Abusive Theology 101

[Mister Agenda]

"It's quite a stretch to get 'told they are evil' from 'drives off thieves'. "

It's not at all a stretch to get it from "condemned.

"It clearly benefits the group to be intolerant of stealing, to get angry about it, similar to the feeling we get when someone cuts in front of us or gets a bigger share of cake than we do. The thieving gorilla isn't condemned for being evil, they're just on their own because they're a liability to the group."

He said they're condemned, you say they aren't. Go figure.

I focus on the subject, you focus on the verb. Go figure.

"Evolution has given us the ability to form all kinds of ideologies, governments, philosophies, and religions; which often reflect our natural social instincts, but also reflect our experiences, history, imaginations, observations, and prejudices. They are our creations and there's no rational reason why we shouldn't judge them on their own merits and flaws."

What criteria determine whether a behavior is natural v. our creations? If we are natural, are not our creations natural? Do we know that gorillas' behaviors aren't influenced by experiences, imaginations, etc?

You realize you inserted that right before the paragraph that goes over why a behavior's naturalness is morally irrelevant, right?

"Even if religion were a direct product of evolution, that wouldn't make it a good thing, unless you consider reproductive success to be the only measure of what is good. There's a fallacy named after claiming something is a moral good because it's natural."

So you would take exception to the statement, "TA DA! There you have it. We have developed these sets of 'laws' naturally. We humans, like other animals, just get it, and do not need to be told that we are evil for being natural" - right?

There's more than a 'Ta da!' involved, yes. Evolution provides a reasonable explanation for our drives and impulses. Their origin doesn't make them inherently moral or immoral. Both our impulse to protect and our impulse to attack are natural and acting on those impulses can be courageous and moral or cowardly and vicious depending on the situation. Moral reasoning and philosophy...or, lacking that, clear societal (even if based on religion) rules and consequences are needed to have a moral system once can compare favorably to that of a band of chimps.

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Lol. ah, no.

Telling someone that the bible says they are a sinner and as such are hell bound, is like warning someone that the elevator they just stepped into will fall 40 floors when the doors close.

More like warning them that the elevator floor will someday open to drop them into a pit of alligators, when everyone and their grandmother has already told them that.

There is absolutely no judgement in that statement.

There wouldn't be any judgement in it if you had reason to believe they were unaware of the warning. I'm not sure what the motivation is to repeat a warning you know virtually everyone has heard, but it's hard to buy the 'no judgement' line. At some point it becomes 'You're staying in the elevator despite our frequent warnings that at some point you'll be eaten by alligators if you keep using the elevator!'

Only the fact that everyone on the 40th floor should wait or simply take the stairs. The fact that I can relay this warning places me on the 40th floor as well, rendering any judgements pointless. (Which is why Christ gave us the parable of the unmerciful servant.)

Everyone on the 40th floor should keep taking the elevator until someone provides convincing evidence it's an alligator-trap.

No, if I were to judge you I would have to have the authority to do so, and power to keep you in hell.

You don't need authority to be judgemental. You just need to feel you're entitled to be judgemental.

You have confused my warning with the conviction and authority/power of the one who originated this message in the first place.

It's not Jesus. We already got that memo. It's you speaking for Jesus we're talking about here.

Again if you were on the 40th with the elevator out would it be sensible for you to condemn the person who warned you not to get in the broken elevator? Would you say he was judging you for making a bad decision?

Yep, if he couldn't explain satisfactorily how he knows the elevator is broken (he had a dream or derived it from the quatrains of Nostradamus or whatever), he's got no business interrupting me. I understand the unbalanced are sometimes compelled to do such things, and I would probably feel sorry for the guy. If he were rational, he could say all kinds of things that would work in keeping me off that elevator: that he's off-duty and responding to a repair call, that the building manager just called him on his cell and told him there's something wrong with the elevators...but this poor sap is going with an explanation no reasonable person could be expected to believe. And that's with no alligators.