Jp wrote:

First use of the word 'oppressed' in the comments:
"Just because you go into a place where you're obviously hostile to their beliefs and they don't like it doesn't mean that you're oppressed.

*In the forbidden city in China*
"Hi I'm a American white male and I'm fervently capitalist and I think communism is completely stupid and anyone who practices or believes in it is an idiot."
Yeah I might have some bodily harm done to me.

BUT I'M NOT OPPRESSED.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007 09:31AM "

I posted something about it well after that.

You lose.

No, no no. Disturbed Puppy posted the link with the words 'You're not oppressed', Jtgibson responded and as anyone could see my post was a response to his.

But you were the one to first go on bitching about it. The conversation was done at the point where you jumped in.

Um, those laws are unconstitutional

And?

Unconstitutional laws aren't really laws, because they won't hold up in court. Duh.

no one is going to act on them.

More because no (honest) atheist is ever going to be able to make a credible attempt at running for office in those states then anything else. I betcha that if one did, that law would come up, and the ACLU or similar group would have to step in and do the whole legal thing.

Blah blah blah, more bitching about being oppressed.

How about the approximately $65 billion the US government hands out via 'faith-based initiatives' to various religious groups? Without ensuring that the good social work (most) of these religious groups do is well-separated from their religious activities? Your government actively funds religion, and yet, they aren't discriminating against atheism? Churches and various other religious institutions may act tax-free, despite the fact that many of them really are just businesses in disguise.

First of all, I agree we shouldn't fund religion based initiatives. These groups do not force you to convert, in much the same way that secular initiatives don't force you to become atheist, secular initiatives get more money.

Some bible bashing crap ect. ect.

But let's consider the 'normal' ten commandments, the set everyone knows about. Well, the protestant version - Jews and Catholics have a different one.

Sure, I'll let you pick the ground to fight your battle.

Well, fully the first four are religious commandments about which god you should worship and how you should worship him - which are diametrically opposed to the US constitution, and the morality of pretty much every nation on Earth.

Then we have the few obvious ones - Honour your father and mother. Certainly not enshrined in law, and rather against my morality, actually - I'll honour good parents, but that's more because they're good then because they're parents.

Then you're very spoiled and ungrateful. Being a parent is extremely difficult and trying. It is more than you should hope to do when you denounce it as trivial.

But I suppose you and the poor woman that marries you will find out. ;)

Don't murder - well, yeah, that one's obvious. [bible bashing crap that was unrelated and just clogged up the text]

Don't commit adultery - well, yeah, it's not nice, but once again, pretty much everybody has this one. Ancient Greeks didn't much like adultery, either.

Actually Zeus was one hell of a playa.

Don't steal - See ancient Greeks.

Don't lie - Too general. I can see several cases where lying is morally good - Schindler in Nazi Germany, for example.

Ok, let's not search for deeper meanings in a text that guides billions of people. Because you know not being objective helps your internet argument.

Don't covet stuff - Completely and utterly irrelevant to my morality. What's wrong with wanting stuff? It's not even something you can help.

Look above.

I also note that the ten commandments don't have laws against rape, or child abuse, or torture, or any of the other things I consider morally wrong.

Sorry if in ten sentences they don't cover every single crime that was ever conceived.

And I can find religions all around the world that have radically different philosophies, is it in our biological moral standards to sew a woman's vagina shut like they do in Africa?

Is that religious? No it's not.

Correction Mr. Know it all, it is. It's often even directed by the village's tribal shaman or religious leader.

Is it a random, quirky think like the Christian obligation not to want stuff?

I'm not going to go around trying to explain the deeper meanings of the bible to some one who is intentionally a biblical literalist because they want to further their internet argument.

No, I'm calling bullshit on your claim. There is no such thing as biological moral standards. Biology is survival of the fittest, every man for himself.

It is advantageous to behave in social groups. Some morality encourages that behaviour - like not stealing and not murdering. It has been selected for on this basis. Once again, read some Dawkins. He discusses this in more detail.

No no no, again look at the example in The Lord of the Flies. When you take a group of relatively uneducated children and stick them on an island they don't bond together and form a civilization where they all help each other. They commit two murders, don't build shelter and generally go insane every man for themselves. They don't even realize they're doing anything wrong.

Morality is definitely not genetic in any way.

Sure you might be able to account for pro-group tendencies by this. But that's completely irrelevant because they're doing it for the benefit of the individual, that's not moral. If a human being has a problem with another human being that jeopardizes his position he will kill/maim/remove/destroy/weaken that human being to get what he wants/needs.

