Morality and Religion

I don't feel like typing very much but here is something that has me thinking.

We all know that some people are ethical and moral while others are not. We tend to assume that many (not all) religious people are usually both. Now I know of several people who have absolutley no religious beliefs and are also very ethical people. Anyway, I wondered what drives people to be of high integrity. Without going into detail does it seem that the religious people are more often motivated by their own self interest to be good Christians or Jews etc.... what I mean is how many of these people would be moral and ethical on their own if they had no belief system? You see the religious person has a motivation that is self centered- that motivation is often an eternal life in "heaven" or "God" looking out for them while they are on the planet. Without this would they simply say to hell with it and just go on with their everyday lives? I believe the answer is totally independant on the person, but my point is that a lot of these so-called "good" people may not really be all that good in their hearts and are just behaving so they don't end up in some silly pit of brimstone and fire. In addition, if an Atheist person (which I am not by the way) is moral and etical it is truly a matter of themselves being that way. No god or church is telling them what to do. Well I don't really know where to go with this but I think it's important to realize that some of these seemingly virtuous religious folks are only that way because they are scared of being damned. If they though they wouldn't be damned then they would be themselves. Of coure this might be an argument that society as a whole benefits from religion but I don't know, that wasn't the point of my post. Anyway some {not very well written} food for thought :-)


Kris

Some religions essentially teach that humans are incapable of being good. The doctrine of original sin causes all kinds of philosophical and psychological problems. I have met people who were members of such religions who were appalled at the possibility of people being able to make moral choice without the guidance of a religion. I mean I know one guy who says he would not know right from wrong at all were it not for his religion. You can ask him if he would torture children for fun if he didn't have his religion and he'll say he doesn't know, that he doesn't know how to define right and wrong but his religion specifies certain rules. I guess the existence of religion for people like this might be better than the alternative, but religious teaching and morality do not necessarily go hand in hand.


Moral choice comes from protecting what we value. If there is something we value we will set up rules to protect it. Some religions have beliefs that indicate humans are not to be valued more than some other things. This can lead to humans being sacrificed to some other value. Not a good result. Also, many people believe in certain religions without really believing in the things that logically flow from some of the beliefs espoused by the religion. This makes things more tolerable.

Yeah it's all a mess! Oh well, if somebody can't figure out right and wrong for themselves then they have issues.


Kris

I have always thought that there is something basically wrong the doctrine of original sin. If my great-great-great...grandfather/grandmother did something terribly wrong, I really don't see how I would have inherited it. Their evil actions created a genetic mutation which could be passed on??? It just doesn't make sense.


The carrot-and-stick approach of many religions (do good and/or have faith=heaven, do bad and/or repent not/believe not=hell or outer darkness) seems to be an attempt at control by the religious body; the religion is setting up God as a Supreme Parent figure who had better be loved and obeyed, or else. Of course this strengthens the influence of the religious body and the higher-ups in it as well.


I think we all have capacity for some good and some evil within us. Most people tend to favor the good somewhat. This can most easily be observed in little children; mostly their actions are good or neutral, but occasionally they do something nasty or even a bit malevolent. So I think that the human psyche has a broad spectrum at its disposal. Given decent circumstances, I have observed that most people prefer doing good or neutral things most of the time (here I am defining bad as unnecessarily malevolent behavior). We do have strong survival mechanisms built in, so sometimes what seems to be bad is merely the survival instinct kicking in, at times unconsciously. But I don't believe that a child who is raised under reasonable and kind circumstances is going to be primarily wicked...but this is in conflict with the doctrine of original sin.


There are some good kernels of wisdom and love and understanding in many religions and I have no problem with these aspects. It's just that I doubt that anything that is true regarding God or the universe would seem utterly illogical. Some truths may be beyond our knowledge or even capacity to comprehend, but these would probably just remain open-ended questions, not things that appear really wrong logically. Also, I think most spiritual answers can be found when we look deep within and listen to that little voice we sometimes hear. Even little kids usually have a pretty good sense of what is right and wrong. Little kids pretty much know what the heart of religion is, I think, even without being aware of it...and oftentimes more so than many adults whose minds and hearts have become cluttered as they pass through life, and sometimes clouded with complex religious teachings.


Some people find great hope or solace or peace in their religion...I'm not against that, but I'm not looking for hope or solace. I just want to know the truth to whatever extent I can, and to be able to integrate it into my daily life to some degree.

Fist of all, Goat, let me introduce myself. I'm Goat, also, but will be going by 2ndGoat here, since you've already claimed my moniker. I hope you don't take offense /images/wink.gif


Second, I happen to be one of the religious folk. I agree with your statement that many religious people are in it for safety. I believe my youth pastor called it "fire insurance." While I need to reflect on the consequences to both society and the practitioner in such a case before coming to a personal conclusion, I do believe there's one other thing to consider- those who do it on purpose, and those that don't.


Certainly, those that are in it for a higher ideal are likely to get more fulfillment out of it. But figure the split mentioned above- I don't think I can fault someone who is hardly more than subconsciously aware of their "fear of brimstone" equally as someone who has decided that they outright do not "like" their religion but continue it for insurance.


...I've got something to mull over, thanks.


2ndGoat

but doesn't searching for truth lead to inevitably understanding logic is a tool to help..but really doesn't explain anything...thus ya gotta have faith...tons and tons of faith...gr8 post(s)..gl...


not a religious zealot..suspicious of organized religions...

OK, logic may not be able to provide us with answers to certain types of questions. Does this mean that faith must then become the path to those answers?


