guy incognito
Well-Known Member
All the hindus I have known were vegetarian because of their religion. How gay is that?
How do I get to heaven? Answers to your questions on eternal life.
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eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
So.. according to beef's wish poof. All religion has vanished and we live in a world of only science. Because he is still irritating and I no longer have to worry about the karma cause by killing him I decide to kill him by chopping him up inch by inch with a cleaver.
So beef, give me a scientific reason why I should not kill you now that I don't have to worry about karma. Surely science can answer such a simple question as to why I should not kill beef boy.
So beef, give me a scientific reason why I should not kill you now that I don't have to worry about karma. Surely science can answer such a simple question as to why I should not kill beef boy.
Padawanbater2
Well-Known Member
Zaehet Strife
Well-Known Member
Because i too, was raised in a certain fashion, and i was taught that killing someone is wrong and bad. Therefor i would feel bad if i killed someone, so i'm not going to.
Karma is as made up as the bible. Do and don't do things because they make you either feel good or feel bad. Don't do them because you think something good will happen to you or bad will happen to you, that rather seems a little, selfish.
You can live out your whole life doing nothing but good, and bad things will still happen. You can live out your life doing nothing but bad, and good things will still happen. Doesn't that clearly debunk the silly idea of karma right away?
Wishful thinking, that is exactly what karma is.
Beefbisquit
Well-Known Member
The only reason you don't kill people is because you're worried about what will happen to you in the afterlife? If you believe that, you're a sociopath.
I have a conscience. I feel empathy when I see people in situations that I wouldn't want to be in. I don't kill people because I wouldn't want them to do that to me, it would be a violation of my life, and doing it to someone else is a violation of theirs.
[video=youtube_share;Hj9oB4zpHww]http://youtu.be/Hj9oB4zpHww[/video]
"Because killing people is wrong regardless of what you believe in"
"Because i too, was raised in a certain fashion, and i was taught that killing someone is wrong and bad."
"The only reason you don't kill people is because you're worried about what will happen to you in the afterlife? If you believe that, you're a sociopath."
Ahh... and exactly why is it wrong?
Come on Beefy boy. Tell us why science says killing is wrong.
"I have a conscience. I feel empathy when I see people in situations that I wouldn't want to be in."
Where did you get that empathy? Is it from science?
Or is it the cultural residue of a religion which has been telling you for 2500 years that killing is bad?
The Aztecs had a religion which told them killing was good. They marched 10,000 prisoners up the pyramids and cut their hearts out to appease their gods.
Now, after countless millions dead we have a world of religions left that tell us killing is bad. Is that what you are arguing against?
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Yes, this is the horror of religion. A system which expouses such things as being kind to each other, being generous to the poor, to love something other than yourself, to not kill and to not steal.
It does not matter whether Kirshna or Jesus existed if it inspires us to act just a little bit better. In a world without religion where is the inspiration? How will science tell us to be kind to each other?
Religion and Religious experience are intertwined. They cultivate each other and without one, the other would not exist. This is why religious experience has been built into our very physiology. To help us evolve. To show us what we can become. Religion is not an answer, it is a door to a world hopefully slightly better than this one. Why would you not want someone to turn the other cheek? Why are you not thankful that religion is there to inspire them to be better and perhaps when it comes down to it, to forgive and not kill you?
"Because i too, was raised in a certain fashion, and i was taught that killing someone is wrong and bad."
"The only reason you don't kill people is because you're worried about what will happen to you in the afterlife? If you believe that, you're a sociopath."
Ahh... and exactly why is it wrong?
Come on Beefy boy. Tell us why science says killing is wrong.
"I have a conscience. I feel empathy when I see people in situations that I wouldn't want to be in."
Where did you get that empathy? Is it from science?
Or is it the cultural residue of a religion which has been telling you for 2500 years that killing is bad?
The Aztecs had a religion which told them killing was good. They marched 10,000 prisoners up the pyramids and cut their hearts out to appease their gods.
Now, after countless millions dead we have a world of religions left that tell us killing is bad. Is that what you are arguing against?
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Yes, this is the horror of religion. A system which expouses such things as being kind to each other, being generous to the poor, to love something other than yourself, to not kill and to not steal.
