Let me just add that spirituality need not equal religion. A beautiful sunset can be a spiritual moment even for Dawkins. He might chose to use a different word, but I bet the sensation is still there…
And introspection, self-actualization, whatever you want to call it… can be considered, by some, to be spiritual in nature. Some of that depends on execution.
Edit: Oh! Might not have needed to say that!
Because I did you the courtesy of playing along with your hypothetical anyway. Other than that opening statement, I treated your scenario with full seriousness. The least you could do in return, as the OP, is reply to my questions for clarification.
Gee, Thanks, MrDibble, you are so kind. Perhaps you could do me another courtesy and reread your overly generous response to my beneath contempt OP and specify which part of:
…is deserving of a response.
And where is the sticky that says I’m obliged to respond to anyone just because they’ve figured out a way to pee in the pool using a keyboard and mouse?
So far as I can tell, the planes been hijacked, crashed into the ocean, blown to pieces and its scattered bits are sinking or drifting in the current , but thanks for your concern.
Sarcasm’s really something you should save for the Pit.
How about the larger context? You know, the part that begins “And may I point out a logical flaw?”. If your whole hypothetical is flawed to start out with, even within its own setting, you have problems from the get-go. It might be nice if you said “nope, not a logical flaw, and here’s why…”
Not that I was asking for a response to that, anyway. I had specific questions in my second and fifth paragraphs, about the details of the premises. *Those *are the questions I wanted answered.
The rest of my post was my own answer to you, and could stand or fall on its own, but some details may have changed depending on the setup of the scenario.
Leaving out the insulting parts that would require a Pit response, I’m just going to say that it’s, IMO, simply good GD debate behaviour to clarify any points that need expansion in your original post, when asked. Especially if they are matters of “fact”, as it were, not matters of opinion. Plus, if you don’t respond, I’ll keep asking, 'cos I’m stubborn like that.
I just do not get it. I answered you OP, within your scenario, seriously and some thought going into it. Yes, I added some parenthetical remarks about the merits of scenario itself, and that’s the only part you focus on. It’s almost as if you did not actually want to discuss people’s answers to your questions (and I think I’m the only one who answered all the questions in the OP).
Well I’ve been sticking to the idea of creating a God in order to fill a moral purpose. Part of that is discerning what the central concepts of religion and its role in society are. Maybe it’s been blown to pieces, but I’ve been sticking to the idea of human created, ‘Gods’ of a sort. If someone starts a thread on these tangents, I’d probably participate.
Well, since it’s BS, it’s irrelevant. There are clear universals. Charity, Sacrifice, Immortality of the Soul, Monotheism, An incarnate God. Again, not going to defend these, in this thread. You want to debate it, start a new thread, where I can get backup by people more well versed in the bible than I am. You seem like you want to have this one out, so do it, throw down the glove, but I’m not gonna go the rounds tucked away in some other thread.
Many religions share intrinsic values. I’ve been reading the Bhagavad Gita recently, and the parallels to Christianity seem stark to me. There are definitely some differences, but in terms of moral values they seem pretty closely aligned to Christianity to me. This doesn’t change the argument, because my argument revolves around the involvement of human beings in the process of culture. If a majority of human beings coalesce around a centralized value system, that system is intrinsic to the culture, and cannot be separated, by engaging in the debate you are being influenced by religion at a very fundamental level. Reacting against something is still being influenced by.
Arguably, none of those are universal; some of them DEFINATELY aren’t universal. And you can’t expect an argument to be taken seriously if you simultaneously declare something to be true, and then refuse to defend it.
I said universal characteristics of CHRISTIANITY. If you want me to defend it. Start a thread.
You are welcomed to find your “universals” here:
Christian Denomination Selector
With at least 3000 different denominations (and personal definitions of God only limited by the number of people that hold them) I’m sure even I can find one that fits.
Christian Atheists for a Socialist Jesus wouldn’t be too bad a start…
I was thinking of joining ‘Atheists for the spread of the faith in the One True God’ myelf.
What’s stopping you? I mean finding a few hundred sociopathic atheists shouldn’t be a problem, right? Beyond that, 3,000, 3,500, 4,000 “Christian denominations” what difference does it make as long as you respect your universals – don’t go intruding into mine of course.
Which might those be?
Which moral values in the Gita are paralleled in Christianity?
I agree that you answered all the questions, although you basically blew them off as meaningless.
I foucused on the “parenthetical” remarks because they were introductory and and speak volumes about your interest in the thread and the concept.
I do not believe you answered seriously and I do not accept your assertion that you put thought into your answers.
