God??

[gregory]

That depends on how you define morality. Even secularly we are influenced by the Judeo-Christian mindset, although we find non-religious reasons to find justification for why we think we are right. The human-sacrificing Aztecs did not lack morality nor were they a backward people, they simply had a different moral code.

I don't agree that "secularly we are influenced by the Judeo-Christian mindset" actually. LAWS in the Western world have a nasty habit of being, but otherwise...

Nor do I for one moment suggest that the Aztecs lacked morality. That is my point, in a way. No religion can define it, it is in ourselves. BUT - if the Aztecs had not had a god to sacrifice humans to, they might have thought about what they were doing and not killed people in the way that they did. We all find reasons - religious or not - to justify the things we do. And we shouldn't actually; we should be able to argue them in terms of the actual reason we did them.

I stole because my family were starving. Fair cop. Honest reasoning.
I cut your hands off for stealing because god says that is what to do - not fair cop. No thought given to it at all.
I cut your hands off for stealing because stealing is wrong in my eyes - middling fair cop. At least you admit it is YOUR eyes.
I cut your hands off for stealing my CDs because they were mine and I loved them - fair cop. Not nice, but honest and true to one's principles.

(I will let you know how that all pans out when my mother asks me WHY I told my sister not to help her any more... I am certain I am doing the right thing - and I defy anyone to find any reason related to any god that says so. )

 

[Zephyros]

I think that beyond considerations of whether God is a factor of morality, the danger is the simple idea, the simple solution. The idea of an all-pervasive morality leading to horrific acts isn't confined to religion. While it could be argued that the Nazis invented a new religion, Christianity was not a big part of their ideology, but race. That ideology was founded upon pseudo-science and was quite secular in nature. More recently, many of the conflicts occurring in the world over the past two decades are due to another form of "religion," that of "American exceptionalism," and "freedom." What if you kill a village because of an amorphic threat of swarthy invaders upending your way of life? Now, just to show I'm not a hypocrite, The Israeli-Palestinian situation is an example of a classic holy war, but one that, when scratched beneath the surface, reveals itself to be nothing but territorial pride, a result of two conflicting nationalist ideologies.

My point is that you don't need to call it God for it to be a religion. All you need, and perhaps this is what organized religion is at its base, is an ideology of superiority.

ETA: The outcry of the religious right against the seeming "liberalism" of the Pope gives a very good hint that differenced don't begin and end with God. The word is ultimately just a placeholder for whatever you believe in. Genghis Khan called himself "the punishment of God," and other people (i.e., everyone else in the world) tended to agree with him.

 

[gregory]

MY simple point is that I will not use a word as a placeholder for something that is unique to me. There is no simple solution.

That is kind of what I was alluding to when I said I will see what happens with my mother. If I posted the whole ghastly saga here, I would get several thousand different moral views of what I should have done. IRL I will CERTAINLY cop a lot of angry and disgusted flak. But ultimately - I did what I felt was the only right thing to do, based on my own ethics and morals and the situation at hand. I will not offer up excuses; I will offer reasons when asked.

I do not feel ANY degree of "superiority" about this stuff - and if you mean that religions engender that, I could not agree more. Not least the people who tell you that you do SO believe in God, you just don't realise it yet. (And I don't believe that Genghis Khan was the punishment of God, either. Nor that he was all bad - and ironically he promoted religious tolerance rather more than most world leaders today !)

 

[danieljuk]

when I was about 12 years old in another life (almost another life ) I was having spiritual lessons to be confirmed in the Church of England. I was quite religious then and then got bored of it and fell out of it at 16. In these lessons I was asked to draw God and I drew this typical guy with a beard sitting in a cloud, looking over everyone. I think I gave him a hat like those stereotypical Australian hats but without the corks. Some people in the religious classes (it wasn't just young people getting confirmed) got really offended by my picture. The funny thing is I drew such a "typical" culturally seen picture of the Christian God. Old guy with white beard and I thought as a innovative young person that having him in a cloud watching over everyone was a good way of doing it. It made me realise that we all have our own very personal view of what we believe in this area. I can't remember what other people drew in that class but they were "right" and somehow I wasn't taking it seriously.

I have really explored my spirituality and have changed my beliefs and religion at least every 10 years! I think I am developing more and more. I am coming back to paganism after becoming completely atheist for many years. I think my changes in spiritual matters reflects my life at that time. I go in the direction that fits me best at that moment. So I am really open minded that my views may well change in future. but I am pretty certain for myself that there is not one God. I believe more in nature or some sort of universal energy but don't believe it's a person

 

[mingbop]

I believe more in nature or some sort of universal energy but don't believe it's a person
*******
That sentence sounds like how I see it too.

 

[Zephyros]

It might be worth mentioning the the "universe" spoken of isn't different from the Western view. All three of the great religions espouse the idea of God as incorporeal spirit. This goes beyond simply not building graven images, but in the view that God is the momentum of the universe, change, movement. God does not make the law, it is the law. Punishment for sin is not the haphazard whim of an autocrat with super powers but a natural consequence of it. The story of Adam and Eve, as well as Moses's encounter at the burning bush illustrate this belief quite well. Just as some food will kill you, death is also the natural consequence of, say, adultery.

Now, that in itself isn't a bad idea, but the difference is in ascribing highly subjective and period-specific human moral values to divine law and declaring them to be universal. But then, even "thou shalt not kill" isn't universal, it may makes sense in an established mode of stationary existence but doesn't in other contexts.

 

[gregory]

Sad to say, I don't even buy into divine law, so...

I'd be careful with the "three great religions"...

 

[Zephyros]

Well, i wasn't implying that you did, but that morals can be a God substitute yet still fulfil that same role of, well, basically "smugness" that one's morals are better than others, for whatever reason. Saying something is morally wrong or saying God forbids it are different ways of saying the same the same thing, and both just as meaningless.

And by "great" I meant, of course, "big" not "wonderful." I find very little that is wonderful in any of them.

 

[gregory]

If I truly believed my morals were better than yours.... Well, let's just say that what is "right" for me may very well not be right for the person standing next to me - and I would be the first to concede ! But the point about personal ethics is that they are (as a rule) at least thought through.

A god substitute though - if you have a god, do you not have to worship, or at least look up to that god in some way ? I sure as hell don't worship my morals. Nor would I expect anyone else to...

 

[The crowned one]

Gods represent moral templates, He is not s substitute, he is a mirror, often with a hidden or not so hidden agenda attached to the more successful god idea's. For us "Godless ones" in the west it is the act or power of producing an effect without apparent force or direct authority, yet it is there. We build our cultural templates off of it, and get them from our parents, with subtitle changes through generations. Then we have our social templates, these change a fair bit quicker and can be effected by our environment in the short temporal. Alcohol and lust come to mind. They really effect moral templates in the short term, and we know it because of the guilt we feel afterwards, and the stuff we will do during the environmental influence.


Everything is unique to everyone, that is why we have language and agree on the symbols of language representing concepts. Hard words like "god" and "consciousnesses" often have to be defined before we can even consider discussing them. In this case my opening post took the "Classical theism" of god. The most child like representation in my books.

like it or not there is more of pavlov's dog in us then we think.