by fulltimestudent 40 Replies latest jw friends
You are right Sea Breeze. And if it is survival of the fittest why love your neighbour as yourself?
When the French Revolution started some believed it was going to all be great. But Burke said it wouldn't because religion is the glue of society - take it out and you get terrors. Which is exactly what happened. They got busy with the guillotine.
The reason for this occurrence comes down to basic knowledge of about are selves and the world in which we live.
The ancients had to endure through own inherent ignorance, hence supernatural beings(gods) came to be as to gives answers to what they saw and experienced.
The ancients were ignorant? I bet they could milk cows and build hen houses without needing a YouTube. I know people who can't milk cows or build hen houses.
The basic problem is that atheists make appeals to blind chance and happenstance. They have an untestable belief system that they religiously adhere to. It is a system of belief that basically says, "that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. (Infinite Monkey Theory)
But NOW, that the infinite monkey theory has produced such a fine specimen such as ourselves, we should abandon random chance as a way of determining right and wrong and people should just trust me, and me, and me, and me too, and don't leave me out.
Computer Scientist Dr. Robert Wilensky’s said it best in a 1996 meeting at the University of California, Berkley, “We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.”
Shakespeare couldn't even write the stories himself :) King Lear is a variation of Nebuchadnezzar. So if Jehovah hadn't caused Nebuchadnezzar to lose his understanding for 7 times in the first place we would neither have the imaginative works of Shakespeare nor the Watchtower's bonkers ideas on 1914. And they worked very hard to fool us with their maths on that one. Took a lot of thinking about.
Phizzy: "A lot of good, ethical and moral choices are made in Nature, by what some still like to think of as " lesser " species, co-operation and altruistic works are seen. If we have evolved the intelligence to work out what does the most good and the least harm, we should make those choices, not anything that comes short of that."
Agreed! But, we (humans) still don't know why other animals seem to demonstrate altruism or why they co-operate. For example, a recent YT video showed a lioness killing a ungulate and then apparently realising (?) it was pregnant and then attempting to revive (?) the fetus. Was the lioness's actions true mercy? Or, was it simply a response to a chemical messenger emitted by the killed beast.
It seems apparent that in spite of the biblical teaching at 2 Peter 2:12 (that governed western thought for centuries) that 'beasts' were 'destitute of reason' (hence the NWT's use of the word 'unreasoning'), animal behaviour can be interpreted as indicating some reasoning ability. So do animals 'think' about their conduct and actions?
And, if humans are animals (advanced or not) is intelligence the foundation of our actions, or is 'instinct' the starting point? Think about the English Protestant persecution of Catholics in Elizabethan times. Was it intelligent or merciful to burn people to death (mimicking the flames of hell)? We humans may think we are intelligent, but our behaviour is often stupid.
Which, of course, was the point of the author's remark at 2 Peter 2:12.(except his chosen illustration was false).
The perennial debate about ethics and religion.
Step one Define ethics:. Standards of behavior that provide stability and cohesion to society
Step 2 define religion:....Reverence and rite directed to a numinous (mysterious and awe-inspiring) "other".
Step 3 explain why 1 cannot exist without 2 .... Some say without fear of supernatural punishment ethics cannot exist. Why? Is ethics the product of the avoidance of pain? If so then ethics are reduced to a most animal level and would not seem to require a numinous other to understand. Is ethics the product of the promise of reward? Then ethics are self serving and again would not seem to require a numinous other to understand. Some say ethics must be superhuman to be trustworthy. This then invites the question of how do we know an ethic is superhuman? The ethic must be able to be rationally defended as superhuman lest imposters feign superhuman. If therefore rational humans can determine the rationality of a superhuman ethic then do the humans need the superhuman? No.
In other words as soon as you admit you can defend the ethics as being rational and valuable you erase the need for a supernatural source. Humans are quite capable of exercising good judgement about ethics and value. The fact that they don't all agree on a given topic reflects the differences in perspective more than a difference in values. The abortion issue is a classic. For many the potential to become a human is equated with being a human. For others the potential to become a human is just that and something that the mother has the right to determine. There will always be some issues beyond consensus. Religion, or more accurately each religion, pretends to offer clarity but actually cannot be rationally argued when challenged. It is in these very areas of debate that religion fails to appear supernatural.
I should add that the most successful religions have at their core an irrational, a counterintuitive element. Stories of the impossible and illogical demands (not eating certain foods, killing your children) satisfy the worshiper that what they are practicing is beyond human in meaning. The Gnostic faiths created layers on layers of cryptic language just for that purpose. One of the main reasons Christianity is in decline is the attempt to rationalize it and defend it. Had it rather added even more mystery and fancifulness it might have held up better.
Religion might contribute something towards the field of ethics if religious people were to practice what they preach. All too often, though, that simply does not happen - and it matters not what the religion is, either (despite widespread claims that "our church don't do that sort of thing"!)
This fact was not lost on the newly-converted Maori people of 19th Century New Zealand. They were quick to observe how the Ten Commandments got relegated to second place between Monday morning and midnight Saturday - then sent on an indefinite Leave of Absence whenever there was a war on.
In his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey noted that to determine which principles are correct, you only have to visualise the results if everyone did the opposite. It doesn't take either the threat of hellfire or the reward of heaven (or the ravings of some half-mad religious leader!)
And if it is survival of the fittest why love your neighbour as yourself?
That false dilemma can only be persuasive to someone who hasn't understood what survival of the fittest means. First, there are many levels to being 'fittest'. Strong bones and teeth may be one example in a given circumstance but strong maternal instincts may also define 'fitness' for survival when situations favor that. Reciprocity, altruism, group kinship, all of these define 'fitness' for survival for social animals. These are the very traits of neighborly love. The better we reflect on the value of these qualities and how they got us so far already, the farther humans will progress away from simple lists of rules and prohibitions offered by religions.
