More religion stuff

[amicus]

"Good works", an undefined and undefinable concept, might better be identified as rational self interest.

We cannot go back to observe the first man, or first gathering of men, the rational animals, who alone among all the animals shows compassion for the injured and the sick and provides.

But we can surmise from history and our understanding of the nature of man, sans a deity, that it begins with one individual caring for another. Strangely enough, it extends to his family and outward to his community.

His acts of compassion and kindness are noted and approved and copied by others as they intrinsically and innately comprehend what is the 'right' thing to do.

Formal religion, witchdoctery, merely exploited that kind and loving nature of man and corrupted it for the benefit of the useless intellectuals who paraded as Priests with a message.

And what a message it has been, self sacrifice is the key ingredient in most formal religions, as it is in the quase-religion, socialism. Sacrifice the individual either to God or the greater good for man is basically evil.

Bullshit, a busload of it!

Religion is a farce, always has been, always will be. There is no God, never was, never will be and it begins to look like we may be the only sentient beings within a hundred light years.

Howdaya like them apples?

Amicus

 

[sr71plt]

"Good works", an undefined and undefinable concept, might better be identified as rational self interest.

Ummm, no. "Good works" can be entirely selfless. And you having started with a sweeping false assertion, I saw no reason to read farther.

 

[rgraham666]

Um, explain Mother Teresa for me then, friend.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

I'd still love to talk, if you're up for it I agree with a lot of the sentiments in your first post, they express many of the things I don't like about organized religion, completely independent of my conviction of whether there actually is a higher power or not.

More serious talk later, but right now I'm looking at your AV and... um... wow. I'm guessing you weren't making cinnamon buns topless and spilled frosting.

EDIT:

Oh, it's ice cream...

 

[amicus]

Educate yourself, read a biography of Teresa.

sr71, yeah, there are mentally deficient people born every day, it is a shame and a tragedy of life.

To be born without a 'self', would be the greatest tragedy of all.

Oh...I get it...you wanna be Christ like? Ah...that explains a lot about a fictional character you wish to emulate.

Amicus...

 

[sr71plt]

Educate yourself, read a biography of Teresa.

sr71, yeah, there are mentally deficient people born every day, it is a shame and a tragedy of life.

To be born without a 'self', would be the greatest tragedy of all.

Oh...I get it...you wanna be Christ like? Ah...that explains a lot about a fictional character you wish to emulate.

Amicus...

There just isn't much reason to follow your posts, Amicus. You make false assertions--often utterly ridiculous ones--and then run from there.

 

[AvoidingRealWork]

Ole Charles Darwin stuck a dagger in the heart of God, long long ago, Jean Paul Sartre and that Kierkegarde and Camus fellow kinda finished the job of assassinating God.

As far as the Common Human and his/her interaction with the divine, I'd say that has sod all to do with it.

Two things: Meteorology and Germ Theory.

It was the common, orthodox view, across all of Judeo-Christianity - and I can dig up a mountain of source to back this up - that God had two primary forms of earthly punishment. When an individual had done wrong, he was struck ill. When a community had done wrong, it was sent famine/drought/flood/pestilence. The continued, devout interaction with the divine was a matter of LIFE and DEATH.

We look at 16th century French Catholics killing and mutilating (and not necessarily in that order) Huguenots and dumping them into the Seine and scratch our heads. We don't get it, because we don't understand the mindset of utter fear these people had of the consequences of an unclean, impure community. Calvinism was, to them, a cancer that had to be ripped from the body politic by any means necessary, or else God was going to punish them in ways vastly more horrible than what they were doing to their Huguenot brothers. It was the lesser of evils.

Along comes Pasteur... and modern fluid dynamics, and the understanding that sickness is just caused by germs and weather by the solar-driven convection of our atmosphere. Rightness with God is no longer a matter of life and death. It becomes the realm of the afterlife, that one great mystery - what lies beyond the grave? Or why are we here to begin with, which Evolution doesn't answer any better than, "Momma squeezed you out from betwixt her legs." Well, yeah, Darwin gave us the mechanics of the thing, but not the Grand Why.

Man has been struggling for 150 years to find a replacement, with little success. The 'Greater Good' of the Socratic method, reborn by Kant and Hegel, was stillborn in the form of socialism and was buried alongside that bearded God and poor old mankind is left starkly naked and alone.

That said, man still needs a means of determining the correctness of all human actions, that of a moral and ethical nature. Further, man does need to understand from whence he came and where in the hell he is going.

