So then why have those crusades all but evaporated?
Weed is on its way to being federally legal. Hard drugs are becoming legal or decriminalized in some jurisdictions. Trans people are pretty much universally accepted/tolerated as being a thing that isn't going away with the remaining conflict more or less related to all the gender based stuff that's been codified in law over the years.
[1]: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/transgender-rights-in-the-...
Do you have evidence or arguments for this, or is this just a feeling? I can see an argument for the statement "religion can be and has been used to maintain public morality" but that's not what you said, so I'm curious about your reasoning.
Once you are discussing the supernatural, you are discussing religion.
But in either case, I'm a little confused. Wouldn't this line of reasoning apply to laws as well? They aren't physical or (necessarily) scientific. And are you saying that any study of metaphysics is necessarily religious in nature? Perhaps we are using different definitions of religion.
If you are making an argument that notions of morality do not (or did not) arise from science, or that morality arose from religion, I think that would have weight to it. But that also doesn't imply that morality cannot continue to exist without religion. For example, it's plausible to me that a sense of shared community is something that can "maintain morality" in a society. We may have lost a sense of community in part due to the decline of churches, but I don't see why it would require them to exist.
Do you believe you morality is more right than a Nazis or a pedophiles?
If so, you need a justification of why your morality is more ultimately correct and truly "good and better." I have not heard a convincing one that ultimately doesn't end in a monotheistic God.
And if not, what are we even doing in this conversation? There can be no moral progress without an objectively better standard that we are attempting to discover.
If one wants to play "edgy contrarian" and argue that the United States was somehow worse than either of those, well...the U.S. is technically secular too.
In reality communism was a religion and more precisely a variant of the Christian religion, but this fact was disguised by changing the names of all things related to the Christian religion.
Just a few of the correspondences between Christianity and Communism (shown as traditional word => communist word for the same concept):
Christian => atheist
Pagan => Christian
Prophets => Marx, Engels & Lenin
Holy Scriptures => the published works of Marx, Engels & Lenin
Christian martyrs => communist illegalists
Pope => general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Cardinals/patriarchs => general secretaries of communist parties
Priests => members of the communist parties having functions in the party hierarchy
Religious teaching in schools => Political teaching in schools
Priest of a military unit => Political second-in-command of a military unit
Heretics => oppositionists to the party leadership
Happy life in the afterlife => happy life in the future truly communist society
Holy Inquisition => Committee for State Security
... and so on.
Writing a complete dictionary about all the words used by Christianity with their replacements in Communism would take a very long time.
While the communist vocabulary looks very different, the meanings are exactly the same as in Christianity.
All the communist countries were not countries free of religion, but on the contrary, they were countries were a monotheistic-like religion was intermingled with all the administrative & government institutions and where all the other religions were aggressively persecuted, including the true atheists or agnostics (i.e. not the communist atheists, which was the code name for the believers in the communist religion).
The claim that the communist countries were not religious was just propaganda, they were countries where there was no separation between the religion and the state.
Likewise false was the claim that the communist countries had a different economic system, in reality their economic system was an extreme form of capitalism, where everything was dominated by monopolies.
However, the Soviets actively rooted every religion during their rule, especially Orthodox Christianity. So if we are to consider Soviet communism a form of Christianity, it's unclear how useful this actually is.
Yes the communists persecuted the other religions, inclusive by imprisoning and/or killing many Catholic priests and many Orthodox priests.
However, this is exactly what was previously done by some kinds of Christians against other kinds of Christians, e.g. during the many conflicts between Protestants and Catholics and between Catholics and Orthodox Christians.
Some people downvoted me, but this also just validates my affirmation that most Westerners are not aware of these facts and they do not understand Communism.
I have grown in a country occupied by communists, so I know from direct experience how Communism works, not from the fantastic depictions typical for the Western movies or novels.
When I was in school, there was nothing that I hated more than the mandatory classes of communist religion, the so-called Political teachings.
