Religion versus human dignity.

I am interested in contributors views on this word “dignity” as used in the original quotation which I repeat for convenience.

Quote:

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion.

Weinber

Without an after life, mortal life is precious.

I know a number of christians friends from when i was in the "faith". And i asked most about why there in it, and those who i can find completely honest will say fear of hell. Christianity is religion of love, then why arent their ppl feeling it?

Finally i say a mortal life can give a eternal meaning. Weather for good or evil, we remember rome, we rember Jesus no matter christ or not, we rember hitler for evil, we rember..... See you can trully impact the world, so its not just the here and now its forever on earth.

Precious does not mean meaning of life. Meaning can only obtain from ultimate purpose.

Death of souls and bodies make that ultimate purpose impossible.

And the word "precious" can also be negative. It totoally depends on people's attitudes towards life. A person who cherish life most can also have the great possiblity to live dissipated life if his expectation fails in his life time.

As for Juses Christ, he is not human, otherwise he is merely a crazyman just because he preached that he himself was the god and he was willing to die for saving humans from the sin by sheddng his blood on cross.

I don't know that you'v ever read the Bible or know anything about Christianity at all. According to the Bible, afterlife is not a reward, it's the real thing no matter that you are firm beliver or not(the believer will go to heaven and nobeliever will go to hell). . .

I'm afraid you didn't get my point. Wolf_ODonnell.
I'm not quite sure the statement "goodness" equates with "conformity" is right or not. Because in my opinion "goodness" does not only mean the knowledge of goodness which one should abtain by reasoning, but also refer to the self-knowing of goodness which I believe does not come from the education or any reasoning.

The fact is that the knowledge of goodness you get from reasoning will not ensure you to do the good thing.

Actually they are not goodness at all. Without higher standards, Humans behavior would subject to the laws of benefing himself at whatever it costs.

I don't know that you'v ever read the Bible or know anything about Christianity at all.

According to the Bible, afterlife is not a reward, it's the real thing no matter that you are firm beliver or not(the believer will go to heaven and nobeliever will go to hell).

And the reason that a Christian go to the heaven is not the reward that he do everything according to the Ten Commandments, just that he believe that God is real thing and he would like to live in Juses Christ(I'm not very sure about the original words).

And Buddhist believes afterlife too, not because it's the reward given by whatever the God.

The reason why I said life is meaningless without afterlife is that you can't solve the problem where did you come from and where will you go after death.

Personally I choose option C - literary invention.

wwlcj1982,
I have a number of contentions with your previous post.

Quote:

Precious does not mean meaning of life. Meaning can only obtain from ultimate purpose.

Firstly, is english your first language? Sentences like this lead me to suspect otherwise. Regardless, from this I can only extrapolate that you are saying that the meaning of life is mutually exclusive to 'ultimate purpose'.
My first contention, if that is indeed what you are saying, is with your use of the phrase 'meaning of life'. This is the meaning of life.


Life.
-noun
1. the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.


Beyond this, life has no meaning, until of course you start to equate meaning with purpose, as you seem to be doing. The purpose of life is to continue. It could be argued that this or that magical deity set it all in motion for whatever nefarious reason the believer can come up with, but without any evidence to support such a thing the arguments always run hollow and empty. Absent any evidence, we must judge by what life does. What life does is continue, by any means necessary.

wwlcj1982,
Death of souls and bodies make that ultimate purpose impossible.

wwlcj1982 wrote:

I don't know that you'v ever read the Bible or know anything about Christianity at all. According to the Bible, afterlife is not a reward, it's the real thing no matter that you are firm beliver or not(the believer will go to heaven and nobeliever will go to hell). . .

A spurious contention actually, since the dead "are conscious of nothing at all." (Ecclesiastes 9:5)

wwlcj1982,

Quote:

And the word "precious" can also be negative. It totoally depends on people's attitudes towards life. A person who cherish life most can also have the great possiblity to live dissipated life if his expectation fails in his life time.

Try as I might, I can't extrapolate anything meaningful from this mess. Dissipated life? Huh?

Quote:

As for Juses Christ, he is not human, otherwise he is merely a crazyman just because he preached that he himself was the god and he was willing to die for saving humans from the sin by sheddng his blood on cross.

Yes, it is much easier to believe he must have been a supernatural uberbeing, than to believe he was a regular guy with ego issues.
Personally I choose option C - literary invention.

wwlcj1982 wrote:

I'm afraid you didn't get my point. Wolf_ODonnell.
I'm not quite sure the statement "goodness" equates with "conformity" is right or not. Because in my opinion "goodness" does not only mean the knowledge of goodness which one should abtain by reasoning, but also refer to the self-knowing of goodness which I believe does not come from the education or any reasoning.

You missed my point. I never stated goodness meant the knowledge of goodness. In fact, goodness is anything but. It is acting on the knowledge.

wwlcj1982 wrote:

The fact is that the knowledge of goodness you get from reasoning will not ensure you to do the good thing.

