What Is The Argument Against Slavery?

Religion is one of man's devices. It is a tool, and can wreak as much bad as it can do good. It is the farming out of one's moral judgment making to other people who claim to know better and to speak for the divine. It is insidious.

 

I was a practicing Buddhist for years. Buddhists praise compassion. They don't knock it as a guide for morality. And the Buddhist religion has failed in moral respects many, many times.

 

You must know that when it comes down to it, people are highly emotional, but of course you use whatever tools you have. The key does lie in compassion [the ability to see things as close as possible to what they truly are] and react accordingly.

The human mind is fragile. Our intelligence is rudimentary, at best. We need some help. Don't you?

 

How is it more fragile than religion? Again, if we were to start talking about specific examples of immoral acts, we'd keep coming back to reason and compassion, not religion. Our intelligence is far less rudimentary and fragile than religion is.

 

Some help from whom, and do you trust that they know better than you do and have your best interest in mind? Putting your own moral judgments and moral compass aside because a perceived authority figure tells you what to do is disturbing to me.

 

People use religion as a guide. That doesn't mean you throw out all your other tools. Only a fool does that.

It is your moral judgement in the end, but it doesn't hurt to have guidance. It would be like asking somebody with a great deal more life experience and wisdom for some help when confronting a particularly difficult situation. One of the most important lessons in religion is in the taking of responsibility for your decisions.

 

Reason and compassion are better guides, more consistently reliable, and better able to incorporate self correction. Religion is, at best, a secondary tool, whereas reason and compassion are primary.

 

Religion is an integral part of the human experience. You are attempting to separate it out because you cannot come to terms with it. It would be like believing that the sister you can't stand is not really part of your family.

 

Not nearly as integral as reason and compassion. In fact, many humans do without religion entirely, so it can't be that integral.

Yet you want to do the same thing with reason and compassion, which are far more integral. We're back to your double standard again.

 

Says who?

Religion has been around forever. And it's not going anywhere anytime soon!

 

Why do you presume they have more wisdom? Religion at its best is codified social mores of the past. At its worst it is manipulative and oppressive. There was no great wisdom in declaring witches unfit to live, declaring homosexuality an abomination unto the Lord, etc.

That's the antithesis of Christianity, where you are given a free pass for all the bad you do by accepting and praising the suffering and death of an innocent volunteer.

 

I see no evidence that it has been around "forever." I don't even have any reason to believe it predates humans. Reason and compassion not only predate religion, but they aren't even limited to our species.

 

Which predates the other is no indication of which is better. This is a red herring.

 

There is really no difference between any of it. How could there be? It is only your mind that has created these different categories.

Our ability to reason is minuscule. Compassion is the one thing we can learn to do with some skill. The main purpose of religion is in pointing to the truth. The words are a good guide, but that's not the heart of the matter. You have to transcend the words to find its true meaning.

 

I would also like to point out that "responsibility for your actions" wouldn't necessarily mean doing good. It could merely mean being obedient. Abrahamic religion is much more about obedience than about ethical behaviour, as demonstrated multiple times in the Bible, Torah, and Quran whenever the two come into conflict.

The central theme may purport to be "be good", but any examination will reveal it to actually be "obey".

 

Reason gets us a lot further than religion does. So does compassion. Religion too often works as the enemy of the previous. When religion wars against reason or compassion, it is in the wrong. When reason and compassion war against religion, they are in the right.

 

If you move beyond the words of religion, then you can understand forever. It really wasn't a temporal marker.

 

Religion IS reason [and compassion]. What else could it be?

 

You are contradicting yourself again. You said that reason and compassion couldn't be the basis for morality, that we needed religion as the basis instead . . . now you say they are the same thing. Obviously there's a difference between religion and reason and compassion. Religion often encourages people to go AGAINST reason and compassion, so that can't be the same thing.

 

Sounds reasonable. What's the point of the religion if you are not going to obey its dictates? The Ten Commandments is a good example.

 

So let's not abandon what little we have. Let's not farm out our moral thinking to purported authority figures who purport to know better than us but have a track record for the opposite.

That is a very big bold claim to which you have provided no basis. Why do you presume religion knows the truth? Why do you presume it's purpose is benevolence towards its followers rather than the control and exploitation of them?

 

The Ten Commandments advocated the execution of people for freedom of speech and freedom of religion and advocated God punishing people for the crimes of their ancestors. These are neither reasonable nor compassionate.

 

No, I said they couldn't be it ALONE [that outside guidance was necessary].

It is up to the individual to pick and choose what works for them. But the guidance is good. If you choose to do the wrong thing, well, maybe you burn in Hell forever, or maybe not. Certainly it all seems to work out in the end [one way or another].

 

And reason and compassion are better guides than doctrines are. Religion is only redeemable when it is guided by them. Reason, with or without religion, is a good thing. So is compassion. Religion without either is worse than a dung heap.

 

Religion is collective human wisdom over thousands of years. You think you know better?

Read it. It is not advocating such things. This is how not so wonderful people have used it though [like they use everything else].

It's like everything else in life, you can see the good or you can see the bad. Or better, you can see both and deal wit it accordingly.

Religion is simply the intellectualization of spirituality. It points towards the truth. The rest is up to the individual.