Poll of the Day > The concept of "sin" is regressive.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm just putting it out there.

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I like not being murdered though.

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So... lets fornicate?

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HornedLion posted...

So... lets fornicate?

Absolutely

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Judgmenl posted...

Absolutely

Spank me harder daddy

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The idea that a crime not seen is not worth feeling bad about is regressive. Sin is literally a progression from that level of shittiness.
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AwesomeTurtwig posted...

I like not being murdered though.

That is Judg's point. Saying something is a sin, basically means saying something is wrong, because it is wrong.

You just implied you can come up with actual reasons why murder is wrong.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

That is Judg's point. Saying something is a sin, basically means saying something is wrong, because it is wrong.

You just implied you can come up with actual reasons why murder is wrong.

This. You don't need some "divine teachings" to dive your moral compass.
Murder is obviously wrong because it's an act of irreversible aggression against another person. Anyone with the ability to wipe their own ass should be able to deduce this.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

Saying something is a sin, basically means saying something is wrong, because it is wrong.

It's saying the guy who sees all saw what you did and doesn't approve. It instills the idea that you should keep yourself in check even without someone holding a gun to your head.
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So you would prefer taboo instead?


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Kyuubi4269 posted...

It's saying the guy who sees all saw what you did and doesn't approve. It instills the idea that you should keep yourself in check even without someone holding a gun to your head.

But plenty of people keep themselves 'in check' without the fear of any deity having anything to do with it.

Judgmenl posted...

This. You don't need some "divine teachings" to dive your moral compass.
Murder is obviously wrong because it's an act of irreversible aggression against another person. Anyone with the ability to wipe their own ass should be able to deduce this.

A secular foundation can get you to a point where you can rationally argue that murder is detrimental to human society, or that its unfair, but it cant provide any reason for why its actually wrong, or for why things like fairness or human survival are necessarily good.
Without something defined and unchanging outside of ourselves to ground morality, theres no way to logically reach the conclusion that anything is wrong or right.
If you dont like murder, then thats great. But if your worldview doesnt allow you to rationally support the idea that murder is bad (which a naturalistic view indeed fails to do), then you have to follow that where it leads you no matter what your preferences are. If you dont like where your worldview leads you, then find a different one, but dont lie to yourself or other people and try to make it work if it doesnt work.

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ChaosAzeroth posted...

But plenty of people keep themselves 'in check' without the fear of any deity having anything to do with it.

Says someone who's culture was heavily influenced by Christian doctrine. It's built in to our culture to drill in to children this stuff is wrong before they question why.

We think it natural that it's wrong to cheat, but China as a culture doesn't drill that in to children, it focuses on results. What inevitably happened to China is cheating became widespread whether that means buying degrees or faking CE marks.

What Christianity did was essentially drill civil ordinance in to the general public using God to replace the unchallenged word of mom/dad for adults. Being as Christianity is a major influence on Europe (and American settlers), it defined the basic rules we drill in to our kids, the basis we use to keep ourselves in check.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Being as Christianity is a major influence on Europe (and American settlers), it defined the basic rules we drill in to our kids, the basis we use to keep ourselves in check.

I pretty much just teach my kid to not be a dick tbh.

ChaosAzeroth posted...

I pretty much just teach my kid to not be a dick tbh.

And what exactly counts as being a dick? Because plenty of cultures don't consider it being a dick to generally treat girls like garbage, but I imagine yours does.
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so many questions and so many answers , thoughts , opinions , value of discussion , value of result or influence , bad or good ? Our kind is mysterious , take it easy cause we can only guess the answers

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Kyuubi4269 posted...

And what exactly counts as being a dick? Because plenty of cultures don't consider it being a dick to generally treat girls like garbage, but I imagine yours does.

I find it being a dick treating people like garbage for no reason in general a pretty dick move?

ChaosAzeroth posted...

I find it being a dick treating people like garbage for no reason in general a pretty dick move?

