Ironically, biblical morality is absolutely fucked in the head.
Killing women because they didn’t scream while they were raped (probably because the uncle or father or brother raping them was either choking them out or holding a knife to their throat or something worse.)
Killing infants and unborn children because someone 3 generations ago did a thing.
Stoning teenagers for being, you know, teenagers.
It really is a good thing morality doesn’t come from god.
In the scope of things that's fairly mild. I mean god once decided to bio-cide the entire planet. (or so we're told, heh.) And that was because some angels game down and got it on with human women.... who probably didn't really have a choice...
Yeah. I mean it’s not the most explicit justification given, per se, but like here’s gen 6, where god decided to, you know, off everything except Noah:
6 ^1^When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, ^2 ^the sons of God saw that they were fair, and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. ^3^ Then the Lordsaid, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” ^4^ The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.
^5^ The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. ^6^And the Lord was sorry that he had made humans on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. ^7^So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the humans I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air—for I am sorry that I have made them.” ^8^But Noah found favor in the sight of the Lord.
Chapter 5, is largely a list of men following the line of Adam through to Noah. Then chapter six kicks off with that little gem, so it certainly seems to be that the think that god found wicked is his children boinking his playthings. (Early on, they were monolatristic, believing in other gods but worshipping only one to exclusion. As they became monotheistic, the sons of god were now angels, not lesser gods.)
(Fun fact. The word used for the ark, just means “box”. Noah didn’t even build a boat. He built a box.)
The best part is when God goes " see that guy over there, he believes so much in me, i will torment him beyond reason to proof his dedication to me"
There are so many of these terrible examples of god being this huge asshole. When i read the bible in my early teens, it was reading the bible that 'made me an atheist'. Seeing that people took this asshole god serious.
Over the years i did get to learn more about Jesus, he is the proto-hippy about sharing love and kindness. But somehow, very few christians follow up on his words and teachings. Christians actively chosing to be assholes when they have Jesus as a deity in their mythological fanfinction. It boggles the mind.
I often use it as my answer to "you just hate god" because agreeing with that statement (with a good reason as to why) is more fun than denying it entirely
I mean, if you believe their stories, god told the first lie. so why would you believe his divinely inspired horror novel when it says someone is the bad guy?
(good news- the exodus never happened. you'd think that rivers turning to blood would be something somebody in egypt would have mentioned/written down. Or the frogs. or the locusts or the whole slew of dead first born sons.)
Not to get into a debate, but someone did write about (something that could reasonably be) it, potential motivated reasoning by the source aside. Sources from that far into the past (or even the relatively closer past) very rarely survive to the present day, especially literary sources (which tend to be written on papyrus that rots away), and even historians of relatively well-attested periods like Rome and Classical Greece basically have a few texts they rely on*, supplemented with archeology, epigraphy (inscriptions on stone) and straight up magic, and that's a thousand years before (edit: after) the period in which the Exodus is taken to have happened without the advantage of Medieval monks painstakingly preserving the material. Now the Egyptian corpus is uncommonly big (yay for the Sahara), but it's also very fragmented. For the most part what we don't and can't know is orders of magnitude more than what we can know, and it's not even like we've studied the whole Egyptian corpus (we haven't; there's a shortage of trained Egyptologists able to do that work), so it's very plausible that an event of even that magnitude would just... not show up in a way we can recognize. So what I want to say is: Truth of the Exodus aside, our sources for ancient history are nowhere near that comprehensive. Three thousand years is a long time.
*For example Roman military history basically entirely relies on two guys (Livy and Polybius), whose works very frustratingly only survive in part, supplemented by some less reliable sources and fragments. When talking about Alexander the Great it's basically just Arrian, again supplemented by less reliable/comprehensive sources and fragments. And it can get worse; we get straight up nothing in the way of literature from Carthage. There's a lot of dumb luck involved in what does and does not survive.
Penn Jillette has a good explanation. I don't agree with a lot he says, but this is pretty spot on. (The clip goes kinda off the answer after about a minute)
tl;dw: If you I don't believe in a god, what's stopping me from raping and killing anyone I want? And the answer is: I have. I already have. I have raped and killed everyone I want to rape and kill, and the answer is............. zero. There are zero people I want to rape or kill. And the question becomes: Who are these people walking around with lists of people they want to rape and kill? Why do we consider THEM the sane ones?
We evolved into social creatures - apes together strong. The group becomes weak if we are always knocking down or killing our neighbour. If we all work together and gather bananas, then we can feed those in the group who can not gather bananas. Healthy ape brains receive pleasure helping other apes (and animals) in need.
Of course it all falls apart when we have malfunctioning ape brains in the group who promote hate, greed, and fairy stories of a magic sky ape or we have Musk ape, Trump ape and Zucker Ape who want all the bananas.
I need some advice, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.
Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations.
A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?
I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev.15: 19-24.
The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offence.
When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odour for the Lord - Lev.1:9.
The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odour is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death.
Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I do not agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?
Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I must admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?
I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two diverse kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.
When God (in verse 45) said that slaves are ok to buy, he meant that people, all from the start, each have slaves within their hearts. Things that we have sold or boughtten that are forced to pick our "moral cotton." God calls for us to set these free, free our hearts from slavery.
And as God goes on to explain the logistics of buying and selling slaves...
lmao that's hilarious. saved to my disk! yeah i think that religion is like ... how do i say this, like you're asking an antique person to build an electric vehicle for you ... they have neither the tools nor the knowledge to do it properly. it's quite bizarre to think that people refuse the progress of time, and especially the progress of society by clinging onto principles of the past.
Is an action good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?
If it's the first one, then all you're saying is "God commands what God commands," and assigning "good" to that is meaningless. If God commanded you to do evil things, then you would have to just blindly accept that as "good."
If it's the second one, then you acknowledge that there's a source of morality independent of God that you're judging God's commands against to determine that his commands are good. At that point, you're in the same place as the atheist, and it raises the question of why we need to listen to God as opposed to just going to the source.
This argument literally predates Christianity. But most religious people just think that philosophy doesn't apply to them and that the answer to every philosophical question is just "Jesus."
Let me make this simple. If God shows up in the sky tomorrow and says "murder is good, actually" then is your conclusion, "Oh, I guess I was wrong about murder being bad, it turns out murder is actually good because God said so" or is your conclusion, "Oh, I guess I was wrong that God only tells us to do good things, because God just told us murder is good and we know that murder is evil?"
You're literally doing the exact thing I described, refusing to engage with a philosophical question and just responding to it with platitudes.
So I guess your question is.
Is God good or just pretending to be good ?
Well, you will certainly be very successful not to answer this if you refuse to listen. And that's the with the rest, you will be better of not listening if your goal is to keep torturing yourself with deeply intricated philosophies.
So I guess your question is. Is God good or just pretending to be good ?
No, my question is, again, whether the things God says are good because God says so, or whether the things God says are good because you've independently evaluated them to be good. "Pretending" has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
Well, you will certainly be very successful not to answer this if you refuse to listen.
You are the one who's refusing to listen. I've asked you the same question three times now, you still haven't given anything resembling an answer.
