God Who Cares? (Atheist) by DeYtH Banger, VeNgeR GrEenTag (speed reading book TXT) đ
- Author: DeYtH Banger, VeNgeR GrEenTag
Book online «God Who Cares? (Atheist) by DeYtH Banger, VeNgeR GrEenTag (speed reading book TXT) đ». Author DeYtH Banger, VeNgeR GrEenTag
- Dan Baker
âThomas Jefferson was a deist, living just like an atheist with no religious practices, but believing there had to be some kind of starter god, or impersonal force that got everything going. The deists were the pre-Darwinian freethinkers, lacking a model for the origin of life. But Jefferson got it right about instincts, anticipating the theory of evolution by many decades. Charles Darwin famously wrote: âIt has, I think, now been shewn that man and the higher animals, especially the Primates, have some few instincts in common.â
- Dan Baker
âFrans de Waal, in his book The Age of Empathy: Natureâs Lessons for a Kinder Society, gives many examples of nonhuman animals acting compassionately. Altruism is an evolved behavior that does not rely solely on having a âhigherâ brain that can construct formal moral philosophies.â
- Dan Baker Bible Arguments (10)
By DeYtH Banger
âYou might object that the appearance of animal morality is just a thoughtless expression of an automatic instinct and that we could also give numerous examples of animals not caring about each other. But we could say the same thing about humans.â
- Dan Baker
âSome people break into tears when they see cruelty to animals, and if you are like my sister-in-law Suzan, you will break into a rageâŠâ
- Dan Baker
âWe have many instinctsâsome nurturing, some violentâand they often conflict with each other. But Freud did not think the Id was moral in itself. He thought it was something for the Ego and Superego to controlâŠâ
- Dan Baker
âDaniel Dennett, in Freedom Evolves, writes that it makes no difference whether our moral impulses are evolved or learned. â[T]he theory that explains morality ⊠should be neutral with regard to whether our moral attitudes, habits, preferences, and proclivities are a product of genes or culture.ââ
- Dan Baker
ââŠthink âinstinctâ is purely biological or a learned habit, or a combination of the two, it comes down to the same goal: the minimization of harm to biological organisms
Craig Packer points out in his book Into Africa, that is because âwe make it all up as we go along,â whereas an ant has âevery small instruction laid out in advance.ââ13 Since none of the other animals have such a proportionately large and complicated brain, they are, as far as we know, unable to construct a formal moral philosophy, but this does not mean they lack altruism, empathy, or moral sentiments.â
- Dan Baker
âWe can think about other people thinking about us thinking about their thoughts. (This is sometimes called Theory of Mind.) We can deliberate, compare, anticipate, contrast, imagine, and prioritize. We can run âwhat ifâ scenarios. We can refrain from acting and wait for more information. (That is one of the functions of the frontal lobe, which checks our actions in social settings. It is what keeps you from burping loudly at a wedding or funeral, for example.) We can investigate, read, and ask for help. We can search our memories for consequences to similar situations, past lessons, previous mistakes.â
- Dan Baker
ââŠof the Unconscious, show that very often we simply âknowâ what to do intuitively, without deliberation. A hunch can be a signal from your lower biological brain to your higher consciousness that something is wrong, though you canât put it into words. Your âgut feelingâ happens somewhere beneath your conscious awareness, but it is no less important than reason. Instincts are a huge advantage, but Gladwell and Gerzinger also give examples of gut feelings gone wrong. Animal instincts are valuable not because they are always right but because they were advantageous most of the time when they were being naturally selected. âIâm not a textbook player. Iâm a gut player,â President George W. Bush told Bob Woodward about his disastrous decision to go to war in Iraq. Gut feelings can go horribly wrong sometimesâespecially when they are prompted by religion rather than evidenceâbecause they are firing in a different environment from which they originally evolved.â
- Dan Baker
âSometimes such actions result in two tragedies instead of one. Call for help. Donât become a dead hero. Yet the fact that most of us have these automatic impulses to do good tells us something about our human nature..â
- Dan Baker
âMorality is not a code. It is a compass. A compass does not tell you where you are or where to go; it only shows you where north is. Think of north as the direction of less harm and south as more harm. If your actions are heading more to the north, then you are acting morally. Of course, you canât always travel directly northâthe terrain is often complicated and actions can conflict with each other, and you might have to detour east, west, or even south for a whileâbut if you intend your general path to go more northerly than southerly, your journey is moral. (No offense to my friends in Australia, Brazil, and South Africa! If you live below the equator, then head south.â
- Dan Baker
âI]n no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of governments.ââ
- Dan Baker
