles as well (minus the endowment by the creator part).

I'm not sure that the Dorchester story is terribly useful in a world where our enemies blow themselves up for the greater bad all the time. Further, in "Band of Brothers," the point was made that the bond among the men was such that they killed themselves for each other all the time, without particular regard for the objective at hand and, presumably, without consideration of Judeo-Christian principles.

That said, I do wonder if the story really played out as we're led to believe: with angelic music and lighting and an exchange between Bobby Jordan and Pat O'Brien.

Sorry, son.
Dat's okay, fadda.
Here, take moin.
Tanks, fadda, I'll never ferget ya.

Or was there, perhaps, a bit more persuasion exerted on the chaplains?

The golden rule is in no way incompatible with enlightened self interest. I don't see it as superior to (or inferior to) but part and parcel of.

Actually, Rabbi Hillel gave the rule as "Whatever is hateful to you, don't do to others," which I think may be superior to the more common form of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Why? Well, you might desire something that others would find unsavory. (extreme and rude example - "I just don't understand why she objected when I peed on her. It's what I would have wanted.") On the other hand, if you avoid behaviors that you yourself would not enjoy, you automatically go a long way toward modeling to others what you would like or expect from them in return. It's not a bad starting point for a moral system, secular or otherwise.

The sacrifice of the chaplains is laudable regardless of their own belief system. Their decision to give themselves up for the good of four sailors may have been informed somewhat by a sense of expectation. ("As a representative of a higher power, it's better for me to model supreme sacrifice, rather than spend the rest of my life justifying my decision to save myself." Indeed, it would have sounded lame for any one of them to say "I thought it was important for me to survive so I could continue to give moral sustenance to the rest of you." Such a chaplain might well have been seen as a coward.)

I suspect there have been any number of non-theists who have also given their lives for others. Unlike the chaplains, they do so without any expectation of heavenly reward. I could see someone deciding that their own biological imperative simply means less to them than dying for something admirable or heroic. ("I could decide to save myself at the cost of someone else's life, but then, will I be able to live with myself?") Not long ago, there was even a video posted in a thread here showing a dog who was willing to put his life at risk to save another dog on a busy highway. (I'm assuming the dog had some understanding of the danger - I guess it could have been in the so-stupid-I'm-brave category.)

Surely you aren't saying that the actions of Mugabe or Idi Amin are examples of ESI, are you? (Enlightened self interest - one serves ones own interests best by serving the interests of others.) Your examples sound more like its opposite, unenlightened self interest - rapacity and willingness to murder to further ones own agenda. How exactly did society benefit from these guys?

I will agree that societies built around ESI face risk from aggressors who do not share those values of tolerance.

I always interpret the "do unto others . . ." as embracing both acts and omissions. However, whether phrased in the positive or negative, it boils down to "Treat people how you expect to be treated." Since the command would be meaningless and unworkable otherwise, this presupposes a shared value system of substantive expectations of proper treatment and agreed upon procedures for resolving foreseeable disagreements. E.g., "Excuse me, ma'am. May I pee on you?"

So you're saying that, without personally holding a belief in an omniscient, omnipotent entity, you desire morality. You have an internally motivated desire to act morally, and you have a desire that the people around you act morally. Would you agree with that assessment?

Assuming you do, I'd have one more set of questions. Do you consider yourself abnormal? Do you consider yourself significantly different than a large percentage of the population? Is that internally motivated moral desire something that you think is largely unique to you?

So really it seems to me we need to be more Machiavellian about our beliefs - we know there isn't a God but we need to pretend so that we can dupe enough of our people to blindly go of to battle and kill the enemy in the name of God so we can eat their bacon. Still sounds like enlightened self interest, especially if you are not a believer.

Oh dear, no. Definitely not ESI.

Yes, my desire for morality may be biological (or maybe some more enduring metaphysical part of me? Can't prove or disprove that), but the specific morality that I desire is cultural as I mentioned several times.

While the desire for morality may be common, that part is invisible and therefore irrelevant; the results or choice of moral systems are radically different, so yes, I do think there are fundamental differences in people and groups. I don't understand Oprah Winfrey's assertion that "We are all the same inside". Was Hitler the same as Mother Teresa? Is a torturer the same as you or me? Is the mother of a suicide bomber who says she wishes her other sons would do it too the same as the moms you know?

Actually, looking at history and the rest of the world, our way of thinking is probably more of a minority. Which is why I hope we can appreciate and preserve it.

I understand your questions. What I need to clear up about my argument is that I'm talking about the value system, not the theology. Theology can be a personal choice, but it's values that determine behavior, and that morality has to be universal and therefore not a personal choice.

For example, you can believe in the Holy Trinity and I can believe that the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of the first Buddha. But we both share the common value that stealing is wrong. There is actually a lot of overlap of values between the Buddhist value system and the JudeoChristian (JC) one, and that's fine.

The reason I don't advocate for Buddhism is that it doesn't value fighting wrongdoing like the JC one does, and therefore will eventually be destroyed or subjugated to regimes that perpetrate more evil, as we are seeing already. The result is a worse world. To many, physical violence even in self defense is wrong. This is a major difference with JC and in fact is a more and more a shared value with the Western European Secular system (WE).

In this regard, the WE system is worse, because many don't even believe in a universal concept of wrong to begin with; it's a personal choice. They seem to have a problem identifying evil and even doubt its existence. This is emblemized by Sweden, who could not see any moral difference between the Allied and Axis powers in WWII, nor between the US and Soviets in the Cold War, or the Israelis and Palestinians today. I think this is because they have put the value of equality above all else, to the point that humans are all the same inside (regardless of their outside behavior apparently), terrorists are freedom fighters or justified because those who they attack enabled them, animals have the same worth as people, etc.

Now, I understand that not everyone falls neatly into the WE or JC category and we all have a certain combination of these beliefs. This is because the WE people's grandfathers who built their cities and societies came from the JC tradition, and it has evolved and morphed from there into WE secularism. I point to the Scandinavian examples because the process is more advanced in Europe and the US is far more religious still.

In the JC system, fighting both in self defense and in aid of others who arevictims of wrongdoing is not only permissible, it is an obligation, which is one of the reasons the US has always had an interventionist foreign policy. I am not saying it's perfect and doesn't often make mistakes. My point is that the benign, "enlightened" secular world has done harm by enabling the harmful forces, both secular and radical religious.

Just because I am not religious myself, doesn't mean that I can't acknowledge the real world consequences of important differences in these ideologies.

