"Do not kill

do not rape

do not steal

these are principles which every man of every faith can embrace.
These are not polite suggestions, these are codes of behavior and those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost."

is what what I thought you were going with

5/16/2011 3:26:37 PM

Well rape is more within Thou shalt not commit adultery and Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's (meaning anyone's) wife.

Quote :

"The first 5 commandments are God's ego trip and the last are common sense"

The only reason you perceive these as common sense is because God made man in his image.

And because of the tree of knowledge of God and Evil, which may very well not be a tree. Lots of theories out there on that one.

"And Jehovah Elohim said, Behold, Man is become as one of us, to know good and evil."

As for the first of the commandments, let me put them in perspective since you don't seem to understand the importance. Say you were married, but your wife slept with everyone and played the harlot would you be very happy about it? Well worshiping idols is spiritual adultery:

"And I passed by thee, and saw thee weltering in thy blood, and I said unto thee, in thy blood, Live! yea, I said unto thee, in thy blood, Live! 7 I caused thee to multiply, as the bud of the field; and thou didst increase and grow great, and thou camest to fulness of beauty; thy breasts were fashioned, and thy hair grew: but thou wast naked and bare.

8 And I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, and behold, thy time was the time of love; and I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness; and I swore unto thee, and entered into a covenant with thee, saith the Lord Jehovah, and thou becamest mine.

15 But thou didst confide in thy beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy whoredoms on every one that passed by: his it was. 16 And of thy garments thou didst take, and madest for thyself high places decked with divers colours, and didst play the harlot thereupon: the like hath not come to pass, and shall be no more. 17 And thou didst take thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of males, and didst commit fornication with them."

Eze 16

5/16/2011 3:45:27 PM

Humanity and morals predate the claimed time of the Ten Commandments by hundreds of thousands of years. The rules set forth in the Bible and in the Code of Hammurabi before it, and in modern law after it are reflections of morality, not morality itself. It's obvious that morality is dynamic, improving as we understand ourselves better, changing even after they were "set in stone" by their respective religions.

If we go by the Old Testament, we should be keeping slaves and not eating shellfish.
If we go by the Code of Hammurabi, we should be killing people for stealing.

"Be good to others" and "punish the wicked" are morals ingrained in our psyche by millions of years of human evolution. We wouldn't have made it this far without them. That they show up in pretty much every religion is evidence of that, not evidence that any of those religions mandated it to begin with.

V, "doesn't believe but doesn't definitively know" Agnostic Atheist. Like most sensible people.

[Edited on May 16, 2011 at 3:54 PM. Reason : .]

5/16/2011 3:52:08 PM

hi guys...just wanted to chime in here....

Quote :

"* My personal belief is that there may or may not be a God, and if there is, various tenets held to by different religions and sects may or may not be right. I am not at all hostile to the notion of God; I just feel that trying to know and understand is an exercise in futility, so I live my life on the premise that I don't and can't know."

spot on Duke...but I will add that there reason I don't believe in God is becasue I have yet to see any evidence of God but I won't say definitively that there is no God.

Quote :

"I think you are going to have to agree to disagree... I agree with the other guys too- if everyone knew that there was nothing after death, and this go around was all you got, then I think they would prove to be more selfish and self pleasing."

that's bullshit. once people realize that being selfish and greedy only makes you unhappy (because people don't want to be friends with some one who is greedy and selfish) then they tend to be good people simply because its a better way to live, not because they fear an angry God. I think this point has already been made though.

5/16/2011 3:53:35 PM

Quote :

"Just a few examples of our modern morality. Sounds like murder is bad, stealing is bad, perjury is bad. The guilty are condemned and the innocent are not punished according to a just judge. This sounds like modern morality to me. Keep in mind I say based so obviously everything in our system is not taken from the Law of Moses nor is everything from the Law of Moses placed into our system."

There were systems of law/morals before the Ten Commandments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi

Quote :

"The only reason you perceive these as common sense is because God made man in his image. "

What about sociopaths?

[Edited on May 16, 2011 at 3:56 PM. Reason : .]

5/16/2011 3:55:40 PM

"Only see this which I have found: that God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices."