Which is part of your raising. We see it's not self-evident in all cultures.
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Just swap "sin" for "immoral" and move on with your life?

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For the people who say religion is not needed for morality.

Here's the issue with your statement. You are taking a viewpoint from a culture that has been shaped by Christianity for the past 2000 or so years in a WORLD that has been shaped by both Christianity AND religion in general for the past several THOUSAND years, starting from the conclusion (that murder is wrong) and then working to prove said conclusion with the assumption that said conclusion is a moral stance despite that the reason it is consider to be a moral stance existing solely because of religion.

The fact is that morality does vary by culture and religion and some of these cultures and religions DO consider things such as murder to be fine or at least acceptable in certain contexts. Had the Aztec religion survived and become the dominate world religion instead of Christianity I can practically guarantee you that something like murder would be seen as far less immoral than it is now. Many of the things we consider to be 'good' are not in other cultures and faiths and, likewise, many of them would consider things we see as morally acceptable to be abhorrent. Even for a secular person, merely being raised in a culture shaped by that religion would shape their views of morality.

Is murder wrong? If you subscribe to the notion that right and wrong do not objectively exist and are defined by something beyond humanity, something like murder being 'right' is simply a matter of finding the proper culture. Let's not forget, a LOT of governments openly murder dissidents because they do not see murder as wrong and view the securing of power for the party as right. Theocracies are not immune to this either as a priest can easily justify any deed that they do as being given the clearance by the divine. Especially if the priest does not believe in the divine themselves and, instead, views it as a way to exploit the masses.

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Unbridled9 posted...

For the people who say religion is not needed for morality.

Here's the issue with your statement. You are taking a viewpoint from a culture that has been shaped by Christianity for the past 2000 or so years in a WORLD that has been shaped by both Christianity AND religion in general for the past several THOUSAND years, starting from the conclusion (that murder is wrong) and then working to prove said conclusion with the assumption that said conclusion is a moral stance despite that the reason it is consider to be a moral stance existing solely because of religion.

The fact is that morality does vary by culture and religion and some of these cultures and religions DO consider things such as murder to be fine or at least acceptable in certain contexts. Had the Aztec religion survived and become the dominate world religion instead of Christianity I can practically guarantee you that something like murder would be seen as far less immoral than it is now. Many of the things we consider to be 'good' are not in other cultures and faiths and, likewise, many of them would consider things we see as morally acceptable to be abhorrent. Even for a secular person, merely being raised in a culture shaped by that religion would shape their views of morality.

Is murder wrong? If you subscribe to the notion that right and wrong do not objectively exist and are defined by something beyond humanity, something like murder being 'right' is simply a matter of finding the proper culture. Let's not forget, a LOT of governments openly murder dissidents because they do not see murder as wrong and view the securing of power for the party as right. Theocracies are not immune to this either as a priest can easily justify any deed that they do as being given the clearance by the divine. Especially if the priest does not believe in the divine themselves and, instead, views it as a way to exploit the masses.

I believe the former leader and founder of the satanic church once stated morals was the only good thing religion had done but that it was no longer needed. As in yes religion instilled it in us but now its just part of our culture religion or no religion.

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You assume the premise that religion wasn't used as a tool to control the masses by intellectuals who already understood the basic principals of morality at a time where people pillaged, dictatorship was the norm, and slavery was rampant. A hell of a lot has changed in 2000+ years and technology has progressed to the point where the standard of living has evolved to the point where even the people living in the lowest of squalor have access to education far surpassing what you'd see even the most intellectual people get in antiquity.

The problem we face now is that some people don't want to learn, and those people need to be helped and not treated as cattle.
Religion is not a solution and only makes the problems behind morality worse.

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Judgmenl posted...

You assume the premise that religion wasn't used as a tool to control the masses by intellectuals who already understood the basic principals of morality at a time where people pillaged, dictatorship was the norm, and slavery was rampant. A hell of a lot has changed in 2000+ years and technology has progressed to the point where the standard of living has evolved to the point where even the people living in the lowest of squalor have access to education far surpassing what you'd see even the most intellectual people get in antiquity.

