Played alive.

The experiment was to show that if morals were inherent and genetic as Ash claimed, they would be there without the need for external suggestion.

Yet, the world could also be a great place if religion wasn't used in the way that it has/is been.

If a person has been brought up like that, then that would be completely against the norm of a human child, hence would not be a good base line for testing such a thing.

Evolved human behaviour does not just include what is genetically inate. It also includes what will be taught to the children. Essentially, memetics. Society's rules have evolved in the same way as animals - a society which teaches you not to murder survives, wheras one which teaches you to murder, or even just to remain neutral, does not. Part of human society is the belief that you have to care for your children and make them into good members of society. The meme is: "you must teach your children both not to murder and you must teach them this meme". Since everybody has a parent, everybody obtains the meme and passes it on. The entire species receives it. What this meme does not require is belief in God, gods, or the afterlife, or in fact anything which cannot rationally be explained in terms of benefit for individuals and the species.

Therefore, an entire society can evolve the idea not to murder without any reliance on faith.

Zed and Alive have pretty much said it well enough. Morality is essential to the operation of civilization. Due to the law of natural selection, morality HAD to develop, regardless of whether religion was involved, or else we wouldn't be here today. Societies that had an aversion to murdering each other were more likely to survive than those that didn't.

Ergo, religion is not required for morality.

Quote from Steyene

The experiment was to show that if morals were inherent and genetic as Ash claimed, they would be there without the need for external suggestion.

I never said morals were genetic. I said that an aversion to murder is genetic, murder being the killing of your next to kin, not that all morals were genetic.

Yet, the world could also be a great place if religion wasn't used in the way that it has/is been.

Name ONE benefit of faith that is not replicable by secular means.

I don't think it would make it better because it could possibly make people give up the will to live.Plus,it helps people set bondries such as if you are a REAL christian then you would know that the Bible basicly links up with modern day society such as "Thall shall not murder".It can be found in the Bible and paraphrased in law code.So you wouldn't go on a masacere (sorry for bad spelling but I mean a large Killing Spree)because you know it would be against religion.So in other words,you wouldn't have a real reason to back up your actions even if your religion is actually real or not.So if you are a Budda than you would go by not being attached to things in this world and so on and so on.So no,it would not really make it better unless you could find out the REAL religion such as if the roman gods are actually real or not.but if the christian God is real then people should follow that.I know I'm kinda rambling but that's about it.

Also it would affect mankind because like Zed put it religion is based off of what mankind could find of ancient times.so some religions could have been fused because the modern person saw it as one when in ancient times it could have ben ten religions man could have mistook for one.So as much as people THINK they know about history,tell them they are a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGG way from knowing every thing.matter of fact,some one could have created a time machine or a invincible armor that they didn't pass down to others.that's what I think.

Master of Animation, what makes you think that people wouldn't have a will to live if they didn't have religion? I don't have a religion: I'm an atheist. Not only that, but I don't believe in an afterlife, I don't think that life has any grand purpose, and I don't believe in the concept of the human soul.

What prevents me from losing the will to live?

Easy: I give my own life purpose. I hope to one day see the Halo film completed. I want to some day direct a zombie film. I want to play Dead Rising 2 when it is released. I enjoy thinking, and death would mean the end of my thought. I want to grow up to have children. I'm sure my death would cause distress among my loved ones. And killing myself would be a real bother. After all, I don't like pain, and there's not a lot of ways to kill yourself that don't involve pain.




And you are incorrect when you say that religion is the reason we don't go about killing people. The reasons we don't go about killing people are that

A)We can put ourselves in their shoes. You wouldn't like for someone to come along and kill you, now would you?

B)If you kill someone, then you are causing emotional pain to that person's friends, family, etc.

C)What reason would you have to kill someone?

and D) You would go to jail, because a society cannot function if people are allowed to kill each other.

Quote from Ash

What prevents me from losing the will to live?

Easy: I give my own life purpose. I hope to one day see the Halo film completed. I want to some day direct a zombie film. I want to play Dead Rising 2 when it is released. I enjoy thinking, and death would mean the end of my thought. I want to grow up to have children. I'm sure my death would cause distress among my loved ones. And killing myself would be a real bother. After all, I don't like pain, and there's not a lot of ways to kill yourself that don't involve pain.

That's a terrible set of reasons for you to be alive, and there are a lot of ways to painlessly commit suicide (it seems to me that you aren't intelligent enough to know what they are, however). I shouldn't be required to give examples.

Quote from Ash

And you are incorrect when you say that religion is the reason we don't go about killing people. The reasons we don't go about killing people are that

A)We can put ourselves in their shoes. You wouldn't like for someone to come along and kill you, now would you?

B)If you kill someone, then you are causing emotional pain to that person's friends, family, etc.

C)What reason would you have to kill someone?

and D) You would go to jail, because a society cannot function if people are allowed to kill each other.

Again; a terrible set of reasons. The reason nobody goes around murdering people is simply because they have no reason to be provoked in to murdering people. It isn't a simple set of morality; it's a set of common sense (a pair of words that is far past your petty comprehension).

I've decided I love Randolph.

Quote from randolph

That's a terrible set of reasons for you to be alive

So wanting to experience life is a terrible reason for me to want to be alive? Nice logic there.

Oh, and "I want to grow up to have children. I'm sure my death would cause distress among my loved ones." are bad reasons? Why?

there are a lot of ways to painlessly commit suicide (it seems to me that you aren't intelligent enough to know what they are, however). I shouldn't be required to give examples.

I'll agree, bad reason. Though it seems odd to me that you are confusing an example of ignorance and lack of intelligence. You do realize these words don't actually mean the same thing, don't you?

