On War & Religion

its impossible to measure all of the kindness and the support and the care that religious people have shown to the world as a result of their religious beliefs - nurses and teachers and coaches and medical organizations and homeless shelters and missionary work and every day people who give a little or give a lot and have been doing so for centuries because their religion or church or temple taughtthem that it was the lords will or the path to enlightenment or just the right way to live

yes it is easy to point to the harm and the violence - its much harder to quantify the goodness

balance

it was religion and religious thought which first asserted that life has any sort of inherent value at all

yes, a lot of evil has been done in the name of religion, and without condoning that i still say that the fact that we regard it as evil at all is because religious reverence informed us that we are capable of and should strive for better

OB1Shinobi wrote: it was religion and religious thought which first asserted that life has any sort of inherent value at all

This is false. It's actually false on multiple levels, too. First, the genes that do more to preserve their survival survive at a higher rate. That animals evolved to preserve themselves and their kin is a direct result of that and it happened long before the first religion. Also, the assertion that any life has inherent value is false by necessity, since "inherent value" is already something internally inconsistent. Value is an outcome of putting value upon things. It cannot be inherent by definition. Nor does a majority of largely popular religions in our day, and by that I mean religions with any global influence of note, teach that life has inherent value. The value of life they teach is often only as far reaching as the religion's tribe and doesn't extend even as far as to all mankind, and it is also, in most cases, contingent upon either ourselves, a cosmic impersonal justice and morality system, or a countable set of deities. Value and inherency are two incompatible things.

... the fact that we regard [said things] as evil at all is because religious reverence informed us that we are capable of and should strive for better

Religion is not only not the only source of morality, but it is of them all one of the poorest ones at that. It does not take religion to recognize something wrong about burning occupied villages by the dozens, but it does very much take religion to think there is something doomingly horrific about that delicious looking piece of penis skin. And how insulting this is to mankind, while we're at it, how insulting is that to the moral thinkers throughout the ages indeed! Dare ye not speak for the rest of us when you say you wouldn't know any better without religion. We would.

genetics does not in any way provide one with a sense that their life or any life has value beyond the immediately obvious, the immediate impulse - as a purely genetic being i may value my own life in the sense that i dont want to feel pain, and i dont want to die, and i may value a mate because i like sex - and i may value association with others because we get more wooly mammoth by working together, and because Urggh tells really funny dirty cave woman jokes and that entertains me, but once we begin to associate a deeper significance to ourselves than pain and sex and food and general entertainment we are entering into the realm of the religious - by definition - and this is where morality becomes JUSTIFIED

religion is the exploration of the ULTIMATE - ultimate reality, ultimate truth, ones ultimate journey as a soul or spiritual being

when we say "my life is valuable because i am intrinsically valuable" we have to justify this - and religion is the original source of this justification

you say that we dont need religion to tell us that its wrong to burn down a dozen villages - but i say that this is exactly what we need - or what we needED, and that until religion came along and told us that it was wrong, it wasnt wrong!

now that religion has informed us that there is a better way, we have the luxury of saying religion is pointless

but it was religious thought that developed human kinds first sense of morality, becauase it was religious thought which first asserted that human life has value beyond the immediate sense of pain and pleasure and delay of death

and ultimately it is religious thought which justifies any morality, because once you assert that there is value in life, beyond what we (or the subjective I) PREFER in the moment, you enter, by definition, the realm of the religious

if you dont agree then please, lets establish exactly WHY it is wrong to burn down a dozen villages

If it benefits me, if it simply entertains me, and i can get away with it, and my life is just as good after burning these village as it was before, maybe even better because the villages smelled bad and they played their music too loud, why shouldnt i do it?

what is WRONG about it?

Again, intrinsically valuable is already a nonsense term, because value is by definition contingent upon a subject and not a property of the object.
No, religion does nothing to justify morality, it merely asserts it. Just because a religion tells you to behave a certain way doesn't make that way right or any other way wrong, even if their claims about the will of the universe or any gods were true, because even with that will and even with a severely problematic coersive system of explaining why we better give a damn (or else), why anything is the right or good thing as opposed to any other remains unknown. Because God says so is not an explanation. It's a lazy way out of having to explain anything.
And no, both people and other animals have had compassion long before anything like religion existed. It went even so far that leaders would lose the support of their flock in raiding a neighbor. It is not until after religion came along that people began being perfectly fine with some of the most inhumane ideas their sick fringes came up with. It did not become any more wrong with religion telling us so than it was with my mommy telling me so, and our instincts as social animals were what both motivated us to not do horrid things to each other, what motivated our mommies to teach us not to do said horrid things, what made a prohibition of said horrid things part of some religions and what made other religions necessary to do said horrid things anyway.
And also no, you do not need to enter "the realm of the religious" to discuss motivations beyond the immediate and current.

