[flagged]
To give an example, science is not a replacement for philosophy, nor is it implemented perfectly, but some people elevate it far beyond its means to answer certain inquiries. That is irrationality, or faith.
Yes, but it is far better than a fraud. Therefore it is the best we have to understand the world. And fairy tales invented by illiterate people thousands of years ago aren't a path to understand the world. They're a fraud, plain and simple.
You are correct. I am, deliberately, "being uncharitable towards religion". I had far too much Catholicism in my upbringing to be respectful of any religion. If you want to know what I mean by Catholicism read the story linked by the title post, about Catholic parents in Catholic Spain. My story wasn't that bad but I saw a lot of that prejudice, arrogance and intolerance. It isn't surprising that in 50 years the country of Spain went from majorly Catholic to majorly agnostic.
> a belief like "God wants us to love our neighbors" is not.
You don't need "God wants" in that. Empathy doesn't need "God". Unlike what church people think, non-religious people have empathy and decency, too. Human beings are social animals, doing empathy is a common trait that doesn't need "divine" justification.
That's true, fair point. It happens also in a lot of secular political ideologies.
You should get out more.
Sounds very religious? Oh well then, you've clearly put some serious thought into this.
> They don’t think of humans as walking meat like a non-religious person would.
What a truly weird thing to write.
Even bonobo monkeys and elephants understand empathy for others. Should we then assume that monkeys and elephants are very religious, too?
> like a non-religious person would.
Oh, I see you took a lot of care in trying to understand what a "non-religious person" is. Are all church people this smart, too? /s
Empathy is an emotion. Emotions are real. You can see emotions in brain scans. But anger, desire for revenge, disgust, in-group affinity, etc., are also real emotions! It's rational to use people's emotions to guide what society should do. But most putatively secular people disagree with that approach! They're constantly telling people to put aside their emotions in favor of supposed universal principles that sound suspiciously similar to religious beliefs.
Yeah, sure! Those evil "putatively secular people" that burned tens of thousands of women during the witch hunt in Europe, killed hundreds of thousands of other people during the Crusades and the European religious wars of the 17th and 18th century, that condoned with the fascist and authoritarian regimes in Argentina, Spain and Portugal because they were against the scourge of communism, that blessed the slavery of Latin American indigenous peoples because it was meant to spread the blessing of Christianity... that was all made by "putatively secular people", like the Catholic Church, right?
I am so impressed by how well and deep you know and understand "putatively secular people"... Are all church people smart like that? /s
I have no problem with humans hunting, or defending themselves, or whatnot. I accept that some degree of violence is necessary, and a lot more can be plausibly justified. However, I draw the line at, say, humans killing each other for bad reason. If it is to be believed that I and these other humans are of the same species, of the same kind, and whatnot, I feel secure in judging them as I would judge myself, and those more familiar to me. Killing indigenous people on the basis of merely not converting to Christianity, and even burning them, is entirely unnecessary. A modern-day analogue would be roundly condemned, or so I should hope.
Speak for yourself. I won't confuse empathy with tribalism, as you do. I'll take humanism [1], the notion that every person is equal in rights. This is my moral basis.
> humans alike will happily take over the territory of rival clans.
Tribalism, again. You don't get past that, do you?
> Which is why empathy didn’t prevent Europeans from colonizing the indigenous people
Yep, but neither did religion and those countries were very, very Christian. And, btw, even today the U.S. is the most religious among rich countries and, at the same time, the most imperialist. If religion is so good how come the most Christian country is so bad to the rest of the world? (I am from South America, btw).
The very idea of a person believing murder and rape to be horrible without a convoluted and often contradicting spiritual belief system is preposterous to them. Hence "rayiner"'s insistence that not treating people like shit simply must be a religious concept because "it sounds religious". These people genuinely believe someone not treating people like shit can only happen if you're terrified of going to hell or something.
They're somewhat rare but not rare enough. They're extremely dangerous people because, after all, the only thing keeping their desire to harm others in check is a fear of an ever elusive supernatural entity punishing them, instead of just simply not having such a desire.
Maybe the above isn't applicable to "rayiner" but people who say not treating people like shit "sounds religious" are almost always that type.
I’m not denying that some people feel that way. Feelings are real, they’re chemical signals in your brain in response to stimuli. But we agree it’s not more than a feeling, right? And nothing makes the chemical signals in your brain more legitimate than the ones in someone else’s brain? Say we gather up our tribe, clan, nation, whatever. We take a vote based on people’s feelings. And 40% feel like you do, and 60% feel rage at the neighboring tribe/clan/nation and want to violently conquer them and take their resources. We tallied up two sets of chemical signals, and we should pick the more numerous feeling, correct?
Why does believing something is right or wrong require religion or is in any way religious?
Why does someone having signals in their brain making them a believer of religion make their beliefs more justified than someone who does not?
Have you ever asked someone why they believe in god or do you just immediately stop questioning the "legitimacy" of their beliefs the moment you realize they believe in religion so they must be right?
People have explained to you why they believe x is wrong, you refuse to accept their answer and insist they "sound religious"
Why, in your opinion, must nonreligious people constantly justify their belief in x being wrong if you don't demand the same of religious people? Double standards.
I’m just following your logic. You pointed to empathy as something even animals have. Empathy is a real thing in nature, you can see those feelings in brain scans. But so is tribalism or pack behavior. Why do you privilege one type of feeling or instinct over another? What’s the basis for that distinction?
> I'll take humanism [1], the notion that every person is equal in rights.
What is the nature of this assertion? Is it a falsifiable scientific fact?
