Religion versus human dignity.

neologist wrote:

I'm afraid Kate would disagree with Solomon's assertion that the dead ". . . are conscious of nothing at all." (Proverbs 9:5)

Aw, what the hell did Solomon know . . . everybody claims he was wise, but the idjit had more than one wife, completely destorying any contention of wisdom on his part . . .

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Setanta wrote:

neologist wrote:
I'm afraid Kate would disagree with Solomon's assertion that the dead ". . . are conscious of nothing at all." (Proverbs 9:5)

Aw, what the hell did Solomon know . . . everybody claims he was wise, but the idjit had more than one wife, completely destorying any contention of wisdom on his part . . .

Speaking of dumb, I botched the location of Solomon's words. The quote is from Ecclesiastes.

And you're right about the dweebality, or nerdociousness, of having more than one wife. He paid for it in the end, you know.

Meantimes, he did have a few upbuilding things to say.

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kate4christ03 wrote:

... if we start blaming religion for the evils that people within them do then next we will find a way to blame outside entities for what child molestors do..etc...and then no person would be responsible for their own actions......

Straw man. Human behavior contrary to the good of the human species and its social structure is inimical to the propagation of the species and the maimtenance of its its social structure irrespective of philosophic construct. The apparently unique-to-humans concepts of "morality" and "ethics" are themselves simply constructs, deriving from the also apparently unique-to-humans ability to engage in "higher reasoning"; at root they are but cogitative expansions on genetically ingrained traits, instincts, little different from instincts such as those responsible for pack/hive order, territoriality, and inhibiting interbreeding and canabalism. Despite the need/compulsion of some to think we are "special", superior to other species, that distinction is a subjective, arrogant, preference-based assumption unsupported by any evidence or objective appraisal thereof.

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Kate wrote

Quote:

if we start blaming religion for the evils that people within them do then next we will find a way to blame outside entities for what child molestors do..etc...and then no person would be responsible for their own actions......

We need to take care with the words "responsibility" and "molestation". Religion is predominantly a social phenomenon. It provides a mutual semantic framework for "living". The fact that believers endorse "an afterlife" gives succour to those extremists amongst them who would alter the details of the "entry requirements". Are believers willing to take "responsibility" for THAT? ....are believers willing to take "responsibility" for religious indoctrination of children which might be termed by some to be "mental molestation"?

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fresco wrote

Quote:

The fact that believers endorse "an afterlife" gives succour to those extremists amongst them who would alter the details of the "entry requirements". Are believers willing to take "responsibility" for THAT?

so your saying that a religion is responsible for however an individual interprets the "religious text" (even if its interpreted wrong) and when that individual acts out in an evil way, we must blame the religion not the individual??? sorry I don't agree.......

fresco wrote

Quote:

are believers willing to take "responsibility" for religious indoctrination of children which might be termed by some to be "mental molestation"?

i think you totally missed my point and the subject.........

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Kate.

Maybe it is you misses the point.

My first point is analogous to the social tolerance of "recreational alcohol" even though we know it might lead to "alcoholism". My second point is that "molestation" comes in all varieties. Both "reponsibility" and "molestatation" can be subject to social negotiation. Such negotiation is an everyday occurence in litigation.

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fresco my only point was that i dont think its right to blame religion for the sins of men.........we all are accountable for our mistakes......if we solely lay the blame of evil done by men, to religion then where is the accountability...and what's the next step....after we let all the nuts go who do things in the name of "their religion" do we then move on to child molestors and say that they can't be held responsible for their actions......etc that was my pt....that is what i was saying about molestors..they are just an example..................

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kate4christ03 wrote:

fresco wrote
Quote:
The fact that believers endorse "an afterlife" gives succour to those extremists amongst them who would alter the details of the "entry requirements". Are believers willing to take "responsibility" for THAT?

so your saying that a religion is responsible for however an individual interprets the "religious text" (even if its interpreted wrong) and when that individual acts out in an evil way, we must blame the religion not the individual??? sorry I don't agree.......

The "disagreement" to which you allude proceeds from yet another straw man argument; fresco neither said nor implied any such thing as you alledge. His observation that religion provides fertile ground for extremist manipulation was concise, cogent, astute, and as more than amply demonstrated by the assembled body of recorded history, entirely accurate.

