Religion Mandating Life

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Originally posted by acmhttu001_2006:
Should Religion[I mean all applications of this word] be granted the authority or exclusive mandate ot define morality, purpose, the
meaning of life, or other questions such as these,

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I got this question or idea of my NOMA thread. Q. stated it in a reply. It is an interesting question to consider, and I wanted to see what you guys thought about it.

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No. Religion can appeal for support to nothing but the personal biases of its adherents. And with religion, those biases become infused with the force of God's will. That is a very dangerous combination.Human culture-- our survival-- is held together by moral principles, by what is allowed and by what is not. To pass these decisions off to an organization supported by nothing substantial is absurd.------------------
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Originally posted by acmhttu001_2006:
So in reply to you post, where do you think that the moral system comes from? Do not all morals come from some type of religion? Are the basic ethics based off of a religion? I am curious.

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I think people typically associate morals and religion causally, the former due to the latter. I thought the same until recently, when I realized that I had it backwards or maybe sideways. Both morality and religion come from the same source-- our ancestor's experiments in survival over many many many millenia. Individuals of any primate group will exibit certain behaviors which serve to maintain the group. Our morality is akin to these behaviors. It is nothing but human arrogance that tries to make something metaphysical out of it.

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When you say God's will, you are meaning the particular deity of that religion are you not?

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Yup.

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The will of God being what the adherents would like that will to be?

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Right.------------------
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Originally posted by acmhttu001_2006:
Why do we need religion?

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I don't think we do. I see religion as something of a side effect. I very much like the way Quetzal put it.

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Obviously it does not encourage human survival [persecutions and Middle Ages].

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Religion in itself perhaps not, but in earlier human history, religion was mixed up with what today we call politics, law enforcement, hygiene, etc. In that form, I think it did encourage survival, or at least served as a vector for passing along information.------------------
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Originally posted by leekim:
Yet if one studies the Constitution and if one looks to the practice, intent, contemporaneous writings and actions of the "founding fathers", one would come to the conclusion that the vast majority of them had absolutely no intent and/or interest in seperating God, ie Church, and State (contrary to what some SC decisions have held over the last 50 years or so and yet now seem to be gradually retreating on). Rather, the founding fathers were only concerned that the State should not embrace one particular religion (or have preference for one) over another.

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Have you read and studied those documents? I doubt it, or you might have seen this:

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"I have examined all the known superstitions of the world, and I do not find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short

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Or this:

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"Christianity...(has become) the most perverted system that ever shone on man. ...Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus."
Thomas Jefferson (unknown)

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Or this:

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The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature.... [In] the formation of the American governments ... it will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of heaven.... These governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.
-- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1788, from James A. Haught, ed., 2000 Years of Disbelief

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Or this:

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As the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims] ... it is declared ... that no pretext arising from religious opinion shall ever product an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.... The United States is not a Christian nation any more than it is a Jewish or a Mohammedan nation.
-- Treaty of Tripoli (1797), the English version of which was carried unanimously by the Senate, signed into law by John Adams, and translated into Arabic (the original language is by Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul)

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Originally posted by leekim:
I am well aware of Mr. Jefferson's and Adams' "take" on religion and it's role, or lack thereof, but they were only two of the infamous "founding fathers" and therefore not dispositive of the group as a whole. If you read my prior post (which I reasonably assume you did because you responded to it), I indicated "the vast majority" of the ff, not the entirety...

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Do you have evidence of that the majority of 'founding fathers' wanted religion in the government? That some were religious is not disputed, but did they intend that religion to be incorporated into the structure of government?Secondly, refering back to the first post to which I responded, you made the statement that the 'founding fathers' did not want any one religion the take a predominant role. How can one introduce any religion without giving it a predominant role? This is the key reason for the SC decisions, in my opinion.------------------
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