Eccle 7:29

Example for your sociopath question.

5/16/2011 4:01:08 PM

Quote :

""Only see this which I have found: that God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices." Eccle 7:29 Example for your sociopath question."

I don't see how this is relevant. Sociopaths don't choose to become sociopaths.

5/16/2011 4:14:58 PM

I think I can boil this down to a dichotomy in what we believe. Leon believes that God is the source of morality, so no matter what came before what - God could have inspired it. I believe that we created God in our image and made the laws as moral as possible for that time period.

Since then, we have modified the moral laws by interpreting the bible in terms of modern morality. But really the only thing it is doing is holding us back from making progress on issues like gay marriage or stem cells or condoms.

moar Sam Harris (on this topic)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Equfju9kJfA#t=35m47s

TED Talk reposted from page 2 (on morality without religion)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww

5/16/2011 4:15:11 PM

Quote :

"* My personal belief is that there may or may not be a God, and if there is, various tenets held to by different religions and sects may or may not be right. I am not at all hostile to the notion of God; I just feel that trying to know and understand is an exercise in futility, so I live my life on the premise that I don't and can't know."

better get born again if you want to be President, bro

5/16/2011 4:20:03 PM

nah, he's fucked. It's already out there on the Internet.

5/16/2011 4:24:35 PM

Haha well then dont agree to disagree... i dont care what you all believe, I was just stating what I believe... I'm not wrong and neither are you as this is truly just a matter of opinion. Peace out brosephs


*PS- I already stated in this thread that I am agnostic, so I'm not trying to say we need religion to have a successful human race- I mean, it seems to cause as much harm as it does good. I'm just saying that if everyone knew for a fact that this life was it, then they would act differently than they would if they had hope of some sort of afterlife. and my BELIEF is that people might be a little more self serving... and don't try to play words around to say that I think people will start raping/murdering/plundering mad max style, cause that's not what I said- But if people have the option to go on a trip with their family or donate a little extra to the the church groups project, then I think they would do what made them instantly happier first. yes, there will still be good people out there, but over all I think more people would be self serving. BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO AGREE WITH ME, AS THAT IS JUST MY OPINION ON HOW SOCIETY WOULD ACT IN THE LACK OF ORGANIZED RELIGION, A PURELY HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION

[Edited on May 16, 2011 at 6:13 PM. Reason : ]

5/16/2011 6:02:41 PM

Quote :

"that is exactly how I view being agnostic (which is what I am)... I'm also a libertarian- where do I fall in all of this mess?"

5/16/2011 6:12:00 PM

5/16/2011 6:19:44 PM

Quote :

"Kanazawa argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal -- caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers one has never meet or interacted with -- is evolutionarily novel."

The terms "conservative" and "liberal" are too vague to be useful, especially in this instance. The argument that conservatives care about themselves or loved ones, while liberals care about everyone, doesn't hold water. The assertion that "caring" for other people means forcing them (either through violence, or the threat of violence) to pay up doesn't sit well with me. I would hope that humanity can aspire to a better condition.

Libertarianism is actually much more in line with a belief in evolution than modern liberalism is. Sam Bowman, an economist, puts it like this: "The free market is to natural selection as socialism is to intelligent design. Belief in emergent order vs top-down planning." The belief that a central planner can maximize the efficiency of an economy is beyond arrogant; individuals know their wants and desires better than a state ever can. Strong economies, then, have to be built upon voluntary association and transactions between consenting individuals.

Religious belief is a complex phenomenon, and a lot of factors contribute to the continuance of faith in an individual. There are geniuses that still claim to be theists. While it's hard to say how much cognitive dissonance goes on with those individuals, they at least say that they believe. I suppose it is possible to look around at the universe and conclude that there is something much larger behind it all that we don't yet understand, there's no evidence that this powerful force is anything like the gods described by various man-made religions.

[Edited on May 16, 2011 at 6:45 PM. Reason : ]

5/16/2011 6:40:41 PM

and I haven't read the thread ...

but has anybody mentioned that this guy Kanazawa is a total quack? He's one of those "evolutionary psychologists" who mis-uses science to justify rape, racism, sexism, you name it.

