[ExI] Evolutionary psychology and religion

[Seien]

On 11/12/2007, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com > wrote:
>
> On Dec 11, 2007 1:44 AM, Seien <seienchan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> >
>
> To be honest, I kind of lost track of which object the pronoun in that
> statement was referring (you, the church, god, ???)  Thanks for the update
> though, I will try to not make that mistake again.



Ahh, that's fine :)

I agree with your definition of morality and rationality.  I was using a
> more jaded impression of the coerced behavior in the guise of morality
> dictated by a religious institutional authority.  Are the laws of the Church
> as obvious as the "laws of Nature" vs "Natural Law" - or are they twisted
> around obvious truths in a way that makes believe without understanding more
> acceptable?  (forgive my ignorance - I had one semester-long class on
> "Christian Morality" at a Catholic university.  It was a long semester.)



You went to a Catholic University? That's horrible, I'm sorry :(


And yes, many people seem to confuse morality with religious morality. I'm
afraid I'm not sure I understood your question, but I shall try my best to
answer it anyway.

Religion is an antirational memeplex. Even the things they say that are
right in essence are wrong in method: the idea that one ought generally not
to go around killing people is a good one, for example, but the reasons for
this in Christianity are all the wrong ones and so the idea loses its
value.

The reason that religion gets it wrong is because it *is* antirational, and
the essence of morality is reason. One can only arrive at moral decisions,
think in a morally good way, behave in a right way rather than an evil way,
with the use of *dynamic reason. *Religion openly suppresses reason.
Therefore it openly suppresses morality. It replaces this loss of real
morality with a false "morality" of its own.

http://curi.us/blog/post/1163-morality-is-not-for-god <-this dialogue might
interest you. :)


-- 
~Seien
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