See how none of this actually pertains to a set of circumstances where the intellectual contraption Hellenic ascetic and the intellectual contraption Abrahamic and Buddhist ascetics and the intellectual contraption nihilist actually discuss what they mean by means and ends given a particular context most here will be familiar with.
How about in regard to suicide and subsistence?
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
Okay, discuss this in regard to your own God of choice. Given, say, a particular context. Indeed, even in regard to the either/or world it can be asked: Did God create the laws of matter because he chose them or did He choose them only because the laws of matter themselves offer no alternative.
At least that way if might be argued that God created our planet with its gruesome natural disasters, destroying countless human lives because He really had no other option. The laws of matter simply are what they must be.
Of course here we have an actual existential quandary. If a God, the God, your God loved goodness as encompassed in His Scripture, what of all the other Scriptures…where goodness might be construed in very different ways regarding the very same behaviors. Then [ultimately] we are back to the OP here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=197537
Only, again, given your own God of choice.
But I am inclined to at least accept that in the absence of God all things are permitted. Either given the nature of conflicting fonts or from the perspective of the sociopath.
Well, that’s certainly in sync with my own set of assumptions. No God, no morality. Or, if a mere mortal morality, one that is derived from hopelessly conflicting fonts. All of which would seem to lack in both omniscience and omnipotence.
And that’s the whole point of linking God and morality: He knows all so there is no getting away with it. And His reward is up and His punishment down. And for all of eternity.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
Here of course the discussion can shift to purely sociopathic behaviors. What sociopath is going to pursue mayhem in his or her interactions with others if he or she believes in a God fully capable of sending them to Hell for all of eternity? But with sociopaths it can often come down to this: the extent to which their behaviors are “thought through” philosophically or religiously. Some can basically become thugs, interested only in stomping on anyone that comes between them and their own self-gratification. But others can become entirely more sophisticated in their rationalizations. Think Nietzsche’s Ubermen. A whole philosophy concocted in order to make that crucial distinction between the masters and the slaves.
And I am certainly one of those who does conclude that ultimately this does come down to God and religion…or religion but No God. For some, why would they not justify all behaviors if there is no omniscient/omnipotent transcendent able to hold them accountable. Instead, they shift gears from “don’t do that” to “don’t get caught”.
Please. The only way atheists can become the moral backbone of any nation is in treating atheism itself as a religion. Once the moral backbone itself becomes one or another objectivist font, the next step is invariably “one of us” [the righteous] vs. “one of them” [the wretched].
As for the softer line, okay, note a moral inclination of your own that you are convinced is deeply embedded in your own “evolved psychology”. This mentality is what those like Satyr use to justify their racism, their sexism and their heterosexism.
Even though all human behaviors must be natural because human beings themselves are an inherent part of nature, some are more natural than others.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
More to the point, is it even possible to come up with precise conceptions in connecting the dots between religion and morality? Let alone when we take our existential leaps off the conceptual assessments and focus in on the world of actual human interactions that conflate religion and morality.
Again, the easiest to understand is the “Thou shalt not” approach from those who embrace a God, the God, my God given one or another actual Scripture. Although even here these Scriptures are, to say the least, open to interpretation.
But what of connecting the dots involving religious paths that revolve instead around Buddhism or pantheism or deism?
And science itself is said to revolve around the “scientific method”. How exactly would that be employed in probing the connection between religion and morality. What mixed results in particular?
Yes, that would be my point. Only I would suggest that in order to at least attempt to clarify any possible disputes, we zoom in on actual “situations” where there are conflicting assessments. Even though for some here that has absolutely nothing to do with “serious philosophy”.
With plenty of actual existential contexts? We’ll see.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
And, for many, recognizing that if morality is to have any lasting relevance in our lives, believing in God is almost beyond all doubt the starting point. With [most of them] we have both omniscience and omnipotence. And how can morality be pinned to the objectivist, ontological assessment without that? If you can get away with doing the wrong thing and never be punished for it what kind of a morality is that?
What are these in turn but emotional and psychological states that we all have the capacity to experience because the human species, as with many other animal species, are preprogramed by nature to embody them in our interactions with others. But, unlike any other species, the moral dimension here is applicable to us in a way that it is not for these other species. There isn’t even really any comparison in terms of how individual members of the human species can be all up and down the behavioral spectrum. Which is merely to point out the obvious: Memes R Us.