Well, it's not going to come from any naturalistic framework, as demonstrated. Why? There is no naturalistic framework for morality and meaning. Let's say I have a genetic predilection for knocking out women with a club and raping them, and somehow am able to get away with it. I produce a lot of progeny who carry on my fetish. A few thousand years later, being a club-wielding rapist is the new Upright Citizen. A sturdy oaken branch is valued the way we value love and affection today.

In other words, all that we value as good - love, affection, altruism, compassion, self-sacrifice... just randomly selected values in the bingo game of life. It's the Void.

I don't like the Void. I submit that there may be nothing but the natural world, but I still don't like the Void, and I'll fight the Void, whether it's rational or not.

However, as I discovered, most would rather cuddle up with a comfortable faith and not be taxed with actually thinking.

There's a difference between suspension of thought and clinging to hope, even if that hope lacks strict rationality. I HAVE thought. But thinking has given me a CHOICE of conclusions, and I choose the one that is less horrid.

 

[mismused]

******

 

[xssve]

I try to have compassion for God.

I think it helps for me to really believe that whatever God there is, is as far away from my experience as I am from the ants in my back yard. Sure, I wish them well, but they're kinda dumb and I can't talk to them. They're on their own to a huge extent because of the limitations of their brains and their ability to sense their own surroundings.

Like humans, they're often very focused on the chemical signatures and gesticulations of other creatures just like them. Hard to get through that.

Very often when I discover my deep resentment and hatred of God, it usually boils down to my own helplessness and anger at my own weaknesses and those of the folks who are busy putting out signatures and gesticulations.

It's universally human will and human weakness that bothers me, not God's will or God's weaknesses.

Volcanos and tsunamis and hurricanes and earthquakes are really beautiful. If only they didn't hurt so much.

Yes, hurt sucks. Serious design flaw. But I haven't come up with a better system yet so I'm trying to stay reasonably humble.

I've tried to put blame for things on my shoulders. In a way it looks like a martyr, in another way it just eliminates helplessness.

If I'm tortured by something or someone, I realize it's my own body's nervous system that makes this possible. Yes, the torturer is an asshole, sure, but if I didn't have so many biological loopholes that were easy to exploit, it wouldn't be possible. With the gift of life comes the curse of pain. I haven't figured out one without the other. Not something that would have meaning. Not something that could make me feel I'm doing something of value. There's so much suffering, yes. But that gives me infinite chance to make the world around me a better place. No, I can't fix it all, but I can fix what I can fix, and that's purpose.

God for me is the incomprehensible scale of the volcano and tsunami and the length and breadth of the Universe that I find as hard to imagine as the ants in my back yard trying to understand economics.

I'm limited. I try not to limit God in the same way because that wouldn't be...sporting.

I'm hoping that through the length and breadth of time, it's all worth it. And I'm going to play my part to the best of my ability and do the best I can because...what else is there?

Being bored and depressed is limited in scope.

Enjoy your life, embrace your passion, and invite God to have fun with you. Go you

I knew you had a sensible streak somewhere, well put.

I stopped teaching philosophy many years ago for reasons of my own and do not intend to begin again, however, if the thread starter and others are truly interested in finding absolute, objective answers to moral and ethical questions, including those involving sexual activity, there are means by which you can do that.
Amicus...

And I, for one, am extremely grateful that you made such an important decision, go amicus.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Well, it's not going to come from any naturalistic framework, as demonstrated. Why? There is no naturalistic framework for morality and meaning. Let's say I have a genetic predilection for knocking out women with a club and raping them, and somehow am able to get away with it. I produce a lot of progeny who carry on my fetish. A few thousand years later, being a club-wielding rapist is the new Upright Citizen. A sturdy oaken branch is valued the way we value love and affection today.

In other words, all that we value as good - love, affection, altruism, compassion, self-sacrifice... just randomly selected values in the bingo game of life.

Fuckin Dawkins and his "Selfish Gene" bullshit.
Men seem to think of genetics as moving in a straight line, from Gunga Din directly to themselves, which is kinda cute-- but wildly inaccurate. Your club-wielding rapist courtship method has no genetic component, none. There are no single genes that do this or that, and don't forget that your club-wielder only shares half of his genes-- someone from an entirely different chromosomal pool presents just as many-- more than half if the baby is a girl. You club-wielder, moreover, might or might not move one quarter of his genes into his grandchildren.

