Do you think religion was irreplacable as a factor guiding individual human conscience in history?

[Braznor]

Originally posted by: mrzed
"If not for religion, which historic doctrine would have guided the individual human conscience? "

Leading question FTL. I've never seen any evidence that religion was the genesis (pun intended) of morality in humanity.

Other animals have been proven to show compassion. Are you suggesting that chimps have some sort of organized religion?

I suspect morality evolved due to the advantages conferred by cooperation among and across groups of people. Tens of thousands of years later, religion came along and began codifying pre-existing morals, (or twisted them into whatever shape held advantage to the leaders of said organized religions).

I am one of the most moral people I know, and I have not a religious or spiritual bone in my body. IMO, there is NO specific correlation between religious thought and morality.

Well, then there is the 4th option right there for you to choose, isn't it?

 

[spidey07]

Religion and Religion alone shaped and developed society and consciousness and the world as we know it. Without it we would still be tribes of monkeys.

 

[Braznor]

Originally posted by: torpid
Yet another idiotic post that somehow thinks religion is some sort of discrete thing that can be pulled out of humanity and blamed or praised for wrongdoings/rightdoings. Might as well ask, "do you think guilt was irreplacable as a factor guiding individual human conscience in history"?

How is it idiotic? Why is it idiotic to academically debate if there is an alternative to religion? Perhaps there is not, but that's not a reason for not to debate.

 

[Excelsior]

Survival of the fittest, obviously. Every animal is born with the innate will to survive, at all costs. We are no different.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: Garth

Originally posted by: Goosemaster
they key is, without religion, and without darwinism, what ruleset do you have for morality as a whole and with what authority does that morality exist and exert influence?

Darwinism is not, NOT, NOT a moral ruleset. It proscribes NO particular behavior. Please correct this error in your understanding because whe you make statements like you have here, it only perpetuates the horrendous strawmen that the anti-evolutionary religious zealot set up as effigies of evolution.

...and now back to your regularly scheduled flame war...

I stand corrected. I used that term out of context and fubar the meaning 😱

my bad😱

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: mrzed

I suspect morality evolved due to the advantages conferred by cooperation among and across groups of people. Tens of thousands of years later, religion came along and began codifying pre-existing morals, (or twisted them into whatever shape held advantage to the leaders of said organized religions).

I had overlooked that. Although it was rather crude and harsh (hammurabi) it was indeed a moral rule set not based on religion as far as my education has taught me.

 

[mrkun]

Originally posted by: mrzed
I am one of the most moral people I know, and I have not a religious or spiritual bone in my body. IMO, there is NO specific correlation between religious thought and morality.

I don't mean to incite you, but what do you consider to be morality, and why do you adhere to it?

 

[mrzed]

Originally posted by: mrkun

Originally posted by: mrzed
I am one of the most moral people I know, and I have not a religious or spiritual bone in my body. IMO, there is NO specific correlation between religious thought and morality.

I don't mean to incite you, but what do you consider to be morality, and why do you adhere to it?

Your question is not inciting, it is fair.

For me, all moral thought can be extrapolated from what Christians would call the golden rule, and I call common sense. Basically all religions have the same thought.

Do unto others and all that.

Why? Well, to me it just seems fair. I don't want you coming into my house, attacking my family and taking my stuff, therefore, I don't do it to you.

It gets more complicated when brought to its logical conclusions. For example: I don't want to drink your poo, so I prefer if you didn't pollute the groundwater with it, or I don't want to breathe the exhaust from your tailpipe. Collective goods (air, water, soil) are the most challenging, because we (almost) all make compromises based on our perceived needs and "normal" actions like driving.

I personally think I'm more moral than most religious people because I'm an environmentalist. Please don't attack me for that statement, as it is one of opinion, and I also don't go around thinking I am better. I do think I've just thought things through more than many people, and I'm honest with myself, which forces me into making moral choices. It is interesting to me that a small but growing movement exists within American Evangelical Christians that realises they have been missing the moral obligation to care for the environment. Things like that give me hope, because despite my ambivalence towards organised religion, I recognize it as a powerful force.

I think many people have a moral compass, but prefer to ignore it, because they want toys, or are impatient, or any number of other reasons. I do it too, but I think it's a matter of degree. There are no pure saints.

 

[Kadarin]

Originally posted by: spidey07
Religion and Religion alone shaped and developed society and consciousness and the world as we know it. Without it we would still be tribes of monkeys.

Interesting assertion. Now support it with some research, please.

 

[Vic]

Define religion.

