I found this observation interesting. But please remember, that all the opinion/s here expressed do not necessarily reflect those of my own. But I do agree with a good portion of it


Religion & Morality
A Contradiction Explained source: http://www.anti-naturals.org/theory/religion.html

French Sociologist Émile Durkheim observed that religion was the root of science. Religion, he said, was the first human attempt to systematically explain the world. Durkheim thought that religious rationality would wither away in modern times (for him, the early twentieth century) because scientific rationality would replace it, by virtue of its superior explanatory power. Alas, he seems to have gotten this one wrong.

But Durkheim was right about the genealogy of thought. Modern religion is an elaboration of a belief in magic. In the absence of a scientific explanation of events and institutions, faith in magical powers, fetishization of nature, and over-interpretation of random variation are inevitable. Durkheim expected religion to fall out of fashion as the outright belief in magic had, for the same reason. For anyone with the least education, the superior power of scientific thinking is obvious. Only a willful ignorance could lead to any other conclusion.

This is where we find ourselves. We live in a world that wants the fruits of scientific labor, but refuses the mental discipline of scientific rationality. Just like children, we want to have our cake and to eat it too.



Religions have persisted, despite their inability to explain the modern world. Here, in fact, we have a stunning reversal: religions play up the "essential mystery" of modern life. Since the world is too complex to understand all at once, in its entirety—even for the scientist—all of us will sometimes shake our heads in wonder at the turn of events in which we find ourselves. Many will find this uncertainty anxiety-provoking, and will look around for a convenient escape.

As social organizations, religions have a dramatic power that hides their essential irrationality. They persist today because they are so effective at constructing group identities and at setting up conflict between the in- and out-groups. For all religions, there is an "us" and a "them." All the ritual and the fellowship associated with religious practice is just a means of continually emphasizing group boundaries and hostility. It is no accident that the history of world religions is a history of violence, hatred and intolerance. The in-group has exclusive access to the truth, so the out-group need not—indeed, should not—be listened to; they can only deceive. And, being liars, and thus, evil, they forfeit their rights as equal members of the community. This is the poisonous logic of religious irrationality.

All modern religions are ideological: they insist on a total, though contradictory, system of beliefs and evaluations. Complete acceptance is the only way to escape the uncertainty of modernity. For this reason, religion without fanaticism is impossible. Anyone whose mind is trapped inside such a mental prison will be susceptible to extreme forms of behavior. All religions foment their own kind of holy war.

The reader might point out that some believers are more bland and mild than fire and brimstone. Those whose devotion is moderate are, perhaps, only cowardly fanatics. They want the fellowship and the security but ignore the logic of the system to which they grudgingly adhere. They may be more numerous than the overt fanatics, but they will always have less influence. This is simply the operation of the rule of the lowest common denominator; in response to uncertainty, the exaggerated sense of confidence of the zealot will win over the crowd. If you doubt that this is true, consider modern politics. The same dynamic applies. This is why our political system has given birth to the "war on drugs" and "family values."


Faith is by definition not rational—that is, it is belief in the absence of verification. (If you do not think this is a fair definition of faith, look it up. I got this from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, item 2b.) If every assertion were subject to question, the faithful would have to admit that they hold their beliefs without rational basis. If the public sphere were to promote the free contest of ideas, religious belief would wither under the scrutiny of scientific rationality, just as Durkheim expected. As with nationalism, faith is secured by appeals to emotion, not critical thinking. Emotion in crowds tends toward panic or violence. (Remember the rule of the lowest common denominator.)

In order to be protected from the harsh light of rational argument, the faithful want to make religion a taboo subject. Orthodoxy is supposed to be beyond question. Just like in totalitarian states, where criticism of the government is a capital offense, the faithful would like to enforce an intellectual gag-order so that the barbarity of their regime goes unchallenged.

In every religious tradition, there is an orthodoxy with an elite (priests, ministers, rabbis, mullahs, etc.) to enforce it, and considerable effort is made to suppress dissent. Where religion is still powerful enough to influence politics—in places such as the U.S., Iran, Israel, for example—religious leaders seek to extend the reach of orthodoxy to the public sphere. We live at a time, alas, when more and more people are demanding that unpopular ideas be suppressed. Speaking freely is now an invitation to serious trouble.


It is no wonder, then, that those who are religious are incapable of moral action, just as children are. To be moral requires that one accept full responsibility for oneself. In order to act in the world as an adult, one must be able to recognize that the world is structured and the situatedness of all individual action. The choices that present themselves in the course of day-to-day living are influenced by social forces over which we have no control. Moreover, there is an element of randomness in the flow of events that prevents any of us from being able to predict fully what will happen next. Morality is a basis for making choices, in the context of a probabilistic world, embedded in a particular political economy.

Faith, like superstition, prevents moral action. Those who fail to understand how the world works—who, in place of an understanding of the interaction between self and milieu, see only the saved and the damned, demons and angels, miracles and curses—will be incapable of informed choice. They will be unable to take responsibility for their actions because they lack intellectual and emotional maturity.

This is why Friedrich Nietzsche hated religion so much. Nietzsche despised weakness. He did not think of weakness primarily in terms of physical strength. Rather, he was referring to quality of character. In this regard, it is hard to imagine that anyone could disagree. Who would argue in favor of the virtue of bad character?

Well, we know who: priests, cops and psychiatrists. We must be weak in order to be controlled. Like it or not, religion is one of the most effective institutions of social control. Though organized religions are sometimes at odds with governments, in a larger sense, the faithful are merely foot soldiers of the Spectacle. (This is Guy Debord's term to describe the form of modern consumer capitalism. It is an apparatus that encompasses capital and all superstructural institutions, such as religion and the media. In the Spectacle, we exist only as consumers. We are marketed products—consumables or ideas—based on our identities; to the Spectacle, we are nothing more than demographic targets.)

