Being nice isn't about being religious. Great. Understood.
But you were still taught a standard way of behavior since you were young which was passed down from those before you...Don't kill, don't steal, be kind.
Putting it simply...your kindness isn't a reflection of religion...but humanity and society's standards of behavior are.
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If you are able to understand the concept of pain, you don't need to be taught why inflicting pain on others is a Bad Thing.
What are you on about? Those before you were religious and you learned how to be a good person.
A capybara knows without being taught that inflicting pain on others is a Bad Thing.
@Jennie Dardis
"What are you on about? Those before you were religious and you learned how to be a good person."
Are you attempting to assert that it was religion that instilled how we learned to be good people? Please prove your assertion.
Geez, Neel runs away and immediately another religious type shows up and start the moral argument. I do not believe in coincidences.
Not another fucking morality thread!
Society and cultures dictate morality PERIOD!
Interesting. So why is that the most enlightened and decent countries also seem to be the most secular, while the most authoritarian and corrupt ones have strong religious cultures. Sweden and New Zealand are examples of the former, Brazil and Venezuela the latter.
Religion has held back the moral evolution of humanity for millennia. Wherever society's standards and morals are strongly influenced by religion, especially the Catholic religion, you'll find authoritarian regimes, corruption, poverty, chaos, war, and misery.
@Algebe
"Religion has held back the moral evolution of humanity for millennia. Wherever society's standards and morals are strongly influenced by religion, especially the Catholic religion, you'll find authoritarian regimes, corruption, poverty, chaos, war, and misery."
*Applauds, claps, whistles. throws toilet rolls* Security rush in to quell the outbreak of support! .....
The population statistics and Mahatma Gandhi would negate your argument. The major religions resulted in a major jump in population. Buddhism, Christianity, Islam. Real or fake, the discovery of soap from the animal sacrifices alone was worth it.
They were rather like the other major achievements (I forget the fancy archaeological term) fire, agriculture, domestication of animals, especially the dog.
@Mrs. Paul Owczarek: The major religions resulted in a major jump in population.
Where's your evidence for that? The biggest rise in human population came with the industrial revolution and the application of the modern scientific method to medicine and hygiene through the work of people like Semmelweis.
Soap could just as easily have been discovered through fat dripping into ashes from an animal roasted on a spit.
Are you saying that religions were also responsible for agriculture and the domestication of animals? Dogs go back maybe 30,000 years to the hunter-gatherer era. I think it's more likely that religions were by-products of the rise of settlements and cities as a result of agriculture and livestock domestication.
As for Gandhi, isn't it ironical that a figure like Gandhi was needed to promote tolerance among India's religions, and that he was murdered by a extremist from one of those religions?
The jump in population for the major religion was a religious studies class.
No. I am not saying religion is responsible for agricultural, but you need people to stop killing and stealing in order for the food production to mean anything. Religion provided a lot of the glue that kept the societies functioning in large groups.
The Church kept the knowledge going through the dark ages that allowed the Renaissance to start
Jewish law promoted a lot of hygiene.
I agree about Gandhi. The religions studies stories highlighted that to most people religion = I belong to the magic group that means I get to kill you. If you want a religious question answered, you mostly have to ask an atheist. They seem to be the only ones researching religion and what to debate it. Why I like this forum.
@Mrs. Paul Owczarek: The jump in population for the major religion was a religious studies class.
I'm not sure I understand what that means.
Religion provided a lot of the glue that kept the societies functioning in large groups.
True. But they were also highly divisive. Religions emphasize the division between us and others, leading to conflict. They also tend to split into violently opposing groups. There's also paleontological evidence that hunter-gathers were bigger and fitter than early agricultural societies, possibly because they had a more varied diet and genetic diversity. Poor physical development and diet would lead to reduced intellectual capacity, possibly making people more amenable to religious indoctrination.
The Church kept the knowledge going through the dark ages that allowed the Renaissance to start
Much of that knowledge was preserved by the Muslims and rediscovered in places like Cordoba. A lot of the new knowledge in fields like mathematics (such as the zero) came from India via the Muslims.
The hunter gatherers were incredibly violent from the records on the bones.
The hunter gatherers were incredibly violent from the records on the bones.
I imagine you'd find even worse records of violence on the bones of people from any battle in the Crusades, the 30-Year War, and on people who'd undergone religious persuasion by the various Inquisitions. Violence is a human constant, and far from reducing it, religion magnifies and propagates it in the name of their "god of love."
@Mrs. Owczarek,
Many of the native North American tribes were hunter-gatherers, but I see no reason to view them as incredibly violent. Hunting big game, especially the larger creatures of pre-history, has always been a hazardous occupation!
