Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

*cough* crusades. *cough* witch hunts. *cough*

 Peregrine wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
They had Christian founders remember?

Not really. Some of them were Christians, but many of the important ones were deists who based their morality and ideas about government on secular principles. And we have explicit statements, both from those founders and in legal documents, that the US was explicitly not a Christian nation.

They still have their concepts of right and wrong from their parenting. Keep tracing it back and you find that everyone's sense of right and wrong comes in some way from Christianity (in modern western society, before anyone gets smart).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
If someone spent their entire life killing so they might survive, why would they suddenly see killing as a bad thing if we brought them to court?

They would not wait to be brought in court to understand that it is bad. They may be forced to do it by your random, unexplained assumption, but many people are forced to do things they consider bad to survive.

 Deadshot wrote:
Over time as our higher intelligence developed we started asking (frankly dumb) questions like "where did the world come from?" And based on our ancestors limited knowleddge (ie, no Big Bang or ability to study fossils) we concluded that someone must have made it.

Except this knowledge change nothing. Because who made/what caused the big bang in the first place?
The only difference is our ability to choose reasonable absence of answer (“We do not know yet and maybe we will never know. We can still try though. Let us build a super-telescope that will allow us to see the big bang!”) over unreasonable, unsubstantiated answers (“The great Muhaboudhesus shat the world one morning before going to fight against a C'tan. Now you must please Muhaboudhesus by circumcising pork and killing all the heretics, infidels, witches and homosexuals.”).

 Deadshot wrote:
Which is opposite to a predominantly Christian society, where their God says "No killing" and so its morally wrong

You kidding, right? Predominantly Christian society says “No killing”? Maybe, if you have a list of exceptions orders of magnitude long than the rule .

Not the same thing. Forcing a grown adult who has lived their life by good and evil to survive and kill will not have the same reaction as someone who has never even considered morality or right and wrong. A child forced to survive by killing (to eat or protect itself) would never even question thr moraity or see such a thing as so wrong that it makes people gasp and give you fearful dirty looks. As far as they would be concerned, its a survival act as basic as gakking and sleeping. Of course its a highly hypothetical scenario but I'm trying to illustrate how modern senses of morals are entirely based upon a Christian founding.

That's true, it changed nothing but now we have explanations other than divine intervention. Ancient people could not see the curvature of the Earth, so they concluded it must be flat. They could not fathom how the world came to be, so they used their limited knowledge of life. Something either grows (living) or is made frok wood and stone by hands. As the earth is mostly stone and other building materials, they concluded it must be constructed by someone large and powerful enough to make such a thing. That is how religion came to be. The other stuff came later.

Yes, exceptions. Crusades, witchhunts, etc. As noted with the Aztec points, those are religious kills, kills in the name of Christianity, God, protecting they innocent people from the followers of the Devil or returning the "Holy" lands to their rightful religion. Because its done in the name of religion, it becomes morally justified for those people. Just look at that "Gay Cake" issue which I believe is from my own city of Belfast. The bakery denied a group a Gay Rights cake with Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie because it violated their Christian beliefs, and so in their mind it became morally justified to discriminate.

 Deadshot wrote:
They still have their concepts of right and wrong from their parenting. Keep tracing it back and you find that everyone's sense of right and wrong comes in some way from Christianity (in modern western society, before anyone gets smart).

Trace it back still further and everyone gets their concepts of right and wrong from Ug the caveman. Although between "Christianity" and Ug, there are quite a large number of generations, periods of tribalism, civilisation, barbarism, renaissance and a myriad of other belief systems.

We stand on the shoulders of giants.

To say that Christianity is the font of all moral authority in Western civilisation is both disingenuous and, well, wrong. I am not Christian, my parents were not, nor were most of the people I grew up with. My values are my own, derived from a shared social empathy and a rational understanding of an individual in a functioning society. Not based on a religion cobbled together from the myths, legends and religious stories of a myriad of other middle eastern nations, filtered through the prism of European Pagan religions and a side order of "this is what we want people to believe" re-translation of the bible.

"They still have their concepts of right and wrong from their parenting. Keep tracing it back and you find that everyone's sense of right and wrong comes in some way from Christianity (in modern western society, before anyone gets smart)."