And that’s the with the rest, you will be better of not listening if your goal is to keep torturing yourself with deeply intricated philosophies.
Torturing myself? Do you find it torturous to examine philosophical questions? I certainly don't. I also don't think I'm asking anything "intricate" here. This is a simple question that Plato first posed 2400 years ago.
It's concerning that you're dismissing this question as some "intricated philosophy" and even more concerning that you call it "torture" to even think about it. There's this big contradiction right in the middle of your beliefs and you're desperately trying to pretend it doesn't exist.
Good because god or good then god ? For us and with the level of knowledge we have god is above everything.
But the goal is to reach him. And then what ? What happen when we become like him ? Do we get to see other stuff, things beyond ?
I guess ask me again when we get there
I think, in religious households, instead of being taught to be a good caring person you are taught to be as selfish as possible while staying within the rules.
So it’s not that religious need eternal threat of damnation, it’s that they have been taught to be as selfish as possible.
So I don’t think they lack morality naturally but they have been taught to be horrible people who obey laws.
So I don’t think they lack morality naturally but they have been taught to be horrible people who obey laws.
it would be interesting to do an A/B testing study where one takes the people who would typically grow up in a religious household and places them in a household completely without religious indoctrination, and see whether they turn out better or worse.
i mean, there's lots of correlation studies that already prove that "christians" in the US are shitheads. and that people who don't identify as christians are typically morally superior in basically any metric. the question is: does that imply causation?
i.e. a possible mechanism is that the really worst people in society need religion to not be even worse people, i.e. you don't see how bad it would get if there was no religion. that's a possibility that has to be seriously considered. i'm honestly not sure what would be found out.
I think, in religious households, instead of being taught to be a good caring person you are taught to be as selfish as possible while staying within the rules.
They're given absolution for their sins. It allows them to be cunts, and at the end of the week, Jesus washes away all their nasty actions.
Some of the worst people I've ever met in my life have been hardcore Jesus cultists. The kind that, when they say "god bless you", it feels more like "go fuck yourself".
That said, in high school (80s) I met a couple of Catholic girls and found they were more sexually open then some other girls. I remember one time we were going though a Kama Sutra book and I joked and said something like "Your God isn't going to like this one." and she laughed and said "that's what confession is for". I always remembered that.
I also swore to hang out with more Catholic girls.
That said, in high school (80s) I met a couple of Catholic girls and found they were more sexually open then some other girls.
yeah, that's a really interesting observation, and i have made it too on numerous occasions (both when i was still a student, but it's also a recurring theme in movies and such). i'm still not really sure what causes it.
the probably most straight-forward interpretation would be that christianity teaches the people to have lots of kids. well, to have lots of kids, you need lewd women. so maybe christianity actually causes it intentionally.
Most drivers don't choose how bright their headlights are or how they're calibrated. Most modern vehicles come with super-bright LEDs, and because of the popularity of larger SUVs and trucks (which is a different conversation) those lights are about a foot higher off the road. Realistically, we can't expect individual owners to replace or modify factory headlights on their own. If we want the problem to improve we will need stronger industry regulations or financial incentives.
one of the first things we learned in auto shop back in school was how damn easy it is to properly aim headlights. you turn two screws/bolts. bugs the shit out of me how it's never done anymore.
calibration, unfortunately, only helps on smooth flat ground when aimed at stuff on the same plane
there's a McDonald's drive through that I go past sometimes that is right next to oncoming traffic but 10 ft higher in elevation, and I fucking hate that thing. I just hold my horn down whenever somebody is sitting in there with blinding headlights so I can't see if somebody is turning across my lane at the intersection just ahead. they still haven't put something up to block headlights. maybe if more people get on the horn they'll finally do something about it
I've heard that most of the cars in the rest of the world have some sort of mechanism by which their lights will not shine directly at the faces of drivers in other cars. But of course here in the US we can't have that.
matrix headlights are only suitable for environments where vehicles are the only other things that will be encountered, like highways
they don't work for pedestrians or cyclists, and they're not quick enough to react on hilly or windy roads
great tech for high speed highways, not appropriate pretty much anywhere else. it's not the loss a lot of people think it is, to not have them in North America
that doesn't hold in practice, btw. there's lots of lewd things that i would like other people to do to me, but other people typically don't like it at all when i do it to them.
We're atheists and have raised our son (almost 10) as such, but always answer any questions he has about religion, especially since he hears it in school. He has no qualms telling friends he doesn't believe in God and one friend told him he was going to hell. This was essentially my statement for him to use in the future andI love that he has no fear expressing himself.
When my son was around 9-10 he came home from school one day and said "everyone on the bus believes in god but me". To note, its a small bus he rides. I felt bad, was a bit upset this convo happened, but I guess its good. The conversation didnt sway him, and I did let him go to church even one time with his "big brother" from a program. He didnt want to go back. I was so conflicted what I would do if he wanted to. But thankfully, he's just no interest in pretend people, and isnt afraid to speak his mind on the matter.
He derived his laws from the god Shamash. He just codified and imposed his interpretation. I am well aware of the stele, I've seen it! As sure as Shamash is my witness!
Have you got a citation for the claim that the laws were supposed to be the divine commandments of Shamash? All the articles I can find on the code or the stele just talk about the laws themselves with no mention of religious connotations.
Nature has essentially built a concept of good and bad into us through evolution. Traits such as cooperation, reciprocity, and concern for others can improve survival and social cohesion, giving individuals who possess those traits an evolutionary advantage over those who are consistently uncooperative or harmful.
You do not necessarily need religion or philosophy to understand the basic distinction between what is good and what is harmful. Human beings already possess psychological mechanisms such as sympathy and empathy that allow us to recognize and understand the experiences of others through our own subjective experiences.
If you understand that something causes you pain, suffering, or fear, empathy allows you to recognize that the same experience is likely to be harmful to someone else. Likewise, if you understand that something brings you pleasure, security, or happiness, you can recognize that similar experiences may be beneficial to others.
That does not mean every individual instinct or emotional response is morally correct. It means that the foundations for morality can exist naturally within the human psyche, without requiring religion or a formal philosophical system to create them.
Traits such as cooperation, reciprocity, and concern for others can improve survival and social cohesion, giving individuals who possess those traits an evolutionary advantage over those who are consistently uncooperative or harmful
Doesn't explain animals that are predators like say sharks. They don't cooperate yet they thrive. You could say that even immorality is an evolutionary trait because it gains you an advantage gaming a system built on trust.
All I mean is you can point at any biological organism and say "the reason it is like this is because it is evolutionarily advantageous" and you wouldn't really be saying anything more meaningful than "it is the way it is because that's what's best for it". It's a near perfect example of begging the question.
It's scary how many christians will pretend "my particular interpretation of god said so" is objective morality. People actually defend rape, slavery, and genocide.
I rely on sense and reason, personally. I aim to reduce overall suffering because I find suffering unpleasant and I empathize with others, and also because working together is mutually beneficial. It's not a choice between emotion and utility, it's both.
Let's be honest, they do so by adhering to cultural norms with the exact same devotion and lack of scrutiny that religious people do.
"Why do we do it this way?" "We've always done it this way!"
