Okay then. Then I’ll summarize it plainly as I can.
[/quote]
Summarise what?
How does that necessarily follow? Why does the existence of “a being of perfect knowledge”(whatever that means) necessitate that empiricism is “imperfect?”
Your argument is self defeating?
[quote]
because you must rely on sense data to both have learned the word and concept of such a being and to communicate such an argument.[/quote]
Huh? I don’t follow. Are you relating your own theory or someone else’s here?
You have any actual rebuttals instead of personal attacks?[/quote]
What do you think of my claim that utopian political ideologies serve as an “immortality project” - a way of giving the illusion of meaning and purpose to your life and providing explanations for the absurdities of life and of giving you a sense of immortality through contribution to and association with a grand scheme for the creation of a “better world?” How about that theory?
No it’s because your parents threatened you with eternal damnation or a proxy as a child.[/quote]
Utter bullshit. I was indoctrinated in the tenants of Militant Atheism growing up and have had a very hard time coming to terms with the fact I do actually believe in some sort of “thing” where it be God, G_D, Alah, nature, karma, what ever you want to call it.
You’re using assumptive conjecture to project your own individual feelings on the whole. Stop that shit.
Something about Emily makes me believe she does a awful lot of good while she is alive… More than most.
There you go assuming and projecting again.
I’m sorry but this is utter nonsense. Just… stop now.
[/quote]
He’s actually correct about his view when you consider how most organized religions define the afterlife. Religions like Islam and Mormonism offer things that we should be above in the afterlife, like sex and ownership of stuff.
No it’s because your parents threatened you with eternal damnation or a proxy as a child.[/quote]
Utter bullshit. I was indoctrinated in the tenants of Militant Atheism growing up and have had a very hard time coming to terms with the fact I do actually believe in some sort of “thing” where it be God, G_D, Alah, nature, karma, what ever you want to call it.
You’re using assumptive conjecture to project your own individual feelings on the whole. Stop that shit.
Something about Emily makes me believe she does a awful lot of good while she is alive… More than most.
There you go assuming and projecting again.
I’m sorry but this is utter nonsense. Just… stop now.
[/quote]
He’s actually correct about his view when you consider how most organized religions define the afterlife. Religions like Islam and Mormonism offer things that we should be above in the afterlife, like sex and ownership of stuff. [/quote]
I can understand someone being an atheist but why do you believe that abandoning religion is something other people should do? When I was an atheist I still believed that religion was largely a good thing and that the decline of religion had serious consequences for society. What makes you think that the decline of religion is a positive thing?
No it’s because your parents threatened you with eternal damnation or a proxy as a child.[/quote]
Utter bullshit. I was indoctrinated in the tenants of Militant Atheism growing up and have had a very hard time coming to terms with the fact I do actually believe in some sort of “thing” where it be God, G_D, Alah, nature, karma, what ever you want to call it.
You’re using assumptive conjecture to project your own individual feelings on the whole. Stop that shit.
Something about Emily makes me believe she does a awful lot of good while she is alive… More than most.
There you go assuming and projecting again.
I’m sorry but this is utter nonsense. Just… stop now.
[/quote]
He’s actually correct about his view when you consider how most organized religions define the afterlife. Religions like Islam and Mormonism offer things that we should be above in the afterlife, like sex and ownership of stuff. [/quote]
I can understand someone being an atheist but why do you believe that abandoning religion is something other people should do? When I was an atheist I still believed that religion was largely a good thing and that the decline of religion had serious consequences for society. What makes you think that the decline of religion is a positive thing?[/quote]
Because there are ways of looking at the world and living, that don’t necessitate believing in things that likely don’t exist. We don’t need to posit faith to suffice our need to answer the unknown. What we need is courage to face it, and the courage to embrace what we learn and make what we can from it. Imagine if we spent the money and effort educating people that we do converting them?
Because there are ways of looking at the world and living, that don’t necessitate believing in things that likely don’t exist.
[/quote]
Of course there are. But my question was why do you believe that these ways are universally preferable?
Assuming that’s true, it still doesn’t answer the question as to why it’s universally preferable.
So your argument is that we should draw all people on earth away from religion so we can save some money that would otherwise be spent on proselytism? Come on man, that is really weak. It’s ridiculous. I could fill up pages arguing from an atheistic perspective that religion is a positive social force and that its decline has had profound consequences for society. I ask you to back up your position and this is all you can come up with?
There’s a big problem here sev. You can’t even proffer an argument to back up your own position. It seems pretty clear to me that you have never even thought about this. You have just proceeded from an assumption: religion is not true therefore it cannot be good.
