lonely day's job corp debacle got me thinking that its bullshit when people need help vicariously through some kind of association when its damn obvious that you could easily do it for yourself. This sort of blind praise is the same rhetoric as people who say that 'since they found christ they have become a better person'.

whats with that? it takes some kind of higher deity to make you be nice and courteous to other people? does it take a messiah to get you off drugs or to stop beating your kids? bullshit, and thats the kind of shit that blinds people into thinking that everything will be done for you, you know the idiots way of life, fuck it all im gonna go eat lasagne.

I agree with this. I have no real belief in any god and am quite vocal about it (just look around ISFAT), so the argument against me so often is "So without a god you have no morals?" Err, where did you pull that one from? Just because I don't believe in a deity doesn't mean I can't see suffering or want to help out, and it also means that when I do do a "good deed" I do it because I want to help and not because I want to spend eternity in some form of paradise.
Religon ≠ morals!

what about the flying spaghetti monster and its noodley appendage?

While Pastafarianism is fun, but it certainly doesn't give morals - the best it gives is the eight "I'd Really Rather You Didn'ts". Morals should come from yourself.

One of my favorite places to have Christian morals drilled into me is the blog
shelleytherepublican.com

With topics such as "Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy", "A towel on the Head - Sign of a primitive society" and i kid you not - "Dirty, Rotten, Filthy, Stinking Illegal Immigrants!", you're sure to read God's word and feel the "love" of our lord. It is this site that makes me dislike America as a whole and look at the church with disgust. religion is lame and very dangerous

The whole thing about 'democracy' reminds me of the character Alden Pyle from 'The Quiet American'. silly stickybeak yanks who think they know everything.... *shakes fist*

Particularly when communism and democracy can coexist without a problem, it's not democracy they were fighting for - it's capitalism.

fedora have you read 1984? you sound like you have rofl.

I have read it, but I don't see the relavance.

no relevence, i can just tell

I'm not against religion, but the institutions that run it and any extremism (Including that in America) always end up doing nasty things. Buddhism is alright, it never harmed anyone too much, but the majority of other religions have spent too much time fighting with each other. I must admit, though, the actual people who follow the religion aren't bad, though I personally believe in doing things because they are right, not because God said to do them.

you are a moron, you edited your post and you still get the point of the thread, its not about zealots blindly following gods will. Its about boorish people who cant do things on their own and need their first steps taken for them, and once things are done for them they dont even realize they could have done it themselves, they lavish their religious sect like its the only way you could possibly improve yourself.

Fair enough, I saw that in the first post but I'd almost forgotten what it was about after having read through some of the more recent things.

I agree with Pirateboy and I'm a Christian(Yes i know People who know me I'm not a true Christian I've far to a broad belief system to be classified as one but ). Morals should come from yourself not your religion. You shouldn't do something with the lord in mind because if you do this isn't a good dead it is a dead for self befit. Thats what i believe.

True, but i don't see the harm in raising people with morels, we do that with children either way even if it isn't through "god". You cant bring up a child telling it to do what it thinks is right, it'll end up as a completely selfish possibly destructive person. You cant expect people to do what is right based on inner understanding of what is right and wrong. I mean we have laws for the same reason, don't kill people or you'll go to jail, the judge doesn't say 'i hope you know what you did is wrong, think about it.
God is simply a convenient method to establish a working society, don't do these things as although you might gain in the short term, in the end it anit worth it.

To convey why you should be polite or help other people without inflicting negative consequences isn't as simple as saying "think about it" a child couldn't give a damn.

In my view more effort should be spent emphasizing 'why' we should do these things and raising understanding about why these things are wrong, but i don't be leave a society without cause effect punishment could function. God was just a pretty clever method of enforcing it upon people.

