Gale wrote:
> mark wrote:
>
> what I coud follow>
(actually, I didn't write this)
>>>>What do others think? Is morality necessarily based upon religion?
>>
This, I wrote:
>> Why? Turn it around: are there folks here asserting that unless you're
>> threatened with eternal torture, you'll be bad? If so, explain Gandhi, or
>> Bertrand Russell, or a zillion others, including me, personally. Is
>> someone accusing *me* of being "immoral"? And if so, define that word:
>> does that mean dancing, consorting with women, and drinking?
>>
>> Or does it mean Good Christian Morals, like the "good Christians" who
>> hung onto slavery in the Old South, or the Spanish Inquisition, or the
>> wars and burnings of the Reformation, or, for that matter, George "we
>> don't torture, and I'm a fundamentalist Christian" Bush?
>
>
> Somewhere in my definitions, I attach the word "morality" to the notion
> of casting judgment on behavior -- usually someone else's behavior. As
> such, I'm willing to let the fundamentalists have the word, and continue
> to vainly wish that both they and the word would go away.
ROTFLMAO! At this point, I think of the Austin Lounge Lizards' old
song, "Jesus Loves Me, But He Hates You".
>
> I firmly believe, however, in ethics -- in the full philosophical sense
> of the standards of behavior we adopt and attempt to adhere to,
> standards derived from our capacities to reason, to empathize, and to
> love. I would suggest that ethical behavior is, ideally, grounded in the
> realization that "I am not the center of the Universe" and in the
> attempt to responsibly take on one's own little role in this Universe.
I agree. One of the things that really bothers me about western religion is
the emphasis on "faith" over evidence. Sorry, but if such a deity as their
did, in fact, create us, and gave us intelligence and logic, then either
they would *want* us to use it, or else they're liars. Given the
earth-is-8000-years-old crowd, with their denial of the age of dinosaurs,
etc, by their own lights their deity makes lies.
I far prefer (of all things) the words of a good Catholic: JRR Tolkien: in
LetR, when Strider, Legolas and Gimli rise up out of the tall grass, and
reveal themselves to the Riders of Rohan, Eomer says, "when legends rise
out of the grass, how is a man to choose the right?", to which Aragorn
replies, "As he ever has" (with the same standards that he has chosen all
his life).
mark