Even more importantly, he was not always able to get away with it, and is not considered any sort of upright citizen. Humanity could not have evolved into societies without altruism love, affection, compassion. Archaeologists say they can always pinpoint the era in which a population becomes a community-- they find human remains that show healed wounds, re-knitted bones. These wounds can only heal if someone else takes care of the person, feeding them while they are incapacitated. That is altruism, and it's the mark of homo sapiens.

Biologists and endocrinologists are finding all sorts of ways that our own bodies reward us for unselfish acts. That sense of happiness and connection doesn't come out of thin air, and is not a veneer of civilisation spread over a brutal core-- it's a deep brain function.

So, yes-- the potential for morality does come natural to us.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

I still largely prefer Aristotle and the Stoics, along with a symbolic worship of the Gods as manifestations of the Divine Intelligence at the heart of the Cosmos.

 

[Recidiva]

Educate yourself, read a biography of Teresa.

I have read quite a bit about her. Regardless of whether or not she was a "perfect being" she was definitely a kick-ass human being. Her definition of selflessness and service I believe to be a good one. All other issues including any feminism or internal reform or where she got her vocation, the help she gave to the helpless is what I think gets the most credit.

These words are ones published in her books and indicative of her intent, and I gotta say, they've helped me. So maybe you should not just read about her, but try what she tried.

Prayer written on the wall in Calcutta's orphanage:

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."

 

[Recidiva]

Fuckin Dawkins and his "Selfish Gene" bullshit.
Men seem to think of genetics as moving in a straight line, from Gunga Din directly to themselves, which is kinda cute-- but wildly inaccurate. Your club-wielding rapist courtship method has no genetic component, none. There are no single genes that do this or that, and don't forget that your club-wielder only shares half of his genes-- someone from an entirely different chromosomal pool presents just as many-- more than half if the baby is a girl. You club-wielder, moreover, might or might not move one quarter of his genes into his grandchildren.

Even more importantly, he was not always able to get away with it, and is not considered any sort of upright citizen. Humanity could not have evolved into societies without altruism love, affection, compassion. Archaeologists say they can always pinpoint the era in which a population becomes a community-- they find human remains that show healed wounds, re-knitted bones. These wounds can only heal if someone else takes care of the person, feeding them while they are incapacitated. That is altruism, and it's the mark of homo sapiens.

Biologists and endocrinologists are finding all sorts of ways that our own bodies reward us for unselfish acts. That sense of happiness and connection doesn't come out of thin air, and is not a veneer of civilisation spread over a brutal core-- it's a deep brain function.

So, yes-- the potential for morality does come natural to us.

Think of how many people follow traffic laws in a day. That in itself for me is a reaffirmation of how the large majority of people cooperate with each other, wait their turn and inconvenience themselves in order to keep the whole system functioning. Anyone going for a driver's license can grasp the futility of chaos if you want to get something done on the scale of a road system.

Yes, there is road rage and insanity. But overall, even just driving around, I see orchestrated cooperation from people I will never know other than in the ways we've agreed to conduct ourselves within a set of rules that we don't have to question because they make some sort of intuitive sense to cooperate.

The cells in my own body make innumerable choices including voluntary cell death in order to serve the whole.

We're composed of that which works together. We work together.

Populations of humans are thriving due to cooperation and sharing of medicine, technology and communication across cultural and language barriers.

That's pretty damned cool.

Yes, there are messed up human beings and all that. No doubt. But I think they stick out so much because there's an ocean of good ones behind them just doing what they do day to day to care for their families and loved ones. The messed up ones are only noticeable to the extent that they cause damage to the sea of humanity that's doing what they can to survive.

Otherwise the news would only be reporting "Someone fed a cat today and didn't torture it to death!"

 

[rgraham666]

I have read quite a bit about her. Regardless of whether or not she was a "perfect being" she was definitely a kick-ass human being. Her definition of selflessness and service I believe to be a good one. All other issues including any feminism or internal reform or where she got her vocation, the help she gave to the helpless is what I think gets the most credit.

These words are ones published in her books and indicative of her intent, and I gotta say, they've helped me. So maybe you should not just read about her, but try what she tried.

Prayer written on the wall in Calcutta's orphanage:

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."

Thanks Diva.

I'm glad you still have the wherewithal to argue with our friend. I can't even read him any more.

 

[Recidiva]

Thanks Diva.

