**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. **
Again, yes it can be attributed to a form of religous belief. But the “good” that AA does (I’ll concede it’s good for the sake of argument, though I tend to suspect as was posted earlier that there’s an argument to be made that it’s switching from one bad addiction to another but that’s a different discussion) isn’t **inconceivable ** without religion and could be done without religion.
Therefore, religiion may be used for that purpose but it’s not necessary. That’s the point, and one that you already agreed with (in general, religion isn’t necessary for good acts) and is the only main point I’m trying to make from Hitchens’ side.
I then add that on top of that, there **are ** bad acts that **require ** (not just attributed to) religious motivation so you end up with a net negative.
**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. **
But human sacrifice is not murder because there’s no malice (hostility) in the action; we’ll have to pick a different example I expect because I think we’re too far apart on the meaning of this definition; you’ve defined ‘malice aforethought’ as ‘intention to kill’ but it’s defined as I understand as malice requiring hostility or else it isn’t ‘malice’ (which is separate from the ‘aforethought’ part so that if you kill someone without imputed malice then it’s manslaughter and not murder).
Maybe we can come up with another example. Because human sacrifice is not possible, in my view, without religion. There’s no reason to kill someone to appease a god along with afterworld considerations if there is no god. Are there other reasons to kill someone? Of course, but those would have happened anyway with or without religion so that’s a wash which just leaves us with the religiously motivated killings that require, not just coincide with, religion.
I am using the definition from your own link and I think Bryan Ekers supported this. If someone in America sacrificed another human being they would charged with what? Murder is the obvious answer. The malice aforethought would be the intent to kill as listed under legal analysis of murder from your own link.
They are defining malice as the intent to do another person harm and they don’t care if you hate that person or not. If you *plan * to *kill *someone as a human sacrifice it qualifies.
Dr. Kevorkian was convicted of murder and didn’t have any hostility toward the man he killed.
You’re working hard to stress the definition of malice and I find that pretty ironic. At this point I’ve made my point as clear as I can and I don’t see your argument as convincing or even valid. I accept that you are sincere but IMO you and Hitchens are moving the goalposts to support a preferred conclusion.
"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. "
As I’ve said, this goes to my point which seems to be beyond Hitchens anyway which is simply to refute people that claim religion is necessary for some goods. If you don’t believe there are any such people, then sorry.
As to your quote above, I think that’s a very good counterpoint and I see what you mean about removing the motive and looking at the action as something that could not have been done for any conceivable other reason that **requires ** that action. Even if that were true, of course, it still follows therefore that religion does society no net good or bad in the end and can’t be held up as a good thing.
I think saying to your child “you will go to hell” is one example. Separate the motivation out and you have a statement – an action, by itself – that is this: “You, son may go to hell.” There’s the action. That statement. That action is a secular bad that could not be conceivably said to a child for any other reason except for that provided by religion.
A point you have tried to insist was true and haven’t shown it to be so.
I’ve talked with lots of folks who believe religion has done more harm than good. That’s fine, they’re welcome to their opinion. You too. So far nobody has presented any convincing argument backed with any real logic or evidence that holds up to scrutiny.
Believers have their share of arguments that are popular and widely accepted largely because of a preferred belief. So do atheists. We sometimes accept arguments simply because they coincide and support what we already think of as true. No big deal It’s a very human trait.
Well, religion doing more harm than good in history is a different convo.
It’s an interesting discussion but it’s beyond my point and I’m not making that claim because people lived and died and did things for their own reasons and if they were religious reasons and they died and those good acts were still done, then they were still done.
What I’m talking about is a philosophical idea of whether or not it is possible to conceive of other reasons to do good acts without religion and asserting that on top of that there are bad acts that require religion.
As society evolves, if we conlude the above I think religion is out the door. Furthermore, even without concluding the above and just concluding that which you’ve already stated – that good acts don’t require religion – religion is still out the door even if there isn’t a single bad act that requires religion either since that leaves it as doing no net good even under that premise.