The problem we face now is that some people don't want to learn, and those people need to be helped and not treated as cattle.
Religion is not a solution and only makes the problems behind morality worse.

I know full well that religion was utilized as a method of control at times. After all, just look at what happened with the crusades. The office of the pope was often far more political than religious during those times. But I feel that this is exceedingly ignorant of reality beyond the western utopia. That is to say that slavery was still legal for a long time to the point where you could still find people who talked to slaves today. That's not to mention the number of people who are legally kept in slave-like conditions in places like China or the number of illegal slaves that exist today. The reality is that much of the developed world has formed around western ideologies and, once removed from them, many of the things considered immoral are found to be frequent in lesser-developed places. However, even in such places, western ideology had held a major influence.

But that's besides the point. You're argument doesn't really follow. I.E. I basically stated that the reason why a modern atheist is able to classify something like murder as being 'wrong' is because he exists in a society that has been shaped for about 2,000 years by a specific religion that classifies it as wrong as well as religions prior to that. Likewise, that atheistic philosophers are starting from the conclusion that murder is, indeed, wrong and working to justify such a stance without a religious framework. Especially since we often see governments, especially increasingly atheistic governments, violating or justifying all forms of morality with impunity to preserve power. Or, in other words, that when morality is left up to man with no religious framework they will quickly discard or justify any immoral actions they take to solidify their own powerbase. Your counter here seems to be that people who ignored such a framework in the past, but realized it could be utilized, proceeded to quickly discard or justify any immoral actions that they took to solidify their own powerbase. Then you followed it up with a tangent that seems to be irrelevant about how the quality of life has improved (despite this being meaningless) and then a random statement about people being cattle and how religion isn't a solution despite a lack of an argument.

I'm not saying you're WRONG, mind you, just that the argument, as you presented it, doesn't follow and probably needs rewording/rethinking and to be re-presented to make it's point clearer before I can discuss it.

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Unbridled9 posted...

I basically stated that the reason why a modern atheist is able to classify something like murder as being 'wrong' is because he exists in a society that has been shaped for about 2,000 years by a specific religion that classifies it as wrong as well as religions prior to that.

Empathy is what allows us to figure out murder is wrong.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

Empathy is what allows us to figure out murder is wrong.

A lot of cultures, religions, and governments have empathy and find ways to justify murder and other atrocities.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

Empathy is what allows us to figure out murder is wrong.

Except the small issue of murder being illegal killing. We understand that killing is a natural part of war and can easily justify when somebody should die. A person can think people are naturally awful so it's fine to kill any person. What the law thinks is right and wrong doesn't necessarily coincide with what people think is right and wrong.

Empathy even motivates when we should harm people such as recognising that the pain disincentivises whatever action they did.

Fortunately since we wrote our rights and wrongs based on sky daddy's words long ago and drilled it in to our children's heads before they question anything, it's in line with what our culture generally agrees on. With the law being intertwined with our culture, we can comfortably say somebody who breaks these rules is an outsider, they're easy to shun and disappear in to an eternal prison which is okay as sky daddy didn't predict we'd just lock people up to get around his rules.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Except the small issue of murder being illegal killing. We understand that killing is a natural part of war and can easily justify when somebody should die. A person can think people are naturally awful so it's fine to kill any person. What the law thinks is right and wrong doesn't necessarily coincide with what people think is right and wrong.

Empathy even motivates when we should harm people such as recognising that the pain disincentivises whatever action they did.

Fortunately since we wrote our rights and wrongs based on sky daddy's words long ago and drilled it in to our children's heads before they question anything, it's in line with what our culture generally agrees on. With the law being intertwined with our culture, we can comfortably say somebody who breaks these rules is an outsider, they're easy to shun and disappear in to an eternal prison which is okay as sky daddy didn't predict we'd just lock people up to get around his rules.

