Religion and Morality

Apparently you have failed to say anything of intelligence, hence the continuation of your garbage to try to gain relevance.

 

Resulting to smileys, I predict strange text colours and sizes and/or memes next!

 

ad hom
nothing to see here.

 

He has already tried this, but it just another failure of his.

 

Not unless you are willing to look and you are not as it may rock your little world.

 

Morality is a product of the evolution of social animals, which explains why social animals like primates and canines and elephants have moral codes, while solitary animals like many reptiles do not.

It's simple. Since there is advantage to being in a community (strength in numbers when hunting and evading predators, etc.) versus living alone, many animals evolved communal natures. "Morality" is simply evolution's way of maintaining group cohesion.

This is why morality is inherently tribal. It's easier to care more for your family members than it is for your friend, and friends are easier than strangers. Countrymen are easier than foreigners, and humans are easier to care for than are other species.

 

its not tribal to refrain from punching every non-gy to punch every gay person in the nose, that is a moral that hopefully maturity and a moral mind created for themselves.

 

Prepar to be attacked as you made no mention of religion being one of the reasons.

 

that made no sense what so ever, especially since I answered it before you posted this and did not mention religion

 

Religion is a product of evolution, too, albeit indirectly.

 

That would be a first for you to no equate morals with religion.

Look at your own post history plus, you are getting touchy about the topic.

 

Yes, coming well after the advent of morality, as you pointed out.

 

from the op

https://www.atheistalliance.org/about-aai.html

 

Thank you.

Do you propose that all atheists are the same and go along with what is stated about them or is this just a supposition being applied to all without regard for individuals?

 

No, not all atheists are the same, just like not all christians are the same. As to the list of values, I'm pretty sure the majority of atheists would agree with at least 4 of them. Atheism does require thought ya'know.

 

Atheism is just the denial of a particular deity. It's not a postive assertion. My atheism towards Jesus is no different than OP's atheism towards Wodan.

 

By particular deity, you imply not all deities in which case that is a misapplication of the word.

 

Yes, it requires independent thought, not group thought.

Actually, all a "majority of atheists" agree on is the lack of a god. The rest is up to the individual.

 

Except not believing in something is not a "system of beliefs" any more than you not believing in Thor or fairies is a system of beliefs. A "system" of beliefs would have to have more than one belief in common, or it isn't a system. But even if it were, you still haven't met your own definition. You forgot the "and practices" part. Even sports fans seem to fit your definition of religion better than atheists do.

Is not believing in Allah a religion?
Not believing in unicorns?
Not believing in Zeus?

 

It's not a misapplication of the word. Atheism is merely the denial of a proposed deity.

 

It would appear then that they are all smarter than you.

 

no atheism is in lieu of any other than a null proposition of deity.

 

Ok so then you are saying, is that we can come to the same conclusions as God, therefore may as well eliminate God from the equation altogether? On one hand I agree that man has a great capacity to process moral matters themselves, on the other hand history would show that atheists have the worst track record in maintaining a high moral ground.

The most obvious flaw is that there is no distinction between church/state and private/public where respect is too broad and effectively removes the right to free choice (religion) and your value judgments must conform to those chosen for you as its open season for tyrannical governments to take over value assessment (morals) and force their conclusions upon everyone in the form of statutes and law much as is being done today. Flag burning is 'heresy' in the US, disrespect to a rag and punishable. We are talking religion now, not government.

New york and california are fining businesses for incorrectly addressing ones claimed gender, the secular state made bigamy laws clearly imposing their religion upon mormons, the state made discrimination laws forcing people to conform to the state religion in the cake baking matter, instead of leaving each case up to a court, took it upon themselves to dictate what religion everyone must conform to since these are all religious matters.

So respect is not a very good measuring stick for moral evaluation. The state of law when the US was created was 'injury in fact'. Things that can be empirically proven in a court. The US has strayed so far from the original intent it is no longer recognizable.

That said, a moral is most often categorized as a 'value' based judgment, you choose to grow and eat a herb than to use pharmaceuticals, a value call made in your own best interest as far as you can calculate, right or wrong or by someone elses standards are completely irrelevant.

Looking at marriage worldwide, it seems pretty clear that as people lose their belief in God, they also lose their ability to tolerate religions other than their own, (atheism) despite they advertise benevolence and superior intelligence.

That said, people act upon their beliefs, hence each 'ism' has a some set of actions that follow. Therefore people make value judgements for themselves based upon their beliefs, value based beliefs are what we call morals, and the composite of our morals are said to be our religion as we use morals to as the compass for self governance. Therefore it can be said we bind to our beliefs/convictions/morals to create our religion and should many other people like the system it then becomes a culture. That is the pecking order.

 

What you fail to take into account is that everything you have said is true even with Christianity in place. Personally, I agree with you, society and government should promote Christianity among the populace even if it is wrong, because it promotes a positive view of morality and virtue. But you asked for an alternative form of morality, and I gave you one, one not based on God or God's law. Would a society based on it end up being like America or the Soviet Union? It's difficult to tell. What we know is that a society based on capitalism succeeds and a society based on communism fails, and a society based on Christianity is more or less free and a society based on atheism is more or less repressed. Would a society based on natural law succeed or fail? Hard to know.

As for your flag burning example, I guess that would depend on your definition of "others", too. I would tend to go with banning it as an example of failing to respect others. One funny video showed a group of protestors on a college campus getting ready to burn an American flag and a girl walking by snatched it and walked off with it. Before the protestors could react, she was stuffing it into her backpack. Seems to me if freedom of speech covers burning the flag, freedom of speech should cover stealing it to prevent its being burned, too.

 

The problem here is that you are using the original meanings of words to "prove" your point when the rest of us are using the contemporary meanings of the words.

Yes Religion comes from the Latin which means simply to bind.

Problem is that the meaning has changed and evolved into what it is now in which religion is...

the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

a particular system of faith and worship.

a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.

Languages tend to do that as attitudes and concepts change. Gay used to mean simply "Happy" or "Merry". Now it has other meanings that are more "top of the mind" than the original meanings are.