Any time religious belief causes any believer to say, "You are less than I am,"

[MineralMan]

religion becomes oppressive and dangerous. That is the core of my negative opinion about religion in general. Often, the written, scriptural principles of a religion warn against putting oneself above others. Human nature, however, very frequently overrides that principle.

Christians thought the naturalist religion of aboriginal peoples was incorrect, so that justified the wholesale destruction of a culture. That is the story of the Americas. It is a horror story that still continues. It also plays out on a smaller scale on a constant, localized basis, even through denominationalism within an overall religion.

Racism, slavery, ethnic rankings, the caste system, misogyny, ableism, and many other negative features of civilization can be traced back to religious origins. Even today, the most segregated places in the United States are in churches all across the nation.

We need to do better than that. We need to demand that we do better than that.

[walkingman]

1. +1

[SWBTATTReg]

2. You nailed it...not just the Americas, but in Africa, Australia, etc. I had hoped that we were ...

moving away from this mentality, but sadly, no. You get a 2-bit dictator who'll never advance based upon their merits (none what so ever) who'll use this caveman mentality to stir up resentments (false resentments, misdirected resentments pointing at the wrong causes of their woes).

We are, as you so well pointed out, better than this...

Thanks MM...

[Mc Mike]

3. Very reasonable. And there are tons of athiests, agnostics, skeptics who are better

at following the religious principles than a lot of adherents of those religions are.

[MineralMan]

4. Most religious behavioral principles are no different than

any other such principles, religious or secular. Non-believers hold the same ethical values, because they're cultural, not religious. We just don't attribute them to deities nor expect forgiveness from deities when we don't follow them. We follow them because they make good sense, not because we have to follow them.

[Mc Mike]

5. Historical context is an issue, here.

There were always people who felt secular ideas of right and wrong, instead of religious ones. No doubt. But a large majority of the victims of religions' goon enforcement squads were religious too, and just believed something different from the powerful fundamentalists who ran those religions.

Until a certain point in history, fairly recent, maybe 1700's, or a bit before the 1900's, religion was involved with most peoples' morals and choices, in pretty much every civilization. Cultural was not possible to disentangle from religious, from dawn of recorded history until (you pick the date, pretty recent, though.) You might pick outliers, like saying that taoism or confuscianism aren't religious, but most of the participants in those were also religious. Or you could tell me about ancient greeks who went for logic and altruism, didn't really believe in pantheism, but most all of the people they were talking to in their civilization were religious.

Re behavior governance and forgiveness, I wouldn't suddenly go on a looting spree, if you could convince me that there is nothing after this life. Also, I'm not going to run 20 red lights in the lord's honor, if I hear on the radio station 'you always have the lord on your side'. So I don't have to do anything, just like you. And I don't use the concept of asking for forgiveness and atonement to wipe the slate clean of my failings, so I can go on to commit those offenses again, like Jimmy Swaggert, say.

You could peg ethical values or altruism to just purely intelligent long term thinking, good sense or a genetic imperative. Maybe you're thinking anthropologically, I don't know.

I don't feel you're broke, so I wouldn't attempt to fix you. People who I see as having some kind of moral compass without having any religious framework to build it on, there's nothing in the religious tenets I adhere to that say they're 'no good.' They're doing the right thing, who cares why they do it or how they came to decide on the principled course of action.

That's why I keep bringing up Logan / Winters to you when we cross paths here. They're doing some good stuff, I don't care why. I don't dislike the secular nazis they're gunning for more than I dislike Opus Dei Santorum, it looks like we're fighting the same people, no need to analyze why.

[MineralMan]

6. See, I think the basic set of human ethics actually predates religion.

The fact that the core rules are the same in pretty much all religions seems to me to indicate that they were developed independently as soon as humans started living in groups. Don't kill fellow humans who are part of your group. Don't steal stuff from them, either. Don't mess with your neighbor's mate. Cooperation gets more done than dispute. That sort of thing.

There isn't much that is unique in any religion's basic moral code. It's all pretty much the same stuff. Of course, those rules often only apply to the local group. That tribe on the other side of the river? Who cares? But don't mess with your homies.

[Mc Mike]

7. I agree with your title line's principal idea.

Last edited Mon Sep 10, 2018, 05:43 PM - Edit history (1)

Lenny Bruce said the first laws were religious laws. 'We eat in area a, sleep in area b, throw our shit in area c'. Then one night a guy gets woken up from his sleep with a face full of shit. He says 'I thought it was a, b, c.' They told him, 'it's a religious holiday, and you're not religious, so you're in the shit'.

I think that the mostly uniform principles indicates that they're all right, not all equally deluded. But maybe they all are deluded, and you just refuse to fool yourself. As long as I maintain the same core rules as you in a polite civilization we share, it doesn't really matter in the end.

It's rare that the moral principles, of religions I've studied, codify the idea of 'get the guys across the river.'

Go, Logan/Winters. Down with Sam Harris.