Ethical Atheist vs believer in God
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juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
If he only knew how much I would actually enjoy the opportunity!
I think I get what you're saying, but I might still be off a bit...
Essentially I think this is what Jung thought too, collective consciousness and all that. I'm not sure how the "bi-cameral" mind stuff fits in, as far as I know we have had two hemispheres in our brains biologically for a very long time. I am inclined to agree with you though in that we do seem to carry a lot of the baggage of our ancestors, almost genetic memory so to speak. So there are still latent tendencies that try to influence us that as we become more aware of them we tend to try to distance ourselves from them.
That's OK. Both religion and philosophy are ways of looking at reality and trying to make some sense of it all...that's what I meant by saying the two are essentially the same. But there are different applications, and different people are going to lean towards their natural inclinations. Red and blue are both colors...some people like blue better, some like red.
OK, but there are also people who do gravitate to Taoist alchemy, particularly in the East, and particularly speaking of three or four thousand years ago.
It is easy to want to skip over large pieces of the puzzle in order to lay modern justifications on ancient scaffolding. But its not accurate, and leads to incorrect conclusions. That's a large part of the reason I butt heads so hard with Tao Equus on this, because that is precisely what he insists on doing.
T
Tao_Equus
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Ok I'l go back and give you a point by point. Though as an atheist I may in future decline to do so because I find a 'believers' need to have superstition as the start point a bit tedious.
Was it not? I am sorry, perhaps I misunderstood.
That's not what I said...at all.
A reasonably advanced one I would presume based on the animals they hunted and respected and the stars they observed to predict their migrations. No religion required.
Morals and ethics arose before and thus independently of philosophy. Of course once our conciousness had developed sufficiently to handle philosophy morals and ethics became fruit for the picking. We can only speculate as to when exactly the first individuals took the first steps out of purely experential thought and into the realm of the might be. But it is easy to see how it did develop as a survival aid. Knowing a herd of bison could be driven off a nearby cliff and making the conciouss decision to do so involves what would become philosophy.
I think you will more likely find they would state that "no written" evidence for one exists prior to then. But the first written ones are highly evolved and it is frankly ridiculous to believe that is when it first evolved as a discipline.
I set out very clearly at the begining of the thread what I defined as 'good'. There is no ambiguity.
Perhaps because I can look at the evidence without the need to weave an addiction for superstition into it?
lol.....what am I meant to say to that?
Sorry Juan that is your mission not mine.
Some of the earlist religious temples are places that were designed to scare the population half to death. Constructed to convey light and sound in a way that a heavilly drugged villager would really think he could hear and see demons. Religious metaphors have evolved little since those days. They still put a root fear into the depths of the psyche that make it nigh near impossible for those so touched to give up on it. Especially when the atheist alternative is nothing. Some people way back philosophised about gaining power and privilige within their society. They came up with religion as the method of controlling their own and war for their neighbours. Again nothing has changed.
How on Earth do you know that!! And you constantly accuse me of making spurious leaps of logic!!! We have no idea if cave paintings had religious meaning or not but there is no evidence what so ever to say that they were. A picture of a horse on a cave wall may well have been a message left for an absent tribe member letting him know they rest of them had set out to hunt horse. No religious interpretations required.
I hope this satisfies you
趁熱打鐵
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
Good article, Earl!
Paladin
Purchased Bewilderment
N
Nick_A
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No, the world of forms is a different higher quality of "being" and water as a natural element is different in its being then the manifestation of water that we define as such. The Bible is not referring to water above the sky as the same being as water below it but only steam for example. Think what yin is. If you recognize yin and yang you will see the relationship between involution and evolution. Unfortunately, there is no way to secularize it. A person has to become open to a more complete quality of perspective or it is meaningless.
c0de
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Hey Guys
Interesting thread.... completely went under my radar.
The atheistic side is adamant that we believers are stuck
in pre-supposing the existence of the supernatural (TRUE!)
However, IMO the atheists in such debates try to avoid
admitting that they themselves are pre-supposing that
human morality and ethics evolved independently. That
is an assertion, which is not based in any "evidence"...
just like the faith of us believers.
Neither side is going to convince the other through force of
sheer argument. Because ultimately, (and some believers might
disagree with me on this) faith is a quality which is beyond rationality.
It is a grace given by God Himself.
Nonetheless, if someone starts a thread, both sides feel an
obligation to defend their.... beliefs.
... facinating isnt it???
hmmm.... so I guess.... in conclusion.....
what Im tryin to say is:
life is frekkin weird.
(sighs... shakes aching head... decides its time to go out.)
Interesting thread.... completely went under my radar.
The atheistic side is adamant that we believers are stuck
in pre-supposing the existence of the supernatural (TRUE!)
However, IMO the atheists in such debates try to avoid
admitting that they themselves are pre-supposing that
human morality and ethics evolved independently. That
is an assertion, which is not based in any "evidence"...
just like the faith of us believers.
Neither side is going to convince the other through force of
sheer argument. Because ultimately, (and some believers might
disagree with me on this) faith is a quality which is beyond rationality.
