2285: Follow the Money

[Mattman]

Originally Posted by DaveNJ

The need to get people to agree with you and join your tribe doesn't go away. You can convince yourself you're doing the right kind of proselytizing, but that's the rationale of literally every preacher out there. Some people feel the calling, some don't. I'm very happy I don't.

The Catholic Creed, of Profession of Faith that is said during every Mass refers to the Church as being Apostolic. Literally this means that we are supposed to spread the good news of the church. We are supposed to get people to join our tribe. I am happy to share my experiences, but I do not like to preach to people or to convert them. Religion is not for everyone. And it certainly should not be part of the law-making process.

[MichaelApproved]

Originally Posted by Los

a new class of religious people - they don't attend church or proselytize, and have no problem picking and choosing what they follow in religious texts, but have a belief that helps them get through life. This type of evolution of a belief system is how new religious are created.

Then why bother with religion at all? Why follow a book of bankrupt morals from 2,000 years ago? Why take on all the baggage that the bible brings (stoning, slavery, drowning children, selling woman, etc.)?

If you have a child, would you give them the bible and say "Follow the rules from this book, it'll guide you well"? Unless you're a psychopath, you wouldn't. You'd end up saying "Follow this but not that. Ignore this part where women are treated as property. Skip over the parts where God indiscriminately drowns children. This sentence is OK but let's bend over backwards to put it into context. etc. etc."

Instead of taking a barbaric religion and trying to find the good parts, why not start over with something that's all good parts?

I'd rather give my child a book of morals that I don't have to rip out pages from before giving it to them.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by MichaelApproved

why not start over with something that's all good parts?

I'd rather give my child a book of morals that I don't have to rip out pages from before giving it to them.

things with all good parts don't exist. humans are gross, violent, dirty, selfish, and deceitful along with any and all goodness. a book of all good parts feels…false?…i guess? overly idealistic?

[DaveNJ]

Originally Posted by MichaelApproved

Then why bother with religion at all? Why follow a book of bankrupt morals from 2,000 years ago? Why take on all the baggage that the bible brings (stoning, slavery, drowning children, selling woman, etc.)?

If you have a child, would you give them the bible and say "Follow the rules from this book, it'll guide you well"? Unless you're a psychopath, you wouldn't. You'd end up saying "Follow this but not that. Ignore this part where women are treated as property. Skip over the parts where God indiscriminately drowns children. This sentence is OK but let's bend over backwards to put it into context. etc. etc."

Instead of taking a barbaric religion and trying to find the good parts, why not start over with something that's all good parts?

I'd rather give my child a book of morals that I don't have to rip out pages from before giving it to them.

What book do you have in mind, then? Can you provide any examples? It's a lot easier to say "that's wrong" than it is to build a coherent moral framework.

You make it sound like it's easy to identify the good parts, but I really don't think that's a simple task at all. Asking people to live moral lives is actually an incredibly difficult challenge, especially in this contemporary age of relative abundance alongside absolute privation.

If you're going to criticize the way this guy is raising his kid, I think it'd resonate more if you put yourself out there a bit.

[DaveNJ]

Originally Posted by Sparrow

things with all good parts don't exist. humans are gross, violent, dirty, selfish, and deceitful along with any and all goodness. a book of all good parts feels…false?…i guess? overly idealistic?

Very well put.

[Sparrow]

that being said, mr. rogers did a pretty good job. he was a pastor, but his secular guidance and emotional handling is just superb.

[MichaelApproved]

I was hesitating when I wrote "all good parts" because I knew people would get hung up on that. I hope we can agree that there are examples of teachings where a larger percentage of the morals are better than the bible. My argument is to go with a book that has a larger percentage of proper moral guidance than the bible has.

It's a pretty low bar. The bible promotes rape, slavery, stoning, and the drowning of children. Who would want children growing up with such grotesque stories? I think we can find some books in the local library that can meet that goal.

Originally Posted by Sparrow

things with all good parts don't exist. humans are gross, violent, dirty, selfish, and deceitful along with any and all goodness. a book of all good parts feels…false?…i guess? overly idealistic?

I'm not talking about a historical book. I'm talking about a book with life lessons that you can give to a child and be relatively comfortable that they won't turn into a psychopath if they followed it word for word.

Your Mr. Rogers example was great. Give a group of 1 million children Mr. Rogers videos and a different group of 1 million children the bible. Without any further guidance, which group of children would be more likely to stone someone to death?

Originally Posted by DaveNJ

What book do you have in mind, then? Can you provide any examples? It's a lot easier to say "that's wrong" than it is to build a coherent moral framework.

Go to the library. Any children's book will have better morals than the bible. I'm willing to bet the non-religious books won't be advocating rape, stoning, or slavery.

If you like TV, you can try Sesame Street or one of the many PBS children shows.

Originally Posted by DaveNJ

You make it sound like it's easy to identify the good parts, but I really don't think that's a simple task at all. Asking people to live moral lives is actually an incredibly difficult challenge, especially in this contemporary age of relative abundance alongside absolute privation.

If it's not a simple task "to identify the good parts", it's not a good source of morals.

You know what's not a difficult challenge? Finding the bad parts within the bible. Advocating slavery, treating woman as property to be passed around within a family, stoning someone, and drowning children are clearly the bad parts.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

When would it ever be OK to put someone in a sack, bury them up to their neck in the ground and throw stones at their heads until they die. That is what "stoning" means.

Why would I want these teachings anywhere near my children? Why would I try to salvage anything from a book that advocates that insanity when there are so many other options for guidance and morals without that baggage?

