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If Religion was to disappear would you be okay if we made what would be considered cold decisions for advancement then, and solely adopted the philosophy "survival of the fittest".

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DivineIntensity said:
"Another favourite argument of the irreligious is that conflicts fought in the name of religion are necessarily conflicts about religion. By saying this they hope to establish that religion is of itself a cause of conflict. This is a crude factual misunderstanding. The only general lesson that can be drawn is that Man is inclined to make war on Man when he thinks it will gain him power, wealth or land." - Peter Hitchens

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StonedStan said:

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DivineIntensity said:
"Another favourite argument of the irreligious is that conflicts fought in the name of religion are necessarily conflicts about religion. By saying this they hope to establish that religion is of itself a cause of conflict. This is a crude factual misunderstanding. The only general lesson that can be drawn is that Man is inclined to make war on Man when he thinks it will gain him power, wealth or land." - Peter Hitchens

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Also let's not attack straw men, or have ad hominem arguments.  I am not a theist, but that doesn't mean that I can't think or that I am automatically immoral.  Peter Hitchens is simply wrong that religion in and of itself is not a cause of conflict.  Look at Islam, and your logic is destroyed.  Islam is a repressive, war based religion and if you don't believe it you should read the Koran.

There is a reason why Christopher was better known.

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StonedStan said:

Give an example of objective morality.  Give me a hard moral decision that has a clear solution and I could entertain the idea of objective morality.  I can't see objective morality because all I see are minds interpreting data as best as they know how.  I don't see any clear set of rules or laws governing man's actions.  I see laws of nature, but they are indifferent to morality.

Religion isn't going to stop those men.  Hell, the bible tells the Jews to have their way with the Canaanites when Joshua goes on his circumcision raid.  If anything the religious ones will do the bad deed and then go to be "forgiven".  Catholics priests, perfect example.

Thanks for clearing that up   It gets heated sometimes in these types of discussions but really I am not meaning to get under anyones skin.  I just enjoy philosophy.

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StonedStan said:

hmmm I'm not sure.  Maybe, but it certainly doesn't seem like it does.

A moral code that is simple is good with me.  Like do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt anyone else

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I'm okay with that this discussion has been interesting brother, let's see if anyone else responds.

blingbling said:

Give an example of objective morality.


i will not be so blind as to claim my subjective view of morality is gospel but we must at least entertain some thought experiments in order to gain a full view of morality.

if you want to find something like an objective morality then walk into your neighbors house and try to rape his child in front of him. obviously i do not want you to do that but lets entertain another idea. go to the north pole and try to rape a polar bear cub in front of it's mother. what i'm getting at here is that there seems to be some common taboo's among many mammals. these taboo's are not set in stone but nothing really is. to ask for objective morality is to ask too much.

many people who claim they have no morals (i'm not saying you have no morals) will actually act as if they do have morals. this is crucial. it's not really what we say we believe as much as it is how we behave which shows our moral character. i do not believe there is objective morality but i do believe in morality itself.

the true problem is not one of "do we or do we not have morals?". the real problem is what these morals lead to. often those who are most outspoken on a topic such as freedom are actually the biggest threat to freedom. like the cia agent who tortures people in order to defend his countries freedom.

morality can often lead to moral purism which is a great threat to genuine morality. by claiming moral purity one can justify anything. also when the moral purist finds that he/she is not as moral as they had once thought they will blame someone else because their purity is unquestionable. morality is a sticky subject. in many ways morality is the moral problem. good people do bad things because it's moral. ideology plays a crucial role in this. being moral is not about what someone says but about what is not said. it is the underlying ideology which pushes for immoral morality. for example: a nazi may have thought it more moral to gas jews rather than shoot them. the problem is that ideology pigeon holes morality until there is nothing moral that can be done. this is true evil.

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DivineIntensity said:

if a moral code can be changed it is not a code at all, and if we have no code to live by we can do w/e it is we please.

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Rhizoid said:

DivineIntensity said:

if a moral code can be changed it is not a code at all, and if we have no code to live by we can do w/e it is we please.

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I don't agree. A changed moral code is still a moral code. If the purpose of the code is still served after it has been changed, then it's not correct to say it's equivalent to having no code at all.

Compare with other codified rules. Changing a rule is not equivalent to having no rule at all. Countries that have switched from driving on the left to driving on the right can confirm that this is true.

Morality is relative. What is right for the lion is not right for the zebra, because the lion and the zebra generally don't share the same purpose when they go about their daily business. That doesn't mean that no shared purposes exist, just that morality is always relative to some purpose. I don't know if there are purposes that are shared by all creatures, but if there are then there might also exist some kind of universal moral rule. The scope of such a rule would however be limited to a particular shared purpose.

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