AndyJC

I'm confused by your argument. The question is "Is it possible for man to live a moral life without religion?" and you agree that and not the other way around, so it stands to reason you don't need religion for morality and so you don't need religion to live a moral life. That really is the end of it.

However, there is one other thing you mention that is core to the issue
This just isn't the case. As I pointed out earlier the Bible puts forward standards of behaviour and attitudes that almost every modern American finds repellant, such as burning witches, stoning adulters and genocide (1 Samuel 15:2-3; Thus saith the LORD of hosts ... go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." Modern Christians have had to 'reinterpret' or ignore great chunks of the Bible in order to live a moral life.

Christians don't even take the famous 10 commandments as absolutes.

TWO: 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.' What about all those Christ Crosses and statues of saints and the Virgin Mary

FOUR: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.' America is a 7 day a week society

SIX: 'You shall not kill.' Except for all those state executions and of cause all those wars

TEN: 'You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's." Coveting is the very basis of capitalist, free enterprise America.

Mal

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndyJC The flaw I am suggesting is the premise that society gets its morality from religion, whereas the truth is that religion gets its morality from society. I described how religious teaching follows developments in civic society, religions are always behind secular society. This point does not require careful definition of morality, everyone in the US today 'knows' that slavery is wrong and that stoneing adulters to death is wrong. The thing is once these moral developments become clear religions have to go through a tortuous process of reinterpreting their ancient texts to accommodate these truths.

So, if I am reading into this correctly, your belief concerning morality is similar to ACT's?

Please clarify so can understand your point of view when I respond to the rest of your comments.

ACt

I'm not sure he is completely in alignment with me, but I'll check:

OK - let's go with slavery. Is slavery wrong? Today's world has plenty of "wealth" to go around, primarily due to our technology being advanced enough to extract this "wealth" from the planet, so we can easily set up methods of paying people for their work. But many many years ago, this was not the case. Slavery wasn't wrong and in fact, it was, perhaps, necessary. Much of civilization was built on slavery and bonded labour. (You could argue that while poorly treated, slaves were still fed and housed by lords who put them to work - today, people are paid and left to do that for themselves.) Religious texts being very old wouldn't make a claim that slavery was wrong because it wasn't wrong then. It is wrong now. Our views have altered and we don't need religion to tell us that - even though, if you ask preachers, they will tell you that slavery is indeed wrong. They don't need a holy text to tell them that.

So in this case, religion and society are in congruence. Do you agree? Or is your point that the bible is outdated and thus, because Christianity follows it, they don't have a grip on modern morality (likewise for other religions and texts)?

Personally, religion is a part of society, so the idea that you can separate them to say who has given who the morals is a flawed practice. I stated a while ago that my moral views were given in terms of biology and humans being a social animal. Society is just a complex form of group biology.

AndyJC

On slavery, religion and society are in congruence now, but not 200 years ago, religion only slowed the progress to abolition by providing a divine justification for the practice. Whereas at the present time religion and society are not congruent on homosexual rights and it will take religious people a generation to catch up as they will have to find some way of reconciling the anti-homosexual passages in the Bible with the obvious fact (to the rest of society) that it is plain wrong to discriminate against people because they are born homosexual. My point is that religion as derived from ancient texts is no help in determining right and wrong. The ancient texts can only hold you back. So the answer to the question "Is it possible to live a moral life without religion" is a resounding yes, in fact 'without religion' is a necessary (but, of course, not sufficient) requirement for a moral life. It is actually difficult to live a moral life if you are hampered by religion and adherence to ancient texts with a moral code applicable to conditions thousands of years ago.

ChojiMullet

I agree that you can be moral without religion but I do not think morals are universal and we normally have some overarching beliefes that are based on some ideals from some where even if they are veiw as just being raised that way or taken for granted as normal common sence.

I have heard countless arguements that morals are personal but ethics are true for all, however I think this is just people trying to use symantics to push thier morals under the screen of religous or political nutrality.

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Mal

Quote:

Originally Posted by AndyJC On slavery, religion and society are in congruence now, but not 200 years ago, religion only slowed the progress to abolition by providing a divine justification for the practice. Whereas at the present time religion and society are not congruent on homosexual rights and it will take religious people a generation to catch up as they will have to find some way of reconciling the anti-homosexual passages in the Bible with the obvious fact (to the rest of society) that it is plain wrong to discriminate against people because they are born homosexual. My point is that religion as derived from ancient texts is no help in determining right and wrong. The ancient texts can only hold you back. So the answer to the question "Is it possible to live a moral life without religion" is a resounding yes, in fact 'without religion' is a necessary (but, of course, not sufficient) requirement for a moral life. It is actually difficult to live a moral life if you are hampered by religion and adherence to ancient texts with a moral code applicable to conditions thousands of years ago.

You're misunderstanding the intention of the Bible; but that's expected, since many Christians also misunderstand it. Yes, the Bible says homosexuality is wrong, but it doesn't say homosexuals are to be treated any differently. Anyone claiming "God hates fags" is probably more spiritually dead than the homosexuals they denounce.

AndyJC

Mal, your response is instructive. You are undertaking the exact process I describe - you are reinterpreting the anti-homosexual passages in the Bible so that you can live a moral life, in this case not having to discriminate against homosexuals.

Mal

How is my interpretation wrong? The Bible says "don't be gay," not "lol gays think they're people."

Vanity

...Wut?

You cannot "reinterpret" something that isn't homophobic. Whenever it is mentioned it's on the same grounds as all sexual sin, and even pride, or covetousness. In other words, it's no worse than someone stealing my car.

And don't even try whipping out Sodom. That has been misinterpreted as OMFG KILL ALL THE FAGS for far too long.

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