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I think faith is an extremely valuable thing to humanity as it gives us drive and motivation, sight and inspiration. I think the major flaw in religion is that it encourages us to put faith in something other than ourselves. We are very easy to be swayed into this position. If faith is put in good motion in the right direction, it is an asset. If it is used against each other or to create literally a "holy mess," then we're doing something wrong. |
I agree totally, Sass. That's why I said I disagreed with that original statement. :)
To further illustrate my point, I'll use a personal experience. My trust was betrayed in one of the worst ways by someone I thought would never betray it. Because of that, I've lost faith not only in people, but also in God AND in myself. That last being the biggest one, and a catalyst for the lost faith in everything else. Without faith in myself, I'm more susceptible to fear, and that fear has made me do some things I'm very ashamed of - not even necessarily big things, but I'm lashing out at people more frequently, and not caring how they feel. I was so focused on myself, because I was afraid to put any part of my life or my choices in others' hands. And then there were negative consequences. It's easy to see how the absence of faith can destroy us. But yes. Faith in anything other than ourselves can also be destructive. I would disagree that faith in God is destructive, because God is greater than ourselves, in my opinion, but for me it's not blind faith motivated from fear. I'm sure you can see the difference, and the connection there. Blind faith in anything can very probably become destructive. |
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Part of what keeps a persons behavior in check is the thought that a God that seeks justice could be watching. If there is no metaphysical god then a government run by people just as falty as the common citizen has to keep watch and be in the citizens mind when someone wants to misbehave. I dont like the idea of such a merciless lack of privacy or the standards that faulty people deal out to meet justice in the name of their own authority. Quote:
When human stregnth and brain power has failed you will always find people huddled together with the common bond of faith. When deaths hand draws near, for many faith is the one thing that eases the passage from life. |
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There ya go, I can make unsupported statements too. You can't assume that. |
Also, that depends on what kind of behavious people think their god expects from them.
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Faith seems like a bad scapegoat for humanity's stupidity. The decline of faith in the 20th century has been accompanied by two of the biggest, bloodiest wars in history. I'm not saying that there is a causal relationship from the former to the latter. It's just that if faith and religions were such major causes of carnage as some folks would have us believe, we should expect to see a decline of violence following a major decline in religion and faith. That has not been the case. People don't need extra help from religion or any other abstract aid in order to justify screwing each other over.
I don't see much value in putting faith in ourselves, either. I see billions of people out there who are brutalizing each other, and yet no one thinks that they themselves are part of the problem. I doubt anyone claims that they are part of problem. Similarly, no one thinks that they are a roadblock to the solution to our world's problems. And yet, there is a whole lot of evil stuff going on in the world. Obviously, a lot of people must have misjudged themselves. No one ever really stops and asks if he himself is part of the problem. Quote:
I'd argue that having faith in ourselves is not the solution. No matter how we define 'having faith in oneself', I guarantee that we can find at least one premium example of such a person that fit the definition that was also a monster. Having faith in oneself seems to relate too closely with self-love. There is no shortage of self-love in the universe, and most if not all of the world's problems can be traced back to one person/people seeking only after their own narrow self interests. IMHO, it seems the only solution there is to this mess we're in is to stop pursuing our own self-interests and start seeking after the common good. It's only when we ditch our own self-love and care enough about all people that people will stop trying to screw each other over. Not that I think humanity as a whole is capable of such a thing on its own, but I don't think it is impossible for some people to overcome their narrow self-interests. Think Mother Theresa. |
Mother Theresa's interests were tied into aiding the Untouchables, who she felt compelled in part by her faith to aid as best as she could.
"Self-interests" are ultimately subjective, and there's no such thing as a "common good." Anybody's vision of a common good is going to end up disadvantaging one group in favor of another, and as hard as ideologues have tried to create unstratified societies, they've never pulled it off. I'd also say that nobody has the right to dictate what is the "common good," because perceptions of the common good will vary according to culture. |
It's an interesting point that someone brought up, earlier, that they believe people only do things because they think a supreme being might be watching over them. I find that to be a ridiculous notion.
