Did Religion Give Birth to Morals?

Not true. I said that and I am very religious. Not true. I am a very religious person yet understand that morals are a social contract. There is no evidence nor have you provided any evidence that there is no place for morals in an evolutionary world. What? Hitler was a Christian. He based his behavior on Christian dogma.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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Rather, many would claim that evolution is not at work today among humans because of the technology that human intelligence has invented.

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em..no.. I don't mean to be rude but how much do you actually know about the theory of evolution? it does not sound like you know very much.

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Many people on this board have tried to correct my statement by saying that human beings are animals. This is a common statement said by nonreligious people.

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Uh, no. The biological definition of animal: People say that human beings are animals because human beings fit the definition of animals.And the "species" (including human beings) were divided up into the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms long before Darwin came along, and this division (even the inclusion of humans in the animal kingdom) occurred without evolution.

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

Actually, if you look at the recently closed No webpage found at provided URL: Is Science a Religion? thread, you'll see that he doesn't know much about science, religion, or history.

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

A lot of people do exactly that. How is that possible if human beings have morals, which you claim they do? He was certainly a religious person. If religion is the source of morals, as you claim, how is that possible?

actually, the person who came up with the modern classification system, Linnaeus, was appalled by the fact that he could not put chimps into a separate genus from humans. even Linnaeus, a stout creationist, recognized humans as animals. and it has nothing to do with the fact that we all evolved. why are we mammals? let's see, hair and mammary glands are the big two. put let's go further up--we have a backbone, which puts us in the same group with every other animal that has one--from sharks to whales to cats and dogs. further on up, we all have this thing called a phyrengal slit (spelling wrong), which every animal has to have in order to be, well, an animal.and why the hitler card? religion has squat to do with morality except as a way to explain why we have them. let's see, is it easier to explain to a kid that god gave them to us or that as we evolved, we ended up being social animals, and doing things that harm society has been weeded out to a large extent.better yet, how do you explain morality's origins before science?

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Possibly true if you mean that Evolution is not directed. Not true. And you have been told that MANY times. I have also shown you documented PROOF that that is not the case.In the words of the Clergy Project: Yet you continue to repeat falsehoods.Why is that? What?What does that have to do with anything? More Gish Gallop bullshit.First it is simply a lie or an example of absolute total willful ignorance. You said: "Even the most unfit human beings survive these days." That is not even true in the MOST advanced countries.Hey Cliff, folk die.Hey Cliff, intelligence evolved.Not only can you not post anything on topic, you refuse to even address the content of replies to your messages.Please look again at Message 13.The topic is "Did Religion Give Birth to Morals?"Not one thing in your response to me has anything to do with the topic.Do you have any evidence that morals only existed after religion was invented, or that morals are in any way restricted to religion?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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Do any of you consider the Nazis to be moral people? They were very polite people and they caused the death of millions of people. Was Hitler a moral person?

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Did they have moral beliefs? Sure. Some were even martyrs to their beliefs.What's the point to this question again?

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I'm not religious, but I find it perfectly easy to get through life without stoning anyone to death, or flying an airplane full of people into a skyscraper full of people.

The Naked Ape was by Desmond Morris. It has many things in it that are relevant to this forum. He also wrote a sequel called The Human Zoo.One of his ideas is that gods were invented to replace the all-powerful leader that is found in most primate societies, since the hominid lifestyle came to be co-operative and lacked such a leader. He also points out that much religious ritual looks very like the grovelling that the primate leaders receive.I do not specifically remember his account of morality, but I'm reasonably sure he included one.

...but I have to point out that "gods before whom one must grovel" don't really make an appearance in human societies until society begins to be organized under chiefs and/or kings before whom one must grovel.The societies that form a model for the earliest human societies, the hunter-gatherers, tend to be more or less egalitarian, and their religions tend to be more animistic, in which the nature spirits must be respected but not to the point of grovelling or servitude.Religions tend to reflect the other aspects of the societies in which they are found. Societies with strong leaders tend to have religions with strong gods. More or less egalitarian societies have less powerful gods. So whatever the evolutionary explanations for religion, if there is one, replacing "strong leaders" probably isn't one of them.It is also interesting that one of the closest relative species to humans, the bonobo, do not have a "supreme leader" -- I don't know about chimpanzees, but I don't recall that their alpha leaders are necessarily "supreme".This sounds to me like another attempt to present an aspect of North American/European civilization as "natural".

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This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

Your few facts are off topic.

I didn't notice if you answered this question. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

Let me try to explain why Message 24 is both On Topic and Pertinent.The quote in Message 24 is from Cliff Clavin, a regular patron of Cheers™.Everything Cliff said was always off topic, and also incorrect. He was a wealth of misinformation.So far that is all you have shown us have been Clavinisms.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion