"Your argument is flawed."
Which argument?
Is reality disturbing?
by sleepy 15 Replies latest jw friends
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Elsewhere
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http://freethought.freeservers.com/reason/morals.html
"The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization." - Robert Anton Wilson
Theists often claim that their religion is necessary for morality. Obviously this is not the case as most people are good, decent people whether they believe in gods or not. Actually, nontheists get their morals from the same place as theists: human compassion and empathy. Christians, for example, do not get decent morals from the Bible. How do I know this? Because the god of the Bible is one of the most evil creatures in all of mythology. He ordered the wholesale slaughter of many innocent people, often singling out women and children to be murdered (see just about anywhere in the Old Testament); he punished people who worshipped the wrong god by ordering "their little ones" to be "dashed to the ground" and their pregnant women to be "ripped open" (see Hosea 13:16); he ordered his warriors to commit genocide, and they murdered every Midianite man, women, and child except for the 32,000 female virgins that the warriors were told to "save for yourselves" (see Numbers 31); and he created a place called hell which he uses to torture people who he dislikes for all eternity. (For more information on the Bible god, see Bible Atrocities, Murder Most High, and Is the Bible God Good?.) Most Christians, at least in this era, do not do these types of things. Instead, they have applied their own moral standards to weed out and ignore those parts of the Bible that don't fit in with their values. The claim that the Bible can serve as the ultimate moral guide is patently absurd.
Does organized religion help society? Well, organized religion does some good. For example, it can help foster a sense of community among its believers. Unfortunately, it can also create conflict between different groups of believers. Organized religion can sometimes inspire people to be kinder, to be more charitable, and to help others. But not always; consider the following: Protestants and Catholics are murdering each other in Northern Ireland. Adolf Hitler was a professed Christian whose actions were consistent with the evil Old Testament god (see Hitler's Christianity). More recently, Christians have carried out a genocidal campaign against Muslims in Kosovo. Islamic terrorists have murdered many innocent people in order to further their goals. Christian terrorists have attacked abortion clinics in the name of their god (these hypocrites call themselves pro-life; they may be pro-fetus-life, but their actions prove that they are very anti-human-life). In addition to starting wars and inspiring fanatics to commit murder, religion can damage its believers sense of personal responsibility by allowing them to shift their responsibility onto God or Satan, and this can have adverse effects on the believers' morality.
Religionists often point out that some atheists, particularly communists, have also committed evil acts. This is true enough. There is, however, an important distinction to be made: Theists have been inspired by their religion to commit atrocities, while communists have been inspired to commit atrocities, not by their lack of belief in gods, but by their political beliefs and desires.
Many theists would argue that even if some people have done evil things in the name of religion, most religious people are good, moral people, and that religion on the average provides a positive moral benefit. It is true that most religious people are good, moral people, but so are most nontheists. The theists' claim that religion is morally beneficial on the average is completely without merit. Not only is there no evidence indicating a positive correlation between religion and morality, there is evidence of a negative correlation:
"The United States is the most religious of all the industrialized nations. Forty-four percent of Americans attend church once a week, compared with 27 percent in Britain, 21 percent in France, 16 percent in Australia, and 4 percent in Sweden. Yet violent crime is not less common in the United States--it's more common. The murder rate here is six times higher than the rate in Britain, seven times higher than in France, five times higher than in Australia, and five times higher than in Sweden. Japan, where Christianity has almost no adherents, has less violent crime than almost any country....Within the 50 states, there is no evidence that a God-fearing populace equals a law-abiding populace. The Bible Belt has more than its share of both praying and killing. Louisiana has the highest churchgoing rate in the country, but its murder rate is more than twice the national average. The same pattern generally holds in the rest of the South..." - Steve Chapman in Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammo.
Another source of data on religion and morality is statistics on religious beliefs of prisoners compared with beliefs of the general population. This data indicates that theists are more than 40 times more likely than atheists to end up in prison. We should not read too much into this large number, however, since it is influenced by many factors. One consideration is that atheism is positively correlated to such things as educational attainment, higher scores on intelligence and achievement tests, and higher income, while crime is negatively correlated with these things.Religion, on the average, is apparently not a positive moral force. A vastly superior moral framework is provided by secular humanism which uses human reason and empathy to construct moral values. Humanists believe that morality should be based on human values, not arbitrary edicts from an imaginary god. For more information on secular humanism, see our Secular Humanism Library.
"As every one knows, there are mistakes in the Bible" - The Watchtower, April 15, 1928, p. 126
Believe in yourself, not mythology.
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Jewel
Sleepy-
Are you seriously contending that religion has made human society more moral?
HMMM, Let's see:
The Inca and Maya offered their children as sacrifices in the name of religion. So did those who sent their children off on the Children's Crusade.
Religions all over the world have required human sacrifice. Even Abraham was willing to offer Isaac up when asked.
Thousands of people were killed in the Inquisition in the name of spiritual purity. Religious ferver inspired the inquisitors to particularly grisly heights of torture.
More thousands of people (on both sides) were killed during the Crusades.
The Bible speaks often of wiping out whole cities and civilizations in the name of religion.
Ritual prostitution was praticed in many ancient religions.
More thousands were killed in New York by terrorists who were sincere in their belief that they were perfoming the work of their god.
Proseletyzing has been responsible for the desctruction of hundreds of indigenous cultures.
Hitler felt his religion justified his organized attempt to destroy all Jews.
Humans have used religion as their excuse to slaughter each other in Bosnia, the Middle East, Africa and dozens of other places on the Earth.
Religion was the reason for the destruction of the library at Alexandria.
Thousands of people were burned or hung (or otherwise murdered) to rid the world of "witchcraft" (read anything not Christian) in the Middle Ages.
Sorry, I'm not convinced that religion has had some type of "civilising" or "moralising" effect on human-kind.
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sleepy
"Are you seriously contending that religion has made human society more moral?"
No.
It is a lot more complex that that.
This is not what my post was about so I'm not replying to any more replies like that. -
Jewel
Yes it was:
>>my point with religion is that it has played a part in how the world has developed into a more moral place other the ages.<<
I think that religion has helped some people. There are lots of stories of people who couldn't get over an alcohol or drug addiction or other self-destructive behavior until they had the assistance of religion. But I think that speaks more of the person than of the religion because it it almost certainly true that that same religion (whatever it may be) has also been twisted by someone, somewhere to justify a bad purpose.
In my case, I felt that I was MORE in touch with reality after leaving the Witnesses. I could never really reconcile what I was taught to believe with what I REALLY believed. It was a huge relief.
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SYN
Reality is input, nothing more.
"Vaccination has never saved a human life. It does not prevent smallpox." The Golden Age, Feb 4 1931 p. 293-4 - The Sacredness of Human Blood (Reasons why vaccination is unscriptural)