Assuming that the pleasure/pain principle is an established fact, which I think is agreed, how could scientific materialism disturb that mechanism in order to discipline a population to feel it has duties which are contrary to sensual appetites and even self preservation considerations.
Maybe with carrots and sticks but then with the former you have conditioning and with the latter fear. Isn't it more efficient to induce a sense of rightness and wrongness on moral grounds. Whenever you see a horse being used by men there is a whip involved somewhere. The horse has to be "broken".
It is difficult to write about the grey areas. One needs polarised ideal-types to clarify thinking. They are not to be taken literally.
. Religion and superstition are and have been extremely powerful forces in the development of human history.
Vengo wrote-
Quote:. Religion and superstition are and have been extremely powerful forces in the development of human history.
Judging by the state of all the other species, some of which the nature programmes show us going about their daily doings, the dung beetle for example, I incline to the the view that it's a jolly good thing too that religion and superstition are and have been extremely powerful forces in the development of human history. The only enviable creature I have ever seen in a movie is the sloth and I think that was shot under optimum conditions.
I think that ideal-type extremes are very appropriate for understanding the complexities of the middle ground, first order Taylor series notwithstanding, although I am willing to say that I'm open to being re-educated on the matter.
How could you identify a teaser from the real thing otherwise?
The rest seems straightforward enough unless I've missed something.
One might say that intelligent design is an ongoing process of trying to discover, scientifically in the case of the cat, how to live life to the optimum value. If we assume an intelligent designer, like Einstein assumed he was riding a light beam, we have a motive for such a study which I don't think is the case if we dismiss the idea. Any motives, if we dismiss intelligent design, are suspected of being tricky versions of sexual selection gimmicks precisely because they have a human origin and thus are subject to human intelligence applied to animalistic "vices". In the evolution theory all is fair in love and war and might is right.
The main problem anti-IDers have, it seems to me, is that they are unaware that they are an infinitesimal part of a rolling destiny of humanity and that the problems they point to are teething troubles and if there are to be any deep structural problems they are trying to bring them on. They are impatient. And it is logical that they are.
It's as if they want all the problems solving right now and if they are not Christianity is to blame.
If intelligent design is the study of how to live life to the fullest, then why does it even need its own name? We already have psychology courses, and we already have philosophy for the more theoretical studies of happiness
In evolutionary theory, we don't have to assume that all societal bonds are broken. Human society is a real thing, people are ostracized from communities, and that is a very big strike against their reproductive capabilities
I think what you're thinking of is more that an athiest will tend to see religion as a crutch.
To me, the best parts of religion are the parts that tell us to treat each other better, love your neighbor as yourself and all that.
Unfortunately, so many people are stuck with this idea of God where he's the big guy raining fire and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrha, punishing New Orleans with a hurricane for its tolerance of homosexuality, and all too often, these people use religion not as a guide for how to do good, but as a guide for how not to get punished.
Quote:In evolutionary theory, we don't have to assume that all societal bonds are broken. Human society is a real thing, people are ostracized from communities, and that is a very big strike against their reproductive capabilities
I'm not at all sure what that means I'm afraid.
Quote:I think what you're thinking of is more that an athiest will tend to see religion as a crutch.
Yeah- it's one of their big straw-men. Projection probably. They are in repression on its other functions.
Quote:To me, the best parts of religion are the parts that tell us to treat each other better, love your neighbor as yourself and all that.
And the splendid inspirations it has offered to the brightest sparks.
You mean the Sermon on the Mount I suppose. I agree entirely. It is putting it into effect that is taking longer than some might previously have thought. In fact, it seems to me, its opponents are the very people who slow that process down and the loudest to whinge about it.
Quote:Unfortunately, so many people are stuck with this idea of God where he's the big guy raining fire and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrha, punishing New Orleans with a hurricane for its tolerance of homosexuality, and all too often, these people use religion not as a guide for how to do good, but as a guide for how not to get punished.
They are suspected by me of having more cynical motives than that.
I think intelligent design is eminently suitable for the USA. It makes a market out of religious ideas. Sort of a trust-buster. If all goes to plan, on the theory of the wisdom of large numbers, the US should evolve the perfect religion to suit it's situation like all sound religions do. And the US has a number of "situations". States they are known as I gather.
It wouldn't do here because we have an established religion which nobody takes much notice of but it's there when we need it. And one situation more or less.
Your constitution writers , in my opinion, were remiss in failing to provide the US with a similar device thus leaving the door open for a multitude of heretical sects to get established on a sound pecuniary footing at a time when the population was more gullible than it is now, if you can imagine such a circumstance.
What I'm trying to say is that selection happens in the environment a species exists in, not in some primitive cave-man world where there are no rules.
As humans, we're social creatures, we can't survive as well on our own as we can in groups. Because the group benefits the individual, the group's benefit is the individual's benefit, and the group's loss is the individual's loss.
generally the people who have the least to gain from society are the ones who are least happy with it.
However, religious groups aren't the only ones that create codes of ethics that are beneficial to the group, they're just the only ones who have been able to back it up with punishment that will even extend past the grave leading back into
If you were an athiest, I don't think it would seem unreasonable that the existence of God is crutch, not for the individual, but for a group that wants to use something to threaten its followers into doing something they should do anyway.