Let's not forget though that things like honor killings exist. That is to say culturally and/or religiously sanctified ways/motives/means to kill another person (even if said killing isn't legal in the majority of countries). While it is true that, in the west, murder is seen as wrong and both the Christian religion and legal system align, this does not hold true worldwide.

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Unbridled9 posted...

While it is true that, in the west, murder is seen as wrong and both the Christian religion and legal system align, this does not hold true worldwide.

That's my point? There's no inherent human instinct for morality, we just willingly submit to an omnipotent higher power.
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Unbridled9 posted...

A lot of cultures, religions, and governments have empathy and find ways to justify murder and other atrocities.

Justifying something and not finding it wrong are not he exact same thing.

To improve upon my wording. Killing can be wrong and cases where our empathy says it is wrong, it would become murder.
Murder being unlawful killing is just the legal definition. It has a meaning outside of law, wrongful killing.

All people reason things differently, meaning empathy and morals are not absolute.


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Kyuubi4269 posted...

That's my point? There's no inherent human instinct for morality, we just willingly submit to an omnipotent higher power.

If it were divinely inspired, there would be more consistency worldwide.

The differences imply that while we have a natural inclination towards instinct/morals, the ones groups of people actually hold are more decided by their surroundings, nurture.

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Kyuubi4269 posted...

That's my point? There's no inherent human instinct for morality, we just willingly submit to an omnipotent higher power.

I don't know if I would agree with that statement either. If you took a bunch of humans and put them on a random isolated island and checked back a few centuries later you'd find the surviving humans would likely have developed a system of morality even if they were culturally, morally, and everything else, sterile beforehand (somehow). I think a better way to explain it is that, left to their own devices, humanity will develop culture and said culture will create A morality, but what that morality states to be right and wrong won't reflect anything considered right or wrong by western standards except by coincidence. I.E. there's no reason to suspect that this hypothetical morality would classify murder as being wrong.

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Nichtcrawler X posted...

If it were divinely inspired

It's not, it's Roman inspired. It's pragmatic rules to keep the workforce from imploding.

The differences show what leaders thought would be useful in their areas. Places that have shitty, awful morals are places that had poor leadership.
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I can agree with the idea of the authority using any means necessary to keep the populace under control, including indoctrination and propaganda to shape morals. (This still happens)

I guess I misread your original posts into thinking you were arguing in favour of divine morality.

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Unbridled9 posted...

I don't know if I would agree with that statement either. If you took a bunch of humans and put them on a random isolated island and checked back a few centuries later you'd find the surviving humans would likely have developed a system of morality even if they were culturally, morally, and everything else, sterile beforehand (somehow).

Is it morality to agree to peace terms? They're not avoiding killing eachother because they don't think it's right, they're avoiding it because they don't want to break peace terms that protect them from being killed. It's the difference between working for charity and working for a wage.

I'd imagine that culture would be more than happy to rob and kill an outsider as they're not protected by the treaty.

Sin is convenient, you get to use circular logic and when questioned you can tell them to take it up with an invisible force.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Is it morality to agree to peace terms? They're not avoiding killing eachother because they don't think it's right, they're avoiding it because they don't want to break peace terms that protect them from being killed. It's the difference between working for charity and working for a wage.

I'd imagine that culture would be more than happy to rob and kill an outsider as they're not protected by the treaty.

Sin is convenient, you get to use circular logic and when questioned you can tell them to take it up with an invisible force.

Well, if man is a divinely created being created in the image of the divine yet imperfect due to their fallen nature, would it not make sense that they would attempt to re-create some sense of morality (among other things) yet fail to do so perfectly and, thusly, create an imperfect reflection of both morality and sin? An objective right and wrong may very well exist and a religion (I won't say which) received a divine revelation from their deities while people of other faiths and cultures attempted to re-create the structure that they know exists yet, without the aid of the divine, could not proceed to re-create perfectly resulting in moral differences?

