Get Rid of All Religion?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
101

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

[quote]kamui wrote:
“have lagged behind ethically” compared to what ?

During millenia, religion was everywhere and was everything. There was no alternative ethical standard.
So back then, if religion lagged behind something, it lagged behind… itself.

Non-religious ethical standards are a very recent phenomenon. So recent it’s absurd to pretend they are superior or inferior to the “old” religious standards.
They are so young they haven’t proven their viability and sustainability, let alone their superiority.

Irreligion is a cultural toddler. It make a lot of noise, and it looks rather healthy right now but its survival is far from being certain.

For all we know, in two or three centuries, it might very well be looked as a strange but ultimately unimportant parenthesis in our history.

[/quote]

Lagged behind ethically compared to contemporary ethics considering the different era’s of different moralists and philosophers.

If we are talking today, we can look at the church position on say homosexuals, always a topic that comes up, I’m kinda tired of the subject but it’s an important one, as well as womens rights. Hows womens rights been historically thoughout the different religions in general? Would you say that churches and religious institutions embody fairness between the sexes? They are always behind. Need I bring up the enlightenment? Behind back then too. [/quote]

You say this like Tuesday is inherently better than Monday. Ok, so your modern ethics has a different/newish position on homosexuality…And?
[/quote]

Not just my newish ethics… Society as a whole is quicker to adjust morally than the Church, when the Church is supposed to be the moral leaders, they are the ones who lag behind society, and ultimately cave to society’s ethics. Do I need to do a historical breakdown of this again? Or do I need to site more examples? It’s easy to grasp and plain for everyone to see.
[/quote]

Hold up a second, you act as if I agree that morality is whatever the flavor of the moment is. If society wasn’t agreeing with you now, and still agreed with me on a host of issues, would you change your conclusions to mine?
[/quote]

I would only adjust my ethics if what you proposed made sense ethically. That’s generally how moral progress seems to work.

Look at how it worked with slavery. Someone looked at another man and saw him in the same light as himself, rather than a slave.

Some dude looked at a gay dude and his love for his lover as similar to the way he loves his wife and children.

If I had a certain way of looking at the world that could be improved by someone, I’m certainly open to it. I was pretty homophobic myself for a long time, didn’t like the idea of gay marriage, it took me to see a very good friends child come out that I had known for many years to come to grips with my hypocrisy.

It’s one of the hardest things, to admit to ourselves and to change.

102

[quote]Severiano wrote:

I would only adjust my ethics if what you proposed made sense ethically. [/quote]

So because society has a position at any particular moment doesn’t make that position actually a “good” or an “evil.”

So, just because the Church “lags” behind your society, doesn’t make the Church wrong.

103

[quote]kamui wrote:

  • The church elected women (and homosexual men) at its highest ranks, taught them how to read and how to wrote centuries before our secular governments decided to let wives work without the consent of their husband.

  • Homophoby and misogyny largely predates the Church and both will survive our (quite ridiculous) attempts to legislate against them.

  • Fairness between the sexes won’t matter much when our bow-so-generous culture will have finished to implement its environnemental ethics at a worldwide scale.

[/quote]

You are right. But what about the whole story?

The Church feared gays into not acting and still does, with some line that goes something like this…

“God makes it harder on some of us, God made it much harder for you to make it and it is a blessing! If you can go through life witholding your desires, you will be rewarded in heaven, but if you have sex with that person you are in love with, you will go to hell.”

And with women… You can be part of our club, but… You will never be a priest, or pope (unless you pretend to be a man as there was one female pope). It’s not equal or respectful of difference in people. It wants everyone to conform, their way, which has proven over and over to be behind the times.

104

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Severiano wrote:

I would only adjust my ethics if what you proposed made sense ethically. [/quote]

So because society has a position at any particular moment doesn’t make that position actually a “good” or an “evil.”

