Religion, morality and conscience

omnicorp

fine fine fine, I don't really agree with organised religion though, The Catholic Church should go back to the third century and stay there.
I don't mean this in an insulting way, I just think that it was a bit more basic and more moral than now.

Fysh

omnicorp wrote:

fine fine fine, I don't really agree with organised religion though, The Catholic Church should go back to the third century and stay there.
I don't mean this in an insulting way, I just think that it was a bit more basic and more moral than now.

I don't take it as an insult at all - you are entitled to your opinion The disagreement I have with religion-based ethics and morals is that they tend to be based, ultimately, on either faith (Which I do not have) or "because I say so" (which has ended up being the case for a lot of religions - the preachers/teachers/priests use their god as a boogeyman to scare the kids into obedience).

In terms of actual value systems, I pretty much adhere to a moral system not unlike the Christian system without the specifically God-oriented parts. But I've read about morality to some extent, learned a bit about different schools of ethics and made a decision that way. What I dislike about religious morality is that there's no choice - either you have faith and follow your religion, including its stance on morality, or you don't. And that, to me, isn't morality - that's just following someone else's rules because you're told to, which precludes the notion of making any decision about something being right or wrong.

Having said the above....I'm less than fully familiar with the history of the Catholic church...how would you describe their ethical/moral values in the epoch you mentioned? It might be interesting to discuss how and why it has evolved from where it started to where we are today...

omnicorp

well, it was less of an organisation than a way of life.
Instead of large churches etc. mass was a humble affair in peoples house, there was no training to be a priest, people preached to others and lived a way of life according to "treat one another as you have treated unto yourself", in otherwords, nearly completely different from todays capitalist organisation.

Redbhoy

Theres no need for religon in modern times! Everyone has a conscience which tells them right from wrong!

omnicorp

people have always had a conscience.
Whether now or 20,000 years ago it makes no differnce.

Fysh

Redbhoy wrote:

Theres no need for religon in modern times! Everyone has a conscience which tells them right from wrong!

I strongly disagree, I for one believe that a large part of what we consider "conscience" is directly related to upbringing. Not to mention the existence of psychopaths, individuals unable to feel empathy for other living creatures and therefore unburdened by conscience.

While I very much dislike the idea that morality can only ever stem from religion, I'm wary about saying that there's no use for it in modern society. I advocate its separation and independence from state affairs, but surely people should be free to believe what they want if we're going to live in a democratic system?

That said, I would venture forth the theory that organised religion actually works against the interest of individual morality (which in turn sheds a totally different light on "moral" gods who issue commandments) since they boil morality down to following rules as opposed to making your own decision when confronted with a moral quandary. It's not really morality if you have the reward of life in heaven as part of the argument in favour of living a "moral" life according to religion x, is it?

omnicorp

I fail to see why people have to take someone Else's views on Religion and God (Christianity, Islam etc.) instead of coming up with their own and sticking to it.

transperson

i agree that there should be a general theology forum or that it should be discussed here !

i completely agree with omnicorp that god,spirituality,religion whtaever you want to call it [not really religion as it implies a recieved dogmatic doctrine and organisation] should be a creative personal experience not the blind belief in what your mother and the local priest/imam/rabbi say. create your own unique internal world and use what you will to do it.

even if the sole function of belief in divinity was moral regulation[some notion!], what redbhoy says is nonsence. as fysh says conscience is dependent on upbringing, the internalisation of authority and conformity to social norms as learnt during childhood. Conscience is not god given, that is to say not any more god given or without cause than any other phemoenon. but it is not universal and the fact that people mosty have some sort of conscience does not affect religion in the least, in fact i would say that people have much stronger consciences when the strict rules of some religions are imposed on them,just think all of those boys treathened with blindness by the priest, and what their consciences were like.no rules as a child is bad news for a conscience.

i agree with fysh also on the fact the morality should not come from religion . reason can and is used to from our moral basis without the idea gods will intering the equation. but that view of religion as constricting moral development is very narrow and as far as i can see soley based on the restricted Christian outlook on the God, morallity and religion.

fysh, you say that conscience is the result of upbringing,fair enough but if that is the case we can "learn" our conscience only by following and internaliseing the rules/values of our upbringers and their society. then conscience is merely the following of internal rules/values. so we are just making our "own decision" based on the cultural rules as learnt when growing up. so surely we are just following rules and not making our own decision. the only difference is the way these as formally expressed, bible vs constitution. and as the case is that our cultural rules and values are the based on the very commandments and way of life that the catholic church dictated[ 1937-DeV gave a "special" place the constitution to the church and the bishops had a big say in it!],does it even make a difference."applied" morality and theology have grown up together.
how can you maintain the position of advocating personal descision theory toward morality while agreeing that conscience is the result of upbringing and maintaining that religion based morality is negative for the individual.

