POG Philosophy and Religion thread

[sufur]

i think you're answering your own question itt. there's something with human beans that make us not want to kill each other. despite the fact that we get angry, violent, irrational, etc. we don't want to kill each other. when we get too angy, etc and kill each other we then feel bad about it. some smart people in the past didn't have a means to explain why we felt this way so all kinds of gods evolved to explain it. there's a itty bitty chance that there is some kind of creator or maybe it's just that the universe has conciousness but it doesn't really matter. there's no reason to believe it and there's much more likely explanations.

[master3004]

Originally Posted by metsandfinsfan

i also have a hard time fathoming God really told him to kill a bunch of people

i believe people convince themselves of things liek that to rationalize what they want to do

But isnt that what most believers do anyway? Isnt it oddly coincidental when someone gets into a political race "because god told them to" and strangely enough that falls right in line with what that person wants?

[sufur]

religions evolved around the evolution of the idea of god(s). I'm sure most evolved altruistically and some were adapted/usurped as a means of control. again, some probably with good intentions and some not.

[metsandfinsfan]

Originally Posted by master3004

But isnt that what most believers do anyway? Isnt it oddly coincidental when someone gets into a political race "because god told them to" and strangely enough that falls right in line with what that person wants?

i dont think when someone robs a bank they are doing it because they think god told them to

[DonkDonkDonkDonk]

Originally Posted by metsandfinsfan

no in most of my experience, it seems that atheists often have higher morals in general

but i think it's impossible to be a theist and committ a truly heinous crime

Originally Posted by Adolf Hitler

Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.

Mein Kampf

[metsandfinsfan]

again donk you are talking about what tl is and that's not what i am speaking of

i give up

[DonkDonkDonkDonk]

sorry i hadn't read the whole thread at the point

[TimeLady]

I think that yes, fear of a god with stop 99% of religious people from committing crimes they believe they will get sent to hell for.

But that doesn't mean that without religion, they wouldn't also not do those things. Religion is just the easiest way to rationalise why we don't do certain things, and honestly, people do seek the easiest answer to their questions

[kokiri]

I think people are also awesome at coming up with complex and entirely spurious reasons to convince themselves why what they want to do doesn't contravene the rules when it clearly does.

[ObezyankaNol]

[metsandfinsfan]

Originally Posted by kokiri

I think people are also awesome at coming up with complex and entirely spurious reasons to convince themselves why what they want to do doesn't contravene the rules when it clearly does.

True but doesn't that mean they don't believe


I guess god and conscience are pretty synonymous to me

[bobman0330]

Can we talk about moral relativism?

In most philosophy that I've been exposed to, people don't seem to take moral relativism very seriously. I'd always been given to believe that if you accepted moral relativism, you'd have to be fine with the Holocaust, etc. However, I have recently been coming to the conclusion that not only is moral relativism true, it's hard to imagine a plausible argument against it without invoking supernatural/religious explanations that I don't accept.

What I mean by moral relativism is this. What people think of as moral precepts ("Don't murder people!") are not fundamentally different from tastes or preferences ("I like chocolate ice cream!"), except they are usually felt more strongly and the holder usually wants to see them applied universally. Furthermore, I don't see how there could be such a thing as knowable objective moral truths. I believe that human psychology is a product of evolution. Accordingly, our moral intuitions are also shaped by evolution. Therefore, our moral intuitions are not a useful guide to finding these hypothetical objective moral truths. Moreover, I have not seen anything that convinces me that these OMTs can be found by logical introspection. The fact that philosophers have been seeking them for millennia without succeeding is strong evidence that it cannot be done.

Am I missing something? Is this going to make me a serial killer or something? Not that there's anything objectively wrong with that.

[amplify]

Originally Posted by bobman0330

Can we talk about moral relativism?

it depends

[well named]

It's possible we're both missing something but yes it does seem to me that given a naturalistic/physicalist world view there really can't be anything that makes a particular moral framework necessarily correct or objectively absolute.

I'm not a naturalist but I don't think this implies that you must end up as a serial killer. I think typically naturalists go with an argument that certain kinds of moral systems are natural to human beings by virtue of their evolution (physically or socially?) and even if they aren't natural laws it doesn't really mean they are in danger of immanent collapse.

[amplify]

Originally Posted by bobman0330

The fact that philosophers have been seeking them for millennia without succeeding is strong evidence that it cannot be done.

plenty of philosophers have found OMTs. it's just that other philosophers disagree with them.