In short you're mistaking selecting for morals for selecting for individual advantage. You might be correct if you lived in a world where everything was nice and pretty. But, human beings have to be mean to survive in a mean world.

Morality is purely a product of the human mind and that is why it is connected to theism. The reason we see similarities between worldly religions is not some weird out there theory of genetics, it's because it's a pretty easy conclusion to come to. Occam's razor.

@BootyBoy
- Masons have to believe in some type of god to join the group. They teach that all the gods(pagan, yahweh, allah) are in the same spirit.

Awesome vid.

Worldweaver wrote:

But you were the one to first go on bitching about it. The conversation was done at the point where you jumped in.

But I wasn't the person who brought up oppression, was I?

Um, those laws are unconstitutional

And?

Unconstitutional laws aren't really laws, because they won't hold up in court. Duh.

The very fact that they still exist is worrying. Could you imagine a law banning black people from being voted into office being on the books in some state?

no one is going to act on them.

More because no (honest) atheist is ever going to be able to make a credible attempt at running for office in those states then anything else. I betcha that if one did, that law would come up, and the ACLU or similar group would have to step in and do the whole legal thing.

Blah blah blah, more bitching about being oppressed.

Or, in other words, "I can't come up with anything against it. Because it's true"

How about the approximately $65 billion the US government hands out via 'faith-based initiatives' to various religious groups? Without ensuring that the good social work (most) of these religious groups do is well-separated from their religious activities? Your government actively funds religion, and yet, they aren't discriminating against atheism? Churches and various other religious institutions may act tax-free, despite the fact that many of them really are just businesses in disguise.

First of all, I agree we shouldn't fund religion based initiatives. These groups do not force you to convert, in much the same way that secular initiatives don't force you to become atheist, secular initiatives get more money.

I don't care if they force you to convert. If government money is
being used to promote religion, then not only has the principle of separation of church and state been broken (Yet another thing that the Bible actively disapproves of), but atheists have been discriminated against.

Secular initiatives aren't 'atheist' initiatives. They're initiatives that don't give a damn either way. And regardless of whether or not they're funded 'more', money being channelled to a religious organisation for religious purposes is discrimination. I would have the same problem with, say, American Atheists receiving government funding. Except that that wouldn't happen. Because, y'know, America is effectively a Christian nation, regardless of what the Treaty of Tripoli might say.

I note that you avoid mentioning the discrimination against atheists at the Tampa city council meeting.

Some bible bashing crap ect. ect.

Oh dear, pointing out the wide variety of interesting, random, insane laws in the bible that have no connection to morality whatsoever is 'bible bashing crap'? It's quite relevant to pointing out that the Bible is about as much a bastion of morality as Mein Kampf mixed with bits of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is to be expected, seeing as the Bible was written by about seventy different people at a variety of times.

I note that you have no answer to me pointing out that four of the commandments are not only purely religious, but are also inconsistent with our modern understanding of morality.

Then we have the few obvious ones - Honour your father and mother. Certainly not enshrined in law, and rather against my morality, actually - I'll honour good parents, but that's more because they're good then because they're parents.

Then you're very spoiled and ungrateful. Being a parent is extremely difficult and trying. It is more than you should hope to do when you denounce it as trivial.

Oh, of course. You automatically must honour someone because they could figure out which bits go where.

No. I will honour good parents - because they're good. I will not honour bad parents - because they're bad. Simply being a parent is not grounds for any sort of commendation.

Example - a woman on the bus yesterday told her five-year-old son that if he didn't move from the seat he was in to some other one she apparently wanted him to sit in - for no apparent reason - she would 'bash him'. That's a direct quote. I refuse to honour someone like that just because they haven't managed to kill the poor child yet.

But I suppose you and the poor woman that marries you will find out. ;)

Well, it's a step up from "Ha, ha, you're never going to have sex!".

Don't murder - well, yeah, that one's obvious. [bible bashing crap that was unrelated and just clogged up the text]

Once again, the fact that a claimed source of moral vision is full of contradictory, immoral crap is fairly good evidence that it is not a source of moral vision. You've also completely ignored the fact that every culture in the history of history has looked down upon murder in non-special-situations. Of course, most of them have had their exceptions - war, if they're Jewish, if they're a criminal, etc.. But in general, their is a moral idea that killing someone from your community just because you can is bad.

