God's will

For religion(s) to take authorship of the core moral code that makes us human the world over is to distort history.

Not imo. I very much doubt that moral codes predate religion, in fact I’m sure they don’t, and to suggest they do sounds like a distortion of history to me.

Well, we’re down to pretty much the fundamentals of the well worn deist / atheist argument. For me the evidence points pretty much one way. Primate ethics research does it for me.

You don’t need a religion for a moral code to exist. The role of religion has largely been to evolve and adapt and benefit the ruling class of the period whilst confusing people with mystical notions. That is not to say that religion may not be used to bring about social change, I’m sure that ISIS supporters see themselves as doing God’s work as did liberation theologists. They are both wrong, however.

Agreed BillMC! Religious doctrines were developed and maintained by the ruling few to control the masses. Certainly in a time when mysticism prevailed.

Therefore, in my world, religion has nothing to do with the true nature of God. Because of the ruling doctrines, God is perceived as a deity, a he, a she. That’s just pretty poor human conditioning, bordering on arrogance.

The key point here is that we all, each and everyone of us has our own experience of the world and who is to say, or cast judgement that one persons’ experiences are false or true? Better or worse? It’s so deeply personal to each individual that not one of us can stand up and negate another’s feelings. Same goes with belief, faith, call it what you will.

I can go with faith being a coping mechanism. If my un-doctrined faith helps me be a better person, enables me to accept the many varied shades of grey, rather than needing everything in neat little boxes of true and false, right and wrong, fact and fiction, then that works for me and quite frankly, don’t give too much of a shit if that is not for others. After all, it’s my world, my life, my experience and as I said before, I’m good with that so long as it creates care, compassion and gratitude within me.

For those of you who can get along with no faith or belief, that’s fine with me too! Even when, just like those who choose to belong to another, polar opposite way of thinking, that it needs shouting from the rooftops to seemingly try to confirm ones own beliefs.

But then, many people need to belong to a group, gain an identity, to tell them how they ‘should’ behave, think, act and react to their worlds. This often occurs when we are in our teens, whilst we’re trying to figure out who we are and how we interact with the world around us. Sheep.

Go get your own world, your own life, dare to be different, dare to believe, in anything you want. Just think, feel and open up to the infinite possibilities that being a human being in this infinite Universe allows. It’s not all black and white, so don’t fear the greys!

…In the absence of proof, science seeks that proof. Without proof, anything is merely a theory.

“Science” is not the only way to understand life – and science doesn’t seek anything, it is just a pattern of human thought.

Somafunk- if you refused to go to church or religious studies from a very young age (which you have the right to do, of course), how can you have an informed opinion on something you refused to learn about or understand?
It’s a little bit like certain religious groups that refuse to learn or understand science and decide they know better, despite being totally uninformed.

and science doesn’t seek anything.

Oh dear! Oh dear, Oh dear! The whole point of science from its very earliest days is to seek knowledge.

Somafunk- if you refused to go to church or religious studies from a very young age (which you have the right to do, of course), how can you have an informed opinion on something you refused to learn about or understand?

I know a religious education teacher who holds no personal belief but did a theology degree and dares to teach about it and a psychiatrist who specialises in sexual abusers but who has never been a paedophile herself. Shocking isn’t it.

You don’t have to be in the gang to have an interest and knowledge of the gang.

Convert- you missed my point (or maybe I didn’t make it very well).

You’re right, you don’t have to be in the gang to have an interest or knowledge about the gang, but that was my point- soma funk seems to have an opinion based in neither knowledge nor interest.

I’m not suggesting that you have to have faith to teach or attend religious studies, but how can you have an informed opinion if you close your ears to understanding what other folks believe? You don’t have to believe in God yourself to learn a little about religion.

Some interesting posts.. I was drawn (in a spiritual way perhaps) to this little snippet (cut from a post and not representing their view in any way.)

most human beings are mentally unhinged

Perhaps we could change ‘most’ to ‘all’

I like the slackalice approach, just make stuff up… mmm! but then what happens when the sheep start following my made up stuff (bingo! we have more bullshit/religion/faith/belief/)

Any takers for 2+2=Banana (how do you coax a sheep? tck,tck, here my pretty.)

And back to the OP: it’s a very tricky question! I don’t believe that God’s Will imposes in such a way for good, evil, or natural disaster. But then I can’t begin to explain where miracles fit in? I think SaxonRider’s contributions are closest to what I feel, but he has expressed himself far better than I could on this subject.

you missed my point (or maybe I didn’t make it very well).

You are right, I did – apologies.

Irrespective of your personal beliefs it is an undeniable fact that religious groups profoundly effect world issues so to know about them is important to understand how the world ticks. Having said that its reasonable to say that RE classes in bygone days (& I suspect there are still pockets that do so now) were no more that recruitment/indoctrination sessions.