Strangler, I enjoyed reading your post. With regard to your examples of Hillel and the Constitution (which I also hold in high esteem), it seems to me that you are going out of your way to extract the God part and leave everything else. (Maybe you are not personally adverse to it, but you are doing it to respond to my arguments to test if God is necessary to them, which I hope is the case). Whether or not these depend on God for validity, it just happens to be historically true. Picasso’s sketches were criticized by those who said that an eight year old child could have drawn them. His response was: “Maybe, but the eight year old didn’t.” I am trying to build my case on results, not theory.

But now that you bring them up, it seems that God is rather integral to them:

Hillel didn’t attribute the golden rule to himself, but rather the God of Abraham and the introduction of monotheism to the world. And the founding fathers did not say that Washington or Madison were conferring rights on those they governed; they had the vision that they themselves were blessed by that same God and they wanted to affirm that for everyone. (An earlier version of the US Seal they designed depicted Moses leading the Jews to Freedom, and the Liberty Bell in Philly has an inscription from the Torah on it). I’m not sure if the idea of specific rights can even exist without someone conferring them to someone else – can molecules or matter or give us rights?

Morality has to be universal? I'm not so sure of that. It seems to me more like an ever-shifting consensus. Anyhow, our most formidable enemies right now are quite committed to the God of Abraham (even if they call him Allah), but their version of monotheism sure isn't pointing them to a morality that benefits their own people, or anyone else for that matter. I'm willing to admit it's possible that WE societies have taken tolerance to a level that endangers their own best interests.

And yes, rights are something conferred upon us by other people. We may say that they are part of natural law, or God given, or whatever, but, sure seems like a human invention to me. (A human invention I am all for, by the way.) This is easily demonstrated by the fact that we have all seen rights taken away, by humans from other humans. (Really recently, in fact!) The molecules couldn't do a thing about it. It will be up to humans to give those rights back.

Hey, let's not go crediting the Judeo-Christian deity for the ethic of reciprocity. It's much older than Yahweh.

We are definitely not all the same inside. (I don't think anyone here claimed as much.) I suspect Oprah hasn't thought that one through very hard. (Of course, she's no heavy thinker. She's more about making her viewers feel warm and fuzzy.)

My goodness it's late.

The fact that religion is the framework under which the current workable moral social contract was built is not proof that it's the only one that works.

Can electrons and phosphorus make a TV show? The concepts of "rights" and "morality" exist solely on the level of interpreting brain activity. So the answer to your question is that molecules and matter give rise to the ability of humans to think about the concept of rights.

And, as a matter of fact, there is good evidence that there IS a universal morality. Responses to hypothetical moral dilemmas like these are very similar across cultures. That includes JC, tribal cultures, atheists, etc. Even when respondants are unable to articulate WHY they make the moral choice that they do, they seem to come to the same conclusion as most other people a large percentage of the time.

In the end, though, skimming some earlier posts, I think we all agree on some level. You made mention of the important part of religion being the stable, teachable framweork of morality that instills the particulars to the next generation (my paraphrasing). I believe in the same. I simply disagree that religion is the only possible source of that framework. It is irrelevant that religion happens to be the one that's been used recently to such a large degree. That doesn't make it right or the best option. I think the fact that we can have a public education system that teaches civics and ethics without resorting to "God said so", but rather, "Because the United States said so" should be proof enough.

No one is suggesting just dumping any attempt to define a group morality that may restrict some random individual's personal morality that might not agree with yours. All we're saying is that the desire for such is pretty universal and it would happen with or without religion. Religion is a result of that desire, not the cause. And in the end, those of us arguing against it feel that the benefits of religion as you defined them (a way of formalizing societal morallity) are available without it and thus without the drawbacks of religion (promotion of blind observance without critical thought).

Yeah but everything, both material and thought, is little bits. That doesn't mean that's the definition of a right, anymore than it's the definition of a chair, which is also made of the same stuff.

It's just amazing to me that you would put so much hope and emphasis on a hypothetical study about how people might unconsciously act on a bridge with 5 guys, when it's so obvious that whole tribes of people throughout history and today made a living pillaging and enslaving other tribes, and very consciously and deliberately act like they are in a completely different moral universe. I mean really, how do you account for the differences in Nazi and Jew, Imperial Japanese and Chinese, Muslim Palestinian and Christian Palestinan, Slave master and slave, and other blatant examples I keep pointing out?

Now the study might be true, that in a split second situation, there might be a common human reaction that is good or moral, but how often does that happen compared to the stuff I listed above that goes on all the time?

"Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --Einstein, Albert"

I wanted to comment on the Einstein quote you publish because it directly addresses the main question of this thread.

He is kind of right in that mankind is indeed in a bad way. While it's true that not everyone needs ultimate reward/punishment to regulate behavior, its also pretty obvious that many do. Many adults don't believe that those consequences exist in a literal way, but anyone who has raised children (or remembers their childhood) knows that reward and punishment are basic to creating behavior in those who can't see the bigger advantage to what they made to do. As they become adults, they don't consciously stop to think "I may go to hell for this", but they now have the feeling that it's wrong. This is not even a religious vs secular issue: Dessert / No TV works the same way as Heaven / Hell.

Now as adults, think about doctors who perform a needed service to society. If they became independently wealthy, how many of them would continue to practice for free? Aren't they motivated by the reward of earning a paycheck and trying to avoid not being able to make their house payment? Would you do your job if you were not paid? If not, are you in a poor way?

I don't see what's so distressing about these motivations. I'm much more concerned with results.

Two other points:

1. Are the billions who believe in the Vedic tradition of Karma (punishment and reward) "in a poor way"?

2. A mathematical genius does not necessarily have extraordinary perception in other areas. Intelligence does not equal wisdom.

The problem with absolute belief systems is they are absolute and almost require the banning or destruction of the other (if it is to survive). If Islam is frightening, it's also a monotheistic belief system, with it's own ethics and morality. If you accept Christianity only for those reasons then you must also accept Islam - or this just becomes an argument of justifying your own beliefs of what is good or evil.

Often the difference is the power and cherished freedom to behave badly. There is genocide in the Old Testament. One of the subtler lessons of Hanukkah is how, after the Maccabees helped the Jews overthrow their worldly Hellenic overlords, they basically became just like them. I remember Pope John Paul II berating Poland for its culture of sex and death that emerged after the fall of Soviet Union. And, of course, we've seen how well the loosening of the Soviet bonds has brought out the best in the various Balkan states.

