religion and claiming the moral high-ground

[miriam_e]

Good grief! I get so sick of religious people waffling on about how their religion is the source of morality and that their religion is what makes people good. It completely ignores the large number of good and moral atheists and it certainly doesn't take account of the many hateful religious people crowding this little planet.

I have lost count of the number of religious people who in honest perplexity have remarked to me that they don't understand how I can be a good person with a deeply held sense of altruism when I have absolutely no religious beliefs at all. It makes me shake my head in despair sometimes.

Why do people think that people should be good simply because some misguided superstition says they should? Why can't they accept that it simply makes good sense to help others?

Altruism just is the most logical way co-exist with your fellow humans.

Comments

[patchworkkid.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. The problem, I think, is the population level. You see this kind of thing mirrored in animal populations that grow too large as well: they turn on each other, aggression levels remain steadily high, sexual perversity ramps up, the list goes on and on. Lyall Watson went into it in some depth in Supernature, which I really have to read again.

That said you'd think that anyone who thought about it, thought about what's made them feel great in the past and did the math concerning their own future... you'd think they'd realise that, yeah, altruism is actually a pretty smart move. And it would be, if everyone would play it. Otherwise you get taken advantage of, feel like a sucker, become resentful, and never do it again. And you become part of the problem just like everyone else.

Which comes back to population again. With a small population when someone behave selfishly, they get slapped. They pay a price. Their whole social world lets them know that what they did was pretty crap. Not so when your social world consists of hundreds of thousands of people.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Your reply makes a number of interesting points.

The thing about crowding leading to more misdirected behavior doesn't seem to be as simple as had been originally thought. We have a number of unconscious strategies to avoid confrontation when we are squeezed closer together. As a dramatic example, note what happens when people enter an elevator in the company of several others. Everybody falls quiet, or speaks in nearly whispered murmurs, and nobody, except closest friends look each other in the eye. When they leave the elevator people's conversations start again and at normal volume. We quite unconsciously do things to protect each other from aggression developing.

When you look at aggression in the wider population, it seems to be going down rather than up. The main drivers of aggression and crime would appear to be wealth disparity and health. This doesn't explain why some of the richest individuals are some of the most dangerous, but I think that is a separate issue. Isolation from the rest of society can lead to a disconnect and lack of empathy, and if the individual concerned has developed their wealth through sociopathic tendencies then it is worsened. And there has been some research recently on how big organisations and the drive to wealth seem to be selecting for sociopathy, but they are only a tiny part of society. Most people seem to be becoming more altruistic and responsible.

I am completely at a loss as to how to explain sexual perversity. I grew up in the country and spent much of my time blissfully alone in the bush, but I got a good helping of sexual perversity. That has faded somewhat over time, but is still present even though I'm living completely alone in the bush again. I used to think it was related to maturity (I've always felt much, much younger and more mentally immature than I physically am) but now am coming to believe that it is a part of every human and has been since our species' early days. It is just that most people won't admit it, even to themselves.

Your point about the problem of con-artists surviving more easily in larger populations is very interesting. It is true... but other forces more than offset it. There has been a lot of research into why most people will help others even though they will never see that person again. This is one of the things that makes me very hopeful for the human race. We are growing up to become a marvellous species... if we don't wreck things first.

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

if someone's religious tenets and guides of behaviour is the only reason why they do anything good and moral then I pity that person.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Yes. We will never know how many are like that though. I suspect that they are intrinsically good, but have been convinced by their religion that the opposite is true, so cling desperately to their god in the hope that it will give them what they don't realise they already have.
Sad.

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

which is really horrid the more I think about it. what it implies about what some religions believe of people is a lot like having someone force dependency on you so you never realize that you're capable of doing stuff on your own - religion as controlling parent/spouse/caretaker. augh.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

The weirdest thing is that it is often worded as empowerment.

[cpolk.livejournal.com]

I'm getting hives!

