Does God Really Make You Good?

So what you seem to be saying is that "true and clear" morality is grounded in empathy and compassion rooted in the evolution of child rearing mammals, while religion and God are products of "primitive man's egotistical fantasies." Can you give us the name of a single reputable scholar or scientific study to support your claim? This is your own creation (egotistical fantasy?) which seems to be at odds with what more knowledgeable people say. First of all, your reliance on empathy alone to do the job seems naive. According to City University of New York Professor Jesse Prinz, recent research suggests that "empathy is not a major player when it comes to moral motivation. Its contribution is negligible in children, modest in adults, and nonexistent when costs are significant.” Even Steven Pinker, rock star of evolutionary psychology, thinks empathy is "overhyped" (Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature). Empathy has a role to play in human morality, but the way in which empathy is expressed depends on other variables. Empathy evolved along with reciprocal altruism, as a mechanism for inducing self-sacrifice; but biologically, it extended only to kin who were part of the moral actor's gene pool. The challenge to civilization has been to extend the "circle of empathy" (to use Peter Singer's phrase) to actors who are biologically unrelated to us. This, it seems, is possible if the objects of our attention are cute, tied to us in communal relationships, have similar values, or are bound to us in common alliances. How we expand the circle further to include strangers who lack these characteristics is problematic. In The Evolution of God Robert Wright argues that religion, along with conquest and expansion of trade, played an important role in this process. "Universal love" was a hard-won ideal, owing much to religion. Also,you focus on biological evolution, but cultural evolution--the evolution of memes-- rooted in our biological nature as thinking, communicating animals, has probably been more important to our advancement as a species. And religion seems to be prominent in the process. To look at only the dark side of religion without crediting its role in inspiring good in people is a gross distortion of reality.

 

Mmmmmm, mmm, mmmmmmmm, yup,

It seems every sentience that I write forces Okie's religious compulsive disorder to spew out another 5-10 lines of dismissive trivial regurgitory tangents.

 

Yes, I admit that it does seem at times like I'm using an elephant gun to demolish mosquitoes. Take away the pseudo-Freudian concept of "subconscious superego" from your "sentience(s)" (sic) and there would be little left to aim at.

 

pfft, stop showing off how you can regurgitate biased trivia and explain why so many ppl believe in sadistic jack ass gods...

 

So where does this go if you take the Hindu view that God is beyond good and evil?

 

Clear morality, as I said in post 16; compassion, empathy, caring, caring for your kids, the golden rule, actions that are unanimously and unquestionably deemed good by sane and logical people...

Cloudy pseudo-moralities of God and religion; convincing yourself another race or creed is evil, conspiring to reinforce superstitions, asking/believing for God to support warfare, thanking God for vicarious redemption through sacrifice/suffering of others, assuming justice will be served in another world/dimension, choosing ignorance of faith over fact, reason and statistics...

 

Your notion that this morality as you define it is naturally and universally shared is contrary to history and anthropology. Primitive peoples and most ancient societies did not extend these norms beyond their kinship groups. You simply ignore facts you don't want to deal with. How "sane and logical" is that?

 

"Cloudy pseudo-moralities of God and religion; convincing yourself another race or creed is evil, conspiring to reinforce superstitions, asking/believing for God to support warfare, thanking God for vicarious redemption through sacrifice/suffering of others, assuming justice will be served in another world/dimension, choosing ignorance of faith over fact, reason and statistics..." Relaxx


What you've done here is to abstract those aspects of particular religions you consider undesirable, associate them with religion in general, and portray them as somehow less "natural" than the virutuous traits you claim are instinctively shared by humans through their biology--giving no credit to religon in developing the latter traits. This is pure propaganda that has no foundation in history or science--which is why you conveniently change the subject any time anyone questions your pseudo-science or asks for evidence.

 

huh? Do you have proof these ancient societies that you're talking about were atheist? Or are you assuming they predate religion? Facts? WTF are you talking about? How logical are you?

Religion developing the latter!? You mean the true clear morals?

OME, he thinks religion DEVELOPED caring or something! Wow, lol!

 

It's indeed amazing how easily you'll get suprised when you're talking about religion with more objective looking people after blocking out all the things that didn't suit your argument about how evil, bad and insane it all is

 

Yeah. Objective "looking", subjectively biased people who can not or will not explain why there have been so many sadistic jack ass "Gods" in our history. Gods, by popular definitions, who should have and could have gotten humans and earth right from the beginning. There are really only two options; Gods are terrible supreme monsters that actually exist -or- Gods are fantasy beings invented by people for coping and controlling. Either way, belief in these monsters or fantasies does not make you the slightest bit better. In reality, you are more likely to support unjust superstitions or make sketchy decisions based on faith over reason.

 

I will tell you exactly why there are so many sadistic jackass gods in our history.
God is in the power of our invocation and there still exist many sadistic jackass gods for this reason and the reason prophets for these gods like yourself exist.

 

It's almost like relaxxx is advocating us to be less objective in favor of reason

 

As they say in Taxi Driver, are you talkin' to me? I figure you must be, because I don't see any other post around you could be responding to. But what you're saying doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything I said. Proof that ancient societies were atheists? There is no such proof, because none of them were. We don't get anything approximating "atheist" societies until the twentieth century. To the best of our knowledge, all ancient and practically all modern societies were/are religious, leading some observers to conclude that god(s) are part of our hard wiring, or that religion is a universal part of human cultural evolution. So, WTF are you talking about that gave you the idea I was saying otherwise? By "the latter", I was referring to "the virutuous traits you claim are instinctively shared by humans through their biology"--the latter phrase in my sentence. But yes, I do mean that it's likely religion played a positive role in developing "caring or something"--caring for people who are strangers, unrelaed to us by blood or kinship. I think that's a reasonable coclusion from what I've read about the evolution of religion. This is a little different from saying religion "DEVELOPED" all positive moral values,or was the main independent variable in developing them, or that religion wasn't also a source of folly and evil. I agree with Steven Pinker that:"Religion plays no single role in the history of violence,because religion has not been a single force in the history of anything." For sources, try Robert Wright, The Evolution of God, Robert Bellah, Religion in human Evolution, and/or Bruce Trigger, Understanding Early Civilization. None of them is easy reading, but they may help you get over the simplistic concept that human nature is naturally good and human religion is naturally evil.

 

So you're telling me that God all mighty is no more powerful than human? Not only is that as sad as it is convenient, it doesn't make any fucking sense! You're saying God is only as powerful as the people it controls but that still means that God's are either sadistic yet weak little dicks, or a fantasy of mans egotistic desires. Hmmmm, what adds up here?

 

I'm telling you our invocations are all powerful in forming our perceptions and what we conceive of as reasonable response. How much more powerful do you want god to be?

 

Maybe there's a third option: God's really a sensible, decent Entity who's badly misunderstood. As you say, gods "by popular definitions... should have and could have gotten humans and earth right from the beginning"; but just because they're popular doesn't mean they're real. The god(s) you talk about are so anthropomorphic and "omni". And you're right, that's always been and still is the "popular" way of thinking about God. But leading theologians and philosophers, and other scholars tell us it isn't true. Those who think of God as more like a spiritual force or ideal aren't suprised that (S)he can't do card tricks.

 

No big surprise to me that nobody attempted to answer my question. It's the usual story - atheists attack the judeo-christian-islamic concept of god, where god is good and the devil is bad, and don't understand that such a conception of the divine is not the only one in existence.

 

It's not incapability but such considerations do not support the egotistical us verses them mindset.