And then you have people like this who are still burning people alive when they think they are witches or sorcerers.



Did it ever occur to them that if they were capable of doing magic, they would either kill the people trying to set them on fire or use their magic to escape.

Clearly what's good and moral isn't universal when things like that are happening now. Although you have to wonder if they really believe they are doing something good by torturing people like that.

Easy. The fact that they bother to define themselves as Nazi, Jew, Imperial Japanese, Muslim Palestinian, Christian Palestinian, etc. For reasons too obvious to go into, humans evolved a tendency towards different "in-group" vs. "out-group" morality. Religion doesn't cause that, it does however exacerbate that. It gives people an artificial definition of who is in your group and who is out of your group, and therefore a reason to ignore the moral code that they would apply to people who they deem worthy.

Even if you accept that Hitler was an atheist (which is highly debatable), there is no doubt that religion was a categorizing tool he used to carry out his evil. There is no doubt that without relying on religious conviction and the xenophobia it creates (whether out of genuine belief or intelligent manipulation), he would never have had a country's worth of people helping him.

I won't claim that lack of religion would rectify that, but it would remove the largest source of "in-group" vs. "out of group" definition we currently have.

\You say that the justification for continuing to promote religion is that the morality taught by religion is what has founded our society. Have you read the bible lately? Old testament or new, there are heaps and heaps of moral "lessons" in there that are appalling by today's standards. So here's the question. It seems that far from basing our society on scriptural morality, we've picked and chosen the "good" parts. We've decided to ignore the wrathful, vengeful god. We've decided to ignore the Jesus that, cult-like, asked his followers to abandon their parents. Or that, with text book in-group morality, marked only Jews for salvation.

Our morality is simply NOT based on scripture. Scripture was a heavily influencing reference book. But decisions were made as to which parts to take at face value, and which parts to ignore as allegory and irrelevant. That's the relevance of the study. It answers the question of how the heck we can possibly make those decisions, and it shows that the basis is not god, the basis is humanity.

I see from these posts that religion and God for most here triggering associations with specific negative historical and theological aspects. Please look at post #167 where I tried to clarify the difference between theology and a value system, which is what I am concerned with. Furthermore I am not denying the negative aspects. One thing I am trying to do is put it in perspective in relation to the comfort and meaning it has given to millions.

Saying religion should be abolished because of its historical abuses is like saying you want to abolish car travel because of accidents.

Why is that a problem? Our criminal law reflects our beliefs – shouldn’t murder laws apply to any two people given the same circumstances? Why would it be wrong for one but not the other? (See my other post about absolute vs. relative morality)

Well some do and some don’t. To recap the previous examples:

1 Radical Islam does what you say and requires the destruction of the other.
2 Dictatorial Secularism doesn’t require it but often destroys outside (and inside) threats to it.
3 Buddhism passes judgment on evil, but does not use violence to stop or prevent it, leaving it to Karma.
4 Western European style Secularism does not pass judgment (relative morality) or use violence to stop evil.
5 Judaism/Christianity requires the destruction only of evil systems and so would act against 1 and 2 but not 3 and 4. (Note that judgment on what is evil is made on the basis of behavior, not on the basis of differing beliefs.)

Looking at the list, it seems that all systems are absolute except 4, which is relative, and the one I assume you favor. No. 2 I think has an absolute system: survival of the fittest where strength, power and self-preservation are revered (Saddam, Pol Pot).

So destruction of the other can be good sometimes, if the other is bad, which is why I prefer 5.

No, I said I was skeptical about systems with their own morality. The bus ads are talking to our culture (4’s and 5’s) and are trying to get rid of the No. 5 God.
Regarding Islam, I don’t accept No 1, but I support Islam as it is practiced in America, which has been compatible with our value system, (probably more with 5 than 4). For example, if practicing Muslims dominated an American city, I would feel safer about leaving my car unlocked and worry less about my daughter being killed by a drunk driver than in a secular dominated city. American freedom of religion has led to good manifestations of it.

Well, yeah, of course I am; everyone on this thread is advocating for what they believe. Don’t you believe 4 (WE) is better than 5 (JC) and present your case to justify that choice? As adults, we get to look at the choices and switch based on looking at what each has to offer. That’s what the bus ads are trying for.

I have been advocating the guidance of a fixed set of moral values (vs. Moral Relativity). But in every age, these have to be applied to the situation by using our intelligence and logic (Situational Ethics). I think both secular and religious people get confused about how to do this. There really are two areas of confusion:

1. Moral Relativity and Situational Ethics.

Moral Relativity vs. Absolute or Universal Morality
An ethicist has asked hundreds of high school students who they would save first if both their dog and a stranger were drowning. 1/3 say the dog (a more secular response, because they love the dog and not the stranger), 1/3 say the stranger (a more religious response, because people created in God’s image and are more valuable than animals) and 1/3 say they don’t know. But my point is about a follow-up question: When either dog or stranger savers were asked if the answers of the others were wrong, very few would say they were. In other words, they feel that everyone’s sense of right and wrong is personal and does not necessarily apply to others. This is what I said about the danger of the bus ads, that everyone can make up their own rules, as opposed to norms that apply to everyone.

Situational Ethics:
Many religious people will confuse Moral Relativity with Situational Ethics. They might say “lying is always wrong”. If you were sheltering Jews in WWII and the SS came to your door and asked “Do you know where any Jews are hiding?”, wouldn’t the ethical answer be to lie?

2. Institutional vs. Personal
“Turn the other cheek”. This makes a great deal of sense on a personal level. If we never forgave people who wrong us, we would end up with no friends. Sadly, many people shut others out of their lives because of intolerance of any transgression.
But it makes no sense to apply this on a national level. Do we say to our enemies who bombed New York, “OK, now you can bomb LA?” Many secular people will point to teachings that were meant to be a guide for the individual and mis-apply it to the behavior of governments.

In the example of lying, many times on a personal level lying is the right thing to do (“honey, do I look fat in this dress?”). But on a national level, it is almost always disastrous.

There has been bit of discussion about selfishness. Religion has seemingly contradictory answers. Rabbi Hillel said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I?”. I think in this case, in the personal realm, selfishness drives others away and will lead to unhappiness. But in the intuitional or national realm, an entity has to know what it stands for and pursue its mission (provided it is a good one). So it becomes a responsibility to defend oneself against aggression and to help others who are victims of it where possible.

