Decay of Civilization - Generation by Generation

[Roman Candle]

Jonathen I only just realised you were from England ^_^ Anyway...

It depends on where you live. For instance, in some parts of London you could definitely leave your door open all day.

When people decide on their morals, it's not just at random. We have some helpful things like empathy and logic. Anyone can plainly tell that they shouldn't go stealing things. We don't need God to suggest "Do unto others" - but some people might need a law to make them adhere. Whether that law comes from God or not is irrelevent. The only reason why people would steal things, (on a petty scale), is because they think they can do it and not get caught.

Personally I think life has a point in itself. You shouldn't do wrong because you shouldn't hurt people. Fairly plain and obvious. If that doesn't actually agree with the Bible on all counts, then that's not having 'less' moral stature. It's just different. For instance, I don't see anything wrong with homosexuality. I don't see anything wrong with early-term abortion either; I believe in protecting the rights of conscious, thinking human beings, not the rights of clumps of cells which would eventually become a thinking being. That's not less moralistic than what's in the Bible - just different.

In short, we don't need God to tell us that things are bad. Empathy can do that for us. What some of us might need a God to do is to tell us not to do bad things.

 

[FlippyD]

Empathy may or may not work for everyone. Some people find meaning in religion and frame their life around that. While religion isn't necessary for everyone, it certainly helps put some peoples lives into perspective, and ultimately makes them better citizens.

 

[Roman Candle]

And yet the decline in religion as a whole does not affect them, (unless it leads them away from their faith), and the rest are happy enough living without it. I think those who want and would benefit from religion find their own way to it.

 

[FlippyD]

And yet the decline in religion as a whole does not affect them, (unless it leads them away from their faith), and the rest are happy enough living without it. I think those who want and would benefit from religion find their own way to it.

What about the hundreds of people in prison who find religion each year? Would they have suddenly decided to convert and become more moralistic without religions intervention?

 

[FoxDemonSoavi]

yes, but many of those hundreds find religions other than your version of chrisanity.

 

[FlippyD]

yes, but many of those hundreds find religions other than your version of chrisanity.

I never mentioned Christianity. Yes, while I do talk a lot about Christian theology in other threads, when I mean Christianity I say Christianity. I've been using the term religion for a reason. Other theologies have helped people all over the globe since the dawn of man, at least on a mental level. Wether or not you believe literally in whatever events that religion touts as the explanation behind the unexplainable is up to you. Besides, do you think Malcolm X would have been the same influential speaker where it not for the presence of the Muslim faith in his jail?

EDIT:
http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=65

 

[Roman Candle]

No one's saying that religion doesn't help people. But I am saying that it's not neccessary to live a moral life. Nor does religion make for a 'better' moral code.

 

[Jonathan]

Why shouldn't I Steal something? What has the person i'm stealing from ever done for me? Easy way to get some cash as long as you're not caught.

 

[Roman Candle]

1. The law says not to.
2. The person you steal from will feel bad.

The kind of person who actually doesn't feel bad at all when they steal something is either the kind of person I'm talking about who does need a religion, or is someone who is just totally selfish and religion wouldn't help at all.

 

[Jonathan]

I actually had a much more decent post than that, but then the chools collective IP adress got banned because one of my friends was being an idiot and spamming my posts... And now I have three points for it, because they reckon it was me on a dual account... Talk about unfair.

Anyway, what i was going to say (because after reading your post more thoroughly i saw that you had already used the example of petty theiving) was this.

Why should we help people who are starving in africa. There is no law saying we must, and what have they ever done for us. It isn't my fault there starving, and anyway, with survival of the fittest and everything, it would be better for human kind if they all died anyway. It would get rid of a large proportion of AIDs anyway.

Now (hopefully) the majority of you would think this attitude is atrocious, but if evolution was true, and if there is no God, basically who says we should help others like that. Maybe even we shouldn't, and should actively kill them. Hitler consciously tried to make his country fit to the theory of evolution, preserving the 'fittest race'. Now don't get me wrong, i think that attitude is completely wrong, but according to his God-less evolution inspired mind-set, there was nothing wrong with doing it. When they charged alot of the remaining Nazis, they charged them with crimes against humanity, because, humanly speaking, they did nothing wrong against their own laws. Thus, the people had to appeal to a higher morality. a God given morality.

Single celled organisms don't have morality. Single celled organisms for that matter don't have consciousness, and can't Love (I mean really love, more on this later), so somewhere along the line of evolution morality must have 'evolved' and consciousness and the ability to Love. This, in my veiw, is ridiculous. The only 'animal' that i can see has a form of morality that would want to reach out and help others not even in the slightest bit related to them is humans. I can see no other 'animal' that does this. I believe this is because we were created in the image of God.

