Religion and Morality

Post Reply New Topic

A "statistical" explanation is different from a "causal" explanation in the way that it simply shows how well two variables "fit together" mathematically without establishing if the variables actually influence each other. A causal explanation would have to document that changes in variable X are actually the product of changes in variable Y (or vice versa). Outside experiments (which can really only be carried out in the natural sciences) this requires a much more advanced statistical analysis with many variables...

The most widely used statistical tool for explaining how much can be explained is R-Squared, which can be defined as the percentage of variation in a variable explained by another variable. In this case, the correlation coefficient (Pearson's R) is 0.76. So R-Squared must be 0.76 X 0.76 = 0.5776, or approximately 58 percent. R-Squared does not, however, give any indication about the path of causation. So variable X might explain variable Y, or variable Y might explain variable X. Who knows?

So in this case we can not - from the reported data alone - conclude that a disconnect between religion and morality causes economic prosperity (as measured by GDP), that economic prosperity causes a disconnect between religion and morality, that they both influence each other or that some third variable causes both (a spurious relationship).

This is one of the main reasons for the 2 most common statistical proverbs: "Correlation does not imply causation" and ""Lies, damned lies, and statistics".

Anyway, this is a very simple explanation.

In reality, there are numerous statistical caveats about the use of R-Squared (for one: the relationship between the two variables in this case is not simply linear, but logarithmic), but I (1) lack the statistical skill to explain all of them and (2) am to lazy to write the hundreds of pages on the subject necessary to provide a full explanation.

More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficien ... ermination
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_coefficient

Thank you. Much appreciated.




Surely the Nazis considered themselves perfectly moral. The committed immoralists who do terrible things, and get a kick ot of their very immorality, can't get anywhere near the horrors caused by the committed moralists who were quite sure of the rightness of their own terrible actions - this 'rightness' by and large backed up by whatever guarantor they may care to refer to (be it one deity or many, or a particular interperetation of natural laws, or the inexorable, inevitable flow of history).

If one posits, say, the Christian God as guarantor - well, can God say anything is good? Can God decree that torturing infants is good, is moral? Or is good beyond God? In which case, what is He for? What we do have is a God whose instructions people can follow so as to get their eternal reward, and save them from eternal punishment. If you will, I have some moral objections to people who do good because they fear eternal damnation.

Again, there is morality as a series of dos and don'ts to live by, and there is morality as the space in which these dos and don'ts exist - it is the sense that, even where we may disagree with someone's moral beliefs, those beliefs all the same have a moral tone. The do's and dont's may be up for question, but that there are moral considerations is not. Just as we need language to discuss and critique and analyse language, and meaning to discuss etc meaning, so we need morality to discuss etc morality. Even the great anti-moralist sceptics, who decree all morality is false, a lie, do so with the tone of morality.

I have no idea if it is true - I don't think there's any particular way to test it - but it is easy to suppose that, as humans became conscious, and aware of conflicts in our desires and, in some way, able to empathise and so aware of our behaviour's effect on other humans (and animals), so what we think of as morality came to be.

As far as I am concerned, morality simply is, and I don't think knowing why it is would be helpful. There is no way to be outside of it. I don't think the problem is that we lack ideas of what is or is not moral, or guarantees for our moral ideas, so much as that moral ideas conflict, even when held by the same person or originating from the same source, time and again.

So if God is the source of absolute morality why is it that much of what is contained withing the bible is now seen as morally repugnant?Today's moral zeitgeist is so very different to that of 200 or even 100 years ago and is vastly different to what it was in biblical times. It seems infantile to suggest that we cannot decide what is right and wrong without the say so of god, when, it fact, many societies have managed to become more moral and more ethical by unshackling themselves from the barbarism of the bible. That is unless of course you feel that we have lost our way and should return to owning slaves, allowing group rape of women to protect the sanctity of male visitors and the stoning to death of apostates, to name but a few of the revolting moral guides in the bible.

