No. You don’t need faith to come up with morals.
You need faith to believe your morals. Show them to me under a microscope or through a telescope. Show me the evil of rape. Show me evil at all. Let me measure it on a scale. Let’s derive a system of units to measure evil and/or good.
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You are talking about what is convenient and inconvenient. In your opinion. What is too risky, or not. In your opinion. And who, temporarily has the power to, for a time, enforce those preferences. Not about something actually being evil. Or, if you all ACTUALLY have a right to not be ruled by my theocratic regime (I have big goals, ok).
You make up morals you already realize don’t actually exist? Sounds irrational to me. Do you only refrain from doing X “terrible” thing to your neighbor in hopes he will return the favor? While knowing it wouldn’t actually be evil if he, or you, stopped abiding by this social contract? Our refraining from murder and rape is simply a matter of preference for a certain level of risk and convenience?
You’re reading too much into the atheism vs. theism debate when it comes to Russia. Lenin had a strong nihilistic streak and his Bolsheviks were conceived as a revenge against the “ignorant, drunk, superstitious Russian peasant” (his words) who in turn hated them (and crucified Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War as peasants were to a man supporters of Socialists)
Stalin gave up on the international and proselytizing element of communism (it was only for foreign “useful idiots” who actually believed it the Communist Internationale) and concentrated on rebuilding Mother Russia in his image. It wasn’t by chance he was called the Red Tsar.
And in the Russian Orthodox that’s all that matters. No universalist sentimentalist bullshit like in Catholicism - the only thing mattered is how Mother Russia fared under your watch.
So 4,5 million Ukrainians that Stalin starved to death don’t matter, nor do millions of ethnic Russians that also perished by Stalin’s hand - they are not an impediment to future Saint Josif.
Mother Russia aka the USSR expanded to the river Elbe and was feared throughout the world and that’s good enough.
What does it take to get canonized?
Catholicism
Gruesomely tortured and killed because you refused to renounce your unwavering faith
Eschewing material world and dedicating oneself to helping the less fortunate ones
etc
Russian Orthodoxy
Being an undefeated admiral
Being a not completely deranged tsar
Being a successful general with a high body count of one’s enemies
etc
Not much discussion about theological issues, one’s morality or faith.
Here’s Saint Fyodor, patron saint of Russian strategic nuclear bombers:
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He’s wasn’t Russian Orthodox. Sorry, just focusing on…Stalin, atheist or no. Not that the rest isn’t interesting.
You don’t need faith for that.
Ask a rape victim to explain all of that.
Ask the rapists throughout history raping the women of the conquered. Preference. A burglar might not want his stuff stolen, doesn’t mean he feels morally obligated to not burgle.
If “feelings” are being offered as evidence then ask the religious about their religious feelings and experiences while in worship…
Show me evil. Whatever your scientific instrument, I’ll correctly point out that all you can show me are acts and thoughts. But not the evil or good they supposedly fall under. You just have to…believe and hold to them like facts.
Or make up morals that you know aren’t real and treat your deliberate lies as somehow worth anymore than an opinion.
I believe it’s evil but it really isn’t…I believe blue is the best color, but really it isn’t. So on. That, to me, sounds even less rational than following/relying on something that humanity seems almost universally oriented for. Predisposed to. Naturally inclined to. Faith. Belief.
Oh, come on. We all know he’s correct. That’s why the beneficiary of a bad call in athletics will always agree it was bad.
First off, why the obsession with rape? Second, what does it have to do with religious faith being irrational? Third, you don’t need to believe in God to be anti-rape, murder, theft, etc.
They may indeed agree but they might not say it.
Isn’t it a sign of being a fully realized human to be able to use reason to go against nature?
It’s the example being used. Do you find its use as the persistent example to be morally offensive? But you need faith to believe in a god and/or good and evil.
It is one faculty. Like faith.
You don’t need faith for that. Society can come up with codes of behavior without using faith or thinking about god.
And then it can put them right back down. And it still doesn’t make the act evil. Or, good.
And I’m telling you in Russia it doesn’t matter.
When you think about atheism vs. theism you imagine a giant, unbridgeable philosophical gap between, I don’t know, the Pope and Richard Dawkins.
In Russia it doesn’t matter. As the Russian Orthodox Church has no problem in canonizing self-declared atheists nor does anybody else have a problem with fluid identities.
Especially Georgians who were notorious for regularly switching between Islam and Christianity in Medieval times. The most egregious example being Georgian king George XI who went from Christian Orthodoxy, Shia Islam until finally setting on Roman Catholicism.
Today we’re praising the red star, tomorrow we’re burning scented candles and kissing icons. Whatever.
Enslaving Africans could be good. Then not. Then, who knows, maybe good again.
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