most people seem to think religion and morality systems that go along with them are either to be accepted "religiously" or comdemned as wrong. looking at Jesus,Mohammed etc as just some ancient people with theories on how the world is,god being the central notion, one should see that what they said is just wise words that can help people live, not gods word, their word that other people caught onto and formed a cult which then spread and now look its all over the world! its just words, take what you will from it and form your own ideas. in fact, in my opinion what is said in the Bible and every religious [hindu and buddhist a little]text i have read is very profound and inspiritional and one cant help but form these strange ideas about the world and what really is going on.

simu

I've split this from the thread on whether religion can be discussed in this forum because the discussion has moved off-topic. Feel free to continue the discussion here!

Fysh

transperson wrote:

fysh, you say that conscience is the result of upbringing,fair enough but if that is the case we can "learn" our conscience only by following and internaliseing the rules/values of our upbringers and their society. then conscience is merely the following of internal rules/values. so we are just making our "own decision" based on the cultural rules as learnt when growing up. so surely we are just following rules and not making our own decision.

So far, I agree completely.

transperson wrote:

the only difference is the way these as formally expressed, bible vs constitution. and as the case is that our cultural rules and values are the based on the very commandments and way of life that the catholic church dictated[ 1937-DeV gave a "special" place the constitution to the church and the bishops had a big say in it!],does it even make a difference."applied" morality and theology have grown up together.
how can you maintain the position of advocating personal descision theory toward morality while agreeing that conscience is the result of upbringing and maintaining that religion based morality is negative for the individual.

The part in bold is where I disagree specifically. The problem itself comes down to the free will/conditioning problem - we like to think we have free will, but every scientific experiment we've ever carried out has been based on the assumption that the universe is a causal system (ie cause and effect). Therefore our brain as a machine may or may not be able to transcend the initial programming we undergo in our formative years (first seven years or so, although it's a topic heavily researched by psychologist iirc). With no clear evidence either way, I opt for the idea that as a species it is generally possible (although not always) for people to use their reason to consciously change their values and therefore effectively alter their conscience.

Unfortunately, when it comes to this problem, there aren't really any answers so far, only opinions.

transperson wrote:

most people seem to think religion and morality systems that go along with them are either to be accepted "religiously" or comdemned as wrong. looking at Jesus,Mohammed etc as just some ancient people with theories on how the world is,god being the central notion, one should see that what they said is just wise words that can help people live, not gods word, their word that other people caught onto and formed a cult which then spread and now look its all over the world! its just words, take what you will from it and form your own ideas. in fact, in my opinion what is said in the Bible and every religious [hindu and buddhist a little]text i have read is very profound and inspiritional and one cant help but form these strange ideas about the world and what really is going on.

I very much agree with your suggestion on people should read and interpret "holy writings". I'm in two minds about the ambiguity, though - on the one hand it could be that they genuinely believed in this omnipotent being that uttered commandments (which just happened to be socially convenient ones, being as they would allow a large society to inhabit relatively close quarters without everyone getting on each others nerves to the point of killing each other). But on the other hand, you have to consider that the people who wrote these papers were fairly intelligent and likely to have some authority within their socieities. Saying "be nice to each other" carries less weight than "and yea, he did command that all would be nice to each other on pain of spending eternity in the hot place with a big red man jamming pitchforks in their collective botties", if manipulation and control of a large and often ignorant populace is what you're looking for....

solas

shouldn't it be in this order..
conscience, morality and religion.
one kind of begets the other.

simu

solas wrote:

shouldn't it be in this order..
conscience, morality and religion.
one kind of begets the other.