"Why is it wrong?" "Because it's just wrong!"
The very small subset of actually moral people decide between good and bad choices not depending on social norms, not depending on laws, not even depending on morals or ethics, but by what motivations their actions arise from, whether they come from Ego or understanding.
You can never know whether an action is good or bad, you can only know whether your motivations are good or bad.
Religious people act like they're more moral or have morality that's special because they believe in God. However when you ask why all those pious people back in the day: cheated, stole, murdered, adulterer, were racist, had slaves, raped kids and stuff. They would say that it was the norm at the time and nobody else knew better.
To paraphrase Stephen J Fry: "then what are you for?!"
Sure, but so do atheists. They just believe their morality is special because they believe in the current social norms, within the current societal context. In 10 years they'll be different, should a catastrophe happen it will shift completely. It's just as flippant in its own way.
There's pretty solid evidence supporting empathy as a beneficial evolutionary trait, it's not like it's random that "don't be shitty to each other" is a social norm.
if empathy was truly universally favored by evolution, then there wouldn't be any non-emphathetic humans today and we wouldn't have this discussion, just saying.
That's not at all how that works. First at no point have I made any "universally" claims. Nothing in evolution or psychology is 100% universal. Second, empathy, on average, is good for the health of the species. Selfishness is a gamble: it can dramatically increase the individual's odds of passing on their genes but it requires enough non-selfish targets to exploit or it actually has a negative impact. More simply, jackasses fighting each other are worse off than pacifists working together.
So what's favored is for most people to be altruistic and a small percentage of predators take advantage of them.
But social norms aren't empathy. They are adhered to because of the punishment that will result if you break them. Before you have any chance of developing empathy or emotional intelligence, you are taught as a child that breaking social norms will result in punishment, and from then on your only motivation to follow them is fear of punishment.
And that is exactly the same mechanism as religious morality.
you are taught as a child that breaking social norms will result in punishment, and from then on your only motivation to follow them is fear of punishment.
I'm sorry to hear about your sociopathy, but no this is not how most people work.
you are taught as a child that breaking social norms will result in punishment, and from then on your only motivation to follow them is fear of punishment.
I didn't give up meat because I was worried about angry vegans coming to my house and beating me up, I gave up meat because I rationally evaluated the effects eating meat would have on the world and determined that those weren't effects I wanted to cause.
Yes, in all likelihood you have some kind of neurodivergence. That's why you've probably noticed people around you rarely function through rational choice the way you do.
People are generally programmed to follow the tribe, keep opinions to confirm and demonstrate fealty to the tribe, and to avoid committing any taboos that could cause them to be cast out and die alone in the wild.
And the people who did not do this mostly just had this exact happen and died.
I am neurodivergent, but I'm not prepared to accept the implication that neurotypical people lack moral agency. Anyone is capable of thinking critically about their behavior and changing it. Not every vegan is neurodivergent.
but by what motivations their actions arise from, whether they come from Ego or understanding.
i'm sorry to shatter your worldview, but this is wrong. people need an "ego", and more "understanding" is not always better.
The "ego" is a symbol for the human stomach. Every time we eat, it's actually a gross and disgusting thing. nobody wants to see it, how you put your teeth into the soft and defenseless food. you're literally devouring, destroying precious food. gross. anyways, people need to eat, otherwise they die. it's the same with what you call "ego". sure, people are "egoistic" sometimes, but if they never are, they never gather the resources that they need and then they die. does not work that way.
"understanding": the more people understand, the less physically active they are. people who do science often sit around all day. nobody would work physically and society wouldn't advance. there need to be people with limited understanding. just saying.
I like what Ricky Gervais said about it. He asked Stephen Colbert if he believed in any of the other 3000 gods from human history. Stephen said he did not. Ricky told him that he just believes in one less than he does.
Since religious morality is made up by people it comes from the same source as atheist morality. Humans!
Religion tends to make it easy for people to insert shitty stuff and claim it is a divine mandate. Atheists have to make a case for why something is right or wrong.
How do atheists decide between good and bad choices?
Well, some of them are dumb, and they just guess based on what's best for their survival at the moment.
The clever ones employ something called "critical thinking"
(I went to Christian schooling for my entire childhood. I first learned about "critical thinking" and the scientific method when reading an Edmund Scientific pamphlet. Blew my mind... in my mid 20s).
That's a good rule of thumb, but it runs into difficulty when you map it to the marco scale.
Whether we're talking individual human capacity (Dunbar's Number) or a question of public policy (for instance, in the Trolley Problem scenario) or even just common accounting and logistics principles, people become indistinguishable from things in significantly large numbers and anonymous contexts.
Bureaucracy has a de-humanizing effect on individuals. But bureaucracy is fundamental to administration of large populations. I don't know how you square this circle without committing some degree of "sin".
I'm not sure I agree. A person doesn't need to be in your Dunbar group to still be treated as a person, and bureaucracy doesn't have to be dehumanizing; though I'll grant that doing so is an easy trap to slide into. But you can plan for the needs and behaviors of large groups of people without treating them as anything less - just look at something like event planning!
In response to the trolley problem - It does get tricky with something like triage, where you have to evaluate who gets saved on the basis of their injuries. In this case, taking a cue from Weatherwax again, I think the key would be making sure that even those who don't get saved still get treated humanely - pain relief, comfort, etc.
A person doesn’t need to be in your Dunbar group to still be treated as a person
Not incidentally, sure. But they need to be in your Dunbar group to be seen as a person.
As soon as "treating another person" carries a price, people charged with delivering treatment are going to start falling off of it.
bureaucracy doesn’t have to be dehumanizing
Again, not incidentally. But the impulse in a bureaucracy is towards expediency. You have a large volume of people to manage and a limited amount of time / manpower / resources. So you cut corners in order to mitigate shortfalls or appease overworked staff, because you don't see the consequences of your actions or experience guilt over it.
I think the key would be making sure that even those who don’t get saved still get treated humanely
I don't argue that this is the strictly moral path. But it ignores the biases, the capacities, and the temperaments of the people doing the triage. At some point you need people to do the things. And people routinely put their own comfort ahead of others' health and well-being, because personal comfort is immediate and real while the experiences of others are remote and abstract.
It rings consistent with the Wiccan Rede (Do no harm) and the ethic of reciprocity, aka The Golden Rule.
Curiously this sheds light on the common sickness of the ultra-wealthy, who are surrounded by sycophantic courtiers who readily agree with their every word bur also want a taste of their sweet, sweet lucre. Inside weeks, they start seeing themselves as experts in everything, and everyone else as NPCs.
You put yourself in the mind of the person or people your choice affects. If they would think positively about your choice, it's generally good, if negatively, then bad.
Good people sometimes do bad things, and bad people sometimes do good things. But the real kicker is that people aren't truly good or bad, it's a false dichotomy.
Well, there is good as in beneficial and bad as in detracting. As my dad said, “about 85% of people are just trying to live their life, not bad or good, but there is the other group that is troublesome” — black markets, affluence against commoners, etc.
