But don't you agree that morals, laws, and society behaviors all stem from religious beliefs.

Hrae's moral beliefs look a lot like what is in the Bible. Treat others like how you would like to be treated.

If we really want to shed off religion in all its forms should we not also shed off the moral beliefs that stem from them?

Feel free to jump in, Ivra.

Manz, your point might hold water if other groups of people that had never heard of Judaism/Christianity didn't also have similar ideas like "the Golden Rule". They never got your memo and they decided that being decent to each other was probably the way to go.

But their beliefs often also stemmed off of some deity. So your counter point holds no water.

The adherents also were bipedal. Therefore, they are the same.

Since when were Judaism/Christianity the only religions.

name a society or known time that didn't have some sort of religion / god.

Even the native Americans (considered savages by the sophisticated Europeans) had religion.

If it is as you're implying, bad things also happen in the name of deities. Things that are perfectly acceptable and moral to that religion's view-point but unacceptable to Christianity's/Judaisms. But it's all okay because our deities endowed us with a sense of what's good and right.


eg- It behooved the ancient Aztecs to sacrifice human-beings in the name of their gods. According to what you're saying, their sense of morals and actions were perfectly acceptable since we derive our sense of morality from our chosen deities.


In social-systems where there is less separation between Church and State, Religion was used as a regulator for social-behavior, not necessarily the originator of said ''morals.''


I know it's somewhat of a tangent but I can't say it in a way more easily understandable -__-

Ok, im sorry Manz, but that last line pisses me off. The natives were Just as civilized as the Europeans. Perhaps not technologically, but for the most part they followed a MUCH more moral path than europeans did. i dont see why you had to throw in that savages line. The Europeans used God's name in vain to rape, pillage, and steal from the natives.

It's not God that's bad- it's humans that use his name to cause death that are bad.

My point wasn't that they were savages. You missed it entirely. My point was that some other society (Europeans) decided that the Native Americans were savages and so therefor they were.

It shows that morals are what society says they are.

Just like Lav said: there have been societies throughout the centuries who had human sacrifices because they thought it was right.

These might help explain the position a bit better than I am.

at work cant see videos.

But aren't morals learned not inherent?

We aren't born with a moral compass but are taught what is right and wrong by those around us. Your own moral compass is influenced by your parents, grandparents, friends, and the society around you.

Thus why there is still hatred, bigotry, and intolerance.

Morality is not a genetic trait that can be changed, but is a societal constraint.

thus why in some parts in the world and in some times in history things like slavery, murder, human sacrifice, rape, and many other activities now considered morally wrong were common and accepted.

I think we have certain social instincts, as do a lot of social animals. But a particular system of ethics or morality is a societal construct.

Is that a slight revision of opinion?


Because they don't seem to mesh in my head.

Why... Religions are taught by family, friends, and society.

I must have misread somewhere.


The only reason I popped-in was to answer Jik's inference that morality came solely from a deity. Guess that's done with.

Many animals do shy away from sex and try to avoid it. They don't keep doing it mindlessly. And the reason we find rape wrong is because it has been ingrained into us by the environment around us. I won't deny that most morality today has stemmed from religion. I am merely saying it can exist full well without religion.

Rules which make him behave malevolently. He set the rules, he can abolish them if he really wants to do good.

I'm only saying that faith isn't "something higher". It's just some poppycock invented by man.

Yeah, when good is done in the name of God, hurrah, because God and religion have done something good. When bad things are done, it's just the individual people.

Like I said earlier, most of morality today is because of religion, but that doesn't mean morality is completely dependent on religion. It can be practised just as well without a deity, as I showed.

And you are not the first to assume that the Bible was the progenitor of the Golden Rule. It wasn't. Regardless of who proposed it, then rule can be reached by common sense, and not necessarily by fear or religion.

At this point, perhaps it can. However, i'm not fully convinced that it could before laws existed. Regardless, i concede the point.

And the reason that only Good things can truly be credited to God (in Christianity, at least) is because Greed and Hate, the main causers of sin, are products of Original Sin.

Pretty convenient isn't it?

Anyway, you didn't say what you thought of his malevolence.

I don't concede that point. I think it's a chicken/egg situation. I think the rudimentary ethics were in place before the idea of a deity was constructed in order to codify the morality. The thought of all humans having similar social instincts is much more plausible than being inspired by a multitude of deities. We've always used stories to explain what we can't understand. I don't see why a sense of right and wrong would be any different.

I did, acctually. i said i dont believe he is.

You forget that, in Catholic doctrine, at least, The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all one. It wouldnt be malevolent to sacrifice himself for us. We dont know the rules of the game by which God plays, so it would be impossible to call him malevolent.

Once again, i must call into question the need for this discussion. it's impossible to prove or disprove God's existence, or to understand any kind of being on a higher plane.

It's not just the Jesus incident. It's also the host of battles started with his blessing.

Then why does religion claim to be able to?

They dont claim to have all the answers. they just know what God's revealed to them.

And i'll have to do some more research on how the old testament is reasoned. However, i doubt that it's out of sheer malevolence.

They do not have proof of god or proof that anything was revealed to them.

Faith is the lack of needing proof. You look at things in scientific terms, but that's not all there is. Assuming Religions are right, and the Soul exists, there's radically different realm out there that we know very, very, very little about.

The key word is then ''assuming'' and ''belief''.


How many more times must it get to this point only to fall into a tangent and rehash the whole argument all over again?