As to the logical flaw, I did present the notion that the negative consequences were basically unavoidable and, as such, would effect everyone including the people who might be in the position to, as you put it, fuck with people.
In as much as your answer is, I’d prefer to institute an atheistic religion such as Buddhism, I’m not sure I can accept that there is such a thing. Buddhism as it’s practiced by American Baby Boomers is quite a bit different than Buddhism as it is practiced elsewhere.
And, since when is sarcasm restricted to the pit? If that’s the case then these mods need to pay a little more attention!
Charity and sacrifice, because as we all know (or should) you need religion to have those traits.
See above you sociopath! 
“Stupid” is not the same as “meaningless”. There’s an interesting debate there, but the phrasing of the hypothetical is logically flawed, like I said, and using a hypothetical in that kind of way is not very big or clever.
Rather than my actual answers. It seems to me you grabbed at the parentheses with open arms, so you could be dismissive.
Well, I’m saying I did, and this is not the forum to go calling me a liar.
I think the effort I put into it shows through. I quoted all those subquestions and addressed them all. If that’s not thought, what were you expecting?
Like I said, it means you can’t get a straight answer to the hypothetical, and you set it up that way from the beginning. That’s either a flaw, or just a dishonest ‘gotcha’ attempt. Either way, not exactly a Great Debate, is it?
I’m *not *an American *nor *am I a Baby Boomer, I have been a Buddhist devotee and I’m *telling you *Buddhism is an atheistic religion. You may not be able to “accept such a thing”, but you don’t get to define the terms atheist or religion, and Buddhism fits both. Anyone who says different is ignorant.
I didn’t say it was, I said you should save it - because you’re not very good at it.
I notice you still haven’t answered my questions. And I didn’t think they were particularly troublesome or majorly changed the hypothetical, so why you haven’t, I don’t know.
I was referring to Christianity, obviously. As for creating a thread, it’s been done, and recently. And I don’t believe you’d defend your statement there any more than here, anyway. You’ve fallen in love with your “I refuse to debate you !” strategy.
So…you refuse to answer my what-if, by pretending it’s irrelevent. I claim that it’s absolutely relevent, because if there were a lack of universals, then it blows your entire position out of the water. I think you agree with that too, but are so desperate not to even look like you’re conceding ground that you can’t even bring yourself to admit what the central pillars of your position are.
So, the answer to “do any two religions share intrinsic values?” appears to be no, since “many” does not equal “all”. You also seem to be aware of this, since you hastily move to try and cover for the answer you couldn’t bring yourself to give.
Do you agree that it’s critical to your position that the religion in a culture be reasonably consistent across the religions that significantly inform that culture, for us to belive that the religion is the source for the decision to select any particular value as being important (perhaps in defiance against the values of some of the other religions in the culture.)
And “Reacting against something is still being influenced by.” is, was, and will always remain hilarious, because it overtly admits that the “values” held by religion can be and are on occasion thrown out utterly by society, but you still want to be able to claim religion as the base of everything anyway. Based on this “no = yes” argument, you can claim that the idea of valuing “separation of church and state” is a religious concept, because it is inspired by recognition of the damage a state religion can do, and that the free-live attitude of the sixties was inspired by religion and was not in reaction to the vietnam war…based only on the fact that christianity’s not like that. 
The notion of duty to God, and devoting one’s entire effort in life to the pursuit of God’s path for you. That’s a big one.
begbert2 The problem is that you debate as though atheism is value neutral and as such should be the normative baseline by which we debate everything. First of all it’s not value neutral, and second of all, the existence of universal values across all religions is irrelevant to the argument. They are not devalued by whether there universal human values or not, or whether they are universal to all religions. Because at the end of the day a religion is an ideology, so is atheism. I won’t argue that they are all religions, but they are all ideologies, and at the end of the day it’s just culture wars. You are trying to describe the ‘other’ by your own cultures existing norms. Go read Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’, and we’ll be able to discuss this a little bit better. It’s all about how the Western Orientalists judged the Orient by using its own internal value system as though it was the baseline for decent values.
You think that you are that different from a religious zealot, but you’re not. You’re of the same sort of dogmatic mindset. You are not capable of divorcing yourself from your own agenda in order to discuss things on other terms. This capability is what determines who I will debate with and who I won’t. One who is incapable of this is a zealot who is not only unaware of their blindspot, but convinced that blindspot isn’t there.
Of course it’s value neutral. Name a value that it has.
Are you aware of the concept of psychological projection ? You appear to be describing yourself, not him/her.