I for example do not poke my eyes out with a fork... Because doing so it bad. It's actually really simple to decide if something is bad. Much harder to decide something is bad and then realize it's good and choosing it because it is good. I change mind all the time. Science too, it's part of science. You see 👀 results from a test and you realize you were either right or wrong and then you test again... Something different.
How can we know bad a good thing without someone who is guiding us? Would someone who has a slave think slavery is bad? It's normal for them because they saw it every day.
How can we know bad a good thing without someone who is guiding us?
modern theology is almost always based on universal principles, i.e. insights that apply everywhere, at any time. in western literature since aristoteles, these have mainly been identified to fall into three categories:
mathematics
physics
biology / chemistry
(or in the medieval ages, they were called "theology" / "law studies" / "medicine", but these topics have been abstracted a whole lot since then.)
to your specific question: slavery is bad because it contradicts the self-determination of the person who is able to think for themselves. modern views (e.g. calvinism claim that every human is physiologically able to make their own decisions wisely enough; therefore they should also get the practical possibility to decide things for themselves).
this is not "somebody" guiding us; it is some ideas guiding us. there's a crucial difference there.
It's a simple 2-part equation to determine what is a good/bad choice (socially)
Golden rule (do unto others...), combined with a little social intelligence to understand that if I were someone else, I might want different things.
Generally, shooting people with paintballs is bad, but there are scenarios where someone is okay with getting shot with a paintball (like when playing paintball) so shooting them with a paintball in that circumstance is "good".
A lot has been written over the ages about the nature of goodness. The Greeks weren't the first, nor were they the last.
Ideas such as natural law have been attested in the ancient Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope for instance. On the other hand, in European thought, Thomas Aquinas was a highly influential figure, as well as Bentham and Kant.
And then, of course, there's the whole rest of the world.
I feel it's very hard to make good choices when you don't have the full picture.
Like should I confront my toxic boss at the risk of loosing my job, or should I cave ? It's good to want to keep your job, but it's also pretty bad to allow for toxic behaviors.
How to find a path for peace in difficult times is tremandously hard, I feel. Sometimes it's good to ask for a little help and guidance. To aknowledge you'd be better following whatever the guy who has the full picture and who's "the source of goodness" than your own stupid anger.
Like that's the whole goal, escape the circle of hate. And that I believe is beyond simple human resoning. You need a source of light to get out of your own darkness
i mean, have you considered the possibility that you know intuitively what is "right" and what is "wrong" because it has been enshrined into you by 2000 years of religion?
What if it has been enshrined into us by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution because altruism is a trait that increases the survival chances of a social species?
i'm happy to hear that it works for you to follow purely your own instincts, but if you consider the typical person in for example the US today, there's a 99.9% chance that's not gonna work.
point is, lots of stuff are "right" because they're socially told, even if you don't call it religion, it's still transported as "common mode of operation". that's what i meant.
In my experience, most people have a pretty good feel for what's right and wrong, it seems to be a basic function of empathy. There is a small percentage who lack this understanding, but more often it seems to me like it's people who have been twisted one way or another that are the issue. They've been taught to value things over people, or that power is the only path to acceptance, or something else equally twisty.
2000 years? Religion has been around longer than that. Is it just Christianity that has "enshrined morality" into the cultures that practice it?
If you ask me to compare a country that was historically mostly Christian, like the US, against a country that was historically mostly Buddhist, like Japan, it seems to me that Japan is ahead on a lot of metrics. Compared to Americans, Japanese people pollute less, have a lower crime rate, a less militaristic foreign policy, hell, they don't even litter.
So what, are all religions simultaneously true, despite contradicting each other left and right? If I get a society to start worshipping the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is that going to eventually "enshrine morality" in that society, even among nonbelievers? Or is it just your particular religion that's correct, and the fact that morality doesn't actually correlate with societies practicing it is just a glaring hole in your argument?
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FuglyDuck@lemmy.world · 90 pts · 2d
Ironically, biblical morality is absolutely fucked in the head.
Killing women because they didn’t scream while they were raped (probably because the uncle or father or brother raping them was either choking them out or holding a knife to their throat or something worse.)
Killing infants and unborn children because someone 3 generations ago did a thing.
Stoning teenagers for being, you know, teenagers.
It really is a good thing morality doesn’t come from god.
Equinox1289@sh.itjust.works · 40 pts · 2d
Sending bears after teenagers because they called you bald once is crazy Elisha.
Kanda@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 1d
It's possibly because they told him to go up the hill where people worshipped other gods, the sinnest of all sins
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
Yeah, but you're forgetting a really important detail. These teenagers were like, really annoying.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Yup.
In the scope of things that's fairly mild. I mean god once decided to bio-cide the entire planet. (or so we're told, heh.) And that was because some angels game down and got it on with human women.... who probably didn't really have a choice...
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 5h
The great flood? That was a nephilim thing?
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2h
Yeah. I mean it’s not the most explicit justification given, per se, but like here’s gen 6, where god decided to, you know, off everything except Noah:
Chapter 5, is largely a list of men following the line of Adam through to Noah. Then chapter six kicks off with that little gem, so it certainly seems to be that the think that god found wicked is his children boinking his playthings. (Early on, they were monolatristic, believing in other gods but worshipping only one to exclusion. As they became monotheistic, the sons of god were now angels, not lesser gods.)
(Fun fact. The word used for the ark, just means “box”. Noah didn’t even build a boat. He built a box.)
SirLeToet@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 1d
The best part is when God goes " see that guy over there, he believes so much in me, i will torment him beyond reason to proof his dedication to me"
There are so many of these terrible examples of god being this huge asshole. When i read the bible in my early teens, it was reading the bible that 'made me an atheist'. Seeing that people took this asshole god serious.
Over the years i did get to learn more about Jesus, he is the proto-hippy about sharing love and kindness. But somehow, very few christians follow up on his words and teachings. Christians actively chosing to be assholes when they have Jesus as a deity in their mythological fanfinction. It boggles the mind.
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d
I think my favorite morality-thing to bring up is Song of Solomon.
Especially when people get on about purity culture. It’s Bronze Age porn.
I mean, yeah. god is a raging asshole, but that one usually gets more entertaining reactions.
Smaile@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 1d
Yup, I don't believe in God, if he is real, I wouldn't want to follow him anyways...
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 5h
Most gods are huge assholes, though.
SourDragon@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
A screenshot of a comment I made a while back. Link to original comment
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
oh I'm well aware of how awful the story is. Basically the entire point was to flex how powerful 'god' was.
SourDragon@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I often use it as my answer to "you just hate god" because agreeing with that statement (with a good reason as to why) is more fun than denying it entirely
SourDragon@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Not to mention the whole Exodus problem
The pharaoh was bad guy at first but then became a victim of Adonaiyahwehjehovahbob's torture
(I didn't mean to comment twice)
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
I mean, if you believe their stories, god told the first lie. so why would you believe his divinely inspired horror novel when it says someone is the bad guy?
(good news- the exodus never happened. you'd think that rivers turning to blood would be something somebody in egypt would have mentioned/written down. Or the frogs. or the locusts or the whole slew of dead first born sons.)
