2shotsoflife

Ok Im not agnostic or any thing but i have an honest question. In the world we live in today every society has a religion of some type. So here's my question as an agnostic do you believe that being raised in a religious society has shaped your morel (sp?) views or not? And lets say some how a completely agnostic society developed like one that has never been exposed to religion. What would laws would develop out of that society? like i know most (but not all) standards of law usually start out as something religious so what would develop naturally if there was no religion?

__________________
I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up - they have no holidays. -Henny Youngman

WilliamBlue

This is a discussion we have had here several times, some (like you?) believe that religion and morals are tied together and others (like me) believe that morals came before religion as you would need to be able to live in a social context before you could have an organized religion. Morals allowed us to live together to form a society is my belief, but it is an argument of which came first the chicken or the egg...

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

harleylove

I agree but here goes anyway.

I have complete faith that even in a society with no religion it would still have morals. I think most people can relate to "Do unto others as you would have done unto you". All it takes is a little empathy not a religious guideline IMO.

__________________
If the day and night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs--that is your success. All nature is your congratulation.
Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862

tommi atkins

I beleive that my christian upbringing has had some effect on my morals. I had a childrens bible in the seventies and i can remember the illustrations, things like john the baptists head on a plate and the romans smashing nails through jesus's hands. It had a profound effect on me which was ...YUK.

From a early age I remember thinking that things like angels and parted seas and arks were ...just not right....something a bit funny going on. However, you can screw kids heads up easily and I still to this day feel a odd twinge of "OOh no! Dont say THAT! God will get upset", Like when my son said he hated god for making him Autistic.

Illogical I know, but thats how it gets ya.

I accept that some of my values today are influenced by the better teachings of jesus and a fear of hell. I feel the majority of my morals however come from my life experiences, parents and my own development of self.

All in all I think i would be not much richer and not much poorer for religion existing.Still, It gives me something to obsessivly spam forums about as i glide through my mid-life crisis.

Og

There's no such thing as a society without religion. Religion is a word built from two components that have latin roots. "Re" which means "pointing back" which you find in words like remake, reply, renew, etc. Ligio which means to connect (words such as ligament and ligand).

Religion is a structured cultural system that links people to human existence in a manner handed around by the previous members of a culture.

This is the way that Joseph Campbell described religion in "The Power of Myth" interview series with him and Bill Moyers. A religionless society is without culture or cohesion and really wouldn't be considered a society at all. There would be no bond or interaction between people.

Using this definition, science is a religion. In my opinion, science is the religion that the world is going towards. Religion doesn't have to mean "belief in some ultimate being" or any manner of mythological crap like that. For example, buddhism and shinto are atheistic religions but religions none-the-less.

Let our icons change from Genesis, the virgin mary and jesus to maxwell's equations, the voyager satellites, and images returned by the hubble telescope. I see no reason why society needs to be without real religion in terms of the definition provided by Campbell.

In fact, buddhist cultures are agnostic cultures. Science is necessarily an agnostic approach to truth. Both of these cultures don't actively seek to find what is truth. They seek to remove what is not truth from the scope of possibilities.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

AB517

When I am with my church friends I tell them the beauty of science is that what we know today may be modified or proven wrong tomorrow. I tell them this is not bad; its growth.

I then ask them and I ask you guys now

What is wrong with religion saying “In light of what we know and our human experience we now think “NEW IDEA”?

I did not choose Buddhism for my set of rituals because his ideas steam from the culture of his time. He saw, like Jesus, an inflexible religion. He chose to do the exact opposite.
Nothing more.

Science is not, and should, never be equated to a religion as we use the word. Science is observing the observable and then trying to predict with it. Science is a tool, the eyes of man if you will. Science is science, the quest for understanding.

The last thing I need is for people like Newton or Galileo to model the proper way to treat other people. They were both jerks. Although priest didn’t such a good job either.

Og

Good that you added this at the end. We don't need icons of other people, but of concepts to guide us. This is the nature of religion. This is a common use of the term in many areas. Buddhism is the example that I use because it is virtually identical with the process of science in its tenets.

Science is THE world religion and all these other ones such as christianity and islam are local "desi" or "provincial" religions of the past. The pantheon of science are our observations. It is not equated with christianity in many ways, but that doesn't mean it isn't a religion.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

romansh

AB my initial an intuitive answer agrees with you.
Unfortunately I have a habit of asking why? (why not)

agreeing answers ..... off the cuff
somehow diminish one another
I don't think we should worship science

disagreeable answers
religion at least as practiced by many would loose out really badly

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, I suppose what's bugging me is I have not seen a convicing argument for against my intition?

__________________
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. ........... Douglas Adams

WilliamBlue

I think that when you call science a religion you bring up the whole Frankenstein issue and with some merit, we must be careful to control science so that it does not control us. For instance in the near future we will be able to program the human genome and (probably?)possibly create a new human race(s?), are we to go down that path? I am not so sure.

__________________
When you dance with an elephant it's up to you to not get stepped on.
How can we be so arrogant and egotistical to believe that the whole Universe was created just for us?

marmalade

I don't think religion and science are separate. I agree with Og's definition of religion. Religion is the desire to create/discover order and meaning in the world. As humans are social animals, religion by definition is inseparable from the culture it arises in.

Accordingly, science is a subset of religion. And, historically, its true that science not only arose out of religion but also arose simultaneously. The earliest mythologies were attempts to explain natural observations: stars, sun, seasons, biology, etc.

Science isn't separate from humanity's seeking of morality and meaning. Science is far more than mere observation and prediction. Religion also makes observations and predictions. The distinction between science and religion is a modern one. This distinction was created for reasons of politics... separation of church and state. Really what this meant is that science became the new state religion for most countries.