In other words, not morality at all.“I was just following orders” is a rejection of moral responsibility, not being moral and that’s what you are describing.
Simple logic? If there’s no evidence for what you say, what makes you think that your claim is any righter than any other wild claim?
It demonstrates that your claim is garbage.
Did I say they were “scientific”? I was just pointing out the obvious. I expect the more scientific versions would be “poor judgement” and some psychological jargon that says “fool” with greater specificity and more syllables.
Yeah, right. You are just doing what many defenders of religion do; demanding that religion be treated in a privileged fashion. People, including scientists and believers flatly say that things that have no evidence for their existence don’t exist all the time. They don’t normally feel obliged to include weasel words like you are demanding people do about religion.
And in what way is that subjective? That’s just pointing out the obvious. Expecting people motivated by and acting according to the rules of a fantasy to be very good at behaving morally would be irrational.
What a perfect example of his point. Even if this research pans out, cells communicate with each other through chemical means already. It would be fascinating if they did it through photons also, but that would be a long way from Qi.
I suggest that religion is concerned with pleasant-sounding lies, as a refinement of Clothahump’s observation. I don’t know offhand of a religion whose tenets suggest that the universe is completely indifferent to humanity and existence is random. I’m guessing the concept doesn’t sell very well.
It’s rational to ask for evidence and it’s rational to ask whether faith is adequate. And if information is wrong, then it’s wrong. But I’m not claiming religion is rational; I’m saying it can only make untestable claims. Claims that by definition cannot be proven to be wrong (although they could be false–we just can’t prove it).
Whether or not the Bible makes testable claims is a matter of interpretation. I do not think that it does. If someone uses a different interpretation that provides testable claims, then they are subject to being tested.
If you can provide evidence about the meaning of life, I’m all ears. So far I have not seen any scientific claims about the meaning of life.
Professional scientists probably never make untestable claims. The review process weeds those out very quickly. But people who claim to be scientific make untestable claims. (See below.)
Lack of evidence for another’s claim (which is unremarkable considering that faith-based beliefs specifically claim to have no evidence) does not provide support for your statement. Where is your evidence for “you should only pay attention to claims with evidence”?
That statement is an opinion. You’d think someone disparaging subjective belief systems would use fewer subjective opinions to support their arguments
You’re the one who says we should only pay attention to statements with evidence. Be consistent with your own standards.
I’m not sure why you think I give religion special treatment (are you confusing me with someone else)? Science can only make testable claims. Religion cannot. Take any statement and it’s either testable or not. If it’s testable, science can determine our best estimate as to whether it’s true or not. If it’s not testable, then science cannot determine if it’s truth or not. Any assertion that an untestable claim is true or false cannot be anything more than opinion.
I’m not holding religion to a special standard, I’m holding science to one. Untestable claims are easy; science does the hard thing and makes only testable claims. And then provides evidence to support or not the claims. Anyone who claims to be solely scientific has to be held to that standard. Those making untestable can believe whatever they–it can’t be proven or disproven either way.
It’s subjective because you use terms like “good moral code”. What’s good or not is subjective.
Well, perhaps in the sense that if you stand under a falling piano, the piano will squish you, but not in any sense that the piano was trying to get you or that it was your turn to be squished.
Nonsense. “Absolute” morality is just as relative as any other if not more so. It’s just another moral code, in this case a generally inferior one supposedly dictated by a fictional being. Who can therefore be conveniently interpreted any way you like; its not like there’s any chance God will actually show up and disagree. Whether it’s amoral in the sense of making it up as you please or in the sense of mindlessly obeying orders depends on whether you are the person who dictates the supposed will of God, or the one who mindlessly obeys it.
And then there’s the question of which supposed “absolute morality” you are following. And how to choose between them. And if “absolute morality” tells you to, say, kill your children will you? Or will you decide to ignore “absolute morality” and let your children live?