As for love, What animal has love even in the face of dispossesion and death. There was a story on the news a couple of days ago about a couple who were palestinian and israeli, being forced out of there country and had to move elsewhere for fear of being abused and maybe killed. They went through it all because they loved each other. What other 'animal' has a 'go against the flow' attitude towards love, a love that can hold on even in the face of death? Again, i belive it is because we were made in the image of God, and God is love.

In closing (lol), I know this has been slightly off the topic, but hopefully it will show you that morality does come from God, as do things like Love, and so a correlation between the rejection of God and the 'decline' of human morality and scoiety should be, in a way, expected.

Gentically speaking we are declining as a population. Minor deletrious mutations are accumulating and the genome is degenerating at an alarming rate (see a book called genetic entropy and the mystery of the genome)

 

[cos]

In closing (lol), I know this has been slightly off the topic, but hopefully it will show you that morality does come from God, as do things like Love, and so a correlation between the rejection of God and the 'decline' of human morality and scoiety should be, in a way, expected.

Gentically speaking we are declining as a population. Minor deletrious mutations are accumulating and the genome is degenerating at an alarming rate (see a book called genetic entropy and the mystery of the genome)

Well I won't comment on the misinterpretation of Hitler's intention nor on the subject of love, but moral is something that respond to the need of living together.May it be the will of god or not, moral exists in different form (still very similar) in any society because moral is the fundamental of society: we need moral to live together, because moral in essence is something that thinks about the best way to be together as defined by Socrates.Moral isn't a gift, is a necessity and a necessity that evolves continually.

As for human genome deterioration don't say things you haven't any idea about, and don't use pseudo-scientific books to justify it.As someone who works on it I can guarantee you that nothing is destroying our genome in fact with all these cultural barrier breaking, human genome as never been so diversified,and that is the best possible thing to happen.Of course they are new thing affecting our genes like some new hereditary problems and new mutation factors, but this is a minority and will hopefully always be.

 

[Roman Candle]

Do you really take the human race for such a bunch of psychopaths? I don't need a religion to tell me that suffering is wrong. I don't need a religion to tell me to cherish human life! And I certainly don't need a religion to tell me how to love.

Also, please don't confuse evolution, a scientific theory, with eugenics and social darwinism (not scientific theories). Whether or not something is based off a religion or not doesn't make it better or worse - for instance, the Spanish Inquisition: About as related to religion as Social Darwinism was to evolution.

You seem to be saying that without God we are incapable of sympathy or empathy. The life of every atheist I've ever known proves that wrong. God is not the only way to construct morality - it's one of many.

 

[Jonathan]

As for human genome deterioration don't say things you haven't any idea about, and don't use pseudo-scientific books to justify it.As someone who works on it I can guarantee you that nothing is destroying our genome in fact with all these cultural barrier breaking, human genome as never been so diversified,and that is the best possible thing to happen.Of course they are new thing affecting our genes like some new hereditary problems and new mutation factors, but this is a minority and will hopefully always be.

Have you read the book? And if you say yes (which knowing my luck you will) It isn't pseudoscientific,

And i'm saying that sympathy and empathy are gifts from God to all people, not just christians. I'm not stupid enough to say that you become a Christian and bang, suddenly you are not a crazed phsycopath bent on destroying life. I'm saying that these things come from God and weren't evolved, they were created.

Obviously no-one needs religion to tell them how to cherish human life, because it is an inbuilt thing, the conscience and Love come from God, and are present in every human being.

What i am saying is some people extrapolate the fact that there is no God, and go on to say "who defines right or wrong... me!" and then go on to do terrible things.

Ok i'm sorry that hitler thing was actually wrong :s I heard it from one of my friends... aah i feel sheepish... lol

 

[cos]

Have you read the book? And if you say yes (which knowing my luck you will) It isn't pseudoscientific,

And i'm saying that sympathy and empathy are gifts from God to all people, not just christians. I'm not stupid enough to say that you become a Christian and bang, suddenly you are not a crazed phsycopath bent on destroying life. I'm saying that these things come from God and weren't evolved, they were created.

Obviously no-one needs religion to tell them how to cherish human life, because it is an inbuilt thing, the conscience and Love come from God, and are present in every human being.

What i am saying is some people extrapolate the fact that there is no God, and go on to say "who defines right or wrong... me!" and then go on to do terrible things.