Brady, I think the common good can be ratified by values common to all or a vast majority of peoples. For example, the greater good could be something simple as ensuring survivability (i.e. necessary provisions such as food, shelter, at least something resembling healthcare whether holistic or western medicine) for all those within the society. As far as I know, it is recognized amongst all cultures that humans need to eat to survive, they also require some sort of shelter, and healing. I do not need religion or faith to make utilitarian decisions. Hedonistic calculus, man, whatever produces the greatest good for the largest number of people. |
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At any rate, you are reading much more into my words than I said. I said nothing about stratified or unstratified societies, or anything along those lines. All I said is that narrow self-interests create more problems than it solves. I don't have to think long before I can come up with an example of needless death and destruction just because President Joe wanted better materials to make his yacht. Quote:
Besides, based on the second to last discussion I had with you, you don't seem to think that ethical principles are rationally discernable anyway, so what is the point of debating this with you? According to that philosophy, all we are doing is emoting, anyway. |
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The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and I think it wouldn't be unrealistic to find more cases where somebody tried to make the world better, and ended up making it worse than you would with "narrow self-interests." Quote:
The only people capable of determining as a group what qualifies as the common good, are nationals. Aside from the basics of law, being that murder, theft, and in some cases assault are bad, everything else is flavor determined by the dominant forces in society, irregardless of whether or not those forces represent a majority. In order to "end injustice" and to establish a universal "common good," you would have to create a global authority and culture, and considering basic factors such as religion, ethnicity, locality, history, and other aspects of culture it simply ain't gonna happen, either in this or other lifetimes. In order for there to be a universally established common good, humanity as a whole does have to accept it on its own. Humanity itself must change its nature, and as I believe you've implied it, if we have to rely on some type of authority to steer humanity in that direction, ultimately the only case of that ever happening, in my opinion, is if we're engaged in inter-special war with aliens, or by altering our very biology. Neither of which is a good option in my opinion. |
I think individualism is destructive and so I really do not like the idea of theories such as emotivism or subjectivism dominating ethical principles. Cultural Relativism is another theory I say we can do without. It stuns me to how any rational person would agree to use these theories as a working model for society -- any society. These are a dangerous set of ideals because it stops all cause for people to question their own actions and customs. I believe absolute moral truths do exist and the only way of discovering them is through reason. For example:
Relativism: In certain parts of the world we know young girls have their genitals mutilated. While western society tends to vehemently disagree with the practice we do however agree that different cultures follow different customs. In short, it is no way prudent of us to force our morals onto other cultures. The relativist at this point would call it a day and go for a pint. The rational person instead would ask, did the young girl agree to the procedure? One simple question and the theory shatters because in not consulting with the girl beforehand, she is simply being used as a means to an end. This blindly followed custom robs the girl of her own reason and dignity. Reason tells us there are likely very few girls and women who would agree to circumcision and so as a working ethical theory relativism collapses. As for faith. There is no room for a personal God in my life. Religion is nothing more than a tool to rob people of free thought. Religion stifles imagination. Crushes wonder. Leaves no room for questions about the stars and heavens. Religion is the cause of many strifes, misery, pain, suffering and deaths around the world. So powerful is religion, such a corruption of the mind, people are willing to end their own life by flying an aeroplane into a building because of their faith. Their belief that God has reserved a special place in heaven for those who work in His service. Religion is fear. Fear of the unknown that awaits us. Fear of an omnipotent God who will burn us with smoke and fire for eternity if we deny Him. If science is a torch, religion is an extinguisher. |
What a bunch of self-delusional bullshit. You trounce religion yet have the gall to declare that there are absolute moral truths? It is wrong to force our morals on other cultures, because the end result is violent resistance. The end result is a people who feel as if they are no longer their own, and if we want to change foreign cultures, it should be through the demonstration of the superior qualities of our own, not some absolutist moral crusade where we go into some African backwater and make people who still can't get irrigation right understand the concept of ability to consent. We still practice ritual male circumcision in this country, but female circumcision makes so many more heads shake because it's culturally acceptable to us that women possess a clitoris or a clitoral hood, but men can't have foreskins because it's "icky." We can't even establish the right to consent in male infants, and you still insist that we should also deny the ability of an indigenous people to consent to our moral crusades?
