Audie
Veteran Member
God doesnt have to exist for you take a God character as a role model.
And this topic is not about the existence of God.
Whatevs. Maybe you should think about what you write.
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God doesnt have to exist for you take a God character as a role model.
And this topic is not about the existence of God.
Whatevs. Maybe you should think about what you write.
It can be debated this way and that way brother. See, i am not saying anything about Atheists not having morality like some others did and the reason for my entrance here was to say that its absolutely wrong to say that Atheists dont have morals or anything of the sort.
Thats a completely nonsensical discussion altogether.
But where do our moralities come from? That we are not sure of. Though you make a valid claim that religion didnt dissuage adherents from enslaving other people, religion also didnt dissuade people from mass murder, genocide, conquests, pillage, and direct political intervention in other peoples business.
But also if you analyse the anti slavery movements in the UK they were motivated by religious sentiments. This happened in many many areas.
Were they motivated by religion or were they motivated by their innate moral values and they used religion as a protocol? We cannot really say.
Say Im an atheist. Where do my morality come from? Is it because of human nature where we were always moral animals or did we evolve with religious sentiments with a God as a role model? Whats the research we have done to make a claim? I hope you understand the position i am setting.
This is why brother it is not fair to quote a book and tell them that their morality stems from that particular passage. Maybe that passage was written by an immoral man who wished to do his bidding but wanted to use "Religion" as a protocol to communicate his personal agenda in a better or more "moral" manner.
Anyway, i shall stop now. Peace.
The point is that I simply disagree that secular humanism is some kind of "logical extension" of christianity. It isn't.
Generally I see morality connected to success, successful actions. Success is very situational, tied to circumstances, individual goals. Depending on what one's goals are they may find different actions being successful towards those goals.
Graeco-Roman, Christian, Humanist
Time: cyclical, progressive, progressive
Teleology: no, yes, yes
Equality: no, yes, yes
Moral unit: family/society, individual, individual
The weak: to be exploited, to be nurtured, to be nurtured
Outlook: Tragic, optimistic (salvation), optimistic (progress)
Scope: 'tribal', universal, universal
Far from one being the rejection of the other, if you created a metric to compare all historical belief systems, liberal Christianity and Humanism would be among the most similar.
Christianity demonstrably made a major contribution to the development of modern science
I don't know if you have read any of Jared Diamond's books - Guns, Germs, and Steel, for example - but one thing I got from this was that morality between different tribal groups (Papua New Guinea, I believe was one area he studied) varied quite a bit and seemingly was arrived at by what worked for them in their particular environment. Such that morality was mainly about what helped the group survive. As groups became larger, no doubt the moralities tended to converge - and probably develop into religious beliefs to make these more powerful. Plus there is evidence that morality exists, even if more primitive, in other animal species, so it is likely that morality in humans is just more advanced.
You seem to be defining intelligence and wisdom, intelligence being the mental capacity to get what one wants to exploit opportunities and avoid pitfalls in the pursuit of a specific goal such as preserving one's health or making oneself more emplyable - and wisdom being knowing what to pursue in the pursuit of happiness, that is, what to want.
I heard atheists argue atheists are just as moral as theists. But I am not sure this is true in general. Many scientists work on weapons designed to destroy humanity.
Scientists are mostly atheists, and many scientists are engineering weapons of mass death.
Then can I conclude there something inherently missing from the way atheists believe?
It seems to me someone could use their religious beliefs as a way of seeing working on weapons of mass death as being immoral, and therefore, a person with religious beliefs might not create such evil weapons in the first place because of the potential consequences as held by the religious beliefs.
If nothing is sacred then why have any reverence for life?
I heard atheists argue atheists are just as moral as theists. But I am not sure this is true in general. Many scientists work on weapons designed to destroy humanity. Scientists are mostly atheists, and many scientists are engineering weapons of mass death. Then can I conclude there something inherently missing from the way atheists believe?
It seems to me someone could use their religious beliefs as a way of seeing working on weapons of mass death as being immoral, and therefore, a person with religious beliefs might not create such evil weapons in the first place because of the potential consequences as held by the religious beliefs.
If nothing is sacred then why have any reverence for life?
Christianity and Islam are obviously related because of the incredible list of similarities, and of course, both derive from Hebrew scripture.
If you want to actually address the points made in my rebuttal of your claims as I addressed yours
The one very simple question I actually asked you was ignored and it is the same question that is always ignored (for very obvious reasons) and will no doubt be ignored again:
If it is so obvious that Christianity was clearly anti-science, then why do basically all contemporary historians of science, who have expert knowledge of the primary sources and context, completely reject this no matter their religious or irreligious background?
If fundamentalist religious people with a strong emotional attachment to a belief rejected out of hand a scholarly consensus on an issue that they have only a superficial understanding, you would find this ridiculous and evidence of religion's detrimental impact on rational, sceptical thought.
Yet this is exactly what you are doing on this issue.
So I was wondering if you actually had a rational reason for believing you are correct and the scholarly consensus is quite obviously wrong?
As someone who claims to be a rational sceptic, doesn't the fact that your view is overwhelmingly rejected by experts even make you think twice and at least start to wonder if in fact many of the assumptions you base your arguments on might not actually be correct after all?
I think your question is short-sighted and not actually reflecting what we are really saying.
First of all, "christianity" is the name of a religion. It's people that are anti- or pro- anything.
If one says "christianity was anti-science during this or that period", what is really being said is that the religious authorities were anti-science.
Having said that, I don't think anyone here, me included, said this. Not in such generalized terms anyway.
One such example is the study of human anatomy. Dissecting humans was strictly forbidden for religious reasons. So the only way to learn about human anatomy, was to study other mammals, but that obviously didn't always yield accurate intel on human anatomy. This gave rise to the practice of body snatching. Researchers risked quite a lot by stealing corpses, just to gather information.
Then there's all the book burning practices, because the info contained therein was "herecy" and "blasphemous"..
Such are clear and undeniable examples of religious authorities trying to control information and protect dogmatic religious doctrines.
Whenever authorities are trying to control the flow of information, what type of research can and can't be done for religious reasons, which research results are "acceptable", and other such forms of censorship... I don't see how you can call that anything else then being "anti-science" / "anti-progress". They were only "pro" science / progress as long as the new intel fitted the religious worldview.
The one very simple question I actually asked you was ignored and it is the same question that is always ignored (for very obvious reasons) and will no doubt be ignored again:
If it is so obvious that Christianity was clearly anti-science, then why do basically all contemporary historians of science, who have expert knowledge of the primary sources and context, completely reject this no matter their religious or irreligious background?
This is why I choose not to engage in discussions with you any longer. This is unrelated to my posting. My position was that secular humanism was not an outgrowth of Christianity. I gave you my argument, and you changed topics without addressing that argument.
This is an unrelated topic of no interest to me.
None of the foundational principles of science can be found in biblical scripture, such as skepticism, rationalism, or empiricism - all antithetical to the Christian notion that all useful knowledge comes from the Bible and that man is totally dependent on God for all things.