[ExI] [Extropolis] morality

Sun May 21 18:18:59 UTC 2023

I doubt very seriously if people join a religion to get legal advantages.
If you asked them they would scratch their heads and say Huh?".  They join
because they believe in their god.  I am not saying that Stuarts' thesis is
incorrect.   bill w

On Sun, May 21, 2023 at 12:53 PM Stuart LaForge <stuart.laforge at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Example of religious people doing things legally that non-religious people
> cannot include the Navajo being allowed to legally consume peyote on their
> reservations. Peyote is an entheogen which brings them closer to the Great
> Spirit. Which brings me to why religious freedom is necessary for any
> equitable multi-cultural empire to exist. It allows diverse and distinct
> cultures to persist in  a global economy. Every culture is their particular
> god's chosen people, and as, should have special legal privileges as a
> result. If religious people did not receive special privileges under the
> law, then there would be no advantages to being in a religion in the first
> place. Therefore, to threaten the freedom of religion is to threaten
> cultural diversity and equity.
>
> Eliminating religion would promotee monoculture and all mono-culture is a
> evolutionary liability. Monoculture is brittle and would quickly lead to
> the extinction of the organisms and organizations that adopt it.
> Monoculture embodied as racism, or other inherent bias, is not just wrong,
> it is weak and loses wars to diversity. The two biggest wars in American
> history, the American Civil War and WW2 were wars fought by
> multiculturalists against racists, and the racists lost both wars,
> empirically proving their inferiority.
>
> To refute John's argument that giving religious people special freedoms
> and protections over non-religious is crazy, I would say that such special
> freedoms are what allows religious people to be rational. There would be no
> advantage for these people to be religious, if religions did not have
> special legal privileges by virtue of the government recognizing their
> place as a god's chosen people.
>
> So to summarize, religious freedom and privilege is necessary to maintain
> cultural diversity and equity, and cultural diversity and equity are
> necessary to maintain a strong organization, nation-state, or empire.
> Religious people, regardless of which religion, have numerous cultural and
> legal advantages over infidels, apostates, and non-believers. Atheists have
> the virtue of being "right" at the cost of much companionship and social
> support through religious networks. Nte that this is true even if "thoughts
> and prayers" sent through social media are worthless.
>
> Stuart LaForge
>
>
> On Saturday, May 20, 2023 at 1:49:19 PM UTC-7 fooz... at gmail.com wrote:
>
> interpreted to mean that worshiping an invisible man in the sky gives
> somebody rights that somebody who doesn't worship an invisible man in the
> sky does not have.  If somebody does something for a religious reason it's
> legal but if they do the exact same thing for a reason other than religion
> it's illegal, and that's nuts. John K Clark
>
> It rather incenses me that churches pay no taxes.  But I need examples of
> religious people doing things legally that nonreligious people cannot
>  bill w
>
> On Sat, May 20, 2023 at 1:28 PM John Clark <johnk... at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 2:23 PM William Flynn Wallace <fooz... at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I was thinking of how to build a moral system.  What should be the
> basic assumptions?
>
>
> I would say the basic assumption should be that the moral thing to do is
> whatever will cause the least amount of human suffering, I'm not saying
> that axiom is complete and doesn't have some inconsistencies, Kurt Godel
> proved that even the axioms of arithmetic cannot be complete and self
> consisted and it would be unrealistic to expect morality could be made to
> work more reliably than arithmetic, but I think that's about the best we
> could do. However the Trolley Problem shows us that most people's intuitive
> feeling about what is moral and what is not has little relationship with
> minimizing overall suffering, in fact some ethicists, especially medical
> ethicists, almost seem to be saying that the moral thing to do is whatever
> will kill the most people.
>
> > Start with the Bill of Rights?  Certainly a good place.
>
>
> I would get rid of freedom of religion, as long as you have freedom of
> speech and freedom of assembly you get freedom of religion automatically,
> it's just one of the infinite number of things you can talk about or have a
> meeting about. However the fact that the US Constitution specifically
> mentions it has been interpreted to mean that worshiping an invisible man
> in the sky gives somebody rights that somebody who doesn't worship an
> invisible man in the sky does not have.  If somebody does something for a
> religious reason it's legal but if they do the exact same thing for a
> reason other than religion it's illegal, and that's nuts.
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
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