Quote:

fresco wrote
Quote:
are believers willing to take "responsibility" for religious indoctrination of children which might be termed by some to be "mental molestation"?

i think you totally missed my point and the subject.........

No, fresco is entirely on point - you are attempting to change the subject. Leaving aside consideration of spirituality (an entirely separate, though tangentially related subect), religion as it exists in its myriad manifestations and is practiced by its diverse legions of adherents unambiguously and inarguably is a purely learned behavior, a social construct, by definition a product of indoctrination.

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Kate,

We can of course all agree that the hypothetical "child molester" is "bad"....but in reality every actual case tends to be different.....what if the perpetrator was himself assaulted as a child ?....what if he "heard Satan" telling him to do it ?....etc.

One of the functions of religion is to deal in absolutes...."certainties" and "truth" lie at the heart of its psychological attraction, but "social reality" is in essence a set of fluid categorizations that shift according to circumstance. "Thou shalt not kill"...but this is a "Just War" argues the army chaplin (with himself) as he "blesses" the troops prior to battle.

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Kate, I congratulate you for defending your position as well as you have. I particularly like your response to my contention that other-worldly doctrines diminish our appreciation of, and capacity to enjoy, this world. You argued that you ARE enjoying your life. What can I say except to note that I think your perspective LIMITS the range of your appreciation and capacity. But--I know--that is very presumputous of me.
I hope you have read the Peckham article provided by Fresco.

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timberlandko wrote:

rosborne979 wrote:
ebrown_p wrote:
Religion has played a key role in some of the greatest (as well as some of the worst) parts of the human experience.

Can you give some examples of the "greatest parts of human experience" which religion has played a role in.

Thx

I'd be interested to see if anyone can come up with a single example of overall benefit to the human condition which may be directly and singularly attributable to religion.

Me too (which is why I asked the question). But I see no takers yet.

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Rosborne and Timber, the only example I can give of an alleged "overall benefit to the human condition" provided by religion is one often mentioned in anthropology textbooks. It is the "universal function" alleged for religion that it provides an absolute moral code by means of which societies control critical areas of human behavior--the behaviors, for example, regulated by The Golden Mean, Moses' decalog, and the prescriptions of the Koran.
I know, however, of religious beliefs that involve no monotheistic god, but which serve to regulate behavior. The Zinacantecos of highland Chiapas, for example, believe that people who fail to live in "traditional" ways, i.e., the conventions of Zinacantan, will suffer illness sent them as punishment by their ancestors. The same is described by Margaret Mead for the Manus of New Guinea. And there are many others. These ARE supernaturalist belief systems, but they involve no God in the Christian or Muslim sense. Nor are their morals necessarily absolute (the people in question don't think in terms of the dichotomies, absolute-relative, eternal-temporal, etc.). Their ancestors, nature spirits, demons, and other supernatural enforcers of morality are characterized only in terms of their relative advantage of power, not their absolute authority.

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OK, JLN - demonstrate that alleged "universal function" to be

a) Universal

and

b) Wholly excusive to, a unique property of, religion

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Timber, take that up with the textbook anthropologists, not with me.
But I might suggst that if the social functions alleged for religion are not "universal," they are probably "general" (i.e., widespread).
And I share your skepticism regarding the exclusivity of those functions for religion. Other institutions might serve the same functions--different structures can serve similar functions. Indeed, there was an anthropologist, Walter Goldschmidt, who wrote a book arguing that the major institutional structures of mankind, e.g., marriage, funerals, religion, etc. are not necessarily universal but some "functions" are, e.g., a method for determining paternity, a social way of dealing with social loss, via death, and a cultural ideology of origins, etc.. He argued, as I recall, that these universal functions can, and are, served by a range of (meaning different) structures (i.e., institutions).

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Timber, take that up with the textbook anthropologists, not with me.
But I might suggst that if the social functions alleged for religion are not "universal," they are probably "general" (i.e., widespread).
And I share your skepticism regarding the exclusivity of those functions for religion. Other institutions might serve the same functions--different structures can serve similar functions. Indeed, there was an anthropologist, Walter Goldschmidt, who wrote a book arguing that the major institutional structures of mankind, e.g., marriage, funerals, religion, etc. are not necessarily universal but some "functions" are, e.g., a method for determining paternity, a social way of dealing with social loss, via death, and a cultural ideology of origins, etc.. He argued, as I recall, that these universal functions can, and are, served by a range of (meaning different) structures (i.e., institutions).