Also, due to the stupidity of one of my colleagues, a teacher discovered that I had a Bible and, because of that, I was almost expelled from High School a short time before the final exam, but I was very lucky due to some special circumstances and I could avoid the expulsion.
Many years later, after communism failed, I believed that the new generations of students will escape my fate and they will no longer waste time with the mandatory religion classes.
Unfortunately, my hope was wrong, because the mandatory Political teachings classes were not deleted from the curriculum, but they were replaced by mandatory Christian religion classes.
So nothing has changed, when the Communist religion was mandatory, I had almost lost my career because it was supposed that I might be Christian, but if I were a student today, I would have similar problems if I would attempt to criticize in school the Christian religion, for exactly the same reasons that were applicable to Communism.
Communism, Christianity, and also the other monotheist religions, are extremely intolerant against the believers of any other religion.
Secularism is the opposite, at most you could say that secularism is like many polytheistic religions, where it was considered normal that everyone believes in their own gods and for the other people it does not matter which are those gods.
The life of a normal citizen of a communist country was very similar, for example, to the life in Italy or Spain 600 years ago, when the Church was more powerful. It might have actually been worse, because the Communist Party might have been more powerful than the Catholic Church ever was.
Permanently you had to be very careful with everything you said, because if you ever contradicted some dogma written in the Holy Communist Scriptures or some interpretation given by a High Communist Priest, you could be singled out as an heretic and be excommunicated, with very bad consequences.
Regarding the Communist dogmas, everything was based on "have faith and do not doubt". It was absolutely impossible to have any discussion about communism based on rational arguments or on experiment results.
Like Christianity, Communism blocked any kind of scientific research that could contradict in any way its Holy Scriptures. To make progress in any career, you had to either be or simulate that you are a true believer and you had to display frequently your faith in the Communist religion.
It does not matter what words are used by Christianity or Communism, wherever any of them succeeded to control the state institutions, the consequences were the same for the citizens, no freedom of speech and severe discrimination between believers and non-believers.
Secularism was precisely the reaction against this, having the purpose of allowing the freedom of speech and religion.
The US is becoming openly hostile to religion, as many of the comments in this thread evidence, which is distinct from neutrality. I agree with religious freedom as such, with everyone being on equal standing.
If you define secularism as the USSR or China, I would disagree with their long term stability, or even with liking their regimes.
Could it be that in Sweden, you get some sort of tax rebate or discounts at supermarkets if you are officially registered with some religion?
Their crime and imprisonment rates are far below those of the US. Even on an individual level, the presence of non-religious individuals is assocated with a series of positive societal effects: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227616923_Atheism_S...
Religion isn't necessary for public morality, and as America has shown, is often actively harmful. America is full of people who assume that they are good people BECAUSE they go to church rather than because of their acts. By and large, these are generally not good people. Instead, they're among the most judgmental and least helpful members of society.
To paraphrase Gandhi, "I like your Christ, not your Christians". The religious in modern society can't even be bothered to read the Cliff Notes of their own book, otherwise they'd be focused on helping the poor and remembering that rich people have trouble getting to heaven rather than going around promoting guns, no taxes, and slashing social safety nets.
On tax, Jesus was giving that response to an entraping question from Pharisees they asked because He had in past criticised of harsh tax policy. Force tithing is not a thing of New Testament but old.
Matthew 5:38 — He advises his followers not to retaliate when attacked. He does not tell them to go out and disarm anyone else, or petition the Roman government to hypocritically do so on their behalf.
Mark 12:17 — When the Pharisees attempted to entrap Him with a question when could not be answered either "yes" or "no" without enraging either the Romans or the religious leaders, He evades the original question and turns it into an admonition to give people (and God) what they are due. Note that he never actual said that the coin was owed to Caesar, though many people seem to assume so. He only asked whose face was on the coin. The idea that not just the tax being demanded but all coins actually belonged to Caesar just because his face was stamped on them would rightly have been considered ludicrous. And no matter how you take that conversation, the fact remains that he never made any comment on the merit of the taxes themselves. There aren't any statements in support of the practice of taxation, and all the points about providing for others, supporting the poor, etc. involve personal contributions, not political action.
I don't think the US is becoming openly hostile to religion.
It is becoming hostile to religion in the public sphere, a good thing if there ever was one.
Just like your sexual practices, keep your religion at home and please stop bothering other people with it.
As a person that wasn't raised religious, the concept that you need religion to find a moral and ethical compass seems weird to me. My parents taught me values, I learned them, society reinforced them. They made sense to me, and I feel bad when I don't follow them. The mechanics of it are pretty simple.
The underlying question is not how YOU got your moral compass but where do the people who taught you yours - and eventually society as a whole - get theirs.
If it's a set of principles that civil society generally agrees upon, then the rest are implementation details that will vary from situation to situation.
If it's a set of whims of the people in power and will vary regularly and constantly, then "damnation" comes from breaking today's rules.. maybe without even knowing what they are.
You learn your ethics from a combination of your parents and society, and you update your beliefs during your life, you share them to a younger generation. Repeat since humans acquired a conscience until humans cease to exist. That's all there is to it.
However, the question was:
> In the absence of religion, where do people find their moral and ethical compass?
That's what I was answering to.
“When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion.”
― Abraham Lincoln
I think others have pointed this out to you, but there is a high dependence on people learning this through good parenting, good teachers, and being around the right people, all while having security for things like food, shelter, etc.
Some of those things get wrapped up in the over-arching term called "privilege" but I think there is something to be said for the fact that you can't assume most people are securing these things. But you can assume that in the absence of this kind of security, many people (maybe even most) will lose their moral compass.
but maybe I can answer your question. I think of morality as a way to rationalize the emotions I feel when someone treats me a certain way or I treat someone else a certain way. my morals are rules I can feel good about following.
I am also agnostic-raised-Catholic and this type of question is posed a lot. I don't struggle with it since I feel like I know the answer...BUT A) It's difficult to articulate, B) I can't really prove it, and C) it's also that I just know "the Bible" is very likely NOT the answer which just crosses one possibility off a list.
You do all the same things, except: (1) you can make your own choices depending on your own reasoning (e.g. you can independently decide whether circumcision/being gay is good or bad, independent of what any religion says), and (2) you’re doing things to be good, not to please god.
In fact, I consider people who are “moral” just because god says so / you fear the consequences / you want to go to heaven to actually be immoral. It’s akin to only helping in an accident if the person is rich - you’re not doing it because it’s the right thing to do, you’re just doing it to get something in return.
Edit: you can also pick any number of philosophical frameworks of morality. Personally I oscillate between golden and silver rules.
2. It is possible to be religious and do good for the sake of good. Most religious people I know do. I would hope that even if I knew I was going to hell, I would still live the rest of my life on accordance with God's will as it is the right thing to do.
Morality is “rational” as a solution to a game theoretic problem. You can also derive it via evolution (which is also a game theory solution).
The morality your discussing is completely different.
People who say that morality can't exist without religion are scary. If they suddenly lose their faith, are they going to start hurting others? What if their religion has blind spots that doesn't tell them how to behave in a specific situation, or tells them that groups like gays and non-believers are fair game?
I agree that atheists cannot point to a single book that everyone should use to define their moral and ethical compass, but I do think that utilitarianism (either act-based: "we should act always so as to produce the greatest good for the greatest number" or rule based: "we ought to live by rules that, in general, are likely to lead to the greatest good for the greatest number") provides a healthy starting framework.
Utilitarianism: Crash Course Philosophy #36 (10 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a739VjqdSI
This tired, offensive and a thousand time debunked old trope requires imo a little more argumentation than the "it is thus" justification you just provided.
I'd recommend reading Hitchens, specifically [1] where he addresses that lame claim at length.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Is_Not_Great
[EDIT]: here's a good summary from the man himself:
A rather bold claim, backed by little evidence and easily debunked by a metric ton of counter-evidence.
As example of counter-evidence, I offer:
- The man spent a large fraction of his life studying religions of all ilks
- He wrote a number of carefully researched books on the topic of religion.
