Let's analyze "Defeaters: The Problem of Science" - a sermon by Joe Coffey

[Interbane]

And just what exactly about Christianity is outdated?

Most everything. God created man in his current form. God created the Earth mere thousands of years ago. Morality that is exclusive. All the ridiculous fairy tale miracles(woman was created from man's rib?) - which leads to misogyny.

It's obviously a bandaid to cover men's lack of knowledge during that time. What they didn't know, they created stories to explain. We don't need the stories anymore. We now know better.

[DWill]

I commend you to the Left Behind book series, or if you prefer not to read the books, checkout the DVD series.

There's the small problem that whichever of the authors does the actual writing, he's not good at it. Anyway, I like to think Robert Wright is correct that the whole rapture thing is based on a disputed reading.

[jcoffey]

Dear Lady of Shallot, I appreciate your reply. I suppose I am getting the courage statement from Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus who both sensed an enormous emptiness. Nietche also mentions it. I also appreciate your values and your purpose for living. My question is a simple "why". What is the basis for the purpose? Your purposes are all outstanding in my world view but what if someone decides their purpose is the total opposite of what you stated. On what basis do you talk to them? To what authority do you appeal? What makes something wrong? There seem to be only a few answers for that question. I decide, which means I am the ultimate authority. Society decides, in which case the majority seems to rule. The strong impose their values on others is another possibility. For all of you it seems you agree that intolerance is wrong. Ok, why? Who got to decide that? Do I get to decide that disbelief in God is wrong? If you get to decide intolerance is wrong not just for you but also for me then what prevents me from deciding that what is wrong for me is also wrong for you? Those are my questions. And they really are sincere.

[lady of shallot]

"My question is a simple "why". What is the basis for the purpose? Your purposes are all outstanding in my world view but what if someone decides their purpose is the total opposite of what you stated."

I think the total opposite of what I stated does happen (like on 9/11) in the name of religion.
I would not be talking to someone like that as there would be no ground for conversation and such a person would be either depraved or mentally ill or a zealot. Others do decide what is wrong for each of us, through law or custom or persuasion or power. Some of these things are minor and we do them to accommodate each other (like turning a t .v. down if your spouse has a headache) some are major like killing. It really all boils down to the golden rule, which I need not believe that Jesus said it to believe it is a good guide for life, and I think the reason Jesus was said to say that is because it is so obvious.

I see my life as a link in the long chain of humanity and I am happy to be that link. I am glad I have a child and she has children to contribute to the human race. I do not believe I existed before I was conceived and I do not believe I will live after my death except in such memories of those who loved me and in whatever works I have created or contributed to my fellow beings.

I actually think most human beings share the same characteristics. There are those who are evil, but they are not the majority. In time we will understand these individuals better and be able (hopefully) to prevent their influence, acts and effects on others.

[stahrwe]

And just what exactly about Christianity is outdated?

Most everything. God created man in his current form. God created the Earth mere thousands of years ago. Morality that is exclusive. All the ridiculous fairy tale miracles(woman was created from man's rib?) - which leads to misogyny.

It's obviously a bandaid to cover men's lack of knowledge during that time. What they didn't know, they created stories to explain. We don't need the stories anymore. We now know better.

Sorry Interbane but you are completely wrong. Nothing you mentioned is necessary for Christianity. Christianity is first and foremost about a personal relationship between the individual and Jesus Christ. In the formative years of the early church the creation story, story of Adam and Eve, Noah's Ark, indeed everything in the Bible was not part of the message. You need to get your mind out of the box that Christainity is YEC. It is not! Therefore, with the exception of your objection to the morality of Christianity, which I pointed out previously is the perfect definition of morality, nothing you objected to is Christianity.

[stahrwe]

I commend you to the Left Behind book series, or if you prefer not to read the books, checkout the DVD series.

There's the small problem that whichever of the authors does the actual writing, he's not good at it. Anyway, I like to think Robert Wright is correct that the whole rapture thing is based on a disputed reading.

I hate to keep bringing it up because I suspect no one actually thinks about what I am saying anymore because I have said it so much, but I showed that Robert Wright has a demonstable record of misreading, ignoring, and failing to understand the Bible. I would place zero confidence in any interpretation Wright promotes.

[jcoffey]

Dear Lady of Shallot,
Your answer really doesn't address my question. You seem to say that everyone just knows what good is and what evil is but there is no reason that would be the case. There are plenty of human beings who are not religious that differ in what they consider good and evil. Who decides? Interbane, you think well. Do you understand my question? As soon as anyone opens their mouth and says one thing is more true than another they are invoking an absolute or at the very least an agreed upon value. The Nuremberg trials of WW2 appealed to a higher law since nothing the Germans did on German soil was illegal. What is the basis for the higher law? And if you say that it has evolved then my question is who decides what is the higher evolution when it comes to morality?

[johnson1010]

Here is a bit that i wrote about this topic on a different thread, which you can find here:

http://www.booktalk.org/why-conduct-you ... t8917.html

There is no otherworldly yard stick by which we measure our moral activities. Nor does there need to be. It all hinges on treating eachother kindly, and working together so that we can all survive.

It is telling that our morality extends only to those we consider to be in our in-groups.