@Algebe,
I totally agree with you. In a tiny nutshell, correlation is not proof of cause and effect. Most likely the population had to reach a critical density before the organization and support was possible for a major religion.
@Greensnake: population had to reach a critical density before the organization and support was possible for a major religion.
And before they could support a parasitic class of priests with very expensive lifestyles.
@Algebe: And before they could support a parasitic class of priests with very expensive lifestyles.
Lifestyles that tended to get more complex and expensive with every opportunity to make new rules!
Religions and accompanying priest, for both good and bad, performed a role of explaining the unknown. Their is/was such a powerful need for those answers, the people that supplied them realized they can make up the answers as they go along and garner incredible power, even putting up answers that helped them gain and keep power.
Now all that is under threat as people can easily find the answers themselves. Even the internet is a powerful information tool for those that seek it. Even my own views on possible gods changed a lot based on what I have found on the net, including this site.
I went from agnostic, "god probably doesn't exist," to utterly convinced there is no god with the help of these forums and other atheist/theist sites. I went looking for answers, and through all the collective knowledge available instantly at my fingertips, and I found my answer.
We are truly down to god of the gaps, the few areas where humans have yet to find satisfactory answers through science. And religion has shrunk for it. And has knowledge continually becomes more readily available religion will also continue to shrink.
@Algebe Re: "Religion has held back the moral evolution of humanity for millennia."
SSSsssss-LAM! Boo-yow!!! That one is out of the park, ladies and gentlemen! Listen to the crowd roar! *clap-clap-clap...*
Algebe, feel free to stroll around the bases at a leisurely pace and wave to everybody in the stands.
Of the examples you’ve mentioned. There are corrupt governments on any part of the spectrum. Catholic, protestant, atheist, muslim, shinto. And there are “enlightened and decent” countries also from all parts of the spectrum. You’ve simply named the corrupt governments of Christian countries and claimed Sweden, which you claim to be secular is actually predominantly Christian.
If we’re going by technicalities, Brazil and Venezuela and even North Korea, would be considered secular states.
I won't doubt that religion has played some sort of influence on culture moral values. Better thank the people that lived in south Turkey and perhaps India as the first people to begin practicing religions. 9 to 11 thousand years ago. Then the other ancient religions like egyptians, and and ancient greece that built on them, and so on. Christianity is a relative newcomer that was heavily built on those ancient religions. Just like nations rise and fall so do religions.
" Putting it simply...your kindness isn't a reflection of religion...but humanity and society's standards of behavior are.
Sorry to disagree. Animals are empathetic. Buffalo defend their own when attacked by predators (usually lions), apes, dolphins, wolves, even ants! care for old and sick members of the group.. and as far as I know no animal has religion. Kindness and empathy predates religion by millions of years.. It has a simple evolutionary base because solidarity with the group increases everybody chances for survival and reproduction.
There goes your OP...
@Aparez
Another SSssss-LAM!
Feel free to stroll around the bases with Algebe.
That’s actually not a good comparison. One can say that all animals have this empathy built into them with regards to their own species.
Humans, however, are a special case. True, we do have a built in sense of empathy but we also have a built in sense to dominate. Which I believe is how slavery naturally came to exist in almost every part of the world.
"Humans, however, are a special case."
Special pleading.
Morality is linked to well being, and that extends to the well being of the wolf pack, or any other social animal. It has been proven that animals have the traits that support well being, such a fair play. Many animals have a moral compass.
It has been documented where a young orphan was taken in and raised by another female.
So the oldest major religion is Hinduism, at a push 15th Century BC...
Homo Erectus fosils date back as far as 1.9m years ago.
If they all thought and every species on our evolutionary branch for that matter, that killing was fine we wouldn't have evolved.
Jennie, you wrote, “Putting it simply...your kindness isn't a reflection of religion...but humanity and society's standards of behavior are.”
Which religion?
"Putting it simply...your kindness isn't a reflection of religion...but humanity and society's standards of behavior are."
Religion is one factor in shaping societies, and vice versa of course, it's no coincidence that religions generally reflect the cultures and epochs they originated in. Though it's laughable to include the word kindness in your sentence, given how barbarically religions have behaved. I think the Hitch summed this one up quite nicely, so I'll let him answer.
“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.”
― Christopher Hitchens, god is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
It is apparent that our dear Jennie is just another drive-by poster. So sad. Ya know what... I think I'll go by a shrimping boat and name it after her. Life is like a box of chocolates, right?
Aww crap...I just picked a chocolate coated prawn.
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