Are you not familiar with Plato’s concept of the “noble lie?”
I’m giving you a homework assignment sev. Have a think about why you believe that the decline of religion is a good thing and why you believe it’s universally preferable. Then explain it. Lay out your case. Because as of now you have yet to present any reason whatsoever why we should promote atheism.
Because there are ways of looking at the world and living, that don’t necessitate believing in things that likely don’t exist.
[/quote]
Of course there are. But my question was why do you believe that these ways are universally preferable?
Assuming that’s true, it still doesn’t answer the question as to why it’s universally preferable.
So your argument is that we should draw all people on earth away from religion so we can save some money that would otherwise be spent on proselytism? Come on man, that is really weak. It’s ridiculous. I could fill up pages arguing from an atheistic perspective that religion is a positive social force and that its decline has had profound consequences for society. I ask you to back up your position and this is all you can come up with?
There’s a big problem here sev. You can’t even proffer an argument to back up your own position. It seems pretty clear to me that you have never even thought about this. You have just proceeded from an assumption: religion is not true therefore it cannot be good.
Are you not familiar with Plato’s concept of the “noble lie?”
I’m giving you a homework assignment sev. Have a think about why you believe that the decline of religion is a good thing and why you believe it’s universally preferable. Then explain it. Lay out your case. Because as of now you have yet to present any reason whatsoever why we should promote atheism.[/quote]
I think people should be weened off of faith and it’s traditions so we can go with reason and the things we know.
We have a lot of people on this world who use faith, and everything with them stops at faith. There is no reasoning with them, they believe their world view is true and that God wants this and that for everyone, and they will kill you if you don’t agree as stated at the end of the video.
You told me that one must believe in God in order to be an Existentialist, in part it’s true, so that is an wrong thing/ evil to put onto people knowing that at some point a lot of us are going to face death and be horrified more because of non truths, or let me say non facts about the afterlife that people buy into because of religion. That is why I feel it’s immoral to pass on, because ultimately we shouldn’t put so much investment into things that we simply don’t know.
The last, is that we have acquired plenty of knowledge and reason to find our own purposes in this life. There are beautiful ways to look at and interpret and conduct ones self in the world without religion.
For me personally I’m all about respecting autonomy. What I realized with my family member who lost her mind is that she went through a psychotic break in part because of her chemistry, but also because of her cosmological view of the world. If she had never been exposed to it, she wouldn’t have had a, “demon” in her mind.
When we expose children to ideas of God early on they fully buy into it and it becomes part of their identity. I was around her family for a time as a kid, younger than her siblings and that’s all I ever heard in their house was you are going to hell for this and that.
IMO that is faith built on fear and shame, and really the faiths don’t care how they get you, they just want you to be a member, and hopefully a tithing one.
So, the idea to stop spreading religion is based in part on the consequences of faith, but also because I believe living without a religion is a better way to live, to base morality on how we are wired and things that are natural to us, like using empathy to better understand how connected we are, and as a guide to how to treat one another as humans.
Like forward thinking, predicting, and planning to tell us what to expect in the future, and to also guide our actions now so that we can have what we want then, for us, for our future.
Meanwhile, the religions, take Catholicism. It’s become aware that the majority of it’s parishes in the Americas are going to be Latino, look how it caters to Latinos now. It’s become wildly unpopular to be homophobic, and look at the efforts to quell homophobia in the Church by the Pope. This supposedly rigid faith that Got it’s word from God is changing quite a bit, or doing mental gymnastics to change it’s opinion on Gays so it can be more popular, and keep it’s ranks swelling.
See through it already.
Hour long lecture on it if you wish by Ramachandran.
I think people should be weened off of faith and it’s traditions so we can go with reason and the things we know.
[/quote]
I know you do. But you haven’t explained why we should do that. And you haven’t explained what “going with” reason and “what we know” actually means.
Let’s see how you go…
That’s a problem with all ideology; not just religion. In fact, the most egregious human rights abuses have resulted from ideologies that are uncoupled from traditional ethics such as National Socialism and Marxism.
Ah…no, I didn’t. I merely corrected your false impression that existentialism and religion are not compatible with each other.
As another poster pointed out, this is a nonsensical argument. For one thing it assumes that everyone brought up in a religious setting will at some stage reject their religion. It also assumes that a level of harm will be caused by the let down of their expectations and that this level of harm will outweigh any benefits that religion has. It also assumes that people are going to be significantly more damaged by their encounter with existential nihilism than they would be if they had not previously believed. All very much groundless arguments. For one thing, people aren’t born atheists - by which I mean, children come to understand their own mortality gradually as they develop. They don’t understand from the get go that they are going to die. So coming to this realisation is the same process as losing one’s religion.