As foot soldiers, their job is to instigate widespread fear. This is why they see sin everywhere. Sin will bring punishment. An angry god is an effective rhetorical tool. Why fear? Because fear prevents us from being open to the varieties of beauty and pleasure around us. When we are afraid, we seek comfort in warm, enclosed spaces—literally and figuratively. The fear mongers hope to send us scurrying towards the safety of their prison. The strategy works, too. We can now understand why so many people turn to religion or shopping as a refuge from complexity. Both function, albeit by different rituals and with different ideologies, to create the illusion of security. Like shoppers, believers are protected from the ugly truths of the real world.

The cost, of course, is the opportunity to explore what the world has to offer. Children must do what they are told. So, too, the faithful. At least children know that the power exercised over them keeps them from enjoying themselves. Those who surrender responsibility for their own moral action lack even that insight; to them, slavery is freedom.

Oh, dear reader, I know the argument: choosing to be servile is not the same as being forced to be servile, therefore, religious faith really is liberating. This is utter nonsense. Rationalists see this example of mental gymnastics for what it is, self-delusion.

In contrast to the believer is the artist. (I am referring here, of course, to ideal types, in the manner of the great German social scientist, Max Weber.) The artist is an exemplar of courage. Creativity requires a boldness and fortitude that can be fruitfully applied to everyday living. The artist must have a scientific rationality—in the sense of using experimentation to discover—otherwise, his work will be insipid or trite. This rationality brings one, also, to a new manner of living in the moment. It engenders a skepticism that reduces the shrill hysteria of these henchmen of the Spectacle to background hiss. Thus, one can concentrate on the humanizing qualities of beauty and pleasure. In this way, true morality is possible.

The artist as an ideal type has two meanings, and it is important to distinguish between them. The first refers to a kind of person who produces art—that is, paints a painting, writes a poem, composes a musical piece, and so forth. This is the artist as a technician, someone who is skilled in technê, or craft of artistic design. When I refer to the artist, this is not the meaning I have in mind.

Rather, I am thinking of the second sense of the type. The artist is an aesthete. Whereas technê is a set of skills that may be acquired through practice, aesthetic awareness must be cultivated by a difficult discipline. It requires a certain habit of mind that is quite different from ordinary awareness. It is a sensitivity to the subtleties of beauty and sensual pleasure. It is a familiarity with the positive and negative aspects of stimulation, and an appreciation of the necessity of both forms. Whereas the artist as craftsman might produce a religious object of devotion, the artist as aesthete is diametrically opposed to the believer.

The artist as aesthete is fundamentally open to the full range of experiences of humanity. All religious traditions are basically anti-pleasure, which is why religious law is so obsessed with sexuality. You can't be fully human if you are unrelentingly hostile to pleasure. The aesthete is defined by openness to the sensual world just as the believer is defined by a closedness to it. Lacking the proper appreciation for humanity, believers can be motivated to commit unspeakable acts. (A mob of believers is common enough in contemporary society; we see such mobs in the news regularly. A mob of aesthetes is impossible.) This closedness to pleasure is a necessary condition for the kind of suffering that makes a young person susceptible to irrational persuasion. Those who, at their core, resent beauty and pleasure will be only too willing to engage in hatred and violence.

On a personal level, religiosity is merely annoying—like pop music or reality television. This immaturity represents a significant social problem, however, because religious adherents fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their faith, these moral *******s are running around pointing fingers and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot.

Here again, the temperate reader might sound a note of caution. "They are not all like that," he might say. No, they are not all like that. But that is not the point. Not all racists engage in lynching, either. It only takes a few. Soon enough, you have a mob and someone ends up dead. (Remember the rule of the lowest common denominator.)

Christians, in particular, like to think that religious violence is a problem restricted to other faiths. This is, in part, because the bloodiest days of Christianity, it would seem, are in the past. Most believers conveniently forget just how much blood is on their hands, historically speaking. Don't be fooled by such amnesia. In the heart of every Christian is a tiny voice preaching self-righteousness, paranoia and hatred; the voice is louder inside the heads of the fundamentalists, of course, but it is there in the others' heads too. For theirs is a vengeful god. Those who believe that they are acting out "the divine plan" are the most dangerous sort in the contemporary world. Make no mistake.



It is curious, isn't it, how many believers are ignorant of the history of their own religion? Most know only the stories told in their scriptures, as if that substituted for genuine history. Some may even attempt to be balanced by acknowledging vague acts of wrong-doing in the distant past—so vague and distant as to be disconnected from the present. (I am reminded of George Carlin, playing the role of the Cardinal in Dogma: "Mistakes were made." Always use the passive voice to avoid responsibility!) This sloppy recollection is a clear sign that critical thinking has been banished. As a result, the blood is still flowing. Christians attack gays and lesbians because "homosexuality is a sin." Christians kill health care providers because "abortion is a sin." Lots of forms of lesser violence, too, such as child molestation. And so on.

Can there be any doubt that humanity would be better off without religion? Everyone who appreciates the good, the true and the beautiful has a duty to challenge this social poison at every opportunity. It is not enough to be irreligious; we must use our critique to expose religion for what it is: sanctimonious nonsense.

This is not a duty that we should take lightly. It will be increasingly dangerous in a society defined by fear. Those who call our attention to inconvenient facts, as we do, will be subject to special opprobrium. There will be hate-filled letters. (I've received my share.) There will be violence, too. Somewhere there is a young fanatic who thinks killing you will be his ticket to heaven.

We must not shrink from the task. It won't be easy; shifting the momentum of history never is. In a sense, ours is a fool's errand, but it is not folly. We may not actually hasten the demise of religion—that would be too much to hope for—but we can slow down the slide to the bottom. Within the Spectacle, there are only momentary spaces of freedom. This is what we fight for. Our work exposing the contradiction between religion and morality will, perhaps, preserve temporarily the freedom to think

Lots of luck in getting a detailed analysis /response to that mlor.
I can understand that viewpoint. However it comes from one who has never experienced the physical reality of god (or of forces beyond the rational explanation of science in its present form.)

