i mean, have you considered the possibility that you know intuitively what is "right" and what is "wrong" because it has been enshrined into you by 2000 years of religion?
What if it has been enshrined into us by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution because altruism is a trait that increases the survival chances of a social species?
It's cute that you think a Jewish stick-zombie is the prevalent religious influence in the world
It says a lot about how little you know, and how worthy your opinion is
!it's not worth a Donald Trump promise!<
Religious idiot wanting to sound smart. A classic.
I think it’s a bit more complex than this.
I think, in religious households, instead of being taught to be a good caring person you are taught to be as selfish as possible while staying within the rules.
So it’s not that religious need eternal threat of damnation, it’s that they have been taught to be as selfish as possible.
So I don’t think they lack morality naturally but they have been taught to be horrible people who obey laws.
That's a remarkably good point
It's conspicuous how adept the religious are at mental gymnastics
I always thought that it was because were looking for ways to justify their shitty behaviour, it never occurred to me that that was a taught thing
That makes it so much worse...
We're atheists and have raised our son (almost 10) as such, but always answer any questions he has about religion, especially since he hears it in school. He has no qualms telling friends he doesn't believe in God and one friend told him he was going to hell. This was essentially my statement for him to use in the future andI love that he has no fear expressing himself.
We evolved into social creatures - apes together strong. The group becomes weak if we are always knocking down or killing our neighbour. If we all work together and gather bananas, then we can feed those in the group who can not gather bananas. Healthy ape brains receive pleasure helping other apes (and animals) in need.
Of course it all falls apart when we have malfunctioning ape brains in the group who promote hate, greed, and fairy stories of a magic sky ape or we have Musk ape, Trump ape and Zucker Ape who want all the bananas.
I like what Ricky Gervais said about it. He asked Stephen Colbert if he believed in any of the other 3000 gods from human history. Stephen said he did not. Ricky told him that he just believes in one less than he does.
Interestingly, law is considered a more effective deterrent for immoral people than religion itself!
Religious law and civil law are not very different, the latter is based on the former, historically speaking.
The difference is in who gets to judge and dole out punishments.
Religious law and civil law are not very different, the latter is based on the former, historically speaking.
Hammurabi's Code disagrees with you.
He derived his laws from the god Shamash. He just codified and imposed his interpretation. I am well aware of the stele, I've seen it! As sure as Shamash is my witness!
Have you got a citation for the claim that the laws were supposed to be the divine commandments of Shamash? All the articles I can find on the code or the stele just talk about the laws themselves with no mention of religious connotations.
in theory the difference is dogmatic vs pragmatic but actually civil law is still mostly dogmatic just less so
Nature has essentially built a concept of good and bad into us through evolution. Traits such as cooperation, reciprocity, and concern for others can improve survival and social cohesion, giving individuals who possess those traits an evolutionary advantage over those who are consistently uncooperative or harmful.
You do not necessarily need religion or philosophy to understand the basic distinction between what is good and what is harmful. Human beings already possess psychological mechanisms such as sympathy and empathy that allow us to recognize and understand the experiences of others through our own subjective experiences.
If you understand that something causes you pain, suffering, or fear, empathy allows you to recognize that the same experience is likely to be harmful to someone else. Likewise, if you understand that something brings you pleasure, security, or happiness, you can recognize that similar experiences may be beneficial to others.
That does not mean every individual instinct or emotional response is morally correct. It means that the foundations for morality can exist naturally within the human psyche, without requiring religion or a formal philosophical system to create them.
I don't disagree with your general point but
Traits such as cooperation, reciprocity, and concern for others can improve survival and social cohesion, giving individuals who possess those traits an evolutionary advantage over those who are consistently uncooperative or harmful
Doesn't explain animals that are predators like say sharks. They don't cooperate yet they thrive. You could say that even immorality is an evolutionary trait because it gains you an advantage gaming a system built on trust.
All I mean is you can point at any biological organism and say "the reason it is like this is because it is evolutionarily advantageous" and you wouldn't really be saying anything more meaningful than "it is the way it is because that's what's best for it". It's a near perfect example of begging the question.