But anyway, your premise: that the dashed expectations of a religious person cause profound harm that would not otherwise occur had they not been brought up to believe in God. I’ve never seen any evidence of this. I’ve never experienced that. I’ve never heard of people who were brought up in a religious environment claiming to have suffered profound psychological damage due to their expectations being dashed. It seems like a complete phantasm to me. An invented crisis. And we’re supposed to avert this crisis by drilling in to children that their life is without meaning or purpose from the get go?
But many atheists would argue that religion has played an extremely important social function by binding communities together in kinship that is able to transcend racial barriers; that religion crystallises ethical precepts and norms and mores in such a way that they become sacred an inviolable. For example, the notion that human life has immeasurable value. Religion can ensure that such values remain constant and are not changed with the times and with fashion. It solidifies values that would otherwise be fleeting; changing and open to dispute.
An atheist might argue that values such as the primacy of human life can only be fixed and inviolable if they are held to be sacred - if they are given a mystical and transcendental basis. For example, as science appears to show that humans are utterly insignificant in the scheme of things then human life itself could be argued to be of little value. Why would it matter much if a few million people were wiped out? After all, a rational argument could be made, grounded in science, that it might be beneficial for the human race to be “thinned out” a bit. In fact, you’ve often expressed Malthusian concerns about overpopulation.
Or for another example, the argument that morality is merely a biological development. If that is so, then we could do away with ethics all together - at least as far as they(ethics) have become “obsolete” and no longer serve the biological function for which they were intended.
We? You speak on behalf of mankind? There are plenty of people who would disagree entirely and argue that their religion is the only way to find meaning. So you have taken it upon yourself to dissuade them? Surely you realise that they may never have to confront existential nihilism - that their religion shields them from it. And yet you wish to take away their shield and tell them they can create their own meaning from “the absurd?”
For you maybe. What makes you so sure that it’s universally applicable? And you’ve also ignored the sociological functions of religion that I’ve outlined.
Another example: there are two tribes who were at war with each other for centuries. Through some process both tribes were converted to the same religion. They no longer identify themselves ethnically and now consider themselves to have a broader identity in their shared religion. They are no longer enemies. They have redrawn the “friend/enemy distinction.” Their religion and new identity has broken down the enmity that once existed between them. This is not just some hypothetical scenario mind you. This process throughout history has united disparate people.
So like angrychicken your views have been formed by a single negative experience. I suggest you think rationally about it. Someone who is suffering from such a mental disorder is going to suffer from it regardless of the forms their delusions take. UFOs, black helicopters, messiah complexes etc. - the problem is the mental illness itself, not the specific forms of their delusions. So if she’d never been “exposed” to Christianity her delusions would have taken on some other form. It’s a pretty oddball argument to blame exposure to religion for her problems.
Religion did not cause her mental illness. It’s an entirely specious argument to link the two in any causal way.
A very facile argument. I also notice you finish off with an accusation that religion is at heart always some kind of confidence trick to cheat people out of their money.
Again, you have entirely ignored the arguments I made - from an atheist perspective - that religion serves a number of essential social functions amongst other things.
I’m not trying to belittle you but your arguments are really very weak and betray an underlying irrational hostility to religion based upon a single personal experience.
The argument that religion has been abused by some does not serve as the basis for universal rejection of religion. Political ideology has been abused by some. That doesn’t mean we should reject all political ideas - which is of course impossible as everything has a political character.
You added more to your post so I’ll address the rest here:
[quote] Severiano wrote:
So, the idea to stop spreading religion is based in part on the consequences of faith,
[/quote]
You haven’t shown a proper understanding of the consequences of faith nor of the consequences of the rejection of faith. When talking about the “consequences of faith” you need to understand religion as “ideology.” In this context religion is just one aspect or form of “identity.” People have fought and killed each other over identity since the beginning of time. You need to understand the nature of conflict.
