Minor nitpick - secular law ignores the motive, but the intention to end someone’s life is major element of the crime and will be a factor at indictment and trial.
Good point, though a minor nitpick with the nitpick 
: hate crime law goes to motive; and some forms of killing where motive can be objectively determined/deduced the penalties can be greater (treason) but you’re right in general about determining subjective states/thoughts.
Murder, however, is specifically defined as killing with **malice **aforethought. What secular law does when it encounters a religiously motivated act (like human sacrifice for the sake of keeping the example constant) is to throw out the subjective state/religious motivation and substitute its own implied motive since that’s, as you point out, irrelevant for the sake of conviction although jury nullification has been known to happen for the very reason that if a jury gives credence to the accused’s beliefs, they may choose not to convict and ignore the law which is permitted and has happened many times when considering motive in regards to religiously motivated acts that result in the death of a child, for example that would otherwise be defined as illegal killing by virtue of withholding medical treatment.
For the sake of this discussion, it’s a central point that religion defines human sacrifice as something done without malice and secular law defines murder as something done with malice. Human sacrifice, as defined by religion, could not be possible without those motivating religious beliefs though killing someone for some other reason could still of course be possible but that would then be a separate act and not human sacrifice anymore since the concept of human sacrifice by definition is irrevocably tied to the belief underlying it which is the point that was being debated: that the act known as human sacrifice which is defined by its religious motives is not possible without religion.
Religion has caused the creation of some rather incredible architecture. That’s just about the only thing that I like about religion.
A lot of awe-inspiring architecture certainly has been created based on religious motives; I’m from D.C. originally and some of the cathedrals there are amazing.
But so long as it’s possible to build such grand works of art without religion they don’t serve as examples of something that **requires **religion to do.
Oh, after thinking about it some more, I see what you think I’m trying to do.
I see how it can seem that way but no I’m not trying to “find” a definition to weasel out of something, what’s happened is that we’ve fortunately stumbled right upon the crux of the matter: secular law defines something a certain way and religious law defines it differently. That act of human sacrifice is okay by the religious belief that inspired it, but not okay by secular law. That’s what I mean.
It’s an example of an act that has no justification in secular law but it does in religious law and that’s at the core of the assertion that there are things (such as that) that aren’t allowed or conceivable within secular law but are **required **by the religious law that demands human sacrifice. It goes to the point.
Welcome to the SDMB, RBerns.
The American Institute of Architects placed Thorncrown Chapel fourth on its list of the top buildings of the Twentieth Century. This beauty is in the woods in Eureka Springs, Arkansas in the Ozark Mountains. I think the photographs are breathtaking.
I’ve mentioned many times that I am a Christian. When have I suggested that a person is less moral because she is an atheist? When has any other Doper regular? Please be specific since you say that this is standard for the religious.
I don’t think that your senseless attacks on others arise from a lack of morals, but from an inability to organize your thinking and controll your impulses. I think you care very deeply about the issues, but you have a tendency to generalize that is beyond reason.
Stop attributing qualities to all of us when they apply only to a minority of us!
It seems to me this debate on the good or evil of religion is like a butcher knife. Its purpose is for cutting meat,but it can be used to kill some one, The knife is not good or bad it is how one uses it.
Religion is good for some people and not for others.
Monavis
I have no idea if you have or not. Do you think I write down the names and opinions of the Christians on the board ?
I’m not going to spend hours looking through old threads. And this board is hardly a typical sample of the religious population anyway.
And why should I believe that only a minorty of Christians regard atheists as evil ? Every time I’ve heard of a study or poll, it says that the majority of Christians think atheists are evil or untrustworthy.
I’ll respond to this post and try to cover the other posts on the same subject.
I’ll accept that you were arguing sincerely and we were approaching it from different view points with no weaseling intended. I hope that if the occasion arises you will extend me the same good faith.
I understand that you were using a religious definition and in that sense how you applied malice. It seemed obvious to me that looking at the act of human sacrifice from the definition of murder that malice aforethought, {(i) Intent to kill;} supplied by your own link applied. It seemed obvious to me that if a human sacrifice occurred today the culprits would be charged with murder so I had a hard time understanding your point.
Now I understand how you were approaching it but I still disagree. IMO to approach the question evenly you can shift between the religious definition and the secular. The *act *itself has to be considered from thew same perspective whether done by a believer for religious reasons or an atheist for secular reasons.
Sacrificing a human life for spiritual gain doesn’t seem any different than sacrificing a life for financial gain. I doubt the person being killed prefers one over the other.
This is basic to the fault I find with Hitchens argument. In the same way believers get accused of moving the moving the goalposts to support their argument i see this as asimialr thing being done by Hitchens
I’m not sure how the point you’re making applies to the discussion of Hitchens point.
Isn’t it just as easy to say that parents who teach their children compassion based of their religious beliefs would have one less positive thing if they lost their belief. One less positive, net bad.
That’s been my point from the beginning. It’s a wash when considering positive acts vs negative acts.
This did help me understand. I’m still maintaining it’s a wash. If you say removing religious reasons to kill is net good then equally removing religious reasons to save lives is a negative. However you slice it, if the approach is consistent Hitchens point doesn’t tell us anything about the good weighed against the bad.
When stripping it down to the act itself I can’t think of one positive act that requires religious belief.
Could you provide a cite for people who believe that specific sentance to be true?