It is a grace given by God Himself.
Nonetheless, if someone starts a thread, both sides feel an
obligation to defend their.... beliefs.
... facinating isnt it???
hmmm.... so I guess.... in conclusion.....
what Im tryin to say is:
life is frekkin weird.
(sighs... shakes aching head... decides its time to go out.)
T
Tao_Equus
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T
Tao_Equus
Guest
Hi c0de,
趁熱打鐵
Not going to let you away with that untruth. It is not pre-supposition but masses of observational data on how social animals behave together. The evolution of these qualities is unambiguous.
God is a man made fabrication so what is the value of "faith beyond rationality"?
趁熱打鐵
Tao, did your synapses make you say that?
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
Tao, did your synapses make you say that?
Indeedy! And far more wondrous than the futile search for a supernatural explanation is the observation of evolution at work in building the parallel and multiple processing that conciousness requires. This knowledge alone should lead us to the moral and ethical conclusion that brainwashing children with religious fictions is actually immoral, even barbaric.
趁熱打鐵
c0de
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@ Tao
Whats up
Would you mind posting this data for us?
Let me suggest, Durkenheim... how about Marx... maybe Weber?
You say that the evolution of these qualities is "unambiguous"...
But anyone who has actually studied the conclusions of these
thinkers will notice that your statement is completely false.
All of these thinkers looked at the "observational data" and
came to completely contradictory conclusions about this
same question.
There is nothing "unambiguous" about the the source
of morality and ethics, if you take God out of the picture.
They don't even have an answer to this question, let alone an
unambiguous one.
Whats up
Would you mind posting this data for us?
Let me suggest, Durkenheim... how about Marx... maybe Weber?
You say that the evolution of these qualities is "unambiguous"...
But anyone who has actually studied the conclusions of these
thinkers will notice that your statement is completely false.
All of these thinkers looked at the "observational data" and
came to completely contradictory conclusions about this
same question.
There is nothing "unambiguous" about the the source
of morality and ethics, if you take God out of the picture.
They don't even have an answer to this question, let alone an
unambiguous one.
Reductionism isn't an explanation, though - as I've stated before on religion asking the "why" and science the "how", reductionism focuses on the "how" and presumes there is no "why" - which fails to address the question in the first place.
Interesting, though - I would have thought that the complexity and engineering of the human brain being ascribed to chance and random processes was an act of faith in itself.
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
Why do you talk philosophical and political thinking when it is self evident that they are nothing to do with studies of evolution in the social structures of social animals? I thought muslims understood evolution theory as valid? I will not do your legwork for you. Google the key words.... take a good long look at it.... there is no mystery. That religions like Islam try to hijack morality and ethics and call them their own, and to twist and pervert them to mindwipe the faithfull, and have done for 1000s of years ingrained this into populations, does not make it true. All the answers for human traits can be found in the way we developed as a social animal. An evolution that took millions of years as can be evidenced by looking at morality and ethics via altruism in very many species around the planet. Most of us are no more moral than a dog. Some considerably less so and curiously it tends to be them that climb to the top.
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
Reductionism isn't an explanation, though - as I've stated before on religion asking the "why" and science the "how", reductionism focuses on the "how" and presumes there is no "why" - which fails to address the question in the first place.
Interesting, though - I would have thought that the complexity and engineering of the human brain being ascribed to chance and random processes was an act of faith in itself.
I feel that it is untrue that science cannot ask "why". You need a 'why' before every 'how'. I feel that your statement, not at all original on these pages, fundamentally ignores what science really is. It is like requiring science to have some quasi-religious philosophical body when it is in fact merely a tool...a process. I think religious people project onto it this aura in order to limit or cushion the psyche from uncomfortable facts. Each faith treats atheism and science as religions in their own right in order that they may be dismissed from serious consideration as would any other rival religion. But this is fraudulent. Pure science and pure philosophy are above and beyond the limitations of a preconceived universal paradigm.
Brain science has advanced very significantly with recent not invasive study techniques. Evolutionary processes are as obvious in these studies as anywhere else we look in biology. Your second paragraph hints to me you have either not looked or are sceptical of evolutionary theory. That surprises me.
seattlegal
Mercuræn Buddhist
Science advances through honest skepticism.
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
Science advances through honest skepticism.
An honest sceptic still asks why sometimes.
T
Tao_Equus
Guest
My apology Thomas for not replying to this before but when I first reed it I was half cut and thought it deserved my sobriety. After all it is not every day I have a post dissected in such a way. Which in itself is quite interesting. Perhaps I should be flattered as it seems to me you are treating my posts as scripture and analysing them in that homage to ambiguous minutiae kind of religious way.
In the first 3 dissections you ignore a whole but I will respond in kind point by point.
Again my apology for the delay....busy time of year.
Seasons greetings
In the first 3 dissections you ignore a whole but I will respond in kind point by point.
Like I say dissecting this from the clarification that follows changes it. The context is provided yet ignored.
That, if you look, is not what I say. I set aside those who do not dwell on ethical, spiritual or philosophical issues.
