Humans 'Predisposed' to Believe in Gods and the Afterlife

[John21652]

Neither, in response to your last question. It was not a subjective analysis; it was an objective analysis of the moral teachings of Catholicism that have been used to justify immoral actions.

It always fascinates me how some people move quickly to move the goal posts when the game turns against them. Your original assertion, in post #47 you wrote that* “…I know that society is negatively affected by the dangerous “virtue” of religious faith.” * That sentence would lead any reasonable person to think you were anti-religion. Now we can see that you are referring to catholicism. Either you were intellectually lazy in post 47, and now wish to expand what it is you were referring to, or you are moving the goal posts because the game you are playing will lead you to defeat and humiliation. The evidence for suggesting you have done no objective analysis of Catholicism, or any other religion for that matter, and that you have now moved the goal posts is to be found also in post #47 where you write “…I just think that I have found the truth, and a view of the world that you will find far more intellectually and emotionally satisfying than any religion.”

This will not be a concise explanation by any means, so please refrain from replying until I say that I am finished.

Let me guess, this represents the inner totalitarian in you. Remember, we will post when and as we please.

When I claim that society is harmed by religious virtues, I am referring to the specific religious virtues of Catholicism that a rational moral philosopher would not defend because he would not come to the conclusion that these certain behaviors are immoral to begin with.

A rational moral philosopher would not defend religious virtues he concludes govern behaviours that are not immoral?!! Is that what you are attempting to say? If so, that’s a false assumption which assumes that the virtues were drawn up/supported by non-rational moral philosophers in the first place. Considering the cogency and coherency of religious virtues, that’s hardly the case.

To understand what I mean by this, one has to first consider which moral virtues of Christianity a rational moral philosopher would deem important.

All of them, I would suggest.

That murder is immoral is an obvious one. I know objectively that murder is not morally good because murder always results in the death of a human being.

How do you know “objectively”?

The same is true for the emotionally and mentally healthy human being who is the observer here.

We hope he/she is emotionally and mentally healthy! How do you know so?!

Given these facts,

From where do you glean these “facts”. After all, we can easily produce statistics that show your “facts” are just opinions. Murder exists; some people seek pleasure from pain, etc, etc. It would seem your “facts” are opinions, or else there are a whole lot of irrational people out there. So how is it you can generalise so?

it is rational for the observer to conclude that another emotionally and mentally healthy human being almost certainly does not want to die, just as the observer does not want to die. Now, the moral skeptic would ask why these facts justify the observer’s moral belief that murder of another human being is wrong. That is a genuine objection, but there is an answer to it.

Now, let’s briefly step away from the murder question to consider what, in the real world, the circumstances are for the observer and his fellow human beings. In order to get on with their lives, these human beings must establish some form of society, however implicit rather than explicit it may be. Suppose that, in a society that begins as one of complete anarchy, Human A wants to punch Human B, for whatever reason. Now, both Human A and Human B, if they are emotionally and mentally healthy, do not want to be punched. So both A and B want to have a law established that says that anyone who harms A (in A’s view) or B (in B’s view) should be punished, but if A (in A’s view) or B (in B’s view) harms someone else, he or she will not be punished.

Now, if both A and B attempt to apply this law, an absurdity will result: …

It seems you are beginning to state a natural law argument for the existence of a moral order. You could have saved me a whole lot of convoluted reading by just saying 'read Hobb’s Leviathin. He stated this argument much more clearly.

Your argument about A and B wanting to punch one another is flawed because you give no reasons why they wish o fight and yet still expect us to accept that they are both rational and emotionally well. neither A nor B asserted any “Law”, as you suggest they did and you haven’t moved past what Hobbe’s would describe as the law of the jungle, to be resiled by a Leviathin. Unless you really do beleive in a totalitarian imposition of rules, you have just produced a need for a moral order with justice at its centre.

your argument really goes to hell in a hand cart in the next post, as I will demonstrate…

 

[John21652]

Now, the skeptic here may again object that the dilemma above only relates to law, not morality. *However, morality is only binding insofar as it deals with the real world’s function. *Morals are not abstract facts, per se. *They are tools used to ensure the maximum happiness and minimum suffering of as many people as possible. *So in order to determine whether certain behaviors are harmful to society, we must consider them in a real world context.