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 2 pts · 1d
Not to get into a debate, but someone did write about (something that could reasonably be) it, potential motivated reasoning by the source aside. Sources from that far into the past (or even the relatively closer past) very rarely survive to the present day, especially literary sources (which tend to be written on papyrus that rots away), and even historians of relatively well-attested periods like Rome and Classical Greece basically have a few texts they rely on*, supplemented with archeology, epigraphy (inscriptions on stone) and straight up magic, and that's a thousand years
before(edit: after) the period in which the Exodus is taken to have happened without the advantage of Medieval monks painstakingly preserving the material. Now the Egyptian corpus is uncommonly big (yay for the Sahara), but it's also very fragmented. For the most part what we don't and can't know is orders of magnitude more than what we can know, and it's not even like we've studied the whole Egyptian corpus (we haven't; there's a shortage of trained Egyptologists able to do that work), so it's very plausible that an event of even that magnitude would just... not show up in a way we can recognize. So what I want to say is: Truth of the Exodus aside, our sources for ancient history are nowhere near that comprehensive. Three thousand years is a long time.*For example Roman military history basically entirely relies on two guys (Livy and Polybius), whose works very frustratingly only survive in part, supplemented by some less reliable sources and fragments. When talking about Alexander the Great it's basically just Arrian, again supplemented by less reliable/comprehensive sources and fragments. And it can get worse; we get straight up nothing in the way of literature from Carthage. There's a lot of dumb luck involved in what does and does not survive.
eurodyne@piefed.world · 40 pts · 2d
It’s much easier to be a good person when you aren’t indoctrinated from birth with some book of ancient myths telling you who to hate.
daychilde@lemmy.world · 28 pts · 1d
Penn Jillette has a good explanation. I don't agree with a lot he says, but this is pretty spot on. (The clip goes kinda off the answer after about a minute)
tl;dw: If you I don't believe in a god, what's stopping me from raping and killing anyone I want? And the answer is: I have. I already have. I have raped and killed everyone I want to rape and kill, and the answer is............. zero. There are zero people I want to rape or kill. And the question becomes: Who are these people walking around with lists of people they want to rape and kill? Why do we consider THEM the sane ones?
BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Had I been alive during WW2, I'm pretty sure myself and majority of my neighbors would have Hitler on the kill list.
imvii@lemmy.ca · 27 pts · 1d
We evolved into social creatures - apes together strong. The group becomes weak if we are always knocking down or killing our neighbour. If we all work together and gather bananas, then we can feed those in the group who can not gather bananas. Healthy ape brains receive pleasure helping other apes (and animals) in need.
Of course it all falls apart when we have malfunctioning ape brains in the group who promote hate, greed, and fairy stories of a magic sky ape or we have Musk ape, Trump ape and Zucker Ape who want all the bananas.
thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 1d
YragNitram1956@feddit.uk · 27 pts · 19h
I need some advice, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.
Objection@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 19h
You're taking those passages too literally:
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 2 pts · 6h
lmao that's hilarious. saved to my disk! yeah i think that religion is like ... how do i say this, like you're asking an antique person to build an electric vehicle for you ... they have neither the tools nor the knowledge to do it properly. it's quite bizarre to think that people refuse the progress of time, and especially the progress of society by clinging onto principles of the past.
ActualGrapesTasteGreen@piefed.zip · 23 pts · 1d
Mutual respect, it isn't fucking difficult.
It starts with "I don't want to die so if you won't kill me, I won't kill you" and just incrementally grows from there.
Objection@lemmy.ml · 21 pts · 1d
Is an action good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?
If it's the first one, then all you're saying is "God commands what God commands," and assigning "good" to that is meaningless. If God commanded you to do evil things, then you would have to just blindly accept that as "good."
If it's the second one, then you acknowledge that there's a source of morality independent of God that you're judging God's commands against to determine that his commands are good. At that point, you're in the same place as the atheist, and it raises the question of why we need to listen to God as opposed to just going to the source.
This argument literally predates Christianity. But most religious people just think that philosophy doesn't apply to them and that the answer to every philosophical question is just "Jesus."
adibou@lemmy.world · -9 pts · 1d
The source is God
Objection@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 1d
adibou@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 1d
Good is good. Only thing is deists believe good is a person with intentions for you and everyone to reach himself, to reach goodness.
He helps you if you listen to him, but only if you listen to him. He does not "command" you are fully free to tell him to fuck of at any time
Objection@lemmy.ml · 11 pts · 1d
Not an answer.
Let me make this simple. If God shows up in the sky tomorrow and says "murder is good, actually" then is your conclusion, "Oh, I guess I was wrong about murder being bad, it turns out murder is actually good because God said so" or is your conclusion, "Oh, I guess I was wrong that God only tells us to do good things, because God just told us murder is good and we know that murder is evil?"
You're literally doing the exact thing I described, refusing to engage with a philosophical question and just responding to it with platitudes.
adibou@lemmy.world · -9 pts · 1d
So I guess your question is. Is God good or just pretending to be good ?
Well, you will certainly be very successful not to answer this if you refuse to listen. And that's the with the rest, you will be better of not listening if your goal is to keep torturing yourself with deeply intricated philosophies.
It is your free choice. At all time
Objection@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 1d
No, my question is, again, whether the things God says are good because God says so, or whether the things God says are good because you've independently evaluated them to be good. "Pretending" has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
You are the one who's refusing to listen. I've asked you the same question three times now, you still haven't given anything resembling an answer.
Torturing myself? Do you find it torturous to examine philosophical questions? I certainly don't. I also don't think I'm asking anything "intricate" here. This is a simple question that Plato first posed 2400 years ago.
It's concerning that you're dismissing this question as some "intricated philosophy" and even more concerning that you call it "torture" to even think about it. There's this big contradiction right in the middle of your beliefs and you're desperately trying to pretend it doesn't exist.
adibou@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 1d
It's not about listening to me..
Good because god or good then god ? For us and with the level of knowledge we have god is above everything.
But the goal is to reach him. And then what ? What happen when we become like him ? Do we get to see other stuff, things beyond ? I guess ask me again when we get there
Boppel@feddit.org · 21 pts · 2d
Nurgus@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 2d
By his Noodly Appendage!
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works · 19 pts · 1d
I think it’s a bit more complex than this.
I think, in religious households, instead of being taught to be a good caring person you are taught to be as selfish as possible while staying within the rules.
So it’s not that religious need eternal threat of damnation, it’s that they have been taught to be as selfish as possible.
So I don’t think they lack morality naturally but they have been taught to be horrible people who obey laws.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 23h
That's a remarkably good point
It's conspicuous how adept the religious are at mental gymnastics
I always thought that it was because were looking for ways to justify their shitty behaviour, it never occurred to me that that was a taught thing
That makes it so much worse...
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 2 pts · 6h
it would be interesting to do an A/B testing study where one takes the people who would typically grow up in a religious household and places them in a household completely without religious indoctrination, and see whether they turn out better or worse.
i mean, there's lots of correlation studies that already prove that "christians" in the US are shitheads. and that people who don't identify as christians are typically morally superior in basically any metric. the question is: does that imply causation?
i.e. a possible mechanism is that the really worst people in society need religion to not be even worse people, i.e. you don't see how bad it would get if there was no religion. that's a possibility that has to be seriously considered. i'm honestly not sure what would be found out.
KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 11h
They're given absolution for their sins. It allows them to be cunts, and at the end of the week, Jesus washes away all their nasty actions.
Some of the worst people I've ever met in my life have been hardcore Jesus cultists. The kind that, when they say "god bless you", it feels more like "go fuck yourself".
That said, in high school (80s) I met a couple of Catholic girls and found they were more sexually open then some other girls. I remember one time we were going though a Kama Sutra book and I joked and said something like "Your God isn't going to like this one." and she laughed and said "that's what confession is for". I always remembered that.
I also swore to hang out with more Catholic girls.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 6h
yeah, that's a really interesting observation, and i have made it too on numerous occasions (both when i was still a student, but it's also a recurring theme in movies and such). i'm still not really sure what causes it.
the probably most straight-forward interpretation would be that christianity teaches the people to have lots of kids. well, to have lots of kids, you need lewd women. so maybe christianity actually causes it intentionally.
NEZ27@lemmy.zip · 18 pts · 1d
That Golden Rule. If you wouldn't like it done to you, don't do it to someone else.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 1d
absolutely wild how many people out there will blast me with eye melting LED headlights and then get all pissy when I turn my halogen highbeams on
I think they missed the memo
ContriteErudite@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1d
I also hate how bright modern headlamps are and agree that it's a potentially painful annoyance at best, and a huge safety issue at worst.
If you're in the U.S., a study has been mandated and a bill introduced to take steps towards setting brightness limits for auto manufacturers. If this is an issue you care about, consider reaching out to your Congressmen and let them know you want them to support the bill and study mandate introduced earlier this year:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7772/committees
https://gluesenkampperez.house.gov/posts/gluesenkamp-perezs-amendment-passes-house-appropriations-committee-to-investigate-overly-bright-headlights
Most drivers don't choose how bright their headlights are or how they're calibrated. Most modern vehicles come with super-bright LEDs, and because of the popularity of larger SUVs and trucks (which is a different conversation) those lights are about a foot higher off the road. Realistically, we can't expect individual owners to replace or modify factory headlights on their own. If we want the problem to improve we will need stronger industry regulations or financial incentives.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
one of the first things we learned in auto shop back in school was how damn easy it is to properly aim headlights. you turn two screws/bolts. bugs the shit out of me how it's never done anymore.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1d
calibration, unfortunately, only helps on smooth flat ground when aimed at stuff on the same plane
there's a McDonald's drive through that I go past sometimes that is right next to oncoming traffic but 10 ft higher in elevation, and I fucking hate that thing. I just hold my horn down whenever somebody is sitting in there with blinding headlights so I can't see if somebody is turning across my lane at the intersection just ahead. they still haven't put something up to block headlights. maybe if more people get on the horn they'll finally do something about it
Quasit@beige.party · 1 pts · 1d
@mrgoosmoos @HeyThisIsntTheYMCA
I've heard that most of the cars in the rest of the world have some sort of mechanism by which their lights will not shine directly at the faces of drivers in other cars. But of course here in the US we can't have that.
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 1d
matrix headlights are only suitable for environments where vehicles are the only other things that will be encountered, like highways
they don't work for pedestrians or cyclists, and they're not quick enough to react on hilly or windy roads
great tech for high speed highways, not appropriate pretty much anywhere else. it's not the loss a lot of people think it is, to not have them in North America
alsimoneau@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 23h
That's just a bandaid. And not a good one.
0x0@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 1d
I thought that was the Silver Rule.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 6h
that doesn't hold in practice, btw. there's lots of lewd things that i would like other people to do to me, but other people typically don't like it at all when i do it to them.
Varesti@lemmy.zip · 15 pts · 2d
"I don't need the threat of eternal punishment, we've got punishment at home." --Me, a bad person.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
😳🥺👉👈
Dohnuthut@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1d
We're atheists and have raised our son (almost 10) as such, but always answer any questions he has about religion, especially since he hears it in school. He has no qualms telling friends he doesn't believe in God and one friend told him he was going to hell. This was essentially my statement for him to use in the future andI love that he has no fear expressing himself.
Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 19h
When my son was around 9-10 he came home from school one day and said "everyone on the bus believes in god but me". To note, its a small bus he rides. I felt bad, was a bit upset this convo happened, but I guess its good. The conversation didnt sway him, and I did let him go to church even one time with his "big brother" from a program. He didnt want to go back. I was so conflicted what I would do if he wanted to. But thankfully, he's just no interest in pretend people, and isnt afraid to speak his mind on the matter.
elbiter@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d
Religious idiot wanting to sound smart. A classic.
mafishfayda@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1d
Interestingly, law is considered a more effective deterrent for immoral people than religion itself!
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Religious law and civil law are not very different, the latter is based on the former, historically speaking.
The difference is in who gets to judge and dole out punishments.
SarahValentine@pawb.social · 3 pts · 1d
Hammurabi's Code disagrees with you.
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
He derived his laws from the god Shamash. He just codified and imposed his interpretation. I am well aware of the stele, I've seen it! As sure as Shamash is my witness!
SarahValentine@pawb.social · 2 pts · 1d
Have you got a citation for the claim that the laws were supposed to be the divine commandments of Shamash? All the articles I can find on the code or the stele just talk about the laws themselves with no mention of religious connotations.
thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1d
in theory the difference is dogmatic vs pragmatic but actually civil law is still mostly dogmatic just less so
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1d
Nature has essentially built a concept of good and bad into us through evolution. Traits such as cooperation, reciprocity, and concern for others can improve survival and social cohesion, giving individuals who possess those traits an evolutionary advantage over those who are consistently uncooperative or harmful.
You do not necessarily need religion or philosophy to understand the basic distinction between what is good and what is harmful. Human beings already possess psychological mechanisms such as sympathy and empathy that allow us to recognize and understand the experiences of others through our own subjective experiences.
If you understand that something causes you pain, suffering, or fear, empathy allows you to recognize that the same experience is likely to be harmful to someone else. Likewise, if you understand that something brings you pleasure, security, or happiness, you can recognize that similar experiences may be beneficial to others.
That does not mean every individual instinct or emotional response is morally correct. It means that the foundations for morality can exist naturally within the human psyche, without requiring religion or a formal philosophical system to create them.
anarchy79@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
I don't disagree with your general point but
Doesn't explain animals that are predators like say sharks. They don't cooperate yet they thrive. You could say that even immorality is an evolutionary trait because it gains you an advantage gaming a system built on trust.
All I mean is you can point at any biological organism and say "the reason it is like this is because it is evolutionarily advantageous" and you wouldn't really be saying anything more meaningful than "it is the way it is because that's what's best for it". It's a near perfect example of begging the question.
It's a bit painting the target around the arrow.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 2d
The thing is, you can "debatebro" yourself into most of morality, save for stuff like "homosexuality is evil".
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 1d
Most religious fundies like this lack a conscious and do no know such things exist in others.