As the argument begins, religion was an early form of science trying to explain the observed effects and phenomenum of physical reality. This may at times have involved a constructed belief to explain certain phenomenum but, if you believe the observers, it also involved physical interactions with god(s) and with powers and processes beyond human ken Today some of those real and observed phenomenum remain beyond scientific explanation and validation. In the present climate many argue this means they do not exist, but that is perhaps not the most logical of deductions.

On another issue I enjoy and appreciate the material benefits which science has brought for me. I would not be alive today without them. However i aslo enjoy the spiritual benefits a spiritual awareness has brought me.( I would not be alive without "divine"/mystical intervention, just as surely as i would not be alive without scientific intervention.)

Science does not bring with it ethical or moral awareness. The more we develop our science the more critical it is that such "spiritual" awareness and knowledge evolves to match the science.

Science will soon allow us to be like god, with both our own bodies and with the universe around us. We need to develop and teach universaly the moral/ethical principles which are required to underly the application of such scientific knowledge. We need to teach that however our morals and ethics are formed they need to be applied. We need to teach peole not that we are innately angry hateful or loving due to evolutionary and genetic responses, but that anger, hate and love are expressions of intelligence and like all such expressions we can control/ manipulate them through will to match our ethical and moral frameworks.

Hopefully science can lead the way in working out the best ways to achieve this. I seriously doubt that humanity will survive if its science is not matched by greater "spiritual " awareness and development. We can no longer afford to be controlled by our evolved biological reactions, and need to learn how to control them and manipulate them for positive outcomes.


Becuse of his preexisting beliefs the writer makes many assumptions which simply are not valid. Heres one of them





This is so ridiculous it is laughable. Sure sex can give great pleasure, but a spiritual experience surpasses the joy of sex by many orders of magnitude. It is truly an on going orgasmic experience involving both the mind and the body. That writer has seriously misread a very important aspect of religion.

They have also misunderstood many religions attitudes to sex. Most religions want to promote a safe functioning society for their believers. Sexual habits, practises and beliefs, because of their physical and emotional interconnections, are one of the most basic elements of societies.Thus, of course, religions promote sexual practises which benefit individuals and societies.

They only appear repressive if you apply the modern dictum that anything goes, and my freedom is more important than any social harm my practises may do

On the other hand he links hate and violence with religion. These are the domain of people religious or otherwise and must be fought wherever they are encountered. The christian religion actually teaches the complete opposite(although it does point out that behaviour which brings harn to individuals and societies must be regulated against and punished approriately)

In other words it differntiates between legal sanctioned state violence aimed at preserving the fabric of society and the right of individuals to use violence to seve their own ends. Today we tend to see this as hypocritical, but in fact it is again a logical pov. The American "wild" west was pacified, and made safe for ordinary citizens, on this principle where peace keepers; sheriffs marshals and others often imposed law and order through the application of violence to enforce the laws. Eventually they brought such law and order that they were no longer needed, or their roles changed and the law could be administered through less violent means.

Would not most logical/rational thinkers agree with such a principle?

Our problem today is that we deny many individual and social practises are harmful, or if they are harmful they should be allowed because of people's right to individual freedoms. Those freedoms, ironically, have only been won through the "pacification" and ordering of our western societies largely on judaeo christian principles.

Older societies and lawmakers had more wisdom than this. They understood that individual behaviour often had to be curtailed, where it harmed others or society. This is not a religious issue other than in the fact that those older societies sometimes had strong religious influences on their lawmaking, while today we tend not to, and our societies suffer in many ways without any religious /spiritual element.

This bit also illustrates other flaws in the argument



Faith is not always irrational (the writer just finished saying that early religions/faiths were often quite logical beliefs deduced from observation of natural phenoomenum. Religion is not always based on faith. it may be based on personal experience or by accepting the word of those who claim personal experience(this is not faith as such). I would not accept that my beliefs are held without rational basis. Entirely the contrary in fact, and many others would say the saime

He is simply wrong/wishful thinking about faith losing i a free conteast of ideas.This actually happens in western democracies. He is thinking with one mindset .Other peope think differently. They are not going to come to the same conclusion he does( on the evidence so far available.)

Both faith and nationalism, of course, along with most human constructs, have elements of emotional and logical appeal. Is he truly saying that nationalism would not stand up to critical analysis. People use many "intelligences" to come to conclusions (and so they should) Any issue requires the application of logic emotion and other elements of human thinking for complete analysis.

True ,crowds tend to generate emotional responses. This is not inherently a negative thing. Just ask the protesters in tianmen(apologies for spelling) square or the earlier ones who overthrew the soviet union.

Thanks for your reply MW. I don't know where you get the energy to reply so extensively, but I enjoy reading your insightful posts.

I read that twice and the more I think of it, the more I think it sounds like a hate-speech against all religious types. The proverbial "call to arms" against the oppression of religious fundamentalism.

It starts off as quite innocuous in discussing the relationship between science and religion, and where the concept of "rationality" fits into it. Then the article devote some time to the effects that religion has on society in creating moral zombies, or more palatably, escapist views (like shopping - as if shopping can be a religious experience, and for some I'm sure it is).

But then I see a nasty turn to the article. It starts warning against the "rising up" of the masses, the beliefs people hold forcing a "mob-mentality" (obviously causing disruption, concern, damage, riot, etc). Then briefly, the author separates themselves (and those of his group) by labelling themselves part of the "aesthete" (artistically rational in searching all forms of meaning). This aesthete obviously is contrasted to the former references to the "foot soldiers" of the Faith, the "Lowest common denominator", through whom the vehicle of oppression and violence can bring.

