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What are the Main Reasons Someone Would Reject Your Religion?

johnhanks

Well-Known Member
I partially disagree. I believe there are (should be) universal morals. Murdering the innocent and forcefully taking what belongs to others without their consent, specially without need, I believe are examples of absolute immoralities. A cultural decision does not always define a moral.
Then what does? Morality is a component of culture, a social construct.

As to your examples of "absolute immoralities", to call murdering the innocent an absolute immorality is mere tautology - if it's murder, it's immoral (and illegal) by definition. Murder has no other definition than unlawful homicide - if a killing is considered morally justifiable (as capital punishment is in some backward societies, and human sacrifice has been in others), it's not called murder.
And if "forcefully taking what belongs to others without their consent" is absolutely immoral, then HMRC is an absolutely immoral institution.
 

johnhanks

Well-Known Member
Let's say James decided he wanted to kill his neighbor and take his wife for a sex slave.
And lots of societies have (and some still do) run like that. Ask the yanomami.
Yes, his society could decide if it was right or it was wrong. He decided it was right.
And yanomami culture agrees with him.
But it will always be absolutely wrong for anyone to do those things to another no matter what the individual or society says.
Our culture vehemently disagrees with the yanomami and similar societies on this one, and regards the practices as abhorrent; and like all cultures we regard our morality as the absolutely correct one. Sorry, but like it or not there are no absolutes only cultural norms.
The determinant is the rights of potential victims.
Rights, again, are purely social constructs. The very notion of universal rights is a historically recent one; the rights we enjoy today did not exist a millennium ago, and may well not exist in a century's time: they are tied to the socioeconomic circumstances of a culture, and change with those circumstances.

Whenever I have this argument with an absolute-morality proponent, I end up being accused of wanting things to be the way I describe them. I assure you, the way I would like things to be is a very different matter: yes, it would be lovely if rights (and wrongs) were absolute and god-given, so everyone throughout history and ethnography always knew exactly where they stood. My reasons for concluding that they are not is not preference but empirical observation.
 
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Smart_Guy

...
Premium Member
Then what does? Morality is a component of culture, a social construct.

As to your examples of "absolute immoralities", to call murdering the innocent an absolute immorality is mere tautology - if it's murder, it's immoral (and illegal) by definition. Murder has no other definition than unlawful homicide - if a killing is considered morally justifiable (as capital punishment is in some backward societies, and human sacrifice has been in others), it's not called murder.
And if "forcefully taking what belongs to others without their consent" is absolutely immoral, then HMRC is an absolutely immoral institution.

Capital punishment, like it is followed by USA or at least some States in it, does not by any means equal murdering the innocent, and forcefully taking what really belongs to others is still immoral. I believe (at least some) obligatory taxes are wrong actually.

Is it okay to murder a child walking in the street or forcefully stopping a driver taking their fully payed by honest earned money car moral in any way?
 

ThePainefulTruth

Romantic-Cynic
Whenever I have this argument with an absolute-morality proponent, I end up being accused of wanting things to be the way I describe them. I assure you, the way I would like things to be is a very different matter: yes, it would be lovely if rights (and wrongs) were absolute and god-given, so everyone throughout history and ethnography always knew exactly where they stood. My reasons for concluding that they are not is not preference but empirical observation.

But you're arguing that what people want justifies any moral standard. Yes that person, or society, may have what they want, but that doesn't make it right or moral, only that they call it so.
 

johnhanks

Well-Known Member
Capital punishment, like it is followed by USA or at least some States in it, does not by any means equal murdering the innocent,
You miss my point, I think. Homicides that we regard as unjustified are labelled murder; killings a society approves are not. To say "murdering the innocent is immoral" is tautological, as if the killing was socially approved people would not call it murder (nor would the society in question call its victim innocent). The crew of Enola Gay killed many innocent children; most people do not call them murderers because, morality being nothing if not plastic, we can adjust it according to circumstances.
Is it okay to murder a child walking in the street ...
By my moral code and yours, of course not. (And "okay to murder" is an oxymoron: if a killing is OK, we don't call it murder, and vice versa). But in plenty of societies (past and present) killing unwanted babies has been morally acceptable, though abhorrent to ours.
... or forcefully stopping a driver taking their fully payed by honest earned money car moral in any way?
Sorry, you've lost me on this one.
 

