h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

SoRB, is your objection to Christianity not that they put their morality above the law of the land (which I've tried to show is not something exclusive to Christianity, but is common to virtually everyone), but that when they do, there's no logical ('real world') reason?

On the homosexuality issue, I'm inclined to agree, but it's not always true for all religious beliefs. I think it's possible for most non-Christians to go through most of the key commandments of the New Testament and agree with most of them. Love thy neighbour as thyself was discussed on another atheism thread recently, and many of the Ten Commandments seem very reasonable to me. Reasonable because following them makes the world a better/happier place to live. There is a justification in terms of consequences for many religious doctrines and rules, but there is none that I can see for the homophobia.

Don't kill people - yes, don't steal - yes, respect your parents - yes, don't be envious - yes, don't have sex with people of the same gender... errr... why?

As to the difference between Peter Sutcliffe and Christians.. well, Peter Sutcliffe was mentally ill.

So if my wife rodgers ? me is that Ok or even if I rodger her just cause she Is my wife ias that ok

Biblical laws against homosexuality (and adultery, masturbation, contraception etc.) are perfectly 'rational'... if you go back a few thousand years to when they were written. I was taught (at age 10, by remarkably forward-thinking RE/history teacher!) that these laws are all about power. They date from a time when political power was simply a matter of how many men with pointy sticks you could put up against the other chap's men with pointy sticks. Therefore, the only way to expand a powerbase was to generate more men with pointy sticks who would do what their leaders told them. So, the duty of every patriotic citizen was to devote their efforts to that end. Allowing men to have sex with other men was clearly a danger to the pointy-stick-wielding-man quotient of the society, and therefore 'morally wrong'. As were people practising contraception or having sex with women outside their religion-sanctioned marriage (and therefore, potentially, having children who would not be brought up as 'good citizens' and may *gasp* think for themselves...)

It reminds me of a story my girlfriend tells of a relative who, when cooking a joint of meat, would always chop the ends off first. She was asked why she did this, and replied "I don't really know, but my mother always did it when we were children". Intrigued, she asked her mother why she did this, and was told "because we only had a small roasting tin at the time, and a whole joint wouldn't fit in"...

These things can be remarkably pervasive. I still occasionally find myself absent-mindedly running a tap before I drink from it to "wash the lead out" - something my mother did when we were small, even though we didn't have lead piping then, and certainly don't now. You've got to get them while they're young...

sorry but for me it's 3 am n Im just a little bit pished n just want to say congr believe in

Well, your diagnosis of sociopathy falls short on two of the points you counted. First, I DO 'conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviour', I just think that local laws are not the unltimate ones.
Do I keep the law? Yes. I also try and keep to another law, the law of right and wrong. The law of the land says I can have sex with random strangers. The law of right and wrong says not. In obeying the second rule I do not break the first.
The second is "7. lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt [...] another "
Saying you'd rather go to prison than renounce your beliefs does not fulfil that criteria. It would be someone else who hurt you, and their responsibility to be remorseful. You probably wouldn't argue that Nelson Mandela was being antisocial by being thrown in prison.

Are you actually prepared to listen to anything I say, or are you going to dismiss me out of hand? I'll probably keep responding either way but it would be nice to know where I stand.

'A rational person may disregard the law for a reason based on reality and evidence - the excellent example given above was helping a loved one to die with dignity. It is quite clear in that case that one can say "yes, the law says I must not take a life, but this person that I love is suffering, and I cannot stand by and let them continue to suffer". There's a clear, real world reason behind the action.'

I think you're wrong here SoRB, nothing about ethics is 'clear'. It may seem odd to you that christians (for example) do what they are told by a God that, as far as you are concerned, does not exist, but in terms of deciding what is right and wrong there is no 100% reliable system, it's only ever a sort of vague combination of pragmatism and intuition. Also, I really think you're pushing it a bit using tick-box pyschology to dettermine that people you've never met face to face are mentally ill because (and let's face it here) you are especially offended by their viewpoints.

As to the Peter Sutcliffe thing, while I don't especially think it is fair to compare him to the avaerage Christian, but my personal anxiety about acceptinfg the existance of God on the basis of faith has always been based around exactly that sort of nutter.

I've been meaning to do this for 2 days...that's better now.

RF

Oh come on Benjamin, SoRB is just being a bit playfully 'extreme' to expose the essentially ludicrous position of belief in God in a society that has been exposed to the knowledge of science and its very real pragmatic achievements for a few hundred years. I agree we all strugle with ethics to some extent but shouldn't we be doing it by discussion and debate with each other in the context of present day modern society and all its complexities, rather than basing it on some book written around 2000 years ago by a variety of authors.

I do understand that most of us need things to feed the emotional parts of ourselves. I do. I get it from novels, poetry, films, human relationships etc. What I just can't fathom is this need to believe in the literal existance of some supernatural entity. Especially one that appears to be so judgemental when it comes to ordinary human desires such as homosexuality. God is love has always struck me as particularly cruel joke.

Runescribe: You probably won't accept it, but in my view there are laws more important than the law of the land.