Bottom line; there’s no reason to think there is any such thing as absolute morality, no way to know what it is if it exists, and no reason to think following it is a good idea.
If the universe was interested in you in any sense, there’d be a open manhole in the path around the falling piano. Or a pile of a million dollars. In any case, not just something by chance, but something that showed love or dislike toward you. Its this concept (and conceit) that the universe thinks you important that makes religion so appealing.
Well as part of the universe’s intellectual caste, I care about me, and I have a modicum of control, or at least influence upon a particular configuration of complex molecules that make up a homo sapien chassy, male, about 32 years old. I haven’t performed the kind of maintenance I should, but it’s in pretty good condition overall. Now, if I did some maintenance and fixed it up, I could easily increase the efficiency of my ability move matter external to my primary chassis. This is accomplishable, and I know how to do it, I just need to get over the inertia (laziness) and do it. Now, from there my ability to reconfigure matter is limited directly by my ability to convince other people to do what I want them to. But if I can get them to do what I want them to do, I am still subject to their external structural insignifancies, and I must work around them, but these are merely engineering problems.
In otherwords, part of my zone of influence, is a portion of the universe’s opinion of itself.
Again, simple logic. If you have no evidence for a claim, given the pretty much infinite number of equally evidence-free claims that contradict yours what are the odds that you are the fellow who guessed right?
Except it’s not a subjective argument. There’s a real world out there that doesn’t care about your silly insistence that evidence doesn’t matter, and will squash you if you are foolish enough to actually follow the worldview you claim to have.
Don’t deliberately ignore what I am saying. You are repeatedly insisting that people treat religion in a special way. You are insisting that people give it a pass on evidnece, and that they use weasel words to avoid admitting that there’s no reason to believe in it.
Wrong. First, because religion has a track record. When it HAS made testable claims, it’s been wrong over and over again. There’s no reason to think it gets better with untestable claims. And religions wildly contradict each other; it is logically impossible for most religious beliefs to be correct; that is also not opinion. And as well; the logical default is non-belief; if there’s no evidence for a god, the logical default stance is disbelief. Just as the logical default for invisible goblins is to disbelieve in them.
Irrelevant. It couldn’t hold consistently to a bad moral code either. Religion fails at morality because it is intrinsically incompetent.
There are testable claims in the plain text of the bible - specifically, the bible claims things occured in ways that can be independently investigated.
If you feel that the plain text does not define the contents of the bible, I would say that the bible has no meaningful content at all. If parts of the plain text of the bible can be eradicated through cherry-picking, then nothing is sacred.
Given that nothing is sacred, and we should worship sacred things, I vote that we should all come together in worshipping it. I could get down with worshipping nothing.
On the other hand, nobody is a real jerk, as has been amply proven in the Family Circus comics.
ETA: :smack: “Not Me”, not “nobody”. Oh well, it would have been funny…
You’re the pot calling the kettle black. We both agree that any religious claims I make have no evidence to support them. You still haven’t provided evidence for your own claims (e.g., “you should only pay attention to claims with evidence”, “a good moral code rejects or ignores the fantasies of religion”). Why should anyone be convinced by your argument when you do not meet your own standard?
More evidence that you are arguing against someone other than me. I haven’t said that evidence doesn’t matter, I said that it’s value is subjective.
Um, so you want to try to find evidence for (or against) untestable claims? Claims, that by definition cannot be proven (or disproven). At least I know my worldview is irrational–you’re in denial.
Who are you arguing against??? I agree with everything in the above quote. I’m not claiming religion is rational or logical–what do you think “faith” and “untestable claim” mean?
And you are still making statements that are your own subjective opinion. If you want to use the standards of science when evaluating beliefs, you weaken your position when you don’t apply it to your own beliefs.
There are more ways to interpret text than “literal” and “cherry-picking”.
And the non-religious don’t get a say in the matter of what’s sacred or not. In other words, “X is sacred” is an untestable statement, so saying it is true or not is a religious statement.