Finally, and this is where it gets really hateful, the author tries to look into the psyche of the believer, the dichotomy of the saved and the damned, and how this leads to segregation and evil morality. Hinting then to the historical blood that is on many religion's heads (though this article looks primarily at Chrsitianity in this particular aspect), the author notes that the same memes exist in the minds of those of us who go to church or Mosque or Temple as existed in teh minds of the Inquisitors or the Crusaders, and thus if the status quo were to change, the servitude of the believer mentality will naturall lead to unmoralistic action based on what is dictated by a pastor/rabbi/etc.

It was a well-written speech, in my opinion. But a hate-filled speech, I think!

Other thoughts appreciated.

mw, just a quickl comment "definitiive proof" won't be found until we fully understand how the brain works. We know the parts, but not how they work all that well. It is sort of like if we were to look at a car engine for the first time, be alble to take it apart and put it together, identify the parts, and what we think they do, but had never seen an engine run to verify our hypotheses. I will go so far as to say it isn't divine at all , it is simply we are ignorant.......

albiet you have every right to your claims don't get me wrong but they are nothing more than that.... ....

I myself think opinion abounds ........ 2 sides of the same coin. neither has the facts. the truth. God hasn't shown Gods self as a talking burning bush to anyone save some man that may or may not have existed . that may or may not have wandered a desert following a 'pillar of smoke by day and pillar of fire by night' aka a ufo ? with a half million + Israelites and leave not a trace.

and until science can close it's books and say ' now we know it all ' there is always a possibility.


as for the dangerousness of religions ? no doubt. at all. but man can be without it too. people kill each other over money , oil , land , women , ect.......... no religion needed , but usually thrown in as a way to get people to back you.

we just don't know and to impose or insist that what we think we know is the end all just speaks of our ignorance IMO......

Once again supra I have no idea what you are responding to from my post.
Did i claim definitive proof of anything?.

Did I say, or even suggest that i see our intelligence or indeed our nature as divine or divinely created?

The singular comment i can see here relating to divine was the intervention in my life not once but many times by a force I have attributed to god. Even then i put it in Quote marks to indicate that is an opinion and also slashed mystical (or you could say paranormal.)

Im sorry that you dont believe in such things, but they do exist and are as real as the rest of the universe around us. Of course one who has never experienced them (or in your case may have chosen to interpret them differently) may argue about the cause and nature of such effects, but they do exist and a significant percentage of humanity experiences them/their effects in one form or another.

It is not accurate to claim that this is simply a personal opinion

I know the brain has many wondrous abilities and you are correct, we are just beginning to be able to map, replicate, and manipulate these ablities(although many scientists are a lot further down this path than the general public is aware)

However the things i am talking about are not recognised as potential abilities of the brain as we currently understand it. Eg the brain cannot materialise solid matter or even a significant amount of energy. The human brain cannot see the future through its own innate abilities.

There is some scientific evidence for how we may be able to read minds, but at the moment the most advanced ability scientists have been able to replicate, is the ability of the brain to operate computers and machines with nothing more than the power of thought, and a little human designed mechanical assistance to transfer that thought into action.

In the end you may be correct. Whatever is responsible for paranormal/supernatural events and experiences may not be "god,"but culturally that is the name we give to something which possesses; will, intelligence and powers so far beyond our present knowledge that they appear magical or god like.

If you ever meet such an entity , personally i would suggest that; if it talks like a god, acts like a god, and has the powers of a god, your safest (and arguably the sanest, most logical) course of action would be to treat it like a god, at least until you know better.

I t would, perhaps, not be wise to maintain (at least openly) your understandable skepticism, in the presence of such an entity.

Well, I don't believe religion was ever a early form of science, because looking at something and taking a wild guess at what it could be then taking the wild guess as true is the exact opposite of science. If religion was an earlier form of science they're way of thinking would have looked like thus "ok, we can't explain x, I think 'a' is the cause of x, hmmm let's see if we can prove 'a' directly caused x. Ok, now let's make sure 'a' caused x...ect". Religion just goes " A caused x and if anyone else thinks otherwise let's burn them at the stake"! If anyone would call that an earlier form of science they must be pretty primitive. Religion in it's early form did exactly what it continues to do today-discourage a difference in opinion and restrict free-thought. That's an early form of science? lol. No. Religionist tend to believe lack of explaination equals evidence they're belief of what caused a certain phenonmenon is true. I can have cancer and then one day I go meditate and a week later the cancer disappears, religionist would then claim either God or Buddha did it, all the while ignoring any possible natural explanation. Religionist mindset tends to be "if I can't explain it, it came from a higher power". Note, when they use the terms "higher power" they're almost always invoking something "supernatural" above the physical realm.


Point proven.... If you "knew" it was God you wouldn't need to "attribute" anything to it; it would be easily identifiable. It would be something objective you can identify, no guess work involved. You just inadvertently proved my exact point above.


Err.....how can you say you wouldn't be alive without "divine" or "mystical" intervention? It definately seems as if your impling "God created me and everything, therefore without him I wouldn't be here". It's fine if you believe a god of some sort created you, but I don't see how God and science can easily be intermixed when one contradicts the other. I don't think your correct in saying science doesn't bring with it ethical or moral awareness, when if you look at it science has done exactly that. Science doesn't promote an absolute head of all which dictates which is definitely right and definitely wrong but from learning what science teaches us about life and the world around us it makes a person humble and appreciate his or her own life and the life of others around them. And actually when you think about it, science isn't actually required in order to have a moral guideline and neither is religion; it's been shown and demonstrated that humans are 'hardwired' to use morality as a basis for survival. I don't think I'd be wrong in saying without morality the human race wouldn't be where it is today. If humans had no inherent sense of morality there literally would be nothing to stop us from killing each other over just about anything we wanted. Yes, we can still choose to kill someone regardless if a god exist or not but our morality is what makes us choose not doing it over doing it.