Nor will the self-knowing goodness. Case in point, look at any anti-Semite or black-hating bigot. Self-knowing of goodness is no better.

wwlcj1982 wrote:

Actually they are not goodness at all. Without higher standards, Humans behavior would subject to the laws of benefing himself at whatever it costs.

Yet somehow the animals that don't have these higher standards care for others and exhibit some sense of altruism. Confucianism is an atheistic belief that sets standards similar to those in any other religion you can find. They're clearly not higher standards, yet they achieve the same thing.

Furthermore, as there is no concept of Heaven and Hell with the atheistic belief, there isn't the chance that people might do something for a reward and not for the act itself.

wwlcj1982 wrote:

I don't know that you'v ever read the Bible or know anything about Christianity at all.

]


An unwarranted assumption. Just because I disagree with you does not mean I do not know anything about Christianity at all. I can prove that I know something about Christianity.

Jesus was crucified on the cross and Christians say that it was meant to be and that he died for our sins. It is said that through that act, he saved us all etc. etc.

wwlcj1982 wrote:

According to the Bible, afterlife is not a reward, it's the real thing no matter that you are firm beliver or not(the believer will go to heaven and nobeliever will go to hell).

It still doesn't prevent it from being a reward.

wwlcj1982 wrote:

And the reason that a Christian go to the heaven is not the reward that he do everything according to the Ten Commandments, just that he believe that God is real thing and he would like to live in Juses Christ(I'm not very sure about the original words).

That is doctrine

wwlcj1982 wrote:

And Buddhist believes afterlife too, not because it's the reward given by whatever the God.

Your grammar is starting to break down. Buddhists believe in reincarnation. The Nirvana they speak of equates more to nothingness than an afterlife.

wwlcj1982 wrote:

The reason why I said life is meaningless without afterlife is that you can't solve the problem where did you come from and where will you go after death.

We still can't. Just because you believe the afterlife is there, doesn't mean it is. Just because someone says its there, doesn't mean it is.

A life can still be meaningless with an afterlife, something you don't deny, I suppose. An afterlife therefore does not mean give a life meaning. It does not give a life purpose. It gives the person somewhere to go after they dead, but it does not give them meaning or purpose.

Take a Christian that doesn't follow any of Christ's teachings, but only believes that Jesus is his Saviour, that Jesus is the Son of God and that only through Jesus will he have salvation. He doesn't give to charity. He doesn't do anything to help anyone.

What purpose does his life have then? What was the meaning of his life? He still goes into the afterlife according to you, and if you believe in Hell, then he goes into the afterlife even if he sinned and doesn't get to Heaven.

He had none.

The existence of the afterlife didn't give his life any purpose or meaning.

I just realised that one of my responses got cut off... specifically the one that staets solely "That is doctrine". Unfortunately, I can't remember what it was exactly I wanted to say in response, so ignore those three words.

If you choose "literary invetion", then you would encounter the question that how can somethng fictioned become religion. I'm working on this thing. But evidences seem to support that it's impossible. I'm not quite sure though.

Why don't you get it. Can you prove this world is real? You can't, but you believe it's real because no evidences so far have disproved it.

wwlcj1982 wrote:

Why don't you get it. Can you prove this world is real? You can't, but you believe it's real because no evidences so far have disproved it.

A muddled assertion. All evidence available, empirical, deducible, and inducible, experiential, referential, and inferentional, indicates that to within a degree of probability vanishingly short of absolute certainty "this world" is "real"; it is not that " ... no evidences so far have disproved it ... ", it is that all evidence available, empirical, deducible, and inducible, experiential, referential, and inferentional, supports the propostion that "this world" is "real", while no evidence, empirical, deducible, or inducible, experiential, referential, or inferentional, none whatsoever - zip, zilch, zero, as in "ain't any" - contraindicates it - a very different circumstance, one which renders illogical any argument against physical reality as we observe and define it.

Conversely, for the proposition you forward, all evidence available, empirical, deducible, and inducible, experiential, referential, and inferentional, indicates that to within a degree of probability vanishingly short of absolute certainty, "that world" is not real, while in support of your proposition there is no evidence available, empirical, deducible, or inducible, experiential, referential, or inferentional, none whatsoever - zip, zilch, zero, as in "ain't any" - which would indicate for it - a circumstance which poses immense difficulty for any argument in support of your proposition.

Your proposition may be presented, and on these boards has been presented by many - but none on these boards has correctly or successfully argued that proposition; the forwarding of your proposition has been apart from the evidenced and the rational. As offered here, by those who have undertaken the effort, your proposition proceeds from myth, conjecture, assertion, preference, and assumption, not from observation, investigation, deduction, confirmation, and assessment. You offer an emotional guess, not a reasoned conclusion. You present agenda, not argument, you preach, you do not persuade.

I submit that religious faith cannot be differentiated in objective, academically sound, forensically valid manner from superstition.

I'm sorry. I don't quite follow you.

Why do you think my proposition are not rational.

All the evidences you gathered are from this world. How can you prove the reality of this world by evidences gathered from this world?

I have already implied the difference between the "superstition" and "religious faith".

As soon as the "religious faith" is disproved, it's superstition, and we should abandon it. Otherwise, it's not.