If by splendid inspirations you mean the curiosity to investigate into the nature of God's creation the way Father Bruno(a man of the cloth who was tortured and burned at the stake) did, then yes.
Well of course, once you know how to justify everything you do to a point where you don't believe you'll be punished, you're free to do just about anything.
I think one of the best things about our constitution is that congress isn't allowed to make any law regarding establishments of religion.
How it is "backed up" is a matter of rhetoric.
with all other societies competing its members must share and agree to some basic principles or else the society will simply vanish. Along with any of the benefits, real and imagined, that may accrue. 
The problem with ideal-type extremes is that in complex issues, the middle ground is a myth. The only people who are truly in the middle of a complex debate are the people who don't yet have an opinion. Everyone else has a set of beliefs and non-beliefs, and when you mix both sides together by taking some beliefs of one side and some beliefs of another, you'll still find yourself on the opposite extreme from someone.
Your talk of making a market out of religion reminds me of Jesus and the temple merchants.
I think what you're thinking of is more that an athiest will tend to see religion as a crutch. The idea being that people are weak and therefore need some sort of boogey-man to threaten them with harm if they step out of line.
To me, the best parts of religion are the parts that tell us to treat eachother better, love your neighbor as yourself and all that. Unfortunately, so many people are stuck with this idea of God where he's the big guy raining fire and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrha, punishing New Orleans with a hurricane for its tolerance of homosexuality, and all too often, these people use religion not as a guide for how to do good, but as a guide for how not to get punished.
As appealing as your argument is that such events were merely growing pains in the life of the Catholic Church, I think it would be extremely naive to say that in some cases, religion is trying to squash scientific research it doesn't approve of(see the daily destruction of leftover frozen embryos in fertility clinics that could have been used to benefit stem cell research, but were instead senselessly destroyed.)
I think its opponents aren't just slowing the process down, but reversing it and trying to twist the word of the lord to justify their mockery of his teachings, applying the name of God the same way a cheap whore applies make-up.
I'm inclined to think atheism is a crutch because it enables people to avoid dealing with the fiendish complexities of theology. Their egos demand simple explanations and there are none. Hence their complete failure to deal with any discussion involving social consequences. They prefer to examine specimens and forget all about the street outside. Atheism seems to me to be a religion for mediocrities and I think the Soviet communist experience is reasonable evidence for that. Only the fossil fuel reserves they have through no skill of their own is saving them from total collapse.
I don't think that we (Anti's) ignore the other aspects of religion. Rather we recognize that all members of a given society must "be on the same page" so's to speak. We simply would prefer to do it without the hocus-pocus.
We atheists do not regard women as intrinsically inferior.
We atheists do not regard female intellect as inferior. Unable to become a Priest or minister or a President for that matter. Again only some religions do this.
I think a societies could probably succeed without resort to imaginary Deities, Creators, Paradises, Intelligences, or Singularities but so far, in human experience, they have been facets of of all the successful ones.
I didn't understand the stuff about particles and atoms, I thought fusion was two people farting simultaneously under a duvet.
I'm off to iron my denim hotpants (cos I'm a girl).
So you see, women are superior in important respects besides being responsible for baby production, most of the mayhem and the world's best solace. That you don't regard yourself as "intrinsically inferior" is a piece of self flattery on your part. An attempt to be equal to them.
Spendi, I feel like when you break up my message line by line, you're not responding to its content but rather to individual lines, much like how 24 hour news networks only play soundbites of speaches.
As far as your posts regarding the influence of language on rhetoric, I believe that language can influence rhetoric, but you're definitely oversimplifying it, and I certainly don't think that the bible had anything to do with making the west the rugged place that it was. I guess what I'm saying is, that I'd like a citation on almost any of your major points from that english language bible post.
In most countries today religion is so much on the defensive, so 'broadminded' and complaisant and unassuming, that we can hardly throw our minds back to the time when Darwin was preached against in every pulpit and Hegel denounced as heretical. Similar conduct in the Bible Belt of the US or Ireland or Spain is smiled at and deplored even by the most pious of churchmen.
I've never known athiests to dodge complexity, and I doubt that moral athiests are less likely than moral theists to do good deeds.
Beyond that, the examples you're giving only further prove my point that religion( do good things to other people or god will punish you) is better at uniting people under an ideal than just the ideal(do good things to other people).
Absolutely not! I look at them as equals.
The feminine stands closer to the cosmic.. It is rooted deeper in the earth and it is immediately involved in the grand cyclic rhythms of Nature. The masculine is freer, more animal, more mobile--as to sensation and understanding as well as otherwise. --more awake and more tense.
The male livingly experiences Destiny, and he comprehends Causality, the causal logic of the Become. The female, on the contrary, is herself Destiny and Time and the organic logic of the Becoming, and for that very reason the principle of Causality is for ever alien to her. Whenever Man has tried to give Destiny any tangible form, he has felt it in the feminine form, and he has called it Moirai, Parcae, Norns. The supreme deity is never itself Destiny, but always either its representitive or its master--just as man represents or controls woman. Primevally, too, woman is the seeress, and not because she knows the future, but because she is the future. The priest merely interprets the oracle; the woman is the oracle itself, and it is Time that speaks through her.
The man makes History, the woman isHistory.