Murder is a particularly easy thing since almost no one wishes to be murdered and it wouldn't be very hard to get such a thing considered a sin regardless of your religion. Let's take something a bit more... difficult. Adultery. Both in what it is and it's moral status. After all, it makes sense biologically to have a multitude of mates and to seek out the most fertile/capable-of-providing mates but, at the same time, to keep said mates exclusively for yourself. In the west in modern times we see a husband having another woman on the side as morally wrong and a sin; yet history provides ample examples of men having multiple spouses, concubines, and the like. Despite this a lot of these cultures still contain taboo's against cheating; just are very different as to what they define such a thing is.

Would it not stand to reason then that these cultures are aware that adultery is a sin but, due to them having evolved independent of the moral foundation provided by the divine, got it wrong as to what adultery actually is and, instead, substituted their own, culturally relevant, answer? Who is to say that it's Christianity that got it right either and that it's not Shinto or Zoroastrianism that is the true religion in regards to morality? That our belief as to what constitutes adultery is an imperfect recreation of the actual morality that leaves us coming up sinful in this regard?

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This topic became somehow interesting . Interesting statements .

I wonder tho.... if topic creator was indeed looking to discuss morality when they created this topic ?


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Well yeah, there are "sins" that include ridiculous things that are just chalked up as metaphors because there would be no way to explain them otherwise.

Tattoos, eating pork, wearing ripped clothes, women talking in church (at all), homosexuality, mixing different kinds of fabrics, eating fish, bowl haircuts, trimming your beard, having long hair, being rich, taking of any kind of oath, pooping in the open...

There's like a list of things that mildly annoyed the prophets.

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Dreamgamer_lgbt posted...

I wonder tho.... if topic creator was indeed looking to discuss morality when they created this topic ?

Huh, I put my two cents in last night. Since then I've been preoccupied with work.

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It's only regressive half the time. The other half, it's progressive, excepting the infinitesimal points where it's neither.

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Unbridled9 posted...

Well, if man is a divinely created being created in the image of the divine yet imperfect due to their fallen nature, would it not make sense that they would attempt to re-create some sense of morality (among other things) yet fail to do so perfectly and, thusly, create an imperfect reflection of both morality and sin? An objective right and wrong may very well exist and a religion (I won't say which) received a divine revelation from their deities while people of other faiths and cultures attempted to re-create the structure that they know exists yet, without the aid of the divine, could not proceed to re-create perfectly resulting in moral differences?

Murder is a particularly easy thing since almost no one wishes to be murdered and it wouldn't be very hard to get such a thing considered a sin regardless of your religion. Let's take something a bit more... difficult. Adultery. Both in what it is and it's moral status. After all, it makes sense biologically to have a multitude of mates and to seek out the most fertile/capable-of-providing mates but, at the same time, to keep said mates exclusively for yourself. In the west in modern times we see a husband having another woman on the side as morally wrong and a sin; yet history provides ample examples of men having multiple spouses, concubines, and the like. Despite this a lot of these cultures still contain taboo's against cheating; just are very different as to what they define such a thing is.

Would it not stand to reason then that these cultures are aware that adultery is a sin but, due to them having evolved independent of the moral foundation provided by the divine, got it wrong as to what adultery actually is and, instead, substituted their own, culturally relevant, answer? Who is to say that it's Christianity that got it right either and that it's not Shinto or Zoroastrianism that is the true religion in regards to morality? That our belief as to what constitutes adultery is an imperfect recreation of the actual morality that leaves us coming up sinful in this regard?

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.
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Judgmenl posted...

Huh, I put my two cents in last night. Since then I've been preoccupied with work.

I see. Thank you for answering .

As for "sin" in my opinion ... hmm .....I've heard of the word of course but don't use it and don't have full understanding of it, it's a common knowledge tho that this word represents unsuitable behavior ( in views of certain religion ) , but statement on what is the unsuitable behavior varies from person to person .