Where is the sympathy, and cries of "murder!" surrounding the cattle ranch? Billions of these animals have been slaughtered by humanity, and hardly nobody has even noticed. Do you pause before you cut into that steak and ponder the genocide which has brought it to your table? It seems to me that a morality imposed on us by a creator that made ALL things, would insist on kindness done to ALL things. The fact that we so readily exclude 99 percent of the living organisms on this planet from any moral consideration is demonstration that morality is a human creation designed to govern our relationship to one another.

i have thought about this for a while.

How does morality work?

There is no god. No imperative which forces us to behave morally from beyond.

There are many different ways of behaving, but broadly speaking, lets talk about selfish and community oriented morality.

Selfish morality would be the kind which says that it is ok to steal from someone else, or kill in an effort to get ahead in life.

Community oriented morality is basically the premise that if you help someone else, they will try to help you, if only to be helped by you again later. This is the seed of all “do unto others” method.

Community oriented morality simply out-competes selfish morality. By its nature, it builds relationships and forges bonds with a group of people. A few working together can accomplish what many working separately cannot. A kind of natural selection is at work in social groups. You keep around people who help you, and you help them, so that they can be a use to you in the future.

Community oriented morality also dictates that any who live in a community must adhere to the rule of the community. Those who mis-behave are few, those who tow the line are legion. Being part of the community is a far more successful strategy than trying to fight the community.

There is no magic here. No mystery. It is survival of the fittest applied to morality. Being moral is in everyone’s best interests, and more specifically, your own best interest. One strategy is observed to be outrageously successful, and another leads to a life of being ostracized and punishment which inhibits the success of anyone who practices selfish morality.

One is not superior to the other due to higher moral authenticity. It is simply a case of one path being more successful. I would argue that community oriented morality IS more morally authentistic, but that is not what ensures it's useage.

These are naturally not absolutes. The fact that there are instances of successful selfish moralists demonstrates that the enforcement of community oriented morality falls to humans, not some external force of immovable authority which sees all and can have immediate impact on the enforcement of community oriented morality.

The bad guys don’t always get what is coming to them because they have slipped through the cracks of detection from other humans, who are not perfect. The very vast majority of humans do not follow the path of selfish morality, though, because it is a less successful strategy. Some few humans have succeeded in cutting out a piece of the world for themselves using selfish means, such as dictators, while the vast majority of the population which they feed off of lives a life of community oriented morality. By and large what happens is that a selfish moralist takes from someone within the in-group of the community oriented group, and they punish this loner for disrupting the harmony of the group. Sheer weight of numbers ensures the enforcement. Numbers which have a hard time forming up around a selfish morality because there is no mechanism in it to encourage co-operation.

There are specifics which vary from community to community, but basically speaking, those things which contribute to the success of the community are seen as good, those things which inhibit the success of the community are seen as bad.

The definition of the community, or in-group, also determines which things are considered bad. A gang which robs from the people of its neighborhood is still behaving in a community oriented frame-work, but they have defined their in-group standards to be very selective. This pits them against the larger group which deems the work of the gang to be a selfish moral act.

The gang will be punished by the larger majority.

The eradication of the jews by Nazis was widely viewed as bad by communities which thought of the group “humanity” as the in-group. Nazis considered a very specific segment of society to be their own in-group, and so the infliction of misery on those outside of that group was seen as justified to further the success of the in-group, or so they perceived.

This is no different than how Americans saw the native Americans or iraqi’s now. We send our troops to inflict misery on those we have marginalized and removed from our perceived in-group without real notions of having done wrong.

As time goes one, hopefully, we will all be able to conceive of all life as being in our in-group.

You see that what i am saying here has nothing to do with how the way things "should" be, but just how they are. People co-operate and get along because it is successful, not because it is the right thing to do (although i do think it is the right thing to do.) Morality does not force our hands. It is not an imperative that we cannot escape. It is a product of our interaction with eachother and in a way it is subject to natural selection.

[geo]

Community oriented morality also dictates that any who live in a community must adhere to the rule of the community. Those who mis-behave are few, those who tow the line are legion. Being part of the community is a far more successful strategy than trying to fight the community.

There is no magic here. No mystery. It is survival of the fittest applied to morality. Being moral is in everyone’s best interests, and more specifically, your own best interest. One strategy is observed to be outrageously successful, and another leads to a life of being ostracized and punishment which inhibits the success of anyone who practices selfish morality.

Altruistic behavior is common in the animal kingdom which is no surprise since we are animals too. It is seen as an evolutionary adaption.

"Vervet monkeys give alarm calls to warn fellow monkeys of the presence of predators, even though in doing so they attract attention to themselves, increasing their personal chance of being attacked. In social insect colonies (ants, wasps, bees and termites), sterile workers devote their whole lives to caring for the queen, constructing and protecting the nest, foraging for food, and tending the larvae. Such behaviour is maximally altruistic: sterile workers obviously do not leave any offspring of their own — so have personal fitness of zero — but their actions greatly assist the reproductive efforts of the queen."

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/altruism-biological/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_game_theory

[jcoffey]

Moderator,
Your reasoning is more logical but there are plenty of places in the world where it doesn't work nearly as neat as you have written. Why would it be advantageous to include the weak or the infirmed or the aged? Racism inflicts nearly every part of the globe in one way or another. You have very articulately explained a morality based on pragmatism. But pragmatism breaks down pretty quickly within the human animal. Thanks for your explanation though. Well done. I would guess this will cause some ire but it seems to me that your morality is living off the residue of the Christian morality that was prevalent for so long. In other cultures you do not find the same definition of goodness.