Actually, I recently visited a vast city, one of the world's largest, in which the crime rate is incredibly low, and where strangers will go out of their way to help you if you are lost or return your wallet if you have left it behind. It wasn't at all a Christian city, or even an Abrahamic one. It was Tokyo. (Which, I guess, falls somewhere around category 4 - essentially secular, with ceremonial observance of Shinto and Buddhism.) I would feel safer about leaving my car unlocked there than any other city I have visited. (Though, given the exemplary public transport, I wouldn't have a car there.)

Willingness to defend seems important to your value judgement of a society, and I guess I understand that. It has to survive if it is going to continue to offer value. So, I don't see why a country couldn't be officially secular (tolerating all religions and beliefs within it but not endorsing any of them), and still committed to a strong defense. In fact, I know plenty of secularists who believe that is exactly what the USA is supposed to be.

The monotheistic religions carry a great deal of cultural capital (even with godless folk like me), but I can't find a fixed set of values (personal or institutional) in any of them. Endless wars have been carried out within these religions, endless splits and schisms, reforms and reactions. Have you yet specified which values, and if fixed, by whom?

Still feeling the effects of last night's dose of NyQuil, so forgive some level of incoherence in this post

And saying that religion should continue to be accepted because it's the contextual basis of our current morality is like saying slavery should be reinstated because it's the contextual system under which our country was made as strong and powerful as it is.

Just because something produced a positive result by one definition of positive does not make it a good thing.

But let me be clear on a few things.

1) I am not arguing that religion should be "abolished". I'd prefer it if people would move beyond it and stop teaching it, but I would never support any sort of legal authority to abolish it.

2) It's not because of historical abuses that I prefer people move beyond religion. It's because of future ignorance. Religion, by definition, promotes irrational thought and requires flatly ignoring observable fact.

Israelis and Palestinians are killing each other. Why? You can trace it right back to the fact that both sides are certain that their religion gives them justifiable claim to a chunk of desert and that any deaths resulting are a small price to pay for doing god's work. And if you think that's just from the Palestinian side, you are sorely mistaken.

STDs and unwanted pregnancy continue to be a major issue in this country because we can't have an honest, open discussion with our children because sex is dirty and wrong because god said so.

Irish schools remain segregated by religion, perpetuating centuries old hatreds that result in bloody deaths.

These aren't "historical abuses". These are real, palpable consequences of the absurd notion that the world should be separated by which invisible deity you pray to.

So here's the calculus that I see.

Without Religion - A continual social discourse on what morals we should ascribe to. Individuals will disagree, individuals will purposely attack that morality and act without it. As a society we would be continually evaluating new knowlege and how it might help better promote morality and well being

With Religion - A continual social discourse on what morals we should ascribe to. Individuals disagree, individuals purposely attack that morality and act without it. Those individual are given extra ammo to act immorally based on their belief that they have moral superiorty granted by god. As a society, we are afraid of new knowledge and actively work to slow its progress because it doesn't agree with the version of the world laid out in contradictory texts.

It bears repeating that there is no evidence that the morality that you are arguing for can be attributed to religion. Religion mimics morality. Religion has changed as morality has changed. Religion doesn't cause that change, if anything it resists it until it begins to lose its influence, and then it changes to garner back more followers.

I don't know, I guess as a moral relativist I have a hard time getting on board the objective morality train becasue I don't believe it. For me to advocate it becasue it seems to work better by some "relativist" standard still seems disingenuous to me. Placebos seem to only work when you believe in them, so for a system of objective morality to work, you'd have to send me to the death camps or otherwise silence or intimidate me.

See, but I don't think the Buddhist influence is just ceremonial. It's the basis for their sense of morality. And the fact that there is ceremonial participation indicates that there is more of a connection than in a more secular place where you would worry about your wallet, like Detroit. And the difference between these two cities illustrates that there is not a common biological morality that doesn't need nurturing, as Gouhlish Delight thinks.

But it's not just self preservation. If you see someone being mugged or bullied, don't you think the right thing to do is to help them if you can, even though you yourself are not being threatened?

I totally agree. That's the idea of the US. The founding fathers envisioned a secular government and a religious population. (Federal government to be exact. States were allowed to be set up according to how people saw fit with Maryland being Catholic and NH Protestant, there was more religious endorsement at the state level, but it was not so much through laws as ceremony).

You mean that makes sense for you right? You are not denying that each has a known set of values (I pointed some out in my 1-5 list.)

Here again, these splits have been more over theology than values, and I am not arguing for any particular theology.

Even though I know this is common, it's pretty alien to me and I can't see how this would play out in your daily life. Are you saying you really think there is no objective right or wrong? What happens when you have jury duty, is that institution wrong in your eyes (see, I can't get away from it), er, how about, is it irrelevant and meaningless? After all, the jury system's whole purpose is to evaluate the circumstances behind an event in light of a fixed standard society is trying to enforce.

By using the word “universal” I mean absolute (vs. relative) morality, that is, if stealing is wrong, it applies to everyone, like I tried to explain in my reply to Prudence. By universal, I don’t mean built-in biologically to all humans; we have already discussed and agreed somewhat about how people can be fundamentally different. Maybe you are talking about what i called Situational Ethics, which is how to apply that morality in difference circumstances.

I agree with your comments about Oprah, but unfortunately it’s not just her audience; many educated intelligent people, especially academics and artists, cling to this same idealistic notion that people are naturally good and the same. (I should write something soon about secular vs. religious dogma.)

Well, on a jury you are making judgment based on Laws not ethics or morals, though when asked by a judge if I can follow the law, I have sometimes responded, "if they are just laws." Of course, I have yet to be seated on a jury so maybe you have something there.

And here's what's pretty alien to me. If you don't believe in god, where does your definition of this supposed universal morality come from?

And to answer your jury analogy, a jury is relevant and meaningful within the context of the system that created it. It's a product of a society that agreed to those rules, and so it makes perfect sense to enforce those rules. But that doesn't mean those rules are universal truths.

Let me be more explicit than that. "It came from my religious upbringing" isn't what I'm looking for. Because that doesn't answer the question. It explains why you believe in it, but it doesn't answer the question of where it comes from if you think it exists. If you got it from religion, where did religion get it? And the only end to that questioning is god.

But you don't believe in god. So this "universal" definition of good and bad is not, afterall, universal. You'd LIKE it to be universal because you feel like it works pretty well, but it simply isn't, unless you believe in god (and even then, if you believe in god and think his word is universal, then his word doesn't match your definition of the universal good, but that's another story).

