Moral Guidance

Their parents, their peers, society as a whole, from within.

I suppose it all depends on what you mean by morality.

At it's core christianity has one key philosophical guideline, treat others as you'd like to be treated yourself. Not a bad one to be taking, no need for the enforced rituals, the judgement and the wish to control others. A back to basics approach wouldn't be the worst to taking. Most folk can take that guideline without the need for the added baggage that comes with organised religion

RecordStraight wrote: »

Human society did just fine for 10s of thousands of years before organised religion, and societies without organised religion did just fine since.

The 21st century non-stop Islamic fundamentalist terrorist war (to add to hundreds of religious wars) would seem to suggest that organised religion is just one more way for people to try to inflict their power on others.

Thus far the 20th century has been the bloodiest in human history.

More people were killed in human conflict in that century than every before.

The secularists attribute the unprecedented death toll down to more mechanised means of killing and injuring people. That is a factor. But what is the main factor behind the higher death toll was the intent to put various atheist / man made principles at the fore of respective societies.

Nazi Germany.
The Soviet Union.
Communist China.
Kampuchea.

The argument may be made that the population of the world was smaller during the 12th century for example, compared to the population of the world in the 20th century.

But the death toll of the population in the 20th century relative to the population in the 20th century, is far higher than the comparable 12th century population figures.

RecordStraight wrote: »

Are you sure about that? I'd be pretty confident that, given the population, other periods were much worse.

Don't be too sure. Measuring conflict deaths in proportion to population, rather than in absolute numbers, the twentieth century was the worst:



This table only goes back to the sixteenth century, before which conflict figures from wars start to get a bit hazy, but even so I believe that the best estimates say that the picture is not very different for earlier centuries.

And, it should be noted, this table only counts conflict deaths. If we added in deaths from democides (the collectivisation famines, the Great Leap Forward, etc) the contrast would be even worse.

RecordStraight wrote: »

Secondly, do you think the devastating wars of the 20th century occurred because in 1914 everybody suddenly abandoned religion, or because of technological advances and international treaties that meant a great many more countries were involved than ever before?

Can't tell you how hinault accounts for the phenomenon, but I can say this; the popular notion that modernity, rationalism, secularism or the enlightenment are associated with reduction in violence or deaths is absolutely not born out by the evidence; it's a faith-based belief to which people cling in the teeth of the evidence. Part of the increase in deaths is of course associated with improved killing technology, but that's not the whole story; phenomena like terrorism, totalitarianism and fascism are very much philosophical products of the enlightenment.

One other point is worth bearing in mind. Increases in deaths due to technological "improvements" are partly offset by increases in lives saved due to improved technology. Up to about the time of the American Civil War, if you were shot in battle at all the likelihood of your dying was well in excess of 50%; if you were shot anywhere in the torso, well in excess of 80%. Whereas today, both figures are well below 10%. The increase in deaths attributable to technology is due to the net effect of improved killing technology over improved medical technology. The rest is due to more fighting.

hinault wrote: »

Thus far the 20th century has been the bloodiest in human history.

Eh? Dont see how the 20th century can get any bloodier, seeing as we have been in the 21st century for quite a while now..

RecordStraight wrote: »

Are you sure about that? I'd be pretty confident that, given the population, other periods were much worse.

Difficult to think of bigger regional conflicts in centuries outside of the 20th century.

The conflicts of the 15th-19th centuries were tiny compared to 20th century conflicts.

One time I heard someone try to claim that the Crusades inflicted a far higher rate of killing relative to world population (400 million) than 1900-1945.
Given that the world population was 2.5 billion in 1945, you can see that the death toll alone from 1900-1945 are far higher than the Crusades.

RecordStraight wrote: »

Secondly, do you think the devastating wars of the 20th century occurred because in 1914 everybody suddenly abandoned religion, or because of technological advances and international treaties that meant a great many more countries were involved than ever before?

Better mechanisation certainly played a part in the higher ratio of carnage and death during the 20th century, compared to other centuries.
However the motives that persuaded man's heart have been there throughout time.
Mechanisation gives full vent to the expression of those dark motives.

Let's clear up something.
The morality of religion was replaced by the morality of National Socialism, or by the morality of Soviet Communism, or by the morality of Chinese Communism, or by the morality of Pol Potism.

RecordStraight wrote: »

Which of those moralities do you think guides me?

I would hope that you don't ascribe to any of the moral systems imposed by those regimes!

The point is that each of those regimes created their own "morality"

The "morality" of each regime sustained and edified the actions taken by each regime.
The "morality" that each regime created unleashed suffering on an industrial scale which we cannot comprehend.

The death toll from WWI and WWII by themselves were bad enough.
Add the death toll from Stalin's purges, Stalin's starving of entire populations in the Soviet regional territories, the death toll from Mao's great leap forward, Pol Pot's death toll, and the 20th century is by far the bloodiest.