Don't commit adultery - well, yeah, it's not nice, but once again, pretty much everybody has this one. Ancient Greeks didn't much like adultery, either.

Actually Zeus was one hell of a playa.

And, of course, therefore the common people were perfectly fine with the idea of adultery. Once again, you completely ignore the fact that every culture ever has considered flagrant transgression of trust to be morally wrong.

Don't steal - See ancient Greeks.

Also ignored. Could it be that you just don't have a case against it?

Don't lie - Too general. I can see several cases where lying is morally good - Schindler in Nazi Germany, for example.

Ok, let's not search for deeper meanings in a text that guides billions of people. Because you know not being objective helps your internet argument.

Oh, of course, let's interpret what the bible says, and then use that as our moral guidepost.

Major problem - to interpret it requires a moral sense already. There is absolutely no way that I could possibly dig "except for exceptions" out of any reasonable translation of that commandment. In other places in the bible, people lie for good reasons - but then again, in other places in the bible, people genocide other tribes, and these people are supposedly God's favoured people. How do I decide which of these acts is endorsed by the bible and which isn't? How do I interpret?

Well, it's simple. I bring my morality to the table. Genocide is morally wrong, so clearly the bits where the Israelites genocide various tribes for the crime of worshipping a different god to them and living somewhere they wanted to live must have been the result of the ignorance of the writers of the Bible, whereas the bits where Jesus tells you to do unto others as you would have done unto you are clearly the results of divine inspiration.

Hopefully you can see the problem here - interpreting the Bible for moral guidance requires a pre-existing morality. You are asserting that there is no such thing as biological morality. (And dare I note that if an omnibenevolent being wanted to give humanity a definitive guide to morality, he/she/it would not leave it up to interpretation.)

I also note that the ten commandments don't have laws against rape, or child abuse, or torture, or any of the other things I consider morally wrong.

Sorry if in ten sentences they don't cover every single crime that was ever conceived.

No, they don't cover every single crime that was ever conceived. But in something that is supposed to be a statement of the prime rules of the religion - something that is often trotted out as the basis of modern-day law - it should damn well cover the important ones. I mean, seriously, four commandments about not doing stuff on Sunday, or not worshipping anyone but God - he's a bit jealous, see - and there's not even the slightest mention of rape?

And I can find religions all around the world that have radically different philosophies, is it in our biological moral standards to sew a woman's vagina shut like they do in Africa?

Is that religious? No it's not.

Correction Mr. Know it all, it is. It's often even directed by the village's tribal shaman or religious leader.

I'll just take this as given, if you insist. Not worth contesting.

Is it a random, quirky think like the Christian obligation not to want stuff?

I'm not going to go around trying to explain the deeper meanings of the bible to some one who is intentionally a biblical literalist because they want to further their internet argument.

I have already commented on how the necessity of interpretation defeats the point of using the Bible as a moral guidebook. Additionally, you've completely missed the point I was making - all religions have random, quirky elements that just hitched a ride on the memeplex. Just because there are biological tendencies to some morality does not mean that humans are saints at heart that would never do anything wrong - genital mutilation isn't really one of those things that would get selected against, morally. Indeed, it likely spread via cultural evolution, as part of the whole mass of 'tribal identity' memes. But that's a whole 'nother story.

No, I'm calling bullshit on your claim. There is no such thing as biological moral standards. Biology is survival of the fittest, every man for himself.

It is advantageous to behave in social groups. Some morality encourages that behaviour - like not stealing and not murdering. It has been selected for on this basis. Once again, read some Dawkins. He discusses this in more detail.

No no no, again look at the example in The Lord of the Flies. When you take a group of relatively uneducated children and stick them on an island they don't bond together and form a civilization where they all help each other. They commit two murders, don't build shelter and generally go insane every man for themselves. They don't even realize they're doing anything wrong.

Lord of the Flies is allegory. That means 'fiction'. As in, it didn't actually happen.

The evolutionary roots of morality have been well-explored by multiple biologists. I am not an evolutionary biologist, and am, therefore, not in the best position to argue for it. I would suggest that you read some books on the damn subject, though, and Richard Dawkins outlines biological roots of morality in The God Delusion. Borrow it from a library just for that chapter. It's rather good. Alternatively, you could look up 'kin selection' and 'reciprocal altruism'. I will also point out that great apes - particularly bonobo chimpanzees - and various other species demonstrate some level of moral behaviour. Worker castes in insect colonies, for example quite clearly disprove your idea of evolution - you seem to have been influenced a little bit too much by the idea of 'survival of the fittest'. That's not really evolution at all. It's a catchphrase that sort of half-explains some elements of evolution by natural selection.

