BootyLove said:
You see I fundamentally disagree with this. Only humans judge, only humans make laws and it's only humans are you accountable to, but above all only humans write about god, spirituality, philosphy etc.
well have to agree to disagree then
The only evidence that 'god' would judge you comes from old books written by humans.
oh i don't think so ... people who do something wrong, generally get their comeuppance, whether that is through guilt, social ostracision or through something equally bad happening to them.
likewise being nice brings all sorts of benefits /inner happiness in itself.
but thats just the morality side of things, there are plenty of very convincing reasons why people would believe in g-d.
at the end of the day though it's not something one can be convinced of through intellectual arguments or just learning something from your parents or at school - you have to experience it for yourself, although intellectual learning definitely does have a value.
People can say until they're blue in the face that the Bible is the word of god or that only a prophet could have written the Qu'ran but these books were written by men.
Of course they were written by men but they all have the same essential message, of the glory of g-d and the necessity of being good to other people.
i think that most of that stuff is divinely inspired - but that doesn't mean you have to take everything that's there literally.
They are tales like the brothers grimm to scare and impose morality upon children.
well, there is a lot more to them than that.
Of course but a lot of people don't even take responsiblity for themselves and manage to blame others, god, fate etc. for almost everything.
Well, yeah, but anyone can do this.
Yes, influenced mostly by your culture. ie your language, your religiousity, your philosphy, the books you read, the nature of your parents and family and friends and especially with the advent of TV: your countries culture and comparatively other cultures (though always through the lens of the dominant culture) and all this will start from the moment you're born...
Yeah, you're right, and i dont accept we have a totally free choice on who we are and the type of person we become or anything. all these factors definitely do have an effect and nobody has an entirely free decision but they can influence certain things.
No it doesn't, it's essentially an anthropological term to do with the effect of culture on humans..
Anyway...you can only do that within the culture you're in, unless you choose to go and live somewhere else. To impose your cultural morality on other cultures is imperialistic at worst and arrogant at best. Your 'ethics' or morality is a manifestation of your culture. You can criticise any other culture but you have to accept that you're doing it within the limits of your own culture, at least at first.
no culture is perfect, and im sorry but i don't think its imperialistic or arrogant to criticise certain aspects of anyone's culture, whether it's your own or someone else's, or certain individuals within it.
otherwise you're in a position of not wanting to criticise ANYTHING for fear of seeming arrogant or offending someone.
If you were born in Tibet or Thailand do you think you'd feel differently?
i see your point, that depends on a variety of things, like my background, family, experiences etc.
Of course it's about culture, especially at first.
Where do you live Fw?
i live in the uk ...
I'm sure plenty of those didn't need to do it in the name of religion. On the other hand some people don't feel they've lived unless they've 'died for the cause' - in those cases it's a false personality thing as far as I'm concerned. Low self-esteem coupled with an intense desire to surrender to something. Exessive passion is usually involved. That's in general, I'm not talking about real heroism, usually carried out in the moment with little pre-meditation.
all of which are good points, but what makes people decide they have to do something that will mostly kill them, even if it is just on the spur of the moment, to save someone else? whether they're religious or not, if we're all out for ourselves?
Well, I think that we do. I'm not an particular advocate of 'survival of the fittest' (they are more likely to be the first to go) more 'survival of the most adaptable'. Co-operation gets you further than non-coorporation in terms of survival. So that's why I think we evolved that way.
fair enough.
I'm an agnostic humanist existentialist (at the moment
who believes in the existence of 'something else/more', but that's it. I certainly wouldn't put my experiences in any previous dogmatic 'box' - especially religions that advocate 'an eye for an eye', 'homosexuals should be exorcised or killed', 'adulterers should be stoned' or any other medieval barbarian bullshit.
erm...my religion doesn't teach that anything like this should be applied to the modern age. religions evolve and change. oh, and if you actually look at the documentation in biblical times, very few of the things you describe actually happened - the safeguards to prevent such things were so great.
as for gay people, that prohibition was originally only intended to apply in regard to temple prostitutes who were used as part of certain rituals, some of them were children and this still goes on today in certain parts of the world. don't forget as well that when the bible was written having children was a necessity since so many would die due to disease and famine. obviously im not excusing it and it certainly doesn't apply in the modern world and its been TOTALLY taken out of context and misused by "religious" people who want to discriminate against gays. but you need to look at the reasons why it was put into place.
and before someone jumps on me i'm bi, i mostly prefer girls and got masses of stick for it at school. i've never heard ANYTHING like that preached where i go to worship and while i've come across a few people with some ignorant homophobic attitudes they are nothing, and i mean nothing compared to the homophobes i encountered at school, all of whom were atheists and took the piss out of anything involving religion.
in my personal experience i've found the majority of religious people very accepting of it, apart from fundamentalist christians. homophobia is based on prejudice thats reinforced by certain interpretations of religious teachings, it was not created by religion itself.
there are many things that don't apply any more, that haven't applied since the temple was destroyed or that were added in by people who sought to justify their own doings.
in the middle ages, that was another matter, but religion was simply another weapon that was used to stigmatise vulnerable people that already had a low rank in society, such as "witches", the working class, jews, muslims and women so that the church and the other rulers of the countries concerned would keep their power over everyone else and maintain social control. if someone started to organise themselves into a movement that would challenge the authority of the state they could always use the excuse of their being witches and in league with the devil in order to silence them.
it wasn't religion, it was a reinforcement of the class system, and it still happens now albeit in ways that are perhaps less obvious.
But that's what they are - old books, written by human beings -admittedly very superstitious ones, attempting to understand the cosmos.
Its only because people deify Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Lao Tzu etc that it all gets out of hand. They're (IMO) great teachers who managed to lift themselves and others above their cultural imprinting with enough charisma and power to change their particular cultures. That's it as far as I'm concerned.
i don't deify anyone apart from G-d himself. i agree with you that that's often a really, really bad thing, to believe that a human being can be infalliable and on the level of a deity. it stops you questioning anything that person has said, and it means you have to agree with absolutely everything they no matter how nonsensical it is.
im deeply suspicious of those wankers in evangelical churches who say that the "spirit speaks through them" for exactly the same reason.
That's why I think most religious doctrine has no basis in actual religious/spiritual experiences. It's an intellectual imposition from 'those who know better'.
but so is atheism as a doctrine. we are a secular society, although lip service is paid to religion, you only have to look at the rampant commercialism in our society, the hypocrisy of religious leaders who don't even take what they say seriously any more, the denigration of religion in the media, and who is pushing this? its not coming from below, it is coming from above and people who are in a position to push their ideas onto others.
i think a lot of religion has just become a joke that's lost its spiritual meaning, its just a ceremony really.
when you think about things like capitalism and the state, this actually makes sense, because most if not all religions (as opposed to cults) preach, at their hearts, a message that forbids the exploitation of others and to place material things above others' well being, that says that you dont have to have money to be worth something as a person. it also calls upon the believer to believe in G-d's laws and not men's laws, so you can see how this could be construed as a threat to authority, unless religion is perverted so that it fits the ideals that those people want, or else just weakened so that it becomes irrelevant.