Son of Roj Blake: I accept that that is your view. I even understand it. I can even tell you the clinical name for it - "sociopath". Yes, I do, now, think you can reasonably be described as mentally ill. Not because you're irrational, or superstitious, per se, but specifically because you're prepared, quite openly, to say that your personal beliefs are more important than wider society's laws.

TRiG_Ireland: Really? I take it, then, that you disagree with Georg Elser, with Martin Luther King, with Gandhi, and with other promoters of civil disobedience?

'Oh come on Benjamin, SoRB is just being a bit playfully 'extreme' to expose the essentially ludicrous position of belief in God in a society that has been exposed to the knowledge of science and its very real pragmatic achievements for a few hundred years.'

No, he accused people on this thread of being sociopaths. I agree with the majority of what he is saying, but I can't accept that it is impossible to say it in a less inflamatory way which, given that this whole issue is clearly inflamatory enough, seems to me to be preferable.

Tch...why do I bother?

RF

God knows.

No, wait, hang on...

Sorry, nobody has any idea.

Bother! On reading the backlog, that point has aleady been made by the ever-eloquent Otto and others.

TRiG.

"I find the prospect of a world run by atheist fundamentalists terrifying. Religion would be banned, in all its forms, or at least those holding religious beliefs would be barred from positions of influence. We would certainly be unable to secure academic positions, and could plausibly be denied higher education. At worst, believers would be institutionalised due to their dangerous and potentially infectious mental illness. Morals are already being ignored in favour of convenience. This is not a trend that has a happy ending."

I'm an athiest and I'll fight to the death for you to hold to your faith PROVIDING you are prepared to do the same for me and respect the fact that I choose NOT to believe in a deity.In fact most athiests are pretty tolerant of those with faith(even if we think it a trifle childish like clinging to a security blanket)and would not dream of trying to prevent those of faith from observing that faith.

We leave all that to the theists.

>>No, he accused people on this thread of being sociopaths.<< benjamin

Oh stop getting your knickers in a twist. We gays get subjected to far worse in REAL LIFE on a regular basis. I'm not just talking about gay bashing but the general social cold shouldering that goes on in numerous social situations, brought about by *nice* people having been brought up to still view homosexuality as some kind of disease. Where does this belief originate from? The writings in holy books written by people in the dim and distant past, that to this day still permeate our society, directly or indirectly. And I say again. The biggest joke of all is when the Christians tell us God is Love.

How many more gay/lesbian suicides/alcoholic despairs is it going to take before things change?

I'm sure you'll find that there are plenty of aetheists who are equally bigoted Fanny, sadly it's a human trait not a religious one. Besides, saying 'well people are mean to me so it's okay for me to be mean to other people' isn't really a very sound one.

Full marks to those who understood that the reference to literally sociopathy was an exaggeration to make a point.

However, my question regarding Peter Sutcliffe is absolutely serious, and it's interesting to me that the only attempt to address it simply said "well, yeah, but he was mentally ill". The whole point of the question is - how can I tell Christians aren't? They take the same position as he did, the only difference is of degree - they have not (yet) killed anyone.

I shall repeat myself. This is addressed to either of the Christians posting in this thread, both of whom have said that they regard the laws given them by their god as more important than the laws imposed on them by their fellow humans.

Bearing in mind that I am a *rational*, *objective* observer - which is to say I do not have access to the voices in your head and have to rely on real world evidence that *I* can see - can you explain the *qualitative* difference between your position, and that of Peter Sutcliffe?

SoRB

That question could be a lot wider, I think. Judging by election results, letters pages, phone-ins and so on, quite a hefty percentage of the public are full of shite. Now, how do I know whether they are mentally ill or not for believing this shite?

"SoRB, is your objection to Christianity ... that when they [put their own beliefs above the law], there's no logical ('real world') reason?"

Precisely.

The problem, to me, is this: if you choose to, say, kill your wife, who is terminally ill, in a humane way, I may condemn you for it. You can give reasons - your love for her, her suffering etc. - reasons I can *see* and perhaps understand. I may disagree with your conclusion, but your reasons are, well, amenable to reason.

But if an irrational person ignores the law (or says they would) based on instructions given them by a voice in their head, where can you go with that?

They may plead that they're obeying a law in a book, but the question then comes back to "why *that* book?", which takes you on to the voice in their head again.

The main thing that worries me about it all is that if they're allowed to be comfortable prioritising the voice in their head over their fellow humans, what happens if and when the voice tells them to do something nasty?

There is a whole world of REAL PEOPLE out here, and we make laws so we can live together in peace. It bothers me greatly that there is a significant number of people out there who believe the voices in their head are more important. It bothers me even more that when they SAY so, openly, they're not vilified and locked up until they're cured.

SoRB

"They may plead that they're obeying a law in a book, but the question then comes back to "why *that* book?", which takes you on to the voice in their head again."

The choice of book is more to do with the society they grew up in than a voice in their head.

Which leads to another question regarding the mental illness idea. Assuming a mental illness a product of some sort of chemical imbalance or physical damage to the brain, why does this damage not arise independently in different cultures? Why do we not find "Christianity sufferers" arising independently on different continents, in the same way that broken legs, depression or alcoholism do?