We arrive at morals because we are a sentient herd animal, we have the ability to work out what kind of behaviour works well in our society. It is not god who maintains these moral guides instead we need to construct vast law and order departments, without which the laws of survival would rip societies apart.

Do you realize that this is completely absurd? It would make as much sense to say that you can either wear the kind of clothing described in the Bible, or just go naked all the time. Because no other kind of clothing has ever been invented, nor could it be invented without reference to an ancient book.

In fact thinkers have been debating secular systems of ethics since centuries before Jesus.

Morality is a set of values intended to guide one's choices and actions. Insofar as religion-based ethical systems choose a standard other than human life I consider them immoral.

A great deal of it has to do with mankind's fallen desires. Ever since the Fall, our default setting is to think of what's best for ourselves above anyone else, even God. When left to our own wishes and methods, we commit terrible crimes against one another without restraint. We have become corrupted through two different forms of sin: the original disobedience of Adam & Eve, plus our continued rebellion against God through self-centeredness. In short, all of mankind severed its relationship with God a long time ago, and we can't repair it because only He is big enough to bridge the moral gap.

People's beliefs about morality change all the time, but morality itself has always been the same. Murder was 100% wrong for everyone 1,000 years ago, regardless of popular opinion, and the same holds true now. The same applies to things like theft, rape, child and spousal abuse, etc.

We get to decide what we will accept, but we don't define what truth actually is...that's never been our call. Also, when you call the Bible barbaric, or say something is more or less moral, what set standard are you using?

The Bible mentions things like slavery and stoning, but an important distinction is that such things are never encouraged by God. What most think of as "slavery" was not always the same in biblical times as it is today, and stoning was a Jewish custom based on the Old Covenant, which was overridden by Jesus' sacrifice.

I respectfully disagree, but let me pose this question: why is it inherently right, from a non-theistic standpoint, for any society to thrive?

People bring this kind of thing up all the time, often forgetting or ignoring that many of the Old Covenant laws were specific to the Jews of that time period, and the only ones still in effect are those reiterated as necessary in the New Testament. Of the Ten Commandments written in Exodus, only one is absent from the second half of the Bible: "remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy."

In comparison to what?

I really don't care what it says in what part of your ancient book. Whole squads of thinkers both ancient and modern have written on ethics without reference to your book, or to your chosen deity, or to any other deity. The choice is not between "obey the commands of a deity, whatever they might be" and "there is no morality, anything goes." That is a false alternative.



Who said it was in comparison to anything?

Societies have endorsed all of those things. You can assert they are true in a spiritual sense and I can assert that the opposite values are spiritually true. But there is no evidence establishing the truth of either claim.

The argument for non-spiritual ethics or morality is that empathy evolved in us as social animals. It confers a survival advantage as it does in other animals. By virtue of our intelligence we have slowly expanded our empathy (imperfectly) to larger constructs. Family to tribe to religions to nations to species. You may not agree with the argument but it remains an argument.

You want to be good, right? Religions know this. That’s why they claim that the value systems that they espouse are the only valid ones. They calculate that if they can get you to believe the lie that your own goodness is reliant on their teachings, then you will remain subservient to them for as long as you want to be good. Religions cultivate your allegiance because you are the source of their political and economic power.

The statistics on atheist incarceration rates does not support the claim that they are greater lawbreakers than theists. This being the case, what good is this concept of objective justification, if it doesn’t statistically result in more people actually acting in moral ways? I am also a little foggy on how you can claim objective justification for morality when you haven't even demonstrated that god exists, or that the bible is true.

Last edited by Stannis on 20 Mar 2014, 8:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2012/05/the-biochemistry-of-love-and-empathy.html





http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/01/31/the-molecular-biology-of-compassion/

^^^
I believe it was Paul who said that even the pagans had the law written in their hearts.

Actually, yes there is.

