(January 15, 2017 at 7:14 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" There just is.
"Why does the world have a rational order?" It just does.
"Why do causes produce regular effects?" They just do.

Yeah, those are reasonable answers...not.

Well, let's try your alternative:

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" God did it.
"Why does the world have a rational order?" God did it.
"Why do causes produce regular effects?" God does it.

Are those answers more reasonable?

"It's magic" is never a reasonable answer, whether it's God or the Tooth Fairy.

(January 15, 2017 at 9:13 pm)Aroura Wrote:

(January 15, 2017 at 7:21 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: Thank you for the compliments. I'll have to disagree though. If you claim religion (or a priest or a holy book) can influence people to do bad things, there's no reason why it can't influence people to do good things. I think when someone attributes people's bad actions to their religion, but then does not attribute good actions to it, it's really unfair and clearly biased.

Please point out how it is bias?

It may seem like common sense, but you know common sense is just flat out wrong as often as not.

There may be specific I stances where religion influenced a person to do a good thing, bit the point is, people n general will do those good things even without religion. Unless you honestly believe all of us on this forum dont do good things?

And evil people will do bad things regardless of religion. Believe in god and thinking they will go to hell didn't stop any number of serial killers and such. Lack of religion doesn't make a bad person more evil, either.

But for a good , nonviolent, normal person to become a murders requires some extreme, and religion can provide that extreme, though it is not the only influence that can.

It's not bias to say religion does not cause morality, its fact. To be clear, its the other way round. Human Morality causes religion. All evidence points to this.

I understand you will continue to disagree, otherwise what would be the point of belief? Which is really my point, too.

Hey, btw, why does a gorilla adopt a kitten and care for it she it could easily rip it to bits or squash it? The kitten does not feed the gorilla, it is not really anything to the gorilla except extra work. Yes, it gets cuddles, but A snake would eat the kitten without a second thought, even if the kitten tried to give it the same cuddles.

Neither the gorilla nor the snake are good or evil, unless you are the kitten of course, they are just acting according to their natures. And so it is with humans. Our natures are social, like the gorilla. We don't need a priest to tell us to care for the kitten, we just naturally do it. Good ones anyway. The bad ones light it on fire. With or without the idea of god.

(I'm not saying people can't be moral without religion. I would never take that stance.)

There can be positive and negative influences in ppl's lives. To say religion can ever only influence ppl negatively and never positively, really doesn't make any sense.

(January 15, 2017 at 9:45 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(January 15, 2017 at 9:13 pm)Aroura Wrote: Please point out how it is bias?

It may seem like common sense, but you know common sense is just flat out wrong as often as not.

There may be specific I stances where religion influenced a person to do a good thing, bit the point is, people n general will do those good things even without religion. Unless you honestly believe all of us on this forum dont do good things?

And evil people will do bad things regardless of religion. Believe in god and thinking they will go to hell didn't stop any number of serial killers and such. Lack of religion doesn't make a bad person more evil, either.

But for a good , nonviolent, normal person to become a murders requires some extreme, and religion can provide that extreme, though it is not the only influence that can.

It's not bias to say religion does not cause morality, its fact. To be clear, its the other way round. Human Morality causes religion. All evidence points to this.

I understand you will continue to disagree, otherwise what would be the point of belief? Which is really my point, too.

Hey, btw, why does a gorilla adopt a kitten and care for it she it could easily rip it to bits or squash it? The kitten does not feed the gorilla, it is not really anything to the gorilla except extra work. Yes, it gets cuddles, but A snake would eat the kitten without a second thought, even if the kitten tried to give it the same cuddles.

Neither the gorilla nor the snake are good or evil, unless you are the kitten of course, they are just acting according to their natures. And so it is with humans. Our natures are social, like the gorilla. We don't need a priest to tell us to care for the kitten, we just naturally do it. Good ones anyway. The bad ones light it on fire. With or without the idea of god.

(I'm not saying people can't be moral without religion. I would never take that stance.)

There can be positive and negative influences in ppl's lives. To say religion can ever only influence ppl negatively and never positively, really doesn't make any sense.

Except that that is not what that quote argues. It argues that "it takes religion". It does not say that religion cannot influence people to do good, nor does it say that only religion can inspire.evil acts.

FWIW, I get from it that it is religious zeal which inspires the religious to do great evil when they do so.

If religion is required for a person to be "good", I'd say that person is probably a psychopath.

How "good" someone is has a lot to do with their upbringing, of course. If you take a person who was raised religiously by nice people, and the person turns out nice, I'd say it's very probable they'd still be just as nice raised by nice non-religious people. If they would have been drastically different, then they are only capable of being nice because they are compelled to do so. That's a psychopath.