Smart_Guy

...
Premium Member
You miss my point, I think. Homicides that we regard as unjustified are labelled murder; killings a society approves are not. To say "murdering the innocent is immoral" is tautological, as if the killing was socially approved people would not call it murder (nor would the society in question call its victim innocent). The crew of Enola Gay killed many innocent children; most people do not call them murderers because, morality being nothing if not plastic, we can adjust it according to circumstances.
By my moral code and yours, of course not. (And "okay to murder" is an oxymoron: if a killing is OK, we don't call it murder, and vice versa). But in plenty of societies (past and present) killing unwanted babies has been morally acceptable, though abhorrent to ours.
Sorry, you've lost me on this one.

No worries man. I'm just sharing what I think :)
 

johnhanks

Well-Known Member
But you're arguing that what people want justifies any moral standard.
What people want? No. What optimises the functioning of a society? Closer. (And "justifies" only to them - probably not to the people they kill or enslave.)
Yes that person, or society, may have what they want, but that doesn't make it right or moral, only that they call it so.
But this is my whole point - right and wrong are what we call them.

Don't you think it's a remarkable and convenient coincidence that, of all societies and cultures in the history of the whole world, we just happen to be living in the one whose moral code overlaps 100% with the absolutely correct one? Even past cultures we may admire, like Periclean Athens, got it wrong about matters such as slavery. The author of Deuteronomy thought that if a woman is raped in the city and fails to cry out, she should be killed. You (I hope) and I find that idea repellent. If ours is the absolutely morally correct position, how did the Deuteronomy author get it so wrong? Or was he - it's the bible, after all - the absolutely morally correct one?
 

Saint Frankenstein

Here for the ride
Premium Member
Its rather sordid history, continuing to the present day (corruption, abuse, etc.).
Theological issues.
It's archaic social stances, especially as pertains to sexuality and gender issues.
 

GoodbyeDave

Well-Known Member
So how much non-hearsay evidence do we have from 2000 years ago? And if you tell me what God told you yesterday, is that not hearsay? And if someone reports something as being as a first hand witness, does that mean it doesn't have to be verified or corroborated?
I don't know why I bother, but here goes.

> I'm not sure where "2000 years ago" comes from, so I'll ignore that bit.

> As for "what God told you", read the definition of hearsay again -- carefully.

> As for verification, consider again my point about reporting a headache. Testimony does not automatically need to be verified. When you were a child, did you constantly interrupt the teacher to ask her for corroboration of her statements? What philosophers call the Principle of Testimony is that reports of experience are prima facie evidence for that experience. In other words, testimony is innocent until proven guilty. The interpretation of experience may be mistaken, and some things may constitute counter-evidence: knowing that the speaker is an habitual liar, or their claim being implausible. If some-one tells me the saw a hoopoe in an English garden, that's surprising but not unprecedented; if they said they'd seen a pterodactyl, I'd wonder what they were on.

You are a very non-standard "atheist".
Now I wonder what you're on! "Pagan" = "atheist"?
 
Killing in a war is unethical and immoral if it's in support of oppression and not in defense of an aggression. So humans have committed murder since the beginning, so what? People have been evil since the beginning, that doesn't excuse it. We can't justify genocide by a majority vote, yet that's exactly what you propose

Once again, you have failed to understand my post at all. This proves the original point of the post that you would find barriers to my religion with one of them being that you do not understand a system of ethics since you are clearly influenced by a system of morality. No where does my argument suggest that genocide would be accepted by a system of ethics and majority vote has nothing to do with the argument. If you are arguing from morality then war is seen as evil even in the defense of aggression so one could not defend themselves in war if their system of morality declared war to be immoral. A system of ethics would look at the reasons for war and would than decided when war would be acceptable. Your argument is a logical facility as you are trying to use extreme example such as genocide in order to invoke an emotional response instead of relying on pure argumentation

