Apr 11
More on god’s laws
I received mixed reviews on my last blog which frankly shocked me. I pretty much cannot believe people disagree with what I wrote. I was most shocked when one of my good friends said, “Stick to writing about poker”. When I inquired further as to which thought he disagreed with he said, “Many people have thought way more about the subject than you”. This response comes from one of the smartest people I know and the utter lack of sense in the statement is shocking to me. OF COURSE people have thought more and written more on the subject than me, that would basically be true for just about any subject (except maybe pokerstars heads up sit and goes). Does this mean that no one except the foremost expert in the world has any right to comment on a subject? To me this shows how incredibly smart people may not think clearly on the subject of religion.
A friend of mine who works for the city of Philadelphia informed me today of a real situation that relates to what I wrote about. Apparently there is currently a call for a Federal law against same sex marriage and the constituents are calling for him to get behind it. Their main argument is that it is god’s law and of course this is impossible to rebuke. As soon as they turn to a real world argument though the logic can actually be dealt with and a rebuttal can be attempted. The argument offered against same sex marriage is that it would pave the way for 2 drag queens to adopt a child, and how incredibly awful would that be?!?! There are many obvious retorts but I will go with the one that I can most personally speak about.
I worked in a school in the heart of West Philadelphia while I was in college at Penn. This school had about 40 kids to a class, and a teacher that spent the vast majority of her time trying to make sure that all the kids were accounted for (and she had been the recipient of many awards for top teacher in the area). They had one child who was deemed the technological expert because he was the only one that knew how to turn on the antiquated computers that sat on one of the tables in the classroom. I worked in the 8th grade in which over half the students had already seen someone shot and over half of the girls were already mothers, some of more than one child. These students could not turn on a computer or write coherently, and had almost all been a victim of some sort of major psychological trauma yet our society makes no laws against them being parents. (And I’m not saying we should or shouldn’t). How can anyone argue that in every case or even most cases of drag queens adopting a child that this child will be worse off than the oldest of 7 children of a 10th grade student who is charged with taking care of his siblings by the time he’s 6 years old because his mother is busy either finishing high school, working a minimum wage job or worse.
To legislate on the basis that any group as a whole would make unfit parents is totally absurd in our society today. Maybe, just maybe even the 10th grade single mother will be a decent parent. It’s really all a matter of odds. But hey, god’s law reigns supreme, so many people say our society’s laws should be based on it.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Steve,
I did not comment on your previous post because I always assume that
intelligent people realize that morals derived from experience and living
together far exceed moral derived from god. But there are many people who
don’t seem to understand this. I am one of the msot moral people around
and I am an atheist. Why would I do anything immoral and spend what
little time we have on earth (there is no afterlife) in jail? Makes no
sense whatsoever. If I were a Christian, then I can commit the most
heinous crimes there are as long as I repent before I die and I will go
to heaven - WTF.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Steve,
Morality based on a god isn’t inherently better or worse than morality derived from logic. That god could want you to sacrifice babies to him or he could be like the early Christian god and demand complete tolerance and love of one’s neighbor. History has shown that both types of morality can lead to heinous acts (e.g. crusaders and Nazis). The way I see it, morality derived from absolute faith in a god’s teachings are less changeable by the individual; in other words, there’s a lot more obvious hypocrisy in committing murder while spouting the ten commandments (including thou shalt not kill), then if you’ve got a customized morality based on logic. The problem with logic is that we humans have the remarkable ability to convince ourselves that just about anything is rational. You can start off with a morality that places a near absolute ban on stealing, but then your reasoning slowly evolves until gradually you’ve come up with a completely plausible line of reasoning that allows for theft. At least for the religious thief, the hypocrisy is more obvious.
-Ari
April 11th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
A response to Mike:
Acting morally because you fear jail won’t keep you moral for long. Sooner or later you’ll find a way to profit immorally in a way that has no chance of sending you to jail. For example, cheating at poker is not illegal, although you’d probably agree it’s immoral. If you’re a Christian who fully believes in the bible, you don’t avoid killing because you fear hell, you avoid killing because its god will; you don’t need the option of deathbed confession.
April 11th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
The point is that that is not acting morally. To not do an immoral act because of its potential consequences is not acting morally. Acting morally is not doing an immoral act because it is immoral regardless of what might happen to you afterwards.
April 12th, 2008 at 12:39 am
nice comments, Ari Paul.
And to stevebets: I like your OT posts, i think they are interessting, keep them coming.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
dumb atheist
without religion this world would be a fucking zoo. religion keeps folks civilized and “in line.” it doesn’t really matter if it’s “true” or not.. i’m not even talking about that.
i for one, would be a much more crazy person if I knew there was a 0% chance that my ‘hellacious’ acts would consequently land me in “hell.”