Skylar
Diamond Member
- Jul 5, 2014
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Science itself is merely a process which focuses on testing of ideas and objectively reproduceable results.. And it can be used to help one in decision making in all sorts of things, including morality. But if it helps, you could reframe it as 'one's own capacity for moral reasoning'. The process of applying that reasoning can easily and effectively assimilate the processes of science. And to great effect.
As I said, you can usually reach morally sound conclusions without all the jiggery pokery and arbitrary rules. Say, recognizing that killing is wrong without the need for any burning bushes, magic spears, falling stones from the heavens, or bodi trees. And without a cheeseburger being an abomination.
Several problems with that idea. The most notable being that unless God is right there to break any ties, we've already made ourselves the source of ethics for everyone in any religious system. You can take the exact same book, same language, same cultural traditions, same religion.....and get wildly different results based on subjective interpretation or prioritization.
Take the Puritans, the Founders and most Modern Christians. Using much the same language, book, and religion, they came to wildly different conclusions on the application of OT law. With Puritans executing both adulterers and gays. The Founders only executing gays and modern Christians executing neither. How do you account for such radical differences in these doctrinal applications?
The most plausible by far is subjective interpretation. Where these three groups simply interpreted the Bible in a very different fashion based on which fit best into their personal world views. I've seen modern Christians make up different 'classifications' for commandments that the bible never mentions. Where some commandments are 'standing' and others are 'specific to a given people'. Who creates these classifications, who defines them, who applies them, who decides which commandments fall into each category?
We do. Its something any theist can do. They can, with very little mental effort, summarily ignore or exempt themselves from any portion of any text, any commandment, anything. Even something as fundamental as 'thou shall not kill' has as many caveats and exceptions as you wish there to be.
And who is to say whose interpretations are right and whose are wrong? No one. God does not break such ties. its just us. Worse, there's nothing that mandates that anyone got it right. Its entirely possible, I'd argue even probable that every one got it wrong. So what you're dealing with in religion is the subjective interpretation of whom ever is doing the interpreting. The epitome of 'making ourselves the source of ethics' in everything but name. Where we simply substitute the name 'God' for whatever we want to do. Or don't want to do.
And yet Christians where the founders and primary instigators of such slavery. Demonstrating that religion can be used the exact same way to justify pretty much anything. I've seen a Christian use Christ's attack on money changers in the Temple as justification for waging war on gays because they wouldn't 'sit down and shut the fuck up'. Fred Phelps felt fully justified in his hate filled rants. And Grand Inquisitor Torquemada was a very devout catholic. You can use the Bible to justify murdering infants in their cribs if you quote the right passages.
And since the issue is religion v. reason......we're subject to all the variety of justification Religion has to offer. Molech's followers were devout when they placed crying infants onto the heated iron hands of their diety's metal statue. The believers in Huitzilopochtli had lasting conviction that their human sacrifices upon the altars of the Azteca would lead to their God's favor. From Voodoo the satanism to animalism to shinto to buddhism, every act of mutilation, every horror done in the name of a God, every sacrifice -human or otherwise-, every land conquered or slaughter conducted stand as a testament to the near infinite malleability of religion in justifying pretty much anything.
Since we don't have God here to break ties between competing interpretations, we have to use our own subjective interpretations to glean meaning from any religious text or 'will of God'. And that meaning is as diverse as we are.
As for the force of reason, it has as much force as we believe it does. Just as a given passage of scripture has as much force as you believe it does. With the 'great decider' in either scenario being us. There's simply no one else to make these moral decisions for us but ourselves.
That's certainly AN interpretation. But as the rather bloody and unequal history Christianity demonstrates, its certainly not the only interpretation. Christians institutionalized slavery. Christians committed unspeakable atrocities against jews and others in the inquisitions. Christians burned people at the stake. Christians executed gays, adulterers, heretics, witches, and those of competing sects. Set fire to entire libraries of books, systematically destroyed entire cultures, and subjugated entire continents.
Your perspective is only valid if there is only one possible interpretation of the Bible that supports your views. Yet as history demonstrates, there are many. Most of which explicitly contradict your own. And if we use the longevity of particular interpretations as an indication of veracity and applicability, yours is among the newest, shortest lived and least applicable.
All of which grossly undermines the word 'must' in your quote. And your conclusions. There's obviously no such mandate. And just as obviously, wildly disparate conclusions that can be drawn from the same text.
And of course, the Bible is merely one of hundreds of religious texts. Which may or may not include any of the passages that you've claimed exist in the Bible. But are of the same supposedly 'divine' origin as the Bible. Almost all of these religions and their texts are mutually exclusive. Which means that if any is right, all others are wrong. Given that pretty much every religion is predicated on the assumption that they are correct....
....that means by the same logic, all of their fellow theists are self deluded and incorrect. Which means that applying the logic of religion, almost all religion is invalid beliefs. And that assumes that one of these faiths got it right. Given that per the logic of religion, the default state for almost all theists is invalid self delusion, it doesn't bode well for theism that the exact same process would result a lone example of truth. At the very least, its ridiculously unlikely that any given faith is correct. And highly likely that none of them are.
Further undermining the utility of your interpretation. And your use of 'must'.
Reason suggests that God simply isn't involved. As demonstrated by the wild disparity between the equality you speak of, and the history of inequality now and for as long as we have recorded history.
And if you don't like a particular passage that god has given you, you can ignore it through interpretation. You can give yourself an exception. Or imagine an arbitrary classification that justifies ignoring a particular passage. You can claim that the person you're interacting with isn't your neighbor. Or assign to them some attribute that allows you to remove them consideration. They're a witch, for example. Or a heretic. Or aren't human, because they don't speak your language.
The possibilities are quite literally endless.
As a dozen centuries of Christian history, crusades, purges, pograms, witch burning, slaughter and subjugation demonstrate......and this from a religion that holds as one of its primary commandments 'As I have loved you, love one another'. Imagine what we could expect from a religion where their founders were actually soldiers and conquerers rather than philosophers and martyrs.
Religion is entirely too subjective to stand as the force that you describe. As its simply too ignorable and too diverse.