Yes, that’s how it works. Given particular historical and cultural and interpersonal contexts [rooted in dasein] how each of us as individuals react to these things can be truly “vast and varied”.
How isn’t that exacly my point about your own value judgments? It is only the religious objectivists among us who insist that it’s their path or doom.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
Isn’t it then obvious why supposed “insights” like this are ever and always bundled up in a “world of worlds”? In “conceptions”? In “general description intellectual contraptions”?
After all, you tell me: how, given a particular context, do you intertwine “doctrines, songs, and other culturally distributed networks of ideas” that you’re familiar with, with “outcomes of quite distinct psychological processes and functions”…given actual experiences from your own life.
On the other hand, this part…
“…both religion and morality can be endlessly assembled and reassembled in culturally and historically contingent ways…”
…makes sense to me as soon as you do begin to connect the dots between a “world of words ‘conceptual’ assessment” and the sheer convoluted complexity of all the ever evolving and changing variables tangled up in the life that you live.
Thus, when those like Fixed Jacob come here and start in with their “conceptual assessment” of astrology how is this…
“Like the constellations of the astrologer’s imagination, these assemblages of psychological and behavioral traits and tendencies may be artificial, contingent, and arbitrary, rather than grounded in any stable underlying regularities.”
…not basically my own point? Astrology, like religion is just another font to anchor the Real Me in. And “the celestial bodies” become just another God to yank your own responsibilities farther away. God and these heavenly bodies pull our strings in ways that are just “beyond our control”.
The point I often come back to. In other words, that historically, culturally and personally, religions are invented precisely in order to provide us with that font we can attach objective morality to “in our head”. But by no means futile if you simply sweep the “circular logic” under the rug and think yourself into believing that this is only the case with their Gods and their religions…not yours.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
On the other hand, given a particular moral conflict relating to a particular set of circumstances, where exactly does moral psychology end and the psychology of religion begin. Human psychology in a free will world clearly revolves around trying to figure out what any specific thing means in the context of grappling with what everything intertwined into the “human condition” means.
And, even given our own tiny slice of that, the relationship between them is going to be murky at times to say the least.
In fact, how do you make that distinction yourself given a situation in which your own moral convictions were challenged?
The bishop of course is the very embodiment of the psychology of religion: a God, the God, my God. But where does his moral psychology fit into my own assumption regarding dasein, conflicting goods and political economy? In other words, “politics” is but one more contributing factor to our collective “failure to communicate”. Maybe God should have thought that part through more when He created us.
And here’s how far that “failure to communicate” can go:
What objective moral truths would you impart to him in order to change his mind? After all, are there or are there not those among us who argue that rape is, in fact, perfectly “natural”? And God has been used to rationalize everything from slavery to genocide.
Consider:
emergencenj.org/blog/2019/01/04 … ne-slavery
focusonthefamily.com/family … -holy-war/
So, where exactly does one draw the line between moral psychology and the psychology of religion here?
You tell me.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
We need take no stand until those who oppose our own “moral concerns” put us in a position whereby, in challenging particular behaviors of ours, there are actual consequences. Think clitorectomies and sharia law and those who refuse to allow their children to be seen by medical professionals. Any number of moral objectivists [God or No God] are adamant in going beyond description to proscription.
Think this “clash of cultures” from Michael Novak’s The Experience Of Nothingness
[b]"Jules Henry:
“Boris had trouble reducing 12/16 to the lowest terms and could only get as far as 6/8. The teacher asked him quietly if that was as far as he could reduce it. She suggested he ‘think’. Much heaving up and down and waving of hands by the other children, all frantic to correct him. Boris pretty unhappy, probably mentally paralyzed. The teacher quiet, patient, ignores the others and concentrates with look and voice on Boris. After a minute or two she turns to the class and says, ‘Well, who can tell Boris what the number is?’ A forest of hands appears, and the teacher calls on Peggy. Peggy says that four may be divided into the numerator and the denominator.”
"Henry remarks:
“Boris’s failure made it possible for Peggy to succeed; his misery is the occasion for her rejoicing. This is a standard condition of the contemporary American elementary school. To a Zuni, Hopi or Dakota Indian, Peggy’s performance would seem cruel beyond belief, for competition, the wringing of success from somebody’s failure, is a form of torture foreign to those non-competitive cultures.”[/b]
“Stands” will either be taken given contexts of this sort or they won’t. Describing human interactions given conflicting cultural approaches to religion and morality doesn’t make Boris’s misery go away. Only efforts to actually change the culture to one less competitive will.