Well, you finish by stating the obvious, which is that behaviours relate to people and people certainly do operate in a ‘real world’. Morals are simply rules that govern the behaviour of people. Look it up. A moral code is merely a set of coherent rules governing peopl’s behaviours. If it isn’t coherent, and cogent, then it isn’t properly a ‘code’ and you end up back with A wanting to punch B.

However, the important point in your paragraph is that in the previous post you began to use a natural law argument for the need for morality and here you have swung into defining morals as tools for maximising happiness and minimising pleasure. In other words, you have swung from being objective about the need to control behaviour, to now stating that subjective desires like pleasure and pain are to be regulated by a moral system.

Congratulations, you have just invented utilitarianism. The bad news is that it was debunked long ago. however, should you manage to rework the pleasure-pain calculus to arrive at something akin to objectivity, please let us know. Thousands of 'rational philosophers have tried and failed.

So from this point we have established that laws that only either protect the rights of 1) no one or 2) only the observer are unfit for a successful society. Thus, laws respecting the rights of all people are the only rational laws that a government of a society can take. One can use this moral framework to condemn not only murder, but also slavery, rape, discrimination, theft, perjury, child and domestic abuse, etc. Catholicism rightly condemns each of these things to an extent.

You haven’t established anything. Oh, unless it is that you haven’t yet made a distinction between something being “law” and its rightness or wrongness.

However, there are other moral evils that the Catholic Church condones.One example is discrimination against homosexuals. You may not think that the preclusion of homosexuals from marriage is not discrimination, but it is. I discuss this issue in the thread “Are Catholics bigoted and intolerant for not allowing same-sex marriage?”, so if you want to debate me about that, go to that thread.

Yes it is discrimination. Just like the law against first cousins, brothers and sisters marrying is discriminatory. Why, a bloke can’t even have ten wives and the law steps in. Gee, the law wont even let me marry my dog, so how discriminatory is that, eh?!

See, you assume that all forms of discrimination are morally wrong. Big mistake. They aint.

Another is the Church’s unhealthy attitude toward sexuality in general…Studies recorded in the American Journal of Public Health show that teenagers in high school to whom condoms are distributed are actually less likely to have premarital sex and get STDs.

You begin with a massive and subjective assumption, which is that the Church’s attitude towards sexuality is unhealthy “In general”. It always amazes me that Catholics become the butt of jokes about having big families, yet they are then accused of having an unhealthy attitude to sex. I’d suggest the evidence contradicts the rediculous assumption.contained in your assertion.

Did it ever occur to you that if teenagers in high school wouldn’t even get STDs if their morality was a little higher? It wasn’t even a problem until sexual mores were relaxed.

Another example is not relevant to modern Catholicism, but it was during the times of Thomas Aquinas and Thomas More. These “saints” condoned the execution of heretics, which is atrocious. This brings me to the most important point:

Considering how catholicism and the Stae were so entwined in those days, heresy was tantamount to treason anyway. Didn’t you know More was a famous statesman? Aquinas used an argument in favour of capital punishment in terms of what the secular state should do to protect its citizens. It was a Natural Law argument. Many today still beleive the argument holds. It is disengenuous, at minimum, of you to suggest Aquinas beleived heritics only should be killed. read his Summa Theologia and quote from it if you wish to assert what he thought

cont.d

 

[John21652]

cont.d

You may object that the latter example is moot because it was based on a misinterpretation of Scripture and is no longer a problem. But was it? How can you know for sure that Aquinas and More were not wrong to execute heretics? What if it is your interpretation of the Bible that is incorrect? This is the key problem with religion. It is based on “holy books” that were written millennia ago in language that is too ambiguous for one to make an absolute judgment about how a certain biblical passage should be interpreted. This is dangerous. Faith is dangerous. Different interpretations of religious texts that are mythological have resulted in hostility among sects to the point of bloodshed. Christianity is no exception.