So, just because the Church “lags” behind your society, doesn’t make the Church wrong.
[/quote]

You are right, that isn’t specifically what is wrong with the church. It’s that they lag behind even the most obvious moral comparatives and tend to be among the last to change their positions. Long after the majority of society accepts things like black skin not being some evil mark (like with mormons) or homosexual acts being anyones business since everyone seems to have premarital sex, but it’s only the homosexuals who go to hell for example… How do you answer that? They are clearly behind, and they clearly change their stances.

105

There was always some people to look at slaves and see them in the same light as themselves. But they were powerless against the majority who accepted slavery, for economical reasons.

This changed when and only when slavery started to make less political and economical sense.

[quote]
Some dude looked at a gay dude and his love for his lover as similar to the way he loves his wife and children.[/quote]

Again, this “ethical progress” would have been impossible in rural communities who couldn’t survive without stable families.
Our current “level of tolerance” is an indirect consequence of the green revolution and rural exodus (As the medieval adage says “the air of the city grants freedom”). Not the result of some kind of ethical eureka.

106

[quote]kamui wrote:

There was always some people to look at slaves and see them in the same light as themselves. But they were powerless against the majority who accepted slavery, for economical reasons.

This changed when and only when slavery started to make less political and economical sense.

Politics and convenience are the excuses for the Church to lag behind, when rightiousness and justice were the way of Jesus.

107

[quote]Severiano wrote:

You are right, that isn’t specifically what is wrong with the church. It’s that they lag behind even the most obvious moral…[/quote]

So? You don’t believe there is an actual set of moral commandments. They’re as “right” as you are, and as “wrong” as you are.

And? Even if they don’t change their positions…And?

And today HBD folks pour over statistics and genomic studies trying to find the smoking gun of inherent racial superiority and inferiority. You seem to also ignore Christian abolitionists, and Christian civil rights leaders (MLK) who moved society based on Christian arguments.

I have no idea what you’re talking about. Pre-marital sex is a sin, is a sin, is a sin. There is no ambiguity. Just because laity may fall short, it doesn’t change. We’re still teaching sex is only proper within the Sacrament of marriage…

[quote] How do you answer that? They are clearly behind, and they clearly change their stances.
[/quote]

I don’t answer for it. There’s nothing to answer for. Just because the Church doesn’t agree with you now, or ever…And, just because you don’t agree with the Church now, or ever…Doesn’t make it morally wrong and you right.

I have a feeling if the Church began to win the debate you wouldn’t all of a sudden say “well, I’m lagging behind, I must change my positions on XYZ.”

108

[quote]
The Church feared gays into not acting and still does, with some line that goes something like this…

“God makes it harder on some of us, God made it much harder for you to make it and it is a blessing! If you can go through life witholding your desires, you will be rewarded in heaven, but if you have sex with that person you are in love with, you will go to hell.”[/quote]

Well, to be fair, they say the very same thing about heterosexual sex.
The idea was to protect a sacrament. Marriage, in this case.
By doing so, the Church invented our culture.

[quote]
And with women… You can be part of our club, but… You will never be a priest, or pope (unless you pretend to be a man as there was one female pope). It’s not equal or respectful of difference in people. It wants everyone to conform, their way, which has proven over and over to be behind the times.[/quote]

the word “pope” comes from “papa”, which means "father.
the word “priest” comes from presbus, which means “old man”.

Are you saying the Church is morally lagging because it don’t “want” a woman to be a father or an old man ?

109

[quote]Severiano wrote:

Politics and convenience are the excuses for the Church to lag behind, when rightiousness and justice were the way of Jesus.[/quote]

Yes, to me. But how in the world could you possibly believe that? His teachings are recorded in a New Testament that clearly rejects much of your “modern ethics.” You must, to be consistent, see him as some kind of outdated ‘bigot.’ You must condemn him for starting the craziness that infects me and others like me.

110

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]
The Church feared gays into not acting and still does, with some line that goes something like this…

“God makes it harder on some of us, God made it much harder for you to make it and it is a blessing! If you can go through life witholding your desires, you will be rewarded in heaven, but if you have sex with that person you are in love with, you will go to hell.”[/quote]

Well, to be fair, they say the very same thing about heterosexual sex.
The idea was to protect a sacrament. Marriage, in this case.
By doing so, the Church invented our culture.