No god encouraged the murder of millions through the totalitarianism of communist and fascist regimes. Claiming that there are absolute moral truths is like putting a dog in a sweater vest. To reject individualism denies that people are at their base simple animals who lucked out in regards to opposable thumbs and a higher ability to reason. Individualism is no more destructive than communism, because both cases produce sociopaths, which are ultimately the greatest cause of destruction in history. Not religion, and not the value of individuality. |
Religon was intended as a means of guidance for people at their wits end, but being maintained by humans has made it like anything else, anything but beyond corruption and the poor followers can be none the wiser. In worse cases it's all they know to have faith in especially if it's all they've ever known from birth, it becomes about as part of being human for them as something like the ability to talk.
I'm not going to even attempt listing examples of corruption making religon questionable to have faith in as it's a flamewar waiting to happen... (although that leaves me open to "BUT U HAVE NO EVIDENCE! >B(" but I'd rather that then going into religons facts and fictions). Let's just say we can blame the pioneer diehard fanboys/girls for many of the religous or 'holy' wars of the past and the people at the top adjusting religon values to say what they want to manipulate people and laugh their ass off while they go off and do their bidding for them. To say it's the end of faith is impossible because it keeps so many people going, I can't see religon ever completly disappearing the only difference now is information is more available to people to know better between when it's good advice and when the guy giving advice is taking the piss... it's the year 2007 having faith in only one things set of values is to say the least pretty primitive >.> Edit: Brady Wins this thread for the self delusional bullshit post alone |
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Again, ethical principles are not determined by people, whether they be nationals or otherwise. Any person is capable of discovering something that already exists. Quote:
Again, this is not reality, nor do I think that such a reality can ever exist. The point of the thought experiment, and the point that I've been making all along, is that if there were no libido/ will to power for more than what was needed to satisfy, most of the incentive for the most terrible crimes of our century would not exist. Hence, I think I've discovered a cause of a lot of the evil in the world. It's not as if I'm coming up with a new idea. I think most political philosophers and ordinary men of common sense have agreed. Where they disagree is in how essential the promotion of our own self-interests is to our own natures. Quote:
Not that I deny that people can put aside their own narrow self-interests on an individual basis. Mother Theresa is an obvious example of virtue, even if virtue to that degree is rare. But even if the state of affairs will never exist on a global level, that shouldn't stop me as an individual from practicing self-denial. If people hate you, and despise you, and utter every slander against you, love them anyway. It's not a matter of good intentions; I can have good intentions while committing murder. It's about establishing the rightness of actions along with the right intentions, aimed at the good of all rather than of the ego. |
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Is it possible that we'll come to a genuinely just "communal good?" Maybe, but we'd have to come to the conclusion as a race naturally, and consentually, or else forcing the situation only exacerbates the problem. Quote:
All of these codes are subjectively determined based on circumstance and other causal criteria. Quote:
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Claiming that righteousness doesn't serve the ego is a horrifying case of denial. If helping the outcasts didn't make Mother Theresa feel good about herself, she would've never done it. Using terms like "narrow self-interest" itself appeals to the ego, because it entices people to give up behaviors which may not necessarily actually be destructive in order to inflate their own egoes. I do think people can change their natures, but only through ideologies and the embracing of fundamental truths, such as the needs of the ego. If people truly understood why they do things, and why others commit harm I believe we'd then be on the track to something legitimately resembling a "greater good;" and no, applying buzzwords to social disorders isn't going to get us there. |
Is it purely coincidental that male circumcision is viewed as acceptable to western cultures and at the same time shows up in scripture? I can only wonder, if God asked for the removal of the labia how many millions of women in North America would undergo the procedure without consent in the same manner as their male counterpart. I am willing to bet quite a few. Although male circumcision is accepted it is still widely debated simply because the child has no say in the matter.
