>> ^VoodooV:

I hate questions like that "Is religion a force for good?"
you can't answer that rationally with just a y/n. I would just paraphrase the old addage: "There are no bad religious members, just bad religious leaders."
if we actually held our leaders to higher standards instead of the opposite, maybe shit wouldn't be so bad/polarizing?


If you knew the extent of the philosophical debates that surround the whole issue of defining what "good" means -or more generally what moral values are- you would like that kind of questions even less, but for a whole 'nother lot of reasons. For example, ask someone if he thinks the word "unicorn" refers to something real (and not just an image). Most sane people will answer "no". Now ask if they think "good" refers to something real. They will either answer an uneasy "yes" or won't be able to respond. A small minority will venture a categoric "no"; then you just have to ask why they think killing is "bad" (or "not good") and they'll be at a loss for words, unless they're philosophers. Of course, "God did it" is not an appropriate answer to any of these questions: you should be able to say what "good" is whether or not God did it, just like we can say what a tree, or even a unicorn, is.

So a better, less confusing, starting point would be: "Is religion useful to mankind?". But the obvious answer is "it depends on the circumstances". Just like you can say that straw can be useful to build a house out of, you can say religion can be useful as a psychological aide. But normally, in our day and age, you would not use straw to build your house but wood or concrete or steel or brick, etc. Your straw building may stand for a long time depending on where you live, even resist some earthquakes better than other buildings, but come a big storm or a very cold climate and you won't stand a chance. The same with religion: if you have science and the scientific method you do not need to go out of your way to build your psyche out of the less adaptable religious concepts.

The unfortunate truth is, of course, that most religious people do not give their children the choice of either religious concepts or scientific ones. And when they do, it's because they've loaded the dice (e.g. the Jehovah's witness). So I ask, how can we hold our leaders to higher standards when we can't even see the benefits of these higher standards? (Here I assume science is a higher standard of thinking in general than religion, but even if we consider science purely as an amoral pursuit, can we let people that cling to belief systems thousand of years old dictate the standards of the leaders that are supposed to guide us in the future?)

The market has no moral values. The market is what people want to pay for, what people want makes up the market.

@GeeSussFreeK
Well, I think you're narrowing the term morality somewhat. Morality is based on reason as well, just as laws should be. I base my personal "beliefs" and morality on reason and that's what I mean by morality - values. Values change when new impressions are made.

Laws and morality are intermixed. It's not like religion vs. science. Our laws are based on the prevalent morality, values, judgment and reason of the judges and politicians who enact them.

Morals are not only beliefs, it's a judgment based on many factors.

Theocracy has nothing to do with this, theocracy is a government form.

A whole $10 million dollars for the Jail Diversion Program at the Center for Mental Health Services... Wow.

-This- is what happens when conservatives are allowed into power. Combined with their self-made claims to primacy on moral values and a religion that supposedly teaches love and acceptance, I believe this speaks volumes about the nature of hypocrisy.

Compassionate conservative...an oxymoron if there ever was one.

For the record I am not from America.

I come from a country that has about 80% population that considers itself religious (orthodox). Many of these 80% actually treat religion as I was trying to present it here - not as a final statement in all life but as something that does not hurt to have. I had religion class in school when I was little and I remember that it was never about following word to word what the bible says, but about moral values, about stories in the bible from which we as kids could learn lessons about good and evil and in the end how everything could fit with religion. We also learned that God loves all of his creatures regardless of their belief. This is how I grew not only to respect other peoples religious beliefs but also to let a little bit of room for my own beliefs (closer to agnosticism).

Now I don't know what the situation is in USA... I agree there are many religious people out there that show fanaticism and hypocrisy. American movies portray this kind of behavior a lot.

All the atheist clips on this site are annoying, because they pretty much sing the same song for no one to hear.