However, a poor upbringing can make a potentially nice person into a nasty person; or at least less nice. This can be due to religion, or not. But religion is particularly scary because it can sometimes give people extremely powerful motivation to do or think things they otherwise wouldn't. Motivation that isn't concerned with the wellbeing of humans. Rewards and punishments that transcend our whole existence. Clearly, if these can be powerful enough to make a psychopath behave nicely, they can easily make an otherwise nice person be a monster. And these are ultimately entirely selfish goals.

Is that worth the trade? Of course, it depends on exactly what a particular person is being taught in their religion. But I'd say that teaching someone the value of doing (or not doing) certain things simply because of their effect on other people is far better than ordering them around based on an invisible dictator that cannot be challenged. Ways of raising children with psychopathic tendencies have been developed, and I'd wager they are far better than just ordering them to be good. A psychopath combined with a bad religious upbringing is just... too horrible to contemplate.

(January 15, 2017 at 9:37 pm)Stimbo Wrote:

(January 15, 2017 at 7:14 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" There just is.
"Why does the world have a rational order?" It just does.
"Why do causes produce regular effects?" They just do.

Yeah, those are reasonable answers...not.

Well, let's try your alternative:

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" God did it.
"Why does the world have a rational order?" God did it.
"Why do causes produce regular effects?" God does it.

Are those answers more reasonable?

Why is there god?  Oh, yes, There just is.

And that alleviate the problem, especially if the figment of imagination is also assigned the attributes of vanity, vindictiveness, cruelty, capriciousness, inability to admit mistakes, and yet still asserted to be "good".  Right.

What a moron.

Religion only "addresses" answers that may otherwise not yet have answers by making up answers. How is that helpful? Anyone can do that. It hardly takes religion to gap-fill with bullshit.

The only advantage in doing so is to make people feel better. Some people are clearly very uncomfortable with having unanswered questions. I can understand this, it's probably an evolutionary trait to encourage us to find answers. But it sadly seems to misfire when our ability to ask fundamental questions outstrips our scientific capabilities.

Some people seem to distrust science just because it doesn't answer everything; penalizing it for being honest enough to confess its limitations.

The thing is, we don't need to know the answers to everything in order to function perfectly well. And made-up answers are a deterrent to pursuing real answers, because they breed complacency and even resistance to progress.

(January 15, 2017 at 5:02 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:

(January 14, 2017 at 4:38 pm)Alasdair Ham Wrote:

Right. 

When a religious person does something bad, it's because of religion. When a religious person does something good, inspired by and influenced by his/her religions to do it, all of the sudden religion has nothing to do with it. 

Quoting "Steven Weinberg" (whoever he is) doesn't make this inconsistency/double standard any less bs.

How could you read that quote and miss the line about 'good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things?'

But religion - yours in particular - has a sordid history of inspiring shit like this.

Quote:The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (French: Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy) in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations and a wave of Catholic mob violence, directed against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) during the French Wars of Religion. Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de' Medici, the mother of King Charles IX, the massacre took place five days after the wedding of the king's sister Margaret to the Protestant Henry III of Navarre (the future Henry IV of France). This marriage was an occasion for which many of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic Paris.

The massacre began in the night of 23–24 August 1572 (the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle), two days after the attempted assassination of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the Huguenots. The king ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders, including Coligny, and the slaughter spread throughout Paris. Lasting several weeks, the massacre expanded outward to other urban centres and the countryside. Modern estimates for the number of dead across France vary widely, from 5,000 to 30,000.

Were they ALL evil?  Or were they just doing what their leaders told them to do?

(January 15, 2017 at 9:37 pm)Stimbo Wrote:

(January 15, 2017 at 7:14 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" There just is.
"Why does the world have a rational order?" It just does.
"Why do causes produce regular effects?" They just do.

Yeah, those are reasonable answers...not.

Well, let's try your alternative:

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" God did it.
"Why does the world have a rational order?" God did it.
"Why do causes produce regular effects?" God does it.

Are those answers more reasonable?

But who created god? How was god created? A figment of the imagination of course. Unless you met god in person. 


Lots of good points here.

If you are doing something because your religion says so, then that's not morality. That's being a mindless drone. You're not concerned with whether or not it's actually a good thing to do. It could just as easily be a bad thing, and you wouldn't know the difference.

If you are concerned with doing good things, this means you have to use this filter to decide which of your religious commandments are good commandments, and ignore the rest. This means you have a system of morality independent from your religion, and the religious commandments are redundant. You're only doing them if you'd do them anyway. Even if it turns out all the religious commandments are good, and you're assessing them, they would still be redundant if you'd follow them anyway.