But the catch is, that's not getting "smart", that is being honest. What about other states and countries? What about how they are influenced by their world and yet so often have similar interests, discoveries, and beliefs. Even in these places not heavily influenced by Christian methodology many commonalities exist. Add to that, what of times before Christianity? What of the relevance of Islamic faith? What about the fact that Christianity takes many of its principles, values, and merits from religions and philosophies before even then? It's not that simple.

is this guy trolling? seriously.

Umm, it doesn't work like that. Not all morality is based in religion. Morality is based on a common code of a particular group to make sure people are not treated badly, mostly it was to protect themselves. The idea that all people should be treated fairly is not a religious idea. Neither are ideas against things such as theft, murder, ect.

 Deadshot wrote:
Of course its a highly hypothetical scenario but I'm trying to illustrate how modern senses of morals are entirely based upon a Christian founding.

Some people (myself included) believe morality is routed in the evolutionary advantages of cooperation. Morality is often observed in non-human lifeforms. I do not need God to tell me that murder is wrong, I can objectively see how much pain and distress it causes.

Murder and killing to survive are not the same things. Even our modern legal systems have clauses for self-defense and justifiable homicide.

The concept of murder as a crime or wrongdoing appears in many ancient cultures and predates Christianity. Case in point: The Ten Commandments predate Christianity by perhaps thousands of years. It's interesting that many of the cultures that have embraced murder (Aztecs for example), were actually motivated by religion. Thus the quote by Steven Weinberg:

Steven Weinberg wrote:Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

I find the assertion by some Christians that morality is dictated by god disturbing. Since it implies that without the threat of divine punishment, they themselves would be happy to rape and murder. I wonder how true that is.

 Deadshot wrote:
They still have their concepts of right and wrong from their parenting. Keep tracing it back and you find that everyone's sense of right and wrong comes in some way from Christianity (in modern western society, before anyone gets smart).

Ok, just for the sake of argument, let's grant your assumption that morality comes from religion, and even an atheist gets their morality from their religious parents (or grandparents, etc) and the religious society around them. Now why stop at "modern western society" when there's so much more to history? It's not like there was some discrete event where "modern western society" appeared out of nothing, it is part of a long and uninterrupted chain of history. So let's keep going back even earlier. As we do that we discover that "modern western society" can trace its origins to societies that existed before Christianity. The first Christians, like "modern western" atheists, got their concepts of right and wrong from their parenting. And those parents were not Christian. So even under your assumption that right and wrong comes from religion it still doesn't come from Christianity.

The only way your argument works is if you arbitrarily stop tracing the origin of a person's morality once you reach a Christian, and the only reason to stop at that point is if you've already decided that morality has to come from a Christian source. And I think it should be pretty obvious to everyone but you why this is a terrible argument.

Of course its a highly hypothetical scenario but I'm trying to illustrate how modern senses of morals are entirely based upon a Christian founding.

And you're failing miserably at it. The fact that this bizarre hypothetical slaughter-child who has never known any life beyond killing doesn't understand morality has nothing to do with a normal person. I don't know why you keep ignoring the fact that there's a middle ground between "slaughter everything in your path" and "Jesus". A person can grow up in a secular (or even non-Christian religious) environment without being completely apart from society and forced to spend their childhood killing to survive. So why not deal with the real world instead of stating the obvious that a person who grows up having to kill to survive is probably going to have a pretty warped understanding of right and wrong as a result?

Also what about slavery? We all kind of decided that slavery was amoral. Christianity was around for eighteen hundred years before that happened, with little to say on the matter. How did that happen?

Well put peregrine. I come from an atheist household. My grandmother, the only one I have ever had, is an atheist, and has, at most, been a doubter her whole life. I am a person with very firm morals. These morals aren't even all from my parents. What really cemented my belief that all people should be treated fairly is the negative treatment I have revived via some extreme bullying. A moral system akin to religion can even survive with no real religion, just look at Unitarian Unilateralism.

 Smacks wrote:
Also what about slavery? We all kind of decided that slavery was amoral. Christianity was around for eighteen hundred years before that happened, with little to say on the matter. How did that happen?

That's a good point. If all of our morality comes from Christianity then why did the slavery debate have Christians on both sides arguing that god supports their side and citing bible verses as justification? It's almost like those people had a sense of right and wrong that was independent of Christianity, and picked which parts of their religion to emphasize and which to ignore based on that independent sense of morality.

Even religious morals are based on the morals of non-religious people who invented these religions unless you believe that they are indeed based on the words of God.

