DBMIJWHIDMTR is the topic of this thread, and it stands for: Don't blame me, I just work here, I don't make the rules. This is the inherent argument implied whenever we try to attach universal value to anything, such as life, and justify it by saying that God has created and/or attached that value. God is the ultimate upper-management, the ultimate top floor bigwig, the CEOmygod. I'm not talking about a specific religion's view on God either, I'm talking about any religion that uses the concept of a higher power in order to attach meaning, value, and significance to Earthly things. Think of it like this. You have an office with workers, and your standard inter-office chain-of-command. You're going to have a variety of positions, people, and policies. How do you apply standards to all? You create a business wide policy, and you do it from upper management so that it's not up to an individual manager or supervisor's personal opinion or method of doing things. In the business world, especially in a non-public business where you don't have a board of directors with a rule-by-group structure, your chain of command pretty much ends with the president/owner/whomever is on the very top of that particular business structure. In the case of religion, that's obviously God. God as a concept is the natural progression of the chain-of-command only God is in charge of all humanity and his policies apply to all. This is why the God concept is absolutely 100% necessary, because without it, there is no intrinsic value to anything, because that value has to come from somewhere. Gold is only valuable because people want it, and have decided that it is worth more than tin or iron pyrite, but leaving the intrinsic value of things, especially life, up to subjective human philosophy is dangerous, because there are no objective universal standards. In fact, the only things in this world that I would consider to have a real intrinsic value are water, and to a lesser extent, air. Without those two things, there is practically no life at all on this planet(though that does not discount the possibility that life would have evolved differently without them, but since our sample size is made up of Earth and Earth alone, we don't know that life can occur with any other setups). We NEED the God concept in order to teach morality. Not always, people can figure out mindsets that value life and objective morality without the need of a out-of-reach authority figure to justify it, you just can't claim that those views are universal and objective. Hence the reasoning of "Don't blame me, I just work here, I don't make the rules". God makes the rules, we just work here. The problem is, I don't know that humanity would have been able to advance this far WITHOUT the God concept. It's an intellectual dilemma I have grappled with for most of my life. An entire system based on something that is entirely unprovable(as of yet anyway), yet absolutely vital to most of the advances in human history. This is why, of all the people who have spoken about religion over the course of history, one man's words stand-out above all the rest for their ability to cut right to a cold hard truth. That man is Voltaire, and what he said was "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him".
I don't completely disagree with your concept. But.... Many primitive tribes had no concept of an all powerful God, and many times their creation myths did not include one. They operated on tribal morals and considered certain things absolutes. Norse, Greek and Roman polytheism, does not allow for an all powerful god but instead has a kind of boss god who is at the mercy of absolute or mystical elements. The Romans and Greeks did pretty well for not having a mono-theistic all powerful creator god. In the east neither Confucianism nor Buddhism ascribe to an all powerful god. I will give you this though; I think everyone has some hidden concept of a God who rules us. Some call it faith, some call it science, but it is the thing that gives objective reality meaning and beauty. Giving it a name and locking it in some box of tradition, dogma or deductive reasoning is as pointless as putting a value on infinity.
This is a very interesting thread topic. I will have to disagree, however, due to certain things we're discovering about morality's connection to genetics. Instinctually, humans usually have a default level of compassion. There are certain morals that are effectively passed down genetically that have aided our organization and survival since the earliest times. Now, it is true that some people are born without a conscience. Sociopaths are people that inherently lack this sense of compassion found in most humans. We notice them not just because they often defy social norms but because they truly do not have what most of us would consider "morality" in the traditional sense. It's also true, however, that morality is molded by social contexts. Children subjected to psychological trauma can become sociopathic. This is most blatantly shown by the creation of "child soldiers" in wartorn parts of Africa. By the same token, our prejudices are also formed by cultural contexts and parental guidance. We aren't born thinking that homosexuality is wrong. That's an acquired view that is dependent on the social context. Most of us are born knowing that the suffering of another is bad. This is reinforced by social norms that punish violence and murder. To a lesser extent, stealing also fits into this category, although numerous cultures have alternative views on property. In many Native American cultures, property was considered purely public and communal. The general understanding was that no one would hoard property for themselves and people could share things without issues. This is somewhat linked to how many cultures also viewed borders differently from the West before the modern age. As for the necessity of religion for morality, I don't believe it has as much to do with that as it does the natural tendency for humans to want answers. For the majority of our existence, things like microorganisms and basic physics were unknown to us. This lack of knowledge made the world around us a scary and uncertain place. Naturally, our intellect demanded to know the answers to the various questions we had about life in general. Due to our social and emotional natures, we compensated for this by myths. Without having an empirical means to determine the workings of the world around us, we created beings responsible for how and why things happen. Diseases were curses caused by wrongdoing or offending the gods, for example. How religion played into morality had two facets: 1) it served as a means for controlling the behavior of the more sociopathic members of society. While sociopaths lack a conscience, they still have a self-preservation instinct, and so belief that an all-powerful being would punish them was often enough to keep them from doing things to harm others. 2) it created a social order useful to the ruling class. Up until relatively recently in human history, most authority structures justified their power through divine right. Surely, the strongest claim to authority is that God himself demands your obedience.
