TrueUCHIHA

Incorrect. You may have lived a moral life without religious belief but you have NOT lived a moraly positive life without any influence of Religion at all. I am sure that who ever has told u what is right and what is wrong has borrowed their beliefs from or have been influenced by religion. Wether or not you accept religon isnt the issue here. its wether or not u have been influnced by it, which you have.

Going by your logic you are saying that because you are ignorant to the existence of something that means you are in no way influenced by it. I wont take the time to debunk this because the flaw in this statement is to great to be counted as a valid argument.

ninjalostboy95

Just adding my 2 cents, I think it's possible for man to live a moral life without religion due to that the fact that religions conflicting with others back then led to numerous amounts of death i.e the crusades. It also led to Martin Luther's thesis(There was a number forgot) which showed the Church was using religion as a profit. I don't know about any countries which contained a majority as atheist.(I don't think there's any.)No offense to religous people.But,then again I dont know cause I'm just 14.

Tsuna

Well, hurray for that. Given that you didn't reply to my post, I'm assuming you're waiting on me to expand upon the arguments I didn't address due to confusion over your intent?
In that case...
Since you said I hit on your points well, then I'm going to address this:

Arguing the point that one is influenced regardless of personal beliefs, to put it shortly, transforms your argument from regarding one's individual concept of morality to an argument addressing the idea of nature versus nurture. Miburo touched on this in his earlier post:
Regardless of whether someone is raised in a religious environment, the capability of reason and logic is part of what makes us humans intelligent beings rather than mere animals who act on instinct. I could argue the point that as humans, we are not inherently primal by nature, but then you could also argue the case of Victor of Aveyron.

This is not a jab at your intelligence or lackthereof, but simply a clarification: If you don't know who Victor is, he was a feral child who had lived the majority of the first twelve years of his life in the wild, away from civilized society, only later to emerge from said wild into civilization. He was studied by a French biology professor, who observed him as being "close to the wild state of an animal". However, you can't really explore this case because Victor was virtually incapable of being educated, even so far as language - not because he was too primal to learn, but because he was deaf-mute, and unable to be taught.

Focusing on his feral-ness, now; given this example, you could say that though humans are capable of reasoning and logic, that regardless of said capabilities, it is the nurturing of said qualities that allows us humans to be "intelligent beings" who live by the rules of logic. But that's another debate entirely, and I'm drifting too far from the point.

The point is, the fact of one's morals being influenced by religion is the same as saying that the factor of human intelligence itself is based upon one's nurturing environment... For example, someone who is completely deaf may not be capable of actual spoken language (though they may use sounds to convey meanings at times, I have experienced) not because they are incapable of learning it, but because they have never been subjected to spoken language, and therefore have no means to learn it.

In short: Yes, because we live in civilized society where everything from laws to traditions to popular media are influenced by religion, whether or not we believe in said religion is void - we are surrounded by it from birth, it is in our schools, our governments, even the values of our respective societies as a whole, despite whether or not said values, governments, schools, or what so have you, are directly related to religious beliefs.

Although this is certainly true, one's personal beliefs need not have anything at all to do with religion. Even if one could argue that said beliefs have stemmed from religious backgrounds, that does not mean that one's moral system is irrevocably based on religion itself. This is where rationality comes in.

The fact of the matter is, just because we, as a people, are influenced by religion by nurture does not mean we are incapable of reasoning and morality in the absence of it.

See above.
Generally speaking, this is a valid point.
However, public opinion does not equal fact. Just because the majority of people believe something is true, doesn't necessarily mean it is.

Everyone used to believe the world was flat, until someone proved them wrong. They also used to believe that the Sun rotated around the Earth. But we now know it doesn't. Just because a "fact" is generally accepted as a truth doesn't mean it is definite.

This statement makes no sense. How can you be influenced by something when you aren't even aware of its existence?

The viewpoint as in the Western thing? Yeah, I agree, but not including that would leave it open for a counter-argument on the fact that those religions are really only more "recognized" in Western society. More specifically, in the United States. It's better to acknowledge a weakness in an argument based on one's personal experiences with their environment - i.e.: I only know the "big" religions as they are considered in the US rather than say, Russia, because I don't live in Russia, and thus don't know the situation there - than to just leave it wide open like that.

Maybe it's just the way I've learned how to debate over the years, but it's better to address all facets of an argument than to leave anything unexplored.

@ninja:
Protip: Agnosticism and Atheism are not even remotely the same thing.

ninjalostboy95

Oh okay thanx Tsuna.

Miburo

I dunno about you, but I'm not six. So I can decide for myself what is right and wrong. And I make those decisions without taking any religious views into account. So no, my beliefs and actions in no way are influenced by religion.

Seriously, are you incapable of fathoming people actually thinking for themselves? Is that really such an unbelievable concept to you? Because that's basically all I'm saying. People can think for themselves. Just because some people made up some religions or even moral guidelines before I was born doesn't mean I'm incapable of thinking for myself and deciding what to believe.

Not that any of that even matters. I'm answering the question of the debate. Can a man live a moral life without religion. The answer is yes. Like I said, religion and morality can exist separately. That is a fact. There are moralities that don't take any religion into account, I've named one already. So therefore, religion and morality are separate things.

It's fully possible for a man to follow a non-religious morality.

There you go. Morality without religion. I've proven my claim.

You haven't proven yours. You've provided no semblance of a formal argument. You've provided no valid counter-argument to my claims at all. Show how all philosophical moralities that are based on virtue of character and reason are actually based on religion with actual evidence. Give actual examples. Don't just bullshit and keep saying "lol lyke religion influences all dat durrr hurrr" without backing anything up. Otherwise, you've been completely and utterly defeated.


Yeah, except that wasn't the point of that hypothetical scenario at all. I simply presented a scenario where you couldn't bullshit like you tried to do above. There is no one there to influence the island guy, there is no religion. Just pure rational morality.

And Protip: Saying something is flawed without showing why doesn't make for a good counter-argument. I could just say all your shit is stupid, which should be obvious to all. I don't, I actually man up and back my shit up.

Again, not that it matters, since you missed the point completely. So you would have just been wasting more of your time if you did. Just letting you know for future reference, in case you get into a debate in the future with someone and what they're saying doesn't totally go over your head.


Also, way to pretty much totally ignore Tsuna's shit. Pretty unmanly.

Nerox

yes that's exactly as i meant. you edited the part in and your argument became very solid. now i think we are running out of options in our little "debate" on the side. just want to say, that i am considering myself part of the western hemisphere as a german, and i am an agnostic. i believe for this debate it is important to take a stance as objectiv as possible, meaning, taking all religions into consideration, like mibz did with the greek.

when you are finished with TU, maybe i could express my point of view in a larger state, which is generally yours, but with slight differences in the pov.

@ninja: crusades and stuff originated from religion, so it is to assume, that the church proclaimed wrong morals, which were believed, as the church was a very high instituion before the time of Immanuel Kant. what i want to say is, that the crusaders for example hat morals impregnated into them by the church -> religion..., the crusades were no opposition against the church etc...

that's okay. we had a nice chat on the side = )

ninjalostboy95

So basically religion and morality are two seperate concepts? I mean people in Great Britain(sp?) seemed pretty moral to me before christianity came along(I'm probably confusing it with another place =/).

TrueUCHIHA

Tsuna, I appreciate you making fun of my intellegence in this thread, It shows your maturity level in this debate and wether or not i can hold your views valid.

Cute.

Where this may be true we can not verify this. Mostly because one we will never again live in a world without religion, and two whos to say that the "moral reasoning" a person comes up with in the absence of religion is moral at all.

Now im not saying that positive moral reasoning outside of religion isnt possible im just saying a valid example has yet to be seen. Because as i said our laws today are based off religion similar to how hamurabis code was tied to religion as well

And you cant be serious about this can you? For instance just because someone is not aware of who are what Jesus is does not mean that their life has been uninfluenced by him at all. Ignorance to a fact does not make it untrue.

Miburo

@Ninja-Yes. They're completely different things.

Morality is like peanut butter.

Religion is a PBJ sandwich. Jelly being bullshit to explain currently unexplained shit, and bread being shit to control the masses or something. I dunno. Point is, you can have peanut butter without having a PBJ sandwich.


Edit: Wow, TU is really busting out the dumbassery now. Logical fallacies galore. If someone is mean then that somehow effects the validity of their arguments. And all those japs that lived in ancient japan that never heard of jesus at all were all greatly effected by his existence, yo. And that can definitely be shown logically. Lololol.

TrueUCHIHA

Oh and at Miburo if your gonna argue against my postion at least read what i say. I never said religon and morality cant exist without each other

Thanks pal

Vengeance

Which is why you were doomed to fail before you even started.

__________________

Screenshot from Shingeki no Kyojin.

Check out this awesome manga called Magi.

Miburo

Yeah, I saw that TU. I ignored it out of sheer mercy, since I'm a merciful hero like that. Because if I pointed out that you already conceded to the fact that we're right before we even started, then you'd look really fucking dumb.

You know, since the debate, that you chose, is asking if a man can lead a moral life without religion. And you also picked our sides for us, which was pro-morality without religion. And then admitted that it is possible to live a moral life outside religion, while reiterating the fact here.

Meaning you chose the topic of debate, picked the side we are to be debating on, then said our side was right. Then tried to argue against us, like a total moron. While bringing that fact back up, like you got me on something. Good job, kiddo.

KillerNN

Is it possible for man to live a moral life without religion?

__________________

ninjalostboy95

@TU: wouldn't Hammurabi's Code be justified as immoral? Certain rules claim that you can cut off someone's hand or gouge out someone's eye or even kill them. It was justified but not morally i.e it wats taken too far in certain aspects.

TrueUCHIHA

As i said the answers yes. However my stance was that because of the world we live in to day it would be a feat to do.
FIN
@ninja Hammurabis code may be immoral by our standards. However Hammaurabis code is simmilar to the "suffrengings of the underworld" which was what they believed in around that time