by stuckinarut2 38 Replies latest watchtower bible
Thanks for your comment Perry.
However, if we as a society truly base ourselves on ancient judeo ethics, we should be treating women as property, and keeping slaves. We should punish people (including children) by throwing rocks at them until they die....
Judeo / Christian ethics has had an enormous impact on the world.
They have. And it's no coincidence that the world is getting better as those particular brand of ethics become less significant.
Judeo / Christian ethics has had an enormous impact on the world.
Yes, thanks to those ethics, slavery was condoned in the USA until just ~150 years ago, and much of the rest of the world not long prior.
Judeo / Christian ethics has had an enormous impact on the world.
More the Judeo than the Christian, I fear...
If Jesus had been given more attention than Moses and Paul, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
l wouldnt say we are more moral. lt only takes 1 press of a button to start an all out nuclear war,Then what?
We are more educated, more likely to base actions on reason rather than cultural obligations and much less religious.
Morality is not something which can be quantified.
From the utilitarian viewpoint of nineteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, we are doing better. Today in the Western World more people have more pleasure and less pain and live longer with a greater sense of wellbeing than ever before.
From the utilitarian viewpoint of nineteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, we are doing better. Today in the Western World more people have more pleasure and less pain and live longer with a greater sense of wellbeing than ever before.
I'm not so sure. While there is certainly much to be said for modern medicine, even this benefit has been compensated by an increase in disease. We spend more time working than our medieval counterparts did. We are certainly more free than them, but much of the choices we are given are rather trivial. The only way I could have possibly been happy back then would have been as a monk or priest, but I believe if I were I would have been much happier than I am now.
I used to look towards the future for hope; now I look back to the past for my inspiration. I will always be an incorrigible Star Trek fan; but don't see anything resembling Gene Roddenberry's dream looming in our future. What I see is much closer to Brave New World and it's unfolding before my eyes.
RT, I can't reconcile an increase in disease today with my perception of the past?
Homo sapiens is a young species and while having begun to turn towards organising ourselves for the betterment of all, we remain for the time being at the level of raw recruits working out how to do it. This difficulty is not surprising since no other species has attempted a conscious democratic governance. Brute force was the only rule available.
Religion worked as a political unifier in the past especially when all societies were rigidly class layered but the time for blind faith in the numinous world is rapidly declining. Our species is only just setting out on a real star treck although we've hardly got off our own planet, yet surely, the technology does seem to be pointing in Roddenberry's direction?
If we take the typical life of a human in his or her development as a pattern; It seems to me that humans in the 21st century are collectively at the stage of teenagers still trying out the world, with some more grown up than others. Human society/societies have made progress and religion with faith in holy magic is no longer a beacon for the future.
The next stage toward maturity: will it be built on the foundations set up by the "philosophes" of the 19th century Enlightenment?
I still reckon that the Age of Enlightenment / Age of Reason had more impact for the better than religion ever did. Christians may have had the advantage of the New Testament and its "Gospel of Peace", but it did not always do them a lot of good.
The irony of this was not missed on "Heathens"; a parody of the hymn "Onward Christain Soldiers" reads as follows:
Onward Christian soldiers, into Heathen lands,
Prayer books in your pockets, rifles in your hands.
Bring the happy tidings, where trade might be done.
Spread the Peaceful Gospel, with your Maxim Gun.
Firearms buffs will recognise the Maxim Gun as the world's first automatically firing machine gun. During the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, it was the Weapon of Mass Destruction, and the Eurpoean colonial powers made widespread use of it to "pacify" the "savages" of Asia and Africa.
Well, I would guess it is because JWs don't live in an "improving world" they are convinced the world is full of more violence, hunger, and sickness than it ever has been (despite the evidence to the contrary), furthermore, such actions as, homosexuals being given equal rights, just causes JW's being further convinced that the world is "immoral" and "God needs to set it right."
JWs live in a world they are afraid to take part in, so they have to convince themselves that it is a dark evil place with no redeeming qualities or people, a belief which I have found to be wildly untrue in my experience.