It does not matter whether Kirshna or Jesus existed if it inspires us to act just a little bit better. In a world without religion where is the inspiration? How will science tell us to be kind to each other?
Religion and Religious experience are intertwined. They cultivate each other and without one, the other would not exist. This is why religious experience has been built into our very physiology. To help us evolve. To show us what we can become. Religion is not an answer, it is a door to a world hopefully slightly better than this one. Why would you not want someone to turn the other cheek? Why are you not thankful that religion is there to inspire them to be better and perhaps when it comes down to it, to forgive and not kill you?
Padawanbater2
Well-Known Member
Killing someone is wrong because it takes away their right to life. "It's a hell of a thing, taking away a mans life, everything he has, everything he's ever gonna have.."
Science says killing is wrong because you don't have control over someone else's body
We got it through a biological process. Science simply explains that process.
Obviously not, as organized religion doesn't actually say killing is bad, quite the opposite actually! Killing is good! God requires you to kill non believers, agnostics, gypsies, homosexuals, adulterers, those that work on the Sabbath, those men that shave their beards, etc.. You should read the Bible!
None of the three main Abrahamic religions condemn killing as you claim. They ALL condone it, some even require it. So wtf are you talking about?
Because you can't understand a civilized world without religion doesn't mean one couldn't exist. If you rely on religion to be a good person, the irony is, you're actually a horrible person. Being good means being good regardless of the circumstances. If it meant going to your idiotic version of Hell to be good to another human being instead of shitty, I would still be good, consequences be damned. THAT is what the fuck being good is. When you're "good" to impress your imaginary friend just to get into his clubhouse, you might as well have just cheat on the test, lied about it, and when you got caught for cheating, give up your friend who gave you the notes to take a lesser punishment..
Your fake 'goodness' is worse than a shitty guy who admits it, and you're naive to think the omnipotent God you supposedly believe in wouldn't know that...
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
...karma is described as spanning lifetimes. It is also described as cause and effect. Causality
...I was walking down a busy street one time and this guy was sitting on the ground with a cup asking for spare change. I had none to give, but would have if I did. When I walked by him he said 'duuuude, kaaaaarma'.
...there's two ways to look at that statement. Either I was at risk of karma for not giving him any change; or he was telling me to beware of his situation..."duuuude, kaaaarma"
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
...Pad, I'll have to disagree on that. A book that condones killing (in the physical sense) wouldn't be on any shelves. The 'killing' described relates to the ego. You can't read a sentence in a book of that sort and stop at that. Imagine if that's what watching a modern movie would be like. As soon as someone gets fckd up in a film we'd all have to gasp and leave the theatre?
Beefbisquit
Well-Known Member
You obviously didn't watch the video. It's 100% about how science can answer moral questions. Before you ask stupid questions, at least attempt to extrapolate some information from what we're telling you. There's no point in even responding to you if you don't read what we write. The answers have already been given to you, what you do with them is up to you.
Do you understand what science is? It's a process for testing. That's all. Science doesn't 'give us things'. However, it can explain the things we have, or might get. The reason we behave the way we do is the result of evolution, a separate process that can be explained by science, but science doesn't 'steer' evolution in any direction. (Unless we're bio-engineering things like GMO's) It might be possible in the future to produce humans that have heightened or deadened reactions to things like killing by modifying their brains, but that's all just hearsay.
No. We've had morality longer than 2500 years, humans have been pack creatures....forever. Before religion people didn't run around killing each other willy-nilly, just like Chimps and Bonobo's don't just randomly off one another. There is social order, maybe it's because of Chimp-Jesus.... lol Probably not...
Christians massacred millions of people during the crusades and the inquisition.
"Christians had more opportunity for violence than any other religious group on earth, and it is therefore unsurprising that, from a sheer numbers perspective, they have been responsible for the most acts of warlike aggression than any other. It is true that Jesus himself never engaged in violent action, but again, this seems to be an issue of opportunity rather than moral repulsion to violence: he was never in a position of political power and was in fact killed by the authorities. But, according to the Biblical narrative, Jesus will return to earth as a conquering warrior king, flanked by a massive army of earthly and heavenly beasts. He will then kill all his enemies.