No one is forcing you to follow the teachings in the bible or any other religion. Sure, you can try to pick and choose which parts of the sadistic bible you're comfortable with but you don't have to. You can choose to put the book down and look elsewhere for guidance.

[DaveNJ]

Originally Posted by MichaelApproved

I was hesitating when I wrote "all good parts" because I knew people would get hung up on that. I hope we can agree that there are examples of teachings where a larger percentage of the morals are better than the bible. My argument is to go with a book that has a larger percentage of proper moral guidance than the bible has.

It's a pretty low bar. The bible promotes rape, slavery, stoning, and the drowning of children. Who would want children growing up with such grotesque stories? I think we can find some books in the local library that can meet that goal.



I'm not talking about a historical book. I'm talking about a book with life lessons that you can give to a child and be relatively comfortable that they won't turn into a psychopath if they followed it word for word.

Your Mr. Rogers example was great. Give a group of 1 million children Mr. Rogers videos and a different group of 1 million children the bible. Without any further guidance, which group of children would be more likely to stone someone to death?



Go to the library. Any children's book will have better morals than the bible. I'm willing to bet the non-religious books won't be advocating rape, stoning, or slavery.

If you like TV, you can try Sesame Street or one of the many PBS children shows.



If it's not a simple task "to identify the good parts", it's not a good source of morals.

You know what's not a difficult challenge? Finding the bad parts within the bible. Advocating slavery, treating woman as property to be passed around within a family, stoning someone, and drowning children are clearly the bad parts.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

When would it ever be OK to put someone in a sack, bury them up to their neck in the ground and throw stones at their heads until they die. That is what "stoning" means.

Why would I want these teachings anywhere near my children? Why would I try to salvage anything from a book that advocates that insanity when there are so many other options for guidance and morals without that baggage?

No one is forcing you to follow the teachings in the bible or any other religion. Sure, you can try to pick and choose which parts of the sadistic bible you're comfortable with but you don't have to. You can choose to put the book down and look elsewhere for guidance.

Michael, please give me some book examples. And I think that while children's books have value, consider that the goal of a moral life as both you and I seem to understand it is to live one past the age of 18. With that in mind, you've got to provide adult examples, too. The Bible is not commonly understood as a children's book, and comparing it to those books isn't really apples to apples.

As far as being a low bar, saying that the Bible "promotes" the things you say it does is kind of facile. The Bible reflects the societies within which it was written. I could very well say that a book like "We Share Everything" promotes radical redistributionism, but it wouldn't really make sense to critique the work on that axis. The manner in which the book is read impacts the lessons drawn.

As far as kids growing up with grotesque stories, I loved grotesque stories as a kid. My mom read us "La Gallina Degollada" when I was five. English translation below:

https://www.utdallas.edu/~aargyros/t...ed_chicken.htm

I'm not sure what you're getting at there beyond asking for Tipper Gore style labels on appropriate vs. inappropriate content, which again I think is subject to a lot more dispute than you act like exists.

But let's get down to the real business here. You say, "If it's not a simple task "to identify the good parts", it's not a good source of morals." I profoundly disagree with that statement. If moral actions are simple binaries with easy 2+2=4 logic, that'd make sense, but I believe the human experience indicates that you are dead wrong.

Plus, it's kind of silly on its face, right? People derive great value from many works that are imperfect. It's not like my bookshelf is full of only works I think are 100% masterpieces. I doubt yours is, either.

So again, I'm going to ask, what books, instruction and teaching on morality do YOU have in mind? We're on the exact same page r.e. rape, stoning, etc. Those views have won the day. Thumbs up to both of us.

How about not so simple moral questions, though? Is it moral to eat pigs? Is it moral to make a lot of money and keep most of it? Is it moral to fly frequently? I really don't think Mr. Rogers is going to do the trick there.

[Los]

Originally Posted by MichaelApproved

Sure, you can try to pick and choose which parts of the sadistic bible you're comfortable with but you don't have to. You can choose to put the book down and look elsewhere for guidance.

You're assuming that all of the people I'm talking about even read the bible. Faith isn't about religious texts, rituals or even holidays, it's just a personal belief. You could take elements from a variety of religions and create your own belief system. It belongs to you, no one else. I'll never understand why it has be all or nothing with people when it comes to faith.

Atheists will argue that the bible shouldn't be followed at all because of the bad parts of it, but our Constitution literally said that African slaves aren't human beings. The fact that it starts by saying that all men are created equal should have invalidated the whole thing, but the country accepted it just the same. It's flawed like all sets of rules, but you need them when dealing with groups. With personal belief, you make your own.

I'm sure that if an atheist organization tried to come up with a book of laws and ideals to govern all atheists, there would be a nice amount of bigotry in there, and a lot of people would have a problem with it. Just use whatever you need to form your own beliefs, and keep them to yourself.

[Lanfear]

You are all very hung up on having one book to explain everything.

There will never be a book like that and even if there was it would need to be updated constantly.

Try starting with some Immanuel Kant style categorical imperative and work stuff out from there.

Then if you insist on this discussion being about raising kids start telling them to not hit other kids and share their toys. Read the book about Frederik the mouse with them, maybe a little later try the little prince, keep going till you hit the wave.

In general try and instill that learning new things is a great thing, and while you are at it teach them history. And then more history and then a little extra history and that should show them that things were fucked in the past but we are working on learning from it.
Tell them that dinosaurs lived a very very long time ago - kids love dinosaurs. I certainly did, and it was super logical to me that they lived long ago because they are found deep down in the earth.