Morality is definitely not genetic in any way.

Sure you might be able to account for pro-group tendencies by this. But that's completely irrelevant because they're doing it for the benefit of the individual, that's not moral.

Regardless of whether or not it's actually moral to do something because it's in your nature (You're NOT doing it because it's good for the group. You're doing it because groups where this was not in their nature didn't survive as well as groups where it was), it certainly looks like a moral sense to me. You have an idea that some things are 'bad', and some are 'good'.

If a human being has a problem with another human being that jeopardizes his position he will kill/maim/remove/destroy/weaken that human being to get what he wants/needs.

You might. :P.

In short you're mistaking selecting for morals for selecting for individual advantage. You might be correct if you lived in a world where everything was nice and pretty. But, human beings have to be mean to survive in a mean world.

No, they don't. That gets you nowhere. Look at modern civilisation - say, Sweden. Sweden functions quite well. The people are happy, there isn't rampant civil unrest.

Consider if the people in Sweden operated under your simplistic idea that evolution is 'all for yourself'. Tada! Rampant civil unrest - barely held in check by a police force that only does its job because it gets paid! Not functioning society!

Or, in other words, it is BETTER for an individual if you act in order to benefit the group, to some extent. Seriously, who wants to live in a society where you could be killed at random? Nobody sane. So for our own good, we do what's good for everybody.

That's a very simplistic description - in particular, it completely ignores the fact that cheating, as a strategy, works particularly well when everybody else is playing fair. But if you actually read the literature - if you don't like Dawkins, go looking for a scientific journal - you'll find that the idea is far more fleshed out then that, and works rather well.

Morality is purely a product of the human mind and that is why it is connected to theism.

And the human mind has evolved to produce morality. I fail to see how that means it's connected to religion.

The reason we see similarities between worldly religions is not some weird out there theory of genetics

So weird and out there, almost every modern evolutionary biologist would agree with it.

it's because it's a pretty easy conclusion to come to. Occam's razor.

Yep, Ockham would say there's likely something behind the various similarities in world religions.

But the differences mean they're quite clearly not the product of (sane. Schizophrenic would work) god/s. The same god is behind the Norse religion and modern-day Christianity? Therevada Buddhism and Hinduism? Unlikely.

Conclusion? Humans have an innate sense of morality. Religions have hijacked that.

Ockham's Razor concludes that you should be an atheist. We have a very good model of the world that does not require a god. Why insert one?

As do I, Keeth. I should write that on my school books next year to annoy Christians, though I doubt many would understand what it means.

Apparently I'm a troll, heh. =)

I was going to attempt to read what JP says but with my hangover right now and his way of using technicalities to form arguments that devolve into a war of text wall attrition I'm over this argument.

I very well could counter all of it but I really don't give enough of a shit about his opinion to do so(the fact that he wrote an insanely long, boring, non-cohesive, non-nonsensical wall of text means he's not going to influence anyone else, it's also self contradictory[from at least what I read, he uses the fact that people aren't good to further his argument against honoring parents and then claims we all have an innate sense of morality to further his other arguments]), so I'll let him have the last word.

Jtgibson wrote:

Well, that pretty much means that the "religion does not foster morality" argument wins. "Could counter" doesn't mean anything if it doesn't actually happen. =P

Did you actually read any of it? Plus, sorry I don't have two hours to formulate another post.

SO YAY FOR THE VICTORIOUS ATHEIST INTERNET ARGUMENT!

Jtgibson wrote:

Worldweaver wrote:

Jtgibson wrote:

Well, that pretty much means that the "religion does not foster morality" argument wins. "Could counter" doesn't mean anything if it doesn't actually happen. =P

Did you actually read any of it?

Every word. Every point you brought up, he shot down in a pretty convincing way to me. The point where he gave a concession on feminine genital mutilation kinda bothered me, though; that's more cultural than religious.

That's kind of funny, because he was arguing a different point than the one you said he proved.

Jtgibson wrote:

Uh, you'll definitely have to explain that, because he was arguing a hell of a lot of points, and he rather specifically said he was letting the FGM point slip.

He was arguing whether or not we have a 'genetic moral compass'. We all know that religion at least intends to foster morality.

Wow

I can't believe this kind of shit is still on the front page