I hear these comments for not wanting to help people, and it feels like we’re worshipping individuality to the detriment of community, which is necessary for survival.
- “I don’t want my money going to ___ .”
- “This is not a democracy, it’s a constitutional republic!”
- “You don’t have any freedoms under socialism/communism.”
- “They’re just looking for a handout because they’re lazy.”
- “I’m a self-made man. I didn’t need anyone’s help.”
- “Empathy is not a virtue.”
- “I don’t see how that’s my problem.”
It’s been like that for a while (how did they get stomach chattle slavery, or the native genocide, or murdering brown people around the globe like Nam?), it’s the reason the rest of the world is very wary of Americans even if they don’t come in tanks and jets. Even Western Europeans are wary of Americans at this point, and they’re basically the same community!
I think that Roman Catholicism and offshoots (not the message of Jesus, but the unholy creation of the empire) are partly to blame, primarily the disinfo of Paul, the fed, with his “faith without works” and “you’ll be saved if you become a man worshipping polytheist!”. Ideology is very malleable, so we can do something about it, but Nietzsche already pointed to the struggle like 200 years ago and a solution proposed by the locals with local ideological tools hasn’t been found yet. Islam is the path forward for the West (and the rest of the world), but ofc you hate to hear it, even if it would offer an ideological framework based on the belief in God and objective morality (you gotta act right to save yourself, more or less Jesus’ message for everyone who’s actually read the Sermon of the Mount, for instance)… don’t forget that that gut reaction has been fostered by the powers that be in the same way that it was for the Japanese, the Vietnamese, the natives, the Africans, and now the Mexicans and Chinese. Maybe there’s something there, huh?
Replacing godheads and debating minute dogmatic differences between colonizer/authoritarian religions is not going to change things for the better. We’ve been doing that for millennia.
Emphasizing historical learning and perspectives from the breadth of the world as well as modern civic humanist principles in our communities sounds a lot more effective to me than replacing one fictitious narcissistic sky daddy with another. Go peddle your ancient brainrot elsewhere.
I really don’t think “we” have, certainly the West hasn’t (with even the term “sky daddy” showing the clear anthropomorphic nature of God in the Western man’s mind, because amoral paganism/polytheism never left, it was just superficially transformed…). The vast majority of people won’t hold themselves accountable when the pleasures of this world are too enticing if they don’t feel like they’ll be unavoidably held accountable by a higher power. With discernment, integrity, selflessness and a clear heart it’s possible to do so to a certain/great extent, but these traits are secondary in the West, where overpowering violence, trickery and the capacity to acquire goods and satisfy yourself are paramount. But whatever, I guess we’ll see.
I personally think people who do things because they fear retribution from sky daddy are the weakest of minds easily exploited by propaganda. Religious thought leads to malleable minds easily exploitable by religious leaders.
Religion is not the source of our social bounds and morality rather a parasite of control left over from ancient times. A vestigial organ that no longer has a use in the face of science but lives on in the body regardless.
I would say all magical thinking does this. This is why I say that things like astrology and homeopathy are not “harmless” but are rather actively harming the fabric of society by being accepted.
Not the person you’re replying to, but I’m an atheist or an agnostic and even I’m not so sure about that.
When given the idea that there is no retribution or reprocussion for their actions, many people become nihilistic and act terribly.
I agree that it’s weak to need a “sky daddy” to act properly, but many people are weak.
This is what you call a sociopath. If you need fear of eternal retribution in order to not do awful things, then you’re just a piece of shit.
There is good scientific evidence that people do not think about the consequences of their actions before they commit to them.
Criminals don’t think of the punishment they will receive by society but suddenly a far removed sky daddy will convince them not to rob a store? This is not how any of this works.
Morality is developed by our social bounds, otherwise every agnostic or atheist would be wildly out of control.
People are mentally weak because of religion, not despite it. It is the antithesis to critical thinking. The lack of critical thought is why our society is so easy to control.
I have seen this play out countless times in my life where people realize how fucked up their religion was once they have left it.
As their eyes open and they realize that they were being controlled by their religious leaders who abused them, they have to wrestle with the life that was stolen from them.
I am even to the point now where I no longer believe certain people need religion anymore. They need community and a sense of belonging and religious leaders like to highjack that basic need for their own selfish interests.