And so the genesis must have been human. There must have been enough people who WANTED the idea that not negatively affecting others is good to be universally held. So religion was created to explain and reenforce that desire. And despite the fact that Darwin has given us a far simpler and sustainable explanation for that, people are reluctant to accept it because relgion "has worked so far", ignoring all of the ways religion certainly hasn't worked.

Sigh, I bet I'm really pissing off some religious people reading this thread.

You may be pissing others off, but you're delighting the heck out of me.

Anyhow, David E., looking back at your first post within this thread, I notice that you say your thoughts about this issue were spurred by comments from Don Wildmon, who you say you know nothing about. Well, I sure do. He's the founder of the very right-wing American Family Association (originally known as the National Federation for Decency.) He started the ball rolling on the boycotting of Disney (for allowing gay days, the horror!), led the charge on the protests of The Last Temptation of Christ, has campaigned steadily against gay rights, abortion rights, Blockbuster Video (for carrying NC-17 titles), you get the picture. He's got a major ideological axe to grind when he says that society functions better with religion. It's a big power grab for him and his ilk. (His son Timothy runs the organization these days, and is cut from much the same cloth.) I know this has no bearing on the merits of the argumjent in and of itself, but you are the first agnostic I've ever heard propose it. (On the other hand, I've very often heard it from religious apologists, whose views I spend a surprising amount of time examining.)

I gave the car travel analogy as an example of an invention that works pretty well, despite what problems it has. Not as an example of a an enduring institution. If we had hover cars, we would switch to those. Changing my analogy to something evil like slavery, which then implies a correlation to religion, isn't fair.

Just as a matter of historical clarification, now that you do mention slavery, it is not what made the US powerful, in fact it tore it apart. The slave states were pretty much only agricultural, party because of the longer growing season, and yes, because of the labor situation. The north, where slavery was prohibited, prospered much more in every other regard: manufacturing, trade, diplomacy, the arts, charitable institutions, urban development, etc. And don't forget that the abolitionist movement was Christian.

Alas, so was the pro-slavery faction.

It seems odd to be doing such a utilitarian analysis of Christianity/religion - it seems to presume that Utilitarianism is the true objective morality by which to evaluate other moral systems.

Yes! Otherwise, the choices are: "Chairman Mao", or "whatever you think is right". And I argue that the consequences of these are not good at all.

The teaching of it must be transmitted through culture, but the morality that we teach has to be applicable to everyone. We are getting tripped up on the word universal, I think. Weren't you arguing for instinctual morality (5 guys on a bridge)? I have always been saying it's cultural, otherwise how do you get societies where human sacrifice was mandated by law and others where it's not? (Here is an example of a practice that was deemed right for some to engage in, but not others.)

As for not believing in God, I try to but have a hard time often. Remember I agreed with Voltaire that if God did not exist, man would have to invent him to avoid the situation you point out that I just quoted above. As long as this thread has gotten, I have not even touched on the most powerful arguments for why someone should at least try to believe in a good God with and an afterlife with accountability . (Separate thread sometime).

Let me explain why what I am advocating is totally consistent with logic and the Scientific Method: To try to bring a way of working with things that are not understood, we often postulate an answer that we can’t prove, and the logic that follows works until we find new information we can adjust for. Even then, the older way is still practical on some level. All the innovations of the renaissance worked under Newtonian mechanics; and even after Einstein, a sextant still works. So how is the postulation of God useful even though it can’t be proved? Science and secularism do not have answers for the mysteries of Time and Existence. I don’t even think we are capable of understanding them no matter what is discovered. (I am wondering if you agree with just that?). One thing we can observe in nature is that there are different levels of capability to understand. My dog can’t understand how I make light appear where I go when I come home. It still happens according to the laws of nature. My dog suffers when I leave her a the vet overnight; I don’t have a way to explain that I will be back for her, and that it will be alright. Likewise, God might have a similar relationship to humans, and God might be limited or part of a hierarchy with more levels. We may not have the ability to know or understand those things, and we may be tasked to work with what we do understand.

At the worst, it attempts to explain mysteries that the secular cannot; and at best it can be a great source of something that no human can be happy without: meaning.

In profession and affiliation more than in deed. It's hard to live up to standards and do the right thing when you have a lot on the line. In historical context, slavery was near universal for all of history, and after US abolition, only took 50-100 more years or so to clean up most of the world.

I don't know, I have no problem accepting the fact that some things are just unknowable to me, or that the only meaning my life has, is that which I attribute to it.

In my case I feel the same. But you and I have been pretty lucky. For millions, this is not the case. This is a good segue to a new thread I am starting about similar bus ads in Britain, and a more common and obvious argument for God.

I think this thread has been pretty much played out, I feel like I am repeating too much. Euro, I would still like your response to the anarchist question and whether you agree about the existence of secular dogma.

oh dear, you're going to make re-read the thread - this may take awhile as I check out the fashions on the Golden Globes...

No question there is secular dogma - isn't that the stuff of party platforms?

As to the Anarchy question - I don't necessarily find it worrisome, but rather the actual state of being. On an individual level we constantly make a choice as to whether or not we will abide by the social contract and thus have a personal sense of anarchy (not that it is without consequence). Sometimes we break with the social norms because we think they need to be changed (e.g. civil disobedience). Sometimes we violate the norms because we can get away with it and advance our own personal agendas. I think by keeping this in mind we respect the needs of other people (have not's having less to lose by violating social norms) and that as much as we'd like other to act in an honorable and moral fashion, at any moment, despite the existence or non-existence of any God we can find ourselves betrayed or taken advantage of. Granted we all wish it were otherwise, but I think it helps to every once and awhile acknowledge the anarchist potential of the people around us.

So basically it boils down to "we need religion because all those other horrible people aren't as enlightened as you and I are and something needs to rein them in"?

Those are hardly the only choices. (anarcho-syndicalism, benevolent despotism, Ayn Randian objectivism, the list goes on.)

In any case, "whatever you think is right" is misleading. We are all accountable to both our own moral consciences (those of us that have 'em, of course) and the prevailing social order we live in. So far, no society I'm aware of has been built around just "whatever each individual thinks is right."

Any social group large enough to need a system of government is going to outlaw the big ticket items like murder and theft - it's a total no-brainer as to why. Heck, even a population without a formal code of laws is going to end up shunning or eliminating the thieves and murderers in its ranks. No god needed, though one or more may be invoked. (Theft and murder by those in charge is another matter of course. Those are control mechanisms, and we already know that they can be invoked to further both religious and non-religious ideologies.)

