I recently saw this comment from Phat in another thread and it really got to me.
Phat writes:
If you disagree with the premise that Jesus is the answer, you better have a darn good reason why you can boldly proclaim your own intellect as the answer.
Call me stupid, but I believe that my intellect left to its own devices inevitably disintegrates into Ego, Selfishness, and self-centered versus altruistic patterning.
I remember also we had a poster recently who claimed that he would quite likely cheat on his wife if he wasn't religious although I cannot recall the thread.
I seem to see this more and more lately and it essentially this boils down to certain religious people who believe that their supposedly religious based morality exists to the exclusion of any secular or rationally based morality.
I find these types of statements very strange because even as I question my own belief in God I would NEVER think that my own morality hinged upon my choice to believe or not.
The reason I do altruistic things is because it is the right thing to do. When I see someone get into a car accident ahead of me, I stop and help if I can even if it means it cuts into my video game time at home. I don't need God to tell me that it is the right thing to do to pause The Office to help my neighbor jump start his car. I don't need God to tell me that I love my wife and that I would not cheat on her.
It seems like that some of these statements imply that the only thing holding a lot of fundamentalists back from total selfish debauchery is their faith. So the question I like to pose to the forum is what would actually happen to these people if they could be convinced en-mass that there was no God? Would we see divorce rates go through the roof? Would there be a mass exodus from all charity giving and volunteerism? What would happen?
With that I would like to offer my opinion and in it my hope for the basic sense of humanity that I like to believe most people hold. I think that nothing would change. Yea sure there would be a few newsworthy issues but for the most part, I tend to think that a lot of people in our current culture currently do things for reasons beyond faith. People would still give to charity for the same reason that they would help a young mother in the parking lot change a flat tire. People now seem to stay married for everything OTHER than religious reasons. (I do in fact know some people who refuse to get divorced because of religion so I imagine that there would be some effect but I don't suspect that lines would start forming outside of the local strip clubs.) Tragedy would still invoke mercy and compassion in our hearts. Our sense of community would be rebuilt not around tall building with stained-glass windows but rather our innate sense of cooperation which is what actually makes us human.
I guess what irks me the most about the people who make these statements, their morality compulsory with their faith, is that they forget that what makes us human is our inability to survive without community and cooperation. As nuclear as we have become in the west, we still vitally depend on those around us for both our happiness and existence and I don't see that changing any time soon.
Faith & Belief please.
Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)
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