cuddly_tomato said:
But these are human values. Science says nothing on such matters. This is my point - as important as science is for humans, humanity is far more important.
Are you talking about the value of lifeforms versus rocks or what? Your quote was a bit long and I'm not sure what your answer applies to.
Anyway, if that's what you are talking about, my answer is this: Objectively, there is no importance to anything. But we as humans aren't fully objective. And we don't need to be, just to employ logic from our perspective.
I may be wrong here, but it sounds like you believe there can only be either full acceptance of everything or complete objectivity.
In other words, we know that evolution occurs. But that does not mean that we should infer anything more from that than it entails - life changes according to its environmental circumstances. To say that this proves god does, or does not, exist, is just as absurd as saying this proves the weak should be euthanised so the strong may survive.
Well, yeah.
I never said evolution disproves god, though.
I just said there is no reason to believe in it or anything like it.
Nothing can
disprove the
unprovable and there's no real need to, either.
*big snip on Fred Phelps et al.*
*snip about not misusing science*
Interestingly, we agree on this, though we come from different sides of the issue.
As I stated, I'm not opposed to religion itself, like you are not opposed to science.
This is the reason I fight antitheism so hard - the alternative, which has been tried, is responsible for more death and suffering than all religious conflicts in the world combined. Indeed, I could find people on this forum who would happly foist this horror upon us, just because they hate religion so much they would do anything to see it removed.
This has nothing to do with science or antitheism.
The rejection of religion does not automatically result in any kind of horror scenario.
It's not antitheism that results in those problems but the substitution of religion with another problematic ideology.
It's extremism that's the problem (religious, political, ideological, it doesn't matter).
A dictatorial theocracy is no better than an antitheistic dictatorship.
A purely secular, democratic state has not been tried yet (and although some European countries come close to it, there always is some influence).
This enables some people to find an easy excuse to not do the right thing, I don't think that it matters though. Doubtless these same people would just say "god told me to do it" if they were religious.
I agree with you on that.
I was merely saying that you need to believe in something beyond logic in order to follow it. One can't be altruistic and logical at the same time, or it isn't altruism. A truly good person has to be illogical from time to time, but that doesn't mean they need religion or anything similar, just be illogical.
Well, but that's really just semantics.
If you interpret altruism as being good for no reason at all and being aware of having no reason, then I agree with you.
But being good because you want to a) help your community thrive, b) receive help in return, c) improve other people's living conditions and thereby your own as well (or something along those lines), is perfectly logical though one may not classify this type of behaviour as real altruism (just like religiously motivated good deeds wouldn't be real altruism).
Also, I don't think one has to be truly altruistic (in
that sense of illogic at least) to be considered a good person by their community.
The regulations come from where? What "proof" can you provide that those things are out of hand? What evidence do you have that these things are "wrong"?
This is my point.
These regulations need not have their basis in something beyond logic, though.
If we as a species desire to thrive, it is logical to enforce certain bounds (along the lines of "free unless infringing another's freedoms") for the community and thereby the individual to live in peace. Things are never
objectively wrong since there is no objective or absolute truth. But they can be wrong for us, as people, as a nation, as a species.
I'm not proposing total objectivity, that would not work as we are not outside observers. I'm proposing logic from our species' point of view.
What I am saying, in the simplest possible terms, is this:- We humans are illogical creatures, we have silly beliefs and silly cultures and do weird things which don't make much sense, scientifically. But this is a good thing, not a bad thing, as long as it doesn't go too far.
I agree on a personal level and strongly disagree on a larger level.
Because, on a large scale, silly things lead to big problems.
Silly things need to remain small otherwise they
will go too far.
We've seen this happen too often to ignore (and, again, this is not only true for religion).
) I have had to rethink several aspects of my faith and quite happily class myself as a "Heretic" now. there are two main threads in theology, there is the one that people (including many theologians) like to laugh at, the revealed theology - something is true "Because it is written". and there is the more interesting (IMO) Natural theology, which attempts to work its way to a conclusion with as few preconvictions as possible. what I was saying in my post was that only an absolute fundie christian would not be willing to concede that science has a valid argument as to the "How"? questions in reality, and - I would contend - that only an equally fundie scientist will not concede that science is incapable of answering the "Why?" questions attempted by religion.