P.S. dag, i was referring in that quote to members of the Sift

^ netrunner

All social legislations only cater to a portion of the populations moral convictions at the cost of the others. It violates the ideas of freedom. The issue isn't whether I think I have the authority over you to interpret the constitution. There is a more basic set of ideas about what the constitution was setup to protect, it might be easier to deal with those first. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is about the more general starting point we have to go on for a social contract. The constitution in whole can be seen a protecting and preserving these things, both against/from others and the government itself. Meaning, no body shall wrongfully cause you death, confinement or restriction, deprivation or enforcement of ambitions.

"The short answer is that yes, it falls under the category of general welfare, just like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, scholarship programs, public schools, etc. etc."

General welfare is contained in none of these, these all have to deal with personal welfare. Your retirement, your health, your children, your continuing education all have one thing in common...you. They benefit your own life conditions and parameters at very real cost. Those costs are other people personal pursuits.

Social legislation assumes one thing, that is has found a universality. A key good to all existence that all people, regardless of objection should be coerced into capitulation to those things. I don't believe any person or government body should be capable of such a thing. I don't believe the constitution allowed for it as it was very explicit in those things which it sought to create.

The framers didn't need to be "omniscient supermen whose words and thoughts should be held sacred and immutable" to make a document that tried to preserve those things that I mentioned. However, I see, as do many, as a tyranny of some peoples personal moral values, of which some I hold, over others. This violates the heart of what we were trying to start with the whole notion of the social contract.

Neither of us need to be 100% correct about all the nooks and cranies of constitutional debates, there would be no need to talk about such things in open forum if that be the case. I would make no such assertion for myself of being without error. However, I think we can debate reasonably as to the very real problem I have with the moral problems of such laws as federal health care and other such legislative works. I find the patriot act and other such "safety" legislation just as egregious.

Consistency in the matters of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are my considerations in all matters of law. We have to look past what we want and look towards people to make those choices for themselves. Until we are all like minded in every way, social legislation will act as a tyranny against the minority.

edit: Grammar, where can I buy a pill for it

I'm just curious...what moral values is she talking about? I've never seen her demonstrate anything approaching a consistent set of values.

I'm going to go out on a limb and call these to women racists. But Hammer, you brought it on yourself by going on their show and showing your teeth like a slave boy.

And did you check out the next segment on housekeeping? This is like a scene out of CSA !

From a morality/values POV, Hammer has always been solid. His problem is that he needed better accountants/financial advisors.

I think it's entirely reasonable that an 11 year old boy would not know about the details of MC Hammer's fall. The most important thing is that he have a strong father figure.

Actually, I'm not surprised Obama isn't going after this one right now. Given all the other problems we have, going after something which will set off the ultra-republican military types is probably more trouble than it is worth. Mind you, I'm in complete agreement that he should eventually tackle it, and this is a perfect example, but saying that this is a priority right now is probably not right.

Put it this way, remember that video a few weeks ago with the crazy evangelical soldiers looking for loopholes to hand out bibles in Afghanistan (or wherever)? Clearly the military is allowing all sorts of crazy shit to go on based on a certain agenda which mashes up nicely with an anti-gay agenda. I'm pretty sure that if Obama were to decide to go for this, the right wing would take it as yet another issue to cause a bullshit morality "values" shitstorm.

I say fix the economy first, then deal with this stuff.

Finally, blaming Obama for don't ask don't tell... really inventive.

Belief in unreasonable things is a weakness of the mind. Faith is by definition belief in something that does not demand any form of evidence, it is therefore also a weakness of the mind. The reason that Atheism "runs rampant" on the sift, is quite simple: as intelligence rises, faith usually subsides. And videosift is a quite intellectual group of individuals. It's not that all atheists are automatically smart, it's that all smart people usually are atheists.

Established religion is for the most of it wicked, for lack of a better word. It is indeed an evil upon the world; Earth's cancer. And for the human race to survive and flourish we need to heal it, somehow. As it is an intellectual cancer the best way is usually education, which is why religion is the only thing that has "forbidden knowledge" - keep the people stupid, and you keep them in control.

Individual "beliefs" are basically (usually) moral values. If you get a hundred people in a room that claims to have some form of belief and question them individually, you'll always find a hundred differing beliefs. No one agrees on everything, especially on morals.

