Couldn't have said it better myself...

[Shadow Wolf]

Humanists have not realised yet how bad they are and that they need to repent.

What's s9 bad about them? What do they need to repent from?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

View attachment 67675

Well, I can do it worse and say it worse than you. That is not unique to religion as religion and not even unique to religion. You can also find the idea of a sort of Hell in philosophy.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Why would you think they are more in touch with themselves, or life?

Because the whole basis of the worldview is rooted in valueing all life, human life in particular.

In religion, not so much. This life is not worth nearly as much in religions like christianity.
Au contraire... the very teaching says that "humans are rotten to the core". We are all "guilty" of being human. And to "fix" that, we need a "savior".

Worse even... in christianity, it doesn't even matter that much how you behaved in life. What matters first and foremost, is what you believed.

All this amounts to having a very low picture of life, human life in particular.
To the point even where you have christian denominations / cults, like the one "mother" theresa belonged to, who even say that suffering is "holy". Her "hospitals" didn't actually treat people. They were just warehouses where people came to suffer and die.

We see it also in the "pro-life" bunch. They aren't "pro-life". In fact, with their drivel, they prefer untold suffering for unwanted children and mothers and all the misery that comes with that.

They'll happily force a 12-year old to carry a pregnancy to terms, for example. And they'll even call it a "good" thing. Their definition of "good" is really skewed. It's not actually connected to well-being at all.

Instead, it's just what they feel their heavenly dictator commanded. It's just blind obedience to a perceived authority while actually sacrificing their own moral compass.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Because the whole basis of the worldview is rooted in valueing all life, human life in particular.

In religion, not so much. This life is not worth nearly as much in religions like christianity.
Au contraire... the very teaching says that "humans are rotten to the core". We are all "guilty" of being human. And to "fix" that, we need a "savior".

Worse even... in christianity, it doesn't even matter that much how you behaved in life. What matters first and foremost, is what you believed.

All this amounts to having a very low picture of life, human life in particular.
To the point even where you have christian denominations / cults, like the one "mother" theresa belonged to, who even say that suffering is "holy". Her "hospitals" didn't actually treat people. They were just warehouses where people came to suffer and die.

We see it also in the "pro-life" bunch. They aren't "pro-life". In fact, with their drivel, they prefer untold suffering for unwanted children and mothers and all the misery that comes with that.

They'll happily force a 12-year old to carry a pregnancy to terms, for example. And they'll even call it a "good" thing. Their definition of "good" is really skewed. It's not actually connected to well-being at all.

Instead, it's just what they feel their heavenly dictator commanded. It's just blind obedience to a perceived authority while actually sacrificing their own moral compass.

Yeah, try being neuro diverse around normal people in a secular worldview and you will learn, that it has nothing to do with religion.

 

[Brian2]

What's s9 bad about them? What do they need to repent from?

Jesus was sent to die for the sins of mankind, to take on Himself the penalty for sin.
It stands to reason that God sees us humans as people who need to repent of our wrong doing and come to Him for forgiveness through Jesus.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Jesus was sent to die for the sins of mankind, to take on Himself the penalty for sin.
It stands to reason that God sees us humans as people who need to repent of our wrong doing and come to Him for forgiveness through Jesus.

Yes, that is one version of God. I have a different faith and thus a different version of sin, Hell and Heaven.

 

[Brian2]

Yes, that is one version of God. I have a different faith and thus a different version of sin, Hell and Heaven.

Yet the true God calls us to come to Him and His Son for forgiveness of what we have done against others.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Yet the true God calls us to come to Him and His Son for forgiveness of what we have done against others.

Yet that is only true if you believe in that in practice. So what is true to me, is different. And the problem with your version of truth, is a greater problem of the Truth as such. For over 25 years now I have been told with different contradictory version of the Truth, that I am in effect False. Yet nobody seems to be able to agree on what True and False is. So I have faith in The Wrong One. That works just as well as The True One for the everyday world in practice.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

There are two meanings to an argument that without God there is no reason to being good.

The first, shallow and in my experience a contrivance is that only the threat of God's punishment is what holds people back from sin/evil. No church in the history of churching* has ever taught that we are good so as to avoid punishment. My experience of churches runs that gamut from evangelical/fundamentalist protestant to traditionalist Catholic; it just isn't a mainstream Christian perspective.