False. Aquinas and More were Natural Law philosophers. Natural Law is not predicated on any “holy books”. The “holy books” are just another signpost to the existence of an objective moral order, discernable through the use of reason. What you write here is just plain piffle. Your logic is based on falsehoods, misinterpretations and defective logic.

Worse of all, you predicate your argument on a “what if”. That’s certainly no objective analysis of anything in particular. It is mere conjecture. You contradict your earlier assertion that you have objectively analysed religious virtues and their effects on society. In your blindness you can’t even begin to see, nor understand that a moral order is what binds a society together.

The bolded text above is perhaps the greatest reason that Catholicism is a moral threat to society. When your moral beliefs are based on foundations that are almost certainly false, they will be corrupt moral beliefs.

You jump from a “what if” to a definitive statement about the wrongnes of Catholicism. You’d have to be pretty irrational to even entertain your ‘logic’.

You also forget that Catholicism’s virtues are predicated entirely on Natural Law. Read the catechism if you doubt that. Unless you can destroy Natural Law moral philosophy, you haven’t any argument. Considering how you even built your case with a Natural Law argument, your logical edifice is in bad shape already.

This is not all I have to say on this matter, but I think I have made my point. Faith is not a virtue; the story of Abraham’s attempted murder of Isaac is a classic example of why that is so.

Please, no more of this convoluted nonsense. You have indeed made your point. Off you go and do some more homework on what morality really is and what it achieves. In the process, please learn to tell the difference between the subjective claptrap you read in the popular press and an objectively coherent and cogent moral code arrived at through right reason. And try to get over your anti-Catholic bigotry. It is unbecoming.

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

Both angels and devils were given a choice. Please read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition “The Fall of the Angels” paragraphs 391-395.

I stand corrected then. As their perpetual occupation is to be divine agents, I merely supposed a subverted will.

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

If you had the technical ability to make your own world and create you own set of intelligent beings would you give them such a choice?

It’s immaterial what I would do. Clearly by your position, you presume that automatons are always preferable.

So what is the point of giving us a choice? What sense does it make?

Why does it not make sense? Is it not just that fully aware beings be allowed to decide for themselves? As an aware being, is your preference to be have a proposition imposed upon you unwillingly?

 

[Soldier_Of_God]

Note to self: True believers are very scary.

Atheists are even scarier.

 

[exnihilo]

Ha, there may something to that! But then, at least from my secular perspective, the difference between the priest and the politician is that the priest’s lies are demonstrably false by examining the history of monotheistic religion, yet the priest believes them in his ignorance (but that is not the topic of this thread); the politician lies merely to save face. That, or he has good intentions to advance society, but his core ideals may be misguided.

So someone who spreads lies he himself believes is worse than someone who spreads lies he knows to be lies? The evidence that politicians really have good intentions, as opposed to just sophist arguments, does not exists because we cant really know what they think. Given what power does to people and what kind of person tries to exercise power over others I would find the probability of good intentions low.

 

[exnihilo]

Now, let’s briefly step away from the murder question to consider what, in the real world, the circumstances are for the observer and his fellow human beings. In order to get on with their lives, these human beings must establish some form of society, however implicit rather than explicit it may be. Suppose that, in a society that begins as one of complete anarchy, Human A wants to punch Human B, for whatever reason. Now, both Human A and Human B, if they are emotionally and mentally healthy, do not want to be punched. So both A and B want to have a law established that says that anyone who harms A (in A’s view) or B (in B’s view) should be punished, but if A (in A’s view) or B (in B’s view) harms someone else, he or she will not be punished.

Now, if both A and B attempt to apply this law, an absurdity will result: Human A punches Human B and claims that he should not punished for this, but Human B will claim that Human A should be punished. Human B punches Human A and claims that she should not be punished for this, but Human A will claim that Human B should be punished. If a moral law like this is applied by multiple people, the result will be that, according to the law, Human A and Human B should both be punished and not be punished. In order for a society to function - while judgments of guilt and innocence are made in a conclusive manner - a hypocritical law like that suggested by A and B cannot be established.

