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Comments
By controlling their innate selfishness. Given the chance, people will torture animals from birth til slaughter to produce their meat more efficiently. Religion can convince them that it's a great crime to kill a cow.
People, left to themselves, are vicious egotists. The only decency they're innately programmed to show is toward kin, as if you can help a sibling without risking your own life, it's 50% as good as helping yourself due to the degree of genetic relatedness. So if we value empathy, we should praise social control mechanisms to the degree they make people love others.
@Forzare: Funny how people can be not religious and also be decent people, then.
Define "decent." If you just mean conforming to social norms, that's merely egotism channeled: people who know how to be socially successful will be more successful finding mates. Any evil their society tolerates, humans will tend to do.
channeled: people who know how to be socially successful will be more
successful finding mates. Any evil their society tolerates, humans will
tend to do.
I don't agree with this.
At all.
People aren't inherently bastards. Not everyone needs religion to tell them to be a good person.
Rousseau Was Right I happen to hold that neither are right and people are born neutral and blank.
Just how low are your standards for a good person?
Again, most people participate in the lifelong torture of vast numbers of sentient beings.
@Juan: People aren't inherently anything, really. People are born as blank slates.
I really don't buy that human brains have no inborn qualities whatsoever. Every human universal speaks against that hypothesis.
I also try my best not to hurt other people. I make an effort to be honest, even when I would benefit more from lying. I give a dollar to the homeless guy with a guitar.
I could kick that dog on the side of the road For The Evulz. Nobody's watching, right? I could get away with it. But I don't. Being pointlessly cruel isn't me. It isn't most people, either.
I'm not perfect, but who the fuck is? I try to do good in my life and be a good person, but it's not because I'm afraid of hell or because God told me that this is how I should be. I don't do it because I'm trying to impress people or to "be more successful at finding mates." I try to be a good person because I have empathy for my fellow human beings. I try to be a good person because I think it's the right thing to do.
So no. I don't think that you need God to be a decent person. God can help, sure. But religion isn't the end-all-be-all of human goodness.
Anyway, it is true that people are pre-disposed towards selfishness, and that norms of behaviour need to be learned. However, quite a lot of despicable behaviour is also learned. So no, this one is not claiming that humans are born good - but they are not born quite as evil as they turn out to be either. Some bad qualities are overcome by society, but just as many are induced by it. It is an even trade-off, in the end.
Heh, only society - and especially religion/ideology - can teach selfless evil. That is not something people normally do.
People, left to themselves, are vicious egotists. The only
decency they're innately programmed to show is toward kin, as if you can
help a sibling without risking your own life, it's 50% as good as
helping yourself due to the degree of genetic relatedness. So if we
value empathy, we should praise social control mechanisms to the degree
they make people love others.
I think that is kind of open to interpretation. I do not know that we can look into a crystal ball and know what life would be like in the so-called "state of nature" or whatever. For example, I think empathy is a natural thing so I do not necessarily agree with what you say about people being "vicious egotists" and such. However, that does not mean that I think everyone is perfect or that people without rules, laws, or moral standards would tend to act in a good way all of the time. I also think that Forzare made a good point earlier about this.
Define "decent." If you just mean conforming to social norms, that's
merely egotism channeled: people who know how to be socially successful
will be more successful finding mates. Any evil their society tolerates,
humans will tend to do.
Well, I can agree that a good point of religion can be encouraging at least a baseline of ethical behavior, but I do wonder why you believe that such is exclusive to religion and cannot be found in something like a secular system of ethics. Again, this is not to say I dislike or like religion or that I am religious or not religious. I am just curious about this stuff.
Beholderess,
Well, this one cannot define any particular standard for a good person,
but has some for a bare minimum of decency. Which would be - do not harm
a sapient being without their consent, unless the sapient being in
question violates this simple rule first. If they do, they are fair
game. Religion quite often causes people to do so.
I think that is an interesting perspective (and I certainly agree with the at least basic decently that you describe) and I would like to hear some examples of religion often causing people to harm others. I guess that kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier though about whether it is the religion, a common interpretation of the religion, or one's own attitudes applied to the religion that causes violence.
This may be a bit off point, but what I mentioned earlier about people telling me that violent people who practice a religion are the one who cause violence rather than the religion itself links back to another point I have heard theists make. Generally, I have heard that secularization is a great evil in society from such persons and that a loss of faith is one of the biggest problems today. Whether or not I agree with that is not really important, but I do think that I have rarely heard much of a strong argument to support such a statement from the people who make it.