I'm glad you still have the wherewithal to argue with our friend. I can't even read him any more.

Shootin' at the walls of heartache, bang, bang.

 

[rgraham666]

Shootin' at the walls of heartache, bang, bang.

We came as soulmates,
from Parris Island.
We left as inmates,
from an asylum.

 

[Recidiva]

We came as soulmates,
from Parris Island.
We left as inmates,
from an asylum.

"and we will all go down together..."

See. Music is dirty.

 

[mismused]

******

 

[amicus]

As far as the Common Human and his/her interaction with the divine, I'd say that has sod all to do with it.

Two things: Meteorology and Germ Theory.

It was the common, orthodox view, across all of Judeo-Christianity - and I can dig up a mountain of source to back this up - that God had two primary forms of earthly punishment. When an individual had done wrong, he was struck ill. When a community had done wrong, it was sent famine/drought/flood/pestilence. The continued, devout interaction with the divine was a matter of LIFE and DEATH.

We look at 16th century French Catholics killing and mutilating (and not necessarily in that order) Huguenots and dumping them into the Seine and scratch our heads. We don't get it, because we don't understand the mindset of utter fear these people had of the consequences of an unclean, impure community. Calvinism was, to them, a cancer that had to be ripped from the body politic by any means necessary, or else God was going to punish them in ways vastly more horrible than what they were doing to their Huguenot brothers. It was the lesser of evils.

Along comes Pasteur... and modern fluid dynamics, and the understanding that sickness is just caused by germs and weather by the solar-driven convection of our atmosphere. Rightness with God is no longer a matter of life and death. It becomes the realm of the afterlife, that one great mystery - what lies beyond the grave? Or why are we here to begin with, which Evolution doesn't answer any better than, "Momma squeezed you out from betwixt her legs." Well, yeah, Darwin gave us the mechanics of the thing, but not the Grand Why.



Well, it's not going to come from any naturalistic framework, as demonstrated. Why? There is no naturalistic framework for morality and meaning. Let's say I have a genetic predilection for knocking out women with a club and raping them, and somehow am able to get away with it. I produce a lot of progeny who carry on my fetish. A few thousand years later, being a club-wielding rapist is the new Upright Citizen. A sturdy oaken branch is valued the way we value love and affection today.

In other words, all that we value as good - love, affection, altruism, compassion, self-sacrifice... just randomly selected values in the bingo game of life. It's the Void.

I don't like the Void. I submit that there may be nothing but the natural world, but I still don't like the Void, and I'll fight the Void, whether it's rational or not.