The second, is that you have no reasoned grounds to support the metaphysical structure of morality. There is no good and bad, because without God you can't support the compulsive aspect of those statements. If there are actual rules to our behavior that exist outside social recognition, there has to be a rules maker. If they are just social recognition, you've lost the judgement/valuation aspects of morality. Slavery, women as spoils as war, torture aren't evil, they are just things we, at this particular time and place and in this specific cultural context, don't like and we have to acknowledge we have no privileged position in determining what society will or will not recognize.

But, in the spirit of debate, I'm going to go one step further and offer up that in the history of the philosophy of ethics, whether someone who is by nature good or someone who is by nature evil in some way but fights his nature to be good is a better person.

If you don't have an urge to steal, and don't? Good for you in expending no effort. If you are kleptomaniac and don't steal, because you fought for your status you are necessarily "better", even if you had to use a crutch of punishment, you have done more work towards being good. It is only in our fight against the evil within us that we show the true power of our moral nature.

*I swear if you "well, actually" my obvious hyperbole, I might actually need the fear of God to lay a hold on my response

From the Humanist point of view, we can not even begin to discuss the nature of "good" (as in what in means to be good, and why or why/not) without considering human nature itself -- not gods. For Humanists, we are just as much an evolved species of animal as any other, and our behaviours are the result of the evolution that brings us to where we are now.

We are a social animal (in fact, according to E.O. Wilson, a eusocial animal) that thrives only with the support of others of our kind. But we are an intelligent animal, as well -- one that can reason outside of our sociality, and therefore are able to default from that. Thus, does it well appear that what it means to be good is to default from our social nature as little as possible, which helps to ensure the continuation of our species. Closer to home, altruism that leads a parent to sacrifice for a child or other family member can help to ensure that parent's genes are passed on to future generations.

This is, of course, a much bigger topic than I have sketched here. But it's one that is worthy of further study/discussion.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

From the Humanist point of view, we can not even begin to discuss the nature of "good" (as in what in means to be good, and why or why/not) without considering human nature itself -- not gods. For Humanists, we are just as much an evolved species of animal as any other, and our behaviours are the result of the evolution that brings us to where we are now.

We are a social animal (in fact, according to E.O. Wilson, a eusocial animal) that thrives only with the support of others of our kind. But we are an intelligent animal, as well -- one that can reason outside of our sociality, and therefore are able to default from that. Thus, does it well appear that what it means to be good is to default from our social nature as little as possible, which helps to ensure the continuation of our species. Closer to home, altruism that leads a parent to sacrifice for a child or other family member can help to ensure that parent's genes are passed on to future generations.

This is, of course, a much bigger topic than I have sketched here. But it's one that is worthy of further study/discussion.

And that your example in the OP is one cognitive version of morality and that there are others in psychology, even for religious people.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Jesus was sent to die for the sins of mankind, to take on Himself the penalty for sin.
It stands to reason that God sees us humans as people who need to repent of our wrong doing and come to Him for forgiveness through Jesus.

That might "stand to reason" if one accepts your first premise -- that "Jesus was sent to die for the sins of mankind." Unfortunately, many of us do not accept that. It can do no possible good to kill one person for the crimes of another -- the criminal won't care, will in fact even think a damn good deal!

What "stands to reason" for me is that human thinkers (and yes, humans could think deeply, even when they were most herding flocks and gathering grains and vegetables) could understand how deeply social we are, how the good -- the survival -- of the many depends on the contributions of individuals. They could also recognize that humans in need can find sufficient reasons (out of need or just contrariness) to default from their social responsibilities, and steal from or harm others, to the detriment of the many. This required some means of control, and thus the "invention" of "the sins of mankind" punishable by God, in need of forgiveness.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

That might "stand to reason" if one accepts your first premise -- that "Jesus was sent to die for the sins of mankind." Unfortunately, many of us do not accept that. It can do no possible good to kill one person for the crimes of another -- the criminal won't care, will in fact even think a damn good deal!

What "stands to reason" for me is that human thinkers (and yes, humans could think deeply, even when they were most herding flocks and gathering grains and vegetables) could understand how deeply social we are, how the good -- the survival -- of the many depends on the contributions of individuals. They could also recognize that humans in need can find sufficient reasons (out of need or just contrariness) to default from their social responsibilities, and steal from or harm others, to the detriment of the many. This required some means of control, and thus the "invention" of "the sins of mankind" punishable by God, in need of forgiveness.

Stealing is a biological standard even observed in other animals. And even cheating.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Jesus was sent to die for the sins of mankind, to take on Himself the penalty for sin.

