@Scorpio - Oy. I read over your post twice to try to get where you're coming from, but I may still not be understanding.
I don't think like most people. A lot of people have said that I am so open-minded that my brains must have fallen out (I have developed my Ne a lot).
(very much the view of Alain De Botton, if you've heard of him?)
I've seen him speak on TV several years ago. He's one of a number of secularists who were raised that way, and lack the reactionary approach that is common in Xians who rejected their upbringing.
which, may I note, we are all born as by default
My Ti called to me: "What would it mean to say that?" My Ne answered that only secularists say that. So it seems to be treated as a support for secularism. My Si pointed out that it's an earlier version of a human. Thus, my Ne then suggested that secularists mean that humans when born are secularists, because that is most rational and are corrupted over time by religion. My Ti then asked: Why should only religion corrupt the data-centres of the mind? Aren't lies also a corruption of data? Can't people lie about other things as well? My Si responded that people lie about lots of things other than religion. My Ne observed that most lies in real lief and in the public stage are about things other than religions. Thus, most areas of life corrupt the data set. This in turn means that if secularists are more likely to be right because they are less corrupted, then this would be true of most topics. In which case, 5-year-old children are more likely to understand everything better than secularist adults.
But I doubt that most secularist adults would accept that on topics other than religion. They would point out that life experience matters more, as adults know a lot more than children.
So there is a counter to the argument of being born by default that most secularist adults would support and defend. The same argument would thus apply to religions.
Religions come after birth, and so trump ignorance.
But now there is another question: this point is simply a logical consequence of the argument. Secularists tend to say they are extremely rational, and open-minded. So
how could they miss this?
Why would secularists consider this a valid argument, when the argument would actually show that religions are MORE credible than secularism?
Why then couldn't secularists use literature/culture to generate a morality of their own that works better?
In theory, they could. But the question is
why haven't they?
Secularists have been extremely common in Europe since the French Revolution. They've influenced all walks of society, from politics to economics to psychology. They seem to think that they are many times smarter and more knowledgeable than all religious people put together. One has to wonder why millions of secularists have had over 200 years to develop hundreds, and yet are still complaining that they don't even have ONE.
Also, how would you even delineate that the secularists' morality is "no better" than the religious ones?
Using critical analysis with an objective and impartial viewpoint, that does not pander to false debating arguments.
Someone who would be objective and impartial.
I think the absolutism with which you talk about the endeavor's futility speaks to a personal bias... I don't think any of us can really make a claim that definitive. The topic is not closed.
I'm only saying that secularists are unlikely to do BETTER, based on evolutionary theory that secularists seem to think is all-important and a justification for their views. So it's really secularists who are making the case. I'm only pointing it out to you.
Even so, just because someone isn't going to be the world's richest person, doesn't justify him/her giving up and not trying to earn a living for his family. If having a better moral system is important, then having a moral system is even more important. So it makes more sense for secularists to first develop or choose a moral system for themselves, then live by it, and then worry about if they can improve it. This is something they can do right now.
But what the data shows me is actually the opposite. Non-religious (that's to say, non-scripture-based) moral evolution is perhaps the only one that's actually evolved, since the texts remain static.
Diarmaid MacCulloch, an Oxford scholar who specialises in the history of Xianity, pointed out that Xianity has kept evolving to changing circumstances throughout its life. The legal, philosophical and theological literature of Judaism has been repeatedly added to over the centuries. The ancient Jews led very different lives to the Jews of today. IIRC, Islam interprets the Koran according to the Hadith, a rule that the latest interpretation is the one to follow. So it's clear that the 3 big Abrahamic religions have been dynamically evolving through time since their beginnings and into the present day.
I think what you are referring to is that they all refer to their original texts. That is the style of classisists. Classisists think that if you want to understand a topic, then you must learn the terms and concepts that authors have developed their theories on. You need to know the past that led up to the present, to truly have a deep and comprehensive understanding of the present. You need to read the primers.
