....is probably not the best movie I've ever watched =\ In fact I consider it a couple hours wasted =_=. But yes I'd never seen it before and I wanted to exercise the power of my new library card OKAYY?
ahem. So...
guess who recently:
-ran 8k VERY EARLY in the morning while REPEATEDLY dodging deadly bicycles
-learnt the alphabet backwards in a day (I finally resolved to do it after seeing a video on youtube. You can listen here =] Now I'll be prepared if boost ever has another free reciting the alphabet backwards competition (fwahaha)
-spent today looking at pictures of mouths and (sadly enough) enjoyed it xD
-pretended they were superman when the lift in their apartment building took them upstairs
-and finally cooked a badass chicken soup XD
I am oh so cool I know I know =p OH BTW if you cbb pleeeease gimme ideas for stuff to cook over here haha. So far I've tried scrambeled eggs, spaghetti, chicken soup, two types of stirfry chicken + veg and banana milkshakes. Someone suggested sushi but I'm not sure I trust myself to make it; it's quite hard to get the rice the right consistency right?
Eh anyway onto the slightly more think-y bit. I was having a conversation with my friend the other day. The basic point of debate was, "Assuming that all religions essentialy are different ways of worshipping the same God. Without this God, humans would have no sense of good and evil." My initial knee-jerk response was, no. I know plenty of non-religious people who live lives with good morals. But I guess, if you say those morals are derived from the society the people in question were brought up in, and the laws of...well pretty much every society were set out in a time when religion was pretty much ubiquitous in society. So the other persons argument was that, even though you don't account the values you own to a higher power, by taking them from the society you live in you've indirectly used the Gods morals, and hence without them your values still wouldn't exist.
This sounded a bit weird still to me. I mean, given that pretty much every culture in the world ever had a religion at some stage in their history means that whatever morals you do have would have to be attributed to the higher God. It pretty much means the argument is unbeatable right? How do you crack something like that?
Anyhoo, in my opinion, religion developed because humans have an innate need to feel like they have someone to look up to; someone to pray to and believe is watching over them...and maybe to explain things that seem unexplainable at the time. Also, having people believe there is a badass thrower of thunderbolts watching if you're being bad is also probably very beneficial to a stable community. The term the person used was that in a godless society everyone would be running around killing each other and basically living the hedonistic life. Anyway would be interested if any of you guys have anything to say about that.
Plah anyway to finish off here's a video to reward you if you managed to read/skip down to this far. ^^
Post 4 of 2011 =]
“Use what talent you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best”
Listening to: This Ain't Goodbye - Train
4 comments:
If you're going to assume all religions essentialy are different ways of worshipping the same God, what about religions with polytheism? After all, did not 'democracy' originate with the Ancient Greeks? Which is 'good', the polytheist democracy, or the monotheist dictatorship?
If religion is the definition of 'good' and 'bad', what happens when religions clash? What if one religion labels the other as 'bad', and vice versa? If they're both worshipping the same God, does that mean all actions are both good and bad?
Well the guy I was talking to was a strong christian, and their genesis belief is that God created everything; i.e if people worship other gods they still worship God god because he created them. So it's like worshipping god via that pantheon, as opposed to directly worshipping the same God.
With the religious war I think it would come down to human fallacy. Depending which side you were on, you could always say the other was mislead or sinful. As in maybe they misinterpreted or disregarded the good/bad message? OH and lol could always say, 'you're worshipping my god via a different god, so your message is probably garbled, therefore I'm more right XD'
I personally don't agree that religion is the source of our understanding of good and bad though. I think they're a set of basic instinctive rules that we have wired into us from an early age that allows us to live in a stable environment. Like...somewhere along the road even wolves and monkeys figured out that it's better being in a group than alone. And a sense of good and bad that helps you avoid rocking the boat would be helpful in keeping a group together.
Well if they're going to use that argument, and you if God can create other gods, then who created God? If God is allpowerful, then He can create another God who is as powerful as He is. He can also destroy that other god. But if that other god is just as powerful as the first God, then he can also destroy Him. Right? So then who is the real God?
Anyway, yes, on an instinctive level, there is some differentiantion of good and bad. Especially regarding infants/young animals, for example. Is that hardwired, though? Or is that precondition through religion?
Mmmm I think the problem is the concept of an all powerful God sounds pretty simple generally, but if you subject it to thought experiments like that it kind of fails. Sort of like the immovable object/unstoppable force thing. The definition of the thing just doesn't cover what would happen in those situations. In those cases I guess it just falls to human judgement/error to decide what to believe in...
I'd like to think that the concepts of good and bad are basic social ideas that humans have learnt over time in order to facilitate living in large groups peacefully. I dislike the idea that it should be attributed to religion, but admit that religion is a pretty good way of getting those ideas across in terms of the things you can scare people with to make them abide the rules. =]
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