Religion is capable of superseding morality, legality and basic decency – and this is why I believe it is so dangerous to us as a species and corrosive as a philosophical, let alone legal, framework.
Theists claim to know not just the name, gender, and appearance of the entity that birthed the universe, but also its (usually his) opinion on what you should eat, when and in which direction you should pray, who should be burned at the stake, who should be groveled to, and who you should sleep with and how. Those who so humbly claim to know the mind of god justify laws, social expectations, wars and executions on this very clairvoyance. Throughout the past and today, organized religion has stood in ferocious defiance of science and social progress at every turn, from evolution to stem cell research to woman and gay rights. An incredible certainty is imparted through religion, unlike any other moral system the religious are so intensely sure in beliefs that revel in their own lack of evidence.
Religion, unlike any other modern philosophy, permits its believers to supersede ethics and veto common sense, with the confidence and conceit only the faithful are capable of mustering.
The God of the old testament revels in genocide and ethnic cleansing, contrasted by the ever praised enlightening god of the new testament, a book which unlike its more direct counterpart mandates the existence of hell – an idea whose nefariousness is only tempered by habituation. The new testament describes to us a universe where not only is your every action, word and thought judged by a supreme, supernatural dictator, but this authoritarian existence can never be escaped, even through death.
Take Sharia, the legal framework informing much Islamic tradition – under these laws, non-Muslims, women and minorities are all treated as lesser than Muslim males, and automatically suffer harsher punishment and longer sentencing. Furthermore Islamic majority theocracies are infamous for human rights abuses and a general lack of concern for female, let alone homosexual rights. The journal Free Inquiry 2009 succinctly encapsulates modern Islam’s moral shortcomings which include “legal inequality of women, the suppression of political dissent, the curtailment of free expression, [and] the persecution of ethnic minorities and religious dissenters”. In short, Islam stands in solidarity with its theological counterparts – a stance shrouded by a patina of charity and ideological consolation, but a stance that inherently opposes human decency and logic.
Religion, it appears, is uniquely incapable of, on the macro level, standing as a pluralist, humanitarian moral framework
https://gamesortheory.com/2017/02/22/on-religion/
Theists claim to know not just the name, gender, and appearance of the entity that birthed the universe, but also its (usually his) opinion on what you should eat, when and in which direction you should pray, who should be burned at the stake, who should be groveled to, and who you should sleep with and how. Those who so humbly claim to know the mind of god justify laws, social expectations, wars and executions on this very clairvoyance. Throughout the past and today, organized religion has stood in ferocious defiance of science and social progress at every turn, from evolution to stem cell research to woman and gay rights. An incredible certainty is imparted through religion, unlike any other moral system the religious are so intensely sure in beliefs that revel in their own lack of evidence.
Religion, unlike any other modern philosophy, permits its believers to supersede ethics and veto common sense, with the confidence and conceit only the faithful are capable of mustering.
The God of the old testament revels in genocide and ethnic cleansing, contrasted by the ever praised enlightening god of the new testament, a book which unlike its more direct counterpart mandates the existence of hell – an idea whose nefariousness is only tempered by habituation. The new testament describes to us a universe where not only is your every action, word and thought judged by a supreme, supernatural dictator, but this authoritarian existence can never be escaped, even through death.
Take Sharia, the legal framework informing much Islamic tradition – under these laws, non-Muslims, women and minorities are all treated as lesser than Muslim males, and automatically suffer harsher punishment and longer sentencing. Furthermore Islamic majority theocracies are infamous for human rights abuses and a general lack of concern for female, let alone homosexual rights. The journal Free Inquiry 2009 succinctly encapsulates modern Islam’s moral shortcomings which include “legal inequality of women, the suppression of political dissent, the curtailment of free expression, [and] the persecution of ethnic minorities and religious dissenters”. In short, Islam stands in solidarity with its theological counterparts – a stance shrouded by a patina of charity and ideological consolation, but a stance that inherently opposes human decency and logic.
Religion, it appears, is uniquely incapable of, on the macro level, standing as a pluralist, humanitarian moral framework
https://gamesortheory.com/2017/02/22/on-religion/