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RE: Christian "Morality"
September 24, 2013 at 4:21 am
(This post was last modified: September 24, 2013 at 4:24 am by gilbertc06.)
I simply do not want to cause people unnecessary harm because I would not like the same done to me.
Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary-wise; what it is it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. -Alice
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RE: Christian "Morality"
September 24, 2013 at 1:58 pm
Sorry for the late reply. I agree that perhaps I did generalize a bit and did not clarify what I meant. What I mean to say is that when I do good, it is because of the golden rule. It just seems to me that a lot of christians do good out of fear of going to hell. I just didn't know how to stipulate it.
Thank you Germans and Boru for pointing out the generalization of my statement. Also, thank you all for your comments.
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RE: Christian "Morality"
September 24, 2013 at 2:05 pm
Don't most people observe moral or 'good' behavior out of fear? We are social creatures, and on some level want to belong to the group, so we adapt our behavior as much as needed in order to belong. We fear the rejection of the group, both the immediate group (family, friends, co-workers, etc) and the larger group (community, society, etc). Some people add an additional layer --or group-- via religious morals, but I don't think they abandon the other groups.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould