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Comment by jadar | Hacker News Reader

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  > The idea of teaching some sort of “secular” ethics has never made sense to me …

An intro ethics class won't shy away from religion, it comes up a lot. You'll most likely even discuss differences in different sects of Christianity. You should also have the discussion of if morals are universal (and if so, which ones) or are all made up.

Secular just means you discuss more than one viewpoint. The idea of teaching morality from only one perspective never made sense to me. You won't even get that limited viewpoint in Seminary school, even though it'll certainly be far more biased

You don’t need religion for ethics or worldview. How about: we all appear here on this rock, none of us know why, we’re all in it together, we all struggle, none of us know if we’re alone in this universe or what the universe really is. This unifies us all and puts us on an even playing field. We should be compassionate to one another as we all come from the same circumstance. We can create a concept of god to explain it, or accept that we don’t know for sure and maybe never will. God is a choice, but not the only one.

This kind of argument, while moral on a surface level, belies a misunderstanding of human nature. In Jungian terms, it assumes that the shadow self either does not exist or has been fully integrated without confrontation.

Once one has enough power and experience to achieve one’s goals despite opposition, and to use others instrumentally, the moral calculus can become difficult. We do not all start from the same circumstances: I am writing this on a phone produced by slave labour.

As Lenin might have said: “compassion for whom?”

You say “God is a choice”. Solipsism is a choice.

This exhibits the borrowing GP mentions: your ‘should’ does not necessarily follow from the stated priors. Why is compassion morally mandated by the priors and not competition, for example?

It’s at least an option for consideration. I shouldn’t have spoken normatively.

Is your position that compassion is only possible via religion?

Agree an option for consideration.

I don’t think religion is the only path, but that it has functioned as a prosocial positive-sum cooperating/compassion technology/mechanism in many cultural contexts. Not without downsides, of course.

That many today relatively reflexively default to ~‘we can all be nice to each other; this is obviously the (only) moral approach’ without stated precepts/priors/fundaments upon which that morality is moored I think tends to implicitly borrow priors from Western Christian tradition, albeit incompletely and sometimes critically so. Sam Harris’ recent appearance on Ross Douthat’s ‘Interesting Times’ podcast was IMO an example of this.

All of our current leaders as using God to justify their terrible actions. So religion doesn’t seem to be very good at teaching morals either.

This happened throughout history, not just now. Religion is used as an instrument, but does not necessarily reflect the underlying meaning.

There's only hunger for power. Man's essence.

Erwin Schrödinger might have abused children because why not, "everything is a wave after all. does it really matter what one wave does to another?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Schr%C3%B6dinger#Sexual_...

Both can be true that Leaders can use god to justify their terrible actions and Scientists can use theories/philosophies to justify their terrible actions too.

Justification of any evil action to consider oneself as a good guy might be a human quality.

That being said, Majority of wars/conflicts in the past have sadly been because of religions and that number doesn't seem to be stopping and is still continuing to this day sadly.

That justification is so rediculous for anyone that can think, like which side should He take?

Either god is me (secularism) or god is something outside me (Christianity). One is going to be better than the other. It matters which one. Everyone has an answer, and it affects your morals. Whether or not you are consistent brings you back to that same question: “who says?”

I understand the argument, but the number of reprehensible Christians (or other flavor of religion) out in the world doesn’t seem to back up the claim that viewing God outside oneself leads to better moral results.

> who says?

Only people can say things. And following people that start by lying that they have unique and superior insight into what things ought to be is not a good strategy. Secular is just saying, we are all in this together as equals, let's figure things out, here's what we got thus far.

Option C: God doesn't exist as far as is currently known

Option D: God may exist but has no perceivable after consequence and doesn't take part in any aspect of our day to day lives which are governed by physics (Deism)

Option E: God may or may not exist but once again, has no effect on our lives. (agnosticism)

So all option C), D), E) [I don't think that the concept of hell/heaven exists in it] have the same impact IMO that esentially there isn't any consequence on our day to day live and we are all gonna be just void when we die. Nothingness,

From here, we can approach towards what is the meaning of life and add onto the existenialism to find ones own meanings and that itself becomes a bedrock of morality

I personally fall somewhere along C), D), E) myself but I don't like to wonder about where exactly because it doesn't really have an impact on my life. I also sometimes fall into B) (God is outside me) in times of troubles to somehow get out of trouble or find strength if I am unable to find within myself during that time.

Logically, it might not make sense for me to believe in god during times of troubles if I can't have logic find the same meaning during not times of troubles. But I do think that humans are driven by emotions not logic at its core so its best to be light on yourself.

Also I feel gratitude towards the universe rather than god and the things which help me in my life during times of joy sometimes.

I also sometimes believe in rituals/festivals because they are part of my culture/community and it brings me joy at times.

But I have enough freeway leverage within all of this that I dictate this as my choice of life and If I see any religious figure person or anything being misused or see faults in any rituals being cruel. I don't feel dear to them and can quickly call anything out and be secular in the sense that I respect other people's rituals to be in co-existence with mine as long as they are peaceful about it because the element of coexistence is only possible within the elements of being peaceful/society being cooperative at large and I hold both people of my community/outside my community to the same standard and am quick to call out if new faults start to happen from my community but also from any other community. (Calling spade a spade)

Yes all of those options would be equivalent from our point of view so you can believe in any of those as far as best present evidence goes.

Transcendental moral principles can still be secular.

One that I find compelling is that Rawls' veil of ignorance lets us imagine that we might be on either side of a conflict, and that therefore moral actions are equitable to both sides. This gives us a secular morality that doesn't come with the baggage of religious outgroup dynamics.

First prove yhwh. Then prove your favorite book is a direct transmission from yhwh. Disprove the claims of other peoples favorite books, there is a lot of competition there.

Demonstrate the telephone line by which this so called yhwh communicates his words and prove how and why it no longer does.

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