Thoughts for the day

[valarltd]

"Woman is a mystery. If God wanted a helper for man, he should have made another man for strength. If he wanted a friend, he should have made a man for comfort." --Augustine or maybe Aquinas.

This is the fundamental tenet of the Neo-Augustinian Catholic sect in my cyberverse. Men are made for men. Women were made by the devil and a good man shuns them.



And a very good one:
"Atheists are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you’re trying to argue from a position of moral superiority." —Amanda Marcotte
(emphasis mine)

Now I do know a few people who are sociopaths and control it with religion. I just think the assumption that everyone is a sociopath might be a bit much.

Comments

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've had that concern about the morality argument from religious people. I don't think it's that they're inherently that violent. I think it's that they're not really thinking it out clearly.

There are a ton of social animals on the planet who aren't getting into heaven per the views of most religious conservatives. But a horse killing another horse isn't really very common. For that matter, even lions don't go off killing their own kind on a regular basis. A dominant male would rather frighten off an interloper than engage with them and kill them (risking damage to itself in the process) What keeps the animals in check against their basic animal urges if God is the only thing that would stop us?

[sunfell.livejournal.com]

Problem for believers is this: Morality is hard-wired. We evolved to be generous, altruistic, social. And for the most part, we are. But when hard times descend- and stay around, religions get invented or imposed that enforce these baked-in instincts.

I don't need the threat of heaven or hell to be a decent human being. I don't need to be born again, either. I got it right the first time.

I sometimes think that the genetic material missing in the male 'y' chromosone is what makes them say - and believe- the idiotic blather quoted above.

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

I tend to point them at the Greek, pre-Christian philosophers. That shuts them up. Christianity did not invent morals.