So is it enough that I have faith that someone is a murderer and put him to death for it? Because the holy father says so? I can't prove he did, but I do have faith that he did.

We have a few billion years until our sun goes nova.

That's a bit different. In matters in which tangible evidence can CLEARLY prove Guilty or Not-Guilty that will preside over faith.

Besides, i'm relatively certain that you could look at Christianity from a viewpoint that condemns the death penalty, with Jesus's protecting of the woman who was going to be stoned for divorcing her husband or something... i forget what it was... so...

That's sort of the point of the statement, isn't it? Tangible evidence would CLEARLY prove the existence of a supernatural being. Why have a double standard?

Because things of the supernatural nature are for the most part intangible. Therefore asking for tangible evidence of the intangible is rather impossible, isnt it?

But just pointing to the supernatural and saying "NYAH, NYAH, OFF-LIMITS TO SKEPTICAL INQUIRY! RULES OF EVIDENCE DON'T APPLY!" doesn't work. It makes one look either naive or a fool.

It's not that rules of evidence dont APPLY its just that there's no evidence against it and some evidence which could or could not be challenged standing for it. For example, if i may re-itterate my opening bit of evidence, the Our Lady of Guadalupe portrait's eyes. Vasu claimed it was Rice Writing, with no evidence that suggested that the man who discovered the portrait knew what rice writing even WAS, or, if he did, that he or anyone he knew had time to practice it.

And you don't have any evidence that it was done by a supernatural deity either. I didn't claim it was rice-writing. I just said that if people can write that small, they can draw that small.

Going back to my initial question, what if there is no tangible evidence that he is the murderer? Just "faith"?

I'd think that the existence of the portrait itself is the evidence...


I don't think that the painter would have to know about rice-painting in particular to be able to do it. What is it anyway except painting on very small surfaces? Not exactly quantum physics. Didn't have time to practice it? There is evidence of that. You're looking at it in the painting.

There has to be tangible evidence if there's been a murderer. the body itself would be evidence. unless of course you're referring to a case in which the person just drops dead for no apparent reason, scientific, medical, you're looking at something unexplainable, correct? Therefore you wouldnt be able to charge the person in the first place. I dont see how this really relates to faith, though, seeing as we're talking in faith that a physical being did something. not a spiritual one.

And writing is a bit different than creating complicated pictures in extremely small spaces.

@Ivra: im talking about the eyes of the painting. within the eyes there are very very tiny images of people that had been made from a color that no dye could make at the time, as confirmed by a chemist who later won a nobel prize. In Detail:

Photographers and ophthalmologists have reported images reflected in the eyes of the Virgin.[40][41] In 1929 and 1951 photographers found a figure reflected in the Virgin's eyes; upon inspection they said that the reflection was tripled in what is called the Purkinje effect. This effect is commonly found in human eyes.[38] The ophthalmologist Dr. Jose Aste Tonsmann later enlarged the image of the Virgin's eyes by 2500x magnification and said he saw not only the aforementioned single figure, but rather images of all the witnesses present when the tilma was shown to the Bishop in 1531. Tonsmann also reported seeing a small family—mother, father, and a group of children—in the center of the Virgin's eyes.[38] In response to the eye miracles, Joe Nickell and John F. Fischer wrote in Skeptical Inquirer that images seen in the Virgin's eyes are the result of the human tendency to form familiar shapes from random patterns, much like a psychologist's inkblots—a phenomenon known as religious pareidolia.[42]

Richard Kuhn, who received the 1938 Nobel Chemistry prize, is said to have analyzed a sample of the fabric in 1936 and said the tint on the fabric was not from a known mineral, vegetable, or animal source.[38] In 1979 Philip Serna Callahan studied the icon with infrared light and stated that portions of the face, hands, robe, and mantle appeared to have been painted in one step, with no sketches or corrections and no apparent brush strokes.[43]

(From Wikipedia)

Time to put this baby to bed. These ARE ink blot tests.

Unretouched.

Retouched to show the "images". I think I see the Loch Ness monster.

Enlarged Image - from http://www.miraclehunter.com/marian_...upe/index.html

Note: These aren't from sites trying to debunk the images in the eyes. These are from people that think this actually shows anything.

What I meant is that there is no tangible evidence to suggest that Mr. Smith has committed the murder, but you have faith that he did. Can we convict him?

As for the physical and spiritual thing, there ids not even a shred of evidence to suggest that "spiritual" beings exist, and you must have something to back up such a preposterous suggestion.

Seems there's a reasonable explanation for this in the Wikipedia passage that you quoted.

This makes perfect sense. Dawkins talks about this too in the God Delusion. His own personal experience was included for that matter.

he doesnt have any proof that that was the reason. Especially since multiple people, unless psychologically alike, will probably see very different things in different inkblots.

Also, you didnt address the situation with the dye.

Exactly.


Thanks Jik.



And as I said before, it was unidentifiable in 1936...


Technology has progressed since then.

I think any anti-theists would've posted like hell if they found the dye. i'll research it, though...

And i dont see how that contributes to your point. Many different people saw one of two things. If it was the rorschach test effect, they would've seen different things for each different person.

That is the most likely reason. Far more likely than divine intervention anyway. As for seeing different things, it's true that different people will see different things... until they're told what to look for.


So a dye not known in 1936 remains unknown? I highly doubt it. If analyzed again, I'm sure they'll find what it is. You'll notice there's no, "Till date, there is no explanation" or whatever.