Marx argued that all conflict is “class conflict” - the haves fighting the have nots. This is nonsense of course. Resources are only one aspect of conflict and when resources are fought over they are fought over in the context of “group identity” - as in, group A has more stuff than “we” do. This concept of “us” versus “them” is the real underlying basis for all conflict. The basis for all conflict is “identity”. As Schmitt explained it, when people come together to form a society they are coming together in a unity against - against other men/groups. This is the “friend/enemy distinction”. They are defining themselves(identity) and part of defining what you are is defining what you are not. “Religion” is merely one aspect of identity. It is no more responsible for conflict on its own than political ideology or race or any other aspect of group identity. You cannot lessen conflict by abolishing one aspect by which groups identify themselves. In fact, as I showed in the example in my last post religion often serves as a method of lessening conflict by extending the umbrella of identity to include other ethnic groups for example. Religion also allows for admittance to the group that racial identity cannot allow. A group identity based on ethnicity cannot allow someone of a different ethnicity to be part of the group. But a group whose identity is based upon religion can accept anyone as part of the group. Religious group identity transcends racial group identity and often serves as an inclusive force that lessens conflict.
For you maybe. That doesn’t explain your motivation for proselytism. That is what you are doing by the way. You’re no different from Christians knocking on doors or Hare Krishnas handing out leaflets at the airport. You want others to accept adopt your own belief system.
Then you haven’t really understood the implications of morality being a purely biological function. I addressed that already. And for all your talk about having the courage to face hard truths, you are hiding from the implications of biology - namely, social Darwinism and moral nihilism.
Well yeah that’s something I addressed myself in PWI recently. It’s why the Church has seen splinter groups like The Society of St Pius X and so on. Not sure how that relates to the discussion though.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
People talking about evidence of afterlife don?t understand one or both of the terms. An afterlife is supernatural, evidence is the presence of physical clues. There can be no evidence, because the notion is non-sense. It?s like discussing the existence of purple based on what you can hear. I?ve never heard purple, therefor I don?t believe in it, never-mind that purple isn’t a concept bounded by hearing.
But I can say that the idea that we are the product of random chance and there is nothing else is completely self-defeating. If existence is random then humans are a randomly produced product of mindless functions without a point. This means that if that idea were true then the idea itself is an entirely random product of arbitrary laws and there is no reason to even discuss it as true or not because it is the random meaningless product of a mindless universe. What reason is there to believe your brain if it is just a random accident? If the idea is “true” then there is no reason to believe it.
I believe in more than we can see, not because I have evidence for or against it, but because it?s the only actual answer I know of. Everything else I?ve ever heard is self-contradiction or just plain avoidance of the question.
[/quote]
Good post. this concept of some mystical world that is forever outside of our observation like the Platonic world of perfect forms is absolute nonsense.
Abandoning this mysticism and embracing the Aristotelian philosophy of an observable universe and, as an extension of our senses, the scientific method is the driving force against violence in this world.
[/quote]
I don’t think you understand what I meant. According to science, there is no morality, so why would one avoid violence? If there is nothing mystical about you, you (including your thoughts on this subject) are nothing but randomly caused meaningless physically dictated reactions. If we throw out the mysticism, your thoughts are the nothing but a chemical reaction akin to metal rusting.[/quote]
Ah i see. There is actually objective proof based on empiricism and the scientific method of secular morality IF you define morality as universally preferable behavior.
Universally preferable behavior is the foundation for non aggression as a universal principal.
Empiricism is also the foundation for the existence of free will because you cannot generate or put forward evidence for the absence of free will or determinism without generating more evidence for it’s existence. By speaking, writing, arguing you are creating infinitely divisible concrete observable evidence for your will to do so.
In other words, arguing against free will is always self-defeating unless you ascribe to the platonic perfect form philosophy and mysticism where you can make a “perfect” argument against free will.
Um, morality is what defines preferable. You are assuming a preference from thin air to assert your proof that morality (a preference) exists. You assumed morality to prove morality. Scientifically, there is no such thing as preferable. Anything else is mysticism.
And it is the axioms of science that say there is no free will. If you are relying on science alone, you are denying there is free will. Science assumes (as it is unprovable) that the universe is consistent and governed by unchanging laws of which these laws explain all physical events. Science assumes a deterministic analytic universe. You have no ability to think or decide and ad any randomness to any part of the system, unless you assert the supernatural. If you claim to be able to affect the system through thought and consideration, you are claiming to violate the laws of science. And if you don’t, your thoughts are nothing but the product of a random system who’s output is wholly dictated by the physical laws governing the matter of your brain. Do you think your thinking alters the course of scientific universal physical laws?
Anyone considering wasting their time with Molyneux’s “Universally Preferable Behaviour” bunkum would do well to take a look at this first:
It’s a good read. Molyneux is claiming to have created a universally applicable system of ethics - something no philosopher has done in 6000 years. Quite an achievement. So is Molyneux a trained philosopher? No. He failed at university - they wouldn’t publish any of his work. Molyneux believes that all the academics he has encountered in his life are jealous of him or unable to comprehend his greatness.