Criminals, anarchists and despots will never agree to whatever they see as going their own desires. You argue against morality, then you argue against law and for anarchy

No where in my arguments do i argue against law and anarchy. Law is based upon a tribal system of law in order to kept the peace among the tribe which is perfectly served by a system of ethics. You are trying to force a morality of your choosing upon the argument and therefore think that law can only exist if your ideals are met. Morality alone is not the basis for law. This argument has nothing to do with the current post and is a another example of a logical facility as you are trying to link an argument with no connection to the original in hopes of distracting from the original.

All that means is that there will always be evil. Surrendering to aggression is to negate the law and the possibility of good order.

Once again, there is no such thing as evil. There has never been evil and there will never be evil. The term evil is a abstract term used by morality systems to make one group feel superior to other groups with some fictional high ground. As my system of ethics has no such terms, one's actions are examined instead of just issuing blanket systems of judgement on a person. The whole purpose of the concept of law is deal out punishment for offenders who strike against the tribe, therefore law by it's very nature is aggression. Socialites make laws in order to punish those who would bring harm to the tribe and are a means to control the behavior of the society in whole.
 

Riverwolf

Amateur Rambler / Proud Ergi
Premium Member
What binary? It's immoral for one person to murder another. Imperialist?

I've come to regard political and moral universalism as inherently imperialist.

Any person or group that violates the rights of others, negates their own rights.

Then enforecement of any rights becomes impossible, and rights cease to exist.

BTW, if the universal moral code isn't adopted, we turn ourselves over to the 2%, anarchists and/or despots, by default--and sometimes the despots are the 51%, which sucks for the 49%, and then when the opportunity comes, the elite 2% trample the remainder of the 51% who were never more than useful idiots to begin with. So there we are back with the 2%. Ain't that an ironic kick in the head.

Not really, because it looks like just random number crunching to me. Since it looks entirely hypothetical, I've no reason to regard it as reflective of the real world.

Universal morality is the only way to avoid no morality.

Quite a Christian way of thinking.
 
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ThePainefulTruth

Romantic-Cynic
I've come to regard political and moral universalism as inherently imperialist.

Easy to do when all the "morality" goin' on out there is nothing but a lot of manipulation--substituting demagoguery for true, simple morality.

Then enforecement of any rights becomes impossible, and rights cease to exist.

Enforcement of rights becomes impossible because those who violate the rights of others forfeit their own? Then justice is impossible and we're back to square one with despotism or anarchy. People who advocate for subjective morality only want the double standard which favors those who rely on deception and force. Though of course those who practice deception have always naturally argued otherwise.

Not really, because it looks like just random number crunching to me. Since it looks entirely hypothetical, I've no reason to regard it as reflective of the real world.

Read it again. It does naturally meander, of necessity. But no matter how you crunch the numbers, it always comes back to that 2% who comprise the elite oligarchy, no matter what PC label they stick on it. It even looks like National Socialism has come full circle.

330px-NSDAP-Logo.svg.png


Quite a Christian way of thinking.

If it was, I'd be a Christian, warts and all. Unfortunately you just can't make that square peg of Truth fit in that round Christian hole.
 

ThePainefulTruth

Romantic-Cynic
I don't know why I bother, but here goes.

> I'm not sure where "2000 years ago" comes from, so I'll ignore that bit.

> As for "what God told you", read the definition of hearsay again -- carefully.

If God were to tell you or anyone anything, you'd be unable to transmit that to anyone else except as hearsay. Those who have first-hand "revelation" of some sort (provided it isn't hallucination, misinterpretation or a lie to begin with), without some external validation, can get others to accept it on pure blind faith. Thanks but no thanks. I consider my soul to be of more worth than that. A patient can buy an aspirin over the counter. But for a doctor to give him something stronger is gonna require more that his word, especially if he keeps coming back to that well--though some people's souls can be a real headache for the rest of us.
 

