You are using “good” and “better” as if they are objective criteria. If they are subjective why do you expect others to share **your **value judgments?
you live under the illusion that an objective morality ever existed, much less within religion? In the 14th and 15th century it was perfectly within the range of normalcy for the church to burn people alive. A millennium before that the religious claimed god commanded them to stone human beings to death. Yet most religions today would find those acts maniacal and aberrant.
So obviously the church has never had anything approaching an objective unchanging set of moral principals. The morality of mankind is something that evolved over time. Prior to the secular rationalist thinkers of the enlightenment the western world was ruled by monarchy and theocracy, which oppressed individual freedoms. Today freedom and morality are considered intertwined … and this is due mostly to those irreligious enlightenment thinkers.
If truth is just a manmade concept then a belief or statement need not correspond to reality to be true. Is that what you believe?
I’m the one with the appreciation for reality remember?
Superstition is defined as “idolatry” and “an irrational belief that an object, action, or circumstance not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome” .
Scientism fits these definitions perfectly because science is worshipped as the supreme **source **of wisdom and insight into reality. Its devotees believe all human thoughts, emotions, values, decisions, goals and aspirations can in principle be explained scientifically.
man … you really sound brainwashed.
Are these rational theories based on facts and reasonable assumptions:
- Science can in principle explain everything. ?
- Everything can in principle be explained by physical causes. ?
- Human beings can in principle be explained as the products of fortuitous combinations of molecules and random genetic mutations. ?
I guess you’re fixated on the idea that all scientists believe evolution was the result of a series of random events (since I see you debating about it with some of the other irreligious posters here).
If you thought about it even if something like intelligent design were true, science should still be able to trace back the physical causes responsible for creating the universe up until a certain point. We already know the singularity was comprised of a small handful of elements & a little bit more matter than anti-matter. These were physical things which combined in just the right way to put all this in motion. Whether this was a random event, or whether something out there was responsible for it all is not a question science frequently tries to answer. In fact opining either way isn’t really science (since insufficient evidence exists, and the mathematical formulas break down as we approach the density of the singularity).
Religion, like naturalist philosophy is a theory (with no supporting empirical evidence). Sure, I do think naturalist philosophy has a more rational basis than religion, but that’s not saying much (since actually believing, for instance, the events depicted in the bible are true has no rational basis whatsoever).
How would you justify belief in human rights and the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity?
are you under the delusion that religion created these concepts?
It would be more to the point to explain how you expect one organization to eliminate poverty all over the world?
my point was that your church has been in these countries for decades; and they’re still just as poor and hopeless as the day you found them.
Have you ever heard of the scientific Establishment? If you think there is no prejudice, favouritism, deceit, scandal and corruption among scientists you are woefully ignorant.
and thankfully science hasn’t deluded itself into thinking it’s infallible? Scandal, corruption, deceit (let’s see, like thousands of pedophile priests, and bishops who sent them running along to a different parish so they could continue their crimes)?
Precise references are required to substantiate this allegation - regardless of whether you want to talk about it. Otherwise it is worthless…
ask and yea shall receive:
Catholic Priest Guilty In Rwanda Genocide
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/13/AR2006121301948.html
A major investigation into allegations of child abuse in Irish state-run institutions is set to implicate ‘hundreds’ of Catholic priests today.
article.wn.com/view/2009/05/20/Hundreds_of_Catholic_priests_to_be_implicated_in_child_abuse/
Some priests assisted passively by refusing to help Tutsi parishioners or clergy. Some openly encouraged the killers. Others promised parishioners safe havens at churches, which were then attacked in some of the genocide’s most notorious massacres, the chapels littered with mutilated corpses and spilled blood in what African Rights called a ``dreadful parody" of the communion ritual.
A few priests manned roadblocks where Tutsis were arrested. Some took up weapons against Tutsis. One former military chaplain who helped train militiamen wore a gun and a crucifix when he greeted Pope John Paul II’s representative during the genocide. Two other priests were sentenced to death in Rwanda this year for paying workers to bulldoze their church in Nyange, killing 2,000 Tutsis locked inside.
maykuth.com/Projects/rwan3.htm
Do you believe our conscience, power of reason and free will are illusions? Yes or no?
I don’t deny human reason and free will (albeit free will is an entire topic unto itself). As far as conscience goes, I see no reason to believe our thoughts are derived from anywhere except our brains. However, we obviously have a conscience (and subconscious)?
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