On 2007-07-16 14:21:21 -0700, sdr <sdrodrian@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:
>> "So the dilemma is this: How do we choose between good and bad
>> instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We
>> should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we
>> love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short,
>> the ideal remains.
>>
>> Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma. It cannot reply: "Obey your
>> evolutionary instincts" because those instincts are conflicted.
>> "Respect your brain chemistry" or "follow your mental wiring" don't
>> seem very compelling either. It would be perfectly rational for someone
>> to respond: "To hell with my wiring and your socialization, I'm going
>> to do whatever I please."
>
> Consider, Mr. Gerson:
>
> If it were the case that religion is our instructor, then there would
> be no prisons. There are, and consider, further, that the most
> religious (at least professing to be) group in this country is the two
> million criminals in our prisons. 'Nouf said.
>
> But if you still think that morality/ethics is in any way/shape/form
> associated with religious belief, then but think about the depravity of
> priests and preachers --who have been caught. Shouldn't that, at least,
> be enough to remove any convictions you might have had about religious
> instruction "bettering" our "naturally evil nature."
One of my favorite responses to the bogus construct that only religion
keeps us evil and depravity is from the NYT and Slavoj Zizek 06-03-12,
"Defenders of the Faith". I'm not sure if it's non-member available or
not: http://tinyurl.com/255nz5
More than a century ago, in ''The Brothers Karamazov'' and other works,
Dostoyevsky warned against the dangers of godless moral nihilism,
arguing in essence that if God doesn't exist, then everything is
permitted. The French philosopher André Glucksmann even applied
Dostoyevsky's critique of godless nihilism to 9/11, as the title of his
book, ''Dostoyevsky in Manhattan,'' suggests.
This argument couldn't have been more wrong: the lesson of today's
terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up
thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted -- at least to those who
claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link
to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and
considerations. In short, fundamentalists have become no different than
the ''godless'' Stalinist Communists, to whom everything was permitted
since they perceived themselves as direct instruments of their
divinity, the Historical Necessity of Progress Toward Communism. [...]
> Further: People who think they should be good BECAUSE their God
> requires it are only setting themselves up for the most evil preacher's
> definition of The Good. Time and time again we have seen preachers
> "inform" their congregations that God wants them to fight this or that
> war (Confederate preachers urged their congregations to kill as many
> Yankees as possible), or to butcher and plunder this or that people (in
> the best of Islamic traditions, Turkish preachers told their
> congregations that murdering Armenians for their possessions (and
> raping their women and children before slaughtering them) was what God
> expected of them... and because acknowledging this monstrous truth
> about Islam before the whole world is so impossible, the Turks to this
> day refuse to acknowledge that the Armenian/Muslim genocide even ever
> took place).
Which is precisely how Zizek pursues it:
Fundamentalists do what they perceive as good deeds in order to fulfill
God's will and to earn salvation; atheists do them simply because it is
the right thing to do. Is this also not our most elementary experience
of morality? When I do a good deed, I do so not with an eye toward
gaining God's favor; I do it because if I did not, I could not look at
myself in the mirror. A moral deed is by definition its own reward.
David Hume, a believer, made this point in a very poignant way, when he
wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to act morally
while ignoring God's existence.
> But I don't have to prove to any parent that we are ALL born with
> unfettered instincts--to be "bettered" by the (sometimes even the most
> casual & offhand) instructions of our parents and societies: Every
> child KNOWS the difference between good and evil (deeds) by the time
> he/she is four or five. And if they don't, then that is a certain sign
> that such children live in a warped and perverted society or family.
Or for some other reason are simply sociopaths.
> The four-year-old who does "evil" may not yet know how to "get away
> with it," but he certainly knows he had better not get caught doing it.
>
> Therefore, if there be man or woman on this earth who still does not
> know the difference between Good and Evil... let them inquire of any
> (as-yet religiously- uninstructed) four-year-old: for he will surely
> know, and tell them.
Good one. "Out of the mouths of babes..." indeed.
--
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
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