âIn his book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris identifies the âwell-beingâ of conscious creatures as the aim of morality. I think that is right. âWell-beingâ is perhaps a more positive way to characterize the harm principle, but it boils down to the same thing. All through Samâs thoughtful book, when âwell-beingâ is unpacked with real-life examples, they always involve the avoidance of some kind of harm or limitation. Well, you canât be âwellâ if you are harmed.â
- Dan Barker
âThe third moral mind, on the right shoulder, is not located in dead ancestors or individual consciousness, but in the social agreements formed by the large tribe to which we belong. Remember that I am not suggesting that law is actually one of your own minds: in a democratic society, humanistic law is a result of a collective mind (including yours) that expresses itself as social expectation or obligation. Unless you live alone on one of the moons of Saturn, the laws you encounter come from somewhere other than your own conscious mind.â
- Dan Barker
âThey replace reason with faith. Reason shows us, for example, that there is nothing wrong with being gay, and if the bible says homosexuality is wrong, then the bible is wrong, not homosexuality. These people are free to have faith and live by their own rules. They are even welcome to try to persuade the rest of us to think like them, but in a secular society, they are not free to impose their theocratic beliefs on everyone else by lawâŠâ
- Dan Barker
âBut I also know there are good reasons for the state to impose a law on how fast I drive on a road that is owned and used by all of us. I may not know all those reasons. They probably have to do with efficient traffic flow, public safety, and convenience. In the absence of a true emergency (such as rushing a heart attack victim to the hospital), I willingly surrender part of my moral decision-making to the collective mind of societyâŠâ
- Dan Barker
âWhat about stem-cell research, abortion rights, birth control, prostitution, polygamy, military draft, tax laws, nude beaches, animal leash laws, motorcycle helmet laws? What about laws based on religious principles? What sense does it make, for example, to outlaw same-sex marriage or a woman showing her face in public? Those religious laws are simply an attempt to legitimize primitive homophobia, sexism, and sectarian orthodoxy. A truly moral law would deal with such discrimination by aiming at the attackers, not the targets. When considering any law, I think we should simply ask, âWhat is the harm?â Bad laws increase harm. If following a law more often results in less harm, we can say it is a good law.â
- Dan Barker
âI am going to break the law, and I want all of you to witness. The god of the bible, if he exists, is an evil, immoral, selfish, arrogant, jealous, brutal, bloodthirsty bully, and if he created hell, he can go to hell. I am not saying âGod Damn It,â I am saying âDamn God.â There. I just broke the Third Commandment. I took the name of the Lord Your God in vain. Are you going to have me arrested for blasphemyâŠâ
- Dan Barker
âThomas Jefferson concluded that âChristianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.â20 It was originally a jumble of regional legal decisions based on common sense and precedent that roughly came together after a long evolution of trial and error. It is not based on written statutes but on the âsurvival of the fittestâ ideas that had been naturally selected by experience. The prohibition of murder, for example, is (to this day in England) not based on âThou shalt not killâ or any other statute, but on the legal decisions of ancestor judges amassed over time into a âcommonâ understanding of how we shouldâŠâ
- Dan Barker
âLook what happened with Harvard, originally a religious school founded by Calvinists to educate preachers (âdreading to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churchesâ) that grew into a humanistic institution of liberal arts education. The seventeenth-century theocrats, at any rate, did not found the United States of America. It was a century and a half later when our actual founders, not wanting any part of the religious divisiveness of the earlier colonies, continued evolving into a secular democratic republic.â
- Dan Barker
âThe constitution arose naturally from a group of people struggling to be free of authority, not to submit to rules. American citizens are not subjects.22 We are a proudly rebellious peopleâŠâ
- Dan Barker
ââŠIn Losing Faith in Faith and Godless, I describe the shortcomings of theistic morality, which is based primarily on a might-makes-right mentality. With its threat of eternal torture, inept role models, and a cosmic dictator who is praise-hungry, angry, and violent, the bible offers an ethical system that reduces to the morality of a toddler who fears and flatters the father figure. In most religions, behavior is governed by rules, but in real life behavior should be governed by principles.â
- Dan Barker
ââŠyou donât believe in God you have to be reminded of the punishment of the law? If you do believe in God you can simply say, âso help me, God,â and that is enough to warrant honesty. If you donât believe in God, it is assumed you have less motive to tell the truth, the âpains and penalties of perjuryâ replacing the threat of âhellâ to force you to be a good person.â
- Dan Baker
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