I’m not claiming there isn’t one. I’d just like to see it for for clarification and I didn’t see Hitchens mention a single example.
Succinctly put. I agree. Religion is just one tool people use to cope with life and their own unique personality. Some use to accomplish good things and some do not. A hammer can be used to build or bludgeon.
Clearly I don’t agree.
I purposely chose language similar to Hitchens.
If you define AA by it’s belief content, {a higher power} then it’s good work is directly attributed to a form of religious belief.
If you define the nuns within their religious beliefs their good work is directly attributed to their religious belief.
To make Hitchens and your point you have to define the act separately from the belief content. Yes, you can help an addict without religious belief. Yes you can help the poor without religious belief.
Now apply the same principle to human sacrifice. Remove the belief content and it’s murder plain and simple. That’s what I mean by looking at things evenly, and what Hitchens fails to do in the section I quoted.
As I’ve tried to explain, when considering just the act, without defining it within the content of belief, as you insist on doing with human sacrifice, there are no negative acts within religion that cannot be done for secular reasons. Not one example so far.
Whatever principle you apply do it evenly when judging the positive and negative acts. Otherwise you’re moving the goalposts in the middle of the argument to support the conclusion you prefer, just as Hitchens seems to be doing.
I think **monavis ** makes a good analogy. You can’t judge the good or bad of belief because the good or bad rests in how the individual applies it. It’s merely the vehicle.
"that malice aforethought, {(i) Intent to kill;} supplied…"
But that’s the whole point: “malice aforethought” isn’t just 'intent to kill"; “malice” specifically requires HOSTILITY. The religious person bears no hostility against the person being sacrificed. It’s an act that couldn’t otherwise be conceived since in the secular world we’d imagine they have to have hostility to kill someone which is just the point: an evil act inconceivable without religion, which supplies the motivation that would otherwise have to be hostility. That’s the whole point!
**"Sacrificing a human life for spiritual gain doesn’t seem any different than sacrificing a life for financial gain. I doubt the person being killed prefers one over the other.
This is basic to the fault I find with Hitchens argument. In the same way believers get accused of moving the moving the goalposts to support their argument i see this as asimialr thing being done by Hitchens"**
Okay, I see what you’re trying to say about moving goalposts. But this is important because it goes right to the point of religion’s net negative: killing for either a secular reason or a religious reason is still killing, as you say. Human sacrifice killing vs. financial motivation killing, the person still dies.
But the financial reason is a motivation that could be conceived with or without religion. The human sacrifice reason is a motivation that could ONLY be conceived with religion. Therefore, one killing that couldn’t possibly happen without religion. The other killings, for financial reasons, are going to keep happening anyway with or without religion. Religion adds a reason that couldn’t exist without religion existing because religious motivations are not replicable without religion – and when you figure in that religious motivations don’t add anything GOOD that can’t otherwise be motivated by non-religious motivations you end up with a net negative for religion on humanity.
No, it’s not just as easy to believe and that’s the entire point: that parents that teach their kids compassion using religion** could still conceive of the idea of teaching their kids compassion WITHOUT religion.**
The converse, however, is not true if operating from sincere belief.
That’s a separate point from a parent that uses a religious belief to teach their kid something where they don’t really believe the religious belief. But there are some things that kids are taught that are only conceivable from religious beliefs like going to hell.
If a parent says, “let’s see…I want my kid to be socially well adjusted, so I’ll tell him about going to hell because my real goal is secular social well adjustment” then he’s just using his religion to make a secular point. True enough, if that’s what you mean, but I’m not talking about those instances since he could have just as well made that point without talking about hell.
I’m talking about a parent who tells their kid about going to hell for the sole purpose of keeping them from going to actual, literal hell because they sincerely believe in that literal hell and not for any other secular purpose. Those specifically religiously motivated things (traumatizing the kid about going to hell) serve no other secular purpose for that parent and couldn’t be conceived without religion. If the parent stopped believing in hell, they wouldn’t keep telling their kids that.
On the other hand, if you ask a parent hey would you keep teaching your kid this life lesson (like compassion for others) even if you didn’t believe in religion they would say YES, I would still teach them compassion anyway. That’s the point.
Yes, but there are no religious reasons to save lives that **require ** religion.
This is a very critical point: differentiating between those that are religious and save lives and those that are religious and **couldn’t conceive ** of any other reason to save a life without their religion.
I maintain that it is possible to conceive of a motivation for some good acts (saving a life) without religion, but it is **impossible ** to conceive of a motivation for some bad acts (human sacrifice) **without ** religion. Net good.
Okay, then we’re not that far apart.
It’s the point that is held by so many people that Hitchens is literally on a lecture tour to debate it. I believe Dennis Prager to be one of those people; specifically, his claim that without religion many good acts that happened in history would have been otherwise inconceivable and couldn’t have possibly happened for any other reason. One example Prager uses in that regard is abolition of slavery.
I don’t agree and neither does Hitchens and neither, it appears, do you.
Sorry I don’t have a cite for that particular thought but if you follow these lecture tours at all it really isn’t an uncommon belief and it’s something he’s responded to verbatim again and again. Hope you don’t think I’m making all this up.
That is succinct, and here’s a succinct response: a butcher knife is required if you want to cut something (for good or bad) but religion is not required for **any ** good act, but it is required for **some ** bad acts. Net negative.