Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

No, he's not. He's arguing that secular morality has no particular process for determining right and wrong. If there's no creator, no design, and we, as mankind, just came up with all of this through evolution and enlightment, what's the argument for choosing good over evil? How do we even know what's good?

Increasingly, in culture, we're seeing evidence of this "emotiveness." It's true because I feel it's true. There's no particular intellect or objective framework to it; it is, at its best, sort of a nod to best practices. At its worst, it's nihilism, a "none of this means anything anyway" that helps get us to many - not all - but many - of our mass shootings

 

On this we agree.

As for this ...

... the bolded part is true.

 

I was at a blackjack table and a guy had one of those $1 million bills in front of him. Every hand, he closed his eyes, looked skyward and rubbed the bill before he looked at his cards. Did he think he was going to win a mil betting $5 on blackjack?

 

That’s still classier than one of my dad’s old jobs, where they folded up fake $20s so people would open them up and find a half-sized sheet of paper inviting them to come down to the lot and pick out a new mobile home.

 

I guess I'll admit to being stupid, finally, or, at least, to being completely uncomprehending of what a million dollars really is (which is true).

I did not know that there actually even is a million-dollar bill.

 

No such thing, according to the Google Machine.

 

If you need a book or a priest to tell you it is right to be good to other people, it is your morality that I question.

Evolution and enlightenment are what teach us to treat one another well. We choose to be good, to be part of a community, because we have empathy and compassion, but also because it benefits us. Which is more trustworthy? Goodness based on compassion and community or goodness based on some deity that may or may not be fiction telling us to do good? I will put my trust in compassion and community every time.

This notion you keep trying to push that evil is caused by the lack of religion is bullshit. It is rhetoric meant to justify all the sacrifices people make in the name of religion and the horrible things that have been done in the name of one deity or another. It is a recruiting point. "If you don't go to church and put something in the plate when we pass it around, evil is going to overtake the world!" The religion business is big business, so y'all have to keep people feeding the machine somehow, right? Blame mass shootings on godlessness! That'll do it!

 

Except no one can provide anything that says there is a creator, a design or a divine process for determining good or evil. It is strictly a human invention because the masses were and are incapable of having self determination. God is a fairy tale. The Torah, the Koran and the testaments of the followers of Jesus are all man made.

 

Two things:

Religion, spirituality and faith actually can, and usually do, contribute -- often mightily -- to people's evolution and enlightenment. Certainly, there is the possibility of that.

And, if there is no religion, or respect for God or his teachings, as you suggest by calling it a fairy tale that shouldn't be respected or learned/taught, etc., what happens if/when there is no compassion/community, either in a person, or a group (or city or a country, i.e. a population, etc.)? This, I believe, is what Alma is trying to address -- the sense that this is what is happening today, that if there is no standard of right/wrong, then everything is OK. Only, we all know that's not the case.

People, at the most basic level, generally know right from wrong. They do. To some extent, it is even a function of survival (do this/don't do that to survive, etc). By extension, most people also have at least some understanding of good and evil. So where, at a germane level, does this knowledge come from? Where/when does it start?

 

Ah...well, like I said, I'm stupid. I actually haven't gotten in the habit of relying on Google. I mean, I use it, but obviously, I don't always think to do it.