Molyneux is actually seriously mentally unstable which should be apparent from his position on things like parents having no right to any kind of authority over their own children.
His ideology is nothing new of course. He just takes it to new extremes. For those unfamiliar with this stuff the simplest way to describe it is a belief in an absolute right to non-interference taken to extremes. So for example, according to Molyneux’s ethical system a parent can leave their child or elderly mother or disabled sibling to starve or freeze to death. Why? Because forcing a parent to feed their child or their disabled family member would breach the parent’s absolute right to non-interference. And of course a parent cannot spank a child under any circumstances because that would constitute an act of aggression. This is just one example of the kind of moral insanity of Molyneux’s world. Unfortunately, with the rise of the internet these kinds of people are able to gain an audience and actually cause significant harm. There’s a generation of young people following his every word and internalising his message.
Of course as a Utopianist Molyneux is offering his delusional ethical system as an alternative social and political system to parliamentary democracy and classical liberalism. He seeks to deconstruct the modern nation state and believes that in its place an organic, international open society will spring force in which his radical non-interference ideology will gain “broad acceptance”, the institutions of the state will become obsolete and whither away(like Communism), all human interactions will become voluntary and conflict will disappear from the face of the earth.
The danger in all of this of course is that some people will take this fantasy seriously enough to attempt to enact it. And so, a “revolution” will be called for in which the state must be overthrown with violence and anyone who stands in the way is an enemy of mankind; a “tyrant”; a “statist” etc. This kind of mindset is becoming increasingly common as young people, aware of the genuine problems with the modern nation state are susceptible to and drawn in by the Utopianism of radical libertarianism. Even if they don’t turn violent they still represent a serious danger to society due to their belief systems, especially in terms of foreign policy.
You have any actual rebuttals instead of personal attacks?[/quote]
What do you think of my claim that utopian political ideologies serve as an “immortality project” - a way of giving the illusion of meaning and purpose to your life and providing explanations for the absurdities of life and of giving you a sense of immortality through contribution to and association with a grand scheme for the creation of a “better world?” How about that theory?[/quote]
Well considering you literally equated “a better world” to “utopia” and the rest of your argument is a straw man related to what you believe my personal motivations are(which isn’t worth a reply because personal motivations of the person making the argument are non-sequiter to the argument on it’s own merits), I would say I have nothing to discuss with you at all.
In place of “omniscient, omnipotent, interested Almighty Creator” put the platonic world of perfect forms…
[/quote]
I shan’t.
Exodus 20:3[/quote]
Okay then. Then I’ll summarize it plainly as I can. If there is a being of perfect knowledge, then the knowledge ascertained through our senses and as an extension the scientific method of categorizing sense data is by definition imperfect.
This is a self-defeating argument because you must rely on sense data to both have learned the word and concept of such a being and to communicate such an argument.[/quote]
I think we can agree here for the most part. Thank you. I can work with that.
My response is:
this is where that faith thingy comes into play
a. our imperfectness necessitates we must trust in Him to communicate to us
b. our imperfectness necessitates we must trust Him to do the requisite work to reach us with His plan whatever that may be
c. because our sense data is unreliable due to imperfectness the communication between He and us must be done on a spiritual and not on a (physical) sensory level
d. our imperfection makes us deeply fallible and easily swayed not to recognize His perfection
e. recognizing our imperfection is the first step toward recognizing His perfection
[/quote]
Hey sorry bout the previous post, didn’t see this reply. I’ll get back to it a little later
Well considering you literally equated “a better world” to “utopia”
[/quote]
No, I didn’t equate the two. I just used both terms in the same paragraph. Not the same thing.
Calling my argument a “straw man” is not a meaningful response. A “straw man” is where one misrepresents someone else’s position and then attacks the misrepresentation. I didn’t misrepresent your position. You have presented Molyneux’s “Universally Preferable Behaviour” as a universally applicable ethical system. When challenged on the technicalities of this system you did not respond. Now again in this thread you are proffering Molyneux’s fantasies again and this time you are also making a number of other even more extraordinary claims. Namely,
Toohuman: As long as you place certain human(in government or in religion) beings outside universal principals(sic) you bind yourself to…you are not an atheist.
And
Toohuman: Your god is the state and politicians and other statesman your proxies for the divine.
