Summations Only

Wow, I'll keep in mind that you're going to judge my moral worth based on my personal beliefs next time I consider sharing them with you.Personally, I think that's disgusting.

Do you think that genocide was morally acceptable at some point int he past?If so, I find you to be disgusting.That would include the Flood, the "cleansing" of the "Promised Land," the Plagues of Egypt, and basically all of Revelations.If you think any or all of those would be morally acceptable for God or Bob or anyone then you have a fucked up sense of morality. Only bad people can look at genocide and call it morally good.

You're trying to disconnect behaviour and beliefs - which is obviously wrong. If you didn't believe that it was Allah's will you wouldn't strap a bomb on yourself and blow up a train full of people.Beliefs influence behaviour - for good or for bad.

Yes. If someone tells me that they think a genocidal war-mongerer is a good being, they have become a bad person in my eyes. Are they as bad as that genocidal, war-mongerer? Not even close. But they've slid over to the "dark side" at least a bit. Well, I would say conduct coupled with motivation. If I save a drowning kid, I'm a good person. But if I saved them only because they were wearing my expensive watch and I wanted to get it back, I'm definitely not as good.What I'm arguing is that morality is a spectrum. Doing bad things is bad. Believing bad acts are good is also bad, though not as bad as if you had actually done them. Believing that atorcities are good is bad. Yes. For example, people in the south during the civil war who may not have owned slaves, but who still thought slavery was a good idea are not good people. They didn't do anything wrong, but they were still not people I would condone. Helping someone makes you really good. Believing that someone should be helped makes you less good, but still good. Believing that person should just die and let you get on with life makes you bad. Actually pulling the trigger to kill that person makes you worse.Again, it's a spectrum, and while actions definitely push you closer to the extremes, beliefs and attitudes (admirations, etc) tend to tip you a bit.Now, to be honest, it does take a calculation of all your actions and all your beliefs to make a full estimation of your "morality." But believing genocide is good is definitely a black mark.

Well, you might... But that's kinda what I'm trying to get at. Back in Message 168, I wrote:

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Well, what the hell do you mean by "religiously motivated". I think it means that you did something because of your religion.

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Like, the 9/11 attacks were religiously motivated by Islam.

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On the other hand, Timothy McVeigh, while being a christian, wasn't motivated by christianity to bomb buildings, he was pissed at the government.

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What matters is whether or not the belief that motivated the conduct was religious or not. But the actual belief, itself, doesn't go into weighing up the morality. We're already talking about bad things that have happened, the crux is whether or not they were motivated by religion. Sure, and when the beliefs that influence bad behavior are religious ones, we would count those behaviors against the religion having any moral high ground.But simply having a belief doesn't count. At least not for the purpose of this thread. Too, I don't think that things that are attributed to god, should count against the religion, itself, as having any high ground. Its about what the religion has motivated people to do.

I agree, that in general, morality is a continuum and simply having some beliefs could push you a little bit towards one side or the other. But in this thread were ascribing moral worth to the religion, itself, for actions that it has caused its believers to do.If a particular person, of a particular religion, holds a particular belief, then I wouldn't count that as some mark against the religion, itself. Unless the religion motivated them to have that belief, and having that belief was one of the action we were measuring with. But that's not what we were supposed to be doing here.How many deaths have been caused by religion?-"well some of those religious people believe bad things!"So what? I've also brought up that we're only focusing on the bad things that have been done and if you really want to find the moral high ground, you should look at the good things that have been done as well.

I would agree that any particular belief held by someone who happens to ascribe to a particular religion should not be held against that religion - unless that belief is mandated or at least influenced by that religion.I thought that's what we were doing here. If someone is saying that a religion is wrong because someone has bad beliefs that are not a product of that religion, then they're also wrong.What gets difficult, however, is that we can seldom tease apart the motivations and influences for any particular belief. It may be a misunderstanding of their religion, or it may be simply their upbringing, or maybe even a neurological disorder...or a combination of these or other reasons.What we can do, however, is look at trends. Does a particular set of beliefs or actions more commonly show up in a person who belongs to a particular religion or not. If most people who hold a belief also happen to belong to a particular religion (or closely related group of religions) it's fair to say that the religion probably has a hand in the formation or continuation of that belief.I feel like I'm rambling a bit here. Unless something in my post jumps out at you, we can probably let this side topic fall to the side.