You rightly abhor the cruel dictatorships that have renounced God, but then you also declared the peaceful secular systems as inferior, apparently for being ill-equipped to defend themselves and others. I'm not sure I buy that as an inevitability. In any case, you have admitted now that the US is a secular government, so, hooray. Belief is up to the individual conscience, as it jolly well should be. (The old "every state determines its official religion" model has lapsed - and thank goodness it has. A free market in regards to belief is the only way to go - government neither endorses nor prevents, so long as believers don't infringe on others. This works for you, right?)

Anyhow, you've tipped your hand. You're a theist, or at least you are committed to the presuppositions of a theistic worldview. It's no shame, but you sound as though you are only barely on the agnostic spectrum, and don't really want to be there. (No offense intended if this isn't accurate.)

Voltaire favored the deistic god of the Enlightenment - a being who set up the laws of nature and got them going, then retreated to some impossibly remote distance, completely and utterly uninvolved with human affairs. Voltaire had nothing but disdain for church dogma and the wielding thereof. His famous quote doesn't necessarily have to be read as an endorsement of the god idea. It could as easily be a shrug of resignation. ("Such is the way of man") Had Voltaire lived long enough to learn of Darwin and natural selection, it is quite possible that he would have abandoned his deistic god and gone atheist.

GD said it well - if there isn't a god, our formal systems of law and morality must have human origins. (And to whatever extent our moral tendencies are biological, they have pre-human origins as well - of course, homo sapiens have reached a point where we can overcome the brutal "red in tooth and claw" imperatives of the natural world. It's a gradual process, of course) If that is the case, embracing superstition simply because it feels right hardly seems like any way to progress.

On the other hand, if in fact there is a theistic god, one who has moral preferences and will be handing out some form of cosmic justice in the hereafter, this being has not bothered to make itself known in uncertain terms. (Mythical stories of Shamash handing the moral law to Hammurabi, Yahweh giving the lowdown to Moses, etc, are fascinating historically, but obviously human in origin, no longer practiced, and incompatible with modern mores.) There is no single divine story that clearly stands out above the others, except where either individuals prefer it, or power structures declare and enforce it - add to that the fact that the vast majority simply take on the god beliefs they were born to. If I find myself in front of a deity after I die, I will join Bertrand Russell in asking, "Why did you hide?"

Sorry for this rambly post. This discussion is messy and multi-limbed, and I'm not a very organized thinker. I hope the other participants are having fun also.

While typing out the absurdly rambly post above, others have (rightly) indicated that this discussion has probably played out. I'll hop on board the other one when it appears.

To be sure the existence of God(s) would be a much easier sell if he/she/they actually showed up now and then - I find their absence telling.

And I would argue that that is because they have been trained from the outset by religion that life is meaningless without god. My parents, while bringing me up within the context of Jewish tradition, always did so in a way that never had me feeling like god was the only reason for my morality and happiness. It was allegory and a way to frame the thoughts, but god was not a necessity in the equation. Thus, it's easy for me to be happy and appreciate life without external "meaning" from god.

At best that's an argument for pretending to believe in god, which seems a futile endeavor.

You know, scientists do not just make stuff up. You can't just plug God into phenomena in order to explain it. "How did this towel dry over time?" "Well, God showed up and blew on it." That is not consistent with logic and the Scientific Method. It may as well be a Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I have been touched by His noodly appendage!

No, no, I am saying that Euro and I have had lives with the opportunity to give meaning to and many others have not. See the first post in the British Bus ads thread. It's about the comfort of a existence of a reason for un-explained misfortune, even if the reason is not understandable at present.

Just saw a news item that illustrates my point about the dangers of moral relativism of Western European Secularism better than I ever could. I should be gleeful about how clear this is if it weren’t so tragic:

The traditional annual Christmas message by the Queen of England is apparently followed up by an “opposing viewpoint” kind of counter message on British TV Ch. 4. You would think that the college educated, highly paid, culturally enlightened Ch. 4 intelligencia would have in their international peer group someone who could articulate a compelling alternate message of compassion and goodwill to that of the outdated, God-associated Queen. You guys on LOT do pretty well, and you have day jobs besides.

So who do they pick for 2008? Mr. Compassion himself:.........Mahmoud Ahmadinejad!

The less educated who only have common sense to rely on, might ask why the execs would make such a wrong choice for their cause of tolerance for alternate views. Oh, but wait, who are they to judge what’s right or wrong? That would be arrogant and presumptuous.

G.K. Chesterton said: “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything”.

And dude, that s**t’s f**ked up right there.

So you're anti free speech?



By the way, did you happen to see his message, or read a transcript? He sounds like he'd make a pretty good ally for you as he pretty much said exactly what you've been saying in this thread.



ETA: I've just been reading it a bit more thoroughly. Yeah, I agree with you. Total dangerous not job that one:

Yeesh, let's silence that evil.

I'm afraid Chesterton is full of it with this one. On the contrary, people who stop believing in God very often do so because they have learned to apply critical thinking. The same reasoning that makes Santa Claus, astrology, Scientology and sasquatch doubtful is finally applied to the cherished notions of ones upbringing, and the result is the putting away of childish things.

There are some who abandon their childhood religion in favor of some other non-rational substitute - eastern religion, The Secret, feng shui, chakras, you name it. But these are not the secularists. These are (to generalize) supernaturally inclined new-agers, who have redefined god and continue to search for things mystical, magickal, transcendent, etc. I don't want to upset anyone here who fits this broad category, but these people often do "believe in anything." (They are often wonderful, life-loving folk, in spite of or even because of their embrace of the silly.)

On the whole, those who have reasoned their way rationally out of god belief are inclined to value science, experience wonderment at our ever-growing (but long ways to go) knowledge of the universe as it is, and find meaning on their own, without recourse to having it spoon fed to them. Chesterton's little wheeze doesn't sting, because it doesn't display much understanding.

And wow, the counter-programming of Ahmedinejad single-handedly demolishes the idea of Western European Secularism? Sheesh. I hardly think giving this doofus a brief forum is tantamount to surrender. Indeed, I suspect it will steel the resolve of many secular people to oppose his brand of theocratic bloodlust.

Anyway, David E, in the spirit of late holiday generosity, here is an atheist who may have some sympathy with your view. You're welcome.