 Deadshot wrote:


You will also note that I responded to that link. Reading just a few lines more reveals that those primate societies likely evolved such a system because there is benefit to a large group; less chance of attack, more eyes to find food, help rearing offspring. I would also direct you to where I say that in those societies, a primate has no issue killing off the Alpha male and taking over if he feels it would benefit him.

I also seriously recommend you take a step back and realise that age is not a factor in this at all. I don't take philosophy, but I don't need to to have my own views on how the world works. The way I see the world makes a hell of a lot more sense than what you seem to think. Animals, which humans are, kill each other when they feel it benefits them. So why are we different? Because a religion took over the world and made everyone think its wrong. Its not wrong, its disadvantageous because you go to jail. The whole concept of morality and right and wrong are illusions created by religion. Socioxlogy doesn't come into it because you are looking at societies already indoctrinated in religious values. It runs so deep that you can't even realise that it has infected you. And when I say you I mean it in a general sense.

Tell me, why do you believe its wrong to kill someone? Answer me that and let's change things up because this is becoming repetitive.

I mentioned age before I even knew how old you were, because that was the level of education that your arguments were showing when it comes down to complex systems of morality. You appeared to be mixing it up basic concepts of morality, social/societal conditioning, history, and evolution into one thing, and the level of sophistication of what you are using seems to be a warped version of our current A level syllabus. The fact you kind of are that age exonerates you of that being an issue because you learn as you get older, and slapping people down for not knowing what everyone else does is counterproductive and kind of nasty. Hence my apology.

As many other people have pointed out since, your logic fails at one basic hurdle. I'll illuminate it again for clarity's sake.

You have conceded that basic psychology and sociology can generate behaviours advantageous to group mentalities and societies, such as 'not killing'. You are attempting to counter with 'But it wouldn't be considered 'wrong' to kill! The concept of 'wrong' comes from religion!'

Alas, it does not. The concept of what is 'wrong' originally comes from those behavioural instincts. The reason that your average muggins does not go about raping and killing is because of empathy and guilt, the feeling that what he would be doing is 'bad'. Some people are born or raised with those mental capacities being underdeveloped, and as such are more prone to commit crimes because of it. But even then, you rarely get a person with their empathy/guilt completely non-existent, it just tends to be distorted (so they reaaallly love cats or can reason away what they are doing or something).

That empathy/guilt complex originally developed as a motivational tool to do/not do something that would be advantageous to us in our animal states. But as our levels of sentience expanded, language developed, and our first primitive societies began to form, it began to be codified beyond that. After a time, you are correct, it did get codified into 'religion'. And that did get passed down. But it's ultimate origin is not religion. That feeling of what you are doing being 'bad' or 'wrong' starts far before religion. And as such, the behaviours that generate it will have transitioned into human society as being regarded as 'unacceptable' or 'bad' behaviours by those human societies long before the religious spin was applied to them. The religions merely seized upon what was already there as common societal rules and turned them into religious ones.

(also, societies existed before religion. The study of those societies would be sociology/anthropology. So sociology does come into it.)

Some people are born or raised with those mental capacities being underdeveloped, and as such are more prone to commit crimes because of it. But even then, you rarely get a person with their empathy/guilt completely non-existent, it just tends to be distorted (so they reaaallly love cats or can reason away what they are doing or something).

Hitler loved dogs.

As always, your arguments are a joy to read Ketara. You're not a teacher, or a professor, or an educated philosopher are you?

It should also be considered that 'religion' itself is a highly loaded and complex word, especially when we're going back to the dawn of human time.

Was it religion when one guy had a bad dream next to a river, and became convinced there were evil monsters there?

Did it become religion when he told everyone else and they all started avoiding that part of the river?

Had it become religion yet when they started leaving small food caches as close as they could to that spot to try and appease the monster?

Was it quite religion when they told the next few tribes in the area, and they all started doing the same thing?

Had religion come into existence when somebody had another dream that it was an underwater monster that actually could swim up and down the river, and as such had the run of the whole river, and so decided they should leave regular offerings to it wherever they were on the river?

Was it religion yet when someone went into the 'cursed' part of the river and survived, so people thought that he was liked by the monster, and gave him special reverence?

When that fellow started telling other people what to do ('Bring me food'. Ug. ) because he was beloved of the river demon:- was that religion?

When writing was invented several hundred years, river demons, and people later, and those 'blessed' people starting writing their commands down, was it religion by that stage of the game? Or do we have to wait until monotheism hits? If so, why does Judaism count, but not Sumerian religion? And if Sumerian religion counts, why not the many variations that came before it?