- From his quoting the bible, the coran, jewish sacred texts on the fly in the middle of debates with random religious folks (and usually tearing them a new one in the process), I feel confident he had at least skimmed most of those.
- No one can accuse Hitchens of being dumb, I very much doubt he'd get into high visibility, in-depth public debate about a topic without having researched it thoroughly.
Here's an example:
Chapter eleven discusses how religions form, and claims that most religions are founded by corrupt, immoral individuals. The chapter specifically discusses cargo cults, Pentecostal minister Marjoe Gortner, and Mormonism. Hitchens discusses Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, citing a March 1826 Bainbridge, New York court examination accusing him of being a "disorderly person and impostor" who Hitchens claims admitted there that he had supernatural powers and was "defrauding citizens".[31][32] Four years later Smith claimed to obtain gold tablets containing the Book of Mormon. When the neighbor's skeptical wife buried 116 pages of the translation and challenged Smith to reproduce it, Smith claimed God, knowing this would happen, told him to instead translate a different section of the same plates.
And where does our concept of corruption or immorality come from? Hitchens just lacks basic knowledge of meta-ethics. He doesn't seem to realize that modern democratic rationalist values are themselves descendants of Christian ideas.
This is the foundational problem of the New Atheists and of the "rational" set in general. They either don't know or don't understand the foundations of modern ethics, all of which has roots in religion.
This is not really surprising coming from a religious person, dogma being after all the intellectual foundation of religion.
But I wonder: is there anything else you could use in your discourse toolbox?
First off, I'm not religious. Second off, this kind of personal attack is not welcome here.
As I already said, every scholar of religious studies finds the books by Hitchens, Dawkins, etc. to be amusing at best. I can't educate you on the academic study of religion in a HN comment. If you are actually interested in reading criticism of such people and not just bashing non-atheistic people, I suggest looking into comparative religion and religious studies.
This is not a personal attack.
You stated facts without backing them up. Twice. This is being dogmatic. My apologies for assuming you were religious given the fact you're defending religion, it was a fairly reasonable assumption to make
> As I already said, every scholar of religious studies
You are now moving from being dogmatic to using "appeal to authority" [1], another well known logical fallacy [2]
I'm still waiting for a properly argumented backing of the various statements you made above.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
[2] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=appeal+to+autho...
Yes, it is, and again, it's not welcome here.
Read the criticism section of the Wikipedia article you posted yourself. There are more than enough intelligent criticisms written of the book.
If you think that my not writing you a lengthy essay explaining why Hitchens is uninformed is somehow indicative that he isn't, I'm not sure what to tell you. Religion is a complicated topic. Pretending that we can solve it in a paragraph is naive at best.
As I already said, if this interests you, read more about religious studies. I am simply saying that "the educated opinion on this topic is that Hitchens is just a popular writer, not a serious thinker on religion." If you disagree with that, well, take it up with the academic community?
I'm simply saying that since the beginning of this conversation, you're stating facts without providing a shred of evidence, other than "go educate yourself on the subject".
This is how conversations usually go in my experience: when you state a fact, you back them up by - at least - a modicum of evidence instead of dropping them as self-evident and walking away.
But given your last answer, one thing you definitely cannot be accused of is lack of consistency.
Subjective morality is ultimately simple preferance and ultimately just a battle of wills. I, and most other religious people, do not consider such a "moral order" to be morality at all.
Objective morality, with a judge above all judges who is justice itself, is the only way "justice" and morality mean anything at all.
I'm personally religious, but the myth of objectivity is a very, very dangerous thing; in masks the ways that man creates God in his own image.
I do not mean this as a flame, but I honestly do not understand why a person who believes in subjective morality would even discuss morality at all. If all morality is simply in the eye of the beholder, moral progress is impossible and it is not possible for one view to be superior to another.
To which I say: have at it. I'll get some popcorn. Too bad about all the bystanders. But I'm sure they'll be happy knowing that they died in the service of objective morality.