morality

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how do you define it? have you taken time to actually consider the functionality of your morals? are they influenced by ancient religious texts and religious leaders or experiences in the world around?

some topics i'd love to cover in this thread.....



why are swear words just so unacceptable?


why is homosexuality considered perverse and immoral...and why is there a sexist bias where male homosexuals face worse treatment than female homosexuals?


why is sex such a bad thing?

a snippet from the porn for bibles article i had mentioned elsewhere.

"CARLSON: The bottom of this, on your web site, you have a statement: "We find that morality should not be derived from religious texts." What should morality be ... what should it be derived from?

JACKSON: Well, morality is not derived from religious texts. Religious texts actually contradict each other. If you read the Bible, it contradicts itself on nearly every page. And the fact that people can decide which one to go with shows that they are getting their morality from somewhere else.

Morality is actually based off of empathy, and failing empathy, it's based off of fear of reprisal from the law. That is where morality comes from.

CARLSON: Yes. But the law, it's a circular argument. You need to think through it a little bit more, Thomas, because the law itself is based on at least a notion of abstract right and wrong, and that is not rooted in empathy or any emotion, but ... you know, an abstract belief that this is right and this is wrong because someone larger, in control, says so.

JACKSON: Well, no, that's not true. It's based off of things that are good for society. If citizens murder each other, this is bad for society. And you see this across the board in many nations.

Several religions have stumbled upon this, but it's not the religious text that's bringing this to people. They are finding this on their own, and societies that don't find this don't survive."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10349028/

they're doing no harm and i find it to be an awesome way to promote an idea. it's no different than the churches offering free meals to teens and teen masses and what not. i don't get where the harm comes from....it's not harmful in any way and is certainly not the violent tactics taken by christians who initially spread the word and forced christianity into the global powerhouse that it is instead of just being a sect of judaism.

inquisition? anyone? how about the vatican's silent support for hitler's genocide? or how about the crusades?


giving out porn hardly compares. but then again, our culture was shaped by the early christians into the society we have today where violence is okay but sex is deplorable. st. augustine particularly comes to mind with the group of savages.

I have no idea.



Yes. I think about it allot.



This is a complicated question. Many things are probably influenced is some way by some religious text or leader in some point in history if you trace it back far enough. I am now influenced by religious thinking? Hmm... It depends how you look at it. I think allot about the effects religions, a particular religion. and religious thoughts have on societies. I have read the writings and speeches of various religious people. I can't say however, that those writings have effected any of my particular moral beliefs. Now this doesn't mean I don't view certain religions, religious figures in positive/negative ways. But these feelings more effected by my concerns in the physical world then any spiritual one.



I don't think this has to do only with religion. The "bad" words that people say now are not the same ones that are said one-hundred years ago. There is the matter of saying the Lord's name in vain, but that doesn't really seem the be the issue it once was.



First not everyone thinks that (obviously). I do not believe it has solely to do with some religious doctrine. I would think it may have developed early in the development of humanity for practice reasons having to do with the need for human population expansion. There is no shortage of atheist/non-religious gay-haters in the world, unfortunately.



Again, there is probably some practical reasons from long ago. Men and women are, obviously different. Long ago, back when stone age times, men did not necessarily have the single-woman relationships they have today. Hence, the gradually development of what would eventually become harems. In history there has traditionally been cases of women being together which means...There are some other issues probably having to do sex specific features.

I am not trying to defend mean treatment today, BTW (or back then).



It's not. The Christian bible never argues that sex is a bad thing. After all, why do you think the religious tend to have more kids then the non-religious?

This is an utter libel. Pope Pius XII was a hero, and saved over 800,000 Jews from annihilation. Refutation of this bogus claim are available in the book The Myth of Hitler's Pope by Rabbi David G. Dalin.

Morality as most people see it is religious. Religion is nothing more than a tool of the rulers to keep people from being able to think freely. I've practically had to create a term for common since morals "Common Law Methodology"... Which, sadly, I don't think most people could comprehend. The truth in morality isn't really so hard to grasp, are your actions hurting an innocent being?
Swear words are only unnacceptible because society decided so, I think this is particularly dumb because you can say poop, crap, doodoo, dookie, stinky, poopoo, but you can't say "s**t". You can say sexual intercoarse, but you can't say f**k. It's really kinda dumb.

