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Theistic belief is experiential and emotional: you either have religious experiences that theism helps you to explain or you don't. Empiricism doesn't enter into it any more than it enters into the equation when you fall in love or enjoy a piece of art.
RE: Love can be measured emperically.
Go away out of that. Refer me to this miraculous study please.
Go away out of that. Refer me to this miraculous study please.
I want people to be honest, but experience has taught me that this isn't always the case.
I want people to be altruistic because I know that it is a system that works.
Expect is probably the wrong term in this case.
But for the record, I wouldn't support any law telling people to follow my standards.
Although I should probably have said "encourage" rather than "instil", but, yes, it is when the moral standards of honesty, compassion, cooperation, accepting that people are different and the notion of fair play coincide with the preferred standards of the school system.
It's one of the things we agree upon.
In my view, a teacher who doesn't care about their pupils' ethics is a poor teacher.
Honest with who? you?
About what?
Why should they be?
Even "altruistic" people.
"honesty" is suprisingly subjective, with "honesty to others"/"honesty to a system".
In fact, honesty to Self is so often punished, supressed, and belittled.
(yet without honesty to Self, there is little honesty at all...)
Yet the school system does not in any real way encourage, develop, or teach to these differences.
fair play, in systems, and in life itself, does not exist. We have illusions of fair play yes, but they are illusions none the less.
A teacher in a system, is going to have problems holding that system together, if they don't enforce certain rules. Call them ethics if it makes you happy.
Don't have the full picture?As with most things we certainly don't have the full picture yet, but I think this is a valid basis for saying that we have empirical grounds for our understanding of how love works.
Don't have the full picture?
We're not even in the same building as the full picture.
Unless someone has solved the hard problem of consciousness while I was snoozing.
Also - is it your view that if a phenomenological psychologist was arguing that love is relational, a discursive psychologist was citing it as a construct and a biological psychologist was arguing that it is a result of neurochemistry you have evidence as to which one is definitively correct in the view that they hold?
Fully agree. :yes:
I am a "dyed in the wool" atheist and I hereby dare any believer to call me immoral.
- I never lie. (Not even to get a day off from work). Honesty is very important to me.
- I quit my job as a marketing executive to become a teacher which basically cut my paycheck in half because I wanted to do something that meant something to more people than just me.
- I do my best, every day, to teach my pupils about the worth of other people and instil in them the best moral standards I know.
- I never suggest any standards (moral or otherwise) to anyone that I am not able to uphold myself as I strongly believe in practising what you preach.
- I have never and will never cheat on anyone I am in a relationship with.
- I spend my vacations working in Kurdistan (Northern Iraq) helping rebuild their school system.
- I am a strong supporter of personal freedom and I think that anyone should be allowed to love whoever they want and that what consenting adults do between their sheets is none of my business.
- I am also a strong supporter of the freedom of speech and of ideas, and while I might disagree fervently with what you have to say I would die for your right to do so.
Now, go ahead.
Call me immoral.
Call my view of the world invalid.
If you can.
So in other words, you do not sin.
1. Humans create religions
2. Humans follow religions that are created by humans.
With these undeniable facts, how do the religious justify their beliefs?
To me, this is the clincher. This is all the evidence I need. Nothing more required to be said or done. Humans create religions and follow them.
That really depends on your definition of "sin".
Do I break the ten commandments? Absolutely.
I have no problems "taking the lord's name in vain" and while I do not have any other gods before "him" I don't have "him" there either. Also, I covet all over the place.
Have I committed any of the so called seven mortal sins? Definitely.
I lust, some would call me proud, I have over-eaten (especially during the winter vacation that you call Christmas), being a citizen in one of the richest countries in the world probably gives me greed just by association, and when I feel like it I'm lazy as dirt.
So, yeah, it really depends on your definition.
Since you break God's law and are glad of it, then is not God justified in punishing you and ultimately sending you to hell?
I do not believe what I believe to be the only true way. I don't believe anyone does.
Sometime Iwounderif Athiest haverun there course and are ready for eternal sleep and they are the souls that are done believe and rest.
I'm not terribly worried since I don't believe in any gods, but trust me, if I find when I die that there really is a god... He's going to get a good talking to! Knockout
That is like the criminal who isn't worried about jail time becuase he doesn't believe the police will catch him. It is an irrational belief and so is yours.