Buddha, Confucious, and Jesus all provided the basic foundation for what would today be considered religious morality with the Golden Rule, but what we consider religion today is not the same as what religion was back then.

So what is religion? What was religion? And why does the judge in a modern American courtroom today wear a robe and sit behind a pulpit? Maybe that will tell you what religious was compared to what it is today, eh?

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: WHAMPOM
Good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

Zoroastrianism. 🙂

I prefer the Golden Rule, otherwise "good" remains poorly defined.

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: Astaroth33

Originally posted by: spidey07
Religion and Religion alone shaped and developed society and consciousness and the world as we know it. Without it we would still be tribes of monkeys.

Interesting assertion. Now support it with some research, please.

Easy. Religion is the foundation of ancient law (Divine ruler, Code of Hammarubi, 10 Commandments, Golden Rule, etc etc). Without law, there would be no civilization.

 

[Canun]

Without religion, at least in the early development of civilization, society wouldn't exist. Why not take what you want? What is the basis for morals without religion, I'm curious. With no such thing as heaven or hell, what stops people from doing whatever they want?


Religion, and the moral code that came with it, allowed people to co-exist at least in early times.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: Braznor

Originally posted by: torpid
Yet another idiotic post that somehow thinks religion is some sort of discrete thing that can be pulled out of humanity and blamed or praised for wrongdoings/rightdoings. Might as well ask, "do you think guilt was irreplacable as a factor guiding individual human conscience in history"?

How is it idiotic? Why is it idiotic to academically debate if there is an alternative to religion? Perhaps there is not, but that's not a reason for not to debate.

It's idiotic because you are making a blanket statement about all religions of all human beings everywhere on the planet now or at any time in the past, and then asking what would happen without religion. Then you go on, after making such sweeping statements, to say that we are only talking about individual people, thereby making the question entirely meaningless, since individuals all act differently when exposed to religious teachings.

Even if I ignore what you wrote and try to guess at what you intended to write, which was possibly a rumination on how history would be different if people had never had religion to guide them, even then you can't hypothesize what would have happened in history without religion because it is impossible to extract it out of human beings. 2000 years ago just about any belief was not substantially different than a religious one since people believed in all kinds of crazy stuff like spontaneous generation of life, etc.

 

[Vic]

Spontaneous generation was an accepted scientific theory until Louis Pasteur, just more than 100 years ago. My point being that we're not even that far removed from what would be considered "crazy stuff" today.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: Vic
Spontaneous generation was an accepted scientific theory until Louis Pasteur, just more than 100 years ago. My point being that we're not even that far removed from what would be considered "crazy stuff" today.

You forgot to put scientific in quotes!

 

[Braznor]

Originally posted by: torpid

Originally posted by: Braznor

Originally posted by: torpid
Yet another idiotic post that somehow thinks religion is some sort of discrete thing that can be pulled out of humanity and blamed or praised for wrongdoings/rightdoings. Might as well ask, "do you think guilt was irreplacable as a factor guiding individual human conscience in history"?

How is it idiotic? Why is it idiotic to academically debate if there is an alternative to religion? Perhaps there is not, but that's not a reason for not to debate.

It's idiotic because you are making a blanket statement about all religions of all human beings everywhere on the planet now or at any time in the past, and then asking what would happen without religion. Then you go on, after making such sweeping statements, to say that we are only talking about individual people, thereby making the question entirely meaningless, since individuals all act differently when exposed to religious teachings.

Even if I ignore what you wrote and try to guess at what you intended to write, which was possibly a rumination on how history would be different if people had never had religion to guide them, even then you can't hypothesize what would have happened in history without religion because it is impossible to extract it out of human beings. 2000 years ago just about any belief was not substantially different than a religious one since people believed in all kinds of crazy stuff like spontaneous generation of life, etc.

Sorry, but you are rambling. I played the devil's advocate in my OP. I provided statements like why one would not work without certain key factors like morality, rewards of religion and so on and it was not biased against religion or for it as such, it was simply a academic exercise to find alternatives to an established social force of human nature.

Besides if you found it so idiotic, you could have simply not posted in it. So why didn't you? The other people here certainly didn't find it moronic enough not to post!

 

[dwcal]

I voted atheist sense of morality. Many philosophers have written about ethics with no basis in religion. Socrates is one of the most famous:
http://philosophy.lander.edu/ethics/socrates.html

Buddhism can also be considered an atheist philosophy because that religion has no supreme being. The Buddha was a wise man who meditated and discovered the dharma, like a universal truth or wisdom waiting to be discovered. I know I'm simplifying a lot by trying to summarize it.