Women's Rights and Religion

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Or, it's an instinctual reaction engrained into your mind from billions of years of evolution.

If you were a polar bear, and that baby was a mates rival, instinct would tell you to tear it apart limb from limb to increase the resources necessary for your own off spring to survive.

This was a trait of humanity until not too long ago. In fact, it is a trait that some still adhere to now around the world.

When I hold by newborn, should I remind myself that it is really just a bag of guts, and a needy inconvenience that needs its disgusting diaper changed way too often? We must be very careful here. When we drop the sanctity of life and trade it in for material evolution and nothing else, we walk down a very treacherous slope that other societies have gone down.

Why?

Define what exactly is meant by 'sanctity of life'? What life, in particular? Human life? If so, that's only a very localised and modern perspective on humanity per se. For millions of years otherism has been the dominant force behind choosing who lives and who dies. I disagree that it is 'self-evident' - It hasn't been self-evident for the vast majority of people. And it wasn't engendered by any particular religion either. I would say it was more likely stemming from things such as Westphalia & the renaissance where sovereignty over the self became more of a status quo, on both a personal and national/international level.

I don't know what 'material evolution' is. Please define it.

I also disagree with your user title; I've never had any religious views since I was born. I have 'views on religion', which is a decidedly different thing altogether, wouldn't you say?

As it is 4:00 am here and there is no limit to the amount of interaction you guys are thoughtfully willing to indulge me on, I gotta make this shorter than i'd like. For now, just about the everyone has a religious viewpoint thing:

As above, I have views on 'religion', not a religious view.

Faith does not equal religion, either. They are two completely different things. One can quite easily study religion (as I do), but it is very difficult to study or even quantify someone's faith as it's entirely internal and subjective to the believer.

Everyone has a religious view. If i may take a stab at this... You hold a belief that things were a certain way 100,000 years ago in early human existence. You take that on faith.

I disagree.

I follow the evidence. "The evidence suggests that..." homo sapien sapien are but one branch of the Homo line that includes a myriad of other species:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of..._evolution

I do not have faith in it. If the evidence holds up to scrutiny (which thus far it does) I, as a pragmatist, must believe that it is correct. Until proven otherwise. You say this below, so fair enough. However I think the use of the word 'faith' is misguided here.

It is not irrational, it is based on reasoning backwards and critical thinking, and piecing together bits of evidence. That is to be commended, as compared to some who's views are inherited from their parents automatically. But nonetheless, we all hold a construct we've pieced together, a model in our minds about the way the world is. A lot of that model we cannot directly interact with, such as yours. We cannot watch footage of ape-man creatures, so we think backwards. about what things must have been like. It is at the mercy of speculation and approximation.

And evidence based inquiry. They are not facts made up for facts sake. The evidence fits the theory, and the theory explains the facts.

We all by default, with our models attempt to answer the 4 components of our human narrative : Origin, Meaning, Morality, and Destiny.
You most likely hold a belief that life evolved from a primordial pool of elements hundreds of millions of years ago. You believe that this in-organic pool of compounds was struck by lightning or some form of energy and morphed into increasingly complex compounds over ages of time to eventually, against all odds, become organic.

I believe that the primordial soup was our beginnings, and abiogensis that ultimately led to the formation of complex life eventuall, over billions and billions of years, led to us, yes.

I have no firm answer to when the point occurred. It's speculation until proven.

You believe at some point a cell, with unimaginable complex protein chains formed and the rest was history.

I don't believe; I know. That's exactly what happened as explained by the evidence.

You most likely believe meaning is only what society can provide, as there is no other meaning or ultimate narrative about us and our place in the universe other than we were here for a short time before the Red-giant sun cooked earth.

Subjectivity, yes.

You believe morality is a convention of society and thus able to be reshaped to a more useful style to and to fit a re-engineered civilization free of archaic rules.

Subjectivity, yes. This can be evidenced as well, negating the idea of a belief.

You likely believe your destiny is to lay down in your grave one day, never to have a conscious thought again, and never knowing you were ever here, as well as everyone else that has ever existed. It ultimately doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, not that there is a grand scheme of things.

Life is what you make of it. But there is no evidence to suggest that anything happens to 'us' after we die.

Am I close? Is this not the beliefs of the Atheistic doctrines of faith?

Quote for me, word for word, the "Atheist doctrines of faith", including when they were published, who published them, and where I can get a copy. I've never read them.

You're presumeably going to reply with what you;ve posted above, which is nothing more than an approximation of what atheists may or may not believe?

Then you'd be wrong. Those things, whilst most likely what atheists believe currently given the lack of evidence for the claims either way, are mutually exclusive to atheism.

Atheism = lack of belief in a god or gods. It's not a faith, and not a religion.

Isn't it a perquisite to believe these as to be considered one of the educated and enlightened fairy-tale-free believers of atheism?

No.

I was born an atheist. As were you. There are no beliefs inherent to atheism, only the lack of them.

Do not the Dawkins and Hitches, and Harris' of the world spread the good news that there really is nothing, and humanity will be snuffed out by cataclysm or self-destruction sooner rather than later, with no hope of ever existing again?

You insult my intelligence. I was an atheist before I'd even heard of Dawkins et al. There have been atheists from the very point that someone invent a god for someone to believe in. You yourself are still atheist towards all those gods that you presumably don't believe in, no?

We all have religious views, in some of our's God is God, in some of our's, we are god.

Now you're inventing a position I don't hold. I don't view myself as a god. You'll be hardpressed to find anyone on here, atheist or indeed theist, who views themselves as a god.

Thanks for the reply and I'll try to interact with the other points soon.

No problem.