Nah, you know what I’m saying :slight_smile:

There is no excuse for politics or convenience to be excuses for doing right. That’s what Jesus died for.

111

[quote]
There is no excuse for politics or convenience to be excuses for doing right. That’s what Jesus died for. [/quote]

I’m not sure what the Church did was as wrong as you think it was.
i’m not sure what we do now is as right as you think it is.

I think it’s beyond naive to think our culture is morally superior to its predecessors. If anything, i think we are morally lost

we have thrown our old religious standards away, but we haven’t replaced them, yet.
So we are flying without instruments right now.
The sooner we admit it, the better our chances to avoid the crash.

112

[quote]kamui wrote:

Child abuse, abortion, drug use, violent crime down, teenage pregnancy down, homelessness down.

Why does one come to the conclusion we are morally lost? Ironically church attendance is lower than ever probably and yet all these metrics are down.

In the world hunger, lack of sanitation, lack of education all these levels are the lowest they have probably ever been. A majority of people are coming out of dictatorships and gaining some of the freedoms Americans have had for a long time.

We’re living in the greatest worldwide poverty reduction time EVER.

Obviously we have a shit ton of problems, but every generation ever has.

It seems as if flying without instruments is better than flying with our old ones?

113

[quote]
Child abuse, abortion, drug use, violent crime down, teenage pregnancy down, homelessness down.[/quote]

Here.
Maybe.

There is more than 860 millions people living in slums today.

That’s more than the total human population on earth when your constitution was adopted.

You can speak about proportions and ratio, but this cynical reasoning doesn’t change the fact that, during the last two centuries we have seen an giganormous net increase of human sufferings.

[quote]
In the world hunger, lack of sanitation, lack of education all these levels are the lowest they have probably ever been. A majority of people are coming out of dictatorships and gaining some of the freedoms Americans have had for a long time

We’re living in the greatest worldwide poverty reduction time EVER.[/quote]

At what cost ? and how long will it last ?

To produce this “wealth” and this wellfare, we have eaten everything our parents had produced during the “glorious thirty”.
Yet we are unwilling to treat our old people respectfully. Let alone their old ideas and their old values.

Worst, we are already feasting with the future work of our children and grand-children, who will be our posthumous slaves for their whole lifetimes.
We all know it, and we don’t care.

In the meantime, we are quietly and happily devasting the Earth, destroying species after species.

In other words :
We are dancing, chanting, happy to ignore solfege, harmony and musical theory.

But we are morally superior because gays and women are invited and welcomed to our little Danse Macabre.

114

[quote]kamui wrote:

Worst, we are already feasting with the future work of our children and grand-children, who will be our posthumous slaves for their whole lifetimes.
We all know it, and we don’t care.

[/quote]

This kind of puts a damper on my Saturday.

118

one last thing on this topic :

[quote]
It seems as if flying without instruments is better than flying with our old ones?[/quote]

I don’t know about you, but if i had to cross an ocean, i would prefer the slight chance of survival over the certain death.
So yes, in such a case, the old tools would be better than the blind pilot.

But i’m not saying we should “go back to the old standards of morality”.
I’m a godless leftist, for God’s sake !
And a french one !

But despite being an atheist, i try to not be unfair with my adversaries.
And i prefer to “win” my godlessness, so to speak.

Because, you know, there is more than a way to be godless. And some of them are reallly, really cheap ones.

It usually tends to declare victory and superiority with an incredible naivety.
But it fails to see that most of its “progress” are actually progress of indifference.

As a whole, our society is not more tolerant than ever before.
It’s simply more indifferent.
In the case of homosexuality, it’s not really that we care more for homosexuals. We simply care less about families.
In the case of religion, most people didn’t stopped to believe for deep philosophical reasons, and ended their practice accordingly.
They stopped their practice for shallow non-philosophical reasons, then they ended their belief accordingly.
That’s why “christians in name only” greatly outnumber actual atheists and agnostics.