As for your challenge, I could name a number of reasons why it is against my interests to burn down neighbor or even faraway villages. I could also try and argue from emotion, saying that my instincts as an empathic social animal deter me from doing such things, but I feel like behavioural studies of people and animals and moral philosophy has done more to this regard than I could ever do justice, so instead, since it was originally your assertion that we do need religion for questions of this kind and their justification, I shall point the challenge back to you:
Let's say I am a sociopath and a psychopath - a proper savage for all intends and purposes. I was born with no regard for the feeling or well-being of others. Let's say I have no foresight either and so cannot picture the consequences of my actions as they return back to me. Let's say I live at a time before religions were far spread and you are a traveller who was enlightened by a religion in a land beyond the mountains and so you come to my village on a mission to inform me and my tribe of how to live a better life. I am completely gullible on matters of fact and will accept any and all supernatural claims you make at face value, including the existence of deities, their will and your knowledge of their will, the existence of parallel worlds or reincarnations including punishments and rewards for a good lived life irrespective of the criteria.
So in other words, you can use any and all religious doctrines at their full capacity, but you cannot appeal to my compassion or consequences or honour.
Under these conditions, i.e. using religion alone, explain to me why I must not burn a neighbor village for their plentiful harvest or indeed why I must not burn you as an intruder into mine.

Gisteron wrote: Also, the assertion that any life has inherent value is false by necessity, since "inherent value" is already something internally inconsistent. Value is an outcome of putting value upon things. It cannot be inherent by definition. Nor does a majority of largely popular religions in our day, and by that I mean religions with any global influence of note, teach that life has inherent value. The value of life they teach is often only as far reaching as the religion's tribe and doesn't extend even as far as to all mankind, and it is also, in most cases, contingent upon either ourselves, a cosmic impersonal justice and morality system, or a countable set of deities. Value and inherency are two incompatible things.

1- i think i elaborated on this in my response but i wanted to add - did you really not understand the basic point i was expressing? i mean, i do respect that it is important to be as precise with our language as possible, but if we are communicating in a friendly and mutually uplifting way, do you really have to pick every damn thing apart to nth degree?

its very frustrating discussing topics with you because we get sidetracked on minutia for no better reason than that you find an opportunity to be critical and wont let it pass

but maybe that is only my impression and not your intent?

2 - EVERY religion teaches that there is a higher order of existence and that we are a part of that order - that we have a place and a purpose within it - THIS IS OUR VALUE and this is what religion does

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so you arent going to explain why it is wrong to burn down villages?
and your response to that is "NO YOU DO IT!" ?

well i think i will say that numerous religion systems have explained this far better than i could do

what is this time you speak of "long before religion existed"?

i am talking about RELIGION - the phenomena of religion itself and not just some particular religion, such as taoism or jediism

OB1Shinobi wrote:

Gisteron wrote: Also, the assertion that any life has inherent value is false by necessity, since "inherent value" is already something internally inconsistent. Value is an outcome of putting value upon things. It cannot be inherent by definition. Nor does a majority of largely popular religions in our day, and by that I mean religions with any global influence of note, teach that life has inherent value. The value of life they teach is often only as far reaching as the religion's tribe and doesn't extend even as far as to all mankind, and it is also, in most cases, contingent upon either ourselves, a cosmic impersonal justice and morality system, or a countable set of deities. Value and inherency are two incompatible things.

1- i think i elaborated on this in my response but i wanted to add - did you really not understand the basic point i was expressing? i mean, i do respect that it is important to be as precise with our language as possible, but if we are communicating in a friendly and mutually uplifting way, do you really have to pick every damn thing apart to nth degree?

its very frustrating discussing topics with you because we get sidetracked on minutia for no better reason than that you find an opportunity to be critical and wont let it pass

but maybe that is only my impression and not your intent?

2 - EVERY religion teaches that there is a higher order of existence and that we are a part of that order - that we have a place and a purpose within it - THIS IS OUR VALUE and this is what religion does

----


so you arent going to explain why it is wrong to burn down villages?
and your response to that is "NO YOU DO IT!" ?

well i think i will say that numerous religion systems have explained this far better than i could do

what is this time you speak of "long before religion existed"?

i am talking about RELIGION - the phenomena of religion itself and not just some particular religion, such as taoism or jediism

http://www.garvandwane.com/religion/religion1.html

im not sure that we can speak of a time "before religion came along" ?
my understanding is that the best of our modern thinking has determined that religion existed as far back as human beings can be said to be HUMAN BEINGS in the modern sense