Actually that hypocritical law sounds an awful lot like international politics and its partner war.

 

[jsaldar]

When I read the title on this post I thought it would be another atheist trying to make his point. However, I am glad to have found the opposite. I have found out that it is very interesting to see how science has given evidence to that which is already stated in the catechism.

 

[exnihilo]

This is dangerous. Faith is dangerous. Different interpretations of religious texts that are mythological have resulted in hostility among sects to the point of bloodshed. Christianity is no exception.

The bolded text above is perhaps the greatest reason that Catholicism is a moral threat to society. When your moral beliefs are based on foundations that are almost certainly false, they will be corrupt moral beliefs.

Are Aesop’s Fables also a moral threat to society? Are the Viking Sagas? By far the biggest killers of the last century were the atheist Communists. This would seem to disprove any idea that religion is the sole or even primary cause of murder. It would seem humanity will commit evil religious or not. It might be that even though religion can be used to justify violence that it actually does more to inhibit it. The last century was very bloody and I think it would be hard to argue that religion (other than hatred of religion which drove the Soviets to massacre Christians) played any real role in the various conflicts.

 

[grannymh]

It always fascinates me how some people move quickly to move the goal posts when the game turns against them.

A special thank you for your posts 100, 101, and 102.
:flowers:
granny

 

[Planty_Business]

It always fascinates me how some people move quickly to move the goal posts when the game turns against them. Your original assertion, in post #47 you wrote that* “…I know that society is negatively affected by the dangerous “virtue” of religious faith.” * That sentence would lead any reasonable person to think you were anti-religion. Now we can see that you are referring to catholicism. Either you were intellectually lazy in post 47, and now wish to expand what it is you were referring to, or you are moving the goal posts because the game you are playing will lead you to defeat and humiliation. The evidence for suggesting you have done no objective analysis of Catholicism, or any other religion for that matter, and that you have now moved the goal posts is to be found also in post #47 where you write "…I just think that I have found the truth, and a view of the world that you will find far more intellectually and emotionally satisfying than any religion."

All right, this is a LOT of ad hominem and strawmanning to unpack.

I never said that I only think that Catholicism is vicious. You are putting words in my mouth. I am not moving goalposts, I am not being intellectually lazy, and this “game” has not led to my defeat or humiliation. I would appreciate it if you would not dishonestly misrepresent my views, lest you come across as pompous and arrogant.

Now, if I gave you the impression that I am an “anti-Catholic bigot”, I am sorry. This is not bigotry; the only reason that I am addressing Catholicism specifically is that I am communicating with Catholics.

I do think that other religions are vicious in some ways, thank you very much. As I have already said, Islam is rightfully hated the most out of all religions because of its despicable moral teachings.

Let me guess, this represents the inner totalitarian in you. Remember, we will post when and as we please.

Now you are just being childish. It is not “totalitarian” to expect other people to have the common courtesy not to interrupt me when I am making a point. Do you see professional debaters interrupting each other’s speeches? No! So stop attacking strawmen and learn to be a civilized debater. Honestly, you sound like a child here.

A rational moral philosopher would not defend religious virtues he concludes govern behaviours that are not immoral?!! Is that what you are attempting to say? If so, that’s a false assumption which assumes that the virtues were drawn up/supported by non-rational moral philosophers in the first place. Considering the cogency and coherency of religious virtues, that’s hardly the case.

Yes, that is my view. If a religion promotes virtues that condemn actions that are not immoral, that religion is not morally sound. That is perfectly reasonable.

Your claim that religious virtues are coherent is just plain false, not only concerning certain Catholic moral virtues, but also other religions. Is it coherent for Catholics to claim that you should love your neighbor as yourself, yet also that God condemns humans to eternal torture simply for not believing in him? How is that “loving”?

How do you know “objectively”? We hope he/she is emotionally and mentally healthy! How do you know so?!

Perhaps I should clarify something here.