If you want to be a world-class evolutionary scientist, your best bet is to start by reading Darwin's
Origin of the Species before moving on to the modern synthesis, as they based their ideas on reading Darwin's book. If you want to be a world-class mathematician, you need to start by reading
Euclid's Elements for the same reasons. If you want to really understand any Judaism, Xianity, Islam or Hinduism, you need to read the Jewish Old Testament, the Xian New Testament, the Islamic Koran or the ancient Hindu scriptures in their script and language, and not in a translation.
But those are just the start, to get a foundation for understanding the later works. You have not reached the thinking of the modern day, until you've also read the major works leading to the modern day as well.
For example:
Yes. But our modern moral advancements (Richard Dawkins talks about this at length) are due to a collective evolution of those moral systems, in spite of the fundamentalism of the religious texts themselves.
Our advancements toward women's rights, toward an abolishment of slavery, toward acceptance of homosexuality, the right of women to their bodies (etc) came about in opposition to religious text; that is to say, non-religiously.
We have been able to do this because we simply listen to ourselves (our own sense of morality) and to one-another's needs, not outdated texts, and adjust according to the times.
Actually, all of those are based on the principle of equality towards all humans.
My reading of the history of English law shows that the principle of equality was introduced into English law in the medieval ages. It was called Equity, and was introduced by the Courts of the Chancery, which were run by the church. The church got the idea of equity from the Bible. The Chancery also introduced the idea of an appeals court, again based on ideas they got from the Bible.
England had already banned slavery many years before abolitionism, with the end of serfdom. But it was still practised in the colonies of Europe. William Wilberforce, a rich playboy and an MP, became an evangelist, and then started fighting for abolitionism in the British Empire. He was backed by religious Quakers, who also believed in abolitionism. They were able to win over the people and Parliament, and slavery was outlawed in almost all of the British Empire. Those who made their living from slavery naturally complained that they were being put into the poorhouse. So they were compensated for their losses. It was a heavy price. But the government was paying for the acceptance of an end to slavery.
30 years later, the only former British colony that was no longer subject to British law, had a massive war over it, because rich Confederates were being told they could not use slaves any longer to work their fields, were not to be compensated for their losses, and received heavy tax tariffs on top, that did not apply to the people in the Northern states. They got a double-whammy from taxation. But, because the majority lived in the North, the Southerners were overruled. No taxation without representation is the American motto, and the reason given for their revolution and the reason for the existence of the country in the first place. Naturally, they revolted and did the same, only this time, the other side won.
When the world mourns the American Civil War as a completely unnecessary loss of half a million lives, and recognises that the British approach ended slavery with peace in a far larger population and area, then the same approach will be used to stop prejudice and discrimination, which will also end any reason to fight against prejudice and discrimination.
Would you say it's fair to claim the present moral architecture in most 1st world countries is better than it was 1,000 years ago when things were more heavily religious?
Debatable. But I would say that if we are to connect it to a factor that has increased, then why not the increase in the use of machines, or the increase in petroleum? Why pick on religion as the sole factor under consideration?
When looking for causations, I like to use the
Baconian method:
Approach to causality[edit]
The method consists of procedures for isolating and further investigating the form nature, or cause, of a phenomenon, including the method of agreement, method of difference, and method of concomitant variation.[8]
Bacon suggests that you draw up a list of all things in which the phenomenon you are trying to explain occurs, as well as a list of things in which it does not occur. Then you rank your lists according to the degree in which the phenomenon occurs in each one. Then you should be able to deduce what factors match the occurrence of the phenomenon in one list and don't occur in the other list, and also what factors change in accordance with the way the data had been ranked.
Thus, if an army is successful when commanded by Essex, and not successful when not commanded by Essex: and when it is more or less successful according to the degree of involvement of Essex as its commander, then it is scientifically reasonable to say that being commanded by Essex is causally related to the army's success.