God is nowadays just a label we put on anything. "God is love", "God is everything", "God is the universe", "God is a big fat piece of crap", but it's all bullshit. God is God, love is love. If you redefine the word, then you will have to explain your redefinition. Every single time someone makes a clear definition of God, you can refute it. Every time you refute any given God, the believers subside and change their definition, "What God actually is, is..." which is just intellectual cowardice.

Many people say that Agnostic is the only way you reasonably can go - Bill Maher said the "doubt" is the only way, for instance - but I don't think that is correct. While we can never be sure of anything really, we always weigh the evidence and base our conclusions on that. Agnosticism basically says that "I can't know, therefore I don't commit". This assumes an either/or answer, "either God exists or it doesn't" and chooses to not assume an answer. This is a bad position, because it's not at all a 50/50 choice. Every single piece of credible evidence points towards the non-existence of any form of God character, therefore it is the most reasonable position to be a non-believer.

I am as sure of the non-existence of God as I am that I am a thinking human being; that the sun rises tomorrow; that water is wet; that water freezes at about 0 degrees celcius; and so on.

"I will either have sex with you tomorrow or not" <-- Which is the reasonable assumption, yes or no? It's the same type of question as the existence of God. Not 50/50 at all.

nice catch here netrunner.
all i can say is THANK GOD we are finally shutting down that pustulent eye-sore that is a pox on every moral value,rule of law and everything america is supposed to represent.
what a shameful chapter gitmo will represent in future histories.
thank god that particular chapter will be over soon.

I, for one, don't expect the next cop that pulls me over to be an expert in moral values, or go out of his way to be a friend to me.

I have a lot to say here, but it should be clear to people that this officer isn't being a bad cop. Officers have duty, and that duty doesn't have a lot of exceptions. Am I wrong?

Police procedure helps citizens and officer and I can't understand why people want officers to throw it out (correct procedure) the instant someone says "I gotta see my momma."

Hell you people would have officers keep guns in the back seat just in case the criminals needed to use them too.

eheheh, I go to far....

I would argue that these are not moral values, but of course you are right - they are values in the way that they are methods with which to perceive and act in the world. Chiefly above all the points you quoted stands truth. The rest springs from there. The great scientific value is that truth = good. If you disregard truth, you are not being scientific. Other than that, I wouldn't say that science judges any action like a religion does: "X is WRONG/bad" or "Y is RIGHT/good".

>> ^chilaxe:
It's not true that science doesn't teach us values.

"[Science], which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values, among others, are honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view.
Nobody appeared in a cloud of smoke and taught scientists these virtues. This behavior simply evolved because it worked."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/27essa.html

It blew my mind when I realized years ago that politicians didn't talk the way they do because they were stodgy bad communicators, but because they were saying something very intentional and very different from common moral values - like this video - We assume Geroge Bush means freedom for everyone when he means freedom for markets and people on top... and maybe some trickle down.

It's like a secret language that the people on top understand but at the same time it lets the average person assume their needs are being addressed. Like anytime the phrase "American interests" gets used by folks in the top of the government. You'd think that meant "our interests" but it virtually always means interests of American corporations abilities to make money overseas. If supporting a dictator (take your pick over the past 30 years) supports the ability of American corporations to make money but also massively decreases the quality of life for a person under that dictatorship it's always the "American interest" to support the dictator dispite the fact that the vast majority of americans would be more interested in supporting those people if they really knew what was going on.

I think it's in interesting that the two people who opened my mind to this stuff are both linguists - George Lakoff and Noam Chomsky. Which makes sense because it's a matter of language and meaning.

George Lakoff's book "Moral Politics" is absolutely amazing by the way - it talks about how people on the left and people on the right look at the world through different metaphors based on families they grew up in. Liberals based on nurturance, conservatives on a strict father. The reason we're so polarized is because we don't understand each other since we frame issues on different world views and words don't even mean the same things on the surface.

Your preaching to the choir Mr. Maher. I think everyone should see this movie and contemplate their beliefs a bit more critically.

Does society really need the facade of religion as discussed by Socrates/Plato, or can we have our moral values sans religion?