Does religion corrupt morality?

[Catholic_Lady]

Pyrrho, do you think I'm a bad person?

[CapnAwesome]

Group-think corrupts.

[Catholic_Lady]

I think I'll have to disagree with you there.  Nobody is 100% reasonable about everything all the time

That is completely irrelevant.  Religion makes people MORE FUCKING IRRATIONAL.  People are fucking irrational enough without any extra bullshit prompting.  But when they fucking get that bullshit prompting from religion, then they are fucking much worse.

, and you can have a fantastically moral, pleasant, intelligent, and progressive person who simply believes in a god.

They are always irrational and always worse than they could be without religious nonsense.  For the lengthy explanation, see the essay by William Kingdon Clifford at:

http://ajburger.homestead.com/files/book.htm

 I don't find anything inherently 'bad' about someone holding a theistic belief at all, it all depends on the attendant beliefs/actions/statements.  I mean shit, to bring up kind of the negative-Godwin example, was MLK Jr. an 'unreasonable' person, because he was religious?  I'm not a fan of any sort of absolutist terms, and saying that 'you can't be a reasonable person if you're religious' seems a bit too far reaching for me.

So you believe that belief in god is reasonable?  Please explain that to everyone.  Please start a new thread on that so everyone will see it.

If you don't do that, everyone seeing this thread will know you are totally full of shit and you fucking know that religious belief is unreasonable and are just writing nonsense now.  Put up, or shut the fuck up.

Sheesh, someone's angry tonight. Chill out, dude. Not everyone is always going to agree with you, and that's ok.

[Catholic_Lady]

On another related note, people should also be nice. ;-)

[Whateverist]

Goddamned Christian sympathizer!

Fuck that.  I became a better person when I became an atheist.  I do not know of even one person who got worse getting rid of that foul, disgusting, superstition.  Religion is evil.  Not pure evil (as it is too incompetent to be pure), but evil nonetheless.

I'd be interested to know what you mean when you say that you became a better person when you became an atheist.  That statement implies that there is something inherently 'better' about being an atheist.  If two people hold the precisely same moral views, but just disagree on whether a god exists, does that make the atheist 'better' than the believer?

This brings up the question of how your worldview and view of self affects your moral standing.  If a person does an act generally considered to be 'good' because they accept an objective imperative or because in their mind it is linked to an afterlife jackpot or because it jives with their subjective view of what the relationship requires or just because of their sentiment for the person .. is the act morally equivalent in all cases?

[Whateverist]

On another related note, people should also be nice. ;-)

I've always thought it nice to be nice, though some times the 'mouth feel' can be cloyingly sweet.

[Whateverist]

All religion is evil because it all goes against being reasonable.  If one is reasonable, one is not religious.  Not being reasonable means one will do something bad, though not necessarily in a predictable way.  Some religions are worse than others, but they all have a corrupting influence in that they entail being unreasonable.

Come now, be reasonable.

[Whateverist]

So you believe that belief in god is reasonable?  Please explain that to everyone.  Please start a new thread on that so everyone will see it.

If you don't do that, everyone seeing this thread will know you are totally full of shit and you fucking know that religious belief is unreasonable and are just writing nonsense now.  Put up, or shut the fuck up.

Wow, was not expecting something that vitriolic or mean.  No, I never stated that I think a belief in god is reasonable.  And I see enough strawmanning from theists, I'd rather not see it from someone who happens to hold the same position on the god claim as I do.

Pyrrho says that he held anti-gay positions, presumably as an adult.  That is probably just the tip of the iceberg.  I suspect when your religious experience extends that late in life and leads you to do things -like try to convert others- that there is greater conflict in moving on.  I compare it to gang membership.  That is why some of them require you to kill someone to get in.  It ensures you'll never forgive yourself enough to try to have a better life.  

To the degree that Pyrrho is processing his life I say carry on and good luck.  But I do question the over emphasis on rationality.  It might be feel like it is necessary for your internal balance now, but I'd advise against attempting to reverse 'religious-jerk' stances.  The thing is to just stop doing harm first.  Express yourself.  Beat a pillow but striking out against others isn't healthy.

[Whateverist]

I should probably charge for my mind fucks, but this one is on the house.

[FatAndFaithless]

I'd be interested to know what you mean when you say that you became a better person when you became an atheist.  That statement implies that there is something inherently 'better' about being an atheist.  If two people hold the precisely same moral views, but just disagree on whether a god exists, does that make the atheist 'better' than the believer?

This brings up the question of how your worldview and view of self affects your moral standing.  If a person does an act generally considered to be 'good' because they accept an objective imperative or because in their mind it is linked to an afterlife jackpot or because it jives with their subjective view of what the relationship requires or just because of their sentiment for the person .. is the act morally equivalent in all cases?

Well that's kinda my point.  Someone can come to the right (highly subjective meaning of the word 'right') conclusion for the wrong reasons.  But just because their reasoning is shitty on a single topic doesn't mean that they are 'unreasonable' as a descriptor of their character or person.  Additionally, someone can believe in a god and /still/ use humanism and empathy as a reasoning for certain positions.  

If we were to take a hypothetical ceteris paribus case of , person A has positions XYZ, and person B has pisitions XYZ, they are totally identical, but person A believes X because god told them to, and person B believes X because of a reasoned philosophy, then of course I'd say person B 'preferable', but I would never say person A is 'immoral'.


(hopefully everyone can follow my stumbling analogy)