Same with God, morality and sex…
Clearly, in any number of nations where “appropriate sexual behavior” is a major moral concern, religion plays a fundamental role in sexual politics. The theocracies for example. And even in the West any number of ultra-orthodox and evangelical communities impose religious strictures in the form of sexual taboos.
Only with God, religion and morality comes Judgment Day. Immortality, salvation…Heaven and Hell.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
The “one of us”/“one of them” coin. And these coins have always been around throughout the entirety of human history. At times when different communities made contact with each other, and at times when, from within a particular community, conflicts arose over what exactly the “rules of behavior” ought to be even among our own.
Then it came down to the extent to which Gods and religious denominations were involved.
Yes, all of these things and more. But then the part where even within “our community” as a whole, these things were made applicable only to those we recognized as “one of us”. In regard to, among other things, race, ethnicity, gender roles, sexual orientation, religion. And of course class.
Right now HBO is airing the series, The Gilded Age. Lots of “warm fuzzy” virtues shared among those who are just like us. Old money vs. new money. And ever and always race and gender. God not so much. At least not so far.
Yes, that’s basically always been my point. There has never been a “one size fits all” niceness such that those like anthropologists or historians discovered that in community after community down through the ages certain behaviors were always deemed to be nice and there was no distinction made between “one of us” and “one of them”.
I just go beyond the historical and cultural differences and focus more on how even our individual lives with their individual sets of experiences can result in assessments of “nice” that vary considerably.
pardon the interruption (moo) but …
self=other
us=them
same same
Imperfect humans screw it up… That you can see it means there is a God that can fill your hole.
That’s what She said.
k bye
Like I said, she must spend hours and hours days and days agonizing over each word in these “miraculous” posts. [-o<
Note to Meno:
Are you coaching her? 
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
‘Prosocial behavior, or intent to benefit others, is a social behavior that “benefit[s] other people or society as a whole”, “such as helping, sharing, donating, co-operating, and volunteering”. Obeying the rules and conforming to socially accepted behaviors are also regarded as prosocial behaviors.’ Wikipedia
“What is religious Prosociality?
‘…a religious principle associated with the protection of the religious group, and a supernatural principle associated with the belief in God, or other supernatural agents.’” psycnet.apa.org
Again, as always, we need actual social contexts to make these distinctions clearer. Also, prosocial behavior would seem to be just as applicable in Humanist communities as religious ones.
And while many would argue that scientifically one is not able to differentiate moral from immoral behavior socially, politically and economically, how about philosophically? What would constitute the philosophical equivalent of the “scientific method” in establishing something like this?
Though again with God in the Script there is a transcending font supposedly able to provide the flocks with the spiritual equivalent of “the final answer”. Though even as it pertains to the same God, there can be conflicting interpretations of what constitutes being either “prosocial” or “antisocial”. And even within the Christian tradition alone there are many denominations – uua.org/re/tapestry/youth/b … 7545.shtml – such that what might constitute being “prosocial” and “antisocial” might be different among them.
Then any possible squabbles among them as to how connect the dots between “religious prosociality” and morality. With respect to “the protection of the religious group, and a supernatural principle associated with the belief in God, or other supernatural agents”.
Where do Roman Catholics and Evangelicals and Baptists and Jehovah’s Witnesses etc., overlap and where are they at odds…given particular sets of circumstances.
Religion does not determine your morality
From The Conversation website
It’s all about God. In fact, I’ve never been able to really understand how No God religious paths are able to connect the dots between “I” on this side of the grave and “I” on the other side. If there is no God to judge your behaviors here and now what exactly is it that determines your fate there and then?
No, seriously…how does that work?
And God because most Gods are said to be omniscient and omnipotent. There is no getting away with behaving immorally because God sees all. And there is no question of not being punished for choosing to live off the righteous path.
And while Humanism can concoct secular renditions of objective morality there is no transcending font to turn to when these renditions themselves come into conflict. And whatever justice follows you to the grave, you are still only on your way back to star stuff for all the rest of eternity. “I” is at one only with oblivion without God. Or with how No God religious paths bring about immortality.
And salvation?