Riverwolf

Amateur Rambler / Proud Ergi
Premium Member
Enforcement of rights becomes impossible because those who violate the rights of others forfeit their own? Then justice is impossible and we're back to square one with despotism or anarchy. People who advocate for subjective morality only want the double standard which favors those who rely on deception and force. Though of course those who practice deception have always naturally argued otherwise.

Stereotyping leading to such mistrust that any argument made against it is immediately treated as "deception" or "manipulation". Typical conspiranoia.

Read it again. It does naturally meander, of necessity. But no matter how you crunch the numbers, it always comes back to that 2% who comprise the elite oligarchy, no matter what PC label they stick on it. It even looks like National Socialism has come full circle.

330px-NSDAP-Logo.svg.png

Ah, the Hitler Card. One of the most common Red Herrings. Also called Argumentum ad Nazium. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adnazium.html

Of course, it is ironically relevant, because they were the political group that, of course, tried to impose its objective morality on the world.

Them, alongside many others before. England, France, and Spain have all attempted this. America is the current carrier of this Torch: the Light of Rome.

That light that detests shadow so much that it seeks to eliminate it altogether. Completely blind to the fact that without shadow, light is just as blinding as darkness.

If it was, I'd be a Christian, warts and all. Unfortunately you just can't make that square peg of Truth fit in that round Christian hole.

I'll concede that one. It was a mistake for me to regard such thinking as inherently "Christian." Sure, we got the concept of objective morality from dominant forms of Christianity, but they were neither the ones who invented it, nor is it inherent in that religion.
 
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ThePainefulTruth

Romantic-Cynic
Ah, the Hitler Card. One of the most common Red Herrings.

Yes, yes. And like the ubiquitous accusation of "conspiracy theory", there do remain actual conspiracy theories and Fascists, some using the "Democratic Socialism" label for the thinly veiled concept of National Socialism/Nazism/Fascism. It's the ever popular tactic of accusing the opponent of what you're doing before he accuses you. But that doesn't appear to be working on the masses any more. You push the useful idiots long enough and hard enough, eventually they decide it's time to wake up, get out of bed, and smell the rancid coffee grounds.

2060dag.jpg
 

Maponos

Welcome to the Opera
There are certain reasons why Monotheistic View has problem with polytheistic view, unlike polytheism teaches everything is right but monotheism says, there is only one truth, else flawed.
or visit here to know more
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs9yR1254HNG1LHXO8oCn2w
Polytheistic faiths have never taught that everything is right. Polytheistic faiths are very pluralistic and very contextual. There is no 'greater truth' to them. It could be said that there are 'many truths', but polytheistic faiths most often don't try to prove anything. In my opinion, they are often the types of faith that are most close and in tune with humanity as they highlight and accommodate the various experiences we have as humans.
 

Muffled

Jesus in me
I'll only talk about my Greek polytheism here.

1) They believe my gods don't deserve worship because they're part of creation, not the Creator;
2) They believe stories have to be literally true in order to impart lessons or morals and that if they're not literally true they have no value;
3) They don't believe in any gods at all;
4) They're not pulled towards the Greek gods specifically.

I believe that makes a lot of sense since it is the first commandment.

I don't believe that. I am sure one might draw lessons from Dr Seuss but the truth is that men whether gods or not are not usually very moral and certainly not dependable for learning morality.
 

EtuMalku

Abn Iblis ابن إبليس
As you see it, what are top three or four primary reasons someone would reject your religion?

Note: Please state your religion -- if it's not accurately stated in your profile. Thanks!
Mercuræn
1 it takes work and discipline
2 it is associated with unpopular belief systems
3 it can be difficult to understand
4 it is a faith based system
 

Muffled

Jesus in me
I think people reject Jesus Christ because as humans we generally prefer to do our own thing whether God likes it or not, we like our sins and don't want them illuminated by the light of Christ .

...the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. John 3;19-20

I believe I said that already but I appreciate the biblical reference.
 
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