From this Bacon suggests that the underlying cause of the phenomenon, what he calls the "form," can be approximated by interpreting the results of one's observations. This approximation Bacon calls the "First Vintage." It is not a final conclusion about the formal cause of the phenomenon but merely a hypothesis. It is only the first stage in the attempt to find the form and it must be scrutinized and compared to other hypotheses. In this manner, the truth of natural philosophy is approached "by gradual degrees," as stated in his Novum Organum.
If we were to use Bacon's rule, then it follows that the more secular the person, the more moral they would be, or at least, the more secular the state, the more moral it would be. Thus, the USSR, which was far more non-religious than any other Western state, would be the most moral of all. But it clearly was not. Atheist China is another example.
Human societies used to practise human sacrifice, but don't any more, even though they were just as religious.
Thus, non-religiosity is clearly not a causation. It's possible that it might be part of a combination of factors. But it certainly can't be the leading one.
When you say "It's not OK", what angle/system are you making that decision from? Is it a religious one? Your own private one? I'm unfamiliar with your religious/spiritual beliefs - so just wanna clarify.
Most of them that I know of. I'm simply stating that most people, both religious and secular, seem to think that incest is banned by Abrahamic religions in all circumstances.
I'm Jewish. But I try to take an objective and impartial stance.
As for asserting my own view is religious: I don't think it's fair to tell someone what their views are. It may be easier for you to associate my statements to the schemas you've hitherto come across and find a correlation (thus assert one), but there are faaaar more options than just "religious" and "non-religious". And you seem to have a bias for tying everything back to the religious.
If someone came up with a theory that quantum decoherence is due to each quantum choice being lived out in a multitude of universes, then surely you can hardly blame anyone for pointing out that your view is very similar to Hugh Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics. Why would you want your views to be treated differently?
I think it may be helpful to open up your scope to the complexity of this whole topic, rather than narrowing things down to a few central/umbrella schemas.
I am. I'm open to everything. There's been a lot of history on this topic over the years. Bit pointless ignoring everything that we already know that might shed some light on the matter, isn't it?
My own view comes from analytical psychology, which happens to be able to provide a rationality for "the concept of the father" as a psychological phenomenon -- independent of religion. The way it's explained is by asserting that each of us is born with a father and mother archetype; instinctually not too different from how other animals know who their mother is and how to stay close to her. Mammals in general have a lot of this.
The role of the parent thus has deep psychological and evolutionary roots, and the psychic place the parents play in the individual are very pronounced. There is no need for religion to be factored in, for this to be understood. We can eeeeasssily develop a framework for why -- religion aside -- humans need a caring nurturer and for certain needs to be met via familial ties.
I've come across several threads on the internet in the last few years asking if incest should be made legal. Many would say no, not if the there are no kids. I gather that the religious viewpoint is generally no, even if there are no kids.
When I read your post, I considered your argument. My Ne suggested to me, that the way that religions talk about G-d as the protective father, the way they generally work, and the way that religions define relationships between parents and children in general, seem to follow a principle of turning the paternal persona into an archetype, and the child persona into an archetype. My Ti then proclaimed that this would make sense, if one was trying to establish and maintain a continuing vibrant, flexible yet evolutionarily stable societal equilibrium. My Si said that would be in keeping with the basic behaviours of religions.
It thus seemed to me, that your unconscious had hit upon a description that would give a very fitting explanation for the religious viewpoint, not just of incest, but of parent-child relationships, and of the relationship between deity and followers.
Your conscious self may not have realised that you were giving a rational explanation for the paternalistic aspect of Abrahamic religions.
Ah, that's interesting. Well, I guess I can't comment on that. People will arrest you if you stand on the sidewalk too long.
They would? Not in the UK. They won't even arrest you if you stand in the road all day, as long you don't keep trying to get run over.
Personally, I'm a tit for tat guy myself.
There's no support that it's restricted to that sphere either. Is it time to welcome you to absurdism yet? Hail Eris? You do get some cool doorprizes. 
