Good debate going on here, TG and antarcticbeech. This is fun.
My point exactly.
I was trying to draw a distinction earlier between organised religion and faith (or a belief system, if you prefer; it’s the same thing). Secular belief systems might not have a name attached to them - they are not explicitly Christian, or Buddhist, or whatever - but they nevertheless constitute a pervasive socialising force that will be adopted unquestioningly by those exposed to them, day in, day out.
It just so happens that nice people like TG and antarcticbeech have been brung up proper. They (presumably) grew up in societies with advanced moral codes (I’ll stop calling it a ‘Christian’ code if that bothers people). Thus they accept the value of life (for example) as axiomatic. It’s pure belief. No justification is necessary or demanded. There are other societies such as South Africa and D.R.Congo where people are brought up to think that (say) rape is no big deal.
Sure you can. But it is merely an irrational belief with no logical justification; as irrational and unprovable, in fact, as my belief in God.
Don’t trust cows. They’re big and scary and they’ll kill you if you so much as look at them funny.
This assertion has no basis in observable reality. The UN and its offshoots have attempted to improve lives in third-world countries by funding material prosperity, and in 50 years have achieved precisely nothing.
Japan’s change was economic and cultural. As I said earlier, it’s daft to argue about which way the causality runs. The two things necessarily occurred together.
My dad is from a third-world country (nominally Buddhist) and I can tell you with absolute confidence that that country has nothing that resembles a moral code, the Golden Rule, or even Buddhist dogma. People get on with the daily grind, and generally avoid bothering each other simply because it’s too much trouble to do otherwise, not because they actually give a shit. Co-operation is impossible because nobody trusts each other: attempt to set up a win-win scenario and everyone involved will deliberately turn it into a lose-lose. Given the opportunity and the motivation, they do unto others whatever they can get away with.
But of course, that’s simply because they’re ‘poor’, right? No, they’re poor because they have no moral code. Prosperity in such countries is physically impossible without a change of culture; once the culture starts to change, then prosperity can continue, and prosperity will reinforce different cultural values. I was suggesting earlier than religious or pseudoreligious memes - if they are ‘good’ memes and reach a critical mass of people - might kickstart that process, as (IMO) they did in Japan.
This is usually called ‘the problem of evil’. Personally I resolve this as follows:
In the story of the Garden of Eden, God gave men a choice: you can be responsible for your own decisions, or you can just let me pull your puppet-strings. No halfway house was offered, whereby God would bail us out whenever we fucked up. We chose the first option, and God’s reaction is typically portrayed as a punishment for disobedience (“if you eat from the tree you will die”). I don’t think it was. He simply told us the inevitable consequences of our choice: we’d voluntarily decided to allow our lives to be ruled by the iron laws of physics and biology, tempered only by our own ingenuity (the tree that Adam ate from was called the ‘tree of knowledge’ - the implication being that we thereby acquired the moral and intellectual tools to deal with our choice). Death, for example, is a necessary aspect of life on a finite planet. Evil is a natural consequence of free will. Of course, it’s just a story; but I find it an intriguing one.
Given that God sent us out into the world equipped with everything needed to deal with it, he not unreasonably expected us to sort ourselves out. Jesus reminded us of what we are capable of - morally and intellectually - within our human limits. If the Gospels are accurate, he spent an awful lot of time rolling his eyes and telling people not to be such bloody-minded idiots.
[quote]What I’m saying is they’re not–people in general don’t act this way and your entire argument is based on assumptions about an admittedly incomprehensible situation.
I disagree completely, for the variety of reasons I’ve previously stated.[/quote]
We’ll just have to agree to disagree then 
Most likely we’re both just suffering from confirmation bias: I’m looking at the shitty bits of the planet (which IMO constitute the majority) and you’re looking at the good bits (which, to you, are also the majority).
Most likely we’re both just suffering from confirmation bias: I’m looking at the shitty bits of the planet (which IMO constitute the majority) and you’re looking at the good bits (which, to you, are also the majority).[/quote]
