Re: Abortion: Right or Wrong?
I think you give religion too much credit, there are indigenous societies who have come to many of the same moral positions as we associate with Christianity, but their morals don't come from that source.
Religion is just another form of social construct, another "society" itself - however, the major religions, especially Christianity, are far more pervasive throughout both history and the modern world than regional societies. Christianity has had a massive social impact on the world, the West in particular.
Remember, this has nothing to do with validity, nothing to do with who is "right" (because, from a subjective stance, everyone is - and no one is), but everything to do with where influences came from.
Because you are unable to answer a question about why something is wrong doesn't mean that the only answer is the religious one.
I didn't say this. My point, summed up, is that the Christian Church was so pervasive, so large, so important in considering the development of the West, that over the centuries the Church's ideas on morality and society's ideas on morality got so intertwined that is difficult, sometimes, to see which is which.
The idea that you put forward about agnostics and atheists is incorrect, you seem to be giving ownership of morality and ethics to the religions as if they invented them.
Do you own your own morality?
Tell me, have you ever sat and really considered why you think some things are wrong?
I became an agnostic originally as a rejection of Christianity, because I saw Christianity as hypocritical (amongst other things). However, it took me a few years to realize that while I had separated myself from the Church in name, in spirit I still acted very much like a Christian is told to. My new goal is to determine right and wrong for myself, not to be told by any society - religion included.
Perhaps I hold other agnostics to a high standard. I don't believe that's unfair.
More likely it is that the violent Old Testament god's morality was tempered by people who didn't buy the religious dogma.
I never said I believed that religions are static.
You seem to feel that religion can anwer the question about why it's wrong to hurt someone, but they can't answer that any more accurately than anyone else.
That is simplistic, but essentially correct.
All they can do is repeat what they've been told, the idea that you have to "own" your own morality is nonsense, religion doesn't own morality anymore than anyone else.
The people who blindly adhere to a religion's moral tenets might disagree; or, more appropriately, I might disagree based on their existence.
I should clarify: When saying "own" I meant to use the concept of ownership metaphorically, to symbolize originality. In that sense, religions "own" some peoples' morality in that their morality is based off of that religion.
My philosophy of HARM NONE is the litmus test for my behavior, is that "stolen" from some religion?
We could have an entire thread based on the challenge here.
But I'll bite. "HARM NONE" is a command to social order; the only purpose of imploring people not to hurt each other is to make sure that society stays orderly and functional. Religion is, and has always been, a tool of social order, probably the most effective tool of social order in the history of the world. As such, the harming of others is prohibited by most religions (in varied forms, of course). It's taken centuries of civilization, in its varying forms, for the idea that harming others is "wrong" to reach you, and during those centuries, what do you suppose the most enduring institution to promote "harm none," or something close to it, has been?
Of course, there's always the possibility that your philosophy stems from hours of introspection, whereupon you concluded that the maintenance of social order is preferable to achieving a greater level of personal freedom (or any of the other results of a breakdown of social order). That's possible too.
Which is it? Did someone tell you what "right" and "wrong" were and you accepted it? Or did you go out and figure it out for yourself?
I don't think so, people came up with the tenets for religions not vice versa.
People came up with the tenets of religion based on sociological preferences. The norms and values of Jesus and his followers (or just "the early Christians" since I'd prefer to avoid sparking another "There never was a Jesus!" argument) became the norms and values of Christianity. Christianity took those norms and values and made them into commandments, etc.
Today, there are people who look at those commandments and live their lives by them, unquestioning. Christianity owns their morality completely. There are other people who reject Christianity itself but still live with most of the moral standards of their Christian neighbors (in most cases, these are the atheists and agnostics you could point out to someone like arbitor and say, "these are moral atheists," and have any hope he might agree). Although they seek alternate societies to claim as their own, Christianity still owns enough of their morality to make a case for it being a part of their lives. Only those who reject Christianity itself and the morality that Christianity has imposed on our society may truly free themselves from religion.
If some religion could prove that they had access to God and that God had given them their moral instruction, then you'd have a case, but so far there is nothing to prove that this has happened. Scotsman makes really good points about the variety of things that are supposedly "religiously" moral behaviors.
I said nothing about religion being correct. You put that in my mouth. In fact it matters very little, in terms of social impact, if they turn out to have been "right." The impact will still have been there.