Yooohooo..

…The whole point of science from its very earliest days is to seek knowledge.

I would say that scientific method is a tool man has used to order information and test ideas, the seeking of knowledge is not confined to those who use science as their tool.

What quite a lot of the “God is omnipotent so he can do what he likes” miss is that God is, typically, also omnibenevolent or all-good/all-loving. God cannot do anything which makes the world a less good place. If the granting of free will to life, or simply the existence of evil, makes the world a better place then god cannot necessarily overrule it. That’s key to the arguments I pointed out above.

Science” is not the only way to understand life – and science doesn’t seek anything, it is just a pattern of human thought.

WHAT?

Science clearly seeks to establish “facts” by the reduction of infinite error using the scientific methodology and observation rather than pure thought. TBH what version of thinking does not seek something – usually the “truth”- with its method? None of them are designed to be wrong or get the wrong answer though we can debate if they work.
As for pattern of human thought I have no idea what this means but the laws of motion are not a pattern of human thought any more than gravity is or boyles law is.

As for morals we have basically two choices

1 god chose morals for a reason – there is a point to the 10 commandments

2 god chose them on a whim and we just have to follow

if it is 1 [ it must be obvs] then anyone can see the reasons and be moral. The golden rule pre dates religion and without religion we would and did still have a moral code. I am nit sure why one would argue otherwise as atheists are not amoral. As we have had religion clearly it has a affected our moral codes as say the treatment of homosexuals demonstrates. We are starting to ignore it a lot more theses days as the treatment of homosexuals shows.
Neither side can claim to to be the most moral or the only moral ones we just have different ones and will each think our own the best. No offence but many christians are very uncomfortable with some of the moral codes of the bible such as stoning adulterers and homosexuals so , generally, they chose which bits to follow.

how can you have an informed opinion on something you refused to learn about or understand?

I dont know much about the KKK and have never studied them in school. Shall I sit on the fence about them? I really dont think you need to study it in depth to know something is wrong – see also homoeopathy
To be clear I studied some theology at Uni and debates like this changed my mind. I moved from thinking the central premise [god made everything] was wrong to thinking that even if you did accept god as true it was still an incoherent mix of conflicting views that even those of faith could not explain nor understand . You were expected to have faith in and worship something that even the most devout and intelligent believer could not explain. God does indeed work in mysterious ways so mysterious even the believer cannot see the reason nor explain it to me

say that scientific method is a tool man has used to order information and test ideas, the seeking of knowledge is not confined to those who use science as their tool

TRue but it is just the best tool we have

Being given a divine book led us to believe and not question all sorts of things

It slaos led us to be rather poor to those who proposes a heliocentric universe rather than the earth being at the centre.

You can pray for enlightenment as a method to seek knowledge but science has given us considerably more understanding [ in the physical real at least] than prayer has.

FWIW I agree science may have limits and may struggle to explain aesthetics and perhaps love but the religious method struggles with everything as it tries to fit facts into a view rather than gain facts and form a view.

Apologies, CBA.

But Junkyard, as far as I can tell, you have an informed opinion and you can’t go back and uninform yourself! You provide reasoned arguments and engage in intelligent debate. You don’t just write off religious people as unhinged nutters (at least, not without debate and intelligent consideration :wink:).

In response to your examples of homeopathy and the KKK- it’s immediately obvious to the vast majority of us that the KKK, a hideous racist, homophobic group is wrong. It’s also blindingly obvious that homeopathy has no scientific basis beyond a placebo effect. Religion however, is the product of centuries of human debate and is a large part of millions of lives, and perhaps not so easily dismissed as wrong or right, even to someone who isn’t religious themselves.

I’m not inclined to get into the “science versus religion” discussion again today, but I believe they are aiming to do different things and are not mutually exclusive.

try and look at the power of something as simple as the Ten Commandments a value system which underpins so many modern societies

it does across as arrogant, societies existed perfectly well before the 10 commandments came along, with their own codes of conduct, whether mandated by religion or in another way, long before montheisim, let alone the abrahimic religions, the Jews nabbed them from the Hittites, who’d written them down before judaism existed
(itd be great to know more, but christians went on a religious book burning spree in the middle ages in an ISIS style)
The Chester Beaty Library in Dublin castle has an amazing collection of religious manuscripts from across the globe and is well worth an afternoon if you’re bored of overpriced stout.

Australian Aboriginies had lived more or less isolated for 50000 years since migrating there from Africa (via se asia), pre european migration to the continent they had their own laws about what foods could be eaten and how it should be shared, punishments if laws were broken, rules for family, marriage and social organisation, rules for looking after land and sacred sites, and rules for ceremonies and rituals.
Same shit completely different religion/society and all recorded orally

my rambling point if I have one,(i was more concise after a few ales last night) is that the ability to survive in a complex society is in our genes, altruism and religiosity have a genetic component , like any other personality trait, so to an extent we are all born with a sense of right and wrong and religion is just a way to reinforce our own moral code

if
god = love
then
god = oxytocin

Religious doctrines were developed and maintained by the ruling few to control the masses.

