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| quote: | Originally posted by DJ_Bananie
I totally believe all of that. all of the standard human prinicples are present in organized religion- you know the standard, do not kill, don't commit adultery- but believing that stories are true when there is no proof is kinda ridiculus! |
Those principles existed before modern religion did. Religion merely qualifies them (and perhaps provides an excuse for people to follow them.) Again, from an anthropic point of view, such principles are necessary for the survival of a society such as ours.
Consider 2 prehistoric human tribes, one filled with people who killed each other, and one filled with people who believed that killing was wrong. Which one would produce the most offspring in 100 generations? Which one would die out, and which one would undergo a population explosion? It is obvious that any tribes who practiced huge amounts of killing would quickly die out, and thus, we are the descendants of people who believed that killing is wrong.
Again... simple anthropic principle. Religion perhaps just provides an excuse for people to listen to the teachings, but it's not necessary. In Canada, our law is good enough to deter the vast majority of people from killing, and in addition to that, our culture believes that killing is wrong, so people would lose the respect and love of others in the culture if they were caught killing. If you look at Maslow's heirarchy of needs, the only needs more important than love and respect are physiological needs, so we, as humans, generally only kill when we need to survive (because killing hurts our love and respect, so it is only profitable to us when it fills a more important need.) Again, this makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint.
So in fact, most of those principles would exist anyway, even if there was no religion. Even 10,000 years ago, before the agricultural revolution, and before humans even had the concept of private property, they had principles within their culture that condemned killing other humans. Maslow's heirarchy is a biologically evolved brain function that allows that to happen.
Religion is NOT NECESSARY FOR THIS PURPOSE WHATSOEVER.
And of course, I'm not criticizing your post... I'm just using it to bring out a very valid point (which you're undoubtedly aware of) and that is that religion is not necessary to prevent "sinful" action... it just reinforces our tendencies to be good (which in the end, are for our own selfish reasons anyway: being good to get into heaven is no better than being good so people will like you.)
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I am nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore I am perfect.
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