Logic is a part of mathematics, and mathematics is true in a most fundamental sense--it seems to me to be a representation of certain basic truths. However, I'm not saying that math and logic can necessarily answer everything: perhaps they can't. There may be other ways to discover some answers, and certain other answers may even be undiscoverable.


I'm not saying you shouldn't have faith. I probably have some faith regarding certain things without even being aware of it. But speaking for myself only, I don't want faith to color my perceptions, expectations, and perhaps discoveries. I want to know what actually is (to the extent I am capable of it). I guess I have faith that what actually is, is not in sum a bad thing.

Logic and math are tools of our reason to deal with the universe. Faith is not. The fact that we are ignorant of some things and are very curious about them does not mean that we can answer the big mysterious questions with faith. We can logically conclude that we do not know many knowable things. Faith simply assumes the big mysterious things are unknowable and gives us something else to hang onto. Until we know them, faith is not a substitute, but it does give us psychological comfort.

Mathematics is an artificial universe based on about a dozen unprovable axioms. It is by faith alone that we contend that we can mirror our own universe with the universe of mathematics, given he unprovability of its basic assumptions.


Logic is useful for making correct deductions from true statements. That is, everything found logically must be based on something else found logically. The recursion only stops when you hit the base case- something you believe that didn't come from logic, i.e. faith.


2ndGoat

I don't know enough about mathematics to fully address your points.


The fact that applied mathematics is always correct, however, seems to lend support to the idea that the base axioms are valid even if currently unprovable. Therefore it is on more than just faith that we can believe they are not unlikely to be correct.


This also leads me to think that even though in one way we may consider mathematics an "artificial" construction (as you pointed out), it is reasonably likely that it really does reflect the underlying realities of the universe and of the relations therein which it describes.

a study published in Lancet indicated mathematicians were the most likely of disciplines to believe in a higher power...more likely than biologists...hmmm..gl

The fire insurance thing is kind of a funny way of looking at it. One of my good friends refers to religion as turning down the biggest freeroll in the world. Funny thing is he's an atheist- go figure.


Kris

Could be...I'm not saying mathematics disproves the possibility of the existence of God...I just don't see any reason why I should be 100% certain either way that God exists or does not exist...as far as I know, it has never been proven either way, so I just keep an open mind, while reducing in my mind somewhat the estimated likelihood of certain things that don't seem to make any sense at all (primarily the "add-ons" of many religions, both in concept and in practice, for example, the convoluted steps to salvation according to fundamentalist Christianity, along with why it should be necessary in the first place).


One argument against blind faith is that it may prevent someone from taking into account new ideas or new evidence...in extreme form, look at all the deluded militant Islamic fundamentalists who believe that their suicide terrorism will lead them to Paradise...there have been many other cases throughout history where blind religious faith has led to throwing out the principles of treating others at least half-decently...look at the Spanish Inquisition and the Witch Trials in Europe and America...I believe rationalism is ultimately a good check on faith...something that is true will probably not fail the tests of logic and science. If science and logic/mathematics produce no answer (such as regarding the existence of God), then the question is still quite open, but certain things such as the fundamentalist belief that the Earth was created literally in a week are clearly controverted by fossil records which span millions of years...that's an example of something being disproved. I'm not saying faith is in itself bad, and it can have good aspects as well, I just think it should be somewhat tempered by rationalism.

Just short comment on your first paragraph. Imo, the concept is taken out of context. The sins are those we committed, not anyone else. If you believe in Christianity or other mainstream religions, eternal life is a main theme, interpretation has clouded the view, and few question it.


If you change your paradigm of eternal life, it becomes, 'what you sew, you reap'. When you live forever you have lots of lives to experience the wrongs you committed, and the good too.


As a side note, if folks treated this life as just one with many more to come, knowing they would reap in the future what they sew now, they would lead very different lives. jmo.

Do most Christian religions believe in reincarnation or eternal life after the human life? I am by no means an expert on Christian theology, but I assumed most Christians did not have a very Eastern view of reincarnation. I know that at least some of the branches of Christianity believe there is only one shot at earthly life and then you get eternity somewhere else. That LDS eternal marriage idea will scare the pants onto you.

of my good friends refers to religion as turning down the biggest freeroll in the world.


pascal was a mathemetician who developed a lot of todays gambling theory.


So Pascal has now made two striking assumptions:


(1) The probability of God’s existence is 1/2.

(2) Wagering for God brings infinite reward if God exists.




taken from below website...

Depends on how you read the bible; hope this doesn't sound like someone knocking at your door.


Some versions of the bible reference in Genesis a man walking the earth who has never died. Book of Kings (forget which one) talk about a man who is taken into heaven by angels during what looks like a dust storm. When talking about John in the New Testiment, there is a phrase that poeple recognized John as Moses(?). Then there is Jesus himself, who showed up after death.


Not to be arguementative about this, you can read into the bible what you wish, some prefer to not think and only participate in the rote they are taught.


Interesting food for thought, how many people have you never seen before that you know you know? How could you know them if you have never seen them or met them?


Stepping down, puffing slightly in his wrinkled suit....LOL

nag,nag,nag..for eternity..enuf to make you an atheist...lol..gr8 point counselor...(but hide from the other counselor living with you)..lol..fgl

god does not play dice with the universe...einstein..gl

I'm not sure about reincarnation, but if I do come back, I'm hoping it will be as Warren Beatty's fingertips.

It keeps populations down (like in religious wars etc.)