HostilePasta@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 1d
I don't think that most "lack" a conscience. I do think their conscience is either malformed or severely stunted.
reptar@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
I think, for the ones who are just decent people, it's more that they misattribute where it's coming from
HostilePasta@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 1d
I definitely agree with that. They think their conscience is "the voice of God" even when it specifically contradicts their preferred fable.
SnoopSqueak@lemmy.today · 7 pts · 2d
I made a video about this because it comes up so much.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfgXj_V33Pw
It's scary how many christians will pretend "my particular interpretation of god said so" is objective morality. People actually defend rape, slavery, and genocide.
I rely on sense and reason, personally. I aim to reduce overall suffering because I find suffering unpleasant and I empathize with others, and also because working together is mutually beneficial. It's not a choice between emotion and utility, it's both.
Zensate@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
Let's be honest, they do so by adhering to cultural norms with the exact same devotion and lack of scrutiny that religious people do.
"Why do we do it this way?" "We've always done it this way!" "Why is it wrong?" "Because it's just wrong!"
The very small subset of actually moral people decide between good and bad choices not depending on social norms, not depending on laws, not even depending on morals or ethics, but by what motivations their actions arise from, whether they come from Ego or understanding.
You can never know whether an action is good or bad, you can only know whether your motivations are good or bad.
lobut@lemmy.ca · 12 pts · 1d
Religious people act like they're more moral or have morality that's special because they believe in God. However when you ask why all those pious people back in the day: cheated, stole, murdered, adulterer, were racist, had slaves, raped kids and stuff. They would say that it was the norm at the time and nobody else knew better.
To paraphrase Stephen J Fry: "then what are you for?!"
Zensate@lemmy.world · -8 pts · 1d
Sure, but so do atheists. They just believe their morality is special because they believe in the current social norms, within the current societal context. In 10 years they'll be different, should a catastrophe happen it will shift completely. It's just as flippant in its own way.
Soggy@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1d
There's pretty solid evidence supporting empathy as a beneficial evolutionary trait, it's not like it's random that "don't be shitty to each other" is a social norm.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 6h
if empathy was truly universally favored by evolution, then there wouldn't be any non-emphathetic humans today and we wouldn't have this discussion, just saying.
Soggy@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3h
That's not at all how that works. First at no point have I made any "universally" claims. Nothing in evolution or psychology is 100% universal. Second, empathy, on average, is good for the health of the species. Selfishness is a gamble: it can dramatically increase the individual's odds of passing on their genes but it requires enough non-selfish targets to exploit or it actually has a negative impact. More simply, jackasses fighting each other are worse off than pacifists working together.
So what's favored is for most people to be altruistic and a small percentage of predators take advantage of them.
Zensate@lemmy.world · -6 pts · 1d
But social norms aren't empathy. They are adhered to because of the punishment that will result if you break them. Before you have any chance of developing empathy or emotional intelligence, you are taught as a child that breaking social norms will result in punishment, and from then on your only motivation to follow them is fear of punishment.
And that is exactly the same mechanism as religious morality.
Soggy@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1d
I'm sorry to hear about your sociopathy, but no this is not how most people work.
Zensate@lemmy.world · -7 pts · 1d
Deflection beats introspection, eh? It always amazes me how easily insults come to the "morally righteous".
At least now you know how people become bad - they don't have the courage to question whether what they're doing is actually good.
Soggy@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
It's not an insult It's illustrating the ridiculousness of your claim. Your faux-intellectual philosophy is not convincing.
Objection@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1d
I didn't give up meat because I was worried about angry vegans coming to my house and beating me up, I gave up meat because I rationally evaluated the effects eating meat would have on the world and determined that those weren't effects I wanted to cause.
Am I just built different?
Zensate@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
Yes, in all likelihood you have some kind of neurodivergence. That's why you've probably noticed people around you rarely function through rational choice the way you do.
People are generally programmed to follow the tribe, keep opinions to confirm and demonstrate fealty to the tribe, and to avoid committing any taboos that could cause them to be cast out and die alone in the wild.
And the people who did not do this mostly just had this exact happen and died.
Objection@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 1d
I am neurodivergent, but I'm not prepared to accept the implication that neurotypical people lack moral agency. Anyone is capable of thinking critically about their behavior and changing it. Not every vegan is neurodivergent.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 6h
i'm sorry to shatter your worldview, but this is wrong. people need an "ego", and more "understanding" is not always better.
The "ego" is a symbol for the human stomach. Every time we eat, it's actually a gross and disgusting thing. nobody wants to see it, how you put your teeth into the soft and defenseless food. you're literally devouring, destroying precious food. gross. anyways, people need to eat, otherwise they die. it's the same with what you call "ego". sure, people are "egoistic" sometimes, but if they never are, they never gather the resources that they need and then they die. does not work that way.
"understanding": the more people understand, the less physically active they are. people who do science often sit around all day. nobody would work physically and society wouldn't advance. there need to be people with limited understanding. just saying.
potatohead@feddit.org · 7 pts · 14h
It makes me feel nice to do good things and be nice to others. I usually go by that.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 1d
I like what Ricky Gervais said about it. He asked Stephen Colbert if he believed in any of the other 3000 gods from human history. Stephen said he did not. Ricky told him that he just believes in one less than he does.
Naive@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 20h
Ricky is GOAT.
snooggums@piefed.world · 7 pts · 1d
Since religious morality is made up by people it comes from the same source as atheist morality. Humans!
Religion tends to make it easy for people to insert shitty stuff and claim it is a divine mandate. Atheists have to make a case for why something is right or wrong.
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
How do atheists decide between good and bad choices?
Well, some of them are dumb, and they just guess based on what's best for their survival at the moment.
The clever ones employ something called "critical thinking"
(I went to Christian schooling for my entire childhood. I first learned about "critical thinking" and the scientific method when reading an Edmund Scientific pamphlet. Blew my mind... in my mid 20s).
5too@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 17h
If in doubt, remember what Granny Weatherwax said:
'And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’
I have yet to find a counterexample.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 14h
That's a good rule of thumb, but it runs into difficulty when you map it to the marco scale.
Whether we're talking individual human capacity (Dunbar's Number) or a question of public policy (for instance, in the Trolley Problem scenario) or even just common accounting and logistics principles, people become indistinguishable from things in significantly large numbers and anonymous contexts.
Bureaucracy has a de-humanizing effect on individuals. But bureaucracy is fundamental to administration of large populations. I don't know how you square this circle without committing some degree of "sin".
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 6h
5too@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 12h
I'm not sure I agree. A person doesn't need to be in your Dunbar group to still be treated as a person, and bureaucracy doesn't have to be dehumanizing; though I'll grant that doing so is an easy trap to slide into. But you can plan for the needs and behaviors of large groups of people without treating them as anything less - just look at something like event planning!
In response to the trolley problem - It does get tricky with something like triage, where you have to evaluate who gets saved on the basis of their injuries. In this case, taking a cue from Weatherwax again, I think the key would be making sure that even those who don't get saved still get treated humanely - pain relief, comfort, etc.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 11h
Not incidentally, sure. But they need to be in your Dunbar group to be seen as a person.
As soon as "treating another person" carries a price, people charged with delivering treatment are going to start falling off of it.