You see, I can agree science doesn't openly present a moral or ethical guideline out right for people to follow-as religion does, but I think when a individual actually learns and studies things within science it then sparks them to appreciate the things around them and inturn makes a person take the old "treat others as you want to be treated" approach about life or run a higher risk of death. I think if people simply took that approach alone, that's all the moral basis you really need. So yes, science would then bring "moral awareness". But please elaborate, I don't know what you mean by the terms "spiritual awareness".


For some reason, given the history of humanity, I doubt we'd make it far enough to make ourselves like "gods" or the advanced extraterrestrials we hear about in movies. I mostly agree with you though.


Ah ah ah, see, there it goes again; "spiritual awareness". What do you mean science needs to be matched by greater "spiritual" awareness??? You are definitely placing emphasis on the term "spiritual". I hope you aren't saying "at some point science should come to terms and believe in the supernatural or the 'spiritual realm' or else we won't have much further development." Why can't you simply say "I don't think humanity will survive if it's science is not matched by greater 'moral awareness'" or something along those lines. The spiritual aspect always tends to cause a debate because things get incoherent and problematic.


Yes, please explain what it means to have a "spiritual experience". I never had one per-say but I think sex would be far better. Ah, looks like we have a difference in opinion.


Like the no use of condoms?........


I can easily see why the author links hate and violence with religion, maybe because hmm, that's what most religions, namely "Christianity", promotes. Anytime you call disbelievers in your religion "fools and wicked people, ...who do no good", I think that's enough to provoke violence and hatred. When you say all disbelievers should be killed, is that not promoting violence? Sure, people in society don't follow those sort of guidelines today but it's only because they cherry-pick parts of they're religion they like and then choose not to follow the parts they find objectionable, like stoning a disbeliever to death. How many holy wars were fought by Atheist? Yes, I agree with you partially that the Christian religion teaches the opposite of violence, Christianity teaches none violence while at the same time promoting intolerance, bigotry, and violence against it's opposers. "If he don't agree with us, kill him," "turn or burn". lol. The bible literally goes from a god promoting murder,wars, torture, human and animal sacrafice to a philosophy of "turn the other cheek and love thy enemy". I'm like Jesus, come on which is it?! The only reason most Christians don't practice that violence the bible promotes today, is because they have more sense and they know it would be wrong despite what they're holy books command them to do.


I amongst many am happy to disagree here! Faith is almost always irrational; that's what you should be saying. Faith sometimes can work, from a naturalistic sense, having 'faith' in myself and my abilities, but religious faith by definition is irrational, as the author states; it's the belief in something despite any evidence. Basically it's pure belief, nothing else added. And yes, I disagree again, religion is always based on faith. If a religious person experiences something unexplained, as I previously stated, what do they do? They claim God did it; end of story. That's not proof what they believe is true, it's pure faith. What occurs is the believer experiences something unexplained then they simply attribute it to God. They're attribution can be either true or false, they believe it's true but still, it's based on faith. There is nothing to prove that phenomenon they experienced true beyond they're own belief. And to say "accepting the words of someone who claimed to have a personal experience" is not faith based has to be the most ridiculous thing I've heard so far in this topic. If a believer in God accepts someone else's experience which is suppose to prove God existence, how in the blue hell is that not "faith"? They believe the person's account is true, they have no evidence to prove it true, yet they still believe it,....um, that's faith. They're "proof" or rational for belief becomes based purely on the validity of the person's account of they're "spiritual experience". I can claim a "Hotshy is going to end the world" and that I saw it for myself in a vision, if someone else is to come along and take my account of what happened as true, without anything beyond my good word, they're rational is based on pure faith that my account it true. I could have been completely lying, and they might believe it, but for the fact that they believe it without evidence makes it "faith".

Anyway, I agree with most things within the articles but some things are just the authors opinion.

Im not sure there's a lot of point trying to respond to this post because our views are so divergen,t but you have gone to some time and effort to give an honest and detailed analysis of my post , so i will try to do the same. I must first say that you are making unwarranted assumptions about my values and attitudes but at least you display an awareness that this may be the case. I will try to clear up any misunderstandings.




Religion and science were innately linked because of their natural form and function. When a cromagnon man tried to capture the spirit of an animal by painting a picture on a cave wall, he was using a form of hypothesis or cause and effect.( Lets see if this has any effect on my hunting success.)

He simply did not have the comprehension to differentiate, nor the scientificaly accrued knowledge and wisdom to do otherwise. When people asked why the sun rose and set each day, without the slightest possibility of actually knowing enough, or understanding enough, to come close to the real nature of the sun, its distance from the earth, or other knowlege to inform them, they used logic and deduction to attribute purpose and motivation to the sun's movements. (This is something humans have done to everything since they become self aware.) ie we act the way we do ,for these reasons. The sun (if an animate object) must do the same.

Now today, when i meet a pillar of light, 2 metres tall, which speaks to me, and performs a physical alteration within my body, i have the scientific knowledge, background, experience and many contemporary resources to turn to to help formulate and evaluate many possibilities.

When this happened to a person 4000 years ago, what realistic alternative hypotheses did they have. They certainly had no knowledge of the neurological functions of the brain. They used a scientific determination which fit the knowledge they possessed, but which to us seems purely religious.

Hope this provides some illumination on what i meant about science and religion having a common starting point.



I was responding to supras absolute disbelief that such things happen. I know they happen. I know there is such a physical entity. However in deference to supras opinions, i can honestly say that i choose to attribute this (for many reasons)to god. As i explained to supra in another post. If it has will and self determination, the powers of a god, and decides to intervene directly in your life, then the prudent, sane, and rational thing to do, is to treat it like god until you know better. You see I know this was god, but supra is correct, I cannot prove that to her, to HER satisfaction. I know it was god the same way i know what a giraffe is.Through observation ,analysis, comparison with common definitions etc

Im probably just too polite for my own good.