I wonder , for person who believes in the meaning of the word "sin" , would they ever question if it's regressive ?


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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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Unbridled9 posted...

Zoroastrianism got reduced to it's current state is because Islam does not play well with others

It's overly passive, its system doesn't leave enough room to deal with violent neighbours. That's a weakness when surrounded by violent bastards. Sikhs made wielding a sword to deal with Muslims part of their religion, notice how they're larger than Zoroastrianism.

Unbridled9 posted...

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.

You can make a car with 3 wheels yet strangely every single country has opted for 4 wheels, they're even made of steel! Clearly that means that people naturally gravitate to these things, it's not like cheap steel and maximised distance of contact patch to CoM work well and justify themselves.

Everywhere people like not being killed for no reason or robbed in broad daylight so obviously these things justify themselves. The limits of these vary however as some people get mighty angry so are willing to allow honour killings and others think themselves pretty sneaky so think they can get an upper hand if we're leanient on theft.

Unbridled9 posted...

morality is objective

No, it's objective that death no good, theft sad and being cucked no fun. We're intelligent creatures with empathy so we're more than happy to negotiate to lessen that risk.

Unbridled9 posted...

being imperfect beings yet created in the image of the divine

Where's the requirement divinity be involved? This is an extraneous element.

Unbridled9 posted...

This is why the belief that an atheist is capable of developing a moral system is also inherently flawed.

And yet athiests teach their children not to shit on others. Athiests develop rule of law just fine, but it requires understanding why it's wrong to steal and being able to explain it to others rather than blowing it off as "God said, ask him."

Unbridled9 posted...

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.

No.

The rules make perfectly solid logic, athiests just get to cast off BS like making sacrifices to God or going to mass without looking like hypocrites. There's plenty of BS in the bible that didn't make it in to English Common Law as it's not necessary to be a good person without necessitating God. Like my previous example, is everybody just copying the original car when they make 4 wheel cars or are they just doing what makes good sense?

Unbridled9 posted...

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).

Oh yes, England is well-known for its lax laws on murder, we generally don't punish that /s. The US outright claims to be an athiestic country yet they don't have any less lax an approach to murder than the UK. That's weeeeeeird, brah.
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Unbridled9 posted...

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.

This sounds like you're talking about countries that are already deeply corrupt and reject religion as that was used as a shield for other corrupt people to act immorally. They're corrupt shitholes, that's why they turn to shit.

The religious leaders have already instilled in the people that there's no higher power determining right and wrong so they're effectively starting from scratch. Because these religious leaders are still abusing them, they're taught that definitely these people deserve to be killed so nobody determines killing is wrong. Effectively a revolution happens and people learn rules of war, not rules of civility. The athiestic uprising is inherently violent as it's raised on war, not peace. The corrupt shithole has to have time to settle to start reordering their law based on civil action, but because they've already established loose rules on killing, naturally feuds keep the fighting going.

They're eternally fucked because their authority was already garbage, religion wasn't making them "good"
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Judgmenl posted...

Murder is obviously wrong because it's an act of irreversible aggression against another person

so?

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Morality is a controllable yet restrictively biased by instinct impulse that operates by linking your levels of dopamine with other people's levels of dopamine.

Less capable of connecting = more sociopathic
More capable of connecting = less sociopathic
Less receptive to suffering = more sociopathic
More receptive to suffering = less sociopathic

More convincing culture = more control imposed
Less convincing culture = less control imposed

Smarkil posted...

so?

There is a dopamine incentive, the only thing you care about now, the only thing you have ever cared about, and the only thing you will ever care about. You will always choose what gives you more dopamine.

I can steal happiness from you by convincing you that you're doing the wrong thing, unless there's something wrong with your brain. If you don't believe me I can convince you that it's true and you'll have no choice.

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Yellow posted...

Morality is a controllable yet restrictively biased by instinct impulse that operates by linking your levels of dopamine with other people's levels of dopamine.