Thing is, human societies and morality would have been evolving concurrently to each and every single one of those events. But at none of them really, can you specifically point to and say, 'That was where religion started!' in any substantive way. And if you can't trace the starting point of 'religion', how on earth can you link it to the starting point of 'morality'? These things are vastly complex systems that evolved alongside humanity, and until all of of humanity's history is known (which it never will be), trying to make such a vastly conclusive statement as 'Right and wrong originate with religion' is ultimately doomed to failure.

Evidently I see the world differently to the rest of you. And this thread is causing me great distress trying to convince all of you otherwise, and nor do I have the time to continue this arguement, so I'm going to now feth right off and do something useful with my time.

Every time someone rage quits, the Church of Satan gets another angel. Or something.

 Deadshot wrote:
Evidently I see the world differently to the rest of you. And this thread is causing me great distress trying to convince all of you otherwise, and nor do I have the time to continue this arguement, so I'm going to now feth right off and do something useful with my time.

Whilst it is never wise to say that disagreeing with the majority is a sign that the disagreer is wrong, I think in this case we are fairly safe in saying so.

As has been demonstrated, extending your own argument logically contradicts the conclusion you posit.

I do salute you for sticking to your guns however and I am sure we all here would be more than happy to doscuss these matters with you again when you have had some time to step back, calm down and re-eatablish your position.

 Smacks wrote:
Thus the quote by Steven Weinberg:

Steven Weinberg wrote:Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

I find the assertion by some Christians that morality is dictated by god disturbing. Since it implies that without the threat of divine punishment, they themselves would be happy to rape and murder. I wonder how true that is.

That, on the other hand, is also demonstrably untrue, unles you want to claim that everyone involved in the running of the Soviet Union were evil people. All it takes is a common cause, religion just happens to be a convenient excuse.


Also, Hitler. Can't make this point without mentioning him.

You guys are awesome.
Talking about religion is always a minefield and it has remained remarkably civil.

My background is Roman Catholic.
Not practicing so well, kids are in Catholic School however.

Personally I do believe that math and sciences should remain fairly "pure" in logical reasoning.
Pushing religious agendas before kids are in a stage to make a decision is rather... unethical I feel.

Long time ago in a dark time for me I checked out some of the COS stuff, rules were rather frighteningly straightforward.
It appears their "golden rule" has evolved since I fist looked.
It was originally as I understood "Do anything you want, provided you are willing to accept the consequences." which subscribes somewhat to the "ethic of reciprocity".
If you do harm to others expect the same back... or worse.
That is the funny thing with the "proper" golden rule where what "I" accept may be different than another person.
What is really frightening is Scientology tries to address this by taking into account the recipient's "tastes".

Yep, that separation of church and state is looking better each day.
Have fun with this topic, you know you do.

 Deadshot wrote:
Evidently I see the world differently to the rest of you. And this thread is causing me great distress trying to convince all of you otherwise, and nor do I have the time to continue this arguement, so I'm going to now feth right off and do something useful with my time.

I would have been more convinced if your assertion had fewer holes.

I think would be willing to agree with you that good and bad are human constructs, and that Christianity has had a hand in shaping western culture and morality (a big hand even). But to say that all morality comes from Christianity would be ignoring all the obvious counter examples that have been presented here. Why is it that only Christianity can influence our values and nothing else? That doesn't make much sense. Surely if one idea can influence us then others can too. There have been plenty of philosophers and writers through the ages that have shaped our beliefs. Many of them lived long before Christ.

I understand it can be distressing when lots of people disagree with you. Some people can be very adversarial, which makes it difficult to agree with them, even when they make good points. I don't think storming off and saying "feth" is the best response though.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
That, on the other hand, is also demonstrably untrue, unles you want to claim that everyone involved in the running of the Soviet Union were evil people. All it takes is a common cause, religion just happens to be a convenient excuse.


Also, Hitler. Can't make this point without mentioning him.

Hmmm, you make a good point sir. Though I find religious and political ideologies to be very similar in nature (perhaps exactly the same). I don't think the phrase "Cult of personality" is an accident. I wouldn't say that everyone in the soviet union was evil, but Stalin certainly was. Most people were probably just frightened and did what they had to in order to survive.

I think the quote is interesting because it highlights the danger of being told what to think. I agree that it is demonstrably untrue, there are probably lots of ways besides religion to convince good people to do bad things. If there even are any good people, it's all quite subjective, but that misses the point. Call it artistic license.