Fair point Slurpee. But you can teach morels without religion. All that religion does is poison the impressionable minds of children into believing that they should obey God of suffer the consequences. "Don't do that kiddies, or else you'll burn eternally in the fiery pits of hell". Religion forces a set of morals upon people that they don't need. Sure, children don't know how to behave well but the fact that there are millions of people around the world that weren't raised religiously suggests that religion isn't necessary in that regard. Teaching children to follow the Christianity (or any religion) is dangerous and irresponsible imo because it promotes adopting morels without any thought whatsoever. "the Bible says this so i'll do it".

So i don't think the invention of God was really that beneficial to society but clearly it was very clever for getting people to do what some guy wanted. It can be used to teach morels but i think you can teach kids morels and responsibility as soon as they start to act a little more civil. kids r gonna be brats regardless of whether they are religious.

There's far more to it than that - look at effectively any "classical" religion and modern laws and compare the rules - they're remarkable similar (don't steal, don't kill, do what you're told, etc.) My theory is this (note, for the following I will use the term god - though I do not just refer to Christianity but any religion with one or more deities); humans are initially pack/pride animals like lions where the strongest fighter rules. They all worship that which they don't understand and call it divine, and some bright spark figures out that all he/she has to do to take and maintain control is convince the others that they can talk to a god. (note, if they're smart enough to figure this out then they're probably quite smart and thus think they could do a better job of being leader). To do this a few simple predictions will do "God says it shall rain tomorrow", "God says if we plant our seeds here they will grow", "God says if I pour this water it will fall down" etc.
Then with this we've got a new leader and a religion - but now every law/rule they set becomes "God says you shouldn't kill". I mean just look at all the rulers of the ancient world - they were all closely linked with god in someway.
At least that's my theory (in it's very basic form)

I think that's close, but personally my opinion is that if things are good more than normal or bad more than normal, they need to blame something. So they say that God is punishing/rewarding them, and develop rituals, and then religion is born. From there, the smart people get seen as being wise, and then they become important holy people. Because they are smart they can then get to rulership from that position.

An experiment was done with chickens, where a device would give them food when they stood on it, but only some of the time. The chickens quickly developed a 'ritual' that had to be done to increase their chance of getting food. This shows just how easily us meat-based creatures will adopt rites and rituals.

However, back to the topic, once there is a society going that is not based entirely around religion (Like today's society, for example), religion becomes unnecessary in terms of morality. People are conditioned by those around them, and by what society expects of them, even if they disagree at some level.

It's called operant conditioning. The chickens were simply rewarded and, therefore, learnt to repeat the desired behaviour.

Not quite, all the chickens had to do was set off a trigger, probably by standing on something, and the machine would have a 50/50 chance of dispensing them some food. They developed rituals on their own, because the few thoughts that they have said that there was a divine reason why they got food and the other chicken didn't. So the other chickens copied them.

Also, theis could probably do with a new topic, it's sending this one astray.

I agree with SlyWolf. How do you know they thought that there was a divine power involved? They simply repeated what appeared to work.

o that aint silicon, thats tungston, and PLENTY of it!

Thankyou for explaining this a bit better, I think I misunderstood Slywolf. I suppose it isn't necessarily that they thought there was some higher power, but if you look back and compare it to human behaviour, you can see how often good things are associated with a higher power. Of course, it is impossible to tell if they had thought of this.

I think you guys mean sky. Its iffy ground compairing animal behaviour to humans, there isnt necisarly any relationship what so every, you cant put a human face or explanation on the actions of somthing that isnt remotly human.

"iffy grounds" - this is because it depends a lot on your beliefs. Personally, I believe that most mammals and birds have developed in quite similiar ways. Psychologically, we can compare ourselves to animals. Dogs form packs, and hierarchies. Simians do the same. So do we.

I admit, chickens are a bit different, however there are a lot of similarities between human beings and animals, and I think that the main difference is our intelligence. If you give a similar stimulus, you certainly seem to get a similiar result out of it.

You are indeed correct, apologies to both sky and SlyWolf; please don't beat me up!

there is a topic made by me very simialar to your maybe you should have a glance

Erm, they're really not that similar at all. And this one is mostly rational oh and a almost a whole year old