LogFAQs > #937781593

Kyuubi4269 posted...

There is no divinity, it's all just cultural boundaries defined by social leaders. The one that got it "right" is the one that has the least conflict and most growth, the most productive one. Shintoist Japanese had Feudalism take over and cause a lot of internal wars. Zoroastrians disappeared in to Muslim territory by failing to compete against surrounding territories to be valuable to the people.

Christianity has successfully set itself in to the most capable countries in the world, the combined success of the Christianity-influenced countries absolutely dominates the rest of the world outright.

There is no morality, there's just rules that work and rules that don't. Shitholes that stick to rules that don't work fall apart, ones that have good rules function.

If you remove these rules from people, they'll just start from scratch to make rules from convenience, there's no inherent sense that say, wife sharing is immoral or lynching albinos is bad.

There are a multitude of reasons why Christianity and Christian-dominated nations came out on top though. For example the Black Plague and the Mongols. However that's not important right now; though I do feel it's worth pointing out that the reason Zoroastrianism got reduced to it's current state is because Islam does not play well with others; but that too is a whole different topic. What's important is that, for the longest time, it was basically the dominate world religion for centuries and even directly helped the Abrahamic religions out (EX: Cyrus the Great's temple).

However I highly disagree with the belief that morality does not exist. After all, we see cultures and religions all over the world develop similar morals and moral systems. Some of the differences make sense when taking in to account the various environments, cultures, and sociologists of the location as well; but the fact that so many cultures can develop so many relatively similar beliefs would highly indicate that there is such a thing as true morality. We don't see basic rules reflected anywhere near as 'universally' when it comes to non-moral set-ups. Admittedly; a large part of this is that Europe, the middle east, and asia all developed strong empires with writing systems and records while Africa, Australia, and the Americas tended to lack such things so what we know about the various cultures is, at best, often described through the lens of cultures from those areas (especially Europe).

This doesn't change that many of them did develop similar morality systems but that said systems were also flawed and imperfect. Which is why I put forth my hypothesis. That morality is objective but humans, being imperfect beings yet created in the image of the divine, attempt to re-create it when left unto their own yet are doomed to fail due to their imperfect nature. The best they can manage is an imperfect recreation that, while it may get some things right and mimic others, is too heavily influenced by various factors such as their culture to ever be a perfect recreation of morality.

This is why the belief that an atheist is capable of developing a moral system is also inherently flawed. Because whatever moral system that they propose with the distinct absence of a divine being would have it's morality heavily influenced by the local culture of which the vast majority have lived in a culture shaped for centuries by one specific religion as well as millennia by religion in general. In other words, all they can do is copy the religious set of morals and find atheistic justifications for said morals while assuming said morals are right for religious reasons and gloss over said religious reasons. Especially since, whenever we see nations arise that push atheistic worldviews, they tend to throw out morality instantly, abuse power, and engage in many acts considered highly immoral by the religious groups (murder being a favorite). There is no reason to believe that any subsequent atheistic cultures would deviate from this set-up either beyond the whims of random chance. As a result we can expect that cultures that eschew the divine, even if they attempt to maintain morality, will end up with a culture in which morality is frequently ignored or tossed aside in favor of personal gain or the enhancement of the power of the party.

It's why these governments tend to intentionally stomp out any form of religion after all. If you have your populace believing something is wrong and answering to any form of higher power as well as being willing to die for said higher power instead of the government (and possibly in opposition to the government) combined with a religious leader who won't submit your population will see your government as immoral, evil, corrupt, and wrong and often resist if not outright rebel against your actions. Meanwhile a government that controls morality can simply legislate that what it does is correct or demand the religious leaders change the faith to accommodate their whims.

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I am the gentle hand who heals, the happy smile who shields, and the foot that will kick your ***! - White Mage