Actually murder, theft, rape, child and spousal abuse have all been found to be acceptable in certain circumstances throughout history. In fact, some places in the world, they are still acceptable. For crying out loud, there are some states where a husband can rape his wife as many times as he wants to because under the law it doesn't count as rape. Spousal and child abuse were quite accepted in many parts of this country until very recently (and in some smaller isloated areas still are). I had the ever living crap beat out of me as a child in the name of God and Jesus for the benefit of my eternal soul. Murder and theft are also not considered crimes in some parts of the world as long as the victim belongs to a group considered as less worthy of rights, and it tends to happen among rigidly religious communities far more often. Fervent and unbending faith allows people to rationalize almost anything away. I personally believe that religion has overall been quite detrimental to improving the overall morality of humanity throughout history.

Why don't you take a look at the most conservative politicians in your own state and start stacking up their stances against the teachings of Christ. You may be surprised to discover that your "christian" politicians continue to insult and villify those less fortunate than them, while spending millions of dollars on their own vanity campaigns. You will see continued advocacy and encouragement for the discrimination and dehumanization of those who do not share their most extreme views, to the point of villifying memebers of their own party for not being extreme enough. Not to mention idolatry, adultery, lies, theft, fraud, advocating large scale violence, favoring the denial of healthcare to the poor, mixing religion and government, capital punishment, and the promotion of the hatred of strangers (I don't see Jesus talking about illegal immigration anywhere).

If you truly are a christian, there can be no greater desecration of the lord's name than one who superimposes the political will of conservative zealots over the scripture of God.

So the bible is immoral to us because we have grown emotionally, because we as a species have gained knowledge and understanding of our natural world and the universe surrounding it, our psychology, our neurolology etc. In short the moral teachings in the bible are repugnant to many because we are no longer encumbered by ignorance and the only way back is to accept all that is in the bible as truth and therefore anything god does must be moral?



Firstly define murder, theft, rape,child and spousal abuse, because I am sure I can find examples of supposed good people doing all of these things in the bible. Young kids getting married off, women regarded as chattels for their husbands wishes, theft of land and goods and the murder of the people to whom the land once belonged, as to rape the bible most certainly prefers the rape of a woman to the rape of a man.


Firstly I use the standard of a modern civilised society with laws to protect both men and women from rape, which prevents the marriage and sexual abuse of children. Then I would add to it a level of pacifism. None of which are in the OT. I get my ethics from looking at historical precedent and the potential contemporary and future consequences of actions. In short I try to use rational, critical thought to guide my actions. As to the "golden rule" this holds little sway with me as we all have differing ideas regarding what we would have done unto ourselves. As far as I am aware there is little to no evidence for a universal objective truth in morality. If you claim there is, then you need to give evidence supporting this claim.



And The Lord said to Moses ... He who blasphemes the Name of The Lord shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him; the sojourner as well as the native, when he blasphemes the Name, shall be put to death." (Leviticus 24:13,16 RSV)
"If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, 'Let us go and serve other gods ... You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from The Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." (Deuteronomy 13:6,10 RSV)

And The Lord said to Moses, "The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp." (Numbers 15:32,35 RSV)

Link Biblical Slavery


Quite clearly there is no inherent right for any particular society to thrive. individual societies might think they have a right to thrive, but this does not make it an objective truth. In the bible only one society has an inherent right to survive (same people who wrote it, what a coincidence!) God has no problem with them Murdering, raping and destroying to maintain that right.

Only in the cities of these peoples that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. 17"But you shall utterly destroy them, the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the LORD your God has commanded you,

I think the politicians of the United States are in no position to be dictating the morality of citizens when they display no understanding of morality themselves. And the ones who cry loudest about their religious faith are usually the ones who are the poorest examples of morality in action.

So for the last 3-4 days, I have been searching for hard data to make morality comparisons between religious/atheist people. It seems most studies that I could find are fairly proportional with one exception: convicted prisoners.

I have found multiple studies, and it seems that between 0.002% and 0.4% of the total US prison population. The Federal Bureau of Prisons Statistics puts the number at 0.21%.

Out of a population in which 15% identify as atheist.

I don't understand what you are q5% identify as Atheist as compared to what? What percent identify as what religions?