In any moral philosophy, you will eventually find at the foundation of objective facts a subjective observation. In the case of Catholicism, the subjective observation is that “it is in the best interest of humans to do what God wants them to do”. You cannot prove that objectively. In the case of a secular view, the subjective observation is that “human well-being is good and human suffering is bad”. I cannot prove that either; it is merely the opinion of the majority of emotionally and mentally healthy humans that happiness is good and suffering is bad.

The same can be said for many other disciplines. Take physical health, for example. The foundation of our beliefs about human health is a subjective observation: “To be healthy is to have one’s body functioning in a certain desirable way”. You cannot objectively say that I am more healthy than a leper. Does that mean that health is a useless concept? Of course not. I think that the same can be said for morality.

Of course, I could be wrong. I am not a moral philosopher, so it is unreasonable for you to expect my response to your initial question to be perfect. Heaven forbid I don’t know everything! I have much to learn. For this reason, I will not move the goalposts, and I will admit that you have taught me something about moral philosophy. I “lost” this debate, okay? That doesn’t mean that Catholicism is true.

The bad news is that it was debunked long ago.

That’s funny, I could say the same for Christianity in general.

 

[buffalo]

That’s funny, I could say the same for Christianity in general.

Huh? I am going to need more than this.

By the way, are you going to answer my 10 Commandments challenge?

 

[Planty_Business]

Yes it is discrimination. Just like the law against first cousins, brothers and sisters marrying is discriminatory. Why, a bloke can’t even have ten wives and the law steps in. Gee, the law wont even let me marry my dog, so how discriminatory is that, eh?!

Once again, you are reverting to childish argumentation. You are equivocating homosexuality with incest and polygamy, when they aren’t even close to being on the same moral ground. Again, see my posts in the gay marriage thread instead of using the tired old “slippery slope” argument.

Did it ever occur to you that if teenagers in high school wouldn’t even get STDs if their morality was a little higher? It wasn’t even a problem until sexual mores were relaxed.

I could just as easily say the same for alcohol use! So what, if there is even a slight chance that certain behaviors could result in harm (due to irresponsibility), then we should place ridiculous restrictions on it, abstaining altogether? For your information, Catholics do not have a monopoly on sexual responsibility.

Considering how catholicism and the Stae were so entwined in those days, heresy was tantamount to treason anyway.

And you think that that is a good reason to justify the death penalty?

Worse of all, you predicate your argument on a “what if”. That’s certainly no objective analysis of anything in particular. It is mere conjecture. You contradict your earlier assertion that you have objectively analysed religious virtues and their effects on society. In your blindness you can’t even begin to see, nor understand that a moral order is what binds a society together.

Yay, more strawmen!

The point of my “what if” thought was to illustrate that one interpretation of certain religious texts is as justified as another. Unless you can prove to me that the Bible does not condone the killing of heretics, you are only proving my point.

Also, I never said that I reject a moral order.

You jump from a “what if” to a definitive statement about the wrongnes of Catholicism. You’d have to be pretty irrational to even entertain your ‘logic’.

Sigh…even more strawmanning. My statement about the false nature of Catholicism had nothing to do with my statement about biblical interpretation. If you had actually read what I had posted, you would have understood that I was claiming that Catholicism is not morally good because it is based on false myths. I never claimed that the problem of biblical interpretation leads one to conclude that Catholicism is false. I even bolded my point!

Please, no more of this convoluted nonsense. You have indeed made your point. Off you go and do some more homework on what morality really is and what it achieves. In the process, please learn to tell the difference between the subjective claptrap you read in the popular press and an objectively coherent and cogent moral code arrived at through right reason. And try to get over your anti-Catholic bigotry. It is unbecoming.

Great, now you do homework about civilized discourse. For starters, learn what a “strawman argument” and an “ad hominem argument” are.

Are Aesop’s Fables also a moral threat to society? Are the Viking Sagas? By far the biggest killers of the last century were the atheist Communists. This would seem to disprove any idea that religion is the sole or even primary cause of murder. It would seem humanity will commit evil religious or not. It might be that even though religion can be used to justify violence that it actually does more to inhibit it. The last century was very bloody and I think it would be hard to argue that religion (other than hatred of religion which drove the Soviets to massacre Christians) played any real role in the various conflicts.