The basis is the context, is globalization. In prehistoric times a tribe where the people you'd physically meet. In a globalized world the tribe is much bigger, because of communication, commerce and transportation technologies broke the limitations of physical connections.
> Is it a falsifiable scientific fact?
No, it isn't. But it is something that mostly works. Life just feels better when you treat others the way you want to be treated by them, when you and them share the same rights. You see, Karl Popper (the "falsiable" guy) wasn't 100% correct. We actually have a lot of stuff in science that is just a convention and isn't "falsiable". E.g. how cold you possible demonstrate to be false the basic geometric elements: a point, a line, a plane. They don't really exist physically, they're just abstractions.
The general rule is that, in general, cooperation is better than war. War is too destructive and is even more destructive when it targets a complex society (because there is more to destroy). With cooperation, in general, you avoid the destruction of war.
Is the difference in setting forceful? If the significant change is in the social environment, principles such as empathy would not be impacted. Or would you say the principles that apply to tribal life are different from those that apply to global life?
> You see, Karl Popper (the "falsiable" guy) wasn't 100% correct. We actually have a lot of stuff in science that is just a convention and isn't "falsiable". E.g. how cold you possible demonstrate to be false the basic geometric elements: a point, a line, a plane. They don't really exist physically, they're just abstractions.
Karl Popper is completely correct. He defines "science" as a narrow art, not the study of truth as a whole. Science is one discipline among many in pursuit of the truth.
> Life just feels better when you treat others the way you want to be treated by them, when you and them share the same rights.
My model is that truth is a matter of consistency, and that truth is related to good. Therefore, what one should do to be good is being consistent to one's beliefs. Beliefs are influenced by perception/experience, manifest in thoughts and actions, can be recorded in statements (accountability!), and so on. In practice, (a variation of) the Golden Rule is derived from this.
Please be transparent on your own beliefs too, if you demand this of others. On what basis do you stake your beliefs? Are you being empathetic? Are you being tribal?
> What is the nature of this assertion? Is it a falsifiable scientific fact?
Science alone is insufficient to answer all questions. Do not overextend its powers. None of us in this thread are mainly relying on science, for good reason. If someone poses the question "should humans do [thing]?" as a scientific one, they are a charlatan and a fraud.
I'm absolutely not religious. So, therefore, am I not human?
I've heard that exact type of comparison before, and it's from those fundamentalist christians. You find out quickly, that "everything is the devil or demonic" that wasn't written down in a bronze-age book and interpreted and translated the snot out of, over a game of telephone played over 2000 years. Most of which was done by illiterates.
Better yet, lets look at what the opposite of this demonic is - judeo-christian values.
1 Samuel 15:3 "Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe [kill and dedicate to YHWH] all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!"
That god sounds like a petty tribal warlord. Really? Genocide? Even kill the infants and animals?!? And this is what's being accepted as good and holy? And when Saul (king) spared the Amalekite king and some animals, even that benevolence was rewarded with destroying Saul.
Petty. Tribal. Warlord.
And yeah, I've actually read the Torah and New Testament and Koran. I know what I disagree in, and I see how our culture are still afflicted by all this historical religious baggage.
Have you read these works considering historical and cultural context? Can you find anything in the New testament that supports this? Do you know about the history of how Christianity shaped European culture? There are excellent books on the subjects (Dominion by Tom Holland is brilliant on the lats of these).
In the Americas and Europe, Christianity is the fundamentalist scourge. We all know of Israel, of fundamentalist Judaism. Middle East? You guessed it, 4 of the 5 major sects of Islam are fundamentalist. And moving further East, we see extreme caste-ism and Fundamentalist Hinduism.
China rooted out Fundamentalist Buddhism with Tibet. In 1953, 700,000 of an estimated total population of 1,250,000 were serfs - effectively enslaved peoples on the land attached to the land-lord. Usually a lama, or a priest in Buddhism. This is a case where an oppressive fundamentalist religion was rooted out, and almost a million people were freed.
Im also well aware of all the damage Christianity and Islam did through the millennia in Europe. The priesthood collectively held back science, arts, literature, and countless other things because of "demons, devils, satan". And that only got worse with Dante's Inferno, which somehow got collapsed as bible stories, but really is a fanfiction.
We also see fundamentalist christian hatred flood everywhere with <GASP> more anti-woman sentiment with Witch Trials held basically everywhere. Even had executions up in Holmavik Iceland, to of which a museum was made to commemorate their witch trials. And everyone knows of Salem Massachusetts. Estimates of 30-60000 women were executed in these sham trials, and was predominantly women targeted here.
Perhaps it was too narrow to just blame christians, although the USA is a "christian nation" and what I'm most exposed against my will. No, the problem is fanaticism and fundamentalism. Its one thing to say "My religion says I cant do (action)." and a whole different thing to say "My religion says YOU cant do (action)". All the fundamentalists demand both.
You mean this priesthood? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scient...
> We also see fundamentalist christian hatred flood everywhere with <GASP> more anti-woman sentiment with Witch Trials held basically everywhere.
Which happened in early modern times.
> Its one thing to say "My religion says I cant do (action)." and a whole different thing to say "My religion says YOU cant do (action)".
I agree. On the other hand secular ideologies are often worse. Look at the history of the 20th century.
> > In the Americas and Europe, Christianity is the fundamentalist scourge.
yes, those horrible Christians. Doing things like abolishing slavery, improving the status of women and demanding marital fidelity from men as well as women. Do you have any idea what pre-Christian Europe was like? The Roman Empire, for example?