Religion is infantile!

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jab1 wrote:

2. We are going to die.

AND:

3. We are aware of Fact (2).

Hey, yeah! That’s right. I forgot to include this point in my OP.

I remember the first time I learned about death, when I was a wee lad of 3 or 4, and I learned that I, too, was going to die someday. I hated the idea. I did not want to die. I suppose if someone had offered me an easy way out (e.g. “If you believe in Jesus and clean up your room, you’ll get to live on after you die”), I would have taken it.

Then again, just because I first got these inklings when I was a little kid, that doesn’t mean that the desire for immortality is juvenille.

[Hunnar]

But the concept of any particular sin or offense is determined by our society. Eating the flesh of a cow or killing a rat, in India are mortal sins depending on your sect of Hindi. Here (the West) we have drive-through cow flesh eateries and spend more on rat-killing than on the education of our children. Sins and the punishment for them could be universal, but they’re not. To assume they “are” is assinine. And depending on your location and the offense, possibly life-threatening.
The concept of sin is a regional issue. Every time you change time-zones, countries, counties, or cities, the Sin-List changes, and Ignorance of the Dogma is no excuse.

Deitys were created so that a person could do unspeakable things to his neighbor and still feel good about himself. Content in the Belief that “His/Her” god wanted them to do it, and that makes everything Okay.

[jmullaney]

*Originally posted by Hunnar *
But the concept of any particular sin or offense is determined by our society.

Welcome to the Straight Dope, Hunnar.

You make a few good points. I could decide, for example, that chewing on a pencil is a heresy punishable by death. I could, with sufficient funding and a little motivational rhetoric, raise an army of armed followers and send them out across the land to slaughter mercilessly anyone who chewed their pencils. Thus there would be a real physical punishment for such an act; but I don’t think that means there is an actually spiritual punishment for such an act. It would be wise for anyone in my domain to respect my ersatz authority, but all in all that doesn’t mean that suddenly pencil-chewing is a sin in timezones under my control.

Sins and the punishment for them could be universal, but they’re not. To assume they “are” is assinine.

Well, if you are going to insist that anyone can come along and arbitrarily declare some action as sinful, you are right. I don’t agree with such an approach, and I do believe there are universal truths, and I define sin as an act which both springs from and maintains a bad spiritual state, and such an unhappy state is a universal punishment in and of itself which is plainly self-evident. Whether you see this symbolically in the yin-yang or in the Christian symbol of the devil as a dog chasing it’s own tail, I think the endless unsatifying chase which is the life of sin is a truism.

Deitys were created so that a person could do unspeakable things to his neighbor and still feel good about himself.

Well, you will get no argument from me that the deity concept has been misused throughout the ages. Just because people lie doesn’t mean there isn’t a God. For example: God told me about your pencil-chewing in a vision – so die heathen!!

[Ptahlis]

*Originally posted by jmullaney *
**
You mean like the drunk (Otis?) on the Andy Griffith Show who always turned himself in for public intoxication? If we are all human, and all of the same nature, then there is no reason for me to believe the consequences for evil actions somehow affect others any different than it does me. Sure, there may be a difference in how, where, when, if, and to what degree the punishment manifests itself in the physical plane – but the root punishment comes on a spiritual plane.
**

When I said that the only people affected by temporal spiritual punishments were the ones that inflicted it upon themselves, I was referring to those who actually felt guilt, remorse, or regret for their “sins.” The best reason I can think of to assume that things might not affect Evil Bastard the same way that they affect Pious Guy is because they both offer different descriptions of the effects. If Pious Guy says that act X has some negative consequence, and Evil Bastard says act X is a great hobby with no ill effects, then who do we believe? I still would like some sort of description of what “temporal spiritual punishment” is supposed to be if it isn’t guilt or remorse.

**
If someone has to rob blind beggars in order to be happy, they obviously are not happy when they aren’t robbing blind beggars. Thus, they don’t have true happiness, even when robbing, since the joy they experience is fleeting. Then they go back to being unhappy. If they were already happy, they wouldn’t be commiting such an act in the first place. **

This is just getting silly now. Nobody posited a guy who has to rob blind beggars to be happy, but a person who happens to be perfectly happy to take the opportunity and who feels no regret over the actions. It is you who insisted he could not be happy unless actively engaged in the activity. Perhaps my phrasing confused you. Instead of “perfectly happy,” lets say he derives pleasure from robbing the blind guy. This is not the only activity that gives him pleasure, nor even the only type of activity that gives him pleasure, but one mong many. What kind of temporal spiritual punishment befalls the guy?

[Hunnar]

Thank you for your warm welcome jmullaney,

However I feel that I must inform you that my doG of the Holy Pencil Chewers has ordained that the hordes of the Rat Killin’ Cow-Flesh Eaters are an offense and they must be purged from our lands if we are to achive pencil chewing perfection.
Ya know, there is a completely different view we might consider. Humans in general are a very egotistical and xenophobic race. What if they got it so wrong as to be backwards.

Consider, Homo-Sapiens have about 100K generations in the present form. Prior to that there were billions of years without them. Did the myriad of deitys that are worshipped just sit around playing ms solitare waiting for followers to evolve? (yes, I do in fact belive in Evolution, Molecular Memory, and the Concervation of Energy aka Reincarnation…oh yeah, and Santa Claus) Anyway, can gods exist without people to believe in them? This opens up a big ole’ can o’ worms.