The early Church was not pacifist as many modern-day Christians claim. Instead, the early Church fathers enlisted themselves as prayer warriors for the imperial Roman armies. The very minute Christianity rose to power with the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine, war in the service of empire and religion was adopted wholesale. Once persecuted by pagans, Christians now set out to destroy paganism in Europe. They sent forth armies to conquer new lands in the name of Christ. Eventually, almost all of Africa, Australia, Europe, South and North America–as well as huge swaths of land in Asia–came under the boots of Christian soldiers. Even today, the Religious Right in the U.S. leads the country down the path of war."
On to Buddhists!
This remark reveals a profound ignorance of history. Stereotypes notwithstanding, the Buddhist tradition is no stranger to violence. This little known story is retold by Professors Michael Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer in the book Buddhist Warfare. Jerryson writes:
Violence is found in all religious traditions, and Buddhism is no exception. This may surprise those who think of Buddhism as a religion based solely on peace. Indeed, one of the principal reasons for producing this book was to address such a misconception. Within the various Buddhist traditions (which Trevor Ling describes as “Buddhisms”
, there is a long history of violence. Since the inception of Buddhist traditions 2,500 years ago, there have been numerous individual and structural cases of prolonged Buddhist violence. [1]
Shield
He then answers his own question:
Buddhist Propaganda
It was then that I realized that I was a consumer of a very successful form of propaganda. Since the early 1900s, Buddhist monastic intellectuals such as Walpola Rahula, D. T. Suzuki, and Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, have labored to raise Western awareness of their cultures and traditions. In doing so, they presented specific aspects of their Buddhist traditions while leaving out others.
General conceptions of a basic Buddhist ethics broadly conceived as unqualified pacifism are problematic. Compassionate violence is at the very heart of the sensibility of this sutra. Buddhist kings had sophisticated and practical conceptual resources to support the use of force…The only killing compatible with Buddhist ethics is killing with compassion. Moreover, if a king makes war or tortures with compassionate intentions, even those acts can result in the accumulation of vast karmic merit.
Can you not objectively look at two worlds - one where there's violence, rape, murder, and every possible deplorable act happening, and one where's it's peaceful and pleasant and people are generally well behaved and decide which is better? Is that what you're telling me? Can you not objectively look at those two scenarios and decide, without falling back on religion, which one of those two worlds is 'better' to live in? I think you can.
This isn't a trick question, assuming you lived by yourself, since birth, you've never even heard about God, Jesus, or Krishna. No concept of the supernatural WHATSOEVER. If someone showed you the utopia where people are living happily, and then the death and violence filled second world, which world would you choose to live in? It's not a hard choice, and it certainly doesn't require god to know that living peacefully is better than living in constant fear.
More like humans have an intrinsic property of wanting to figure things out. When we don't have an answer, we make one up. BAM! Religion.
Lightning? Must be someone throwing it. Flood? Must have pissed god off. Crops didn't grow? Must have been mixing the milk and meat plates... etc., etc., ad nauseum.
Religion is probably the most selfish thing in existence.
Don't kill! - Not because you're taking away the sanctity of someones life, but because god will punish you in the afterlife. It's all about you, and what you have coming to you.
Make sure you have good Karma! - Not because doing good things is good, in and of itself, but because good Karma gets you rewards in the next life. Again, it's all about you, and what you get for being good.
Present to me, a divine command from god or holy scripture, that commands that you do something good - but there's no punishment if you don't do it, and there's no reward if you do. Show me that part of religion, where people do things with absolutely zero reward or deterrent.
Religion isn't good, it scares people or bribes people into submission. Anything good done by religion could be done without religion.
All the atrocities created by religion could ONLY be created by religion.
NietzscheKeen
Well-Known Member
Wow! Nice post! Very well put. I'm a moral nihilist/emotivist, but for the longest time I was a moral objectivist so I can still agree with a lot of what you said; big fan of The Moral Landscape.
I will have to go back and watch the video to which you refer because we might be able to have an interesting discussion regarding ethics; it would certainly be more productive than the arguments you find yourself in much of the time, lol.
I did and still do disagree with Hume' Law. I admit, I avoided Hume (and Hegel) as much as I could while in university, so I may not actually understand Hume's argument.
Edit: LOL, the video WAS Sam Harris.
I will have to go back and watch the video to which you refer because we might be able to have an interesting discussion regarding ethics; it would certainly be more productive than the arguments you find yourself in much of the time, lol.