Junkieturtle, you seem to believe that morality is something external to the person. Like laws are external (as they are a societal concept rather than a personal one). This is not the case. Morality is the sum of personal experiences regarding social acceptance. Chain of command, also known as hierarchy, is an entirely different kind of social construct. Upper-management is required for law but it is never required for morality. On the contrary, it often leads to the exact opposite.
It's both. Your morality is a part of yourself, but the morality of those around you is something that affects you as well. Plus, your internal morality can be shaped and guided by the external morality around you.
the god i herd about i church seemed evil to me at times that’s part of why im no longer a believer but even if that god exists im not sure i would agree with it and it would not be a moral authority just by existing strike oppressed workers of the world
God concept isn't even a good indicator of morality. Let's take any God's teachings and apply them literally to our existence. You know the outcome...death. Our current morality is HEAVILY influenced by enlightenment philosophical concepts, not God concepts.
The value of god is subjective as well. I don't value god. Are you going to tell me not to murder because your or someone else's imaginary god says so? I don't care. And which god will you use to justify your morality? Which version of scriptures? Which interpretation? The concept of god and religious morality is not universal or universally respected, so, I'm sorry, bringing religion into is of no help. Whether people are religious or not religious, their values are subjective, as is their morality. It's all relative, with or without the concept of god. Bringing god into just incites emotional reactions instead of logic and evidence. You have freaking morons flipping out in the Middle East because of their ridiculous subjective, religious morality. You have morons in the US shooting at teachers over science class, and firebombing clinics over personal medical procedures. Religious morality is more likely to lead to crazy behavior than non religious. I'd say using god is less effective and less rational. And there are plenty of societies that don't rely on religion for their morality. Some other animals have morality and are a hell of a lot more peaceful than stupid violent humans.
I understand a what you're saying and agree with a lot of it. It's the downside to the God concept, but it doesn't speak to why the God concept was invented in the first place, and why there are a great many people who still rely on the idea of an omnipotent authority figure to prop up universal morality. Me personally, I don't believe in God, and I don't need an all powerful authority figure threatening me with (*)(*)(*)(*)ation in order to live what even the bible would consider a just and moral life. Problem is, not everyone is going to reach that conclusion, and when you're trying to control large groups of people, or at least get them on the same page, you need a unified set of guidelines and a standard to rally under(God). I suppose what needs to be discussed is what a "moral" life actually is. What are morals we can all agree on?
There are no morals we can all agree on, religious or not, which, again, is why religion is unnecessary for morality and certainly not a source of universal morality. I mean, you seem to just completely ignore my points and just repeat yourself even after I point out how religious people do not all agree and can get really emotional and violent about it.
That other people exist externally to you, to whom morality is also an internal business, does not change the nature of morality. Law is directed at maintaining a functioning society. Morality is directed at maintaining social acceptance of the individual. The two constructs naturally overlap in contents since society consists of individuals but it doesn't change that either serves different purposes. Here's an illustration. You're giving a coworker a daily lift to work in your car. The speed limit says 50 mph but both you and your passenger are accustomed to the stretch of road and even though you both know it's a clear violation of the law, it's not really an issue to either of you that you speed along at 75 mph. Now imagine that you turn to your coworker and tells him that you're having sex with his 19 year old daughter. Even though you both know it's NOT a violation of the law, do you think it will be an issue to anyone of you?
That other people exist externally to you, to whom morality is also an internal business, does not change the nature of morality. Law is directed at maintaining a functioning society. Morality is directed at maintaining social acceptance of the individual. The two constructs naturally overlap in contents since society consists of individuals but it doesn't change that either serves different purposes. Here's an illustration. You're giving a coworker a daily lift to work in your car. The speed limit says 50 mph but both you and your passenger are accustomed to the stretch of road and even though you both know it's a clear violation of the law, it's not really an issue to either of you that you speed along at 75 mph. Now imagine that you turn to your coworker and tells him that you're having sex with his 19 year old daughter. Even though you both know it's NOT a violation of the law, do you think it will be an issue to anyone of you?