Brady, I want to be clear on your position so correct me if I have misunderstood. You're saying that because certain societies are less fortunate, moral truths ought not to apply to them and more, do not exist at all? This is the equivalent of suggesting that 2 + 2 only equals 4 in certain societies with higher education. Moral truths are no different than logical truths. Also, in calling it the moral crusade, you seem concerned that moral truths are nothing more than an iron curtain. This isn't the case. Moral truths are not forced onto people. It is not like the ten commandments. The rational person only has to think about murder to know it's wrong. There is no need to look it up in the criminal code or scripture. It's interesting that you reject moral truths because the study of ethics is to do just that. Ethics is the attempt to derive our values from facts. You are free to believe that we are forever hopeless in ever finding moral truths but I just happen to think of them as quite real and obtainable. Last thing, I want to clarify the contradiction you believe I have made. My view on morality and religion are very much separate. Moral truths are discoverable through reason. These are not rules codified by the elite and forced onto others. All humans have the ability to discover the same moral truth. In the same manner that all humans have the ability to understand that 2 objects when added to another 2 objects equals 4 total objects. And so I have not contradicted myself because while religion is an iron curtain, moral truths are not. |
Apologies for the scatterbrained post.
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The bottom line is that the more faith-centered a culture/group is, the more irrational and unjust it tends to be. This includes Hitler. This includes most of Christianity's past and some of it's present. This includes almost all of Islam's past and present, with the exception of those Muslims in the minority now adopted to modern day secular culture. Secular rationality will lead to universal moral standards, but unfortunately there is too much faith clouding the world for this to happen anytime soon. Murder someone for being taller than 4'0", and the world will agree you're immoral. Murder someone for faith-based reasons, and Murder someone for faith-based reasons in a purely secular world, and the world will agree you're immoral. |
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The absence of faith doesn't get rid of cliques, it doesn't get rid of history, location, or skin color. It doesn't get rid of income, social position, or class. It doesn't distribute resources evenly (nothing really can). Even in the absence of faith, people will find a way to preserve their identities, and it'll be based on the simplest of things. Hell, it doesn't even get rid of subcultures. Especially not the really weird ones. You know what I mean... Quote:
This is not an endorsement of Arab behavior. We think beating women is horrible, and through the virtues of our own society, hopefully they'll end up coming to the same conclusion. Attempting to force our morality on them, however, hasn't come to any good whatsoever. There's a war going on which proves my point. Quote:
My point is that there are underlying hippocracies in the argument which are based upon our own societal norms. What right do we have to tell other people to stop committing genital mutilation when we continue to perform it ritualistically? Infants can't even offer consent. Quote:
It's essentially not much of a leap from voting for any politician in a democracy. You cast a vote for the representative or party that you believe will act in your best interests. The end result I'm getting from this argument is that the inevitable solution to the politics problem is no politics, and social or market anarchies. Quote:
It didn't require faith when Colombus committed genocide against the Arawaks, although it did help him sleep at night. Cognitive dissonance has as much to do with, or may even function independantly of faith. "It's ok to kill Jews, they destroyed Germany." "These niggers deserve slavery, they can't even carry the hoes in." Cognitive dissonance, of course, is highly irrational, yet it has no real basis on faith. European Imperialism subjugated millions, and slaughtered hundreds of thousands (millions when you count plagues in the Americas), yet it wasn't based on faith, but real political interests, such as the spice trade and gold production. Quote:
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I never said it was right, and you're coming up with an end which I never implied. Obviously shipping off rapists to the middle east doesn't fit with our concept of justice, because we prefer punitive sentences to exile. You're applying the misconception that subjective perspective is equal perspective. What I'm saying is that forcing people to come to the "right conclusion" creates more problems than it solves. If that conclusion is self-evident, let them figure it out. Quote:
If you're going to tell me that no faith will eliminate greed, then get the fuck out of here. |