Again; a terrible set of reasons. The reason nobody goes around murdering people is simply because they have no reason to be provoked in to murdering people. It isn't a simple set of morality; it's a set of common sense (a pair of words that is far past your petty comprehension).

I LISTED THAT, YOU MORON.

C)What reason would you have to kill someone?

BTW, common sense is unreliable. Anyone with intelligence understands the difference between common sense and scientific/logical deduction.

Quote from Deathwish

I've decided I love Randolph.

I've decided that you're an idiot who sees that someone sides against me and assumes that therefore they must be great.

Nice job with the application of critical thinking. It seems to have escaped you that he's a bloody moron who can't read.

Quote from Ash

So wanting to experience life is a terrible reason for me to want to be alive? Nice logic there.

The experience of life is far different than the atrocious goals you've set for yourself. "See a movie; play a game." I don't expect you to understand, though, since you're still in grade school and haven't experienced life yet.

Quote from Ash

I LISTED THAT, YOU MORON.

If you could comprehend what my post stated, I reiterated that point and added backbone to it. I claimed that the rest were bad.

What you listed were terrible attempts at voice of reason. Do I have to reiterate that, too?

Quote from Ash

BTW, common sense is unreliable. Anyone with intelligence understands the difference between common sense and scientific/logical deduction.

Common sense is different than scientific deduction because deduction would mean that there are numerous points that would have to be excluded from a theory, when with common sense a theory isn't needed because there is nothing to exclude. I shouldn't have to give you examples because you obviously lack basic reading comprehension.

In short, your "BTW what I have just typed is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand" comment is meaningless and proves nothing.


I enjoy your debate tactics, however. Your usage of ad hominems makes these posts even more rewarding.

Quote from randolph

Your usage of ad hominems makes these posts even more rewarding.

Quote from randolph

The experience of life is far different than the atrocious goals you've set for yourself. "See a movie; play a game." I don't expect you to understand, though, since you're still in grade school and haven't experienced life yet.

Quote from randolph

I shouldn't have to give you examples because you obviously lack basic reading comprehension.

So I have been skimming through this thread every once in a while for the past few days and haven't had anything to point out until now. Randolph, you are a hypocrite.

Quote from randolph

The experience of life is far different than the atrocious goals you've set for yourself. "See a movie; play a game." I don't expect you to understand, though, since you're still in grade school and haven't experienced life yet.

Nice job ignoring "Have children" and "not causing pain to family and friends". Again.

If you could comprehend what my post stated, I reiterated that point and added backbone to it. I claimed that the rest were bad.

If that was meant to be reiteration, then your writing is atrocious.
You stated that my list of reasons for why people don't murder was awful, and then stated the reason people don't murder, which was a part of my list.
You didn't offer any reasons why my list was bad, you instead restated one of my reasons as if it were a brand new reason, which is assumed by your introduction sentence to be a correction to my list. You made no inkling that I had mentioned this reason, you just stated it flatly.

Even worse, your grammar here seems to be that of a 3rd grader. You say "a set of morality" and "a set of common sense". Perhaps you meant "A set of morals" and "a set of ideas dictated by common sense"?

What you listed were terrible attempts at voice of reason. Do I have to reiterate that, too?

No, you have to explain what was bad about them.

Common sense is different than scientific deduction because deduction would mean that there are numerous points that would have to be excluded from a theory, when with common sense a theory isn't needed because there is nothing to exclude. I shouldn't have to give you examples because you obviously lack basic reading comprehension.

"Common sense" is a person's initial perception. Common sense dictates that since above your head is up and below your feet is down, if you were to travel to the Indian Ocean you would fall off the Earth.

It isn't untill you ignore "common sense" and look at gravitation objectively that you understand that the reason this is not the case is that matter is forced towards the center of gravity, and that if the center of gravity is more or less at the center of the earth, "up" and "down" are relative terms.

Common sense dictates that if you cut a breadcrumb in half, you can cut the resulting crumbs in half and keep getting smaller and smaller crumbs. It's not until science comes along and shows us that eventually this act of cutting crumbs results in what can no longer be called breadcrumbs.

Common sense is not a good determiner of truth.

In short, your "BTW what I have just typed is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand" comment is meaningless and proves nothing.

If my response to your petty insult was irrelevant, than your insult must have been irrelevant as well.

Quote from Dragon⁰⁷⁷

So I have been skimming through this thread every once in a while for the past few days and haven't had anything to point out until now. Randolph, you are a hypocrite.

I'm pretty sure he's just a troll, look at his post record.

Randolph must be trolling. His comments are far too stupid to be made by a rational human being.


Now then, I remembered something that I wanted to bring to this thread's attention.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_4670000/newsid_4677200/4677247.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&bbcws=1

It takes a while to connect and load, and it's quite long, but I recomend you watch it all anyway. I put it to you that if religion and spiritualism were erradicated, the eight year old boy featured would have survived and thousands of other children would not suffer the horrendous privation of human rights.

I also argue that the world would lose nothing that could outweigh this by the absence of religious belief.

Let's leave terrorism aside for now and focus on something which is soley motivated by religion and not politics.

To me religion is the most important thing to have during these times. Saying that there is no God or gods is insane thinking. Being a christian saying that we can do better without God is highly offensive. These countries that are fighting over seas for what they think is right. People are very vunerable to what you teach them. Sadly these people are fooled into thinking killing yourself is good deed. To me religion isn't bad only the people teaching it. Also I think the world is a better place with religion espeacily christianity. Besides there is no way to explain the origion of everything without religion. Also you can't explain the meaning of life without religion.