I did and still do disagree with Hume' Law. I admit, I avoided Hume (and Hegel) as much as I could while in university, so I may not actually understand Hume's argument.
Edit: LOL, the video WAS Sam Harris.
Zaehet Strife
Well-Known Member
Or maybe he's used that one before, and taking into consideration how superstitious people can be, it's worked time and time again, as people think about the words he used, turn around, and give him money for uttering a few simple superstitious words.
Zaehet Strife
Well-Known Member
Killing is neither right, nor wrong... what is right and wrong is completely subjective, it depends on how you personally understand it, and feel about it. If you were born into a society where killing was good, you would probably be ok with it. We are born into a society where killing people is seen as bad, so most of us aren't ok with it. Also, it is a major deterrent, knowing that in America you will probably spend the rest of your life in a cage if you do kill someone.
Personally, i like to go by this philosophy, "Do onto others as you would have them do onto you/ Do not do onto others as you would not have them do to you".
Not only has the society i grew up in taught me that killing is wrong, but i grew up with a sense of empathy and i don't like causing pain to other animals, because i have experienced pain, i would rather not inflict it onto someone else. I have experienced the loss of a loved one, and i would do my best to make sure no one else has to feel that way.
Like i said before, it seems a little selfish and egotistical to parade around life only doing things because you believe that if you do good, good will happen and if you do bad, bad will happen.
Why not parade through life doing good because you want to do good for no other reason than it making you feel good, without expecting anything in return? And taking a moral responsibility for your own actions (good and bad)?
Good people are going to do good, bad people are going to do bad, and everybody makes mistakes. It's up to US as individuals and a society to make sure we are held responsible for the things we say and actions we take... not some made up magical spirit energy.
guy incognito
Well-Known Member
I think it goes beyond that. I grew up in a society that says white people are better than black people (or niggers as they are often called), and being gay is just flat out wrong to the point that it is ok to direct hate their way. Even though the household I lived in, and the town I grew up in embraced those values and taught them to me, I knew it was wrong as a child. Even with the brain of a child I was able to determine right from wrong. I think most other people are too. It is society and religion that then indoctrinate and condition people to the point that they accept whatever is going on as normal.
eye exaggerate
Well-Known Member
H R Puff N Stuff
Well-Known Member
by doing good deeds and being kind to your fellow man/woman
guy incognito
Well-Known Member
And to further that thought:
It takes a warped set of beliefs to make killing right. It would be very hard to convince a normal rational person that killing and sacrificing humans is morally right without invoking some kind of irrational belief (like god) into the mix. But if you literally believe in god, and he commands the sacrifice...
It takes a warped set of beliefs to make killing right. It would be very hard to convince a normal rational person that killing and sacrificing humans is morally right without invoking some kind of irrational belief (like god) into the mix. But if you literally believe in god, and he commands the sacrifice...
Beefbisquit
Well-Known Member
This would undermine millions of years of evolution. Humans are social creatures because of our genetics. Even in tribal societies where traits like extreme suspicion, and greed/manipulation and thought of as virtues, they still don't just randomly kill. There is always a boundary or sorts; a 'you can't kill me unless....', what follows 'unless' varies from society to society, but there's always some boundary that prevents total anarchy for the most part. There are parts of the world that are virtually lawless, but even there, people still live together in communities and abide by social contracts.
Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but all societies have had some sort of order, so we have nothing to base this society off of. If we believe our desire to live together in a social society is at all dependent on our DNA and biological funsctions, than in order to change our nature in context to how we value our social contracts, we would have to change our DNA as well. Nature or nurture?
Yeah, that's one I generally follow too.
RAmen, brother.
Beefbisquit
Well-Known Member
I have a question for anyone who follows any religion;
If it came to pass tomorrow, that a new, verified text was found that was directly tied to your religion, e.g. a new chapter of the bible, Quran, or a new text of the Tipitaka, etc.; and it commanded all the followers of said religion to murder any non-believer without question, would you do it?
If it came to pass tomorrow, that a new, verified text was found that was directly tied to your religion, e.g. a new chapter of the bible, Quran, or a new text of the Tipitaka, etc.; and it commanded all the followers of said religion to murder any non-believer without question, would you do it?