Goodness exists in the human character with or without religion and religion is most definitely not necessary to be a good person. And here I argued that religion does not enhance human goodness but clouds it with double meanings based on fraudulent assumptions and too often taints the act of goodness by making it conditional on acceptance of the pertinent religion. Or that well of human goodness within the individual is something pure and even with the best of intentions it is sullied by the introduction of religion into it. Religion claims to give people the way to be good, this is a lie, good people will be good with or without it.
Absolutely! There are great case studies for dogs, cats, squirrels, tigers, dolphins, wolfs, gibbons, baboons, chimps, bonobos, vampire bats, racoons, ravens, ververt monkeys, walruses and even termites displaying unambiguously altruistic behaviour. Altruism is in fact normal in social animals.
The dynamics of any social society, human or not, tends toward producing both winners and losers. This is survival of the fitest in action. As we developed language and higher conciousness the 'fittest' used these tools to their advantage. Religions are a product of this. The smart cookies saw advantage in having the group believing in a single purpose and the best way to achieve that is to set up some allegorical paradigm. But mankind is no longer bands of isolated groups who occasionally have to defend their territory from neighbouring clans. We are now so jam packed tight and numerous that we cannot afford to have tribal paradigms, which are what religions are. We need to dispense with them and live in peace together, like a super colony of ants, and not like territorial chimps. You can really lump together religion, politics, big business and economics as having evolved to serve a tribal society. However we have grown beyond the tribes. We need to change if all the suffering and inequality that goes on every day is to be halted and every human given a genuinely fair deal. Religions and politics divide people, not unite them. Big business and economics are used by them to keep a status quo of suffering and inequality, a servitude to the tribal elders who live lavishly. Religions like the CC and political institutions like the US government use economics purposefully to keep the worlds poor poor. CC missionaries, world bank 'aid' packages, big business exploitation and political patronage all work hand in hand to keep people poor. We have the resources to feed, provide all medical needs, house, educate and raise the standard of living to western style affluence for every man woman and child on this planet...and reduce the average working week to only a few hours. In fact if the CC had acted to attempt much of this unilaterally it certainly had the wealth to do so. But it did not. Because it does not care about being good. It cares about being rich and powerful. $800 million in paedophile priest payouts in the US in one decade alone gives some idea of the wealth the CC possesses. If it had really wanted to be good...it could have been a long time ago.
The difference is still the important bit. Only with the atheist can you be confident a good action is carried out purely for common humanity and not possibly through religious guilt. I have personally seen a difference between atheists engaged on doing something altruistic and religious groups doing so. It is a general 'air' and there are undoubtedly exceptions, but the atheists certainly more than prove that religion does not possess any secrets when it comes to human goodness.
But you would say that Thomas.Yet careful not to deny it outright. Religion never gave us the monumental leaps of human ingenuity that led to our current levels of knowledge and technological ability. It was human minds that thought outside the box. And the CC has a long history of destroying anyone who dared voice heretical notions. Religious schools were the only schools for most of history and knowledge was suppressed and stifled by them, violently. School back then, (again things have not changed much), were to teach people very selectively to serve their church,... not truth and certainly not reductionist critical thinking. It was not until the rise of truly secular universities that human knowledge blossomed. Only when religion was taken out of the equation did the universe start to make some sense. And to this day the numbers of such students going into the sciences tick the atheist box. And you know that is true, and it is why you were careful not to deny it. The CC has in recent decades changed its tune. It is clever enough to know it needs to embrace the change to have any hope of credibility. I think this is because the CC leadership are actually atheists. They know evolution theory is fact and you cannot remain a rigid unchanging entity in the face of so much change. They understand the adapt or die bit.
Like I say I believe there are a great many atheists with high level church titles. Churches and monasteries were the libraries of their day. If you were smart and inclined you had no option. Even so he may have been a true believer.....but he knew as fact far less than an average 14 year old does today.
Ermmmm ....I think not. They are primitive and naive and full of layer upon layer of ambiguity. Not one of them can do more than say "be good and respect each other". There that's it said. No need for layer upon layer of contextual gibberish. Holy books were not manufactured to teach that message in the absolute purity of how I put it. Holy books were developed as an instrument of power and for the preacher to have a prop of authority over an uneducated 'flock'. "If its in the book you do as it says or their will be hell to pay" literaly. And this is why holy books have a passage for every eventuality when the supposed message is tiny, simple and requires no collection plate.
Of course. Believers are human too!
Not always. Sometimes their psyches are polluted with false notions such as original sin. It is one thing to love something for what it truly is, and quite another to love it for what you have been persuaded it is.
No of course not, but are they forbidden mention?
It is. It is rotten to the core as it is full of suffering based on obvious lies. Lies that we all collude in.
I will take that as an affirmation that the CC is such an institution?
Ohhh you need a religion for permission to enjoy life then do you!!
They are listened to because of their position, not because they are worth listening to, though they may be.
It is not inviting if you are not good and see it as a reason not to do good. But as a known truth it allows one to be altruistic with absolute purity.
Again my apology for the delay....busy time of year.
Seasons greetings
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