Orion Ussner kidder
Patrick@PatrickoftheG IMO, you should get over that.
"Religions" take many many different forms, and there are many many people and communities who do objectively good things out of a sense of devotion.
Just saying.
can everything be outside now?@OrionKidder @PatrickoftheG yep, and I think there's also a certain percentage of psychopaths/sociopaths that can be taught to stay within the bounds of religion or other morality. It can be dangerous to free their minds.
@OrionKidder @PatrickoftheG religion helps some people who have underdeveloped senses of morality/social consciousness be less problematic in how they deal with others... If you teach them their religion is not a good guide for how they should behave, they might suddenly have no guide. It can be bad. They could decide anything is ok. They could cling to some other guide because many people are trying to sell many versions of morality.
An established religion at least has some generations of testing on their thesis of what makes a good community/human.
An established religion at least has some generations of testing on their thesis of what makes a good community/human.
@thesquirrelfish @PatrickoftheG I'm so sorry, but no, this is at best a half-baked "take."
Religion is one of a handful of socializing forces in our lives: along with family, education, media, community, etc. It just is the source of a huge amount of human moral positioning. I'm not defending that or saying it's "good, actually," to be clear. I'm pointing out that your narrative makes no sense given the reality of how religion functions in human society and, as far as we can tell, always has.
@thesquirrelfish @PatrickoftheG Setting aside the smug tone and air of superiority, that's why it's nonsensical to refer to "underdeveloped morality" in this context.
That's not how any of this works.
@OrionKidder I don't understand? like are you saying that people who stop believing in their religion never go through periods of doing things their religion told them not to as part of that? I was not trying to be smug or have an air of superiority, I have directly experienced this with friends and acquaintances. It's like going from being a teetotaler/totally sober to binge drinking for college kids - if you've been using a set of hard rules to make a decision and you stop believing in the rules, the next time you have to make the decision you are not necessarily prepared.
This is my experience, your mind and experience may vary.
@PatrickoftheG
This is my experience, your mind and experience may vary.
@PatrickoftheG
@thesquirrelfish @PatrickoftheG You rested that on a faulty premise: "religion helps some people who have underdeveloped senses of morality/social consciousness be less problematic in how they deal with others."
This is nonsense.
@OrionKidder
You don't think religion helps people to make more socially conscious choices? Particularly about things they haven't considered or thought about before?
You don't think religion helps people to make more socially conscious choices? Particularly about things they haven't considered or thought about before?
@thesquirrelfish That's not what you said, so it's not what I replied to.
@OrionKidder right, I said the strongest version of what I believe initially, can you clarify what you disagree with?
I'll give an example that I think is easier, and it's the first time I experienced this. I was a young atheist trying to convince my friends. I convinced a friend, yay! He immediately cheated on his girlfriend, boo. His beliefs in monogamy and how to treat women had entirely rested on his religion & the culture tied up with it. He had to relearn this stuff based on concepts of mutuality and communication and respect. It didn't take that long, but the urges he'd been using religion to suppress were "kiss all the girls" and when he didn't have the religion...
A better way to have put it might be "for some people the religion is doing more work than we know."
@thesquirrelfish So what I'm hearing is you based a generalization on one case?
Look, I've already explained my disagreement. I'm not interested in repeating myself.
Cheers.
@OrionKidder sorry I didn't understand your objection. Here's some more examples.
A couple more general cases:
usury. The old religious idea prohibited it, and that helped prevent financial accumulation and create more equitable societies with a bunch of knock on things that are likely to be good for people who respect the prohibition without them having to to reason it out with long-term economic forecasts.
Here in California the Chumash people had a practice of burning the belongings of someone who passed, which meant it was more useful to learn the technique of how to make something, respecting the accumulated knowledge of elders, with similar knock on effects.
Old socioreligious practices of hospitality were often told "because they could be a god/representative of god" or the Christian ideal of "what you do to the least of these, you do to me" act similarly - the ongoing practice of those things is a much wider range of impacts than just the ones that an individual sees in the one time act.
A couple more general cases:
usury. The old religious idea prohibited it, and that helped prevent financial accumulation and create more equitable societies with a bunch of knock on things that are likely to be good for people who respect the prohibition without them having to to reason it out with long-term economic forecasts.
Here in California the Chumash people had a practice of burning the belongings of someone who passed, which meant it was more useful to learn the technique of how to make something, respecting the accumulated knowledge of elders, with similar knock on effects.
Old socioreligious practices of hospitality were often told "because they could be a god/representative of god" or the Christian ideal of "what you do to the least of these, you do to me" act similarly - the ongoing practice of those things is a much wider range of impacts than just the ones that an individual sees in the one time act.
@thesquirrelfish @PatrickoftheG You also didn't phrase it as "your experience." You phrased it as an objective truth.
Look, friend. I've been arguing with people on the internet since the late 90s. You're not going to get me with the old "Why, whatever do you mean? Good Heavens! I was just..." [moves goalposts while they think no one's looking].