 Smacks wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
Evidently I see the world differently to the rest of you. And this thread is causing me great distress trying to convince all of you otherwise, and nor do I have the time to continue this arguement, so I'm going to now feth right off and do something useful with my time.

I would have been more convinced if your assertion had fewer holes.

I think would be willing to agree with you that good and bad are human constructs, and that Christianity has had a hand in shaping western culture and morality (a big hand even). But to say that all morality comes from Christianity would be ignoring all the obvious counter examples that have been presented here. Why is it that only Christianity can influence our values and nothing else? That doesn't make much sense. Surely if one idea can influence us then others can too. There have been plenty of philosophers and writers through the ages that have shaped our beliefs. Many of them lived long before Christ.

I understand it can be distressing when lots of people disagree with you. Some people can be very adversarial, which makes it difficult to agree with them, even when they make good points. I don't think storming off and saying "feth" is the best response though.

You misunderstand me. I am going through a rather difficult point in my life and it stresses me out having to argue and causes anxiety. So I'm trying something new where I simply ignore the problem and leave the arguement alone until the anxiety goes away. Pleazs don't interpret it as storming off. I'm just trying to keep myself in acceptable mental health. Feth is just what I say all the time. Comes from growing up the most deprived area in the whole of Northern Ireland, going to a middle class grammar school and being a non-conformist. For me its almost a colloquial term. I say feth just for the feth of it .

Anyway, just wanted to explain myself.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Deadshot wrote:
They still have their concepts of right and wrong from their parenting. Keep tracing it back and you find that everyone's sense of right and wrong comes in some way from Christianity (in modern western society, before anyone gets smart).

Ok, just for the sake of argument, let's grant your assumption that morality comes from religion, and even an atheist gets their morality from their religious parents (or grandparents, etc) and the religious society around them.

If we follow the argument's logic.... Why the feth is there a HUGE debate over same-sex marriage? Afterall, according to Christians (and quite a few other religions too) this is immoral and does not deserve rights, much less respect or debate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, I find it ironic, that in the study of history, if you look at the Scandinavian region, pre-Christianity, you'll find that women had rights that were almost on par-with mid-20th Century US women.


In Old Norway, a woman was allowed to own property, and pass it on for offspring to inherit. A woman was allowed to initiate divorce (I cannot recall if it was an open divorce, or if there had to be specific reasons for it). Women, provided they were property owners had a place at the Thing. They were afforded the vote in matters of legislation.


But, once Christianity becomes dominant in Europe, all of this is repressed. The Church dictates that a woman's "Godly Duty" is to bear children for her husband, and not much else... no divorce, no property ownership... nothing. Certainly, there were a few queens here and there in some countries, but if you look closely there's a lot more oppression/repression towards women until really the late 19th century.

 d-usa wrote:
Even religious morals are based on the morals of non-religious people who invented these religions unless you believe that they are indeed based on the words of God.

Surely that is the basic point of religion.

Religions usually give you (1) a cosmogony, (2) a moral compass, and (3) rules to follow as a member of the religion. (2) and (3) overlap because normally "being" a member of the religion is considered being "good" by the religion.

 Deadshot wrote:
Evidently I see the world differently to the rest of you. And this thread is causing me great distress trying to convince all of you otherwise, and nor do I have the time to continue this arguement, so I'm going to now feth right off and do something useful with my time.

It's not difficult to do something more productive than arguing on Dakka.

If/when you decide to return, remember that none of us have a problem with you personally. We're just a bunch of curmudgeonly gits on the internet who like arguing about things other than toy soldiers from time to time.

 Deadshot wrote:
Ancient people could not see the curvature of the Earth, so they concluded it must be flat.

Just as an aside, as this is one of my personal pet peeves....

Plenty of people figured out that it was round - this was theorized at least as early as the sixth century BC.

Not just theorised, it was tested experimentally.

Exactly. The whole deal with Columbus is that he WAS wrong, the Earth was really as big as Ptolemy (or whoever it was) had calculated, so he lucked out when he ran into America.

 Frazzled wrote:
Interesting that thats on an atheist website. That kind of supports what someone else was saying about who the supposed satanists really are.

Church of Satan and Satanic Temple people are typically self-professed atheists. Theistic Satanists are typically actually a variant of Christians inasmuch as they believe that God, Jesus, and Satan are actual entities.