Homosexual men aren't recieved as well as women because structurally this is a man's world, even though women control sexuality. Meaning, men make most of the decisions and hold most of the power, so men have control in this aspect of society. But really the male/female thing, both genders have control holds on one another somewhere, be it money/power (males) or sexual power (females). And they both do really screwed up things with the powers theyr given.

i have serious doubts about that work. dalin works at a roman catholic university, is conservative in his own practices, and that dalin argues that critics of pius are liberal catholics and ex-catholics who "exploit the tragedy of the jewish people during the holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the catholic church today" is quite questionable.

you're talking about that most religions encourage procreation. i'm talking the act of sex, not procreation. i'm talking condoms, birth control pills, and quite possibly some handcuffs.

of course religion will want procreation....the more their followers procreate, the more followers they will have.

by the way, if i could remove myself from the debates for a second:


the initial start of the thread, i meant more to do with how our society has developed where it is, not necessarily implicating religion either way other than when i postulated the question about where your(addressing the reader) morality originates from and if it's religious in nature or from first and second-hand accounts or possibly some other source.*




*like scientific studies...many people believe it's immoral to not recycle...though if one does research, they will find that aluminum and plastic are the only positive products to recycle and paper actually produces a much larger adverse affect than just throwing away paper products...scientific study and fact used in making moral decisions.

So be it. But it is true. Pius XII was a conservative, and a strong ally of the United States during the Cold War. The famous author of Hitler's Pope is a liberal Catholic. Many of those who most promote the Pius XII are liberal Catholics. They do it because it is designed to discredit the church generally, and change it's structure to fit their goals*. Remember: If the church was in on holocaust, then obviously the whole bloody thing must be crooked. I realize you might believe it crooked but that does not mean by default Pius XII was involved in the holocaust. Hitler hated Pius XII. This is not to say certain elements inside the church did not help certain Nazi war criminals escape after the war. But, that is not the same as saying Pius XII was in on the holocaust.

EDIT: The whole anti-Pius story got started because of some play written by a leftist during the Cold War. After the War itself, Pius XII was treated as a great savior of the Jews even by the founders of Israel.

In regards to Dalin. You say because he is conservative and worked at a Catholic University he is questionable. Why? Do you think he is a sort of mole or has been fed documents? I think he was a history professor or something and he didn't look over anything anybody else didn't. Does "conservative" mean bad?

There are catholics who want to change the church. They are very upset that the church maintains it's positions on no women priests, and it's anti-abortion positions, as well as various other things. They even have organizations, and are rather popular with the popular press.

my point was that he has his reasons to find the facts he wants to find.

and yeah, israel owes a lot to pius...he essentially helped the zionists get started with shipping jews to palestine.

You know this without reading any of his book? You can base it purely on knowing he is a "conservative" and he taught at a Roman Catholic University. I mean, I've read stuff that made sense from The Nation even though I almost entirely disagree with it's editorial policies.

Let me ask you this question. I went to a Catholic school. I'm a self-admitted conservative. Does that mean everything that I say is automatically suspect, regardless of the evidence? I thought McCarthyism was bad.

it is immediately suspect for me because i'm a skeptic.


also: mccarthyism was a christian backed effort against communists and atheists (since at the time, atheists were automatically considered communists regardless of their political beliefs).

So, you would take the word of an atheist over a religous person. Is that what this is about?



REALLY?! Joseph McCarthy was a member of the CHRISTIAN PARTY?! Did he famously ask: "Are you now are were ever a atheist or a person who did not believe in the deity of the lord Jesus Christ?"

REALLY!

Was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who maneuvered to get rid of McCarthy, a secret atheist? Were all the people who voted to censure him atheists?

Do people still talk of the big atheist witch hunt?

Was Vladimir Lenin, Iosef Stalin, Mao-Tse Tung all really Catholics? Is Kim Jung Il actually a catholic? Did Moscow's Anti-Religion Museum never actually exist?

the christian entity holds more political influence than you give credit. just...people are starting to fight back within the last 30 or so years.

What is "the Christian entity?" Please be specific.