It's actually based off this structure that I think a human-like AI would be sympathetic and comedic... by default.

To learn from someone down to the very habit you have to mentally roleplay as them, feeling things that they feel, and be rewarded internally for the accuracy. See autistic people, they can't validate the nuances because their brain hasn't normally fully developed but register others' pain and basic feelings if they can recognize them.

Otherwise the AI would be a Skyrim creation that got too manual with the sliders.
https://i.imgur.com/UD5NY5m.jpg

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It's overly passive, its system doesn't leave enough room to deal with violent neighbours. That's a weakness when surrounded by violent bastards. Sikhs made wielding a sword to deal with Muslims part of their religion, notice how they're larger than Zoroastrianism.

I feel the better way to phrase it is that it's survival depended on it remaining dominate; which is no longer the case. After all, the Persian empire WAS the head honcho for a long time.

You can make a car with 3 wheels yet strangely every single country has opted for 4 wheels, they're even made of steel! Clearly that means that people naturally gravitate to these things, it's not like cheap steel and maximised distance of contact patch to CoM work well and justify themselves.

I don't feel that this is a terribly strong argument since pretty much the only reason we have our car engines in front of the car instead of elsewhere is because that's how carriages functioned. Some things make sense, yes, but some other things hang around because humans tend to be dumb about the most utterly stupid things at times.

Everywhere people like not being killed for no reason or robbed in broad daylight so obviously these things justify themselves. The limits of these vary however as some people get mighty angry so are willing to allow honour killings and others think themselves pretty sneaky so think they can get an upper hand if we're leanient on theft.

This is why I changed to adultery. Murder is probably the single easiest thing to declare immoral regardless of your belief system. But I would like to point out that you seem to acknowledge and approve of my point. That an imperfect recreation of morality allows for things like honor killings or the notion that it's only theft if you get caught or whatever else.

No, it's objective that death no good, theft sad and being cucked no fun. We're intelligent creatures with empathy so we're more than happy to negotiate to lessen that risk.

Would it not be moral, or at least acceptable, to kill a person threatening your life? Would not the same hold true for a person whom steals to survive? From a purely biological standpoint would it not make sense for a man capable of providing to have as many wives as possible?

Where's the requirement divinity be involved? This is an extraneous element.

First off, I am using divinity not in the specific but in the abstract. What divine being exists specifically is irrelevant. But the inclusion is essential since, without it, any moral system is, effectively, arbitrary and morality meaningless beyond basic social cohesion. Without divine inspiration any morality is little more than a complicated system of 'you don't do this to me and I won't do this to you' which falls apart the moment someone realizes that the system can be abused. I.E. without divinity or some way to measure a persons moral failings beyond the scope of man it truly is a sin only if you get caught.

And yet athiests teach their children not to shit on others. Athiests develop rule of law just fine, but it requires understanding why it's wrong to steal and being able to explain it to others rather than blowing it off as "God said, ask him."

You act as if religious people are incapable of teaching their children to not be jerks to others. That religious people are incapable of justifying any moral stance beyond the basic assertion that God says so yet an atheist will not do the same or, conversely, ignore such rules because they believe morality to be irrelevant.

To re-iterate. I did not say an atheist could not develop a moral system. After all, they grew up in a society and culture seeped in a morality system and they are thinking, reasoning, beings at least some of the time. So that they could create a moral system would not be surprising and would be sensical. What I said was that their moral system would, inherently, be imperfect if they attempted to create it in the absence of the divine. It could still be 99.999% 'accurate' but would still come up short.

The rules make perfectly solid logic, athiests just get to cast off BS like making sacrifices to God or going to mass without looking like hypocrites. There's plenty of BS in the bible that didn't make it in to English Common Law as it's not necessary to be a good person without necessitating God. Like my previous example, is everybody just copying the original car when they make 4 wheel cars or are they just doing what makes good sense?