My suspicion is that over time as mankind evolves, religion will be out the door and I think it’ll be evidence of our maturity as a thinking species with metacognition layered on top of our animal instincts.
If you’re using my link then you would have noticed the use of the word MALICE in that link. Where’s the malice in human sacrifice? Against whom is their ‘deep seated hostility’ expressed? Nobody. No malice. To say otherwise is to set aside their motivations and impute your own (you secretly hate women and are just pretending to believe this is a religious act) which just isn’t always true.
Dr. Kevorkian was convicted of murder because they set aside the malice motivation because that’s what secular society does when it encounters ‘religious belief’ (as you’re correlating to Dr. K for the sake of argument). I’m not ‘working hard’ to define malice, it’s a simple definition and the difference is important because it goes to the very point of the difference between secular and religious motivations and whether or not a religious motivation could have existed for an action in any given case that would otherwise have been inconceivable.
It’s equally ironic that you’re working so hard to refute that since I’ve made my point clear which was just restated.
Hate crimes, by the way, do take motivation into account. In murder, for practical purposes, courts function to dimiss the issue of motivation but focus on INTENT simply to cause harm for any reason. For the purpose of clarifying the difference between moralities of religious and secular, which is our discussion, it is important to keep in mind those different points of view; it’s not a trivial point and is separate from how the law functions in practice. Whether or not the courts uphold secular morality through their laws is an ENTIRELY other subject.
No. You are still moving the goalposts.
If you have to define the act of killing /murder in human sacrifice by it’s belief content to make it a net negative for religion, then you must do the same for the positive acts. The act is killing someone or feeding the hungry period. When you extend the definition of the act to include belief content then you must do it for both. Then it’s killing for religious reasons or feeding the hungry for religious reasons. You can’t mix the two and have a logical or fair argument.
I noticed on Wikki that human sacrifice was listed as a sub category of murder. Murder is the act. In a similar way feeding the hungry might come under a compassion or kindness heading with groups listed that included religious secular groups. The basic act is the same for both groups.
If you have to define the act of killing /murder in human sacrifice by it’s belief content to make it a net negative for religion, then you must do the same for the positive acts
Religion is the **sole possible motivation ** for that particular act on that particular day (throwing a woman into a volcano) which is why it’s added to religion. Not because it’s a motivation, but because it’s the sole possible motivation for that **particular ** bad act. There are no sole possible religious motivations for good acts.
Sorry, murder is a legal term that requires hostility. If you don’t agree, no matter how the laws act in practice of their own theoretical definitions, then we’ll just have to agree to be talking past each other. It’s a central point to me that goes to the issue of religious motivation to secular motivation.
The closest I could try to reach to your side is to subsitute the word ‘killing’ for ‘murder’ as I did earlier.
Hmmmmm seems to me if it’s a religious reason to save lives then it does require religion. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a religious reason…right?
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.
and I maintain that’s moving the goalposts and an invalid argument. You’re using different standards for judging the good and bad.
The bottom line, IMO, is that you’re actually the one moving the goalposts because the motivations have to be bundled; some actions require some motivations without which they’d be inconceivable – which is different than saying the action couldn’t physically happen. It **wouldn’t ** happen, and that’s the point.
If you separate out the action to say “all actions or statements that are physically able to be done or expressed phonetically by the human body and mouth” then it’s just silly.
Of course a human being with a mouth can say “you will go to hell” but they wouldn’t say that were it not for religion. The statement is inextricably bound to the motivation. They could say something else to cause turmoil, but that’s another subject and their point wasn’t to cause turmoil for its own sake it was to convey what they felt to be a truth.
[QUOTE=cosmosdan]
Hmmmmm seems to me if it’s a religious reason to save lives then it does require religion. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a religious reason…right?
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 see that it seems that way to you, but IMO a religious reason to save a life could have been conceived without that religion, as you’ve already agreed, and that’s my point and meaning if that’s what you’re trying to get at which, I’m assuming, is what you’re trying to get at. If on the other hand you’re defining something as a religous reason to save a life in that way that requires religion and without which it’s inconceivable to save that life then there is no such act.
