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Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Is religion good for us? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined:
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What a great post Rahvin. I see the Abrahamic faiths as the biggest offenders but even if you take religion as a whole thing.
Remember, morality is subjective. So again it comes down to refining definitions to the first common denominator. By that I mean does my concept of good have to be acceptable to everyone?
I wouldn't trust a toddler's instinctual sense of right and wrong to make my real-life moral decisions. But you do. They are the same ones you had as a child, refined of course. We know what is right. We know that it is ok to eat pork if you cook it properly. We know that you change your books as you learn. As a species we carry a monkey on our back.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
one-sided arguments likwe this one are very dishonest... This is not a one sided argument. This is one side of the argument. Your job is to present the other side. Show me the good that organized religion is responsible for in the world today. And again with calling people dishonest. I am tempted to launch into a scathing rebuke but I think it would be lost on you. If you can put forward some coherent evidence my mind may be changed. Your mind, on the other hand, is like a bank vault stuffed to the brim with old currency. If your vessel is full then you have no place at the well. I really do not care who is right I want to know what is right. Can you see the importance of that distinction?
less worried about religious people and more worried about your own kind. Religious people are my kind in a general sense. It gives me no pleasure to watch you stumbling around in the dark. We need to lift each other out of the quagmire of ignorance and fear. I dont mean to attack your faith but if it wont stand the light of reason what kind of a refuge is it? I want to say that religion is like a cul de sac. Good for development bad for progress. But I am talking about religion not faith and it seems that the two are inseparable. Ah what the hell. Jesus loves you Archie but everyone else thinks you're an asshole. Its a joke, its a joke.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
So religion is a result of our nature. As reason replaces superstition can we not leave it behind?
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
Let's hope so. Cheers to that but I think we need to do more than hope.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
Reason's replacing superstition? When did that happen? Last time I looked, the MD down the road from me is a practicing homeopath; my coworker, who, laughs at the religious for being ignorant and credulous, thinks I'm a cultural imperialist for valuing 'western science' over 'eastern wisdom'; and my medically-trained mother is a reflexologist. Hey my wife does that toe fiddling thing. Feels reasonably good.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
It goes beyond ethics as well. I don't trust my instinctual, emotional reactions to anything. We got apart here. Thats not what I meant. I meant that the seeds of moral knowledge are instinctive. From there they grow into reasoned moral and ethical behaviour. That is sort of my point. Reducing that irrational emotional response that is so endemic to religion. And that response stems from the individual. I see that all of our societal ills can ultimately be reduced to the sum of the consequences of the acts of the individuals. It boils down to you and me and what we decide to do, think and believe. Add it all up and you have the present state of things. I guess a broad based liberal education really is the answer as Huntard said. What is the name of the guy who conducted a study at a county fair about 150yrs ago. He recorded all of the guesses regarding a cows weight and found that the mean of the guesses was exactly correct.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
I think unreasonable and illogical emotions like my phobia of snakes is just a part of the human condition. It is as much a part of us as is our ability to reason and be logical. I happen to believe that our foibles are what make us human. A universe of opposing forces.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
How much are the doctrines of Christianity and Islam to blame for the over population of the world? Is it their ridiculous birth control policies or is it just the need to breed? What do the Hindus think about it?
It strikes me that uncontrolled population growth is a disaster in the making. {AbE} Also striking that as general education rises pop growth slows. Edited by Dogmafood, : No reason given.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
Ringo says; Like any tool, the use of critical thinking should be encouraged for those areas where it is applicable. It may or may not produce a net "better" result in the world. After thinking about this statement for a while I have to disagree. While applied critical thinking may produce different results for different participants considering the same question you cant blame the thought process for the undesirable outcome. Any given problem may not have a 'good' resolution but there will always be a 'best possible' resolution. I would also disagree that you dont use critical thinking when deciding what ice cream to eat. Do you like strawberries? If so you will probably like strawberry ice cream. As the personal variables come into play everyones result of applied critical thinking becomes personalized but the model remains the same. The only place I can see where critical thinking falls short is in matters of love. Even there it is likely that we fail to identify the appropriate weight to assign to facts. Do you have any other examples where critical thinking falls short when compared to a non critical thinking approach. The short list in the OP are a few examples of where the poisonous leachate of non critical thinking has cost us dearly.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
A "best possible" solution may well be a bad solution. It may well result in one participant killing the other one, like in the examples given in the OP. The OP examples were examples of non critical thinking. If you were to apply critical thinking to the Pakistan/India conflict you would see that there is no gain in killing people over some frozen mountains. Take out the irrational religious dogma and you have a bunch of dogs who caught the car.
It doesn't matter whether the model remains the same. We're talking about the consequences. What If I decide (critically) that I deserve your ice cream and I won't take "no" for an answer? If you fail to weigh the consequences of demanding my ice cream then you have failed at critical thinking.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
Somebody suggested that if critical thinking displaced religious thinking, the world would be a better place. I'm asking for evidence for that positive claim. See the murder by prayer thread.
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Dogmafood Member (Idle past 379 days) Posts: 1815 From: Ontario Canada Joined: |
A few incidents one way or the other don't address that question. Thats correct. I guess my original thought was to pile up the evidence and weigh it.
I asked you before how you plan to quantify good and evil to decide which is greater. I am not sure. I thought that the difference would be apparent. I guess that I am relying on my own moral code. I see that my original list had some bad things that are not necessarily the fault of religion. Most of them still stand. Apart from an individual coping mechanism, what has religion done for us lately? Any big peace break throughs brought about by religious negotiations? Any big Catholic church funded scientific research? How are the Muslims doing with helping out in Pakistan? I couldnt buy beer on a Sunday until a few years ago. The negative effects of religion are all around us. Mostly we are used to them. I also see some religious people doing good things like the MCC and UnitedWay. I am not sure that these people wouldnt do good things without their religion.
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