5/16/2011 7:31:26 PM

i am not saying that society wouldn't know how to act if religion were abolished or nonexistent.

i just feel like many people look up the teachings of buddha and christ.
i do think that "turn the other cheek" would be abolished.
hell, we don't follow that now!


and also-this does NOT apply to everyone. at all.

Quote :

"because people don't want to be friends with some one who is greedy and selfish"

i also cannot agree with this.
do you base friends on how much they donate to charity or how often they volunteer?


can you imagine how bad the republican party would be without religion?

[Edited on May 16, 2011 at 7:40 PM. Reason : sfdsfds]

5/16/2011 7:39:31 PM

Society can function fine without religion.

You can create rules and implement punishments without invoking a god.

Hmmm...I don't like getting punched in the face, and I'm pretty sure most people don't. Let's make a rule that we don't punch each other in the face, and if someone breaks that rule, we punish them.

Where's god needed?

5/16/2011 7:42:34 PM

The researcher who came to this hypothesis is a carnival barker pseudo-scientist full of controversy always linking everything to IQ

Quote :

"Kanazawa's theories on race and intelligence are controversial. Kanazawa has argued that Asian cultural traditions and/or character inhibit Asian scientific creativity[12] and that "political correctness" is a bigger threat to American evolutionary psychology than religious fundamentalism.[13] He has been accused of promoting "racist stereotypes".[14] In 2006 Kanazawa published a controversial paper suggesting that poor health of people in some nations is the result, not of poverty, but rather lower IQ.[15] In the British Journal of Health Psychology George Ellison wrote that the theory is based on flawed assumptions, questionable data, inappropriate analysis and biased interpretations. Ellison wrote that Kanazawa mistook statistical associations for evidence of causality and falsely concluded that populations in sub-Saharan Africa are less healthy because they are unintelligent and not because they are poor.[16] Kevin Denny wrote similar criticisms regarding the IQ data and stated that African Americans should have similar IQs when compared to the sub-Saharan African population and that Kanazawa should have measured the distance between areas in a topographical fashion.[17] P.Z. Myers, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Minnesota, has called Kanazawa "the great idiot of social science."[18]"

5/16/2011 7:44:59 PM

^^ i never said it wouldn't.


no one did.



[Edited on May 16, 2011 at 7:47 PM. Reason : read the first sentence of my post right before yours haha]

5/16/2011 7:47:28 PM

Sorry, I guess I missed it.

[Edited on May 16, 2011 at 7:48 PM. Reason : ...]

5/16/2011 7:48:12 PM

Quote :

"do you base friends on how much they donate to charity or how often they volunteer? "

Hell yes. I hang out with people who hoard their money and don't volunteer. Cue eye roll.

5/16/2011 7:48:35 PM

its ok boo

[Edited on May 16, 2011 at 7:49 PM. Reason : ^my point exactly ]

[Edited on May 16, 2011 at 7:51 PM. Reason : im actually pretty happy with the way this convo is going. i feel a little more...enlightened ]

5/16/2011 7:48:44 PM

i don't think religions would just disappear, they would probably morph slowly over time

hopefully the service oriented / money donation / social group type stuff would remain and the superstitions and outdated ideas would fade away

5/16/2011 8:36:38 PM

Quote :

"i just feel like many people look up the teachings of buddha and christ. i do think that "turn the other cheek" would be abolished. hell, we don't follow that now! "

And why don't we, if more people in this country are religious than non-religious? Do you still think that religion is required for morality?

5/16/2011 10:25:18 PM

Quote :

"if there are no consequences to be held up to in an afterlife, then i feel like philanthropy would decrease. if you live and then you die, nothing happens, i think more people would make more of the time here on earth and be greedier, that make any sense? "

So are you now saying there is a hell?

5/19/2011 6:28:19 PM

no, other people do


^^i don't know. and that is a good question.

i know that i purposely try to follow it for spiritual reasons.



[Edited on May 19, 2011 at 7:51 PM. Reason : otherwise id probably be a revengelful fucker. ]

5/19/2011 7:49:21 PM