Religion does not determine your morality
From The Conversation website
It can’t be entirely clear because among ourselves here there are a wide range of Christians…some are very conservative and interpret God’s Scripture as condemning homosexuality and abortion and pretty much in line with the policies of, say, Donald Trump. Other, progressive Christians, using the same Scripture, come to opposite conclusions.
Then there are those who put emphasis on the meek inheriting the Earth while others insist that God wants you to be rolling in the dough.
Some say that without God all things can be rationalized. But, apparently, with God, most things can be too.
And some put emphasis on Judgment Day…on Heaven or Hell…while others insist that their own “private and personal” Christian God forgives all.
Thus…
The part I root in dasein. Christianity is much like any other set of value judgments. You are indoctrinated as a child to believe or not to believe in it. You have experiences as an adult that bring you toward it or away from it.
So, in acknowledging this, how then are you able to determine beyond a leap of faith or a “wager”, if the Christian God is the optimal [or the only] path to objective morality on this side of the grave and immortality and salvation on the other side?
Well, you tell me.
The part where morality [even religious morality] evolves over time historically and culturally. For example, with Christianity in the Feudal era, the Catholic emphasis on the afterlife and then, with the advent of capitalism, the birth of Protestantism in which the emphasis [for many] shifts to life on this side of the grave. It’s still important to tend to the poor but it’s also important to “live long and prosper”.
Religion does not determine your morality
From The Conversation website
In a word: dasein.
Each Christian connected to the God of Abraham is no less connected through their own childhood indoctrination and their own uniquely personal experiences connected to Him subjectively, existentially, problematically.
Indeed, just imagine if the truly preposterous stuff from the Old Testament were taken literally: lifelessons.co/spirituality/bible/
Or the things God endorsed: salon.com/2014/05/31/11_kin … e_partner/
Or the mass killings: bethinking.org/bible/old-te … s-killings
And where does this internal moral compass come from if not from the manner in which I construe the self here as the embodiment of dasein? Especially in our “postmodern world” where interpretation is all the rage. For many, religion is just another cafeteria line from which to pick and choose the God least likely to impose actual onerous obligations on you. Religion-light as it were.
On the other hand, the fanatics…
From the Philosophy Now forum…
Are you telling me that the omniscient God of Abraham could not come up with a Scripture such that the terrible inquisitions, crusades, and wars fought down through the ages between Christians, Muslims and Jews over what God’s words meant couldn’t instead have been entirely avoided?!
And what of those born before the alleged birth of Christ? Those who never even heard of Christianity? What of those who go to the grave worshipping an entirely different God precisely because no one ever brought your God to their attention?
What of their fate on Judgment Day?
Again, unbelievable. Gravity is applicable to all men and women down through the ages and across the globe. No exceptions.
But people born hundreds or thousands of years ago, and in countless cultural contexts producing any number of conflicting moral and political agendas…objective is objective here too?
Again, the only reason you are able to assert that here is because you merely assume that this objective morality is derived from a Christian God that you basically refuse to take here…
1] to a demonstrable proof of the existence your God or religious/spiritual path
2] addressing the fact that down through the ages hundreds of Gods and religious/spiritual paths to immortality and salvation were/are championed…but only one of which [if any] can be the true path. So why yours?
3] addressing the profoundly problematic role that dasein plays in any particular individual’s belief in Gods and religious/spiritual faiths
4] the questions that revolve around theodicy and your own particular God or religious/spiritual path
…given a particular set of circumstances.
Again, my point does not revolve around accusing someone of murder, but in establishing that the accusation itself is warranted because it can be established in turn that murder itself is immoral. And [of course] what you do here in order to “establish” that is to insist that such things ever and always go back to the subjective, rooted existentially in dasein assumptions you make about the Christian God! Around and around you go!!
Just as those who worship and adore an entirely different God will.
Meanwhile…
Where is this God? Are you able to produce Him? demonstrate to us why we should accept your own “private and personal” set of assumptions?
No, of course not. Instead, yours is just another leap of faith, another wager.
Again, let’s bring this down to Earth.
Here are the scheduled executions coming up Texas.
tdcj.texas.gov/death_row/dr … tions.html
Now, given your own understanding of the existential relationship between this behavior, objective morality and the Christian God, how are we to understand “incommensurable” here?
Now, from my frame of mind in a No God world, there does not appear to be a way for philosophers to establish if capital punishment is in fact either Good or Evil behavior. Instead, different individuals having led [at times] very, very different lives will be predisposed existentially to embrace conflicting political prejudices.