I’ll conclude this aspect of this conversation – which is off the point anyway of **naming one good act that requires religion ** which you haven’t done and instead brought up another, related, point of suggesting that there are no bad acts that require religion which is an intriguing and, in the grand scheme of which the first question is a part, a nonetheless valid and good point – by simply testifying to my personal experience: if I’d been raised without religion, my parents would have not otherwise done secular bad acts except for their belief in religion. Their religion wasn’t an excuse to do some bad acts they were otherwise set on doing, it was in fact their genuine motivation. If religious belief had been magically removed, we would have been left with a better result because for them there are bad acts that required religious belief to do without which they’d have had no reason and after having abandoned religion they now see no other reason to do.
The result, for my life, would have been a net gain without religious belief.
And that, in the end, is the point of where such things reach the reality of actual human life. I’ll point out that even if your point were equally true that no bad act requires religion, the best you can do by such argument is make religion pointless in the net total. Not a ringing endorsement if it’s reduced to a butcher knife.
It’s been intellectually stimulating and at times very frustrating but worth it to debate and discuss this related but technically off thread topic with you cdan. Thanks.
So you can provide a name but not a cite? I’d like to see the argument in his words. There’s a great big difference between saying religion was primary for abolishing slavery and saying it’s inconceivable that it could happen for any other reason.
I don’t think you’re making it up. I’m just wondering about the nuances of the argument like the one I just mentioned. You may or may not have captured the argument accurately and without a cite I can’t tell.
I have no problem believing that some religious leaders believe that without God belief the world would sink into a heathenistic chaotic orgy. That’s not what we’re discussing though. If their argument is wrong that doesn’t make Hitchens right.
If he stopped with
I’d say, “there isn’t one” and we’d be done. It’s an observation that while true doesn’t really speak to the value of spiritual beliefs for the individual.
when he adds
it appears he’s trying to make some point that IMO he fails to make because his argument is faulty.
Given the incredible amount of evil commited in the name of religion, motivated by religion, past and present, that’s a ridiculous thing to say. There’s nothing that religion could collectively do that’s enough to make up for all the evil that it’s done and is doing.
Hammers don’t have doctrines and commandments. People obey religion; they don’t obey hammers. Religion is not a tool that you use, the religious are tools that are used by religion. The only exception being the unbelievers who are cynical and ruthless enough to feign religion in order to manipulate the faithful; but then whether the control is by a manipulator or the religion itself, the believers remain puppets.
Well, ours was a philosophical discussion on purely logical parameters of whether or not certain thoughts/acts are possible given a religion/without it as where what you’re talking about is pragmatic reality and history.
But I do agree with you and I think over time religion will go to history’s dustbin.
Since by your own words above, you admit that the studies don’t say that all Christians think that atheists are evil, and since you claim that the Christians who are posting at the Dope are different from your image of most Christians, why not be truthful and precise in your statements about Christians rather than attacking us with statements that are in error?
If you say “many Christians” or “some Christians,” I can buy that. They drive me nuts too. If you say “the majority of Christians,” then I would expect a cite, but I’m openminded to a good source. But when you say just “Christians,” that includes me and if I don’t fit your attacking statement, I’m going to resent your broadbrush.
I don’t attack people just because they are an atheists or Southern Baptists or not in the SEC. Fact is, I don’t do much attacking unless people are telling lies. And I don’t think that you are. I just think that you overstate things sometimes.
Never thought I could. From my first post in this thread my point has been that Hitchens argument doesn’t really offer any valuable information.
Hardly. Even if we accept that that it’s a wash it does necessarily follow that religion is pointless. If that was the point Hitchens was hinting at then his challenge fails to make it. Guessing at what might have been without religion doesn’t offer any real data we can use. Religion is a tool used for different purposes by the user. Obviously it’s a tool chosen by most of the world’s population so I’d hardly call it pointless. If we can refine it, change it so we get a lot of the good results and fewer of the bad I’m all for it.
ditto. I will look up the guy you mentioned and see if I can find anything on his argument about slavery.