What brought me in was the idea that the Flud story in Genesis should be counted in the deaths brought about by religion. I don't agree with that. My first post in this thread echoes that sentiment:

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If political powers use religion as a tool to overtake a people, is it really that religion that caused all the killing?

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I agree, and that's what should have happened in this thread. Instead, we've been arguing about what things should be counted as trends from a particular religion.

I think you're being a bit disingenuous here, you must know that having an immoral belief has a bearing on the morality of the individual - religious or otherwise.The Religious motivation simply follows. I doubt you would deny that having a strong Chritian belief can lead to many good behaviours, so you must accept that when in the hands of deluded extremists it can also lead to bad behaviours. So much is self-evident.Or do you say otherwise?

True, but there are some caveats. For example, people often bring up charities as a good thing from religion, but there are a good number of non-religious charities out there and atheists are just as likely to engage in charitable works as religious people, so that would seem to be a moot point. So any purported "goods" have to be ones that are exclusive to the religion."My religion may condone slavery, but it also tells me to feed the hungry, so it's at worst neutral."
"Well, my atheistic morality tells me to feed the hungry and it says that slavery is bad."
In comparison, all we can use to compare the two stances is the bad thing, since the good things cancel each other out.

Peronally, I'm torn on this point. Why did god flood the earth? If he did it because the people he created were not following his rules, and his rules are told through religion, I would call it a religious motivation.If God had not created his religion, his reason would not have existed to flood the earth.However, if he flooded the earth for personal reasons. Say he was curious how it would affect our development, I would say that was not religious, though just as heinous.

Yes, but I wasn't speaking generally but rather specifically for the topic of this thread - which is weighing up the attrocities that have been brought about by religion. No, I've explicitly said that I accept that religion can cause poeple to do bad things.I don't think that 'having a belief' is a bad thing that can be used to weigh up the attrocities caused by religion.Although, on second thought, I suppose there could be a case made that a widespead belief in something that makes people bad could be considered an atrocitity in itself... however, that's not really what people have been talking about.

Then we agree. Like I say, this is a bonkers thread.What these debates always lack is balance. As Perdition has already said, there's a spectrum here. Personally, I tend to view Christians that believe in a vengeful god, floods and young earths as dangerous and dim. But those that have a more sensible attitude to their religion, allowing for metaphor and room for science's discoveries about our world, are generally more a force for good than bad. (Although quite wrong-headed of course :-)

But a religion can have a tenet like: Help the poor.Without tenets, how can you assign the merit to atheism for motivating people to give?When poeple bring up something bad, y'all go: No, atheism can't be held responsible because its just a lack of belief. But if we talking about good things y'all go: See, atheists do that too I'd say ones that are tenets of the religion should be counted on the religiously motivated side.

I'm not assigning it to atheism, I'm just saying that religion doesn't have a monopoly on the merit. Here, we get into the same problem with assigning deaths. Is the charity performed because of religion, or is there another motivation.But I guess I agree. If we're going to assign a particular act of violence to religion, we should find acts of "goodness" that have religious motivations as well. But you just said that atheism has no tenets. So, if we're going to try to use these calculations to compare, we're going to have tenet after tenet propped up by religion and the atheists are going to have nothing.What we need to try and do is figure out which acts are religious, and which are maybe more cultural or even ingrained in what it means to be human. If atheists do an action about as often as religious people do, it should be considered a human attribute and not religious.What most of these types of calculations come down to is, if we got rid of all religions, would the net effect make the world better or worse. Many atheists would argue that many wars would be eliminated (not all, by a long shot) but most of the good things, like charity, community, sense-of-purpose, etc would still exist.So, if removing an institution would eliminate some unnecessary deaths, but have no effect on the good things being done, doesn't that mean the effect of that institution is a net negative?Now, I'm actually curious, hypothetically, what would happen to the charities done under the auspices of religions, if the religion were abandoned. Would someone keep them going from a moral compulsion, or would they just stop operating, leaving only the non-religious charities in operation? If that were the case, the calculation becomes more complicated.