It's a bit painting the target around the arrow.
Is an action good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?
If it's the first one, then all you're saying is "God commands what God commands," and assigning "good" to that is meaningless. If God commanded you to do evil things, then you would have to just blindly accept that as "good."
If it's the second one, then you acknowledge that there's a source of morality independent of God that you're judging God's commands against to determine that his commands are good. At that point, you're in the same place as the atheist, and it raises the question of why we need to listen to God as opposed to just going to the source.
This argument literally predates Christianity. But most religious people just think that philosophy doesn't apply to them and that the answer to every philosophical question is just "Jesus."
Mutual respect, it isn't fucking difficult.
It starts with "I don't want to die so if you won't kill me, I won't kill you" and just incrementally grows from there.
Most religious fundies like this lack a conscious and do no know such things exist in others.
I don't think that most "lack" a conscience. I do think their conscience is either malformed or severely stunted.
I think, for the ones who are just decent people, it's more that they misattribute where it's coming from
I definitely agree with that. They think their conscience is "the voice of God" even when it specifically contradicts their preferred fable.
That Golden Rule. If you wouldn't like it done to you, don't do it to someone else.
absolutely wild how many people out there will blast me with eye melting LED headlights and then get all pissy when I turn my halogen highbeams on
I think they missed the memo
I also hate how bright modern headlamps are and agree that it's a potentially painful annoyance at best, and a huge safety issue at worst.
If you're in the U.S., a study has been mandated and a bill introduced to take steps towards setting brightness limits for auto manufacturers. If this is an issue you care about, consider reaching out to your Congressmen and let them know you want them to support the bill and study mandate introduced earlier this year:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7772/committees
https://gluesenkampperez.house.gov/posts/gluesenkamp-perezs-amendment-passes-house-appropriations-committee-to-investigate-overly-bright-headlights
Most drivers don't choose how bright their headlights are or how they're calibrated. Most modern vehicles come with super-bright LEDs, and because of the popularity of larger SUVs and trucks (which is a different conversation) those lights are about a foot higher off the road. Realistically, we can't expect individual owners to replace or modify factory headlights on their own. If we want the problem to improve we will need stronger industry regulations or financial incentives.
or how they’re calibrated
one of the first things we learned in auto shop back in school was how damn easy it is to properly aim headlights. you turn two screws/bolts. bugs the shit out of me how it's never done anymore.
calibration, unfortunately, only helps on smooth flat ground when aimed at stuff on the same plane
there's a McDonald's drive through that I go past sometimes that is right next to oncoming traffic but 10 ft higher in elevation, and I fucking hate that thing. I just hold my horn down whenever somebody is sitting in there with blinding headlights so I can't see if somebody is turning across my lane at the intersection just ahead. they still haven't put something up to block headlights. maybe if more people get on the horn they'll finally do something about it
@mrgoosmoos @HeyThisIsntTheYMCA
I've heard that most of the cars in the rest of the world have some sort of mechanism by which their lights will not shine directly at the faces of drivers in other cars. But of course here in the US we can't have that.
That's just a bandaid. And not a good one.
matrix headlights are only suitable for environments where vehicles are the only other things that will be encountered, like highways
they don't work for pedestrians or cyclists, and they're not quick enough to react on hilly or windy roads
great tech for high speed highways, not appropriate pretty much anywhere else. it's not the loss a lot of people think it is, to not have them in North America
Penn Jillette has a good explanation. I don't agree with a lot he says, but this is pretty spot on. (The clip goes kinda off the answer after about a minute)
tl;dw: If you I don't believe in a god, what's stopping me from raping and killing anyone I want? And the answer is: I have. I already have. I have raped and killed everyone I want to rape and kill, and the answer is............. zero. There are zero people I want to rape or kill. And the question becomes: Who are these people walking around with lists of people they want to rape and kill? Why do we consider THEM the sane ones?
Had I been alive during WW2, I'm pretty sure myself and majority of my neighbors would have Hitler on the kill list.
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