In preparation for our Bollywood New Years, I started delving into Hindu theology and find it fascinating in how it compares to the competing Monotheism in our culture. First off, this notion of "God" as a "lawgiver" (well at least setting and establishing moral and ethical guideleines) seems kind of fuzzy in a pantheon - as the God's themselves seem subject moral and ethical judgement and face consequences for their actions. Secondly, with millions of God's already, what's one more? It seems pantheistic thinking sort of promotes multi-culturalism. I'm sort of coming to the conclusion that if we decide to adopt and promote a religion a pantheistic one trumps monotheism in many ways.

I think one of the problems with monotheism is defining just what this "God" is - Creator, Lawgiver, Judge, Father, Sacrifice, Watch Maker, Santa, Energy, Mysterium Tremedum, etc.. I've had several occasions where people have argued that I can't possibly "really" be an atheist, because I held some belief (I don't think an atheist necessarily has to be a nihilist) but whatever.

Before we can discuss a beleif in God, I think we need to define just what that God is we are believing in. As for me, I'll align with Nietzsche and ask for a God that can dance - Shiva be praised, Dance Nataraja Danace!

I'd certainly go along with the thought that monotheism was in many ways a terrible step for religion to take. (And in my college religious history courses, it was hammered in again and again what an important step forward monotheism represented. I think I can now beg to differ on a few fronts.)

I sure hope atheism doesn't necessitate nihilism, 'cos I'm a long way from being a nihilist.

Christianity only maintained its monotheism for a few centuries, so if it was a mistake they fixed it soon enough.

I confess to occasional flirtations with nihilism - especially after watching the Big Lebowski

True dat.

So basically it boils down to "we need religion because all those other disadvantaged people aren't as enlightened as you and I are and something needs to make them feel better when bad things happen"?

I thought the unenlightened used those "sh1t happens" bumper stickers for those situations. ;)

Actually, I'd say that the enlightened used those stickers. :)

With apologies to the AA among us...

With regard to the AA comic, I want to point out that the person in the program who stops using no longer makes his friends and family miserable. He/she now has a sense that they are not the most important thing in the world and are not the victims they thought they were when they used in their former nihilistic, dead-end (and most likely secular) mindset.

Now, to you they may be re-adopting childish things, and playing a mental trick on themselves in putting what is beyond their control in the hands of a higher power (God). But it works in making life better for them and us.

As for the Africans with AIDS, they also have two ways of viewing their situation: a) the physical world is all there is, and I got shafted, or b) there is part of me with a purpose that transcends my physical death.

Since we can't prove or disprove either scenario, they are both in their way mental tricks. Which one will be more uplifting, and which will be more of a drag?

That's a false choice you've set up. Let me try:

a) The physical world is all there is, and I got shafted. But I'm going to definitely die soon if I just lie here instead of working hard to stay healthy and getting the most out of what I have left

b) there is part of me with a purpose that transcends my physical health so I'm just going to lie here and die. If given the opportunity, I will give the gift of such transcendent purpose to that cutie over there by having unprotected sex. If god doesn't want her to die, he'll protect her. If he doesn't, she's just experiencing her purpose. Oh the joy of giving that to her.

I am glad that the content of Ahmadinejad's speech was benign as you pointed out. But it has little bearing on who he really is and what he represents. Even a stopped clock is right two times a day.

My point was not about him anyway, but about how the media intelligencia has no moral clue. Why can't a tradition like their own country's Christmas message stand on its own instead of being deconstructed and countered? I've been to the Ch 4 HQ in London and it's an architectural masterpiece. These guys are literally some of the most well off and privileged in the history of the world but they must not appreciate that fact; they ignore the culture that made so much possible for them, as they seek in so many ways to counter and downgrade it.

Come on, believing in an afterlife doesn't mean you don't do what you can to sustain yourself physically. You do have a body and have incarnated for a reason after all. It's real impact is in alleviating the mental burden of the things you CAN'T change.

And I never meant that non-believers all have a bad attitude, only that it is more likely for them to, and for logical reasons.

I think most of us are arguing it's less likely, for logical reasons.

I know you are coming from a good place on this and you want to be objective with regard to both sides (as do I), and that there are two sides to every story. But the reality in this case is that the two sides are very different:

The Israelis repeatedly say they want peace and a two state solution. They have put their money where their mouth is and have done various "land for peace" deals including the Gaza pull-out of 2005 where their army forcibly removed Jewish settlers.

Hamas repeatedly has said it does not want a two state solution and that they want Israel gone completely. They have also put their money where their mouth is.

I have to believe what the two parties themselves say since their actions back them up.

It's easy for Israel to sit there and say, "Hey, we're offering peace" because they know it won't be accepted. If they thought for a moment that offering these cease fires and two state solutions would actually result in a peaceful recognition of a Palestinian state, you'd see a far different voice from Israel.

You spend enough time talking to Israeli Jews, or Jews who've spent time in Israel and they'll tell you the same thing. Neither side will consider the fighting over until the other side is dead.

And the pull-out from Gaza lasted how many hours until the blockade began?


I've finally come to the conclusion I want Hamas to win, and Israel to be blown from the face of the earth. They are an insult to Jews everywhere, and a disgraceful example of becoming that which you hate. They are today's Nazi's.

And there: I've Godwined this thread about God. I win(ed)!

It certainly can. Or that you don't do everything you might otherwise. But I'm not saying my choice is real. Just that it is as flawed and incomplete as the one you presented.

You're imposing what you believe on everybody else. Who will decide which version of this belief is the one that is best for everyone to be tricked into believing (because they do have to be tricked; you can't just choose to believe something).

I disagree with the logic you've presented in this thread.

BTW, that would be the leftist, secular, forces in Knesset that have made negotiation with Palestinians the predominant position of Israel. The right wing religious parties continue to insist that force is the only answer.

The existence of earthly phenomena like insurance and modern medicine affect human behavior, generally for the worse. I don't see why belief in an afterlife and forgiveness wouldn't do the same. Indeed, as I've argued repeatedly, a lot of our biggest and most charming Christians have the sin/forgiveness/repeat cycle down pat

I didn't say they didn't think force might be necessary, only that they want a two-state solution and peace. As you say, they differ among themselves as to how to achieve that. The problem with this leftist ideal is that negotiation only works when both parties have a similar frame of reference/values. Gandhi and MLK's peaceful resistance worked with the British Empire and in the US because they were appealing to a common sense of decency of those regimes, whereas it would not have worked against a Hitler or at Tiannaman Square.

So too negotiation alone can't work with Hamas - what is there to negotiate when they want nothing less than the destruction of Israel (as they themselves say), and are willing to die for their cause?