I think I agree with basically everything you’ve said here and especially this conclusion. The problem is that for many the only type of these things they can find is couched in religion. As a child-free atheist, I basically have no sense of belonging nor a community.
In addition, some people’s only exposure to even the very concept of morality or ethics comes through religion.
You have a community here which is probably more real and fulfilling than going to a church service. Here we are having a discussion you would never get in a typical church. We are both thinking together, discussing, without any authority to tell us otherwise.
Our sense of right and wrong simply don’t come from religion. It initially comes from our familial bounds but is reinforced through our many interactions with our social groups.
You can see this in gangsters that believe in God, but also will deal drugs and shoot each other. Their morality is determined by their social group, not their belief in religion.
As I said. I used to believe like you that religion is needed by some people, but I have begun to doubt this premise.
You’re confusing people who say they are/consider themselves A and do/are A with those who aren’t. You understand religion as a superficial, decorative thing because that’s the way it has been in the West since at least the days of Nietzsche, and as such their moral relativism is not surprising at all (ethics are belief/self-determination, check is-ought problem on wiki). Doomsider, I have walked your path, I just started earlier and I’m probably older as well. Your vitriolic gut reaction has to do more with your perception of religion and religious people in a Roman Catholic plus offshoots setting (or just some hypocrites from whatever religious group) than it has to do with belief and monotheism itself, your disappointment is expected. But you haven’t gotten it, you don’t understand what it actually means to believe in something and live your life accordingly in a similar way you understand gravity and don’t jump out of windows. Take care, merry winter solstice! 👋
Yeah no
… wut.
If anything, Atheism is the way forward.
Atheism is no way, it’s intellectually lazy, and cowardly fence-sitting that leads to/reinforces hedonistic nihilism and moral relativism. It’s just noticeably more internally consistent than Roman Catholicism and its trinitarian offshoots, but that’s like never dating again because your middle school boyfriend was mean… Atheism is the way like suicide is, and mostly something fall into by default, or emotional pain, or the need to feel unwatched and unaccountable so one can do nonsense, not some sort of “transcendental wisdom” that Europe came up with, lol. Even for Nietzsche, this is a tragedy (because he’s not a dummy!) without precedent, and something that needs to be corrected ASAP. If God is dead in the West, something needs to fill the God-shaped hole. Ideally, it’s God, but evidently it hasn’t been for ages (if some form of righteous monotheism even “trickled down” from Roman Catholicism to begin with!) and the results in their societies (amoral and selfish “get the bag” mentality, sexual depravity that’s applauded and openly talked about and taken as virtue/lightly, people living by inertia and for pleasure because they have no purpose nor do they even care to think about it, the “loneliness epidemic”, etc etc.) are very noticeable.
I think believing things without evidence is intellectually lazy. Atheism is the default position. I only believe in one less god than you.
What is the “evidence” behind moral stances?
For me it’s at least partially based on mutual aid, something that we also see in nature. Helping other people helps me (and the entire species as a whole).
That said, I’m not sure why you’re so convinced that morals need to be based on anything. I have empathy, that means I don’t want harm to come to others. It’s really that simple.
Of course you do, you were made that way, we all were! Religion/belief in a set of principles in an axiomatic, non debatable way just provide good guidance, a handrail in case your eyes get too big and, idk, you end up president of the free world and Raytheon wants to bribe you and you want a new yacht so you push for war in a far away land. Our nature can only go so far, for the rest of the time you will need a code and something to keep you accountable to it that’s bigger and outside of yourself, and Abrahamic monotheism helps us do that.
Sorry, the absence of god isn’t a hole. It means being a moral person for rational reasons and not because some author of a fairy tale, who also say things like “it’s cool to kill some people”, said so. Even if it ‘was a hole’, filling it with proper education is far superior in all respects.
Edit: and this is the first time I’ve seen someone argue that following a religion is NOT the intellectually lazy thing to do. Amazing.
You can’t science/big brain yourself into morals, you either believe in it or not (again, check Hume’s fork and the is-ought problem, the wise men in your tribe already talked about this!). And it’s not about believing in tales, but finding yourself in/agreeing the words of the prophets (like their moral lessons) enough that you start considering the background ideology of what they’re saying and then one day you’re a well-read God fearing man.