1. If a deity is a controling force of the universe and there is no one in the universe who knows it, does the deity still exist as a god?

Imagine you are a scientist studying bacteria in a petri dish. From the point of view of the bacteria you would be like a God, with the power of life death, creation and destruction.

Does this make you a god or just voyeur with controling issues?
3

Does any of this matter to the bacteria?

Will any of them kill each other in an attempt to gain favor from the Giant-Eye-Overhead God?

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Hunnar wrote:

Consider, Homo-Sapiens have about 100K generations in the present form.

[nitpick]
If by “the present form” you mean Homo sapiens sapiens (Cro Magnon and its descendants), the earliest known example dates at about 130,000 years ago. That’s 6500 generations, not 100,000 generations.
[/nitpick]

[Hunnar]

I did say “about”. That means +/- 100% of the original number, and then I let someone else come up with accurate research.

I’m an “Idea Man”, about 20 minutes ahead of my time.

[jmullaney]

*Originally posted by Ptahlis *
If Pious Guy says that act X has some negative consequence, and Evil Bastard says act X is a great hobby with no ill effects, then who do we believe?

What do you think the source of Evil Bastard’s actions are?

I still would like some sort of description of what “temporal spiritual punishment” is supposed to be if it isn’t guilt or remorse.

I would be content to call it “unhappiness” not to put too fine a point on it.

This is just getting silly now.

Agreed.

Nobody posited a guy who has to rob blind beggars to be happy, but a person who happens to be perfectly happy to take the opportunity and who feels no regret over the actions.

I don’t think real human beings work that way. I just can’t see someone mugging blind cripples without some sort of motivation.

Instead of “perfectly happy,” lets say he derives pleasure from robbing the blind guy.

But he’s still not truly happy if he needs to derived added happiness from performing such actions. You are admitting he needs to perform this action to lift himself to a higher spiritual state. Thus he is at a lower state of happiness than he should be already. This is the temporal punishment.

This is not the only activity that gives him pleasure, nor even the only type of activity that gives him pleasure, but one mong many.

Again, you are positing a person who has to do these various actions in order to increase his happiness, and that he has to sustain these actions. He is not as happy as he could be unless he performs these actions. That is a reflection on his spiritual state – which is, to some degree, unhappy.

[Captain_Amazing]

*Originally posted by jmullaney *
**
But he’s still not truly happy if he needs to derived added happiness from performing such actions. You are admitting he needs to perform this action to lift himself to a higher spiritual state. Thus he is at a lower state of happiness than he should be already. This is the temporal punishment.
**

Well, but I’m happy when I eat ice cream, and don’t get to eat it all the time. Is my lack of ice cream punishment? How is my like of ice cream different than his like of beating up beggars?

[jmullaney]

To quote Chuage Tzu again, “Desires unsettle the heart until the original nature runs amok.”

[Ptahlis]

*Originally posted by jmullaney *
**
But he’s still not truly happy if he needs to derived added happiness from performing such actions. You are admitting he needs to perform this action to lift himself to a higher spiritual state. Thus he is at a lower state of happiness than he should be already. This is the temporal punishment.

snip

Again, you are positing a person who has to do these various actions in order to increase his happiness, and that he has to sustain these actions. He is not as happy as he could be unless he performs these actions. That is a reflection on his spiritual state – which is, to some degree, unhappy. **

So, your idea of temporal spiritual punishment for sinning is not being in a continuous state of maximum happiness? That sounds bizarre to me. Everyone has varying degrees of happiness, even Jesus if I read my gospels right. If someone were to always be maximally happy, how would he even know it without a comparative base?

[jmullaney]

*Originally posted by Ptahlis *
So, your idea of temporal spiritual punishment for sinning is not being in a continuous state of maximum happiness? That sounds bizarre to me.

It’s an idea shared among Catholicism, Buddhism, Taoism, and… miscellaneous.

Everyone has varying degrees of happiness, even Jesus if I read my gospels right.

Point taken. Jesus wept upon learning of Lazarus’s death. Although elsewhere he says, “let the dead bury their dead” which is reminiscent of the passage in Chuang Tzu where his disciples ask him about his funeral:

"When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But Chuang Tzu said, “With Heaven and Earth for my coffin and shell; with the sun, moon, and stars as my burial regalia; and with all creation to escort me to the grave, - are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand?”

“We fear,” argued the disciples, “lest the carrion kite should eat the body of our Master”; to which Chuang Tzu replied, “above ground I shall be food for kites; below I shall be food for mole-crickets and ants. What do you have against birds?”

Jesus was also distressed over the prospect of his crucifixion – at least, he wanted to do God’s will and was uncertain as to what exactly it was. Despite their similarities, the spiritualism of Christianity is concerned with love of neighbor, God’s will, righteousness, saving the world, etc. while you could argue that the spirituality of Taoism and it’s derivatives are more self-centered (or, perhaps, realistic). “Suffering for the sake of righteousness: is it worth it?” is a whole other debate. Of course, some would argue that Jesus paid the debt for Original Sin and there is that strain of spirituality in Christianity as well.

If someone were to always be maximally happy, how would he even know it without a comparative base?

Ah, the Tree of the Knwledge of Good and Evil. You are familiar with this parable? All have sinned, etc. Paul goes into this whole issue big time, so I defer to him.

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Apu: “Hindu! There are 700 million of us”
Reverend Lovejoy: “Aw. That’s super.”