“What Jesus said was marvelous. What does it matter whether he was God or not?”
Well? Lots of people like to debate the existence of some deity or another, and I guess that’s good clean fun, but sometimes I wonder whether it’s done so much that we’ve stopped paying attention to the truly important parts of all religions, the parts that teach us about human nature and ask us to be better people. Are metaphysical questions raised by religions incidental to their deep meaning? Or is the metaphysical content, the echelons of seraphim, cherubim, and angels, the creation myths and miracles, is all this metaphysical “baggage” just as important a component of religion as the commandments and proverbs? Alternatively, maybe the entire question is flawed because it’s impossible to divide religious material into the categories of “insight” and “superfluous metaphysical justification”.
As the great philosopher Socrates once said, “I dunno”.
The difficulty, I think, is that religions do not inherently teach you to be a good person. Rather, they teach a particular set of beliefs and morals that not every person nor every culture agrees with. Take christianity, for example. On the surface it’s a pretty good thing, right? It seems to teach that we should all be good people by not causing harm unto others, treating ourselves and each other with respect, and helping out those in need, right? There are parts in it, though, that seem to betray the “nicer” teachings, such as the advocating of war and slavery. That’s not so cool. That’s why these things come up in conversations. Not everything in every religious text is sunshine and rainbows. There are some pretty messed up things going on. Even removing questions of divinity from the conversation, many religious texts are pretty hard to choke down as passing on a strong set of “good” morals.
That’s just my take on it, though. Perhaps owning slaves and warring with nations who didn’t agree with you was a sign of being a good person back in “the day”.
…and that was hardly a new idea at the time, anyway. The Golden Rule was in wide use (in Maat) during the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt, a couple of thousand years before J.H. Christ was even a twinkle in His father’s eye. Um. I mean His Father’s eye. (Oh, god, that trinity stuff does my head in).
Meatcube, I agree with you that most religions are inconsistent and sometimes wrong outright in their moral teachings. It makes sense that they would be; no source of information on anything is perfect. Even if you consider the bible to be the message of an omnipotent, omniscient deity, it makes sense that the humans recording and translating his words might make mistakes. However, I think it’s still important, despite these problems, to try to understand the beliefs and morals that are propagated by religions. Religions don’t “inherently teach you to be a good person” much more than a water-gun inherently makes you wet, but they try to and I think that that’s largely their purpose. If we can extract the good teachings and throw away what’s been proven bad, we’ll be that much closer to understanding morality and eachother.
Religion is a wonderful method of spreading morals and ethics, but I just don’t think it’s the best way. Really, people learn these things as they grow up with or without religion to guide them, it just depends on their environment. Religion is just part of that environment.
Religion isn’t a tool, though it is used as one.
Religion is an effect of a cause upon some of man.
Waist product isn’t a tool either, though it is used as one.
Waist product is an effect of a cause upon man; chiefly, eating causes waist product.
Religion is a waist product caused by the consumption of sensory input that compels the spiritual actions by the person.
Not everyone spits out the same waist product.
It depends what they eat and what their body needs.
Not everyone spits out religion.
It depends on their sensory input and what their body needs.
Equally, our waist product can be used to grow more food.
So too with religion.
But not every food is healthy for every person.
So too with religion.
All food is irrelevant unless your body requires that food specifically, or needs to stave that food specifically.
Then it is not irrelevant.
Then it is relevant.
Eat this; do not eat this.
Either that or suffer lack of health.
So too with religion.
I’m not sure how you can say that people learn morals and ethics with or without religion, when I can’t even name a society that hasn’t been exposed to it and accepted some form or another. Now, it’s true that religion might not be the best way to teach morality, but I think that when you try to replace something, first you try to understand what it is you’re replacing. If we look at how something has been taught in the past, we can take away clues as to how things should and should not be done. If on the other hand we go no further than to say over and over again (perhaps in novel and clever ways) that it was being taught wrong, we’re really shooting ourselves in the foot/foots/feet.
Simple enough; if you want to remove religion unilaterally for moral teaching, then you have to replace it with secularized ideology and iconification of the desired moral interests.
Not everyone needs it, but whether anyone realizes it or not, Religion is a large portion of such a role in any given society; even for those that are not involved in it.
It is a face of a set of ideals, in which morals are attached in part, and this causes reflection and consideration of such ideals even for those not adherent to it.
Such constructs have been done in history and they work.
However, suggesting that Religion is only for morals is short of it’s role, as we can see in history by the fact that where Religion has been removed, it is later brought back in a given society.
I don’t mean to suggest that religion is only good for passing along morals, but rather that’s one of it’s uses. I can’t hold the opinion that society without religion would be without morals, as religions are the creations of man and, thus, morals are the same. There is nothing remotely divine about treating each other with respect. It’s just common courtesy.