We have never declared an intellectual war against an ethically lagging system of belief.
We have simply grown tired of our old systems, and now we are more than eager to embrace a shiny new one. Or any shiny new one, for that matter. Hence the success of new agey cults and other neo-religious phenomena. or the success of totalitarian ideologies.

The irony here is that this kind of irreligion actually reproduce the “old” system without even noticing its own intellectual debt.

This so-called altruism, with all its emotionnal pity and charity toward the poorest and the weakest is fundamentally christian, to the core.

It’s simply the ungrateful heir of the “slave morality” Nietzsche wrote about.

Like him, i think that “The future belongs to those with the longest memory.”
Not to those with the cheap, self-induced amnesia.

Because if you want to have a slight chance to think something else, something new, something different, something outside the borders of the hegemonical paradigm of your culture, you HAVE TO fully accept and fully acknowledge your intellectual debt. In its millenia-old entirety.

119

[quote]kamui wrote:

[quote]
Child abuse, abortion, drug use, violent crime down, teenage pregnancy down, homelessness down.[/quote]

Here.
Maybe.

There is more than 860 millions people living in slums today.

That’s more than the total human population on earth when your constitution was adopted.

You can speak about proportions and ratio, but this cynical reasoning doesn’t change the fact that, during the last two centuries we have seen an giganormous net increase of human sufferings.

This is EASILY due to greater population.

You really want to go there?

When our Constitution was adopted black people were slaves. Women had a forced role. Massive groups of people in this country had absolutely 0 freedom and were FORCED to do certain things. We were “free” in idea only. The vast majority of our country was enslaved in certain ways.

That increased amount of people you’re talking about came from modern medicine which started saving lives over and over. Our life expectancy and quality of life has soared in ways unimaginable to people back then.

Who’s not treating old people respectfully? Where are you getting this? We probably do more health care wise and quality of life wise for our elderly than at any other point in modern history. We are more prepared to help them with the challenges of being older than anyone else in history.

And WE ARE living so much longer than them. Are we really destroying the Earth more than we did in the 1900’s? Really? Based on what? We fought multiple massive wars. We lost countless people to the flu. We dropped two atomic bombs. We built massive disgusting cities and people died from living in their own filth. CHILDREN worked long hours and PEOPLE died at work all the time from shitty working conditions.

You speak in broad terms of stuff you cannot prove. What is your increase in human suffering based on? A greater amount of people? The human suffering in the 18th century was ungodly and with a massively lower amount of people.

You really want to go toe to toe morality wise with the 18th century or even last century? So far the 21st century has destroyed the 19th century in every metric you can come up with for human misery.

You’re ignoring massive easy amounts of human history to come up with the frankly ludicrous position that right now is an immoral time. And as much as I love our previous generations maybe it is time you started to love this one a little bit for ALL the good that is going on right now.

It’s really easy to be a debbie downer and talk about the current times as the worst ever. Not only is that untrue in many metrics, but what are YOU doing to change these things if they are such a big deal? The vast majority of people on the internet are living such comfortable lives that they can sit around a lot and talk about how much the current times suck while soaking up heat in the winter, AC in the summer, and never missing a meal.

120

[quote]
This is EASILY due to greater population.[/quote]

Yes.
IE : something we did not control, do not control and can not control.

We are speaking about a huge, massive, enormous demographical transition, at a worldwide scale.
This transition is the root cause of most of the “wrong” things AND “good” things that happened during the last two centuries.

This is what we call a “crisis”. And it’s an unfinished one.

My point is not that we are evil. And that we regressed.

I’m saying that we tend to call “moral progress” what is actually a perfectly amoral and unvoluntary evolution.

i’m saying that recent changes, good or bad, are not due to some ethical realizations, but to a monstruous demographical and economical tidal wave, starting with the industrial revolution.

We can’t pat ourselves in the back about it, because we are still riding this fucking wave.
And we are mostly powerless about it.
It’s way too soon to tell if we will make it alive and better, or not.

In the meantime, there will be more than a billion of people living in slums in 2030.
Not sure that the millions of people who will then be free to watch some kardashians on some kind of screen really make up for it.