The word order in the thread title is random - don't read meaning into it. I was trying to give some idea of what people were discussing in the thread, that's all!

transperson

Fysh wrote:

The problem itself comes down to the free will/conditioning problem - we like to think we have free will, but every scientific experiment we've ever carried out has been based on the assumption that the universe is a causal system (ie cause and effect). Therefore our brain as a machine may or may not be able to transcend the initial programming we undergo in our formative years (first seven years or so, although it's a topic heavily researched by psychologist iirc). With no clear evidence either way, I opt for the idea that as a species it is generally possible (although not always) for people to use their reason to consciously change their values and therefore effectively alter their conscience.

fsyh , yes the problem the personal decision veiw of ethics that you are advocating does boil down to the freewill/determinist arguement. as you have said all scientific knowledge and experiment point to determinism and you have agreed with the veiw of conscience and morallity as determined by upbringing and experience. however, in your opinion, reason can overcome this!

a possible opinion is that, as we are always getting new experiences and learning our minds, conscience and morals evolve as we live but that is all we are still determined by our past experience and unique circumstances to follow the law of cause and effect. your "reprogramming" is simply the continuation of the process of "initial programming" . reason is not a way out of cause and effect because it is so clearly based upon the very principles of cause and effect.


however, the law of cause and effect is paralleled by the hindu notion of karma. that is that past action and events lead inevitably to the present circumstance which inevitably leads to future circumstance and so on as karma plays itself out. as long as we are attached to our selfs [ego] and the world around us we can never escape this.

i think reason certainly cannot help us as it is based on the human imposition on concepts and ideas upon nature leading to generality and innacuracy aswell as keeping us firmly locked in the left-brain verbal intellectual analaytical framework of thinking.

as i understand the hindu teachings i have read it is through an intuitive realisation of the ultimate reality and a complete loss of ego [a kind of enlightenment] that we can escape this law cause and effect otherwise we are condemned to play out our karma. so as we cannot sence our ultimate selves, that is if we have one at all, we are just the accumulation of past events states playing onto new events in the a cause and effect manner.

so the view of the world as hindus see it determinism and freedom exist together on different levels but the west is a bit lost at the moment with this reason is all that is important, science holds the key to all and the massive swing toward the gratification-now, consumerist, athiest and materialist, in both sence of the word, outlook and culture.


fysh, there is no doubt but that those who wrote the bible and other taxts believed what they said and thought it was fact and truth, to them it was fact. to someone who has a revelation, without doubt that revelation is true.
those who have written this liturature on the divine, whatever form it takes were never powerful, when the bible was written Jesus was percieved as a dangerous madman, christianity was an underground cult, not a policy making ruling elite. the same with mohammed, the same with judaism, Zorohasrianism at its inception, buddha the list goes on. as far as i can see religion, in particular christianity was hi-jacked and used for the benefit of the state and rulers. but realise that the teachings of the those who wrote are there for the benefit of all individuals not the state. Jesus not once talked of religion, organisation or state, but always of life and goodness. people let what others have done get in the way of what is said, personally i dont think they should it is blindness to do so.

Fysh

transperson wrote:

fysh, there is no doubt but that those who wrote the bible and other taxts believed what they said and thought it was fact and truth, to them it was fact. to someone who has a revelation, without doubt that revelation is true.

I disagree. I very much doubt not only the current translations of ancient texts, but also the notion that they are pure and unbiased transcriptions of the words of the prophets. In the case of christianity in particular most of the bible is actually third-person accounts or interpretations of the actions of jesus.

Then there's the fact that I might, if i were to take LSD or magic mushrooms or other hallucinogens, have a "revelation" and see the face of God or whatever. It doesn't mean it's ultimately true, because what we've done is reconfigured our brain by chemically altering it. (Again, this brings us back to another older argument, the objective/subjective reality problem). Therefore, since I am aware of this possibility, I question the contents of certain texts.

transperson wrote:

those who have written this liturature on the divine, whatever form it takes were never powerful, when the bible was written Jesus was percieved as a dangerous madman, christianity was an underground cult, not a policy making ruling elite. the same with mohammed, the same with judaism, Zorohasrianism at its inception, buddha the list goes on. as far as i can see religion, in particular christianity was hi-jacked and used for the benefit of the state and rulers. but realise that the teachings of the those who wrote are there for the benefit of all individuals not the state. Jesus not once talked of religion, organisation or state, but always of life and goodness. people let what others have done get in the way of what is said, personally i dont think they should it is blindness to do so.

With regard to the part I've marked in bold; according to the bible Jesus never talked of religion, organisation or state. However, we're 2000-odd years on from when that document was originally written. Given, amongst other things, the use of these texts by the Russian Orthodox Church towads the end of the nineteenth century, I'm sceptical of assuming that the texts have not been altered throughout history to suit the needs of larger institutionalised religions.

