The Fremen Mirage
2 weeks ago
Random thoughts on the blue highways.
You never know what you will find on the blue highways. Particularly when the choice at an intersection is controlled by the roll of a die. About the only rule is that highway onramps don't count as an intersection. You don't even have to roll the die. If one road looks interesting, go for it.
--We *are* hard-wired for morality... while we can accurately describe the biology of how this occurs, in my mind it doesn't speak to where this moral compass originally comes from.
fangi
It doesn't come from anywhere, it evolved as an advantage in humans.
Rules in religion are just other types of social rules. That they are religious is just a different classification. Many religious leaders use the idea of an authority of god as a way to persuade believers that a moral idea is better than if it was proposed on its own merit.
F1fan
One of the Bible stories used to talk about homosexuality is the story of Sodom and Gomorra. Briefly, here is what happened. In Genesis 19, you’ll find the story of two angels visiting Abraham’s brother Lot at his house in Sodom. The men of Sodom gathered, demanding that Lot’s guests be turned over to them to be raped. In that time, rape was a tactic of war, a way to humiliate an enemy. In that region of the world still, hospitality is of the highest value. Lot could not have let his guests be hurt. He offered to give his two virgin daughters to the crowd, but the crowd tried to break down the door instead. The angels blinded the crowd and they couldn't find the door. To assume that homosexuality was the problem here is a gross leap made possible only by a void of cultural understanding.
Again ... "Religions" don't kill ... PEOPLE kill ...
teilhard
... often in the name of god.
You are correct, religions don't kill people. Atheism doesn't kill people. People driven by ideology DO kill people. How humans manage their ideology is the crucial element. I'd suggest that ideologies that have irrational and unrealistic elements are more tempting. Religious ideologies have a built-in authority of god, and humans can use that "authority" to defer all sorts of moral accountability. Of course political authority can do the same thing for a person. The crux is a failure of personal and independent moral accountability. Any time a person has an ideology to absorb accountability the more tempting immorality can be.
This is why non-theism is an advantage to one's own moral sense: there is no ideology to justify moral ambiguity. The sole responsibility is on the self, and the self must account.
F1fan
I'm proud to be atheist. To me, it's just another IQ test I've scored well on.
Bob_the_Lunatic