Ok i'm sorry that hitler thing was actually wrong :s I heard it from one of my friends... aah i feel sheepish... lol

It's your luck: I read it, not entirely but I read about half of it, and even if this book is distracting there are many problems: the author says that on the long run acquired mutation will slowly get the genome to be less and less efficient but he seem to forget the power of natural selection as well as some genomes proprieties and the fundamentals of population genetics.
Also this book is far too religiously engaged to be called objective.

As for why our society is based on notion such as justice or "neo-manicheism" instead of the law of the strongest, isn't something build on some kind of transcendental gift but on necessity. Modernist thought a lot about it, you should really read if you haven't already Hobbes's "Leviathan" or Rousseau's "Du contrat social".

 

[Minkoff]

What i am saying is some people extrapolate the fact that there is no God, and go on to say "who defines right or wrong... me!" and then go on to do terrible things.

What's your point? People sometimes interpret religion in a way that encourages them to do horrible things. Even your religion. Any viewpoint can be skewed horribly.

 

[Dopples]

What's your point? People sometimes interpret religion in a way that encourages them to do horrible things. Even your religion. Any viewpoint can be skewed horribly.

Isn't religion the reason the terrorists bombed us? Like, it was god's will?




But generally, you should learn to think for yourself. Just saying "God did it." doesn't solve anything nor present any solutions to the question. Also, humans are not the only animal capable of love. Why else would a dog or a cat stick with a person who's raised them since childhood? Example...



Originally, I had two dogs, and one was the mother of the other. Having been trained with the mother, the other dog was always around her. When the mother died though, my other dog became disoriented, and became a lot more needy. She obviously loved her, or else she wouldn't have become so needy.

 

[Roman Candle]

Dogs and cats are generally kept in a child-like state of development. The way their brains work is slightly different if they havn't led a feral life. As an interesting side note, however, I do know that swans, if they lose their 'life-partner' (^_^) do what's known as 'pining' and stop eating. Sometimes they die

Animal behavior, since they do not have languague, is far too complex to be able to make simple, summary judgements.

 

[Jonathan]

the author says that on the long run acquired mutation will slowly get the genome to be less and less efficient but he seem to forget the power of natural selection as well as some genomes proprieties and the fundamentals of population genetics.

I don't get you. He has an awful lot to say about natural selection, and how it couldn't sort out degeneration...

As for interpreting religion to do bad things, fair enough maybe Islam does justify violence, and if that was true, then they would be being consistent with their religion. Likewise, eugenics would be consistent with an evolutionary belief, and *if* Hitler's intentions were evolution based (I know now that they weren't, but this is purely for speculative purposes) they to would be perfectly consistent with his belief in Evolution.

To murder is consistent with atheism, but likewise so is being nice, because essentialy in atheism you are your own God, and you decide right and wrong.

HOWEVER (Big however) The spanish inquisition, the crusades and all other so called holy wars, plus the violence in ireland and any other forms of violence supposedly in the name of God are NOT consistent with christianity.
"Love your neighbour" "Turn the other cheek" and the fact that we shouldn't use human weapons and violence for christianity, But spiritual weapons (Jesus (ithink) Describes the Bible as a double edged sword), along with many other examples in the Bible, show that we SHOULDN'T be violent etc.

These people who advocate christianity as a way to engage in war are INCONSISTENT with Jesus' Teachings. So, following what Jesus said (If you love one another...by this will all men know that you are my disciples) these people were NOT christians, or at least the people ordering the attacks weren't christians.

Hopefully you get that anything done in the name of God, doesn't neccesarily mean it is from God, especially if it contradicts the Bible.

 

[Roman Candle]

Murder is banned in all religions. That's never stopped anyone. For instance, where it says, "Do not kill" in the Bible some people have proposed that the actual meaning is nearer to "Do not murder", and so wars and executions are acceptable. People have argued that while it's wrong to kill, if Christianity is threatened then it would be a greater wrong to let the religion die out, and so things like the inquisition had to happen.

There'll always be a way of interpretting the text in a way that justifies someone their action, even if it's indefensible in the wider context of the Bible.

 

[Jonathan]

But the wars were unprovoked. the Bible was being used by rome as a political tool. There is no way you can justify that with the "Love your Enemy" found in the new testemant.

And with God there is no lesser wrong. It took one sin to get adam and eve chucked out of the Garden, so just one wrong thing would be enough to make it wrong. The religion wasn't going to die out anyway.

(Talking about "the greater good" has anyone seen hot fuzz? hilarious (apart from the language...))