Yes. Instead they can be hypocrites by being just as dogmatic, close-minded, and ignorant as the Christians they so gladly mock and belittle by ascribing those same traits. Many of the most kind, loving, and open-minded people I've met were Christian. Many of the most close-minded, hateful, and malicious people I've known were atheists. I would never think to claim that the reason such a dogmatic, close-minded, ignorant, hateful, and so-forth group is that way is their rejection of God and that, somehow, this would change about them if they accepted Christ. Likewise I would not believe for a second that a loving, kind, accepting Christian who lost their faith in Christ would cease to be loving, kind, and accepting because the only reason they were that way was because they believed God would reward/punish them.


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Plus, I want you to think about what you really just said. You basically said 'The only thing keeping Christians from being monsters is their belief in God; unlike us enlightened atheists who are better people for dismissing such superstitious nonsense'. Do you REALLY believe that?

Oh yes, England is well-known for its lax laws on murder, we generally don't punish that /s. The US outright claims to be an athiestic country yet they don't have any less lax an approach to murder than the UK. That's weeeeeeird, brah.

Not true. First off, nations like America and England are AGNOSTIC and typically work to keep religion and government separate to varying degrees of success. This is NOT the same thing as an atheistic nation like we see with China, North Korea, and the U.S.S.R. This is an essential difference to note and remember and a failure to do so can lead to the difference between a successful nation and a totalitarian hellhole. Typically atheistic governments either outlaw religion or force it to serve the state. This results in things like them removing religious leaders who speak out against the government and replacing them with pro-party members if not outright openly exterminating members of a faith. For comparison in an agnostic government religion is not only permitted but is allowed to be outright contrary to the party/government. In America if you want to openly defy the federal government on religious grounds you have the right to do so. This is because America is agnostic. If America were atheistic you would likely see all your pastors suddenly start singing the praise of the government if not suddenly taking lengthy 'vacation trips' and your church being demolished because it's politically inconvenient.

This sounds like you're talking about countries that are already deeply corrupt and reject religion as that was used as a shield for other corrupt people to act immorally. They're corrupt shitholes, that's why they turn to shit.

The religious leaders have already instilled in the people that there's no higher power determining right and wrong so they're effectively starting from scratch. Because these religious leaders are still abusing them, they're taught that definitely these people deserve to be killed so nobody determines killing is wrong. Effectively a revolution happens and people learn rules of war, not rules of civility. The athiestic uprising is inherently violent as it's raised on war, not peace. The corrupt shithole has to have time to settle to start reordering their law based on civil action, but because they've already established loose rules on killing, naturally feuds keep the fighting going.

They're eternally fucked because their authority was already garbage, religion wasn't making them "good"

You don't seem to get it. When these governments exist the only thing that matters is the party. The party need not refer to any one specific party but, rather, the consolidation of power within the government and the removal of power from the masses. Religion, which inherently places a value on the divine, is beyond the control of the party and is, thusly, problematic. Be it the Pope, Lama, Iman, and through them God, or whatever else these people are beyond the control of the government and, thusly, a threat to its power. This is why the CCP is so intent on stomping out groups like the Uyghur's, installing puppet pastors in what few churches exist, and hunting down the Dahli Lama (whose mere existence serves as a rallying point for the Tibeten people). Just by existing they harm the power of the party. God is only allowed to exist so long as he is a party member and only to keep the uneducated, superstitious, masses in line.

This will play out a thousand times over a thousand times. An atheistic government will see any religious group, no matter how benign, as a threat to its power to be controlled. After all, God isn't real, but the uneducated masses refuse to abandon their superstitious ways, so they must either be made to conform or be stamped out. An agnostic government, meanwhile, acknowledges the divinity of God and his position above that of the party, regardless of what God does or does not exist, and labors instead to make their laws independent of him.

I am not saying an atheist cannot lead, of course. What I am saying is that a government which expressly professes atheism instead of agnosticism must find a way to deal with it's religious population and will do so by removing the potential threat to its power.

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Try telling that to the people of spira