Sunday School

[Daniel W.Participant]

@strega, thank you.  You made be blush.

 

@regthefronkeyfarmer, Thanks Reg for the explanation.  I also agree with Ghandi, but again, I think civilization would be a good idea everywhere.  The brutality of Eastern cultures does not let them off the hook.  And subjugated, obliterated societies in the Americas (Inca, Aztec) were as brutal as the invading Christian  conquistadores, but they succumbed to disease, superior methods of warfare technology (horses, iron, ships, other weaponry).

Back to your method of street epistemology, I’m glad it works.  I think people are afraid they will look racist if they say to your face “Chinese people are immoral” but back where I grew up, they had no problem saying things like that.  Again, it depends on how we define morality.  This is from an internet dictionary definition:

n. The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
n.  A system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality.
n.  Virtuous conduct.

Back where/when I grew up, they also would not have had any problem considering the vast majority of the world to be immoral.  In fact, that was part of what made them so special.  Part of that is the idea, some thought that heaven only has space for 144,000 people.  That means that more than 7 billion go to hell.  That’s why it’s hell.  I hate crowds.

 

I also like your framing of atheist to mean “atheist with respect to ‘your’ god(s)”

 

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

“what people thought was right and wrong matched up pretty well with what they felt God’s morality was like.”

– this reminds me of the “God is an Englishman” fallacy.

In the end, it’s not that morality comes from religion – it’s the other way round.  Both culture and religion are offshoots of morality.

[DavisModerator]

Simon Paynton wrote:

In the end, it’s not that morality comes from religion – it’s the other way round.  Both culture and religion are offshoots of morality.

Morality, culture and religion all emerged together in primitive man. None of them were offshoots of any other one. There is no chicken, egg and omelette. So for many emergent religions (especially animist ones or very slowly developing pagan ones) its next to impossible to demonstrate that one was the source of another. However, a non-emergent religion (a movement consciously started with new texts/narrative and new ideas, transformed moral code etc) is definitely dictated to a large degree by local contemporary culture and morality though often highly modified by a few people’s subjective additions/strike-offs of morality and world view on social structures.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

I should have said, the religions and gods of large groups, which are morally concerned about their subjects.  Gods of small groups are not morally concerned, because they don’t need to be, because it is easy to trust people within a small group, and difficult to know whom to trust in a large group.

If culture and religion are forms of cooperation (within large groups) then I think that they are both offshoots of the original form of cooperation: personal morality.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

I also like your framing of atheist to mean “atheist with respect to ‘your’ god(s)”

I find this approach has merit. I have de-converted a few people over the years using similar lines.

Something like this:

Theist: So where do atheists get their moral compass from if they don’t believe in God or have faith in Jesus? There has to be a source of absolute morality!

Me: So you think that the 1 billion Hindus in India have no morals. I mean they don’t believe in your God. In fact most of them probably never even heard about Him.

Theist: But Hindus are not atheists (HA HA TAKE THAT ATHEIST!!).

Me: I agree but you are missing the point. Like me, they are atheists when it comes to your god. They do not believe in the existence of your god any more that I do. Like me, you too are an atheist when it comes to their gods. You don’t believe any of them exist. We are both the same in this regard. We are both atheists when it comes to Hindi gods.

Theist: Well at least they believe in something. You believe in nothing.

From there I just keep asking them to explain what they mean (The Socratic approach). It is difficult for them to argue that their atheism towards Hindu gods is different to mine. We both lack a belief and there is no level to that lack of belief. I do not believe any more or any less than you do. Our disbelief is the same thing.

From there they might get a clearer idea of what being an atheist means. There is no effort required to not believe something. We don’t work at not believing something. I can usually see that they are thinking at this stage.

Now do you think you understand what it means to be an atheist? I keep repeating that line in various formats.

My lack of belief in any Hindu god is “the same” as my lack of belief in your god. It is the same as your lack of belief in Aztec gods.  Do you understand that? I am not denying your god exists or saying that you are wrong. It is just I do not believe what you believe.

[Reg the Fronkey FarmerModerator]

Sorry, that last post is a bit repetitive of an earlier one. I wrote it in one go as I am busy elsewhere.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Theory of Mind – the “ability to understand that others have separate minds containing potentially different beliefs, desires and intentions“.  That’s a great definition of Theory of Mind, I’ll have to save it for later.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

“Theory of Mind”

– “Maybe there is compelling daily life evidence for ToM’s central claim that we can know the beliefs, desires and intentions of another.“

– maybe the Theory of Mind is not about the beliefs, desires and intentions of another.  Maybe it’s about other things: the goals and perceptions of another, which we perceive through external signals such as emotional displays or speech or body language or other things.

The cleaner fish would seem to possess Theory of Mind of the big fish in this sense: it clearly has to understand whether the big fish will eat it, so knowing its goals and perceptions must be crucial.

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