Lots of points in here. You can read my posts, take my word for it or choose to disbelieve me, but demonstrably and provably i would be dead many times without many cases of divine/supernatural intervention.
God has gone out of his way specifically and directly on quite a number of occasions, to save me from death (another reason to acknowledge his physical reality and nature, i guess)

I have no trouble experiencing both the physical presence of god/the supernatural and of science/ the natural world. hey both exist, and so must exist in harmony with each other in some way. One day, im sure, science will measure, evaluate and even emulate many of the powers of god.

I do disagree absolutely about where morals and ethics come from. They are not hardwired through evolutionary biology into humans, but neither are they "given" by god. Human morals and ethics are a direct construction and an integral part of our intelligence and sentient self awareness.. That intelligence evolved through evolutionary process but once it reached a critical mass it has the potential to override all the biologically programmed and genetic influences in humanity.For examle chimps and man are very close genetically, similar in social evolution and with almost precisely the same evolutionary biology. Why then can chimps not paint creatively write poetry or display the slightest tendency towards any spiritual/religious awareness. te only difference which exists is within or level of sentience and self awareness.

Humans are capable of intellectually conceptualising moral /ethical values, and then evaluating them and making intellectual self aware choices about our actions. We are the only animals on this planet which can do this although a number may be aproaching this level of evolutionary development. I do acknowledge that god may have passed down some rules for good individual and social living which all cultures have woven into their specific legal ethical and moral frameworks, but if you dont believe in god then youre hardly likely to believe that either.My fall back position would be that we discovered these rules/laws through our own intelligence, but that fails to exlain why all the wise men who came up with such rules attributed them to god rather than exalt their own genius.

As i said, any animal can kill, but we are the only ones who can murder. This is not inherent, nor is there any evidence for this being inherent, we have to learn that murder is wrong, and why it is wrong. Animals will act from predetermined /evolved responses where certain behaviours give more evolutionarily successful outcomes, but humans are no longer bound to those programmed responses.




How do we decide moral or ethical principles? Science may teach us how animals do this. It may teach us end/zero sum games and cost benefit analysis. It can give us a lot of good reasons for acting in certain ways and not acting in others, but for most of us there is a spiritual dimension which transcends logical behaviour.Bbecause of our sentient self awareness we are spiritual. We can love, hate, feel pity sorrow etc these are what i call the spiritual elements of humanity. These are a product of our sentience, not our biology. We need to develop a much better awareness of our emotional responses, what causes them and how to respon to them. Science can help us with this, but in the end it cant show us why certain things are right and wrong. Philosophy can be a useful tool in exploring different posibilities but again it doesnt look at the emotioal/spiritual forces which drive us to make decisions. It is not enough to understand logicaly why you would push the fat man into the path of the train in order to save a hundred lives, you must be able to examime yourself to understand why to you that is a logical and rational decisio. This is a very complex area. I can really only say that i see humans possessing a spirituality which is an integral part of our evolved intelligence, and yet we are never taught to recognse it analyse it or use it effectively as we should in all parts of our day to day life. For example treat others as you would like to be treated is ok if you are a fully functioning emotional person withadquate self respect and love for yourself. however if you fell you deserve to be hated and mistreated, doe this mean its ok to treat others as you want yourself to be treated?

This is my fear too, but i actually believe we can and must survive and to do so we have to develop that spiritual aware ness of self, our relationship with others and our connected ness with the wider universe which i have been speaking about.



Because as you may see from my explanation in my view ethics and morality are tied into the spiritual nature of humanity which is a function of our evolved intwelligence and thus at our control not the product of some evolved biological responses which we can use to excuse/explain how we behave and argue that we cannot do better.


This is not the same type of spiritual experience per se as i have just been talking about, but it is connected.

Strange things happen to people(well they do to me) Call it mystical/supernatural or spiritual whatever you like.The net result of those things for me has been a life and mand altering transformation. I have discussed these experiences in detail elsewhere.

Let us just say How would your life be altered if you had an angel appear before you(and you didnt believe in angels) and this entity said "ïm going to take away your nicotine addiction of five years" and proceeded to take away both the addiction and all physical symptoms. Suppose you went back inside and your parents asked "what was that bright light out in the front yard. Did we just have some visitors turn up "LOL

Lets suppose this sort of thing happened not just once but on a semi regular basis over 40 or more years. That's one sort of spiritual experience.

The other is the transformation which can take place inside a person who experiences such things. No fear of anything. No anger, lust etc. A mind so filled with light that there is no room for hate or darkness. Thats another sort of spiritual experience which can grow from contact with the source of ongoing physical miracles. These experiences permanatly transform the body/mind in a way which is far greater and more positive than drugs alcohol or sex.
Im not alone in claiming this. it is precisely the sort of thing eastern mystics have been saying for years. It is an experience of joy /bliss /rapture which just carries one throughevery trial and tribulation of life aware of the bad things around you, but physically and emotionally protected/sheltered from them. From personal experience you can lose everything you possesed and accumulated over 50 years and come through the experience richer, happier and a better person than befor. you can care for relatives with altzheimers til they die, working 18plus hour days for 5 years and feel nothing but love, joy and great pleasure from the experiences.

No I teach kids safe sex practices. I had in mind like only having sex in a long term loving relationship preferably a form of marriage, and not having kids unless you are loving and commited enough to stick to together to love care and nurture them til they are basically emotionally and physically self sufficient



I simply respectfully disagree. Most religions dont do this. people do this. There are punishments in the ot which are no longer appropriate because society can survive now where back then such behaviour theatened the very survival of societies and peoples. Non the less most of(say the bible)s basic prnciples are correct. An peole would be better of if they truly lived by them



Ran out of time to do this justice, but as you will get from earlier comments, our experiences lead us to very different conclusions. You are entitled to yours, but you can not attribute my knowledge and my beliefs to yopur experiences which is what you are doing here.

