(April 16, 2017 at 7:46 am)Brian37 Wrote: I am not "railing" against any individual nor trying to make anyone "paranoid".
I am pointing out our species flawed evolution in that we gap fill and create clubs as a gap. That does have the real affect of creating social order and safety in numbers, but that is a false perception. Life was around long before humans and long before any written religion or stationary society.
My skepticism is based on our modern scientific knowledge and I don't give anyone a pass. I don't even see the word "atheist" as having any magic power to make an individual only do good or only do bad. The truth of all religions is "that was then, this is now". There are tons of empathetic individuals all over the planet, not because a religion makes them that way, but because our evolution produces the attribute of cooperation and empathy in that individual. I merely doubt ALL religions when someone claims it is coming out of antiquity in holy writings or holy people.
If you have not read, and I keep pointing out this author and two books. If you want to understand my position "God The Failed Hypothesis" and "The New Atheism" both by Victor Stenger , in both books he debunks the idea of the need for a god/God/supernatural. But in the second book, "The New Atheism" in one of his later chapters he compares multiple religions WORLDWIDE, points out how each point to their "goodness" and claims to morality, and makes the point, and I agree, if everyone can point to those things, then it should be obvious that our behaviors are in us, not our labels.
Even Jefferson, without knowing how right he was in a modern scientific sense, saw goodness and morality in others who didn't share the same beliefs, "whence arises the morality of the atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists".
I cant put it any more simply than, "That was then, this is now". We do know where morality comes from, it comes from evolution. It comes from our socializing and by that socializing we form groups, but that does not mean everything we do makes that group right about everything, and that group can be centered around very false perceptions.
Humans for the most part ON AVERAGE, think locally and defend that which they are raised in. It does foster protection in a local sense, but the downside is at the same time, it produces divisions against other groups.
I don't give anyone a pass on this, logically speaking only. I want more humans to consider that what makes us different isn't as important to me as what we have in common. It still remains we are the same species with the same ability to be compassionate or cruel. There is not one nation that does not have prisons or hospitals.
Morality come from evolution but from individual evolution.
Life teach us that nothing come for free unless you as a child get a candy from a pedophile.
The bread doesn't fall from the sky Brian.
(color mine)