There's a difference between suspension of thought and clinging to hope, even if that hope lacks strict rationality. I HAVE thought. But thinking has given me a CHOICE of conclusions, and I choose the one that is less horrid.

~~~rt

Ya know, ARW, you can believe or disbelieve anything you wish or default to, that is your individual prerogative and yours alone.

Just as one must have the knowledge of basic theorems in Geometry to comprehend the math, one must have the basic knowledge of the formal terms of Philosophy to comprehend that 'science' yes, science, I use the word for a purpose.

Man has spent all of recorded history and much of prehistory painfully struggling to acquire knowledge concerning the physical reality that surrounds him, hindered by the witchdoctors who have no desire to to acquire knowledge but impose their beliefs on others and live a parasitic existence off of others.

Mankind is in its infancy, yet we have acquired a working knowledge of how the earth was formed, how life began, the mathematics that explain the workings of our solar system and in general terms, through the laws of physics, the Galaxy we inhabit and the beginnings of thought about the nature of the entire universe.

Parallel and simultaneously, man sought to comprehend the nature of the human mind. That history of progress is also a magnificent study as we moved beyond the witchdoctors and belief, to comprehension and logical understanding of the function of the brain and the nervous system.


You said: "...Well, it's not going to come from any naturalistic framework, as demonstrated. Why? There is no naturalistic framework for morality and meaning. .."

You could not be more in error.


"...In other words, all that we value as good - love, affection, altruism, compassion, self-sacrifice... just randomly selected values in the bingo game of life. It's the Void...'

You may live your life that way, your choice, your concept would be randomly selected to go extinct were it not for others that do know the definition of right and wrong, good and evil.

Now...go back into the flock, tithe your local witchdoctor and he will promise you life ever after in the garden of Eden...and by the way, bend over and grab your socks while he relieves his arbitrary needs. (Clan of the Cave Bear)

Amicus...definitely of the irreverent sort...

 

[shadowmethod]

I agree very much with Amicus.
I've spent a lot of my time studying religion and the impacts it has on the world. Philosophies, ethical standards, ruling procedures, etc.
When one person goes along the lines and says there is a one "true God" then they are stating something beyond what they can actually say. In the sense of which any deity would, if at all, exist, it would be beyond the fabric of this physical existence and would thus be impossible to say if one is real. However, for all that science has advance in showing how things work, the idea of a deity has been hacked away as to what it could have actually done. (I don't want to get started on that....I don't want to run from the Expansion to planetary formation through Abiogenesis straight up through evolution. It probably should be noted that I'm going for Evolutionary Biology and I used to be a Psychology major...)
Fundamentalism is absurd because it ignores realities and what we know and replaces it with the assumptions that people thousands of years ago made to explain the things that they couldn't explain factually because no method existed to understand them.
Moderate religion, in any sense, is nearly as bad, because unless we're talking in the deistic sense of an outside deity that started it all and then disappeared, it's impeding on what is really out there and can be discovered.

I declare myself as an atheist. 7 years ago was the first time I questioned it because I had always been told the Christian God was right and everything about it was correct. I witnessed deaths around me and the changes that science brought and wondered how exactly God fit into this. I looked no further than the bible and found that it was so preposterous and contradictory that there was no way to claim any truth in Christianity. Upon looking further into other world religions, none of them showed anything substantial at all.
Deism or Pantheism, above all actual religions, make more sense. However, the shear strangeness of how that is mashed together makes me see it as not anywhere close to actuality, so I see the world as an atheist.

 

[amicus]

Recidiva...there are books and books of little 'Homily's like that, coming from all different directions, many relying upon common sense, some, like yours, on another basic belief, the Xtian or Budhist one of forgiveness.

"..."People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. .."


For example...one should never tolerate unreasonable or irrational, one must constantly remind the idiots that they have a mind. And, 'self centered', what the hell else can one naturally be? There is only one you, m'dear, and will only ever be, only one you...celebrate it!

You second post about observing traffic...excellent! Did the same thing myself while fishing on a boat in the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington, the I-5 bridge full of traffic at rush hour and nary an incident as people, in their own mutual self interest, navigated in the most efficient manner possible.

Here is my bone to pick with your assertion of the 'Law' as that factor that makes it possible, it is not.

It, again, is the desire to cooperate that people naturally have for the mutual benefit of both and the rational self interest of each.

I ask you to envision a little housewife in her cottage, boiling a stew, watching the children and knitting a sock for her hubby who is out chasing a dragon for dinner.

Sometimes the ladies of the manor all gather together and have a sock knitting bee, just for the companionship. Not much later, they discovered that if one tended the yarn, another the children, another the cooking pot, lo and behold, the tasks were much easier and more efficient.

Thus was born the knitting factory and so on and so forth, the most efficient and humane and effective system of economic methodology ever created, all by mutual self interest of each...it is called .....(drum roll) Capitalism!

Ain't that just amazin'!?

the always lovable and amiable Amicus...

 

[sr71plt]

II declare myself as an atheist. 7 years ago was the first time I questioned it because I had always been told the Christian God was right and everything about it was correct. I witnessed deaths around me and the changes that science brought and wondered how exactly God fit into this. I looked no further than the bible and found that it was so preposterous and contradictory that there was no way to claim any truth in Christianity. Upon looking further into other world religions, none of them showed anything substantial at all.