Accepting the word of another is not faith in the same sense as faith in "God" We all ,everyday, take a lot of what everyone around us tells us "ön faith". This requires a far less suspension of disbelief than simply believing in god in faith. That is the point i was making. To construct your own belief in god takes a lot more faith Than actively choosing to disbelieve and challenge the account of another person. So some people do follow anothers lead, but this is not the same level of faith as constructing a belief in god from nothing. However i can sympathise with your view, and would not strongly argue against it



Apologies for the typos>This was a long post and im about 2 hours late getting home from school. May get a chance to tidy them up later.

Mr w...quotes: "In the end you may be correct. Whatever is responsible for paranormal/supernatural events and experiences may not be "god,"but culturally that is the name we give to something which possesses; will, intelligence and powers so far beyond our present knowledge that they appear magical or god like. "


I say i dont know because i don't know, its okay to not know IMO . indeed .

god is a generic label used for many things .....

a quick point to close this - Since you are applying rational thought to this, then you should not apply the fallacy that the length that something has been around makes it valid.


"Remember that models are not as detailed as that which they are made to represent."

That's a good point

Thx. lol. I almost lost this topic.


Lack of comprehension and using the alternative option still doesn't = science. Your telling me that ancient people used deduction and "logic" to attribute purpose and motivation to the sun's movements,...but I can't agree with that. Seeing the sun rise and fall and then saying "god x is the cause" is the exact opposite of science; I wouldn't even go as far to say that was early science. Like I said, taking a nonsequitur guess about a phenomenon and taking it as absolute truth then saying forget further testing of the hypothesis, isn't science. I think the populations used some form of primitive reasoning to arrive at they're conclusions that all sort of unexplained natural phenomenon was caused by supernatural mystical causes.


While I hold heartedly agree with what your saying from a general standpoint, I just don't agree calling the methods they used early scientific, but simply superstitious and religious. If they accept something without at least having enough sense to further investigate something then to simply think "the gods did it, the gods did it", I stand corrected they're superstitious and religious. Science's starting point was when someone amongst the large groups of people who accepted superstitions had enough sense to reject those beliefs and actually start some form of investigation into what could be the cause of a phenomenon. Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge, the thing that strikes me sharp is that ancient people simply had an answer for everything:gods, the devil, and spirits.


Ok, how do you know it was a god and not an evil spirit posing as a god? Explain.....I'm honestly interested in hearing this. Sure you can't show us a 1st person perspective of what exactly you experienced, but you can try to do a damn good job at describing it. Put your experience out there for skeptical purposes.


Arrogance. You honestly believe "God" or a god has personally went out of his way to specifically save your life while 100,000 times over he has purposely chosen not to intervene and save children from being murdered and raped? Ha! I don't think I'd be wrong if I were to say that was a case of special pleading, you imply that for some unknown reason your life is and was more important to God than saving innocent children from murder; I simply see no good reason for God to allow the murder of innocent kids. If there was a god which existed, which chose to save my life over 1000s of kids lives he could have saved who are far more innocent than me, I wouldn't even in hell, worship that God. I just find that so innately stupid on God's part. Glad I'm an atheist now.


HA!


Good, feel free to disagree, I like learning about others. Morality isn't hardwired into human biology yet if you remove a critical part of the brain which controls this process of reasoning, you cease to have the ability to make a moral decision regarding two or more issues. You more or less have an cold and callous individual, purely self serving.


I think there is definitely a link between the brain and morality. Chimps can't express poetry or engage in religion because simply put, they're brain is drastically different from ours. We have the ability to "think and reason" and to learn at a much higher level than they ever could outside of swinging from trees and peeling bananas. Screw monkeys though, I've seen a elephant paint a vivid picture of a flower with it's trunk; I bet he makes the monkey feel bad. Now that I think of it, I when I was young I use to do things I didn't even consider wrong, like kill squirrels with a bebe-gun, I never thought about it until one day when I actually stopped and evaluated what exactly I was doing and why is it would be wrong. So in a sense, I could lean towards believing morality is learned, but then again when I was even younger I inherently knew why I shouldn't do bad things to other kids, I just felt it wasn't right-causing intentional suffering to others; when I seen other people do bad things to others I'd get sort of angry but also compassionate for the person getting abused. My parents never really taught me alot about morality, I simply figured these things out on my own. All they did is send me to school, and through observation I learned about what is moral and what isn't. I learned if I do this-this will happen, but if I do this to someone-this will happen, and so on and so forth. Even at a young age I tended to evaluate my actions, thinking "what will most likely occur if I do this", and through just observing and thinking I structured my moral foundation. All my parents did was send me to school, outside of that I was mostly a kid who kept to my self anyway, I never really had to be told what not to do.


That's being overly subjective; all "wise men" don't attribute they're knowledge to a god or some super-natural deity of any sort. Maybe the the reason why some wise men attributed they're gained knowledge to a god is simply because that was they're belief!? What about the wise men who would agree with your initial proposition that we discovered these guidelines through rules,laws, and our own intelligence? I myself rather settle for the most simple explanation than a complex one to over complicate things. Be simple and not much simpler.


I wonder if having the ability to consciously think had anything to do with that. An animal kills to survive, or defend, which would fall back on its ability to survive, but humans murder-we plot to kill someone, most times for self-serving reasons, but I wonder if we removed our thinking ability and our type of developed brain would we still be capable of such. Monkeys don't go out and kill for money or valuables, they don't murder per say, but humans do, but why? Almost all this has to do with our distinct differences in our brains. Don't blame it on a god or the devil, look inward first. If we never had the ability to think on the level that we do murder and more wouldn't be possible; we'd just kill, unaware of our actions as being good or evil, it is our self awareness and thinking ability which allows all of this to be possible, all of which stem from our brain.


As previously stated in the article, it depends on the type of brain you have. No two brains are exactly the same, but what you can bet on is that our moral decision making is derived from something within our brains and nothing external such as a god or "spirit". It's purely about how your brain is structured, as experiments show. Different brains have different way it executes moral decision making, but be sure it all relies on the brain.

Continued..............

Link
This proves that our ability to make moral decisions is influenced by how our brains work. If our moral decision making weren't affected by how our brain is structured what else what affect our ability to make a decision, God?


Yes, emotions are a product of our sentience, but our sentience is a product of our biology, you make no point. Seems as if your invoking that there is an absolute moral standard that is to be upheld by all, who is to say our view of what's good and what's bad is absolute; they're nothing more but subjective guidelines we live by, unless god really exist. It is my view that there is no good, no evil, only actions, it is our minds which invent these concepts of black and white which then allows us to "make sense" of the world around us. Without our minds, we'd see our actions just as the animals do when they kill, they do it through pure instinct, they don't think about it, they just do it. Not to say that this mechanism of black and white is bad, but just to point out, there is no moral absolute everyone should or have to live by. We as people can show each other why certain things are wrong and why certain things are good but to say "this is the way we do things, and this is how it's gotta be" is not our job, nor is it a god's job.


From an evolutionary stand point we're wired for survival, but in some cases there are people who love to hurt or invoke pain upon themselves, sometimes until the point of death, but we have long since figured out those people have disorders or mental illnesses. "Treat others as you'd like to be treated" only works if the individual is sane lol, meaning he has no serious mental illness which would impair any of his brains abilities to function normally. As you've stated, this only works if you are a fully functioning emotional person. If a man was ill and enjoying hurting himself, treating others like he treats himself would not be a good thing for everyone else, but from his perspective he probably would enjoy it! But if there is no god, there is no moral absolute everyone should live by, which means, anything goes! Rofl, some things in life can be up for interpretation or modification to suit the individuals needs. That's the great part. You believe spiritual forces drive humans to make decisions but I fail to see what you base that belief on. Can you prove beyond yourself these forces exist? Can you do it within a controlled enviroment which eliminates any chance of hoaxes or guess work? If not, it's merely that, a belief.


I don't fear it; I wont be here in 1,000 years to find out. It would be nice if we as a species survive so the greatness of our kind can spread, but if we don't-all I can say is snap my fingers "damn".


Ok. Point made, but if a guy enjoys going around murdering people then eating they're flesh afterwards is the man mentally ill as in "crazy" or is he possessed by a demonic spirit? Do you buy the argument that some people are born schizophrenic and go on killing sprees? What beyond his own brain structure and biological processes are responsible for that, an evil spirit? There are somethings people just can't control, especially in the case of a person who has the compulsion to commit murderous acts yet doesn't know they're murderous; I'd call them insane. Your core belief seems to be everything a human does is derived from the "spiritual" aspect of they're existence, yet if someone has a mental illness and commits atrocities, it must also follow, from your logic, that it is not something wrong with the person's psycological makeup, but that theres something wrong with his "spirit" which some how influences his decisions to do good over evil. I can't even begin to agree with your line of thinking.


Possible......


Yeah,.....people who have created religions do this, so yeah,...religion does it. Burning people at the stake is so the society of back then could have survived, ....boy if only those burnt witches actually knew why they were burning.

Yes, pure faith is different from faith in god, something you can't see. My friend can tell me something is either true or false, I'd only trust him based on my past experiences of him being correct, so to me faith wouldn't be required because I'd have something to go on, with God you have nothing to go on, just belief without evidence, and then reject all appeals for rational inquiry. We can't see god, can't observe god, can't feel god, yet people use God as the explanation for things they don't understand. They're just standing in a hole and digging deeper by invoking god. I enjoyed the discussion. Your far different from danielost. :-) (hits the floor)

I'm late on this thread, but what an interesting thread it is! Great stuff, MLOR!!!

To understand the morality imposed through religion, first we have to understand what it is that religion causes one to believe, and how religion makes us behave.

Take (as we often do) Christianity, although this could be any of the revealed religions, and some of the points are basic to all religions:

1) Belief in a deity/supreme being (God).

When one believes that Moral Code descends from some higher authority, there is often the subconscious desire to flaunt this authority. Take any family with children as an example and the majority of these families will have to discipline their children for 'naughty' behaviour. This behaviour comes from the child testing the boundaries of authority, something all children do naturally. This behaviour is moderated, but not lost in adulthood and some people retain a strong anti-authoritarian character throughout their life.

Thus, we see the imposition of authority on us as an adult society can be counter-productive and, at the very least, actually instills the sort of behaviour that strict religious morality frowns upon. This gives the religion a form of self-vindication that fosters continuing belief in its' 'rightness'.

2) Belief in some form of life after death.

Has the effect of reducing the persons focus on the life they live. This is very closely tied to point (3), but belief in life after death - especially the 'eternal life' after death promoted by various religions - possibly promotes (perhaps subconsciously) the actual worship or hopeful/wishful anticipation of death. At the very least it serves to reduce the impact of death so we begin to devalue life itself. Death, the recognition of death and that it is the end of life, serves to highlight the importance of life.

3) Belief in reward/punishment.

Probably the most insidious effect of this belief is that it promotes the doing of good deeds because of the reward offered (the 'eternal life' of point (2)) - leading to behaviour that is promoted as selfless, but has an underlying theme of selfishness. This belief also heavily promotes exclusion and absolutism and so reduces the believers capacity to accept relative moral standards.

So, what sort of morality does Christianity promote then?

Selfish, exclusive and absolute. Devaluing life and, by imposing itself through a perceived higher authority, being continued through its' self-vindication.

Of course it also promotes much, if not all, of the basic societal morality as well. Religion could not well survive if all it had to say for itself was negative.

Very clever people, those who created the various religions. Very clever indeed.