So the story goes.
And people consider that to be admirable and wonderful and...

And I consider it absolutely deplorable and horrid. It's not justice. It's not good. It's punishing a scapegoat for the crimes of others. It's glorifying human sacrifice. It's an obsession with blood.

It's plenty immoral.

It stands to reason that God sees us humans as people who need to repent of our wrong doing

If that were the case, he wouldn't be punishing a scapegoat to absolve other people's guilt.

and come to Him for forgiveness through Jesus.

The way to make ammense for your own wrongdoings, is by picking up your bottom and acting like it. Not by having a scapegoat do it for you.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

So it sounds like you realise your need for repenting of some things that you do. (iow stop doing them) but you don't see your need of forgiveness, and why should you if you think that this life is all there is.

How does forgiveness solve anything? Does the victim stop being the victim when the perp is forgiven?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Jesus was sent to die for the sins of mankind, to take on Himself the penalty for sin.
It stands to reason that God sees us humans as people who need to repent of our wrong doing and come to Him for forgiveness through Jesus.

That doesn't really answer the question though, does it?

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

It is my own view that some study of human nature, a creature evolved to be both truly social (eusocial, as Edward O. WIlson has it in "The Social Conquest of the Earth"), but to retain the abiliity to act selfishly and default from that sociality. I think that explains human nature a heck of a lot better than ancient scripture.

I mean, I ask you, what is "bad" about a newborn baby? To lump that innocent in with "There is none good. No not one." seems profoundly silly to me.

It also contradicts the righteous people in the Bible. Job was sinless.

 

[muhammad_isa]

How does forgiveness solve anything? Does the victim stop being the victim when the perp is forgiven?

No. We need forgiveness, because we constantly sin.
..hopefully not major sins, as they require repentance, and is more serious.

It is about the state of our souls. Without forgiveness, our souls become "stained" .. we become further away from righteousness and our sinning might well become worse than it is already.

 

[Brian2]

That might "stand to reason" if one accepts your first premise -- that "Jesus was sent to die for the sins of mankind." Unfortunately, many of us do not accept that. It can do no possible good to kill one person for the crimes of another -- the criminal won't care, will in fact even think a damn good deal!

What "stands to reason" for me is that human thinkers (and yes, humans could think deeply, even when they were most herding flocks and gathering grains and vegetables) could understand how deeply social we are, how the good -- the survival -- of the many depends on the contributions of individuals. They could also recognize that humans in need can find sufficient reasons (out of need or just contrariness) to default from their social responsibilities, and steal from or harm others, to the detriment of the many. This required some means of control, and thus the "invention" of "the sins of mankind" punishable by God, in need of forgiveness.

Well it is a damn good deal but there is no point in thinking you can fool God about it, true repentance is needed and not just saying yes yes on Sunday and no no on every other day.
Religion no doubt has social and political benefit even if not tolerated in some countries where allegiance to the state is taught.
It does seem too much to say that conspiracies by those in charge were the source of all religious belief however.

 

[Brian2]

So the story goes.
And people consider that to be admirable and wonderful and...

And I consider it absolutely deplorable and horrid. It's not justice. It's not good. It's punishing a scapegoat for the crimes of others. It's glorifying human sacrifice. It's an obsession with blood.

It's plenty immoral.

It's a once off by a willing participant to avoid the death of millions of people.
It was not a sacrifice by anyone it was an evil act of injustice and murder by the political and religious leaders. It was a murder that God accepted as a sacrifice because Jesus could have avoided it by stepping back from speaking the truth in the place where God wanted Him to and to those God wanted Him to but He did it even though He knew it would mean that they would kill Him.
God accepted it as a sin offering because Jesus was a lamb without blemish as the Temple required, a sinless man in symbology.

If that were the case, he wouldn't be punishing a scapegoat to absolve other people's guilt.

Not so much a scape goat because it was agreed upon millions of years earlier as a necessary thing to unite a broken creation in love and under one person.

The way to make ammense for your own wrongdoings, is by picking up your bottom and acting like it. Not by having a scapegoat do it for you.

Yes well repentance is part of acceptance of the gospel and repentance means picking up your bottom and acting like it.
Paying for what you have done is something that you cannot afford however, it required God to pay for it Himself in Jesus.

 

[Brian2]

How does forgiveness solve anything? Does the victim stop being the victim when the perp is forgiven?

Hopefully the perp stops being the perp when he repents and is forgiven.