Religious doctrines predate civilisation, surplus, and the existence of the masses.

If you look back during more recent times the indigenous peoples of the Americas all had religious doctrines long before the arrival of Europeans, and yet they often didn’t have a structured class system where the elite few needed to control the masses, especially in the case of the hunter-gathering societies.

It seems to me that it is more about religion v religion , than religion v science , they can’t all be right .

I also subscribe to the thought that a collective belive has been an advantage to Homo sapiens , a reason to fight and stick together in the face of competition with rival groups of humans It could be a part of the reason why our species of human is still around and the others are not , and why successfully sociertys of the past had a religious element.

I am more interested in what somone does in the real world than what they think , If the doctor who helped save my life following a pulmonary embolism was Muslim/Christian/atheist was the least important part , and I don’t care if someone thinks that it was the will of God ( It was science skill and training imo) I am just glad to be here .

You provide reasoned arguments and engage in intelligent debate. You don’t just write off religious people as unhinged nutters (at least, not without debate and intelligent consideration :wink:).

Flattery Flattery but thanks.

Despite my entrenched anti religious views on here a number of my close friends are very devout to a variety of faiths- I was at eid last thursday for example. In general I see good people trying to adhere to a moral code and conduct that I myself could not achieve. Forgiveness being one of them. That said I cannot for the life of me understand why they think there is a god.

Whilst I agree science and religion are not mutually exclusive many of the findings of science and what the bible tells us are mutually exclusive

we evolved or we were created as an example.
IMHO you really need to pick one or you end up with a very strange fudge where the bible is the word of god or just metaphorical. These mental gymnastics those of faith have to go through lead to an inconsistent view IMHO

I very much doubt that moral codes predate religion, in fact I’m sure they don’t

It’s academic now anyway, isn’t it?

A couple of millennia ago, religion may well have shaped society. Brought law to the lawless and pseudo-scientific explanations for the world around us. And that was probably a good thing, evolutionary even.

But now we have an established legal system, the threat of fines / jail has replaced the threat of fiery hell for all eternity (and doesn’t require “faith” in the judicial system). Whether religion predates moral codes or vice versa is, at best, a history lesson.

But anyway. Someone posited earlier, “god is love.” This throwaway internet meme fodder is part of why I asked the original question. If god is love, then why does bad shit happen? Is the implication that when something good happens it’s all “yay, god” but when something bad happens it’s our fault? That’s just special pleading, surely.

Thinking about it, can both cases be true? For “it’s all god’s will, good and bad, and anything we can’t explain is because he moves in mysterious ways” is the crux of the Old Testament; for “god is love, but man’s corruption spoils that sometimes” we have the NT. Does that sound about right?

But then, if it’s our own fault for the ills in the world, god created us “in his own image” – so it’s a manufacturing defect. How does that sit with a perfect omniscient god?

I very much doubt that moral codes predate religion

I suspect people tried to get good conduct from their children long before they were intellectual enough to form a god thing to worship. I would imagine we tried to instil modes of conduct before we were verbal and its hard to have a god concept without language.

Its seems most unlikey we had no morals at all and then formed a god and then formed morals
In essence religion is not the starting point for morals it is just another method to provide morals.

I like the slackalice approach, just make stuff up… mmm! but then what happens when the sheep start following my made up stuff (bingo! we have more bullshit/religion/faith/belief/)

You end up with a situation identical to that of L Ron Hubbard and Dianetics, a religion that he thought up, that people joined and that, ultimately, he lost in his divorce to his wife. Yes, a RELIGION that was part of a divorce settlement,

So, he started another one that is still going strong today and that has recently been granted “religion” status so that it can get all those nice tax benefits. Not that it needs more money, but when you have a lot, it’s nice to have more, right?

Going with traditional religions for a moment though… I’ve always seen the huge cathedrals around the world, with their high pulpits and gold leaf, as a means of inspiring awe in the population. Quite apart from being there to save or help the population, I just think they were put up to intimidate them, remind them that they are the little people, insignificant to this religion. I admire the architecture, but the message is one that I do not like.

Oddly, the only time I even remotely enjoyed a church service was at Sandhurst. Because it meant I could sit down for a while and not have to do press-ups. I still have a problem with religion and killing, something that is a cornerstone of every army (pretty much), but I will support the blokes that do.

In general I see good people trying to adhere to a moral code… That said I cannot for the life of me understand why they think there is a god.