[j03j03.livejournal.com]

i agree. the whole, "without god there is no basis for morality" idea is frighteningly idiotic.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

...and frustrating! It persists despite the wealth of contrary evidence.

Simple questions...

[exileinparadise.livejournal.com]

As a devout anti-organized-religionist, it has become helpful to stuff the backpack of refutation against the storm of stupidity usually unleashed by the standard religion-spewing zombie:

And all I do is simply ask questions.
All the answers are in the Bible right? (this is where you bait the hook)

Why do you preach teetotalling/alcoholic abstinence when Noah's first act after getting off the ark was to get so drunk he passed out naked in his tent?

Why do Christians rant against prostitutes when Jesus himself loved one?

Why did Jesus refuse to let the leper woman touch the hem of his robe and be healed, when he had healed so many others?

Why was Lot spared from the destruction of Sodom and Gamorrah for being such a virtuous guy after offering to throw his virgin daughters to a mob if they would just stop knocking on his door?

Why would you believe in a a God who would torment a poor man like Job just to win a bet with the Devil? Heck, why do believe in a God that gambles with the Devil over your soul in the FIRST place?

A quick read through the Bible will net you all sorts of paradoxical morality questions that will stump the religiously inclined.

If they try to waffle (and they will) to another topic, just repeat until they get that you are expecting an answer.

Gutenberg has eText of the King James version and several others which a good for grepping.

An excellent piece of weaponry if you can find it is "The Book Of The Bible"... I will have to find mine in storage to give you other details, and Amazon (strangely heheh) doesn't seem to list it.

In the Book of the Bible, Vatican scholars and such analyze the Bible from some pretty strange angles... one chapter is "The Top Ten Threat's God Made To Man"... with chapter and verse pointers. My favorite was #8 on their list: "He will toss thee like a ball into a large country." - Isaiah 22:18

The Bible itself is always your best weapon against it.

Re: Simple questions...

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Great points!

I've always felt that the bet god makes with the devil over whether Job will break when god tortures him is particularly weird.

A nice one is the section of Genesis that got edited out of the bible by the Council of Nicea. It explains more about the bit where Adam & Eve lose the garden of Eden and in doing so makes it clear that it is a parable, not meant to be taken literally. The "fruit of the tree of knowledge" is the food produced by agriculture. Of course they lost the garden of Eden -- they chopped the fucker down to plant crops! But that got conveniently discarded.

Another is the crazy line about not suffering a witch to live, which was responsible for countless deaths at the hands of christian bigots. It is a mistranslation. It more correctly says that you shouldn't share your village with a poisoner. Nothing about witches at all.

A great place to peruse the insanities in the bible is the Skeptics Annotated Bible (includes annotated Koran and Book of Mormon):
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/

Re: Simple questions...

[exileinparadise.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Garden of Eden is particularly bad, as well as the "edit" of the book of James (Jesus' brother IIRC), and the omission of the whole war in Heaven.

And I nearly forgot the best one:
What were Jesus' last words on the cross (which was actually in the shape of an X)?

IIRC, each of the 4 books of the Bible that reports it reports it differently.
99% of Biblethumpers won't know WHY either:

The first book of the New Testament written about Jesus' life was written over 20 YEARS after his death. Not sure how good YOUR memory is, but can you remember that sort of detail about things over 20 years ago in YOUR life?

There are 4 main books about Jesus, each written 20, 40, 60, and just over 80 years after he died.

There was a great Discovery channel show about Biblical scholars dating the books of the New Testament... very cool stuff.

Applying facts to religion always seems to leave religion a little more wanting.

In Desmond Morris' Illustrated Catwatching, he talks about how Xtians were so misled by the witch line, they also nearly extincted all of the pure black cats in Europe by burning them as they were witches familiars, and that most black cats you see will have at least SOME patch of white on them somewhere.

So, you can also have fun asking Xtians why they hate cats so much, especially if they HAVE some!

Thanks for the link on the Skeptic Bible... gotta check that.