Their religious cause.

But that's exactly my point. Israel knows full well they can claim they want peace until they are blue and white in the face and never have that bluff called. But rest assured that if it ever came down to it, there'd be more than enough of them wanting to wipe Palestineans off the map right back at them.

ETA: Restating my point slightly and succinctly - if the truly religious segment of Israel held the power, there would be no talk of a two state solution.

There are some hard-core religious settlers, but as far as I know they are within the 1948 borders and do not advocate the genocide and destruction of any Palestinian nation. Do you have some representative quotes or news stories to back up your charges of this?

I am not saying there is not bad religion; there obviously is. I am saying that the fix for this is good religion, not no religion.

Recent news item on the subject for those of you who rely on scientific studies (80 yrs in this case) to state what is obvious to many of us:

By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: NY Times, December 29, 2008

If I’m serious about keeping my New Year’s resolutions in 2009, should I add another one? Should the to-do list include, “Start going to church”?

This is an awkward question for a heathen to contemplate, but I felt obliged to raise it with Michael McCullough after reading his report in the upcoming issue of the Psychological Bulletin. He and a fellow psychologist at the University of Miami, Brian Willoughby, have reviewed eight decades of research and concluded that religious belief and piety promote self-control.

This sounded to me uncomfortably similar to the conclusion of the nuns who taught me in grade school, but Dr. McCullough has no evangelical motives...His professional interest arose from a desire to understand why religion evolved and why it seems to help so many people. Researchers around the world have repeatedly found that devoutly religious people tend to do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages and be generally happier.

Many religious people think God reveals himself to them all the time. They attribute phenomena to him that science can’t explain - everything from the mathematically improbable coincidences we all experience, to ghosts to past life regressions...these may not all point to the existence of God, but they are supernatural and they are glimpses of something.

Of course the main argument for limited revelation is one you probably know about: moral choice and free will. If God were visible and were to unequivocally show the consequences of bad behavior, it would be easy to be good and we would essentially be automatons. If you were to design a video game and populate it with your creations, it would be pretty boring to have them behave according to what the rules you have coded, which you have already predicted; as opposed to introducing some algorithms that would set in to motion some more interesting interactions...

I wonder what "good" religion is - especially when competing God's and their prophets seem to claim they're the right one. It would seem off the bat that the real dangerous religions are the one's that seek converts,since that's what seem to lead to all these conflicts and fears of infidels.

Of course, the only sure way to eliminate bad religions is to destroy them, I suppose that means we must allow genocide in those cases - I mean, it's just to root our evil after all. Our God's will forgive us this trespass.

May our polytheistic love triumph over the haters and converters, for our religion is the one that is good.

Why is that odd, shouldn't utility actually be the main reason to adopt a system of beliefs, secular or religious? Why subscribe to them if they are not useful to you in guiding your life?

Today above, I quoted a NY Times article about how multiple studies find that religious people are generally happier. People seek happiness through all sorts of means from yoga to consumerism. Some things work, some things are empty and temporary. Why rule out trying the means of religion that seems to work?

So God did God create us to be good, or just entertaining. And if the Good One's bore God, why would he ever invite them into Heaven. Methinks perhaps we mixed up this heaven and Hell thing - perhaps it's Satan we should worship, at least then we'd be guaranteed a good time.

Well, i that's the case Fvck religions and be a utilitarian. I prefer pleasure to utility, so I'll hope you find my secular hedonism acceptable as well (God not included or excluded)

A first grader could understand what good and bad manifestations of religion are: blowing up a plane vs. Salvation Army collections would be a simple example.

Well, its true in the case of Muslim extremism that we see today, but Jehovah's Witnesses try to convert too and are not dangerous. Again it comes down to good or bad manifestations. I don't logically understand why you can assert and believe in the bad but deny that it can be good...so many things in life are not intrinsically bad but can be abused. Like my example of water saving your life or drowning you..

You are presenting this as though it is typical of religion in the world today, but only a small percentage of Muslims advocate genocide, so it's not a fair or accurate representation.

Um, you do know that mathematically improbable coincidences are absolutely inevitable and scientifically explainable, right?

Likewise ghosts and past life regressions. The dispassionate scientific investigation of these notions has yielded a big zero. People can attribute these things to any god they want, but that's just adding folly to delusion as near as I can tell. Are these notions comforting? Of course. That's a good reason to be suspicious of them, and do the hard work of investigating them.

And as to this notion of God not wanting us to be automatons, well, it seems as though most versions of Christianity end up with the elect being altered back to pre-Edenic perfection, to spend eternity glorifying the creator. That sounds pretty damned automated (and terrifyingly pointless). Obedient robots seem to be exactly what god intends for us to be in the grand scheme, though I have heard apologists hem and haw that we will somehow have perfect free will in the hereafter, but will somehow never ever do anything that isn't 100% pleasing to God because we will completely share His nature. What twaddle.

It's not surprising that church membership yields warm fuzzy benefits. Having a community united in common cause or belief, a place to go where you feel accepted, surrounded by people who are likely to help you out in times of need, these are fine things, though they can also yield the dreaded "us vs. them" herd mentality if said groups aren't vigilant. And there are other trade-offs. Membership usually involves an agreement, implied or explicit, to abide by certain norms, and not to question or dissent.

I can think of no better image to keep on one's mental screen than those photographs of lynchings in the South. In them, you see groups of genteel church-going folk, dressed in their Sunday best, smiling with warm satisfaction as a body hangs from a tree limb above them. (No matter how happy we are in our spheres of choice, we should keep such images available to our consciousness, and do the occasional gut check to make sure we aren't headed in a similar trajectory.) Churches can and often do achieve tremendous good. Many secular organizations have been studying how best to emulate the effectiveness of church groups in providing for charitable causes, disaster relief, etc. while avoiding the dangers that lurk in the shadows of complacency and conformity.

Sorry no. Islam (to which I'm assuming you are referring) does not teach people to blow-up airplanes. Just as the Bible did not tell medieval Christians to torture Jews to death in order to convert them. Religions are not "bad" or "good"; people are. Religious belief, in itself, is not the cause of evil behavior, it only provides the excuse.

Spend your time talking to truly religious Jews, especially ones that have spent time in Israel. The devout do not want peace. The devout want the temple restored and to carry out God's will to slaughter their enemies in his name.

Precisely the kind of illogical, irrational thought that religion encourages/demands. The kind of lack of critical thinking that allows people to be happy and satisfied while killing other people.