Arguably, that’s two different things. Religion provides the moral code, a belief in a deity is there to enforce it.

Ergo, if we accept that people want to be good people, we could readily have a godless religion and have the same benefits.

As DNA said, is it not enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to have fairies at the bottom of it?

Junkyard- I wasn’t trying to flatter you, it was sincerely meant, based on what your contributions to the thread.

if we accept that people want to be good people, we could readily have a godless religion and have the same benefits.

We could and we call it socialism 😉

Thanks to the pea 🙂

Religion really does my head in 🙂

I don’t really see a difference between Father Christmas and God TBH…
(No offence BTW)

I would imagine we tried to instil modes of conduct before we were verbal and its hard to have a god concept without language.

Indeed. Have a google around the experimentation and observational studies done on primates. If a moral code is present in primate societies it’s laughable not to appreciate they were in existence in humans prior to organised religion being in existence to clarify (and take ownership) of them.

If a moral code is present in primate societies it’s laughable not to appreciate they were in existence in humans prior to organised religion being in existence to clarify (and take ownership) of them.

It makes sense that it predates organised religion. I suppose the question then is where did that instinctive or inherent, as opposed to commanded, moral code come from? Can it be entirely put down to survival of the fittest or whatever the appropriate evolutionary aspect is when it includes behaviours that at times put others needs or interests above our own?

If there is such a thing as an God (any God)

1) why does he/she/whatever let nice people like ST Jenn get Cancer

2) why can’t he/she/whatever then stop it

I would guess that in the history of the world more pepole have been killed by religion than any war.
Just imagine how nice it would be if all religions never started.

JohnClimber, for your 1st question, I agree that is a valid and difficult question and I can only refer you back to SaxonRider’s response on page 1.
For your second point I have to disagree with you. Plenty of wars have absolutely nothing to do with religion (although some are in the name of religion). WW1? WW2? The Falklands conflict (territory)? The Gulf War (oil)? The violence in Ukraine? I doubt Assad is committing atrocities in Syria in the name of religion, even if IS are, If you think the end of religion would bring an end to war and conflict, I think you’d be bitterly disappointed to find that war and conflict would continue.

Have a google around the experimentation and observational studies done on primates. If a moral code is present in primate societies it’s laughable not to appreciate they were in existence in humans prior to organised religion being in existence to clarify (and take ownership) of them.

Erm, you have completely changed the context of what was being discussed. This what you previously said :

I see the 10 commandments (actually not all 10 – you can have the first four as self serving twonk) as humanity’s value system – it kind of evolved just like the whole standing up thing. Religion just nabbed it and chucked it in a burning bush. The best bit is some of us don’t need them as decreed rules, it just comes naturally.

Are you now seriously claiming that in non-human primate societies they don’t steal or shag their neighbour’s missus because it is morally unacceptable?

I am perfectly happy to accept that a chimps, for example, live by a set of rules which provide social order, for example you don’t steal or shag a dominant male’s missus cause you get a slap if you do, although the dominate male might well steal off you – cause no one will give him a slap.

If a less dominant male believed he’d get away with stealing then I’m sure he’d give it a go, I can’t believe that he would be worried about his “conscience” or that it was “morally unacceptable”, only that he might get a slap.

I don’t go around stealing from people not simply because I might get punished but because it would be morally unacceptable to me, even if I was certain to get away with it.

As I say, I’m sure other primates live by rules which provide social order and cohesion, I can’t believe that you can describe that as a moral code though.

I haven’t seen any evidence that morality predates religion, I’m sure the two arrived hand in hand. Along with music.

The violence in Ukraine?

Actually religion does play a small part in the violence in Ukraine. But your point is correct. Wars are power struggles. Religions give a sense of belonging and make an appeal to loyalty. But nations and states also do that, yet few people argue that nationhood is bad and all countries should be abolished. Although I probably would.

ernie lynch- I didn’t realise that religion had a part in the Ukraine violence, I stand corrected.

I haven’t seen any evidence that morality predates religion, I’m sure the two arrived hand in hand. Along with music.

What about dance, drama and art were they all non existent before religion

TBH i assume you are being humourous on this thread though I run this risk of you saying I am being personal

I didn’t realise that religion had a part in the Ukraine violence

Well I think it plays a minor part – the Orthodox East and the Catholic West. I believe that Ukraine means “borderland”, it’s historically been where West meets East, where different cultures converge.

I only made the point to emphasise that the situation in Ukraine is rather more complex than Russian aggression, as our media and government would like us to think. You have on the one hand eastern Ukraine which feels a close affinity with the East and Russia, and on the other hand western Ukraine which feels a closer affinity with Europe.

Ironically iirc Ukraine was historically once the centre of Russia and home to Russia’s capital city, it was in fact more ‘Russian’ than Moscow.