Again, not incidentally. But the impulse in a bureaucracy is towards expediency. You have a large volume of people to manage and a limited amount of time / manpower / resources. So you cut corners in order to mitigate shortfalls or appease overworked staff, because you don't see the consequences of your actions or experience guilt over it.
I don't argue that this is the strictly moral path. But it ignores the biases, the capacities, and the temperaments of the people doing the triage. At some point you need people to do the things. And people routinely put their own comfort ahead of others' health and well-being, because personal comfort is immediate and real while the experiences of others are remote and abstract.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 16h
It rings consistent with the Wiccan Rede (Do no harm) and the ethic of reciprocity, aka The Golden Rule.
Curiously this sheds light on the common sickness of the ultra-wealthy, who are surrounded by sycophantic courtiers who readily agree with their every word bur also want a taste of their sweet, sweet lucre. Inside weeks, they start seeing themselves as experts in everything, and everyone else as NPCs.
Snowclone@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 13h
jaaake@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
Empathy.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
You put yourself in the mind of the person or people your choice affects. If they would think positively about your choice, it's generally good, if negatively, then bad.
This isn't rocket science
InvalidName2@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 1d
Good people sometimes do bad things, and bad people sometimes do good things. But the real kicker is that people aren't truly good or bad, it's a false dichotomy.
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 1d
Well, there is good as in beneficial and bad as in detracting. As my dad said, “about 85% of people are just trying to live their life, not bad or good, but there is the other group that is troublesome” — black markets, affluence against commoners, etc.
Sordid_Seraphim@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 11h
I see someone struggling with something that might take a minute or two tops and help them.
Expanding on that I don't think I'm a good person. I think the minimum people should do is help others if it's no real skin off your nose.
Good people are the people who volunteer, the pekple who do good for the sake of it and spend meaningful amounts of time helping others.
Most people don't, religious or not.
altphoto@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 1d
I for example do not poke my eyes out with a fork... Because doing so it bad. It's actually really simple to decide if something is bad. Much harder to decide something is bad and then realize it's good and choosing it because it is good. I change mind all the time. Science too, it's part of science. You see 👀 results from a test and you realize you were either right or wrong and then you test again... Something different.
SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Evangelicals are just psychopaths, kept in line through fear.
minorkeys@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
Yeah, the threat of temporary punishment should do the trick!
heartSagan5@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 1d
Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 15h
How do the gullible decide which parts of their faith count and which don't?
JK lol they just do as their told.
bertlewirth@lemy.lol · 1 pts · 1h
My told?
kzzzl@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 19h
How can we know bad a good thing without someone who is guiding us? Would someone who has a slave think slavery is bad? It's normal for them because they saw it every day.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 6h
i'm not sure whether this is a serious question.
modern theology is almost always based on universal principles, i.e. insights that apply everywhere, at any time. in western literature since aristoteles, these have mainly been identified to fall into three categories:
(or in the medieval ages, they were called "theology" / "law studies" / "medicine", but these topics have been abstracted a whole lot since then.)
to your specific question: slavery is bad because it contradicts the self-determination of the person who is able to think for themselves. modern views (e.g. calvinism claim that every human is physiologically able to make their own decisions wisely enough; therefore they should also get the practical possibility to decide things for themselves).
this is not "somebody" guiding us; it is some ideas guiding us. there's a crucial difference there.
saimen@feddit.org · 1 pts · 1d
Honest answer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
Naive@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 20h
Always these people
Bytemeister@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
It's a simple 2-part equation to determine what is a good/bad choice (socially)
Golden rule (do unto others...), combined with a little social intelligence to understand that if I were someone else, I might want different things.
Generally, shooting people with paintballs is bad, but there are scenarios where someone is okay with getting shot with a paintball (like when playing paintball) so shooting them with a paintball in that circumstance is "good".
weps@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18h
probably mostly because of Greek philosophers
luciferofastora@feddit.org · 2 pts · 16h
A lot has been written over the ages about the nature of goodness. The Greeks weren't the first, nor were they the last.
Ideas such as natural law have been attested in the ancient Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope for instance. On the other hand, in European thought, Thomas Aquinas was a highly influential figure, as well as Bentham and Kant.
And then, of course, there's the whole rest of the world.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 6h
that was such an interesting read, thank you for that!
adibou@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 1d
I feel it's very hard to make good choices when you don't have the full picture.
Like should I confront my toxic boss at the risk of loosing my job, or should I cave ? It's good to want to keep your job, but it's also pretty bad to allow for toxic behaviors.
How to find a path for peace in difficult times is tremandously hard, I feel. Sometimes it's good to ask for a little help and guidance. To aknowledge you'd be better following whatever the guy who has the full picture and who's "the source of goodness" than your own stupid anger.
Like that's the whole goal, escape the circle of hate. And that I believe is beyond simple human resoning. You need a source of light to get out of your own darkness
adibou@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 1d
Asking people to make "good choice" while knowing they do not have the full picture is gaslighting. It's also how 21st century economy work.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · -10 pts · 1d
i mean, have you considered the possibility that you know intuitively what is "right" and what is "wrong" because it has been enshrined into you by 2000 years of religion?
glorkon@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 23h
What if it has been enshrined into us by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution because altruism is a trait that increases the survival chances of a social species?
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · -5 pts · 22h
i'm happy to hear that it works for you to follow purely your own instincts, but if you consider the typical person in for example the US today, there's a 99.9% chance that's not gonna work.
point is, lots of stuff are "right" because they're socially told, even if you don't call it religion, it's still transported as "common mode of operation". that's what i meant.
5too@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 17h
That's a pretty pessimistic view!
In my experience, most people have a pretty good feel for what's right and wrong, it seems to be a basic function of empathy. There is a small percentage who lack this understanding, but more often it seems to me like it's people who have been twisted one way or another that are the issue. They've been taught to value things over people, or that power is the only path to acceptance, or something else equally twisty.
ZMoney@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 23h
Totally, when I stoned my ex wife to death for adultery I didn't even realize it was in Leviticus.
Objection@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 19h
2000 years? Religion has been around longer than that. Is it just Christianity that has "enshrined morality" into the cultures that practice it?
If you ask me to compare a country that was historically mostly Christian, like the US, against a country that was historically mostly Buddhist, like Japan, it seems to me that Japan is ahead on a lot of metrics. Compared to Americans, Japanese people pollute less, have a lower crime rate, a less militaristic foreign policy, hell, they don't even litter.
So what, are all religions simultaneously true, despite contradicting each other left and right? If I get a society to start worshipping the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is that going to eventually "enshrine morality" in that society, even among nonbelievers? Or is it just your particular religion that's correct, and the fact that morality doesn't actually correlate with societies practicing it is just a glaring hole in your argument?
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 1 pts · 12h
all good points. by "2000 years" i didn't mean exactly 2000 years. can also be more or less of course.
and yeah, i like the japanese views a lot too, they do a whole lot of things better than us.
Objection@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 11h
My points lead to the conclusion that religion does not instill society with morality.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 23h
It's cute that you think a Jewish stick-zombie is the prevalent religious influence in the world
It says a lot about how little you know, and how worthy your opinion is