Note : I've not quoted or responded to your comments about hindusim because I agree with what you've pointed out about the use of reason, and don't have anything to reply yo your comments about hinduism (which I found very interesting and informative, btw )

transperson

fysh,
yes the bible may have been altered, but that does not take away from a core message that it communicates. to ignore all it says on the suspesion that it may have been altered is akin to "throwing the baby out with the dish water". anyway, as i said take what you will from it, i certainly think the bible is narrow in its approach, this very day i had some devoted Legion of Mary women come up to me, they were quoting the bible and making it seem as if i was lost to the devil and that jesus was the only truth, one of the women said that i should go to a church at christmas because jesus said "where there are two or three gathered in my name i am present", out of this line the whole idea of churchs and cathedrals have grown! its all taken out of context and alot of rubbish and irrelevent stuff has developed which i think should be ignored. it is essdential to discover for yourself not rely on others who can and do manipulate information for their benefit.

and everything we know is second or third hand reports, we have very little first hand knowledge. we only trust that man got to the moon, atoms and electrons exist, that history happened the way we are told etc. if we were to throw all second hand knowledge out the door we would be lost.

if the church wanted power and a legitimate hierarchical structure [as you imply] and it was willing to edit [as you imply] the bible then i would think that it would be filled with references to bishops and popes and organisation and the god given order that should be upon the church! but its not, so what you are implying must be wrong. ,surely if the russian orthodox church wanted more power and organisation they would have altered the bible so that organisational and heirarchical religion was directly refered to by jesus.

throwing drugs into the equation, if one was to have a religious experience while on hallucinogens, does that make the experience less real for the experiencer? im not sure. i know people whose lives have been changed by a spiritual experience while on drugs. and is everything not just chemical balances in the brain? that opens up a can of worms and usually leads to materialism.
but not having thought about it alot i cant really see why the possible fact that everything in our experience can be routed in material and energy is a problem for an outlook on existance as divine. science is more and more pointing in the direction that all is one-energy, matter is energy,we are energy, what we think is energy.it's all energy! major hippee stuff

getting off topic, basically i think this topic is to wide to condence what i think of it!

a point: the way dicussions evelve it seems that they always waver from the topic especially as undefined as this!

as for the first post in this tread, i agree that the christian church shoud return to its roots. it should ignore the manipulation and perversion of the original movement and become the way of life it was, treat your neighbour as you treat yourself, sence of brotherhood, community, connection, union with god, loving etc. the radical christian ethos!

i think even if we dont believe that god exists religion can still be a useful tool in creating a more harmonious, free and happy world. just as long as it is not abused by the powerful, which will almost inevitibly happen, and even then it is still useful for the individual if they realise that is going on and have a critical outlook.

Fysh

transperson wrote:

yes the bible may have been altered, but that does not take away from a core message that it communicates. to ignore all it says on the suspesion that it may have been altered is akin to "throwing the baby out with the dish water".

Well, that's not exactly what I was saying. Among other things, the ideas contained in the Bible (at least in the new testament) have been discussed without the religious context as the social contract - it's not the ideas I have issue with, it's the way they are presented as a religion. Given my scepticism for religion in general, I tend to avoid discussing the ideas from a religious perspective because I find it very difficult to accept the notion of "religious morality". But that's a separate discussion.

transperson wrote:

and everything we know is second or third hand reports, we have very little first hand knowledge. we only trust that man got to the moon, atoms and electrons exist, that history happened the way we are told etc. if we were to throw all second hand knowledge out the door we would be lost.

Not entirely accurate. One of the more interesting aspects of science is that most if not all experiments used to justify theories are normally documented in very detailed form, the entire idea being that you should be able to reproduce the entire experiment and see the evidence for yourself before accepting an idea. Given the sheer volume of research carried out today, it is impossible for one to actually do this so some trust in the academic world is required, but in principle if you want to test the theories for yourself the work is documented in many a textbook as well as the original papers (although access to these is not always easily available). But I agree that this is another problem when discussing matters concerning historical documents in general.

transperson wrote:

if the church wanted power and a legitimate hierarchical structure [as you imply] and it was willing to edit [as you imply] the bible then i would think that it would be filled with references to bishops and popes and organisation and the god given order that should be upon the church! but its not, so what you are implying must be wrong. ,surely if the russian orthodox church wanted more power and organisation they would have altered the bible so that organisational and heirarchical religion was directly refered to by jesus.