Oh please, not this argument again. Atheism does not logically lead to communism, nor does atheism lead to mass murder. The most peaceful countries on earth are primarily atheist. Not to mention the MANY wars that were caused by religion throughout history. This is not the place to discuss which religious position helps the world more anyway. Truth is the most important objective here.

As for the remark about Aesop’s fables and Viking Sagas, you misunderstood my point. It is one thing if religions teach moral lessons, however accurate they may or may not be. It is quite another when exclusively religious virtues like faith are used to justify immoral actions. Faith is what caused Islamic terrorists to crash planes into the World Trade Center - specifically, faith that they would go to heaven for their pious actions. That is the kind of dangerous faith that I oppose. That and the kind of faith that causes children to say, “God hates f*gs.”

 

[Planty_Business]

Huh? I am going to need more than this.

By the way, are you going to answer my 10 Commandments challenge?

I…did. Have you read the comments?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Planty Business;8148142:

Ha, there may something to that! But then, at least from my secular perspective, the difference between the priest and the politician is that the priest’s lies are demonstrably false by examining the history of monotheistic religion, yet the priest believes them in his ignorance (but that is not the topic of this thread); the politician lies merely to save face.

So someone who spreads lies he himself believes is worse than someone who spreads lies he knows to be lies? The evidence that politicians really have good intentions, as opposed to just sophist arguments, does not exists because we cant really know what they think. Given what power does to people and what kind of person tries to exercise power over others I would find the probability of good intentions low.

It might be better to use “misrepresentations” instead of lies. The word “Lie” tends to carry with it a notion of intentionality. The person that spreads misrepresentations that he/she does not know are untrue is a person that is misinformed. A person that intentionally misrepresents is a deceiver. Deceiver is more generic than liar but can include instances where some one misrepresents without using lies (such as selectively telling the truth, misleading through making implications, so on).

It’s hard to say which one is worst independent of a specific situation and it’s consequences, but I have a bias towards seeing the deceiver as being worst than a person that tries to be honest but is misinformed.

 

[buffalo]

I…did. Have you read the comments?

Yes, I am referring to the second challenge. I already responded to your first answer.

 

[buffalo]

Oh please, not this argument again. Atheism does not logically lead to communism, nor does atheism lead to mass murder. The most peaceful countries on earth are primarily atheist. Not to mention the MANY wars that were caused by religion throughout history. This is not the place to discuss which religious position helps the world more anyway. Truth is the most important objective here.

As for the remark about Aesop’s fables and Viking Sagas, you misunderstood my point. It is one thing if religions teach moral lessons, however accurate they may or may not be. It is quite another when exclusively religious virtues like faith are used to justify immoral actions. Faith is what caused Islamic terrorists to crash planes into the World Trade Center - specifically, faith that they would go to heaven for their pious actions. That is the kind of dangerous faith that I oppose. That and the kind of faith that causes children to say, “God hates f*gs.”

Whoah - I can’t let this one go -

Atheism leads to power.

Source for claim the Soviet Union was internally peaceful? Does eliminating 25 million objectors count? Atheism is peace through fear.

One can have faith in many things including atheism. I conclude that is a bad faith as well as an irrational one.

I would posit to you one should have faith in truth? Do you agree or disagree?

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Source for claim the Soviet Union was internally peaceful? Does eliminating 25 million objectors count? Atheism is peace through fear.

I thought that was coercion or intimidation. It also sounds like you are saying that within a population you will find an extremely high[er] occurance of those that don’t believe in deities employing fear as a tool of manipulation than those that do have a belief in a deity and deities. Am I interpreting that correctly or have I made a mistake in my interpretation?

 

[buffalo]

I thought that was coercion or intimidation. It also sounds like you are saying that within a population you will find an extremely high[er] occurance of those that don’t believe in deities employing fear as a tool of manipulation than those that do have a belief in a deity and deities. Am I interpreting that correctly or have I made a mistake in my interpretation?

1 million or so in the Soviet Government controlled the 200 million. The Church went underground.