^^Those are your exact words. That was what I was responding to. I was not misrepresenting anything you said.
In this case your personal motivations are relevant because you are specifically talking about the motivations of everyone else. In fact, your argument that I quoted above is aimed at the motivations of everyone who does not subscribe to your radical libertarianism. You are making the claim that anyone who doesn’t subscribe to your brand of radical libertarianism is creating a religion for themselves by exalting other human beings to positions of authority.
[quote]
I would say I have nothing to discuss with you at all.[/quote]
Yes, I know it’s difficult when people call you out on your bullshit. But you can’t expect otherwise when you tell people that you have a universally applicable system of ethics. Oh, yes? And what is it? Oh, it’s too complex for me to explain. Watch this video. It just so happens that my ethical system is remarkably similar to this load of horseshit from Stefan Molyneux. That kind of crap doesn’t fly here. If you make claims you have to back them up. But you refused, and now you’re here in a religion thread trying to sell Molyneux again and this time claiming that anyone who doesn’t subscribe to your Utopianism is somehow creating their own religion by idolising human beings. Again, don’t expect not to be called out on this shit.
[quote]Severiano wrote:
I think people should be weened off of faith and it’s traditions so we can go with reason and the things we know.
We have a lot of people on this world who use faith, and everything with them stops at faith. There is no reasoning with them, they believe their world view is true and that God wants this and that for everyone, and they will kill you if you don’t agree as stated at the end of the video.
[/quote]
This is a fundamental human state of mind. You can replace religion with nationalism or feminism or even fucking soccer fandom and you’d essentially have the same thing.
I don’t get why people focus specifically on religion as if it’s the ONLY thing.
[quote]Severiano wrote:
I think people should be weened off of faith and it’s traditions so we can go with reason and the things we know.
We have a lot of people on this world who use faith, and everything with them stops at faith. There is no reasoning with them, they believe their world view is true and that God wants this and that for everyone, and they will kill you if you don’t agree as stated at the end of the video.
[/quote]
This is a fundamental human state of mind. You can replace religion with nationalism or feminism or even fucking soccer fandom and you’d essentially have the same thing.
I don’t get why people focus specifically on religion as if it’s the ONLY thing.[/quote]
You see those are all the same types of things based on bullshit we can connect on. We are so inventive in the ways we are empathetic that we create connections with one another that cause groups like the KKK and Nazi’s. In the process of our stupidly easy connections people become dogmatic about Nationalism, Racism and all kinds of horrible things, its true.
But, what if we put that sort of energy that really is a result of our Empathy, back into Empathy and recognize it as a valuable thing for it’s own sake? Fucks sake, if the people are right about mirror neurons it means we are programmed to feel empathetic as a result of our intelligence. Think of the magnitude of that for a minute? We do things like appreciate and develop artwork, music, culture, because of it. It comes totally natural to us, doesn’t need to be learned but maybe it can be refined and more appreciated. I don’t need to claim feeling what others feel is in our nature, it’s in the way our nervous system and brain work.
[quote]Severiano wrote:
I think people should be weened off of faith and it’s traditions so we can go with reason and the things we know.
We have a lot of people on this world who use faith, and everything with them stops at faith. There is no reasoning with them, they believe their world view is true and that God wants this and that for everyone, and they will kill you if you don’t agree as stated at the end of the video.
[/quote]
This is a fundamental human state of mind. You can replace religion with nationalism or feminism or even fucking soccer fandom and you’d essentially have the same thing.
I don’t get why people focus specifically on religion as if it’s the ONLY thing.[/quote]
You see those are all the same types of things based on bullshit we can connect on. We are so inventive in the ways we are empathetic that we create connections with one another that cause groups like the KKK and Nazi’s. In the process of our stupidly easy connections people become dogmatic about Nationalism, Racism and all kinds of horrible things, its true.
But, what if we put that sort of energy that really is a result of our Empathy, back into Empathy and recognize it as a valuable thing for it’s own sake? Fucks sake, if the people are right about mirror neurons it means we are programmed to feel empathetic as a result of our intelligence. Think of the magnitude of that for a minute? We do things like appreciate and develop artwork, music, culture, because of it. It comes totally natural to us, doesn’t need to be learned but maybe it can be refined and more appreciated. I don’t need to claim feeling what others feel is in our nature, it’s in the way our nervous system and brain work. [/quote]
Empathy and actions from empathy are entirely irrational. I thought you wanted to abandon irrationality and leave only the rational.
If, as you desire, we stick only to what is known, do you claim to know that murder is wrong?