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Rosborne and Timber,

If you ask the question in such a way that you attribute every good deed done by religious people as something they would of done anyway... you make the question impossible to answer.

Let's take my favorite as an example (and I will admit to baiting Setanta a bit here, but I know this history and am able to defend it). Quakers and other religious men were at the forefront of the fight to abolish slavery. Much of the arguments against slavery were religious ones, and many of the people who fought against slavery, including risking their lives by helping to free slaves were inspired by their religious faith.

Now let's get the game out of the way. There were atheists who fought against slavery. There were religious people who used religious rhetoric and reasons to support and rationalize the institution of slavery. But this is irrelevant to the question.

The point I am making is that this is a clear example where people of faith used their faith as inspiration to do something heroic. Whether these specific people would have had the same inspration or strenght without their faith is question that is impossible to answer... but from what they did, said and wrote... their religious faith was a key part to what they did.

Another good example is Martin Luther King. He was (in spite of the historical revisionism of people who want to argue against religioun) first and foremost in his mind a Baptist minister.

How do we know this? Well read what he said in his speeches and wrote in his letters. The religious theme was at their core until the very end.

He believed very strongly that he was doing "God's will" and that motivated him. Religious ideas and inspiration and faith permeated his speeches as well as his correspondancce and is even in the recollection of the people around him.

Read about Corrie Ten Boom who was a evangelical Christian (I believe she was a Menonite) who saved the lives of many during the Nazi rule in Germany. The Menonnites risked their lives to save others in defiance of a police state. Many of them had the opportunity to leave and decided to stay.

I am not making the statement that only the religious do these things. This is a false argument and you are purposely setting up a debate that is impossible to lose, and I am not making a claim that religion is exclusively able to do anything.

I am saying is that religion has the ability to inspire and to motivate... often for good. Many people have found courage and motivation and the call to heroism from religion.

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Re: Religion versus human dignity.

fresco wrote:

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."
(Weinberg).

Do you agree ?

good and bad are defined by a set of moral and ethical rules. Since religious people derive those rules from their religion, the statement 'good people do bad things' makes no sense.. .really.
Because good people, in the sense that they adhere to their religious morals, don't do bad things because of that religion... That's a paradox.
It makes sense if you can honestly say that
a. the statement is made from an atheists point of view.
b. it is possible for people without religion to adhere to an unambigious and universal set of moral codes.
c. it follows that good people who foreswear their religion are suddenly only doing good things, or turn bad.

Of course I know that your statement is simplified for the sake of clarity and brevity, but it is nevertheless lacking. That being said, I for one believe it is possible for people to commit grievous acts that are by the laws laid down by their God in a holy book as interpreted by their religious leaders nevertheless allowed, forgiven and even blessed. All in furtherance of ploys and struggles that as often as not have little to nothing to do with religion itself.

Naj.

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Good reasoning, ebrown. You stay above the traps.
But it does seem to me that religion does not have the power to motivate people to do great things if they do not already have the character to have done them without religious justification.
I find it difficult to conclude that the actions of Islamist suicide bombers can be explained solely in terms of religion. Too many students of Islam are not willing to die as their expression of jihad.

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JLNobody wrote:

Good reasoning, ebrown. You stay above the traps.
But it does seem to me that religion does not have the power to motivate people to do great things if they do not already have the character to have done them without religious justification.
I find it difficult to conclude that the actions of Islamist suicide bombers can be explained solely in terms of religion. Too many students of Islam are not willing to die as their expression of jihad.

I concur, JL. It's too easy to blame it all on religion. Suicide bombers are motivated by multiple factors, not just their religion, although I will readily admit that religion certainly is one of the reasons.

Ultimately, the only one to blame for misbehavior is... the person misbehaving. Not their religion, or their upbringing, or their personality disorders, or the six starving children at home.
Certainly, those (and many more) are all factors that drive humans to commit certain deeds others find questionable, but those factors in themselves are not responsible. That burden lies squarely on the person commiting the crime.

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Of course, Naj, if I had six starving kids at home and no way of earning money to feed them, robbing a liquor store (preferrably with an unloaded gun) might be considered an ethical act on my part.

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Religion versus human dignity.

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