Deism or Pantheism, above all actual religions, make more sense. However, the shear strangeness of how that is mashed together makes me see it as not anywhere close to actuality, so I see the world as an atheist.

I can understand being agnostic, but being an atheist seems just as doctrinaire and claiming to know the unknowable to me as any god-based religion is (and, thus, is really a religion). But the wonderful thing about this is that you can believe whatever you wish--and adher to whatever belief system you wish to. Won't get into trouble with me right up to the point of anyone trying to force their "beliefs" and set of doctrines down my throat.

 

[shadowmethod]

I will post two more issues I see that are scattered about in this discussion.

"Good Works"

The idea that we gain our sense of morality from a deity that claims the influence that each seperate religions and sects (Christianity has +10,000 sects...each a little bit different.) is a bit absurd. I mean no offense, but when you look at all people in the world and all religions of the world, you see that no two people's moral codes are exactly alike. That does not coincide with a deity controlling ethical standards. If we really gained our morality from a deity, then it would all be the same. We would have that deity's moral code. No excuses of the "devil" here because it only goes as far as what your deity can really do. If your deity is too weak to overpower a creation of its own, then it doesn't meet the requirements that have been bestowed upon it.
Along with that, Humans are not the only creature with moral codes, yet we are the only ones that follow religions. When I hear a creationist or a person who is completely scientifically illiterate say that "evolution tells you that you're an animal and that you can act like one!", I want to vomit, honestly. The argument is not only misunderstanding the basic constructs of evolution, but of moral and ethical standards. Look at any group of animals on the planet and tell me if it's chaos all the time or do they hold some mental connection with them. Just because their ways of showing emotions such as love, anger, sadness, and joy are different than ours doesn't mean they are immoral.

"Why"
I saw the idea that science and in particular Darwin's evolutionary process gives us the "How" factor but not the "why" factor...aside from the fact that evolutionary theory explains why evolution happens.
Well, that's a logical fallacy. To say that you need a "why" for something is a false dichotomy in a sense. What is being said in that sense is that since it doesn't give a reason why, then it must be God. That's not the situation.
Life exists purely because it can. Matter does not need life, but it has formed life through environmental effects on organic matter. (that I really don't want to explain...) We give ourselves purpose, seeing as we've evolved biologically and socially enough that we have moved out of the nomadic survivors that we used to be, because we see what we have but don't know why we have it or why it does what it does. That purpose in explanation of nature without actual knowledge became a religion, and the people in power gave it traits and laws according to what they thought would give them the most power and fit to their own mental codes as to what would rule best.
In a sense, we made up a deity to explain it...and it shows because all of the different parts of the world had religions that were different...and as time progressed, they started to merge and conglomerate into the stories of the modern religions. Hell, Jesus is a conglomeration of dozens of traits that were given to characters predating him in mythology. The OT stories are copied from several other texts.

 

[shadowmethod]

I can understand being agnostic, but being an atheist seems just as doctrinaire and claiming to know the unknowable to me as any god-based religion is (and, thus, is really a religion). But the wonderful thing about this is that you can believe whatever you wish--and adher to whatever belief system you wish to. Won't get into trouble with me right up to the point of anyone trying to force their "beliefs" and set of doctrines down my throat.

No....no, that's wrong....
I'm trying to not be harsh...please forgive me if I come across as that. I see this all the time and there is such a false idea that is brought up with that. At least you're nice about it and you're not flying off the handle and calling it a religion and saying that we are at just as much fault.

Atheism holds no doctrine. In fact, I think that Sam Harris had it correctly when he said that atheism as a word shouldn't exist, just as any religious belief shouldn't.
Atheism is a philosophy...not a doctrine. What is that philosophy? "There is no deity." There is no moral code and there is no instructions. It simply goes by what one sees as moral and beneficiary in their minds. Yet that doesn't mean that we're going to go kill somebody...we've evolved standards of decency over the years through the entire evolutionary chain...which I lightly touched on in the last post I made. There's no gain in killing somebody without causation and we are programmed for survival, sicne that is what we made it this far by doing.

There is a major problem that I see repeatedly in that people think that agnosticism and atheism are unlinkable. They are not exclusive. In fact, most people will say they are agnostic atheists.
Agnosticism, by definition, is to say that there is no knowledge of a deity. Many theists who accept that it is beyond the bounds of human understanding would be labelled as agnostic theists, which they don't seem to like because they still equate anything that isn't directly a part of their religion as incorrect and tainted.

And I don't push my lack of belief on anybody...it's just that when they impede on the world of science or on my freedoms that I get outraged. I hate the idea that we are held in place by a belief system that I do not adhere to and that it encroaches on us every day for their own benefit, but that's the way it's come to be until there is absolute secularization where religions are exactly as they were meant to be...private beliefs. I find it tragically ironic that we here in the U.S. are founded on secular laws....but people don't know that and they continue to force religion like they have a clue.

 

[sr71plt]

when you look at all people in the world and all religions of the world, you see that no two people's moral codes are exactly alike.

In living most of my life outside of the United States--and in countries dominated by religions other than Christianity--I've noticed, rather, that the moral codes of all spiritual doctrines are much more in line with each other than the adherents of any of those spiritual doctrines seem to realize--and certainly than they will acknowledge. There does seem to me to be a commonality in trying to come to grips with (and perhaps control) the unknown/unknowable and where the "I" fits into that.