What say you?
Instead, you bring it “down to Earth” given a different context…
Well, at least there is no mention of pixies and unicorns.
More to the point [mine] atheists who subscribe to moral nihilism as I understand it do come to conclude that human conflict in a No God world that is essentially meaningless and purposeless, ending for each of us one by one in oblivion, is neither good nor evil.
Sans God, how could it possibly be either one?
On the other hand, this can be no less but somewhere in between an educated and a wild ass guess given “the gap” and "Rummy’s Rule.
I mean, given just how utterly insignificant “I” am in the context of “all there is”, what could I possible really know about any of this.
It’s just that I suggest in turn that this is applicable to you too. Indeed, that’s why I suspect further it is so important for those like you to believe in things like Christian Gods. Something, anything to anchor I in.
Try this…
Go here: sciencechannel.com/show/how … ks-science
Watch a few episodes in order to grasp just how profoundly mysterious “all there is” is. See if you can connect them to your Christian God.
Religion does not determine your morality
From The Conversation website
Now ask yourself this: where do their opinions come from? How about this: through one or another complex intertwining of their religious indoctrination and their own distinctive, idiosyncratic experiences all jumbled up in their relationships with others and the particular sequence of information they happened to bump into through newspapers, books, magazines, movies and the like. Thus, as with fingerprints, no two minds here are ever really going to be alike.
On the other hand, that doesn’t stop most from insisting that their own take on God has nothing to do with any of that. No, they have convinced themselves they really are able to capture God so as to capture precisely what God has commanded of us in our quest to choose a righteous path.
Why might this be the case? My own conjecture here revolves around what I call the “psychology of objectivism”. Once you come to invest the meaning and the integrity of I in a particular moral narrative, that becomes the source of your “comfort and consolation”. And not even God and “persuasive essays” are going to come between you and that. You see what you already know. And with luck for your “peace of mind” all the way to the grave.
Religion does not determine your morality
From The Conversation website
Yes, but which religion? Revolving around which alleged God over the length and breadth of thousands of years in communities that worshipped and adored every imaginable rendition of Him that, well, could be imagined. And then all of the No God facsimiles with their own [to me] wholly unintelligible No God immortality and salvation.
Then we pile on all of the No God Period secular fonts derived from the simple fact that when human beings interact there is no getting around the absolute necessity for “rules of behavior”. Prescriptions and proscriptions which reward this and punish that.
And then when, re Marx, surplus labor derived from our more recent political economies allowed for the existence of philosophers, those able to concoct all manner of “philosophical” narratives, it still doesn’t change that basic reality.
From or not from religion, nature more or less than nurture, morality comes from the very existence of the human condition itself.
Thus…
Of course, all I do is to explore that “place” given my own set of assumptions here. Though, unlike most, the “place” I’ve come to has resulted in my own moral philosophy having been deconstructed into a “for all practical purposes” fractured and fragmented sense of futility. I don’t see the glass either half full or half empty…but having fallen to Earth and been shattered in a thousand pieces.
And all derived from the assumption that a God, the God does not exist.
Though, by all means, if you can convince me that He does, give it your best shot.
Why are people calling Bitcoin a religion?
The Conversation website
by Joseph P. Laycock
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Texas State University
[b]Religion:
1] “the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.”
2] “a particular system of faith and worship.”
3] "a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance.[/b]
Given religion in its broadest sense there are any number of human behaviors that can be described as religious. Certainly some construe capitalism as a religion. Those like Ayn Rand worshipped and adored the almighty dollar by eschewing all “supernatural” components and insisting that philosophically a rational mind could defend capitalism as the most logical and epistemologically sound economy. And then all that follows from this in regard to social and political interactions.
Okay, Bitcoin is, what, a new currency? You use it as a means to purchase those things that then revolve around whatever you think yourself into believing the ends in your life should be. You might use it to sustain your religious beliefs or your political prejudices or your preferred “causes”. Just as the accouterments of any particular religion are used to deepen your faith there.
But how then, as with traditional religion, is it more than a means to an end? How does it make sense to worship and adore Bitcoin as one would worship and adore a God or an ideology or a school of philosophy?
On the other hand, where do the Bitcoin zealots come down on immortality and salvation? Bitcoin only on the other side?
So… it’s the same idol it’s always been. The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.
all the volcanoes blow up