That's not what I was implying, nor is it what happened. The church did not seek power for itself; it was manipulated by the Czar at the time to try and raise public support for a leader who was really not very good at his job. Owing to high illiteracy at the time as well as widespread poverty, it was possible for bishops and priests to be very selective with what gospels they preached, giving rise to a situation where the ideals of the new testament were preached when civil unrest was growing (in an attempt to quell the peasant uprising) and old testament fire and brimstone, eye-for-an-eye-and-tooth-for-a-tooth ideals were preached when the Czar was planning to go to war with Japan in 1905 (to encourage the people to be patriotic and fight for their country). Although you only have to look at the Catholic church and its devotion to a Pope and the Virgin Mary over Jesus to see an institution where the actual contents of the book as we know it have, at the very least, been either ignored or very interestingly misinterpreted. Not to mention the constant queries as to why "new" gospels are not accepted as being genuine.

transperson wrote:

throwing drugs into the equation, if one was to have a religious experience while on hallucinogens, does that make the experience less real for the experiencer? im not sure. i know people whose lives have been changed by a spiritual experience while on drugs. and is everything not just chemical balances in the brain? that opens up a can of worms and usually leads to materialism.

I can't say I'm sure either, but from my experiences with drugs I find that a lot of my perceptions turn out to later be unreliable (anything from thinking that another drink is a good idea to becoming convinced that I have the ability to scale sheer walls, and many other ideas in between) - hence my scepticism for convictions or ideas that arise as a result of deliberately interfering with the normal operation of the brain. I don't mean to absolutely dismiss it, but how do we know we won't discover some drug under the influence of which people lose all sense of religion? It is a difficult question to answer, and I don't flatter myself to think that I'm qualified to do so, at least not beyond making decisions on my own personal viewpoint.

transperson wrote:

but not having thought about it alot i cant really see why the possible fact that everything in our experience can be routed in material and energy is a problem for an outlook on existance as divine. science is more and more pointing in the direction that all is one-energy, matter is energy,we are energy, what we think is energy.it's all energy! major hippee stuff

This raises an interesting point - for a while, the whole "everything is energy and we're all one" has been recognized as a sort of generic hippy/new age/tree hugger ideal, and a lot of people point at Strings or Superstrings and say "see, science is finally catching up with what we already knew" and start being smug. But, if we go back hundreds of years, to the greek ideas about matter being made up of atoms, nowhere has it ever been scientifically documented that there is any division between the matter that makes up the universe and the matter that makes up our bodies. So realistically there's never been a division between this ideal and the scientific viewpoint. Where the division arises, I think, is in the appended notion that somehow we are all capable of tapping into a universal consciousness. Partly because there's been no real scientific investigation into how the tapping in would happen (likely due to our imperfect understanding of how the brain works) and partly because there's never been any kind of proper explanation of what this universal consciousness is (as in, what structures it might work through, what it represents, does it have a body, are we a part of it when we haven't attuned our brains to it, is it part of a greater multiverse or the sum total of the universe, etc).

transperson wrote:

as for the first post in this tread, i agree that the christian church shoud return to its roots. it should ignore the manipulation and perversion of the original movement and become the way of life it was, treat your neighbour as you treat yourself, sence of brotherhood, community, connection, union with god, loving etc. the radical christian ethos!

I would imagine that the reason this was lost was that as the religion spread, positions of authority (at least in terms of organisation, if nothing else) arose who likely viewed the use of communal churches as a way of maintaining a consistent set of ideals and values throughout all the lands where it was adhered to. Not that I think it's necessarily right, merely a suggestion as to how the structure may have gotten to its current state. I do think that it would be nice for it to return to the form described, even though this does to an extent question whether the religious aspect is actually necessary (in light of the overlap of ideals with those of the social contract, etc).

transperson wrote:

i think even if we dont believe that god exists religion can still be a useful tool in creating a more harmonious, free and happy world. just as long as it is not abused by the powerful, which will almost inevitibly happen, and even then it is still useful for the individual if they realise that is going on and have a critical outlook.

I don't understand why an organised religion would be of any use in a population that didn't believe in god. Surely all that does is teach people to follow an institution rather than the ideas it claims to represent? Meaning that the critical outlook you mention is reduced rather than encouraged.

while I do think that some sort of introspection or spiritual consideration is generally beneficial to every individual (no matter what their personal views on the subject), I dislike the idea of large structures because they tend to accumulate followers through who the structure can gain power and influence, which is always something to be feared. It's amazing what people will do when they're convinced that they're earning themselves salvation...

Pherekydes

transperson wrote:

"throwing the baby out with the dish water".

You were washed in the sink, too? Hey, at least my parents took the dishes out first! :eek:

johnscone

the whole believing in a god thing is a bit crazy anyway, its like kids who have imaginery friends who they talk to.