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As for SES, it's true it will remain in faithless societies as well as possible injustices caused by them, but the playing field will be greatly leveled when equality is truly reached through non-discrimination of the previous category. Quote:
As for your view on how to convert their society, their faith blinds them to virtues of our society. Their faith says men are in control of all aspects of life and women are not. That's how it's always been, and it's worked for thousands of years, why change now? Giving women equal rights doesn't necessarily improve a society's wealth, a society's military, or most importantly a society's faith, so what virtues could possibly be found in it? Quote:
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What you're creating here is a cultural conflict, in which one culture, presumably ours, cannot accept the existance of another culture, Arab ones, on the same planet. This creates problems because it implies to Arabs that we consider them an enemy, meaning that we are their enemy. You may not feel that way, but carried to its extreme through interventionist relations (essentially what is happening now) you end up with a clash of civilizations, if not at the least terrorism. Quote:
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Faith is also a matter of trust. You can't trust anybody without placing a reasonable amount of faith in them. The Germans trusted Hitler, the Cubans trusted Che Guevera, etc., etc., yet if we denied ourselves the ability to trust, how would we ever develop meaningful interpersonal relationships? Quote:
Cognitive Dissonance, in case you didn't know, is the behavior associated with demonizing a demographic in order to justify your intent to persecute them. On his first voyage, Columbus had a lot of praise for the Arawak people in his journal, yet when he returned with Spain's military might he described them as stupid and warlike whereas before he considered them beautiful and inquisitive. Would he have made these claims if he didn't think the Arawaks had gold? I doubt it. Quote:
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The Western World has been Christian dominated since the Edict of Milan in 313. It took us 500 years after a dark age and subsequent enlightenments before we've even started to toy with the idea of faithless societies. The Arab world is currently in their own dark age, and they have to come out of it naturally, otherwise we end up with collapsed towers and dead soldiers, in addition to all of the other innocent Arabs who end up being killed, all so that we can impose our own values on their society and still fail, because they can't accept a system of government which doesn't adhere to Sharia law. You still think this is just? The Soviets understood that Chinese communism was different from Vietnamese communism, was different from Soviet communism, yet right now we've made a mistake in regards to considering how Democracy would work in the Middle East. As one blogger put it, it's as if we all thought that Arabs were just "Americans in funny outfits." In our own society, men had to be convinced to give up their power in order to foment equality for women and minorities. We still have a lot of problems regarding race relations in this country, and you think that we should be imposing our values on a foreign culture? Not dictating what is right and wrong to Arabs is no more an acceptance of wife beating than prosecuting "curb stompers" is an acceptance of homosexuality. Stop being an idiot. Quote:
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I never said that we should accept cultures which don't appeal to us, only that we should tolerate them within their boundaries. Otherwise, if we attempt to impose our values on them as you suggest, either through force or posturing, we enable the forces of regression in the region to capitalize on our oppression or hypocracy. Quote:
This also, of course, denies that some people may be legitimately justified for violating a societal norm. |
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Atheism is not a religion. The atheist doesn't use faith to reject God. She uses common sense. The rejection of God is based on the absence of rational justification. You cannot prove the existence of God with logical thought. Thomas Aquinas and St. Anselm tried and their arguments, even to the church, are embarrassingly laughable in this age. 21st century philosophy is mainly dominated by logical positivists and analytic thought. Metaphysical claims about God are rejected as nonsense because there is no way to prove them.
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I have no problem with faith in general, the sort of faith I have in my family and friends. It's this blind faith that bothers me. Frankly, it makes no fucking sense.
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All these examples you give of atrocities have non-faith based roots. Power, money, political gain. But all of them use FAITH to justify their actions. Once faith is removed from the picture, there are no more excuses to make you seem good and righteous, and people will see you for what you truly are; a thief, a murderer, etc. Quote:
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